The Relic In The Egyptian Gallery & More Tales Of The Cthulhu Mythos

by McLaughlin, Mark

  “It’s now or never!” I said to Dr. Brandywine, loud enough for Caspar to hear. “Now or never!”

  The doctor stared at me, frowning. “Now or never...?”

  Caspar threw open the front door and flung the baseball bat with all his might at the back of Dr. Brandywine’s head. It connected with a sickening crack, louder than a firecracker.

  The gun dropped from the doctor’s hand as he fell to the floor, unconscious.

  Caspar entered the room and picked up the bat. Then he did something I hadn’t expected. He saw the black box between the chairs and their horrid occupants – and with one powerful swing of the bat, broke the box open, revealing a core of wires and crystals that glowed bluish-green. He gave the machine another blow and the core burst into flame.

  Mrs. Veng screamed as her hair caught fire. A moment later, she passed out. G’hodloth thrashed wildly, squealing like an enraged hog. Tufts of its flaming fur floated through the air, setting nearby curtains on fire. Caspar gave the machine yet another swat for good measure. The room was filling with smoke as flames spread through the apartment. With a high-pitched shriek, G’hodloth burst from its bonds and scuttered out of the room, black fur ablaze. The smoke from the burning fur was streaked with wisps of the bluish-green glow.

  Mrs. Veng’s hair and most of her clothes had burned away. The aborted treatment, coupled with the heat, had worked a ghastly transformation upon her. Her skin had turned brittle and was peeling away from her body. The exposed muscles beneath looked like fried meat.

  “My God! Look at the doctor!” Caspar cried.

  Dr. Brandywine had told us that the room’s low temperature kept his fever in check. His body was now just a couple feet away from the blazing machine. Subjected to heat, the fever had returned with a sudden, lethal vengeance. The doctor’s eyes turned blood-red and his flesh started to bubble and bloat, like yeasty dough in a warm oven. Within seconds, bright-yellow pustules arose, swelling to the size of grapes.

  “He’s contagious!” I shouted. “Let’s get out of here!” I ran from the room and Caspar followed close behind. I wanted to somehow extinguish the fire, but I knew that was impossible. Staying even a moment longer in the same room as that diseased body would have infected us.

  As we hurried out of the building, we saw that other parts of the house were also on fire. No doubt G’hodloth had spread the flames when it rushed, fur afire, from Dr. Brandywine’s room.

  Once we were safely outside, I looked back at the building and saw flames shooting from windows on all three floors. Soon a fire engine arrived. We crossed the street so we wouldn’t get in the way.

  Despite the efforts of firefighters, the blaze could not be stopped. Torrents of gray smoke poured from the structure. At one point, a high-pitched shriek sounded through the halls of the massive building. Then a squealing, writhing mass of coal-black smoke, trailing long, vaporous limbs and heavily streaked with bluish-green flashes of energy, burst through the roof and soared up into the sky. Moments later, the Veng house collapsed, burying the living door and all of its secrets beneath tons of flaming wreckage.

  The Relic In The Egyptian Gallery

  by Mark McLaughlin & Michael Sheehan, Jr.

  The silver moving van arrived in front of the Arkham Public Museum at 1 p.m. on a Saturday. It was a chilly autumn day, and only a couple dozen patrons were wandering the halls. Quentin Grant, the Executive Curator, was alerted to the presence of the van by his Office Manager, Emma James.

  Quentin hurried out of the museum. Two stocky moving men, both clad in dark gray coveralls, had already opened the back of the van and hauled out a wooden crate, about six feet high and three feet wide.

  Quentin was a gangly, middle-aged man with large, dark eyes. He was in the habit of gazing at the world in an owl-like fashion, tilting his head every now and then, as though to study various details from new angles. He tilted his head many times as he studied the strange delivery. The crate’s acrylic glass lid completely covered the opening. The clear sheet was screwed on, not hinged, so that it would have to be completely unscrewed on all four sides to be removed. This assembly made it possible to see all of the crate’s contents.

  The thing inside the crate was an Egyptian mummy – a slender, muscular man, his arms regally folded across his chest. Like many such mummies, the dried body had been wrapped in linen and coated with resin.

  This specimen, however, was unique in that a lustrous gold mask was strapped with thin metal bands onto the wrapped head. The mask depicted a somber male face, with eye-holes rimmed with brilliant scarlet gems. Quentin had never seen this particular form of embellishment before. The body rested on a bed of excelsior and dried leaves. He noticed with great interest that the hands of the mummy were not wrapped in linen. The fingers were curled into dark, withered talons.

  Emma joined him front of the crate. She was a young woman with wavy red hair and dark-green horn-rimmed glasses. “Interesting. I’ve never seen a mask like that on a mummy before.”

  “Neither have I,” said Quentin. “The jewels around the eyes are an unusual touch. So are the gold bands holding the mask in place. I’ll need to look at that mask more closely. I’m surprised that this mummy was shipped with such careless disregard. Anybody with a screwdriver could open up that crate.” He turned to one of the men who’d brought the crate. “Who sent it? Why is it here?”

  “An anonymous donation,” said the delivery man, “from a gentleman with an interest in history.”

  “Such a rare and expensive relic…” Quentin stared at the mask and its scintillating gems. “I will need documentation.”

  “We’ve been instructed to deliver this crate. No more, no less,” the man said. He returned to the van, along with his coworker, and they both drove off without another word.

  “What’s going on here?” the curator said, exasperated. “Who leaves behind a valuable donation without asking anyone to sign for it?”

  “So what are we going to do?” Emma said.

  “Take it, of course.” He found himself absent-mindedly stroking a corner of the acrylic glass lid. He stopped immediately. “It’s priceless! I can’t risk offending a wealthy potential donor by not taking it. I’ll have to talk with our lawyers. In the meantime, we have some extra rooms in the Egyptian Gallery. Please find Carruthers from Maintenance and ask him to lock it up in one of those for now. I’ll wait with it until he gets here.”

  “I can just call him,” she said, pulling out her cellphone. “What’s his number?”

  “You must not talk to him very much. He doesn’t have a cellphone. He thinks they’ll give him brain cancer. Check his office – he’s probably there.”

  “Will do.” So saying, she hurried toward the building.

  Quentin stood by the crate and looked at the clear lid. The acrylic glass mystified him. It didn’t create an airtight seal on the crate, which was too plain to be part of any display. All the covering did was ensure that a person could see the mummy in transit, but not touch it.

  At last Emma returned with Carruthers, along with two of his helpers, both of whom were in their mid-twenties. One was pushing an empty hand truck. Emma directed them as they strapped the crate onto the hand truck, and within minutes, the mummy was on its way into the museum.

  As Quentin re-entered the museum, he paused for a moment to appraise the promotional display for the Witchcraft Exhibit. It just wasn’t pulling in visitors. Arkham’s history was rich with tales of black magic – perhaps too rich. Tourists found it interesting, but the citizens took the city’s supernatural legacy for granted. He’d have to determine a more novel way to interest the public in the project.

  He returned to his office and checked his phone messages and emails, in the hope that the donor of the mummy had tried to get in touch. But, the only communication he’d received was an email from Alicia Williams, the museum’s Events Coordinator, letting him know that she was enjoying her vacation in San Diego. Quentin knew that Alicia was fond of them, bu
t he had no room for relationships in his life. Every minute of his life was filled with his work, which he loved.

  He had wanted to work in a museum ever since he was a little boy in Chicago, home of many such centers of learning, all truly glorious to him. In time, he was offered the position of Executive Curator of the Arkham Public Museum, and he accepted without hesitation. Arkham, Massachusetts, was a community with a long history of witchcraft, cult activity, and documented supernatural occurrences – a delightful challenge for any adventurous curator.

  He especially relished ancient Egyptian history and mythology, and so, was pleased to be part of a museum with a gallery dedicated to Egypt. When he was a young man, he’d once traveled to the Valley of the Kings, where many pharaohs and nobles had been entombed. During that time, he had talked extensively with a self-professed magic-man named Dr. Xorthonos.

  The doctor lived in a ragged tent outside of the Valley. He was a bone-thin man with thick white hair, impossibly blue eyes, and a toothy grin. He told Quentin that he was on a worldwide quest for specific talismans and ancient books of wisdom, and he was searching the Valley for a magical item known as the Blood Ring of Anubis.

  “I can sense that it is out there, amidst the tombs,” Dr. Xorthonos said. “I was born with the ability to intuit the location of magical power, and my powers are helping me to find that ring. Before long, it shall be mine.”

  “But what if it’s underground, sealed deep within a tomb?” Quentin asked.

  Dr. Xorthonos shrugged dismissively. “I have faced obstacles far more daunting than that.”

  Quentin smiled at the memory of that persistent, quixotic mystic. He wished he knew how to contact the doctor. The white-haired man would have been able to shine some light on the whole crate affair. But, the doctor had never been one to hand out business cards.

  Quentin made calls among his colleagues to see if he could learn who had sent him the crate. His efforts, however, did not yield any results. Later that afternoon, Emma stopped by his office. “Carruthers has the crate set up in the Egyptian Gallery,” she said. “In the Scarab Room.” Many of the rooms in the Gallery were named after popular Egyptian icons – others included the Pyramid Room, the Sphinx Room, the Cartouche Room, and the Chariot Room. Museum employees joked that the restrooms should have been called the Throne Rooms.

  “Excellent. I’ll head that way in about a half-hour,” he said.

  “When I left, he was unscrewing that plastic sheet,” she added.

  “What? I didn’t ask him to do that!”

  Emma bit her lower bit fretfully. “Oh … I figured we’d need to do it eventually, so what harm could it do?”

  Quentin rose from his desk and hurried out of the room, toward the Egyptian Gallery. Emma followed close behind. “I’d like to find out who sent us that crate before we do anything with it,” he told her. “Besides, he might accidentally harm the relic inside.”

  When they arrived at the Scarab Room, the open crate was there, with the plastic sheet leaning against the wall. But the mummy was gone. Coarse, light-gray granules were piled on the floor in front of the crate, along with Carruther’s clothes.

  “Carruthers had two helpers,” Quentin said. “Are they around here?”

  “They were with him when I left. They must be around here somewhere.”

  Quentin noticed that the door to the adjoining Cartouche Room was open. He walked into the room and noticed two more piles of scattered granules and clothes. He cried out, “Emma, look at this!”

  She entered the room and followed his gaze. “So what’s this?” she said. “Are those piles of dust supposed to be … them? That other pile of dust … is that Carruthers? That doesn’t make any sense.” She looked around the Cartouche Room. “This doesn’t go anywhere. Why would they go in here?”

  “Maybe something was in their way when they were in the other room,” he said, “and they couldn’t go out into the hall.”

  “But people don’t just turn to dust,” Emma said. “Mummies don’t just disappear, either. Of course, if somebody was carrying it through the building, wouldn’t we have seen them?”

  “The mummy wasn’t carried away. It walked out before we arrived.”

  “That’s not possible!” She stooped down to get a better look at the dust. “I bet somebody whipped up these dust-piles to fool us….” She picked up some of the granules, held them close to her nose – then dropped them immediately. “Oh, that’s horrible!”

  “This whole occurrence utilizes elements of the Scorpion Magic of the ancient Cult of Nyarlathotep,” Quentin said. “It can’t be a coincidence. I didn’t recognize the Trojan Horse strategy at first – that tells the tale right there.”

  Emma sighed with exasperation. “Trojan Horse strategy? You’ve totally lost me. I have no idea what’s happening, but we need to call the police. Right now.”

  “They can’t help, but certainly, we do need to call them. Three people have disappeared.”

  “I wouldn’t say they’ve disappeared. They just aren’t here. Maybe they went back to Maintenance. I was thinking we should call the police because that mummy was stolen. You don’t suppose that Carruthers and his assistants stole it…?”

  “Let’s check Maintenance,” Quentin said. “If they aren’t there, I’ll call the police. Then I’ll let you know what I suspect is really going on.”

  The curator locked up the main entrance of the Egyptian Gallery. As they walked through the building, he peered in his owl-like way down every hallway.

  When they arrived at Maintenance and found no one, Quentin called the police from the office phone. He informed them that a newly donated relic from an anonymous benefactor had disappeared, and that the three employees who had transported the relic into the building were also missing.

  When his call was completed, Quentin turned to Emma. “Let’s go to the Main Lobby and wait for them. Like you, they’ll probably think Carruthers and his men stole the mummy.”

  “Can you tell me now what’s going on?” she said as they walked to the Lobby. “You mentioned something about a Cult of Nyarlathotep. Was that one of the Pharaohs? I know some of them placed themselves among the gods.”

  “Nyarlathotep was an ancient god of the night, adored by the Dark Pharaoh, Nephren-Ka,” Quentin said. “You won’t find mention of Nyarlathotep in most history books. I believe that the relic is under the power of his cult. The legend has become distorted with time, but long ago, the creators of the Trojan Horse used their wooden handiwork to transport an undead creature into the enemy city. The Cult of Nyarlathotep had never died, and some of those creators were members. Once inside the city, the creature, empowered by the cult’s Scorpion Magic, came out and absorbed the essence of all living things it touched, turning its enemies into dust. That, I believe, is what happened today. That mummy was the weapon, hidden in plain sight.”

  Emma managed a pained smile. “But even if I believed in the supernatural – who would do that to us? Who would arrange such a complex plan?”

  “I wish I knew,” Quentin said. By that time they had reached the Main Lobby. “Please look outside to see if the police have arrived. I have another matter I need to take care of.”

  As Emma headed for the front door, Quentin walked up to the Information Desk. He talked for a moment with the attendants on-duty, and then activated the public address system. “Good afternoon,” he said. “The Arkham Public Museum will be closing early today. We apologize for the inconvenience. On your way out, please stop by the Information Desk for a free admission ticket to use on your next visit. Thank you.”

  Emma soon returned with two policemen. She introduced Sergeant Brennan and Officer Grainger to the Executive Curator. Brennan was fortyish and heavyset while Grainger was young and fit, with fine blond hair. Quentin repeated the information he had provided in his call to the police. He didn’t bother to share the supernatural possibilities he had explained with Emma. Those concepts would only make the officers doubt his sanity. H
e then told them about the piles of clothes and dust they had discovered in the Egyptian Gallery.

  “Seems to me that Carruthers and his guys would be the most likely suspects,” Brennan said. “They might have thrown together those dust piles to throw us off the track. Some sort of ruse.”

  “That makes more sense,” Emma said, nodding.

  “More sense than what?” Grainger said.

  She shot an apologetic glance toward Quentin. “More sense than any explanation I could imagine,” she said. “It’s all so confusing.”

  Suddenly, a woman’s scream echoed from within the museum. “That sounds like it came from the Witchcraft Exhibit,” the curator said. “Emma, please stay here and make sure everyone exits the museum.”

  Quentin, Brennan and Grainger ran to the Witchcraft Exhibit, where the walls were draped in black satin in honor of the theme. In the center of a huge hallway, amidst the displays of witchcraft paraphernalia and torture instruments used to elicit confessions, an elderly woman sat sobbing on the floor next to a pile of men’s clothes and scattered light-gray granules.

  “Are you okay?” Brennan said, approaching the woman. “What happened here?”

  The woman look up at him, an expression of fright etched upon her thin, tear-streaked face. “We were leaving like the announcement asked … but something ran toward my husband. Then it was gone….” She pointed to double doors at the far side of the display area.

  “Stay with her and get a statement,” Brennan said to Grainger. He then rushed through the doors, with Quentin following close behind.

  The next room, also part of the Witchcraft Exhibit, housed an array of grimoires – ancient books of magic within acrylic displays, wired for security. Quentin cried out in surprise when he saw the figure that stood, tall and proud, in the center of the display area.