The wax quickly started to harden and while it was still soft enough for him to shape with his hands, the Sandman tipped up the mould and set to work. He smoothed the limbs and added features to the blank face; a nose, two holes for eyes. It was crude and lumpy but still easily identifiable as a human figure. The Sandman paused. A sheen of sweat covered his face and he wiped it away nervously. There was always a risk when casting a spell… He had to do this right. One wrong ingredient, the wrong action, the wrong word…and the result would be disastrous. Possibly fatal.
In his hours of study, the Sandman had learned that Egyptian magick – Heka – had two components. The physical: the ingredients, the ritual actions. And the spoken: the words of power.
Using an ornate knife, the Sandman cut a small slit for a mouth then, leaning over, he breathed into it. “Breath of my breath,” he said quietly.
A groaning sound behind him made the hairs on his neck stand on end. The Sandman paused in his labours and looked over his shoulder. It was the mummy, standing motionless, waiting for its next command.
The Sandman crossed the chamber and stood in front of the creature. Once upon a time the mummy had been a king, but now it was his servant. It felt good to be the one with the power for a change.
“You’re angry, aren’t you?” said the Sandman. “Good! I’m angry too.”
The mummy stirred, the moaning becoming a fierce growl. The bandaged feet shuffled and the arms began to rise from its sides.
“Halt!” ordered the Sandman. He stepped closer until his face was level with the mummy’s. The Sandman stared into the pits where the eyes had been. He had grown used to the disgusting perfume of decay which filled the air wherever the undead creature went. For the Sandman, this had become the smell of victory.
“I wear the Eye of Horus,” said the Sandman, stroking the gold pendant at his throat. “You go when I say ‘go’; you are mine to command.”
The mummy retreated and the Sandman returned to his wax doll.
It needed one finishing touch.
The Sandman picked up a large curved bone; an enormous tooth. It was a hippo tusk engraved with hieroglyphs. It had been a gift from a stupid man who didn’t understand its real value.
It was an Egyptian wand.
With quiet satisfaction, the Sandman reached into the leather pouch at his belt and pulled out a polished brass button. Then he pressed the tip of the wand into the warm chest of the wax doll and slit it open like a surgeon. When the hole was big enough, he pushed the button inside and closed up the wound again, burying it inside.
Finally the Sandman unrolled a papyrus scroll. It had been written by a priest of Osiris, the Egyptian god of the afterlife, the underworld and the dead.
The Sandman cleared his throat and broke the silence.
“Looking, you will not see.
Searching, you shall not find me.
Seek me and all you gain
Is entry to a world of…pain.”
The Sandman turned the wax doll over in his hands. It had a fat round head and a swollen belly with a button inside. For some reason it made the Sandman laugh.
“You can’t say I didn’t warn you,” he chuckled.
Charley lifted her face from the microscope and rolled her shoulders. She had been bent over her samples for the best part of an hour and she ached. Billy knew that his partner was in discomfort; she often was.
“What have you found?” he asked gently.
“All the sand samples match,” she said. “Pure white Saharan. And, as I suspected, the cotton fibre I collected from the safe could have been made yesterday.”
Billy furrowed his brow. “So what does that mean? Is the mummy a fake after all?”
“The mummy that attacked us seemed real enough and Lady Fitzpatrick’s description was very vivid.” Charley shook her head. “I’ve left out the best part… The fresh white cotton had traces of black ash on one side.”
Billy rubbed his arm, which felt bruised after the mummy’s crushing grip. “So if an old mummy is wearing new bandages—”
“Then it can’t be working alone,” finished Charley. “Someone repaired it.”
“You mean,” said Billy, “that we’re looking for a ‘daddy’ too?”
“You think you’re so funny, don’t you?”
“It’s a blessing…” said Billy modestly. “And a curse.”
“Mostly a curse, from where I’m sitting.” Charley smiled, although she was so tired that it turned into a yawn. “How about you, Billy? Is your sixth sense telling you anything?”
“I’m sorry,” said Billy. “My skill isn’t like yours. Your brain works every time you want it to, but my…ability isn’t as reliable as that. I wish it was. I wish I could just point the way straight to the end of the trail.”
“Where would be the fun in that?”
“To tell you the truth, Charley, there are so many things whispering to me in this odd house that I can’t hear anything clearly at all.”
“44 Morningside Place has to be one of the weirdest crime scenes we’ve ever been called to,” Charley agreed.
“Imagine that you’re standing in a doorway, half in the room and half out,” Billy went on, doing his best to put into words something he didn’t really understand himself. “It’s like I’ve got one foot in this world – the one that we can see and feel with our natural bodies – and the other in a spirit realm; an invisible world that’s just as real as this one.”
“That must feel…strange.”
“Strange isn’t even close,” said Billy. “It’s as if I’m trying to see through a window that hasn’t been washed in centuries, or attempting to hear one voice in a crowded street.” He rubbed the back of his neck thoughtfully. “Hardly anything that I see or hear or smell from the other side is clear at all. I get pictures or impressions of things, flashes of insight, and Sir Gordon’s house is so cluttered with objects that it’s almost impossible for me to cut through the noise.
“Just walking down the hallway, for example, I know that the boxful of finger bones belonged to a shaman. I can see him clearly, rolling the bones in dust and reading the future in them. Since we went into Sir Gordon’s Egyptian hall, all I can taste is the desert. I can still feel the sand blowing on my face, carried on the winds of time…”
Charley looked at her partner’s face, getting a glimpse of the burden he carried.
“Some of the dead people in the photographs that Sir Gordon likes taking have been talking to me, shouting their names, or mumbling incoherently…” Billy’s face clouded slightly. “It’s not easy.”
He turned to Charley. “I also know that owl in the study hates being dead and stuffed but really enjoys playing the banjo.” Billy’s face cracked into a grin.
“You made that up,” said Charley.
“Only the bit about the owl,” he confessed. A dinner gong rang, summoning them both to the table. “Come on, I’m starving.”
Dinner came and went. Five courses. Mrs Fudge, the cook, had prepared Scotch broth, smoked salmon, good Scottish beef with roast potatoes, followed by raspberry blancmange and a cheeseboard. They ate quietly, watched over by Mr Cowley. Plus a row of shrunken heads in a display case and the glassy eyes of a stuffed penguin riding a bicycle.
Wellington seemed spooked. He kept whining and was snuffling round their feet under the table, as if he was hiding from something. Charley slipped a slice of beef to him and Wellington took it eagerly, his rough tongue lapping at her fingers. Charley gave him another slice; she wasn’t really in the mood for eating. She was in worse discomfort than usual and her head felt strange. She’d overdone it probably, and she couldn’t wait for her bed.
The food was all delicious, but the meal had been an awkward experience. The atmosphere in 44 Morningside Place was tense. Two more servants had handed in their notice, and the remaining staff were on edge, as if expecting disaster. The weight of the curse on their minds, thought Charley. Even the ticking of the clock, usually such a reass
uring sound, only made her feel that time was running out.
They hardly spoke a word. A combination of weariness and worry had taken its toll. Sir Gordon was sweating even more heavily than usual, and once or twice Charley had spotted him wince slightly during dinner. Probably heartburn, she guessed.
Sir Gordon pushed his plate aside. “Take this away, Cowley,” he said. “My nerves are in tatters, I have no appetite at all.” Charley noticed how his waistcoat was straining to hold in his fat stomach. There was even a button missing! But she kept her thoughts to herself.
“Coffee, sir?” Cowley asked, bringing a steaming silver pot from the dresser. “After-dinner chocolates?”
“Just the one, to be sociable,” said Sir Gordon, popping a chocolate straight into the pink round hole of his mouth and putting two more on a side plate. His Lordship belched loudly and then covered his mouth in embarrassment.
Charley and Billy made their excuses and headed off for bed, leaving Sir Gordon with the port decanter and one more slice of cheese. Possibly two. And some grapes. And then perhaps a brandy.
The ride up in the lift was silent. The lift gates opened and Charley and Billy paused in the corridor before heading for their bedrooms.
“You all right, Duchess?” Billy asked. “You look done in.”
“Fine,” said Charley, even as a twinge of pain stabbed at her temple. She winced and raised her fingers to her forehead. “Just a headache.”
“Can I get you anything?”
“No,” she said, waving away his help. “Cowley has left a jug of water in my room, I had a glass earlier. Give me a good night’s sleep and I’ll be tickety-boo in the morning.”
Billy hovered; she could tell he was concerned about her.
“Go!” Charley insisted. “I’m fine.”
But she wasn’t.
Charley’s head was spinning by the time she closed her bedroom door behind her. Her wheelchair felt as if it was made of lead and her strength was failing fast; she barely had the energy to reach the bedside cabinet. She made a fumbling attempt to pour some water to clear her head, but the jug slipped straight through her fingers. The room was a blur. I just need to lie down, she told herself.
She pushed down on the arms of her chair. Shakily she heaved herself upright and tried to shuffle towards the bed. Cold sweat ran down her forehead and another wave of dizziness washed over her.
The bed loomed above her. It was impossibly large, a mountain of eiderdown which she would never be able to climb, not even in a million years. The terrible whirling inside her head grew worse and, just as quickly as it had grown, the bed now seemed to disappear into the distance, until it was a tiny speck on the horizon. Charley swayed. Her head weighed more than her whole body and there was nothing she could do to stop it from dragging her down to the floor.
The pain in her skull was incredible. An awful hammering that screwed her left eye shut with agony. The headache was so sharp it was as if it had been nailed there.
Billy! Help! She was screaming on the inside but wasn’t sure whether the words even made it as far as her lips.
As the headache stabbed again, Charley passed out.
In his bedroom Billy splashed some water on his face and changed into his nightclothes. There was a fire in the grate and he stood in the comforting warmth while he slipped into his nightshirt. He climbed into bed and pulled up the sheet. Billy was dog-tired, having spent most of the previous night fighting the fire at the hotel. He should have fallen asleep instantly but he couldn’t relax in 44 Morningside Place.
Sir Gordon’s weird and wonderful collections were a distraction, a background noise to something bigger and darker and infinitely more powerful…
All of the servants were saying it: This house is cursed.
Billy felt his skin begin to crawl and in spite of the warmth of the fire an icy terror came over him. He suddenly had the most awful feeling that he was not alone in the room.
Tucked up in bed, Billy peered suspiciously into every shadow… Was there someone behind the curtains? Had he left the wardrobe door ajar like that? Could there be something under the bed?
The creeping fear grew worse. Billy could almost feel it making its way up his chest.
That was when he realized the worst. There really was something creeping up his chest.
With trembling fingers, Billy drew back the sheet and saw a huge evil-looking creature scuttling up his body. A scorpion! With pincers raised and poisonous tail coiled to strike!
Billy didn’t dare move. Even breathing seemed risky. He could feel the scratch of the scorpion’s feet through his nightshirt. Its armoured body was golden yellow. Sharp jaws snapped and hissed. The fat bulb of the stinger was poised on the end of the segmented tail, a drop of poison glistening at the tip… One sting was all it would take.
Billy struggled to keep a lid on his fear. Goosebumps rose along his arms. Why did it have to be the deathstalker? Trying to keep his body as still as possible, Billy ran through his options. If he was quick he might be able to sweep the scorpion off, get some space between him and it. But he would have to be very quick… The scorpion advanced further up Billy’s body, almost as if it had realized that a plan was being hatched against it.
Billy stole a glance sideways to see if there was anything on the bedside table that he might be able to use as a weapon. There was a candle, a glass of water and a Bible…a nice, heavy Bible.
Billy quickly ran through the motions in his mind…reach out with his right hand, pick up the book, sweep the scorpion on the floor with a single blow, throw back the bedsheet with his left hand, jump out of bed and find something to finish the horrible thing off before it regained its senses and attacked again…
Billy inched his fingers towards the Bible just as the scorpion raised its claws… Here we go!
He snatched up the book and brought it across his body with every ounce of his strength, sending the scorpion flying. Without even waiting to see where the creature fell, Billy leaped up. He ran to the end of the bed, jumped off and grabbed the iron poker from the fireplace. He felt better now that he had a weapon in his hand, although he was very aware that his bare feet were vulnerable.
The only light in the room came from the flickering embers in the grate. The scorpion was nowhere to be seen. There was a rug in front of the fire, and another small rug beside the bed, but the rest of the floor was naked wooden boards. Billy listened and heard the click click click of eight feet scuttling towards him at incredible speed.
Billy spun around, desperate to see where the deathstalker was coming from. He thought he saw a flicker of movement beside the leg of the bed and he lashed out with the poker, striking the floorboard so hard that the wood splintered. If the scorpion had been there it wasn’t now… He heard the scratching of its feet again and he spun round once more, this time hitting the floor behind him with another deafening crack. Damn, it was quick!
Billy backed away until he was up against the wall. At least that way he couldn’t be sneaked up on from behind.
Footsteps approached from the corridor outside. “Are ye all right?” called a voice.
“Doogie! Get in here quick, I need your help!”
The lad poked his head around the door. He looked even younger dressed in his nightshirt. Billy reached down with his free hand. He grabbed the steel tongs that were used to put coals onto the fire and threw them to Doogie. “Catch.”
“Is there a wee mouse?” asked Doogie.
“Something a bit more vicious than that – look!” He pointed with his poker. “There it is!”
“I hate those beasties!” said Doogie, his face showing more than a flicker of fear.
Nevertheless, both boys launched themselves as one. Billy managed to catch the deathstalker a glancing blow, knocking it over onto its back. Its legs kicked in the air frantically as it tried to right itself again and Doogie moved in with the tongs, grabbing it by the tail and picking it up. The scorpion continued to thrash, its pincers snapp
ing at empty air.
“Whatever you do, don’t let it go!” yelled Billy. Part of him wanted to throw the vicious creature into the fire, but he couldn’t blame an animal for simply following its instinct. “Drop it in the wastepaper basket,” said Billy, bending down to pick up the fallen Bible. “On three. One…two…three.”
Doogie released the tongs and the scorpion fell into the wire cage of the waiting basket. It seemed stunned for a second, and then started to climb up towards freedom with lightning speed. It would have made it too, if Billy hadn’t blocked the way, trapping the deathstalker inside the bin with the heavy book.
They relaxed, both breathing heavily from their efforts.
“It was in my bed,” said Billy.
“It must have escaped from the tank in the conservatory,” said Doogie.
“And if one could get out, then there might be more of them on the loose… Charley!” He was running as he shouted her name.
Billy burst into Charley’s room and found his partner writhing on the floor. He dropped to his knees beside her and cradled her head in his lap. Her face was twisted with pain. Her skin was cold and clammy. “Duchess,” he said anxiously, wiping the sweat from her brow.
Her face was turning blue…
“See if there are any more of those scorpions lurking,” Billy ordered Doogie. “I’m getting Charley out of here.”
Billy scooped Charley up in his arms and took her into the relative safety of the corridor, where there were fewer places for a scorpion or a tarantula or goodness knows what to hide.
Lowering Charley down again, Billy patted her cheek with the palm of his hand, trying to bring her round. “Charley, it’s me, Billy. Have you been stung? Where are you hurt? Charley…” Billy refused to let the panic show in his voice. “Duchess,” he urged. “Wake up, please.”
“Eh? What…what’s going on?” Charley’s voice was slurred. “Where am I?”
“You had me scared,” said Billy.
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