Stolen Souls

by Sackett, Jeffrey

  At that moment a few miles away, Suzanne Melendez began to have the strangest dream.

  CHAPTER 10

  The bedroom was still and dark, illuminated only by the tip of her cigarette, which glowed briefly brighter as she inhaled. She had smoked constantly in her years of graduate work, but the pristine atmosphere of the small country town had been an inducement for her to break the habit. She had, almost but not totally successfully. That one cigarette after making love was the one she could not, or would not, give up, and it had a calming and soothing effect upon her even when the lovemaking had been perfunctory, as it had been tonight. Too many thoughts and apprehensions were rushing around in her mind for any hint of erotic interest to intrude upon them, and she had accepted his overtures, not unwillingly, but with a lack of enthusiasm offset only by her love for him and her desire to please him. He had not known of her feelings tonight, had not known that their lovemaking had been for her a submission rather than a sharing. And she had not known that for him it had been done tonight out of a sense of obligation, for he was as distracted and preoccupied as she.

  She snuffed out the cigarette in the plastic ashtray and rolled over to embrace him, resting her head upon his chest. His arms enveloped her. He drew meaningless little circles upon her back. "I love you, honey," he said.

  "I love you too, Tommy," she whispered. They lay there in silence for a long while, each lost in thought, each in a sense absent from the other even as they lay in an embrace. At last she said, "It's possible, isn't it? Anything's possible."

  He sighed, not wanting a repeat performance of their conversation of a few hours ago. "Almost anything's possible, Harriet. But not that. That is not possible."

  "It would explain a lot," she insisted.

  "It wouldn't explain anything. Look, honey, you bought some antiquities which obviously somebody else wanted to buy first, and he stole one of them. That's all, that's the whole story."

  "Yeah, but the letter from the ninth Earl, and the way that the old man—His Lordship's uncle, I mean—was so obsessed with keeping the mummies protected—"

  "Come on, Harriet. A doddering, senile old man makes a lot of strange comments on his deathbed, another guy who lived a century and a half ago has all these morbid, superstitious fantasies . . ." He shook his head. "You can't take any of this seriously. It's absurd!"

  She refused to be dissuaded. "It's fantastic. It isn't absurd."

  He sat up slightly in bed and faced her in the darkness. "Do you seriously believe that Hadji stole that mummy so that he could pour somebody else's soul into it? I mean, walking dead men? Do you think Karloff got off the noon train at Greenfield?" He laughed.

  "It isn't funny, Tom," she snapped. "It's scary."

  "It's stupid," he corrected her. "If you want to worry about something, why don't you worry about Will? Nobody has seen him since this afternoon. He never showed up at the hospital. I have a seriously ill patient, suffering from a disease the nature of which I can only guess at, wandering around somewhere, probably dying. And if what he has is infectious . . ." He laughed again, this time without humor. "If you want a horror to think about, think about that!"

  "I'm worried about Will too, Tom," she said. "But I'm not so close-minded that I'm ready to dismiss as impossible any sort of—"

  "Walking dead?" he finished for her sarcastically.

  "No," she said, the anger rising in her voice. "I don't believe in resurrected mummies any more than you do. But what if Hadji does? Wouldn't he steal, even kill for his belief? What if there is some sort of pagan cult which wants the mummies we bought? Aren't we all in danger from them? Look what happened to poor Mr. Pearson. And poor Mr. Lewis."

  "Harriet," he yawned, "people get killed. It's a sad truth, but it's still a truth. People do get killed. Just because that English lawyer was killed, three thousand miles away, doesn't mean that we are in any danger. And as for Lewis, we don't even know if there's a connection between his death and the theft of your mummy." He slid back down in the bed and pulled the covers over them both. "Let's try to get some sleep, okay? Everything will work itself out. I wouldn't be surprised if tomorrow Will comes in and tells me that he crawled into a bottle of bourbon tonight, Jasper catches the burglar who killed Lewis, and the state police show up with your mummy and Hadji. Okay?"

  "No, it isn't okay," she sniffed. "Besides, I'm not sleepy." She reached over to the pack of cigarettes on her night table and took one out. She was about to strike a match when she stopped and put the cigarette back into the pack. No smoking when you're tense, she told herself. That's how you start again. "Just think for a minute, Tommy" she said. "Just for a moment try to use your imagination, try not to be so empirical."

  "We're both scientists," he muttered sleepily. "We're supposed to be empirical."

  "Well, just for a minute or two, let's try to remember that most people aren't as empirical as we are, okay?" He murmured his assent, and she continued. "You and I are both religious skeptics. You were raised as a Lutheran, I was raised as a Roman Catholic, and neither of us has any connection with our churches; we think religion is self-delusion and superstition. But not everybody thinks that way. I mean, I don't believe in walking mummies any more than I believe in a resurrected Christ or a Great Flood or a thundering Jehovah on Sinai. But there are people who believe all of that stuff, so why shouldn't there be people who believe in Anubis and resurrected mummies? There are cults all over the place, Tommy, and they believe all sorts of weird things. Why shouldn't we accept the possibility that there's a group in Egypt which maintains some strange old beliefs, and are willing to steal and murder for them? Religious beliefs have power over the minds of people all over the world, make people do all sorts of bizarre things. Look at Iran, Ireland, the Middle East. It's possible, Tommy." There was no reply. "Tommy?" He began to snore softly.

  "Shit," she muttered. Harriet grabbed the cigarette pack again, paused again, and then said, "Oh, what the hell," and took one out and lighted it. She inhaled deeply and lay back down upon the pillow. It always irritated her that he could fall asleep so easily and so quickly while she so often spent hours tossing and turning in an insomnial funk. How can he sleep tonight? she wondered, annoyance mixing with envy. With all the things that have happened since yesterday, how the hell can he sleep? She took another drag from the cigarette and then put it out. If he can sleep, I can sleep, she thought with resolution. But she knew that she could not. As she lay in the dark silence of the bedroom, words and ideas kept drifting in and out of her thoughts. Sekhemib . . . Ousha . . . Hyksos . tekenu . . . Anubis . . . Xepheraxepher

  Hadji . . . Selwyn .

  Harriet got wearily out of bed and went out to the kitchen. She poured some milk into a saucepan and placed it on the stove. Some warm milk, maybe, she thought. That'll help. She turned on the burner to a low flame and sat down at the table to watch it from a distance. There's something, she thought. There's something that will make sense of all this, but I don't know what it is. If only I could talk to Tom, bounce ideas back and forth. There's something, some connecting thread, to make sense of all this.

  She looked at the clock which whirred in mute electronic service upon the wall. Three in the morning. I wonder if Suzie is awake? She dismissed the thought. If she was awake, she was screwing the Englishman. If I disturbed that, she'd kill me. But I have to talk to somebody. Sam? she thought. No, he is even more of a skeptic than Tom.

  It's funny, she thought. All those centuries of Catholic-Protestant animosity and anti-Semitism, all eradicated by a few decades of rejection of religion. Sad, somehow, to live in a world without absolutes. Probably healthy, in the final analysis. But still, somehow sad, unpoetic.

  The milk was beginning to froth slightly, and she rose from her seat, took the pan by the handle, and poured the warm liquid into a glass. She stared at it for a moment, and then poured it into the sink. I hate warm milk, she thought.

  She went back into the bedroom and switched on the lamp which stood upon t
he dresser beside the door. The light did not awaken Thomas Sawhill. Nothing short of a police siren would awaken him, as she well knew. Harriet pulled on her underpants and then her bra, and took a sweater and a pair of dungarees from the closet. Maybe a short walk will tire me out, calm me down, she thought. She would never have ventured out onto the streets at three in the morning back in Manhattan or Chicago, but the only danger at night in Greenfield was the mosquitoes and the occasional misdirected raccoon which wandered in from the woods. She pulled the sweater over her head and the dungarees up from her feet and then sat down on the edge of the bed. She put on a pair of sneakers, laced them up, tied them, and then left the room, switching off the lamp before closing the door.

  She took her keys from the hook on the living room wall and walked out into the hallway. She locked the door of her apartment more out of habit than necessity and walked out onto the street.

  The air was cool but not unpleasantly so, and the only sounds were the ubiquitous crickets and the muffled roar of a truck on the thruway a few miles away. This was a good idea, she thought as she began to walk down the deserted street, as a sense of peace and tranquility began to seep into her osmotically from the surrounding calm. She noticed that she was strolling, and she forced herself to adopt a quicker pace. Strolls don't tire you out, she thought. Got to walk briskly.

  She was walking in the general direction of the college, and she reflected upon how differently things looked at night and how much you miss by driving everywhere. She had never noticed the carefully painted curlicues which formed a border of the movie marquee on Main Street, glowing red against the white and blue, or so it seemed in the dim light of the streetlamp near the theater. She passed the alley beside the diner and saw a few foraging cats pause tensely as she passed before returning their attention to the garbage cans which stood against the brick wall. She walked past the old Dutch Reformed church which the Huguenots had built centuries ago out of stone and mortar as firm and rigid as their faith. She paused before it and gazed up at the steeple and the cross which capped it. Faith, she mused. Such an anachronism. All we have faith in today is science, which asks more questions than it answers and causes more problems than it solves.

  No, that's not quite true, she thought as she continued down the street. Science has given us longer life spans, medicine, transportation, communication, a million other things so commonplace today that we don't even think about them anymore. We all tend to idealize the past—I certainly do, anyway—but I sure wouldn't want to live in a world without antibiotics, birth control, television, washing machines, or a shot of novocaine in the dentist's chair.

  She reached a street corner and looked needlessly to the right and left. There were no cars, of course. The good burghers of Greenfield were all safely tucked away between their clean white sheets. A motion in the dim distance caught her eye, and she peered myopically down the street. A person, some two blocks away, was slowly approaching her, and a brief wave of vestigial urban panic washed over her, but it dissipated almost immediately. She continued to watch the slowly moving figure and was able to conclude quickly enough that it was another woman. Odd, she thought. The woman seemed to be wearing a nightgown. The woman drew closer, crossed the street a block away from Harriet, and began to assume a familiar appearance. Harriet squinted at her, trying to discern her features, and then gasped slightly. "Suzie!" she whispered.

  Suzanne Melendez walked toward her, barefoot and clad only in a sheer white nightgown. Her tousled hair fell haphazardly about the face which bore no trace of cosmetics, and her brown nipples showed clearly through the flimsy cloth. What the hell's the matter with her? Harriet thought. She shouldn't be walking around like this, dressed like this. Is she nuts?!

  Harriet walked down the street toward Suzanne and called out to her, making an attempt at levity. "Hiya, Suzie. If you're out looking for men, you're in the wrong town. You'd be better off back . . ." Suzanne walked past her somnambulistically, her gaze never wavering or registering any acknowledgment, her gait never changing, her face frozen in a blank impassiveness. "Suzie?" Harriet said. "Suzie? Is something wrong?" She stood motionless for a moment as her friend continued her slow progress away from her, and then Harriet ran to catch up with her. "Suzie? What are you doing? Suzanne?" My God, Harriet thought, she's sleepwalking! She must be sleepwalking. Concern for her friend mingled with fascination as Harriet kept pace with her, eyes glued to Suzanne's face. You're not supposed to awaken a sleepwalker, she remembered. So what the hell are you supposed to do? Just stay with her, I guess, so you'll be there when she wakes up.

  She walked along beside Suzanne, never taking her eyes off her, and stumbled over a gnarled tree root which had thrust its way up through the sidewalk. She fell forward and sprawled out on the pavement, skinning the palms of her hands. Ignoring the discomfort, Harriet got back to her feet and caught up again with Suzanne, who had neither turned nor stopped when Harriet fell. This is so creepy, Harriet thought. She and Suzanne had lived with each other at college for years, and never had Harriet seen one episode of sleepwalking. This must be a recent development. They say that tension and frustration causes people to walk in their sleep. Poor Suzie. She must have a lot of things bothering her that she never talks about. I wonder if it's because there's no one special in her life? Maybe she's frustrated in her career?

  Harriet walked along beside Suzanne for what seemed to be nearly an hour. Suzanne walked with what appeared to be a slow but steady determination, as if her sleepwalk was following a particular path to a particular destination. There was nothing erratic about her progress, no hint of random direction, no indication on her blank face or in her immobile arms that she was dreaming. She walked as if in a trance, but purposefully. Harriet looked into her eyes every few moments, hoping to see some spark of wakefulness. There was none.

  They walked past the statue of Montgomery Winthrop, and Harriet reflected that the eyes and face of the statue were as lifeless as those of her friend. She tried unsuccessfully to repress a shudder, and she crossed her arms, suddenly very cold.

  Why is she going onto the campus? Harriet wondered. Foolish question! She's just walking. She doesn't know where she's going. This is coincidental, not intentional. Maybe I can steer her a bit, get her to turn, change directions, head back in the direction she came from. Maybe I can even get her back to the hotel and back into bed. I know I'm not supposed to wake her, but maybe just a little pressure on her hand, a little guidance, might not disturb her. Poor Suzie.

  Keeping pace with Suzanne, Harriet carefully reached out and very gently touched her hand with the intention of trying to push her slightly, of trying to alter her direction. She recoiled with a start and hopped back a few feet from Suzanne. What's wrong with her hand? she wondered. She had not noticed it before, but her friend's right hand seemed unusually cold, hard, almost leathery. Could she have eczema or psoriasis? She had never suffered from either affliction before. God! Could it be whatever Will Foster had? Even Torn didn't know what Will was suffering from, or even where Will was. Could it have been something contagious, something Suzie picked up from him. I just took her hand in mine. Could I have just gotten a disease from my best friend? Harriet began to examine her hand closely in the dim light of the half moon and the lampposts along the pathway through the college campus. Don't let your imagination run away with you, she told herself. You can't get a skin disease that easily. Calm down.

  Suzanne continued on up the path and then turned toward the grounds building. Harriet followed her cautiously, careful not to touch her again and feeling simultaneously guilty and foolish. They were drawing near to the building before Harriet noticed Gus Rudd carrying something awkwardly from the door to an automobile which was parked nearby. Thank God Gus is here, she thought. He can help . . .

  Then she recognized what Gus was carrying. One of her mummies! All thought of Suzanne vanished immediately along with her fears and worries as anger surged up in her. Gus, was stealing one of the exhibits. W
hy, that son of a bitch had probably helped Hadji steal the first one! Probably took a bribe! "GUS!" she shouted. "You stop right there!" Gus Rudd ignored her. He slowly opened the rear door of the car and slid the mummy into the back seat. He then slowly closed the door, turned, and walked back into the grounds building in a measured, somehow distracted manner. "Gus, goddamn it! Come back here!" Harriet ran past Suzanne and entered the grounds building angrily. "Gus, you son of—"

  Her words were cut off abruptly by a hand which clamped down upon her mouth as another hand reached around her waist and pulled her tightly to the body of her captor. "Good morning, Dr. Langly," Ahmed Hadji said vindictively. "It's so good to see you again."

  Harriet struggled against him, stamping on his foot and dragging his hand away from her mouth. "Hadji, you bastard, you goddamn thief! Get your filthy hands off me, you goddamn son of a bitch!"

  "Please, please, madam, your manners! There is someone here whom I know you would like to meet, especially considering your line of work." He pointed to the left with the hand she had just pulled away from her mouth.

  Harriet looked in the direction Hadji was pointing and saw a rather handsome young man standing casually beside an empty crate. His black hair shone in the light of the bulbs which burned above them, and his penetrating eyes rested above a thin, aristocratic nose and a fine-lipped mouth which was at the moment turning upward in an amused, somehow disquieting smile. "Who the hell are you?" she demanded, her anger diminishing and fear replacing it.

  "Don't you recognize my friend?" Hadji asked smoothly. "Look carefully. Look closely." He kept her gripped tightly to him.

  Harriet studied the man's face. He was familiar, but she could not quite place him. His shoulders were broad and his waist narrow. His skin was a pinkish white, but the hue seemed inconsistent with his features. He was a Mediterranean type, and a skin color more closely approximating Hadji's olive complexion would have seemed more appropriate. He walked closer to her, still smiling, and she felt her knees weaken as his eyes bore deeply into her own. She gazed weakly as his eyes seemed to draw her into him and blinked only when he turned to Hadji. When he spoke, her ears registered the sounds, but her mind refused to accept what she heard.