Stolen Souls

by Sackett, Jeffrey

  His voice was rich, melodious, and strong—masculine but possessing a subtle delicacy the like of which she had never heard. But it was not his voice which startled her. It was the words which he spoke in a tone filled with equal parts of amusement, confidence, and command.

  "Uat en sat nefer khra," he said to Hadji.

  Ancient Egyptian! she thought with wonder. A woman beautiful of face, he had said. But why in ancient Egyptian? No one actually spoke the language. Like all dead languages it was studied to be read, not spoken, as she had studied it for so many years. Yet this man spoke it naturally, without any air of pretension or effort. Hadji emitted a brusque laugh. He must have understood him, Harriet realized. But why? Why would either of these men be able to speak ancient Egyptian? What could possibly be the purpose of learning to speak a dead language?

  "Ten kebten, neba," Hadji said cheerfully. "Wetem er aut retus."

  The man glared at him suddenly. "Rexk tesk, abu Tekhutif." Hadji did not reply. Harriet felt his grip loosen as he mumbled unintelligibly in a voice which dripped with embarrassment and apology.

  This is impossible! I couldn't possibly have heard the words I just heard. This is just simply impossible! Her mind translated: This is your slave, my lord, Hadji had said. It is pleasant between her legs. The other man's angry response was to ask, You know this yourself, priests of Thoth?

  Harriet's thoughts rushed back and forth between the implications of Hadji's comment and the implications of the other man's response. Both filled her with overwhelming fear, fear of rape and fear of .. .

  Fear of . . .

  She looked at the face of the man who had spoken to Hadji. He had called him the priest of Thoth. But that's ridiculous. There's no priesthood of Thoth! There hasn't been for over sixteen hundred years! Unless, of course, it had survived secretly, underground. Unless it had a reason to persist. Unless . . .

  She looked closely at the face of the young man. Her conscious mind fought to keep the recognition from forcing itself out from the recesses of her memory, but it burst out nonetheless. It can't be him, she thought frantically. It just can't be him. It's absurd. It's ridiculous. It's horrible.

  "Dost thou understand my words?" he asked her. She did not reply. She was staring into his face with shock. "Dost thou understand my words? Answer me, woman!"

  Harriet shuddered. Ancient Egyptian! The young man was addressing her in ancient Egyptian. She thought hard, trying to pick out the correct words of response from the vast reservoir of linguistic knowledge she possessed of a language which she had never spoken, only read, and never heard until this moment. "I understand thy words," she finally said haltingly.

  He ignored the use of the familiar pronoun. Her broken response told him that her mastery of his language was far from perfect, and he chose not to grow angry at her impertinence. "Dost thou know who I am?"

  Another pause as Harriet arranged her thoughts. "Thou canst not be he who I think thou art."

  He laughed grimly. "Then thou knowest me, woman. Be thou certain. I am Sekhemib, the servant of the god Anubis, the lord of the winds."

  Harriet shook her head. Her body was trembling from head to foot, and only Hadji's unrelenting grip kept her from collapsing upon her rubbery legs. "Thou art not," she whispered. "This thing cannot be."

  "Guard thy tongue, woman," he snapped. "Cast no doubt upon the word of the beloved of Anubis!" He turned toward the door as Suzanne walked slowly in. "This is the tekenu of Yuya," he said to Hadji. He closed his eyes for a moment and Suzanne stopped moving. She stood beside Gus, who was as immobile as she. Both of their faces were empty, devoid of expression.

  Harriet looked at them both and then turned to Sekhemib. "What is wrong with my friends? What has been done to them?"

  "They serve me," he explained simply. "But they serve me only for a little time, and then they shall serve my compatriots. Thou too shalt serve me, but for a longer time."

  "I do not understand," she said weakly. "Thy words are strange to me. How do we serve? What do we do for thee?"

  "Thou shalt assist me in my return to the land of my birth. I have a thirst which only Nile water will quench. They shall serve me now by helping to restore to me that which was mine long ago, mine for thousands of years, my friend Yuya and my beloved Meret."

  "But—" she began in English, and then, remembering, began again in Egyptian, "The names thou saist are known to me. They are dead bodies, they are mummies."

  "Now, thou speakest truly, woman. They are dead, embalmed bodies, even as I was a short time ago. But now I live, I walk again, after a sleep of three thousand five hundred years—"

  "Since the Hyksos?" she asked weakly.

  Sekhemib's eyes went wide in impressed surprise. "Thou knowest much, woman! Yes, since the Hyksos king Dudimose imprisoned me in my own mortal flesh. But now I live, and soon they shall live, and then we all—we three of the old times, the four who sleep still, Ahmed Hadji, and thou—shall begin our journey back to the land of my birth. Thou shalt aid me and serve me." He paused and studied her face for a moment. "What is thy name?"

  "Harriet," she whispered.

  "Heret," he repeated, mispronouncing her name perhaps intentionally to make it sound more familiar to his ear. "Thou shalt come with us to Egypt, Heret, and thy knowledge of this world shall serve as a help to us in our journey. Thou shalt be my voice in this land and beyond it, until we come to Upper Egypt, where I shall be safe with my people."

  She did not respond. Her mind was a maelstrom of confusion and shock. At last she asked weakly, "And then?"

  "Then thou shalt serve one of my compatriots, as thy friends shall serve Meret and Yuya this night."

  Somewhere inside she knew fully what he meant, but she refused to allow herself to understand. "What is this service? I do not understand."

  Sekhemib smiled cruelly, delighting in informing her of her fate. "This night, Meret and Yuya shall drink of the souls of thy friends, and they shall live again, even as I live again. And when thy day comes, then shalt thy soul be given as a draught of life to one other who shall join the company of the immortals, who die not."

  Harriet fainted. Hadji held her limp form in his arms, grinning at the vicarious revenge he was feeling at her condition. "Shall I take her to the chariot, my lord?"

  "In a moment," Sekhemib replied. He turned his eyes upon Gus, who promptly bent over and lifted the second mummy in his arms. As he carried it outside, Suzanne turned and followed behind him. "Carry her out, Hadji," he commanded. "I shall keep my friends company in the rear. Thou and the tekenues shall seat yourselves in the fore, with Heret."

  That will make a very crowded front seat, Hadji thought; but he decided against pointing out the fact. Instead he bowed slightly and said, "Yes, my lord," and carried Harriet out of the grounds building.

  It took a few minutes of manipulation and effort to fit Harriet, Gus, Suzanne, Sekhemib, and the two mummies into the automobile, but when it at last had been accomplished, Hadji took his position behind the steering wheel and pulled the door shut. He found to his chagrin that he was barely able to move his left arm because it was wedged so tightly against the inside of the door, and he found himself sitting slightly to the left of the center of the wheel. Well, he thought with resignation, it is a short drive, and traffic is not likely to be heavy. He started the car and, keeping the headlights off, drove slowly toward the exit from the college campus.

  Suzanne Melendez and Gus Rudd were still sitting stone like, and Harriet, whose head was slumped down upon her breast, was still unconscious. Hadji glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Sekhemib whispering quietly to the mummy of Meret, whose hand he touched and gently stroked. 'My beloved Meret,' Sekhemib had called her. Beloved! Hadji had known the pleasures of women—his friend Fatima Razheed, currently priestess of Hathor, came immediately to mind—but he realized for the first time that the idea of an eternal love, a truly eternal love, was not necessarily poetic hyperbole. How long had Sekhemib loved this woman whose bo
dy was now a withered and woodlike shell encased in rotten cloth? Thousands of years? Tens of thousands of years?

  Would he want Fatima Razheed for the next thousand years? No, not Fatima, he thought. Khadija Hassam, perhaps, the nubile and enthusiastic priestess of Bast, perhaps. That would be interesting. He looked once more into the rearview mirror. Was that a tear he saw upon Sekhemib's cheek? No, it must be a trick of the moonlight.

  When he reached the street where the March house stood, he again switched off the headlights. It was nearing dawn and the local residents might be beginning to stir. Of course, they could do nothing to harm Sekhemib, and Hadji felt still safe under the protective wing of the beloved of Anubis, but he also saw no reason to invite difficulty.

  He rolled the car quietly into the driveway and then climbed out of the front seat. A quick survey of the surrounding houses told him that the townspeople slept still in blissful ignorance. He ran up the steps to the door of the house and opened it wide, making certain that it would remain open until they were all safe inside. He went back to the car and asked, "Shall I carry the slave inside, my lord?"

  "Yes," Sekhemib replied, and then closed his eyes for a moment. Responding to the command he had just issued in dreadful silence, Gus and Suzanne stepped out of the car one at a time and walked around to the opposite side, from whence Sekhemib had already exited. Gus reached in mutely and pulled out the mummy of Yuya and began to walk toward the door of the house. Suzanne grasped the mummy of Meret and followed him. Hadji, already holding Harriet's limp form in his arms, had preceded them. Sekhemib followed, and once the others were inside, he pulled shut the door of the house.

  Harriet's head was throbbing and she felt nauseous. My God, she thought weakly, what the hell did Tommy and I drink tonight? I feel like I'm coming down from one hell of a drunk. I haven't felt this bad since . .

  Memory assaulted her. She looked around her, trying desperately to fight down the surge of hysteria which she felt rising in her. Over against the wall . . . the wall of what? she asked herself. Where am I? It looks like a basement . . . cold, damp, dark but for the flickering candles . . . no, not candles . . . it looks like bowls of . . . of oil, perhaps? Animal fat, from the smell. The scent struck her nostrils, and the pungency elicited a cough from her. The smell seemed not to bother Gus or Suzanne, who were . . . yes, over against the wall were her old friend and the deputy policeman, sitting calmly. How can they be so much at ease when . . .

  Memories continued to assault her. Suzanne's bizarre behavior of a short while before . . . a trance? Some sort of hypnotism? But they always say that you never do anything under hypnotism that you wouldn't do normally . . . but what do I know about hypnotism? she asked herself? And who are 'they' anyway?

  Harriet looked to the right of the chair in which she . . . what am I doing in this chair? she wondered. I don't remember . . . yes, yes, I do remember, I remember Hadji's hands and arms, I remember being lifted, I remember being deposited not too gently upon this chair, I remember . .

  She tried to lift her hand, but could not. She was bound, hand and foot, to the chair. She looked to her right and saw Hadji and Sekhemib . . . Sekhemib! Good God, it's true, it's true! . . . kneeling in front of the burning pot of oil. The two mummies were lying on the floor beside them, and in the flickering light Harriet could see a small statuette of .. . Anubis. My God, it's Anubis! They're praying to . . . no, wait. Are they praying? What are they saying? She strained to hear the words of the soft chant:

  "Anet hrak, Yuya, anet hrath Meret," they chanted. Homage to you, Yuya, homage to you, Meret. "Aua Sekhemib abu 'Anpuf, aua Ahmed Hadji, abu Tekhutif, rexkuak, rexkuak, rexkua renk, rexkua renk." I, Sekhemib, priest of Anubis, I, Ahmed Hadji, priest of Thoth, I know thy name, I know thy name.

  What the hell are they talking about? Harriet wondered. Of course they know the names of the mummies. Of course they . .

  Names! The ancients believed there was a power in names. What was the name of the god whom Ousha worshipped? Xepheru . . . Xephera . . . no, it was Xepheraxepher, Xepheraxepher—

  A sudden cry of pain escaped from Suzanne, and an identical cry issued forth from Gus a fraction of a second later. They were both suddenly conscious, and their bodies shook with shock and bewildered terror. They each made spasmodic movements with their arms and legs, and they fell onto their sides and began to flop about like beached fish. It was then that Harriet noticed that they were bound as well, their wrists behind their backs and their ankles together. A white froth appeared around Suzanne's mouth. Gus rolled from side to side, shrieking in agony. The golden medallions they wore were vibrating.

  "Tekenu enti khenak, Yuya. Tekenu enti knenath, Meret. Iuk enn tern sekhauk, ink em arauk," they chanted, a dirgelike song in a minor key. The tekenu is with thee, Yuya; the tekenu is with thee, Meret. Come thou to us without memories of evil, come thou in thy form. "Auk erkhekh en khekh, aha khekh." Thou shalt live for millions of years, a life of millions of years.

  The chanting was momentarily eclipsed by the screams from Suzanne and Gus, whose bodies were writhing in the most rending anguish. As Harriet watched them their cheeks seemed to draw inward tightly against their jaws, and their teeth began to cut outlines in their gray and brittle facial skin. Blood seemed to seep through their pores and began to drop thickly onto the cold stone floor. Harriet's eyes connected with Suzanne's, and she felt her heart leap to her throat at the look on her friend's face. Suzanne said, "Harriet . . . help me . . . help . . . ," but it was not a voice which spoke, it was an inhuman rasp, a liquid gurgle which oozed from the split green lips in the company of slime and blood.

  Help! Harriet thought. How in God's name can I help?

  In God's name . . . ! Or in a god's name . . . ! That's it! she thought. If the story on the scroll is true, then the Hyksos god. . .

  But there's no Hyksos god, she reasoned. There are no Egyptian gods, either. Hadji and Sekhemib are worshipping a piece of stone, an idol. The gods do not exist. They never existed.

  But Sekhemib is here, he is alive!

  If Anubis has power ... if Anubis exists .. . Xepheraxepher --

  Gus Rudd screamed horribly as he rolled about the floor, kicking his legs impotently like a trussed animal. A large fragment of flesh detached itself from his face and fell onto the cold stone floor with a loud slap and then lay there in the midst of a puddle of putrescent, sanguine liquid.

  "Anet hrak, Yuya, anet hrath, Meret, aua Sekhemib abu 'Anpuf, aua Ahmed Hadji, abu Tekhutif, rexkuak, rexkuak, rexkua renk, rexkua renk—"

  "Xepheraxepher!" Harriet cried out. "Xepheraxepher!"

  Sekhemib ceased his chanting and turned to her quizzically. Hadji continued the chant for a few moments and then he too ceased and gave Harriet his attention.

  "I call upon the god Xepheraxepher," Harriet said loudly. "I ask the help of Xepheraxepher." Then she shouted, "Xepheraxepher, help me, help us all, protect us from the followers of Anubis." Sekhemib rose from his knees and slowly approached Harriet. In Egyptian, she thought wildly, it must be in Egyptian. What are the words . . . what are the words . . .

  "Nekhemkua, Xepheraxepher, nekhemkua ma aputat sexeperiu titer-it! Nekhemkua, Xepheraxephet; ma aputat sexetperiu aterit!" Deliver me, Xepheraxepher, she cried, deliver me from those who make to arise calamities. She looked directly into Sekhemib's eyes and shouted defiantly, "Xepheraxepher; rexkua renk! Xepheraxepher, nekhemkua, nekhemkua, nekhemkua! . . ." I know your name, Xepheraxepher, deliver me, deliver me, deliver me.

  Sekhemib laughed, not grimly, but lacing his laughter with sarcasm. He laughed loud, deep, long. "Xepheraxepher!" he laughed. "Do you confront me with the power of a dead god, woman? Shall I tremble and fall upon my face and weep at the power of a dead Hyksos god?" He grabbed her chin in his hand and squeezed it hard, lifting her face upward toward his. "Pray to the Hyksos god Xepheraxepher, Heret," he laughed. "Pray until your voice grows weak and your throat grows dry. Pray to a dead god. I live! I live! Three thousand five hundred years
ago that unwashed god of an unwashed people fought the god Anubis and triumphed for but a little time. Now Xepheraxepher is nothing, the Hyksos are dust, and I live, and Anubis lives!" He turned from her toward the small statue of the ancient Egyptian god of the grave and cried, "Anet hrak 'Anpu! Anet hrak 'Anpu!"

  "Anet hrak 'Anpu!" Hadji echoed ecstatically. "Anet hrak 'Anpu neb nest! Anet neb nifu!" Homage to Anubis, Lord of Thrones, Lord of the Winds!

  "Yuya, Meret!" Sekhemib cried, "Come forth to us in your forms! Come forth to us without memories of evil! Yuya, my old friend, Meret, my love of ancient times, come forth in your forms. Anet hrak, 'Anpu!"

  A low, mournful moan crept from Suzanne's mouth and shortly died as her face contorted in mute agony. Every muscle in her body seemed to tense and flakes of dry, leathery flesh broke free from her body and spun wildly out as she writhed in her convulsions. Gus ceased to thrash about and lay upon his stomach, his disintegrating body twitching horribly.

  "Anet hrak 'Anpu!" Sekhemib cried. "Anet hrauthen neteru!"

  The small basement was suddenly filled with the stench of rotten meat. Harriet felt her stomach straining to expel its contents, and she struggled to master it, but failed. She vomited painfully onto the floor but felt no relief of her discomfort. The smell emanated from Suzanne and Gus. She looked at them and saw their bodies streaming reddish-green liquids, saw their flesh cracking, splitting, withering before her eyes.

  Suzanne emitted a terrible cry dripping with pain and anguish. Gus shrieked. And then they lay still but for the particles of flesh which even now dropped thickly from the light gray bones.