Stolen Souls

by Sackett, Jeffrey

  She glanced over her shoulder at Ahmed Hadji, who was as always keeping a close watch on her. He smiled politely at her and inclined his head slightly, but the smile and the bow bore no element of courtesy or civility. His smile was bitter, vindictive, smug. "It is a beautiful day, is it not, Miss Langly?" he asked amicably.

  Harriet tried to ignore him. She disliked everything about him—his looks, his manner, his attitude, and of course his actions. She was particularly unnerved by the leering way he allowed his narrow eyes to drift up and down over her, fixing them frequently upon her breasts and buttocks and belly. She was still wearing the sweater and dungarees she had donned in her room a week before, and she regretted being so attired. It was not merely that her clothing was filthy and redolent of perspiration and grime. In that regard her clothing differed only slightly from the flesh it covered, for she had not been given the opportunity to bathe or even wash her face. Her hair was greasy and matted, her fingernails black with dirt, her skin covered with a film of soiled sweat. Her body was no cleaner than her clothes.

  What bothered her about her attire was that the sweater and dungarees were, after the fashion of casual dress, quite tight, quite form fitting. The sweater hugged her large breasts and the dungarees were stretched tight around her legs and buttocks. Hadji's constant staring caused her instinctively to attempt to draw her collar and lapels closed across her throat and bosom, but the sweater of course had no collar, no lapels. Fully clothed, she felt naked and exposed to the leering eyes.

  Harriet looked out at the rolling waves of the North Sea. If I jump, I'll drown, she thought. If I don't jump, then God knows what will happen to me; God knows what they'll do to me before they kill me. And of course, they will finally kill me. They feed on death, all of them. Vultures, vultures . . .

  She raised her left foot very slightly off the deck, as she had done so many times before over the past three days, and then put it down again. She lacked the courage for suicide. So many people seem to think that suicide is the coward's way out, a way to run from reality rather than face it. They are wrong. It takes courage to kill yourself when reality presents as the only alternative the sort of fate to which she seemed condemned. Harriet lacked the courage to accept reality's choices. As long as there was hope, she lacked the courage to pursue the only logical course of action.

  She closed her eyes and bowed her head. Hope! What hope?! Hope that Thomas Sawhill was following them? Ridiculous. With her unwilling help, she, Hadji, Sekhemib and the six bodies of the priests had gone from Manhattan to Washington by train and had then flown to Hamburg. How could Sawhill follow so irrational, so circuitous a trail to Egypt? How could he possibly deduce such an itinerary? They had boarded the ship in Hamburg a few days ago and were now sailing leisurely around the northern reaches of the continent of Europe, heading west, to Brest in France, to Lisbon in Portugal, to Tunis in Tunisia, and then to Alexandria in Egypt. Hadji had explained their route to her in some detail. Why should he not? No one could follow them. This old freighter with Liberian registry had been purchased by Hadji's people in Egypt, had been fitted with a crew imported from Singapore, had been cleared in advance at each port of call by means of judiciously distributed bribes. She was totally isolated. The captain and the crew were Chinese; whenever they drew near a port, she was locked in her cabin; the ship had no radio. She could speak to no one other than Hadji in English and Sekhemib in the ancient tongue. None of the crew spoke English, and of course neither did they speak ancient Egyptian.

  No way out. No way out.

  She looked again at the white-crested blue waves. That's the only way out, she thought. And I just can't bring myself to do it.

  "Thou thinkest on foolishness, Heret," Sekhemib said from behind her. "To take one's own life out of a fear of death is the reasoning of a madman."

  She spun around when she heard his voice, and recoiled slightly at the sight of him. It was not his appearance which caused her to shrink back: indeed, he was rather pleasant looking. His skin had darkened over the past few days, and he now looked radiantly healthy. Why shouldn't he? she thought. He's living Will Foster's life. Sekhemib had abandoned the (to him) bizarre and uncomfortable clothing which he had worn in Greenfield and was now clad in a simple white kaftan with a waist sash of purple linen. No, it was not his appearance which caused her stomach to turn. It was the knowledge that she was talking to a dead man, or at least a man who should be dead, should have been reduced to dust thousands of years ago, a man who had shed more blood than she could imagine, a vampire, worse than a vampire, a leech, worse than a leech. She turned away from him and stared out to sea at the dim gray distant mass which was the coast of Normandy. "You don't know what I'm thinking," she muttered. "You can't read minds."

  "No, I cannot read thy thoughts, Heret," he said, coming forward and leaning against the railing, "but I can read thy face, and thy face speaks of death."

  "And what is my fate to be at your hands, if not death?"

  "Have thy people no gods, no beliefs, to comfort thee? Art thou like unto the Achaeans, who take their own lives in desperate times, or like unto the people of Tyre? If now thou livest and next month thou are to die, why does this make this month less sweet? Is it not possible that thou mayest die today or tomorrow in accordance with the nature of things?"

  "This is an easy thing for you to say, Sekhemib." She refused to call him by any of his titles, though she had been forced by Hadji's threats of violence to employ the polite form of the pronoun. "It is easy to speak of death when you can defeat death. Health is not prized by the healthy, but by the ill."

  "No, Heret, thou dost not understand. I have died, a thousand times I have died, if but for an instant while I drank the souls of the tekenues. I know death better than any man."

  Her curiosity was pricked by this. "I know that you died when you were defeated by Ousha and his god—"

  "They did not defeat me, Heret, for I live, and Ousha is dust, and Dudimose is dust, and Xepheraxepher is a dead god, an empty word, a name without power. They did not defeat me, they did nothing more than interfere with me for a little time."

  "A little time! Three thousand five hundred years!" Sekhemib shrugged. "But a moment in the life of the world. It is of no matter."

  Harriet felt the scholar in her, so long repressed by the horrors of her situation, slowly reasserting itself. "How old are you, Sekhemib?"

  He shook his head. "I do not know. Anubis came to me in a vision long, long ago, in the dim time, before there was an Egypt, before men had learned to build or smelt or fashion."

  Predynastic period, probably, she thought. "We have learned that a king named Namar or Menes united Egypt nearly five thousand years ago. Do you mean that you were born before that?"

  He laughed. "I knew Namar well. He served me well for the years of his power. No, Heret, I was ancient in the days of Namar. The years pass and the memory fades, but in my youth I was not as I am now, for each time I drink a human soul I take some of that mortal's visage and some portion of his shape, and I change. I remember that during the dim time I was small and hair covered. I are raw meat and lived with the beasts on the plains, far to the south of the land of Egypt. Meret was with me, and Yuya and the others, Herihor, Senmut, all the others, but they too were not as they are now. We all changed over the thousands of years as we drank the souls of the people."

  Harriet's mouth was hanging open in shock. Prehumans!? Hominids on the plains of Africa? "Are you trying to tell me that you are hundreds of thousands of years old? That's impossible!" She realized that she had said this in English, and she quickly repeated it in the ancient tongue.

  Sekhemib smiled. "Anubis is an ancient god, older than Amon, older even than Osiris. I have served him since before men spoke and gave their thoughts in language. I have served him since the beginning of the world, and I shall serve him until the end of the world." He bowed his head reverently. "Anet hrak 'Anpu."

  Harriet shook her head. "I cannot understand this,
Sekhemib. There are no gods. They do not exist, they have never existed. This all cannot be!"

  "Art thou blind, woman? Do I live? Do my limbs move, does my eye see, does my mouth speak?"

  "But the gods, all religions, are just wishful thinking, just ways of comforting ourselves, just

  "And thou hast no gods, nor thy people?"

  "Oh, there are religions, but intelligent, educated people don't take them seriously. They just aren't true. They're fables."

  Sekhemib nodded in agreement. "Thou speakest rightly, for if thy people do not worship Anubis and Isis and Set and the other ancient gods, then they worship false gods indeed."

  "That's not what, I mean," she said tiredly. "There is some way in which you have been able to prolong and restore life, that's obvious. But there must be a scientific explanation for it. All religions are fables, all the gods are myths."

  "I pity thee, Heret," Sekhemib said sadly. "Dost thou believe that nothing exists beyond thyself, that no life exists beyond this life?"

  "Well, if you don't believe that, then why are you so determined to stay in this life? I mean, if you believe in an afterlife or in some form of existence beyond death, why are you so obsessed with staying alive?"

  "Oh, Heret, thou art so simple. Hast thou never asked thyself why Anubis has blessed me with this gift, why he has given me my powers with which to protect myself?"

  She shrugged and looked back out to sea. "I assumed it was part of a deal. You worship me, I'll bless you, like Abraham and God."

  "Who is this man?"

  "An ancestor of the—of the Habiru. It doesn't matter." She sighed. Depression was once again blanketing curiosity

  "Ah, the Habiru. Allies of the Hyksos. Ousha was a Habiru, but he worshipped no god with the name God."

  "God is an English word," she said tiredly. "It's a general term like the Egyptian word neter."

  "And this god had no name?"

  "Look, why are you asking me all this? What do you care about the Hebrews and their religion? Why don't you just leave me alone? Why don't you just kill me and be done with it?" She started to cry.

  "Compose thyself, Heret," Sekhemib commanded. "I speak with thee for my pleasure, for Ahmed Hadji is a fool and no companion. But I have no wish to listen to weeping and gnashing of teeth."

  She was sufficiently frightened of him to force herself to stop weeping. "I'm sorry," she said, and then thought, Why on earth am I apologizing to this creature?

  "Thou are forgiven," he said seriously. "Answer me. This god had no name?"

  "He had a name, but the Hebrews were not allowed to say it."

  Sekhemib laughed heartily. "Such idiocy! How can you use the power of a god if you cannot speak his name?"

  She shrugged. "Your concept of the relationship between man and God is somewhat primitive." She was instantly regretful that she had made the statement. She did not want to anger this man, because he was correct in saying that the certainty of death did not make the presence of life any less sweet. Quickly, she added, "But you did not make a pact with Anubis?"

  Sekhemib had heard and understood her criticism, but he chose to ignore it. Why should he be offended at the ignorance and ill manners of a mortal woman whose life lay in his hands? "Yes, a pact, but not made in words, for I had no words during the dim time. Anubis has no need of my worship. I worship him because I am his servant, because I want to worship him."

  Harriet frowned. "Then why? . . . I mean, I don't understand."

  Sekhemib smiled. "I drink the souls of the tekenues. And I am the tekenu of the god. Through me, he drinks the souls of men, and he lives, even as I live."

  She stared at him skeptically. "You are a tekenu? You?!"

  "Yes. A god who has no servants, whose name is never called upon, is a god who dies, even as the god of Ousha, Xepheraxepher, is a dead god. Anubis would live forever, so he chose seven of us from the mud of the dim time to live forever. And as we drink the souls of the tekenues, he drinks our souls and lives."

  "I don't follow this," she said. "Do you mean that Anubis lives, that gods live, only so long as they have worshippers?"

  "No. A god needs no worship. He needs his name only. But Anubis is a wise god and an ancient god, and he went beyond the power of the other gods and made them his servants. The ancients worshipped all the gods, but exalted Amon above the rest. They knew not that Amon, and Osiris and Ra and all the others, serve Anubis."

  He was digressing, and she wanted to understand what he had said. "But what does this have to do with soul drinking? Why does this make you tekenu of some sort?"

  Sekhemib shook his head. "You people of this age are so far from the gods that the simplest truths are hidden from you. You have no gods, and so you understand nothing. We seven—I, Meret, Yuya, Herihor, Senmut, Wenet, and Khumara—we seven are Anubis. When we meet once each full moon for the ceremony, we give our souls to the god and we become one, we become the god. He lives because we live, he assumes physical form by the power of the souls we command. Once each full moon he drinks the souls we possess and he lives."

  Her mind was simultaneously reeling and rejecting what she was hearing. "And you? What happens to you when Anubis takes your soul? I mean, the soul you are living on?"

  He shrugged. "I die for a brief time. When the ceremony ends, the god returns the soul to me and to the others, and we live again until the next full moon. When we grow old and the appointed days of the souls we have taken come to an end, Anubis takes the souls and we in turn drink the souls of other tekenues." He smiled at her. "You see, Heret, that is why! say that I know death better than any man. Thou knowest that I live forever, and that is true; but I die for a time each full moon. I know death very well."

  "I'm sorry," she said. "None of this makes any sense to me. You say that Anubis is the seven of you, that he exists separately from you, you talk about gods actually coming to life—I mean, actually being visible in physical form—none of this makes any sense." She shook her head in depressed bewilderment. "Very soon I shall awaken, Sekhemib, and I shall be in my own bed in my own home, and all of this will have been a dream, a nightmare. None of this is true. None of this is real."

  "What men believe is what is real, Heret." Sekhemib was speaking to her as if she were a particularly slow child. "You people of this age believe only in that which can be measured and seen, and therefore that is all which exists."

  "Ridiculous," she muttered in English. In Egyptian she said, "What is real is what is real. It makes no difference whether you believe it or not." She turned back to Sekhernib. "For thousands of years men believed that the world was flat, but that didn't make it flat."

  "The world is flat," Sekhemib said simply.

  Sighing, she returned her gaze to the North Sea. "Forget it."

  Hadji had been leaning back against the cabin door behind them during this exchange, out of earshot. Now he approached them and said, "My lord, behold the city in the distance. That is Brest, of the country called France. We will stop there for a few hours to pick up supplies."

  "Yes, Hadji, very good. Take thou the woman and lock her away." To Harriet he said, "Think thou on my words, Heret, for it is not good to die in ignorance." He turned and walked away from them, walking along the deck in a cheerful and sprightly manner.

  "Come, woman," Hadji said in English, taking her by the arm. She allowed him to lead her through the cabin door without resistance. What purpose would it serve to resist? she thought. No way out. No way out.

  Hadji led her through the stateroom into a small bedroom connected to it. He pushed her roughly down upon the bed and removed a length of rope from the dresser beside the bed. He then bound her ankles together and tied her wrists to the bedpost. He stood back and smiled. "Behave," he admonished, wagging his finger at her, and then left the room, closing and locking the door behind him.

  Harriet was too depressed even to struggle against the rope. She lay there, quiet and still in the darkness of the unlighted cabin, as a few stray tears
trickled down from her eyes and plopped onto the mattress. "Tommy," she whispered sadly. "Please help me, please . . ." The tears began to flow freely, and she moved instinctively to bring her hand to her face to wipe them away, forgetting about the rope which bound her to the bedpost. She was reminded of her bonds when her arms came to a stop with a sudden jerk.

  But wait. Had there been a give in the rope?

  She strained her neck to turn and look above her. She tried again to pull her arms away from the bedpost and saw that the ropes were securely tied, but that there was a slight give in the post itself. She pulled again, harder this time, and one of the rails of the headboard snapped free from its position. The old bed, which had in all likelihood been on the decrepit old freighter since its maiden voyage, was rusted and cracked. She pulled again, and another rail moved slightly forward. Again, and the two rails to which she was tied fell forward, striking her on the head.

  Her forehead felt bruised, but the pain was eclipsed by the thrill of sudden hope which sprang up in her. Eyeing the locked door nervously, she began to twist her hands around in the knotted ropes until she was able to get her fingers on the knots themselves. Untying them was a long, frustrating process. Minutes passed . . . fifteen minutes . a half hour. She pulled the first knot free just as the old freighter slowly moved into its slip in the docking area of the French port. Harriet reached down and began frantically to work on the ropes around her ankles. She untied them in a much shorter time, and then crept quietly across the cabin to the porthole.

  Harriet looked out and smiled with relief through her fear and anxiety. There were people out there, real people, not enemies, not murderers, dockworkers shouting and carrying and running to and fro along the wooden walkways. She lifted a trembling hand to the latch of the porthole and moved it to the left. It opened easily, and she pulled the window toward her. It was a small opening, but Harriet would be able to fit through it.

  I have to fit, she thought. I have to!

  She stretched both her arms out before her and pushed them through the porthole. Her shoulders were too wide to fit through, but she pushed and wiggled and wiggled and pushed. Her shoulders eased slowly through, and the steel porthole rim scraped painfully against her breasts. Harriet looked down and saw that there was a six or seven foot expanse of water separating the hull of the freighter from the thick wooden piles which formed the side of the slip. Good, she thought. I'm sure I can make it a few feet in the water to those big logs, even if I can't swim. She pushed against the outside of the ship, trying to throw her weight forward by lifting her legs, which were still inside the cabin, up higher than her torso. She slipped quickly forward as her breasts cleared the rim and then came to a sudden stop as her hips slapped against the circular opening. Damn! she thought.