The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 2003, Volume 14

by Stephen Jones

  “Appearing supernaturally, I should say, Vanessa,” said Jeperson. “That’s generally what apports do.”

  “Not just the apports,” she went on. “All the obelisks and sphinxes. Oughtn’t this to be in the Valley of the Kings, not buried under greenery in London North Six?”

  Jeperson dropped the sand and let the scarabs scuttle where they might. He brushed his palms together.

  Vanessa was right. Everything in this section of Kingstead Cemetery was tricked out with Ancient Egyptian statuary and design features. The Bunning tomb was guarded by two human-headed stone lions in Pharaonic headdresses. Their faces had weathered as badly in a century as the original sphinx had in millennia. All around were miniature sandstone pyramids and temples, animal-headed deities, faded blue and gold hieroglyphs and ankh-shaped gravestones.

  “I can explain that, Miss . . . ah?” said Lillywhite.

  “Vanessa. Just Vanessa.”

  “Vanessa, fine,” said the scholarly caretaker, segueing into a tour guide speech. “The motif dates back to the establishment of the cemetery in 1839. Stephen Geary, the original architect, had a passion for Egyptiana which was shared by the general public of his day. From the first, the Cemetery was planned not just as a place for burying the dead but as a species of morbid tourist attraction. Victorians were rather more given to visiting dead relatives than we are. It was expected that whole families would come to picnic by grandmama’s grave.”

  “If my gran were dead, we’d certainly have a picnic,” said Fred. Lillywhite looked a little shocked. “Well, you don’t know my gran,” Fred explained.

  “They held black-crêpe birthday parties for the many children who died in infancy,” the caretaker continued, “with solemn games and floral presents. Siblings gathered annually around marble babies well into their own old age. It’s not easy to start a graveyard from scratch, especially at what you might call the top end of the market. Cemeteries are supposed to be old. For a Victorian to be laid to rest in a new one would be like you or me being bundled into a plastic bag and ploughed under a motorway extension.”

  “That’s more or less what Fred has planned,” said Jeperson.

  “I can’t say I’m surprised. To circumvent the prejudice, Geary decided to trade on associations with ancient civilizations. If his cemetery couldn’t be instantly old, then at least it would look old. This area is Egyptian Avenue. Geary himself is buried here. Originally, there were three such sections, with a Roman Avenue and a Grecian Avenue completing the set. But the fashionable had a craze for Egypt. The Roman and Grecian Avenues were abandoned and overtaken. It was no real scholarly interest in Egyptology, by the way, just an enthusiasm for the styles. Some of the gods you see represented aren’t even real, just made up to fit in with the pantheon. A historian might draw a parallel between Ancient Egyptian obsession with funerary rites and the Victorian fascination with the aesthetics of death.”

  Fred thought anyone who chose to spend his life looking after a disused cemetery must have nurtured some of that obsession himself. Lillywhite was an unsalaried amateur, a local resident who was a booster for this forgotten corner of the capital.

  “It’s certainly ancient now,” said Fred. “Falling to pieces.”

  “Regrettably so. Victorian craftsmen were good on surface, but skimped everything else. Artisans knew the customers would all be too dead to complain and cut a lot of corners. Impressive stone fronts, but crumbling at the back. Statues that dissolve to lumps after fifty years in the rain. Tombs with strong corners but weak roofs. By the 1920s, when the original site was full and children and grandchildren of the first tenants were in their own grave-plots, everything had fallen into disrepair. When the United Cemetery Company went bust in the early 1960s, Kingstead was more or less abandoned. Our historical society has been trying to raise money for restoration and repair work. With not much luck, as yet.”

  “Put me down for fifty quid,” said Jeperson.

  Fred wasn’t sure if restoration and repair would improve the place. The tombs had been laid out to a classical plan like miniature pyramids or cathedrals, and serpentine pathways wound between them. Uncontrolled shrubbery and ivy swarmed everywhere, clogging the paths, practically burying the stonework. A broken-winged angel soared from a nearby rhododendron, face scraped eyeless. It was the dead city of a lost civilization, like something from Rider Haggard. Nature had crept back, green tendrils undermining thrones and palaces, and was slowly taking the impertinent erections of a passing humanity back into her leafy bosom.

  “This is the source of your haunting?” asked Jeperson, nodding at the Bunning tomb.

  Fred had forgotten for a moment why they were here.

  “It seems to be.”

  There had been a great deal of ghostly activity. Yesterday, Fred had gone to the newspaper library in Colindale and looked over a hundred and twenty years of wails in the night and alarmed courting couples. As burial grounds went, Kingstead Cemetery was rather sporadically haunted. Until the last three months, when spooks had been running riot with bells and whistles on. A newsagent’s across the road had been pelted with a rain of lightning-charged pebbles. A physical-culture enthusiast had been knocked off his bicycle by ectoplasmic tentacles. And there had been a lot of sightings.

  Jeperson considered the Bunning tomb. Fred saw he was letting down his guard, trying to sense what was disturbed in the vicinity. Jeperson was a sensitive.

  “According to your report, Lillywhite, our spectral visitors have run the whole gamut. Disembodied sounds . . .”

  “Like jackals,” said Lillywhite. “I was in Suez in ’56. I know what a jackal sounds like.”

  “. . . Phantom figures . . .”

  “Mummies, with bandages. Hawk-headed humans. Ghostly barges. Crawling severed hands.”

  “. . . And now, physical presences. To wit: the scarabs and other nasties. Even the sand. It’s still warm, by the way. Does anyone else detect a theme here?”

  “Spirits of Ancient Egypt,” suggested Vanessa.

  Jeperson shot her a finger-gun. “You have it.”

  Fred would have shivered, only . . .

  “Richard, isn’t there something funny here?” he said. “A themed haunting? It’s a bit Hammer Horror, isn’t it? I mean, this place may be done up with Egyptian tat but it’s still North London. You can see the Post Office Tower from here. Whoever is buried in this tomb . . .”

  “Members of the Bunning family,” put in Lillywhite. “The publishing house. Bunning and Company, Pyramid Press. You can see their offices from here. That black building, the one that looks like the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey. It’s called the Horus Tower.”

  Fred knew the skyscraper, but had never realized who owned it.

  “Yes, them. The Bunnings. They were just Victorians who liked the idea of a few hierogylphs and cat-headed birds in the way they might have liked striped wallpaper or a particular cut of waistcoat. You said it was a fashion, a craze. So why have we got authentic Egyptian ghosts, just as if there were some evil high priest or mad Pharaoh in there?”

  “George Oldrid Bunning was supposedly buried in a proper Egyptian sarcophagus,” said Lillywhite. “It was even said that he went through the mummification process.”

  “Brains through the nose, liver and lights in canopic jars?”

  “Yes, Mr Jeperson. Indeed.”

  “That would have been irregular?”

  “In 1897? Yes.”

  “I withdraw my objection,” said Fred. “Old Bunning was clearly a loon. You might expect loon ghosts.”

  Jeperson was on his knees, looking at the sand. The scarabs were gone now, scuttling across London in advance of a nasty surprise come the first frost.

  “I’ve been trying to get in touch with the descendants for a while,” said Lillywhite. “Even before all this fuss. I was hoping they might sponsor restoration of the Bunning tomb. The current head of the family is George Rameses Banning. He must maintain the family interest in Egypt, or at least
his parents did. It appears George Rameses has his own troubles.”

  “So I’d heard,” said Jeperson. “All dynasties must fail, I suppose.”

  Fred had vaguely heard of the Bunnings but couldn’t remember where.

  “Pyramid Press are magazine publishers,” said Jeperson, answering the unspoken query. “You’ve heard of Stunna.”

  Vanessa made a face.

  Stunna was supposedly a blokes’ answer to Cosmopolitan, with features about fast cars and sport and (especially) sex. It ran glossy pictures of girls not naked enough to get into Playboy but nevertheless unclad enough for you not to want your mum knowing you looked at them. The magazine had launched last year with a lot of publicity, then been attacked with a couple of libel suits from a rival publisher that they had made nasty jokes about, Derek Leech of the Daily Comet. Stunna had just ceased publication, probably taking the company down with it. Fred realized that he had heard of George Rameses Bunning after all. He was doomed to be dragged into bankruptcy and ruin, throwing a lot of people out of work. The scraps of his company would probably be gobbled up by the litigious Leech, which may well have been the point.

  “Bunning and Company once put out British Pluck and The Halfpenny Marvel,” said Jeperson. “Boy’s papers. At their height of popularity between the wars. And dozens of other titles over the years. Mostly sensation stuff. Generations of lads were raised on the adventures of Jack Dauntless RN, and the scientific vigilante Dr Shade. I think the masthead of Stunna bears the sad legend ‘incorporating British Pluck’.”

  “You think there’s a tie-in,” said Fred. “With all the pluck business. It’s a penny-dreadful curse.”

  Jeperson’s brow furrowed. He was having one of his ‘feelings’, which usually meant bad news for anyone within hailing distance.

  “More than that, Fred. I sense something very nasty here. An old cruelty that lingers. Also, this is one of those ‘hey, look at me’ hauntings. It’s as if our phantoms were trying to tell us something, to issue a warning.”

  “Then why start making a fuss in the last month? Any ghosts around here must have been planted . . .”

  “Discorporated, Fred.”

  “Yes, that . . . they must have been dead for eighty years. Why sit quietly all that time but kick up a row this summer?”

  “Maybe they object to something topical,” suggested Vanessa. “Like what’s Top of the Pops?”

  “It’s not dreadful enough to be after the Bay City Rollers, luv,” said Fred.

  “Good point.”

  Jeperson considered the Bunning tomb, and stroked his tash.

  Fred looked around. The cemetery afforded a pleasant green dappling of shadow and swathes of sunstruck grass. But Jeperson was right. Something very nasty was here.

  “Vanessa,” said Jeperson. “Pass the crowbar. I think we should unseal this tomb.”

  “But . . .” put in the startled Lillywhite.

  Jeperson tapped his tiger-fang. “Have no fear of curses, man. This will shield us all.”

  “It’s not that. This is private property.”

  “I won’t tell if you don’t. Besides, you’ve already established that George Rameses Bunning has less than no interest in the last resting place of his ancestors. Who else could possibly object?”

  “I’m supposed to be a guardian of this place.”

  “Come on. Haven’t you ever wanted to open one of these tombs up and poke around inside?”

  “The original Mr Bunning is supposed to have had an authentic Egyptian funeral. He might be surrounded by his treasures.”

  “A bicycle to pedal into the afterlife? Golden cigar cuspidors? Ornamental funerary gaslamps?”

  “Very likely.”

  “Then we shall be Howard Carter and Lord Caernarvon.”

  Fred thought that wasn’t a happy parallel. Hadn’t there been an effective curse on the tomb of King Tutankamun?

  Vanessa produced a crowbar from her BOAC holdall. She was always prepared for any eventualities.

  Fred thought he should volunteer, but Jeperson took the tool and slipped it into a crack. He strained and the stone didn’t shift.

  “Superior workmanship, Lillywhite. No skimping here.”

  Jeperson heaved again. The stone advanced an inch, and more sand cascaded. Something chittered inside.

  Vanessa had a trowel. She cleared some of the sand and picked out dried-up mortar.

  “Good girl,” said Jeperson.

  He heaved again. The bottom half of the stone cracked through completely, then fell out of the doorway. The top half slid down in grooves and broke in two pieces. A lot more sand avalanched.

  Fred tugged Lillywhite out of the way. Jeperson and Vanessa had already stepped aside.

  A scarecrow-thin human figure stood in the shifting sands, hands raised as if to thump, teeth bared in a gruesome grin. It pitched forward on its face and broke apart like a poorly made dummy. If it were a Guy, it would not earn a penny from the most intimidated or kindly passer-by.

  “That’s not George Oldrid Bunning,” gasped Lillywhite.

  “No,” said Jeperson. “I rather fear that it’s his butler.”

  There were five of them, strewn around the stone sarcophagus, bundles of bones in browned wrappings.

  “A butler, a footman, a cook, a housekeeper and a maid,” said Jeperson. Under his tan, he was pale. He held himself rigidly, so that he wouldn’t shake with rage and despair. He understood this sort of horror all too well – having lost the memory of a boyhood torn away in a Nazi camp – but never got used to it.

  The servant bodies wore the remains of uniforms.

  Lillywhite was upset. He was sitting on the grass, with his head between his knees.

  Vanessa, less sensitive than Jeperson, was looking around the tomb with a torch.

  “It’s a good size,” she called out. “Extensive foundations.”

  “They were alive,” bleated Lillywhite.

  “For a while,” said Jeperson.

  “What a bastard,” said Fred. “Old George Oldrid Bunning. He got his Pharaoh’s funeral all right, with all his servants buried alive to shine his boots and tug their forelocks through all eternity. How did he do it?”

  “Careful planning,” said Jeperson. “And a total lack of scruple.”

  Lillywhite looked up. He concentrated, falling back on expertise to damp down the shock.

  “It was a special design. When he was dying, George Oldrid contracted a master mason to create his tomb. It’s the only one here that’s survived substantially intact. The mason died before Bunning. Suspiciously.”

  “Pharaohs had their architects killed, to preserve the secrets of their tombs from grave-robbers. There were all kind of traps in the pyramids, to discourage looters.”

  A loud noise came from inside the tomb. Something snapping shut with a clang.

  Jeperson’s cool vanished.

  “Vanessa?” he shouted.

  Vanessa came out of the tomb, hair awry and pinned back by her raised sunglasses. She had a nasty graze on her knee.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Nothing a tot won’t cure.”

  She found a silver flask in her holdall and took a swallow, then passed it round. Fred took a jolting shot of brandy.

  “Who’d leave a mantrap in a tomb? Coiled steel, with enough tensile strength after a century to bisect a poor girl, or at least take her leg off, if she didn’t have a dancer’s reflexes.”

  “George Oldrid Bunning,” said Jeperson.

  “Bastard General,” clarified Fred.

  “Just so. He must have been the bastardo di tutti bastardi. It would have been in the will that he be laid personally to rest by his servants, with no other witnesses, at dead of night. They were probably expecting healthy bequests. The sad, greedy lot. When closed, the sarcophagus lid triggered a mechanism and the stone door slammed down. For ever, or at least until Vanessa and her crowbar. The tomb is soundproof. Weatherproof. Escape-proof.”

  “There’s treasure
,” said Vanessa. “Gold and silver. Some Egyptian things. Genuine, I think. Ushabti figures, a death mask. A lot of it is broken. The downstairs mob must have tried to improvise tools. Not that it did them any good.”

  The now-shattered stone door showed signs of ancient scratching. But the breaks were new, and clean.

  “How long did they . . . ?”

  “Best not to think of it, Lillywhite,” said Jeperson.

  “In death, they got strong,” said Vanessa. “They finally cracked the door, or we’d never have been able to shift it.”

  The little maid, tiny skull in a mob cap, was especially disturbing. She couldn’t have been more than fourteen.

  “No wonder the ghosts have been making a racket,” said Fred. “If someone did that to me, I’d give nobody any rest until it was made right.”

  Jeperson tapped his front tooth, thinking.

  “But why wait until now? As you said, they’ve had a hundred years in which to manifest their understandable ire. And why the Egyptian thing? Shouldn’t they be Victorian servant ghosts? I should think an experience like being buried alive by a crackpot with a King Tut complex would sour one on ancient cultures in general and Egypt in particular.”

  “They’re trying to tell us something,” said Vanessa.

  “Sharp girl. Indeed they are.”

  Fred looked away from the tomb. Across the city.

  The Horus Tower caught the light. It was a black glass block, surmounted by a gold pyramid.

  “George Rameses Bunning is dying,” said Lillywhite. “A recurrence of some tropical disease. News got out just after Derek Leech Incorporated started suing Pyramid Press. It’s had a disastrous effect on the company stock. He’s liable to die broke.”

  “If he’s anything like his great-great, then he deserves it,” said Vanessa.