Ghosts of Karnak

by George Mann

  “Or the mark of a rival gang,” said the Ghost, “striking back at the Reaper. He’s made a lot of enemies.”

  “That too,” said Donovan. He dropped the butt of his cigarette and ground it beneath his heel.

  “And Ginny,” said the Ghost. “Did you manage to get a look at the passenger manifest?”

  “Not exactly,” said Donovan, “but the Second Mate was very helpful on the holotube. He did a little digging around and called me back. She was definitely on the ship, Gabriel. Cabin thirty-five. You must have missed her somehow.”

  “You’re sure?” said the Ghost. “It couldn’t be a mistake?”

  “I can’t see how. According to the Second Mate she even had dinner with the Captain one night.” Donovan looked pained. “I’m sorry. I know it’s not what you wanted to hear, but she’s back in New York.”

  Then where was she? Something had happened to her. He was sure of it. “All right, then I need to find her.”

  “What if she doesn’t want to be found?”

  “Then I’ll walk away. But first, I need to know she’s okay. People don’t just disappear, Felix.”

  “You checked her apartment?”

  “Still locked up and empty. No one’s been there for months.”

  “I’ll tell Mullins to put word out,” said Donovan. “Treat it as a Missing Persons.”

  “Thank you,” said the Ghost.

  “Least I can do,” said Donovan, “but remember—that woman knows how to look after herself. If something has happened to her, woe betide any man who’s got in her way.”

  The Ghost hopped up onto the wall, reaching inside his coat for the ignition cord that would activate the boosters strapped to his calves.

  “Where next?” said Donovan, reaching for another cigarette.

  “The Centurion,” said the Ghost. “I’m going to take a look for myself. Ginny, the exhibition, the dead woman—maybe even the Reaper—they all have ties to that ship, one way or another. I’m going to give it a kick and see what falls out.”

  “Be careful,” said Donovan. “You’re in no fit state for a brawl.”

  His words were lost, however, by the roar of the Ghost’s boosters, as he shot up into the air on a plume of brilliant flame, streaking across the skyline toward the docks.

  EIGHT

  The Centurion hulked in the dock, ominous and dark.

  The Ghost circled high above, observing the deck for any signs of habitation. It was a cool night, and the sea breeze played across his face, making him feel alert and ready, despite the nagging pain in his chest.

  He’d expected to find guards or dockworkers patrolling the vessel, but the deck appeared silent and still, and even the lights in the small office on the dock had been put out. The only sounds were the roar of the canisters strapped to his calves, and the rhythmic shushing of the ocean.

  He cut the fuel line, causing the booster jets to sputter and spit, and then fall silent, guttering to nothing as he slowly descended, feet first, to the deck. He hugged the shadows close to the main funnel, keeping low. If there were any guards down on the dock, he’d sooner not give them cause for alarm. The last thing he wanted was a firefight with a bunch of innocent men.

  The upper deck had been packed away since he’d stood on the quayside below, watching the passengers milling around while they waited to disembark. The chairs had been upended on the tabletops and tied into place with lengths of blue twine, and canvas tarpaulins had been stretched over all of the lifeboats. The deck had been scrubbed and polished, too; the boards gleamed, even in the moonlight, and he could smell the oils they’d rubbed into the wood. He guessed the ship would be setting out on the next leg of its journey within a day or two, or perhaps making a return trip to Egypt and the far-off ports of the Middle East.

  He took a moment to get his bearings, and then, still clinging to the shadows, crossed the deck to a set of double doors, which he presumed would open up onto a staircase and down into the main passenger areas.

  He tried the handle, but, unsurprisingly, found them locked. A quick shove splintered the wood around the mechanism, however, and within seconds he was inside, the door wedged shut behind him.

  It was dark in the stairwell, so he adjusted his goggles to their night-vision setting, casting everything in a pale red glow. Cautiously, he crept down the carpeted stairs, still wary of triggering some sort of alarm.

  The stairs opened up onto a lower deck resplendent in its finery; crystal chandeliers dripped from molded rosettes on the ceiling, plush red carpets lined the floors, gilt-framed mirrors and portraits dressed the papered walls. It might have been the interior of a top-end hotel, rather than the communal deck of a steam liner. Little expense had been spared.

  He could imagine the sort of conversations that had passed here, at the foot of these stairs—the same sort that he heard at his Long Island parties, night after night—vacant of all real meaning, just the petty chit-chat of self-obsessed elitists massaging one another’s egos. He couldn’t see Ginny fitting in here. She’d probably spent most of the journey up on the deck, taking in the view, or else locked away in her cabin with her books.

  Now that he was here, he wasn’t entirely sure what he was looking for. There was no point searching for the manifest—Donovan had answered that question. What he needed was some sort of proof that she’d really been here, on the ship, and not just a logged entry in a book.

  Donovan had said she’d been registered in cabin thirty-five. That seemed the logical place to start. He’d have to make his way down through the First Class decks until he found it.

  Moving swiftly, he crossed the foyer, skirting the lounge and passing through a set of double doors into a lobby area. There were elevators here, but he decided not to risk using them, preferring to seek out the stairs. There was less chance of anyone noticing him if he kept to himself and didn’t make use of any of the facilities—lights included.

  Three decks further down, a sign directed him through another door to a passageway leading to cabins twenty-nine through thirty-nine. He took it, noting how the furnishings down here were still reminiscent of a New York hotel, with rich carpets and brass fittings on all the doors. He couldn’t conceive of how much the whole thing had cost to build, and, likewise, to maintain; there had to be a veritable army of staff and servants onboard when she was at sea.

  He found cabin thirty-five within minutes, and this time, was surprised to discover the door was unlocked. It was pitch black inside the room, but his goggles compensated, and he slipped inside, pulling the door shut behind him.

  It was a small space for a First Class cabin, despite its evident luxury; a chaise longue, a fireplace, a small vanity table and a plush double bed, draped in silk sheets. A smaller antechamber proved to house a small bathroom and toilet, now devoid of any toiletries, and twin wardrobes which were equally empty of any effects. A maid had evidently prepared the room for the next guest: the sheets had been changed, the bed made, the carpets brushed. There was nothing of Ginny’s here, no hairbrush, no clothes, no evidence she had been here at all. Even the scent of her had been polished out of the woodwork with a liberal application of beeswax.

  He checked beneath the bed, just in case; opened the drawers in the vanity unit. There was nothing at all.

  He noted that a small door led to the adjoining cabin. It was bolted shut from this side, so he slid the bolt and crept through. The room mirrored cabin thirty-five in nearly every way, clearly built to the same schematic, only reversed. Here, the same was true as in Ginny’s room; the maids had done a thorough job erasing all evidence of the previous passenger. All save for a small white patch on the carpet.

  Interested, the Ghost dropped to his haunches, removing his glove and pinching some of the powdery substance between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. It was dry and crumbly. He raised it to his nose and cautiously sniffed, surprised to discover that it wasn’t, as he imagined, a trace of some illicit narcotic, but simple white chalk. He ran
his fingers through the carpet, causing tiny plumes of dust to form in their wake. It seemed the maids hadn’t been quite as thorough as they should have been; there was evidence here that someone had been using the chalk to draw outlines on the carpet. Whatever shape it had been was now long gone, but the realization loosened a tumble of thoughts in the Ghost’s mind.

  Chalk circles? The witches of Godfrey Place had used chalk circles to enact their foul rituals. He supposed it might be a leap to imagine someone on this ship had been carrying out similar elaborate practices, but the ritualistic murder of Autumn Allen was still preying on his mind. The Egyptian connection just seemed too coincidental. And now he had discovered this, in the room directly connected to the one in which Ginny had supposedly been staying. He didn’t like the implication of that one bit.

  Rising, he quickly checked over the rest of the room, but again, found nothing save for more vestiges of chalk dust, which the maid had obviously found difficult to properly remove.

  The door to this cabin was also open to the passageway—as, he presumed, they all would be, until they became occupied again—and he stepped out, careful to leave the inner door pulled shut behind him.

  He considered heading up to the bridge, but suspected he’d find nothing there but further log books and charts. If a conspiracy of some sort had taken place aboard this vessel, it was unlikely the captain would have known about it. More likely, the people involved would have had assistance from among the junior members of the crew.

  The crew quarters, then, might be a place to look for answers, but as he’d already established, there would be hundreds of them aboard, and without any indication of whom or what he was looking for, it would be like searching for a needle in a haystack. There was always the risk that one or two of them might still be onboard, too—while most had evidently taken the opportunity to explore the iniquitous speakeasies and jazz clubs of the city, some would inevitably have remained here, and he risked raising the alarm if he started rooting through cabins without any real sense of what he was looking for.

  Better, he decided, that he take a look at the holds where the antiquities had been transported, to see if he could find anything that might connect the expedition with Autumn Allen. If so, he and Donovan would then be able to go after the expedition leader in search of answers.

  The Ghost moved through the ship like a specter, swift and silent. He hurried through the passenger decks and down into the grubby engineering section of the ship, thick with the mingling scents of oil and rust. He’d been impressed by the scale of the vessel from the quayside, but the sight of the engines themselves left him feeling utterly dwarfed. Enormous furnaces, now cold, warmed pressurized water tanks, which in turn drove huge pistons, each the size of tree trunks, to turn the wheels that powered the ship’s rudders.

  The hangar housing these engines spanned the entire girth of the ship, and was as tall as a small apartment building. Every footfall he made on the iron gangway as he passed through echoed like a ricocheting bullet.

  He reached the first cargo hold ten minutes later to find it empty. There was evidence that heaps of crates had been stored here recently: loose strands of packing straw, scattered sand, splinters of wood. The crates themselves had all gone, carted off the ship and up to the museum. Large metal hooks dangled from chains overhead—used to secure expensive cargo or provide support to the cranes as they attempted to load and unload the crates from the ship.

  He cast around, searching for anything at all that might help him to understand what had happened on the ship, but there was nothing. It was just an empty hangar, on an empty ship.

  All he’d been able to find was a smattering of chalk dust, which might or might not indicate something untoward. It was tenuous at best.

  He supposed he was going to have to call in a favor with Arthur over at the Met, see if he couldn’t get a look at the exhibition early, before it opened to the public. Maybe there was some clue in the artifacts themselves.

  He crossed the hangar, ducking through a doorway into the adjoining cargo hold. Here, too, there was evidence that a large number of crates had been recently removed; only there was one major difference—a single wooden packing crate still stood in one corner.

  It was large, about the size of a small room, presumably containing some significant relic from the dig. A statue, maybe? The head of a colossus? Judging by the size of the crate, it would have to be a centerpiece to the whole exhibition.

  It seemed odd that it had been left here unattended while everything else had already been unloaded, but he supposed the dockworkers might have found themselves in need of a bigger crane to take the weight, or an alternative means of transporting it uptown.

  He crossed the hangar, circling the crate. The sides were unmarked panels, nailed onto a wooden frame. Around the front, he was surprised to see two freestanding statues, just abandoned in the shadow of the crate. One resembled a human female with the head of a lioness. She was seated on a plinth, which had clearly been damaged at some point in the long forgotten past, so that the hieroglyphics carved upon it were scratched and undecipherable. She had her arms folded across her naked chest, one hand holding an ankh, the other a rod or scepter. She’d been hewn in smooth black stone, and her eyes watched him impassively as he circled around, studying her.

  The other statue bore a similar aspect, also seated upon a plinth. This one resembled a bare-chested male with the head of an ibis. Its curved beak was partially absent, and one of its arms was missing, lending it a strangely maudlin appearance. This one also carried an ankh, its surviving arm lowered by its side. It had a sun disc headdress, similar to the one he’d seen carved into Autumn’s forehead, and the base of its plinth was covered in neat white columns of pictograms. In the near darkness of the ship’s hold, they seemed eerie; things that didn’t belong in the here and now, relics from an ancient past that should have remained forgotten. The Ghost couldn’t help but feel there was good reason why the old religions had been extinguished; his experience with the Roman had left a deep, unsettling scar.

  These, though, were simple statues; artifacts recovered from the hot sands of the past and brought here to be gazed upon by thousands of admiring New Yorkers. Despite their unsettling aspect, they posed no threat.

  Nevertheless, it seemed odd that they should have been unpacked from their transportation crates here, in the hold of the ship. Surely the museum would have expected to receive them by now, along with all the others? Perhaps, he decided, they were rejects, too damaged to put on display alongside the more pristine examples that had already been chosen for the exhibition.

  Frowning, he approached the crate, looking for a means to see inside. There was a door round the front, cut into the wooden panel and hinged to allow access. It was padlocked shut. He leaned closer, trying to peer through the thin crack between the door and the frame to ascertain what was inside. It was too dark, even with his night-vision goggles. He was going to have to break the lock.

  Behind him, something groaned. It was a long, drawn-out sound, like rending metal, and at first he thought it was the hull of the ship, settling with the change in temperature. When it started again a second later, he realized it resembled more closely the sound of grating stone. He turned, his mouth suddenly dry.

  The lion-headed statue was getting down from its plinth.

  The Ghost edged back, flicking his wrist so that the barrel of his flechette gun ratcheted up and around, clicking into place along the length of his forearm.

  The statue lurched forward, its movements jerky and deliberate. He glanced at the other to see that it, too, was now pulling itself free of its perch, raising its remaining arm to hold its ankh aloft, as if calling for divine intervention.

  This, the Ghost realized, was why the two statues had been left unguarded on the ship. They were the guards. Someone wanted the contents of that crate to remain very much unseen.

  The two statues marched toward him, their feet clanging on the metal floor of t
he hangar. He wondered what was powering them, whether there was a control mechanism hidden inside of them, like the automatons he’d fought before.

  “Um, listen,” he said, holding out a placating hand. “I really don’t think this is a good idea.” He glanced at the one on the left. “I mean—you’ve already lost an arm. I’m sure you don’t want to lose another? Why don’t the two of you return to your seats, and I’ll be on my way?”

  The ibis-headed statue leaned forward, its jaws levering open to reveal a wriggling, barbed tongue. It hissed, and the sound was like a pressure valve releasing. It was one of the most unearthly sounds the Ghost had ever heard, and he felt his hackles rising.

  “No, I didn’t think so,” he said. He raised his arm, squeezed the trigger and released a hail of flechettes at the creature. The tiny blades struck home, but they pinged harmlessly off the stone, failing to leave even a single scratch.

  “Ah,” said the Ghost. “This is going to be interesting.”

  The lion-headed statue was close to him now, and it pulled its arm back and took a swing at his head, using its scepter like a glaive. He dropped and rolled, coming back up to his feet and firing into its face. Once again, his flechettes had no effect. The creatures really did appear to be made from stone.

  The other one was nearly on top of him now, and he cast around for anything he could use to ward it off. There was nothing, not even a length of pipe. It swung at him, and he raised his arm, twisting it so that the barrel of his flechette gun would take the impact. It connected with a resounding clang, and the vibration in his forearm made him cry out in pain, falling back, clutching at his wrist. Cringing, he flexed his fingers. Thankfully, it wasn’t broken.

  The statues stalked forward, full of menacing intent. He glanced back the way he had come, wondering if he could reach the door in time, but decided he wouldn’t make it. They were slow, but not that slow.

  They were closing in, trying to shut him down with a pincer movement. His only advantage was the fact one of them was missing its arm, but he couldn’t yet see a way to use that against them.