Ghosts of Karnak

by George Mann

  Boots crunched on gravel. The Ghost tore his eyes away from the apparition. The remaining cultists were gathering, retreating to their ropes. Close by, Donovan raised his gun. “Stay where you are,” he called. “Or I’ll shoot.”

  One of the cultists stopped, while the others continued to the other side of the roof. “We came for the Enforcers,” he said, “but we will not hesitate to kill you, too. Follow us, and you die.”

  He turned and ran after the others, who were now taking to their ropes, disappearing steadily over the lip of the building.

  Above, the apparition was already drifting away, its ethereal light fading as it was slowly swallowed by the darkness.

  Donovan was readying himself for a shot.

  “Felix, no!” called the Ghost. “Remember what you said? Now’s not the time. We’d be dead in minutes. We’ll have our chance.”

  Donovan lowered his weapon. The frown on his face said more than words ever could. They stood, watching as the last of the surviving cultists disappeared over the edge.

  “This is going to take some explaining,” said Donovan, after a moment. The rooftop was utterly devastated, with chunks taken out of the walls, holes punched into the floor, and dead bodies strewn about haphazardly, blood pooling and mingling with the gravel.

  “The war has begun,” said the Ghost. “And it seems the Circle of Thoth has a secret weapon.”

  “At least we know Astrid was right,” said Donovan. “The apparition is involved.”

  The Ghost nodded. He could hear footsteps in the stairwell behind them as an army of police officers came hurtling up toward the roof.

  Nearby, someone groaned. It was one of the cultists, the one who’d been tossed across the roof by the Enforcer. He was still alive—his leg snapped at the knee, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth—but he was dragging himself across the rooftop by his fingertips, heading for the rope.

  “Go,” said Donovan. “Don’t let them catch you here. I’ll see to him.” He nodded at the cultist. “Maybe now we’ll get some answers.”

  The Ghost ran, leaping over the side of the building and powering his boosters, sailing off into the night, just as the policemen spilled out behind Donovan, guns blazing.

  TWENTY

  “I’m not going to say I told you so,” said Astrid. She was standing by her workbench, her hand on her hip and the hint of a smile twitching the corner of her mouth. “But I told you so.”

  Gabriel stood in the doorway. He’d come straight over that morning after a quick stop at the bakery to collect pastries. He’d spent another hour the previous night, searching the rooftops for any sign of the apparition, but it had vanished, along with the cultists.

  “We’re not there yet,” he said. “You were right, though—the apparition is definitely a part of whatever the cult is doing. I was hoping you might be able to help us to identify it?” He looked sheepish. “And by that, I mean if I tell you what it looked like, can you tell me what you think it is?”

  “I can do one better than that, I think,” she said. “But let’s start there.” She fixed him with a disapproving stare. “Now are you coming in, or are you going to stand there in the doorway all morning?”

  Grinning, Gabriel fetched the stool from under the workbench and pulled up a seat, leaving the armchair free for Astrid.

  “Coffee, today,” she said. “It’s too early for anything else.”

  “I’d always taken you for an early riser,” said Gabriel.

  “More of a night owl,” she said. “That’s when all the interesting stuff happens.”

  Gabriel laughed. “I can’t disagree with you there.”

  She dropped into her chair while the coffee brewed on the stove, folding her legs up beneath her. She was wearing a pale-cream blouse, the top three buttons open at the neck, and a pair of loose-fitting gray culottes. A pendant hung from her neck, a small silver vial of some sort, and she was wearing a brace of rings on the fingers of her left hand. Her hair was pinned up casually, as if she hadn’t quite had time to see to it yet. “Describe it to me,” she said. “Try not to miss anything out.”

  Gabriel outlined everything he had seen the night before on the rooftop, from the ankh, to the lions, to the sun disk and the strange, ethereal wind.

  “Sekhmet,” said Astrid, without a moment’s hesitation. “The warrior goddess, daughter of the sun god Ra. It’s an avatar, a manifestation. Whatever they’ve done, they’ve brought her back.”

  “The tomb,” said Gabriel. “That’s what they found during the dig—the tomb of Sekhmet, close to the temple of Thoth. They’ve brought it here, recreating it at the museum. Arthur said it was just ceremonial, that they’d never found a body. Could this be why?”

  Astrid seemed to consider this for a moment. “It’s unlikely a three-thousand-year-old corpse could be reinvigorated in the way you describe,” said Astrid, “and really, that’s not how all of this works. At least, I don’t think so. This is new ground for me, too.” She hopped off her seat as the coffee pot started to boil over, hurriedly removing it from the stove. She poured them two mugs, and the steaming scent of it made Gabriel’s stomach lurch.

  “The way I see it, the ancient gods were not bound to physical forms in the way that we are. They were more transient than that, everlasting. At least within their own realm, which mirrored the realm of men, as we’ve already discussed. Whenever they wished to traverse our realm, they would take an avatar, inhabiting the form of a human for a short time. When they later returned to their celestial form, their business here concluded, they would leave no trace of their passing.”

  “So you think that’s what’s happened here?” said Gabriel. “That they’ve somehow found a way to wake Sekhmet?”

  “It would make sense,” said Astrid. “The shape and form of the tomb might help to provide a clue. If there was no body, though, it might be nothing but a ceremonial tomb, as Arthur suggests, designed to mark the passing of an avatar once Sekhmet had returned to the heavens. It might even have been a device designed to aid in the forging of another.”

  “A device?”

  Astrid nodded. “Buildings can have power too, Gabriel. They can channel energy, provide an anchor with the heavens. If the chambers in the tomb mirror the resting place of Sekhmet in her own realm, it might be how they woke her.”

  Gabriel swallowed. So now they weren’t just contending with a phantom. They were dealing with the avatar of a living god. The week really was going from strength to strength.

  “What do they want?” said Gabriel. It was a rhetorical question, but Astrid drummed her fingers on the arm of her chair as she considered her words.

  “Isn’t it always about power? About proving you know best, that your ideology is superior to that of others? Isn’t that always what these people want? Awakening ancient gods, harnessing the power of inter-dimensional entities, even just beating down on the kids from the next neighborhood—it’s always about power, about proving you’re right by making sure someone else is wrong.”

  “I know you’re right, Astrid, but I need to figure out how. How are they trying to do it? What’s their next move? If I’ve any hope of stopping them, I need to understand.”

  She placed her coffee on the floor by her chair, and stood, holding out her hands. “Come on, the pastries will have to wait. I’ve something to show you.”

  He took her hands and she heaved him up, leading him through to the antechamber where she kept her personal belongings. A large wooden wardrobe stood against one wall, although most of her clothes seemed to be hanging from freestanding rails, or folded away on shelves. She crossed to the wardrobe and opened both doors.

  “Astrid, what’s this all about? I’m not here to give fashion advice.”

  “Shhh,” she admonished. “You’ll spoil the effect.” He watched as she stepped into the wardrobe. There was a click, and then the sound of creaking hinges as a panel in the back of the wardrobe opened, revealing a small void behind. Astrid ducked her head
and stepped through, waving for him to follow.

  Curious, Gabriel did as she indicated, following her through the strange portal.

  He found her standing in a small chamber on the other side. It smelled damp, and the air was frigid. There were no windows, and the only light came from a single electric bulb, hanging on a cable that dangled from the rafters. The walls had once been painted white, but were now streaked with grime and decay, and he could see that mice had left their spoor in the corner, dashing in and out of a tiny hole in the outer wall for shelter.

  In the centre of the room was a chair, covered by a gray woolen blanket. He could tell from the shape and form that someone—or something—was sitting in it.

  “What’s going on?” said Gabriel.

  “I’m about to show you something, and I need to know that you’re going to keep it to yourself. Can I trust you?” She looked more intense than he’d ever seen her.

  “You can trust me, Astrid. I’ve trusted you, haven’t I?”

  “All right then,” she said, and grabbed hold of the blanket, sweeping it off the chair with a flourish. She dropped it to the floor by her feet. “Meet ‘the Seer’.”

  Gabriel stared at the thing in the chair. It was an automaton, of sorts—or at least that was what it looked like—a mannequin in the approximation of a man, plated in ancient, tarnished brass, and carefully wired with tiny wheels and pulleys. Its face was a blank, staring mask, its mouth an open slit—whoever designed it had forgotten to paint in its face. It had a strange, box-shaped object bolted to its chest, and its arms were resting upon its lap. It was moldering—there was no doubt about it—the small leather patches on the inside of its elbows and the back of its knees were dry and cracked, and there were stains where it had sat against the rotting chair for too long.

  Gabriel knelt before it, marveling at the workmanship. He’d seen music boxes before, filled with the most intricate mechanisms designed to make a tiny simulacra of a bird twitch and sing, but this was beyond anything he could have imagined. The closer he got, the more he could see the labyrinthine workings between every plate, at every joint. It was a marvel of the watchmaker’s art, writ large. It belonged in a museum, not here, rotting away in a derelict old church.

  He straightened up, rubbing his palm across his jaw. “It’s remarkable,” he said. “But what is it?”

  “I told you,” said Astrid, grinning mischievously. “It’s the Seer.” She patted its head affectionately. “It was built in 1771 for George the Third, King of England, by a secret cabal of watchmakers, alchemists and Hermeticists. It’s designed to predict the future, and it works, too—within reason.”

  Gabriel raised an eyebrow. “How the hell did you get your hands on it?”

  “When it was discovered the King was suffering from an ailment of the mind, it was deemed too risky for the device to remain in England, and so it was hidden away, transported to Holland. When its keeper was murdered in a chance robbery, it was abandoned, left hidden for years inside a secret cavity in a Dutch wall.” She rubbed her hands together, staving off the chill. “There were rumors, of course, people had heard of its existence, and it became one of the most desired occult objects of the early nineteenth century. Bonaparte wanted it, as he thought it might help him defeat the English at Waterloo. William Godwin coveted it, and it’s thought his late-night talk of the object might have, in part, inspired his daughter to write Frankenstein.”

  “Go on,” said Gabriel, intrigued.

  “It wasn’t discovered until nearly a hundred years later, at the turn of this century, still walled up inside the crumbling old house in Amsterdam. Workmen were brought in to do repairs, and there it was, peering out at them from inside.”

  “It was smuggled out of Holland by a pair of British agents. They wanted to keep it out of the hands of the Queen, who would have employed it in extending her Empire even further across the globe. These agents sent it with a trusted ally to Gibraltar, where it remained for over twenty years. It finally made its way here two years ago, when Queen Alberta reignited the search for it, and a friend entrusted it to me for safekeeping.”

  “I see why you were so keen for it to remain a secret,” said Gabriel. “That’s quite a tale. But does it even work anymore? I mean… look at it.”

  “No one has tried to operate it since the British agents in 1903,” she said. “But I’m game if you are?” She grinned.

  “What, now?” said Gabriel.

  “There’s no time like the present,” she said. “What’s the worst that can happen? It doesn’t work, and we go back to drinking coffee, eating pastries, and trying to fathom what the cult is up to. On the other hand, if it works, you might find the answers you’re looking for.”

  Gabriel stared at the thing for a moment. It seemed like madness. Surely it was nothing but an old parlor trick, like that chess-playing Turk that had caused such a sensation in its time, but had turned out to be concealing a human operative all along. Then again, he trusted Astrid implicitly, and he supposed he didn’t have anything to lose. After all, he’d just been convinced that the thing he’d seen on the rooftop the previous night was an avatar of an ancient god. There wasn’t much skepticism left in him after that.

  “Okay,” he said. “What do we have to do?”

  “Take off your shirt,” said Astrid.

  “What, really?”

  She laughed and shook her head. “No. But it was worth a try. I need to go and fetch some things from the workshop. Wait here. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  * * *

  “It operates on a similar principle to those living statues you encountered,” said Astrid, as she laid out a small cotton sheet on the floor, and assembled her paraphernalia. She was reading from an old, yellowed manuscript as she worked, selecting a strange assortment of icons, herbs, pickled rodent parts and vials containing what appeared to be congealed blood.

  “You mean it’s going to come to life and try to kill me?” he said.

  “I mean it has no obvious power source,” said Astrid, “save for the contents of the box in its chest.”

  “Which are?”

  “Everything I’m about to put in it,” she said. She finished laying everything out according to the pattern in the book. She’d previously marked the sheet with lines of dusty chalk, drawing the familiar hermetic pattern of nested shapes, into which she’d laid the components of her ritual in precise order.

  “Right, open the compartment for me,” she said.

  Gabriel did as instructed, carefully undoing the latch and opening the panel. It was stiff, and creaked, and he was worried it was going to come away in his hand at any moment.

  Inside, the compartment was blackened with ancient ash.

  Astrid had moved round to join him, and he watched, fascinated, as she took the components one at a time, laying them carefully within the machine’s chest, following a very specific order laid out in the manuscript. Then, when she had finished, she rolled up the cloth, found a strip of matches, and struck one.

  “Would you like the honor?” she said, holding it out to him.

  “I’d sooner leave it to the expert,” he said, “if it’s all the same.”

  Astrid nodded and stepped forward. She gently laid the match inside the compartment, and then closed the door. “There,” she said. “Now we wait.”

  She stepped back, coming to stand beside Gabriel.

  For a moment, nothing happened. Gabriel could smell dried lavender smoldering inside the thing’s chest. Black smoke was curling out from the edges of the compartment door, and, disturbingly, from the open slit of its mouth, as if it were exhaling.

  “I think all we’ve managed to do is hasten the thing’s demise,” said Gabriel.

  Astrid shook her head, holding her forefinger up to his lips to silence him. It was still covered in chalk dust. She was watching the Seer intently. He could see the hope in her eyes; she needed this to work. For her, it was some sort of validation, proof of her methods, her way of
contributing to the investigation. He had no idea what he’d tell Donovan if they did get anything useful out of it. He’d gone along with talk of living statues—an eighteenth-century automaton that could predict the future was another thing entirely.

  Within moments, the whole room was beginning to swim with filthy smoke, and Gabriel was close to running for cover. He could feel it tickling his sore lung, and he spluttered, raising his hand to his mouth.

  He heard Astrid say something, but didn’t quite make it out because of his coughing fit. “I’m sorry, what did you say?” he asked, once he’d recovered. The smoke was stinging his eyes now, too.

  “Not me,” said Astrid, from beside him. She had an excited gleam in her eyes. “Him.” She pointed at the automaton.

  Gabriel stepped closer, lurching back in surprise when the Seer lifted its head with a jerky, sudden gesture, turning to look right at him. He could hear the gears and levers clicking and whirring inside of it.

  “As above, so below,” it said, its voice a strange mechanical burr, as if it were being generated by the turning of the cogs themselves. “So below, as above.”

  “What does it mean?” said Gabriel, looking to Astrid.

  “Just listen,” said Astrid.

  “The ancient ones once more walk the realm of men. The Empire of Greed shall be refashioned to their purpose. The heavens shall soon align, and the world shall know the wrath of Thoth.” Its head jerked suddenly to the left, and it made a sound like a long and heartfelt sigh, smoke pluming from its mouth.

  “Come on,” said Astrid, wafting her arm before her face, “let’s get out of this smoke.” She led him back through the wardrobe, closing the panel behind her.

  “I’m not really sure how to follow that,” she said. She looked dazed, her face covered in streaks of soot.

  “I’m not sure you could,” said Gabriel. He wiped his eyes, which were still watering from the smoke. “Pastry?”

  Astrid looked at him, and burst out in rapturous laughter.

  * * *

  “Well, it worked,” said Gabriel. “In a manner of speaking. We almost burned the place down.”