Imhotep

by Jerry Dubs

  She nodded and wiped her eyes.

  “Are you sure you want to leave?” he asked.

  “Are you sure you want to stay?” she answered.

  They turned to the panel and Imhotep raised his hands and placed them gently against the door. He looked at the wall and then over at Diane. Then he leaned into the wall, pressing hard.

  He stepped back as the stone started to swing open.

  They stood by the opening, feeling the stale air from the long closed tomb drift through the gap in the wall toward them. There was no sound, no light coming to them.

  “It’ll be morning, just like here, but five thousand years later. Here are three wooden matches that I brought with me. They’re all I have left. They should last long enough for you to get back to the staircase. As soon as you’re through, I’m going to paint over these symbols, so you won’t be able to turn back.”

  She took the matches. “Wait until I have one of them lit and get through the hole in the other wall.”

  “Good-bye Diane, I hope things go well for you.”

  She nodded and stepped through the door. He watched as she struck the match against the stone wall, found her way to the break in the facing wall and stepped through.

  He saw the light dim as the match burned out and then flare again as she lit the second match. Pushing shut the wall, he bent down for a brush. He hesitated for just a moment, listening through the wall.

  Then he began to paint over the hieroglyphics.

  Epilogue

  The outlander renamed Ipy was buried in the unfinished tomb that was to be Kanakht's resting place.

  King Djoser honored Ipy by attending the funeral, which his sister Hetephernebti conducted.

  Tama, priestess to the goddess Ma’at, pronounced Ipy’s heart truthful and light, assuring its owner passage to Khert-Neter. It was the first time anyone had seen the priestess cry during the ceremony of the weighing of the heart. A young wbt-priestess named Pahket assisted her.

  Modern archaeologists who discovered the tomb could offer no explanation for the unusually large size of the sarcophagus.

  King Djoser ruled for almost thirty years. The Stele of Setet Island records his anguish over the seven-year famine and his success in persuading the god Khnum to unleash the waters of the river.

  He was entombed in the Step Pyramid, the precursor of the more famous pyramids later built at Giza. His fame was overshadowed in later years by that of his famous adviser, Imhotep.

  Imhotep directed the building of the Step Pyramid, and served King Djoser as adviser, official scribe and personal physician. The ancient Egyptians regarded him so highly that he came to be viewed as a god himself.

  His tomb has not been found.

  It's history

  Although this is a work of fiction, the ancient Egyptian world is depicted as accurately as the passage of five thousand years (and my limited knowledge) allows.

  There is a Tomb of Kanakht at Saqqara, I was in it.

  There is a temple at Kom Ombo. It includes a chamber in which are stored the mummified remains of crocodiles which were worshiped as the god Sobek. I saw them, too.

  The hymn sung to Re by Hetephernebti is a translation of a prayer to the god from the time of King Djoser. (And the rulers were called kings, not pharoahs in the Third Dynasty.)

  Hetephernebti was either a wife or sister, or both, to King Djoser. I chose to make her a sister.

  King Djoser did declare himself a god, and there was a devastating seven-year drought. Its history is recorded in the Famine Stele found near Aswan. The offerings King Djoser made to the god Khnum and his dream are recorded on the stele.

  And Imhotep, Djoser’s famous adviser and physician, was the architect of the Step Pyramid, the precursor to the more famous pyramids at Giza.

  Preview KALEIDOSCOPE,

  a multiple-universe murder mystery

  KALEIDOSCOPE

  A novel by Jerry Dubs

  Launch

  Watch Harper’s helmeted head as he flops across the hood of the green Plymouth.

  The tinted visor is down, but if you look closely you can see his eyes. They’re wide in astonishment. Well, no shit.

  His head bounces once against the sheet metal and a Hess station sign crosses his field of vision upside-down.

  His body is moving way too fast now.

  He leaves the relative safety of the car’s hood and goes airborne, weightless, headed toward the asphalt of the winding country road. His mind can’t keep up with the experience. It has time to process just two images: the upside-down Hess sign and then the gas pumps, tilted sideways to him as gravity snatches him from the air and pulls him toward the road.

  In that blinking slice of a second Harper tries to read the gas prices.

  -0-

  At the moment of impact, when his motorcycle collided against the front quarter panel of the Plymouth, Harper felt an immense wave of sadness sweep over him. The deep melancholia could have foreshadowed death; it might have been a preparation for the pain that would follow.

  Or maybe it was just a rush of adrenaline, an organic flood sweeping through his hurricane head. Mental connections are severed, neurons are firing and missing, waving good-by to each other.

  So, check this out: The bike screeches and scratches its way across the road, broken glass spills from the Plymouth's headlights, tinkling as it falls to the asphalt. Customers at the gas station and the drivers sitting in their cars exhale a collective gasp. Doesn't matter. Nope. Not a bit.

  The only that matters amid that screaming cacophony of anticipation is this: Does Harper get tense?

  Because if he stiffens slightly as he focuses on the numbers on the gas pumps, tries to grab some kind of fact out this mad twirling, that moment of concentration will slow the twirling of his body as it falls earthward and he will land on the cushioning muscles of his ass.

  But what if he smiles at the irony, his facial muscles twitching into a curious rictus? See, just a second ago he was riding his 55-miles-per-gallon bike; now he’s trying to read the price of gasoline he might never have to buy. That could be funny. Are his rattled neurons working that fast? Gallows humor, Harper? You up to that? Hope not. Because if he stays limp and maintains his rotational momentum, the unprotected point of his hip will swing around to grind into the road. We're talking bone shattered into corn flakes.

  Either way, he's looking at a bunch of hurt.

  He lands, bounces, rolls, arms flailing. He’s out of control, shut down. Tumbling sickeningly fast, rolling ungainly, he makes his way like a human tumbleweed down the center of the road. Staying on the yellow lines.

  Until oompf - he sprawls on his belly across the centerline.

  While he’s lying there unconscious, let’s rewind a bit, put it all in a little context. Don’t worry; we’ll catch up with Harper.

  He’s not going anywhere.

  -0-

  Across the Susquehanna River, Frank Chesnut looked in the bathroom mirror. For the first time he saw and actually considered the wild tangle of brown and gray hairs that sprouted over his eyes. Although the bushy growth has been developing for years, he’s ignored it.

  So now the sign of ungracious aging takes him by surprise.

  His mind isn’t as sharp as it was twenty years ago. He knows it sometimes wanders.

  The neuron stalks in my brain are probably as wild and tangled as my eyebrows, he thought. Neuron stalks? Must be watching too much of that Learning Channel.

  He reached for a small pair of scissors and leaned forward to get a better view of the wild hairs.

  -0-

  Harper Russell leaned into the curve. Behind the visor of his motorcycle helmet he was singing the chorus of The Mavericks’ “Dance the Night Away.”

  The Tex-Mex rhythm filled his bobbing black helmet as he rode down the winding two-lane road. “With senoritas who can sway,” he sang enthusiastically as he noticed a green Plymouth up ahead waiting to pull out of a Hess station.

 
; “Right now tomorrow’s looking bright.”

  The driver seemed to be looking down the road at him, still Harper eased up on the throttle, watching.

  -0-

  Stanley Clymer watched Kassie’s face in disbelief.

  All that prevented him from shooting his wad was the sense of wonder that kept poking its way into his excitement, just like he was poking away at Kassie Dell. Three years ago, when she was still Kassie Slayton, the flawlessly gorgeous, energetically athletic, erection-provoking captain of the cheerleading squad, he had fantasized about her night after night.

  Cum, Stanley, cum!

  Under him, Kassie was working her hips hard, trying to get herself off despite Stanley’s awkward, unrhythmic performance. She regretted letting herself use Stanley to get revenge against her philandering husband.

  But every time her wedding picture bounced into view, she gritted her teeth in determination to get off because she knew that in a few hours her bastard husband David would be out somewhere screwing some bar pick-up. Damn him! Kassie gritted her teeth, closed her eyes to better picture Johnny Depp’s face, and sneaked a hand between her legs.

  -0-

  Legs crossed, Addy Dalton and her younger sister Abby sat on the carpeted floor of Abby’s apartment and picked at slices of pizza. They exchanged amused glances as Addy’s boyfriend Tim Waldman stood in front of his whiteboard and outlined his latest esoteric theory.

  “Everybody’s had an unexplained bruise or a stiff neck in the morning. You know, you say you slept wrong or you don’t remember what you bumped into to get the bruise. Right?”

  George Patterson, a boyfriend Abby was considering dumping, belched. Then he unleashed a second, drawing it out loudly, modulating the pitching, rolling it through his tightened throat, across his cupped tongue and delivering it through pursed lips. On an Animal House scale, give it an eight point five, maybe a nine.

  “Gross, get it under control,” Abby said, and rolled her eyes, wondering how she had ever found him attractive.

  “I know where that came from,” George said, laughing, holding up an empty Coors can.

  Tim ignored him and wrote “U2” on the whiteboard.

  “No, not Bono, don’t get excited. I’m talking about Einstein’s theory...” an exaggerated groan, part of the ritual, came from the girls. “It might imply,” Tim talked over the mocking moans, “that there are alternate universes being born all the time. What if that bruise you got is because the ‘you’ in another universe,” he drew a circle around the U2 symbol, “got in a fight? The other ‘you’ is in a lot of pain and you get the echo from it. Your injury is a distant reflection of the other universe.”

  -0-

  Eyebrows untrimmed, Frank squinted at his reflection. His hand was shaking. He wondered if he should go to his barber to get his eyebrows trimmed. What if he poked himself in the eye? He put both hands on the sink and shook his head.

  Sighing deeply, he brought the scissors carefully up to his face and leaned closer to the mirror once more.

  -0-

  Coming closer and closer, Kassie started moaning. Stanley began to make little squeaking noises. Arching his back he knew that he never be able to stop or pull out.

  He gasped and groaned, “God's will be done!”

  -0-

  The green Plymouth pulled out from the service station. Harper was six feet from passing the Hess station exit - a fraction of a second from safety, a blink of an eye from riding unscathed past the looming hunk of Detroit metal.

  No time to brake or swerve, barely time for a mental ‘Goddamn.’

  An immense sadness came over him in the split second before he heard the crunch of metal, felt the impact and flew across the hood of the car. The service station turned upside-down. The gas pumps leaned sideways.

  Weightless, sad and frightened, he hurtled into an unknown future.

  Preview THE EARTH IS MY WITNESS,

  the first case of Existential Buddhist detective David Lamb

  THE EARTH IS MY WITNESS

  A novel by Jerry Dubs

  Saturday, September 5

  So I wake up lying sideways on a strange bed and I have no idea where I am and that hasn’t happened since I was a freshman at Penn State seven years ago.

  I feel like I could throw up. I try to swallow and immediately start hacking like a cat with a hairball because it feels like someone stuffed a golf ball down my throat.

  And it’s dark.

  Still coughing, I roll onto my side and swing my legs over the foot of the bed to stand up.

  From behind me a woman says, “Don’t move.”

  I stand up to turn around so I can see who it is.

  “I said, ‘Don’t move.’ ”

  I hear the echo of a bang. Or maybe I don’t.

  - 0 -

  My head is stuck to the floor.

  I open my eyes, close them and try again. Nope, I’m still lying face down on a dirty carpet. I have no idea how I got here or where exactly ‘here’ is. And, man, this carpet stinks.

  The fringes from a bedspread hang against my cheek. I can see under the bed without moving my head. There isn’t anything under there, but something is lying on the floor on the other side of the bed. I can’t tell what. It’s dark.

  I unstick my face from the floor, swallow and wince. My throat hurts like a mother and the right side of my head is throbbing like somebody whacked me with a piece of rebar.

  I get up to my knees, twist around and rest my arms on the foot of the bed. Where am I?

  It looks like a motel room. How did I get here? What happened last night - or tonight? What time is it?

  Someone pounds on the door.

  “Gloria? Open up, Gloria.”

  I push myself up to my feet.

  “I know you’re in there, Gloria. Open the damn door.”

  I would tell him there’s nobody in here but me, but my throat isn’t working and the room is starting to spin a little. I stagger to the door, fall against it, plant my face at the peephole.

  “Is that you, Gloria? Open the door, honey. We can work this out.”

  All I can see out there is a plaid shirt and curly black hairs. My hand starts turning the doorknob. The door rushes open, pushing me off balance.

  Paul Bunyun’s little brother steps through, grabs a handful of my shirt and pulls me up on my toes. He’s got red-lined, watery eyes and a bushy black beard. More black hair is climbing out of his plaid shirt. Swinging me back and forth, he looks past me into the room.

  “Gloria?” he shouts. His breath smells like onions and pig meat.

  A gurgle of puke surges up my sore throat. I shake my head to push it back.

  I try to say, “I’m Dave Lamb. There’s no Gloria here, just me,” but all that comes out is a string of chunky drool and a croaking whisper that even I can’t understand.

  He swings his eyes back on me. “You touch her again and I’ll...”

  Out of the corner of my eye I see his ham-sized fist closing in on my face.

  - 0 -

  I can’t breathe.

  My hand comes away sticky with blood after I touch my nose. It hurts when I swallow and there’s a pasty scab on the right side of my head.

  I think I’ll just lie here in the dark a little longer.

  - 0 -

  I wake from a nightmare about angry lumberjacks.

  I’m breathing hard through my mouth and my face is wet with sweat.

  It’s dark in here. Here? Where is here?

  I roll over to the edge of the bed and launch myself toward an open doorway that I hope will lead to a bathroom.

  It does.

  I flick on the light, squint at the brightness and lean against the sink.

  The light hurts, but the face that stares back at me from the mirror hurts more. This morning I was decent-looking, middle-class, twenty-five-year-old white guy. No tats, no piercings, nothing unusual except long hair pulled back in an out-of-style ponytail.

  Now I look like
some ancient dirtball who paid somebody to beat the crap out of him.

  My brown hair has come loose from the ponytail. It’s standing up in spots and plastered against the side of my head in other spots. My eyeballs are filled with bloody squiggles and I’m wearing a purple raccoon’s mask. Black, scabby clots of blood hang out of my nose, which looks fat and bent to the side. There’s a patch of dried blood on my right ear. I don’t taste so good either. I think I might have puked recently.

  What happened?

  Where am I?

  What would Nietzsche do?

  He’d call Warren Rudy.

  Warren will know what’s going on.

  Warren knows everything.

  I tug my cell phone out of my blue jeans, slide it open and call Warren.

  I almost shit myself when Daryl Hannah starts whistling that creepy song from ‘Kill Bill’ in the other room. I hate that song. I poke my head into the other room ready to slam the door shut if I see a one-eyed, sword-swinging killer in the bedroom.

  There’s nothing there.

  The whistling is coming from the far side of the bed, on the floor by the curtained window.

  I slide my phone shut and the whistling stops.

  Hmmm.

  I call Warren again.

  The whistling starts again.

  I follow it. The room is dark. There’s a light switch by the door and a table lamp on a small desk to my left, but there’s enough light spilling out of the bathroom for me to see where I’m going. There’s a dark splash on the carpet at the foot of the bed. I shuffle around it.