Dark Terrors 6 - The Gollancz Book of Horror - [Anthology]

by Edited By Stephen Jones

  ‘Tell me,’ he said, wishing Ruivo would shut up. I should have told him to keep quiet before we started, he thought, though I don’t suppose that would have worked. Damned man can’t keep his mouth closed. Sweat trickled into his eye and he knuckled it away.

  The ghost turned an anguished face to him. ‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘You know there are some things I can’t tell.’

  ‘Then where’s this papyrus your brother wants?’

  ‘Please,’ the ghost implored. Da Silva raised an eyebrow at Ruivo.

  ‘We have to know,’ said the archaeologist. ‘Or that confounded El-Aqman will take away our permit. He thinks we stole it.’

  ‘Tell him,’ Da Silva ordered. The ghost shook his head, fighting the compulsion, but unable to resist.

  ‘I put it back where we found it!’ he spat, strain making his voice shrill. ‘But it didn’t do any good.’

  Ruivo frowned. ‘What do you mean, it didn’t do any good? What were you thinking of?’ Be quiet, damn you, thought Da Silva angrily, or I’ll knock you cold, I swear it. He wiped his damp palms futilely down his trousers.

  ‘Didn’t do any good because I’m dead, you fool.’

  ‘Mother of God,’ exclaimed Ruivo, ‘how did you die?’

  ‘Shut up, Ruivo,’ Da Silva snapped. ‘He can’t tell you that.’ He turned to the ghost. ‘What can you tell us?’

  ‘Nothing more.’ Shaking his head from side to side, seemingly in pain. ‘I wish I could. I wish I could. Believe me.’

  ‘Scatter his ashes, Ruivo,’ said Da Silva, sickened by the ghost’s anguish; by the whole business.

  ‘But what if—’

  ‘You’ve got what you wanted, now do what he wanted. Or I will.’ Ruivo stared at him, then nodded abruptly and picked up the box. His brother’s ghost watched. Da Silva turned to him. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  The archaeologist said quietly, ‘Goodbye, Valentim,’ and took the box outside.

  ‘Goodbye, Manoel,’ whispered the ghost, a little wistfully, and dissolved as his brother let the desert wind take his ashes.

  ‘Obrigado, Valentim Joao Ruivo,’ said Da Silva into the sudden silence.

  Outside, Ruivo stood still for some time, staring out into the great emptiness. Da Silva sat and watched him, waiting for his heart to stop racing. He finished his beer, wondering what had distressed the ghost so much. Speculation was pretty useless, but he could no more stop himself from speculating than he could from - well, from seeing ghosts.

  He wiped his face again, lit another cheroot, and waited for Ruivo to rejoin him.

  At last the archaeologist, with an audible sigh, turned and came back into the shade. His face had grown haggard and Da Silva realised, startled, that the man was probably pushing sixty. How long has he been grubbing in the desert, pursuing dreams? he wondered. Thirty years, forty? Ruivo pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes wearily, then slowly opened them again and stared tiredly at the captain.

  ‘I suppose I owe you an explanation,’ he said. Da Silva shrugged. He had worked some of it out already, but was still intensely curious. And he had no intention of going back to Luxor until he found out the full story.

  Raising an eyebrow, he said, ‘You’ll have to tell me something before my brain overheats with wild guesses. What’s this papyrus that has the pair of you so excited?’

  ‘Why, it’s the most amazing thing,’ said Ruivo, becoming animated all at once. ‘Beautiful colours, perfectly preserved, quite unique. Popped inside a funerary statue just like any old scroll - they often contain papyri,’ he added, apparently just then remembering he was speaking to a layman. ‘But I should begin at the beginning. Do you want another drink? Where’s that wretched boy? Ahmed! Ahmed!’

  ‘I sent him away,’ Da Silva explained, blowing smoke out and wondering vaguely whether the day could possibly get any hotter.

  ‘Oh. Of course. Yes. I’m, er, glad you thought of that.’ Ruivo raised his voice and called again. ‘Ahmed! Where are you?’ The boy came trotting up, bare feet apparently impervious to the burning sand.

  Having made the domestic arrangements to his satisfaction, and at the same time, Da Silva noted, successfully postponed the promised explanation, Ruivo resumed his seat. His clothes were looking rather the worse for wear now, his collar decidedly limp. Beads of sweat were running down his nose. They had made dark spots on his linen trousers.

  ‘You were going to tell me about this papyrus of yours,’ Da Silva prompted him, fed up with waiting.

  ‘Do you have children?’ the older man asked, with apparent irrelevance.

  ‘Yes,’ replied Da Silva, his wife’s face coming clearly into his mind, and missing her strongly. ‘A son and a daughter. Why?’

  ‘My son and my brother brought out that papyrus. And now my brother’s dead, and my son’s in hospital in a coma.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘We don’t know. The morning before Valentim died, he simply never woke up. Brain fever, the doctor called it. Which means he has no idea, either.’

  Da Silva digested this. He did not believe in coincidences. ‘Did anything happen to anyone else who handled the papyrus? Who else did?’

  ‘Just the three of us - Miss Hardy, Dr El-Aqman, and myself.’

  The boy Ahmed brought more drinks. Ruivo turned to tip him, and Da Silva surreptitiously lifted his eyepatch and mopped beneath it. Something was going on, and if past experience was anything to go on, things would start getting unpleasant very soon. He sighed. It was almost too hot to think.

  ‘You’d better tell me everything. From the beginning.’

  Ruivo looked at him with a slight frown. ‘You’re not what I expected, you know.’

  And you’re prevaricating again, Da Silva thought in exasperation. What the hell did you expect, Madame Blavatsky? He settled on a more diplomatic, noncommittal, raised eyebrow. ‘Go on,’ he said, mildly.

  The archaeologist took a sip of his drink. ‘Well. There was a shaft that looked promising. You understand we play hunches a lot.’ Da Silva nodded. He himself never underestimated the power of a hunch. ‘It had been marked but not excavated. When we enquired we found the workmen wouldn’t go near it. They said it had afrits in it - that’s a kind of evil spirit. Apparently you can tell when these things are about by their terrible smell.’

  ‘Most of Cairo must be infested, then,’ observed Da Silva, drily, and Ruivo laughed, a high-pitched, strangely girlish giggle.

  ‘Just so,’ he agreed, and went on with his narrative. ‘So, anyway, Valentim decided to dig into it himself, with Juliao - my son, that is. I mean, Valentim took a pick and started swinging at the rubble. He was sixty-one! No wonder he had a heart attack! We eventually managed to get a few of the younger men to dig. They either didn’t believe in these spirits or the bonus we offered them spoke louder. That happens a lot. So we covered up our faces, because it really did smell vile, and got to work.’ He paused to take a drink.

  Da Silva, caught up in the story, wiped sweat away automatically and wondered why, after getting on for three glasses of beer, his bladder wasn’t complaining.

  ‘Not far down,’ Ruivo went on, ‘we found a side passage, loosely blocked by rubble, and at the end of that, a burial chamber. Of course it had been plundered. The grave-robbers hadn’t even left the mummy. It was full of rubbish, stones, broken wood. There was a stone sarcophagus - the lid was smashed to bits - but they had missed a few small items, including a battered wooden statue which held the scroll.

  ‘As I said, we thought it a common funerary papyrus. We didn’t even bother to look at it until we’d cleared out all the artefacts.’ He smiled in pleasure at the recollection.

  ‘Where are the other artefacts?’ Da Silva asked, rubbing thoughtfully at his cheekbone, trying without much success to ignore the sweat trickling down his ribs. He had been, despite himself, almost mesmerised by Ruivo’s tale: the change which had come over the archaeologist as he related it was quite remarkable. He was reli
ving it. The dark shaft, the rubble-strewn passage, the smashed sarcophagus, the detritus on the floor which hid the few treasures overlooked by the thieves, all were very real to him.

  ‘Under lock and key. I’ll show them to you later. You’ll be interested, I’m sure.’

  ‘Yes.’ Da Silva nodded. ‘And the papyrus? What was it?’

  ‘It was astonishing,’ said Ruivo. ‘Quite unique, as I said. Nothing like it has ever been recorded. What it was - well, my brother was the linguist. He said it was sacred poetry. Praising the gods. Hymns, perhaps, or prayers.’

  ‘Prayers,’ repeated Da Silva, thoughtfully, lighting another cheroot and staring at the white-hot sand outside. There must be more to it than that. Why would he want to get rid of prayers? ‘Did your brother write down any of his translations?’

  ‘Yes, he did,’ Ruivo said, ‘but he knocked a lamp over in his tent the night before he died, and his notebook got burned. He was really upset - or he seemed to be. Now I’m not so sure. We should have asked him.’

  ‘He wouldn’t have been able to tell us,’ Da Silva told him. ‘You heard what he said. Ghosts have to follow rules, too, you know.’ He ran a hand through his sweaty hair. ‘Are you going to retrieve the scroll?’

  ‘I have to. El-Aqman wants it for the Cairo Museum.’

  ‘You should tell him what your brother said.’

  Ruivo stared at him. ‘Are you mad? The man’s a complete materialist. He wouldn’t believe in a ghost if it appeared in front of him and shook his hand.’

  ‘As you wish,’ said the captain, with a shrug. ‘What exactly did you tell the good doctor - and Miss Hardy - about me?’ He sat back in the chair and eased his trousers away from his thighs in a futile attempt to let some air in. Ruivo coloured.

  ‘Er, just that you could find missing items.’

  Won’t tell them I talk to ghosts, but makes me out to be some kind of dowser, thought Da Silva, torn between annoyance and amusement. ‘I see,’ he said, and got to his feet. ‘Shall we go and find a missing item, then?’ The idea of going out into that heat was daunting, but it was preferable to ferreting about in pitch darkness when evening came.

  ‘Now?’ the archaeologist exclaimed.

  ‘Yes, why not? Perhaps whatever your brother was afraid of will be less of a threat while the sun’s up.’ He tossed the butt of his cheroot out into the sands and squatted down to rummage in the pack he had brought until he found the long knife he normally wore concealed down his back. The silver in the blade’s alloy was remarkably effective against things that were not human, and its fourteen-inch length equally so against those that were. Holding the sheath loosely in his right hand, he turned towards Ruivo. ‘Shall we go?’

  The older man stared at the knife, apparently taken aback by this assumption of control, and said in a bemused tone, ‘You’ll need a hat.’

  ‘Right,’ said Da Silva, fishing a squashed fedora out of the pack and clapping it on his head, ‘lead on.’

  ‘This way,’ the archaeologist said, putting on his own hat and setting off in the merciless heat across the sand. It was not easy to walk on, being soft and powdery, and quantities of it soon found their way into Da Silva’s boots. Everyone in their right mind was under cover, having a siesta if they had any sense, and in minutes he was regretting the impulse which had led him to suggest this. The sun beat down like a great bronze hammer, and sweat was pouring off him. The gritty wind blew in his face, threatening to remove his hat. He shoved the knife through his belt and held the hat down instead. Ahead of him, Ruivo’s jacket flapped like a cloak.

  They had not gone very far when Phoebe Hardy’s voice called out, ‘Hey, you fellows, where are you going?’ and the lady herself came striding towards them. She may have preferred the comforts of masculine garb, but she was keeping the sun off with an equally practical, if somewhat incongruous, parasol.

  ‘I’m taking the captain to see where we found our little hoard,’ Ruivo explained, tipping his hat to her. ‘Don’t stay out in the sun too long, dear Miss Hardy.’

  ‘I’ll tag along,’ she said, blithely ignoring this rather feeble attempt to get rid of her. ‘Hot enough for you, Captain?’

  Da Silva took his own hat off and wiped his brow. The sweatband inside the hat was living up to its name. ‘I’ve encountered climates I like better, Miss Hardy,’ he replied, replacing it hastily on his head as the sun battered at him with renewed ferocity. ‘But you look very cool. How long have you been in Egypt?’

  ‘Four years,’ she replied with a smile, acknowledging the compliment. ‘You do get used to the weather, if that’s any help.’

  ‘I don’t intend to stay long enough to do that,’ he said drily.

  It was really too hot even to carry on a conversation. The heat got into the throat and made breathing difficult, and the burning dry wind was intensely annoying. He removed grit from his eye, and wished he could do the same for the other side. I really wish I hadn’t suggested this, he thought. Charging off across the desert like a bloody camel. I must be mad.

  ‘Not far now,’ said Ruivo encouragingly, if a little breathlessly, gesturing at the low cliff-face which rose ahead of them.

  Miss Hardy moved to walk beside him. ‘It’ll be better out of the sun,’ she said.

  That’s the understatement of the year, thought Da Silva, but enjoyed her back view in her trousers. She had long legs and a trim figure, and there was no harm at all in looking.

  ‘Here we are,’ Ruivo said, and stood to one side to let Miss Hardy precede him into what looked like a crack in the cliff. Following them, Da Silva found it widened immediately into a narrow defile full of welcome shade and the faintest of ghosts, fluttering almost invisibly in the dark-shadowed interior. The sun did not reach the bottom, even at its highest. Its absence was an infinite relief. He took off his hat, flapped it briefly in front of his face, and sat down on the cool ground. When he pulled off his boots, he found he could tip about half a pound of sand out of each one. Miss Hardy laughed at his expression.

  ‘There must be a knack to walking on sand,’ he said, looking at her feet.

  ‘I suppose there is,’ she said. ‘I don’t even think about it now.’

  A faint reek reached him then, something undeniably foul but without any immediately recognisable provenance. You wouldn’t say drains. Or latrines. Or dead cat. But you certainly didn’t want it to get any stronger.

  He got to his feet. ‘Do you smell that?’ he asked, remembering Ruivo’s story of evil-smelling afrits.

  ‘Yes, that’s the famous stink,’ the archaeologist replied. ‘That’s why we couldn’t get anyone to dig.’

  ‘I’m afraid it gets worse,’ said Miss Hardy, who was tying a handkerchief bandit-fashion over her nose and mouth. ‘Ready?’

  ‘Lead on,’ said Da Silva. A prickle of unease went across his back, and he frowned. He never ignored such feelings, not since he gained the ability to see ghosts. At the same time he thought he heard music. Surely that had to be imagination, unless someone had a phonograph in the desert. Still, stranger things had happened.

  Ruivo and Miss Hardy were already ten feet away, and he hurried after them, his sense of disquiet deepening with the growing foetor. He took the knife from his belt, drew it, and dropped the sheath on the sand.

  Now the stench was all around them, thick enough to cut, strong and unclean and meaty but not quite like decaying matter, yet not entirely like anything living, either, though there was something feral about it, something predatory and tigerish. And now the music was unmistakable, although the others showed no sign of being able to hear it. Now why am I not surprised at that? he thought sourly. Strange, plangent music, full of unfamiliar chords and curious harmonies. Sweat ran into his eye, and he wiped it away with his sleeve.

  ‘There’s the shaft,’ said Ruivo. ‘—Mother of God!’

  Da Silva didn’t see where they came from, but suddenly two frightful figures hopped out of nowhere and swooped towards the archaeologist, who fel
l back, eyes wide with terror.

  They were not the stuff of nightmares. They were worse than that. Wrapped in fluttering rags, the flesh beneath looked flayed, suppurating, bones glinting yellowly through in places. They were not even remotely human. A little less than man-sized, their faces had long muzzles, improbably fanged, and their mouths gaped open, jaws lolling brokenly as their heads wagged on their shoulders. They had no eyes, just blazing sockets like searchlights. Their taloned feet were birdlike, their limbs were hinged wrongly, and in their hands they held curved swords. A weirdly debilitating keening noise issued from their lipless maws, an intensely horrible counterpoint to the odd music which still sounded. Their very presence was terrifying.

  Yelling, Da Silva charged them. It was pure reflex: he was too scared to swear, too angry to retreat, and he had no time at all to think. His mind registered only armed creatures attacking an old man, and did not stop to think about odds. His instincts yammered at him to turn and run. He ignored them.

  He ducked under a whistling slash from a scimitar, and pushed the paralysed Ruivo out of the way, pivoting to parry the long curved blade in a flurry of sparks, and disengaging instantly. It was longer than his knife, but his reach was greater. That made a change. On die other hand, there were two of them. And he only had one eye.

  Then the other came screeching at him. It was inhumanly fast. He skipped back rapidly, flailing his knife in long parries, the thing seemingly a little confused at his left-handedness. Noting this he went on the offensive, blocking its swordthrust and slashing downwards like an executioner with his knife, just missing severing its neck. He dodged the scimitar, but the thing kicked forward impossibly with its taloned foot, ripping his leg from shin to knee, and the strange ululating music reached a crescendo.

  The pain was breathtaking for a split second, and he drew in a grating sob, bringing the knife up again to split the creature open from belly to chest. Its shriek abruptly cut off, and it crumpled, thick ichor spilling from it. Da Silva felt blood running down his leg into his boot.