by S. A. Sidor
The Englishman remained unperturbed.
My ears were ringing after the nearly deafening boom.
“Gelignite,” he shouted. “The boys put your dead diggers inside, wheeled a box of jelly sticks into the mouth of the tomb, and blasted the thing. Not to worry, all’s well.”
But I did worry, and with good reason, my concerns continued to mount for days, and later aboard ship in Alexandria my fears were confirmed. The telegram did not sit well with me. That extra “S” in Godspeed, a poor speller in the telegraph office, no doubt… but how on earth did Waterston know we had found anything? Well, his dream phantom told him, I supposed, the same one who showed him the location of the tomb. Was it necessary to slaughter my crew of workmen, to kill the loyal and honorable Hakim, simply to cover up our discovery and subsequent illegal removal of antiquities? I was disgusted, utterly baffled by the brutality. If this was how we treated the Egyptians, I could well understand their wariness at allowing us to rummage in their sacred sites.
I could not grasp why on earth Waterston had ordered such drastic measures. Had he gone mad? Was it the money? Surely, he had enough already, although rich men seldom feel they do. These mummies, even the sarcophagus, were hardly priceless. Once the identity of the man in the sarcophagus became known, the news would draw the interest of certain specialized collectors and occultists. This odd crowd had always struck me as rather silly, though my exposure to them was limited and mostly through reading their outlandish and often amateurish papers. Now I was not so sure.
In for a penny of occult supernaturalism, in for a pound – it is one thing to ponder occult matters in distant ancient times and quite another to admit them to your own. I had no rational explanation for what was happening around me. Until Egypt I had been skeptical of anything I could not observe, catalogue, and analyze. I had lived without benefit of faith in the unseen. Yet I could not reject Waterston’s fever dream, nor could I disprove the eerie powers at work in Odji-Kek’s tomb. In plain English, I was stumped. If I were going to curate this sorcerer’s exhibit, I thought it might be best to subdue my own prejudices and open my mind to outré possibilities. What choice did I have?
Regarding this matter I was resolved.
However, I was not happy.
Here I had come to Egypt with such a thrill of excitement, and presently I was leaving like a thief in the night, an actual thief if the Egyptian authorities ever looked inside our six crates. But they did not. They had been bribed by my English rescuer, who also bought my passage, using Waterston dollars, on board the tramp steamer Derceto, with its curly-haired, tawny, Greek captain and a crew who spoke not a word of English.
We had set sail on the twentieth, the Vernal Equinox, and I grew appropriately green about the gills. After a day’s journey, I had yet to establish my sea legs. I tried to console myself with the prospect of only a nine- or ten-day voyage ahead of me. Plenty of time for acclimation – ha! With any luck, we would arrive back in America before Easter. Not that I have ever been a strict Christian. I had given up churchgoing for the library and the laboratory, and I liked to work on Sundays. But I did, and still do, enjoy the holidays, especially the pagan aspects. Spring-time rites on parade. Rabbits and eggs – fertility symbols ushering in the season of birth or, more accurately, re-birth.
All along we carried him like an egg in a basket, did we not?
Amun Odji-Kek, the golden yolk inside the shell of his sarcophagus. Now he nestled down inside the hull of the ship and waited for me to deliver him to America. I knew precisely where in the cargo hold the sarcophagus rested, the starboard bow. I felt a kind of vibration in my legs when I walked over the foredeck. This feeling of connection at one spot came despite the fact I had not witnessed the crates being loaded. Yet, I knew. Without logic, I began to sense his awareness of my exact whereabouts, too.
Did his spirit loom over me?
Nonsense, I told myself. This tethered-ness to the mummy was purely mental. I was willing to concede as much. The mummy was under my guardianship. He occupied my mind. My intellect alone might have created our bond. Yes, that could be true.
But it felt like this: a PUSHING, originating outside my physical body, a telepathic assault. Multisensory points of attack. A cold, scaly hand touched my neck. I brushed it away. There was nothing there. My ears filled with pressure until I became stone deaf. The pressure subsided. Quick, erratic drumming in the blood – a pulse overtook my pulse. It made me nauseated (though I supposed one might chalk that up to seasickness). I noticed deep smells of waste that came and went with no hint of any source… and the queerest sensation of something which crawled inside my mouth and squirmed beneath my tongue.
Everything lessened if I walked away from the foredeck. I felt normal again.
Aft, I found two sailors shoveling an alarming number of dead seabirds over the side of the steamer. I watched this dumb show with amazement. Scrape, scrape. Another shovelful of birds tossed over the rail. Where did the birds come from? How did they perish? Out of the sky flew answers. A dozen gulls crashed into the ship’s boards; with furious thumps they snapped their necks, the little heads twisted awkwardly to one side, or tucked straight down, and their wings remained open on impact. Then the shovels scraped. The reaction of the sailors told me they had not witnessed this behavior before today.
They looked as if I spooked them.
I saw grayish white arcs gliding in the wind. More birds were following our wake, swooping low and drawing closer.
I could not watch.
The interior of the steamer was a narrow warren of darkly paneled, ill-lit passageways. A wordless sailor showed me my living quarters for the next week and a half, a man-sized shelf essentially, with a little cubby for personal belongings and a moth-eaten privacy curtain. I wanted to spend as little time closed in there as possible, and hopefully all of it asleep. When he left me, I went about inspecting the rest of the ship. It took no time to discover its finiteness.
I had no access to the cargo compartments.
The galley effused an aroma of garlic and cuttlefish, which I might have sampled had we not hit rough seas coincidental to our intersection with the prime meridian. A persistent Levanter wind battered us through the Strait of Gibraltar; rain, mists, fog – these three overlapped interchangeably. I poked my head above deck for fresh air, and returned soaked through to the skin, feeling no hunger or encouragement, as we pushed into the long North Atlantic deep.
Chilled, I retired to my musty berth, where the heat of the boilers soon had me shucking out of my clothes. We sailed with less than a full crew. The bunks around mine were unoccupied. The crewmen slept in a different section of the ship, on the opposite side of the engine room. Coal-fed machinery turned the great screw propeller underwater, and if it did not falter, neither did its hellish noise. I hung one leg out of my bunk to mitigate the sense of interment. Our mummies enjoyed more spaciousness.
I read the tattered telegram again.
Dreaming of your danger… an emissary… Godsspeed…
Exhaustion overcame discomfort, and I slept.
Nightmares of premature burial. I woke with a start in utter darkness, and, forgetting where I was, in a state of half-awake panic, shot my arms upward, encountering the sealed lid of my coffin, which I soon realized was only the empty bunk above me. My wrists shivered with pain. I rolled out of bed and hit the floor, elbows and knees landing hard.
“Damn it!”
From that vantage point, with my senses sharpening into focus, I spotted a sliver of moonlight at the end of the passage. Curious, I drew on my trousers and coat, stuffed my sockless feet into my unlaced and still sand-filled shoes, and thrust my hand searchingly into my bag to rummage for my pipe and tobacco pouch. I had all but given up the nighttime habit of smoking while at work in Egypt – so dry was my mouth, so constantly racing my brain.
Life at sea had rekindled my taste for a good pipeful.
Besides, I was wide awake and needed to chase away the demon
s.
The ship seemed steadier. Perhaps I had gained my sea legs while asleep. Trailing four fingertips along the wall of empty bunks, I made it to the stairway. The handrail under the moonlight appeared dipped in mercury.
Grabbing hold, I ascended the steps.
Night had transformed the wooden deck into an assortment of metallic grays. Iron, lead, cobalt, zinc – I counted them all among the boards, the mast, the ladders, and the shed-like wheelhouse. Our steamship seemed to be constructed of heavy elements afloat on a rippling ebon ocean. The air was cold but not unpleasant. I gladly traded the oily steam bath below for the seaweed salty tang. The winds had quieted, and I could see the puffs of my breath in front of my face. Our forward progress produced a breeze. I turned up my collar and fastened a few buttons as I walked to the foredeck. Peering up, I saw the first quarter moon, and a cloudless sky hoarding stars.
What a spectacle the constellations were.
Stargazing, I went to the rail and began to pack my pipe bowl. It was only as I stepped back from the breeze to shield my match that I realized I had crossed the deck without feeling the odd vibration I had registered each time before, and which I was convinced synchronized with the location of the sarcophagus in the cargo hold.
Now I paced back and forth and felt nothing.
“Hmph,” I muttered, “all in my mind apparently.” I turned to smoke at the rail.
And saw I was not alone on deck.
My midnight companion stood in the shadow of one of the lifeboats. That was why I had missed seeing him before. The prow of the little raft obscured him.
“Hello,” I said. “The weather’s much improved. Chilly, but it feels good compared to the stuffiness down below. Not raining at least. We can be thankful for that.”
He said nothing.
Under most circumstances I am not one to pursue conversation with strangers, especially those who signal their hesitancy to talk. Unmarried and with no prospects for marriage on the horizon, I was quite used to being alone. At home I had few friends, and most of them were not known for their repartee. My only real friend in recent months, Hakim, had just been murdered, and I felt partially responsible for that. What did I have to think about but my alleged career? What was my career but servitude to the whims of Montague P. Waterston? A man I had never even met!
Then I must confess, more than anything else on that March night at sea, I was feeling lonely. How I wished for a traveling partner, someone to distract me, to help pass the time, and keep me from feeding upon my thoughts, if only for a few minutes while I smoked my pipe.
“HELLO,” I said again louder, much louder, and I was immediately embarrassed.
Still the other did not reply.
Ha ha! I laughed to myself. I had the solution.
He was a foreigner. A sailor, no doubt, as I saw no passengers on this voyage who were not sailors, other than me, and come to think of it, since I had awakened, I saw no sailors either. Perhaps he was on night watch. Was he not allowed to talk, or was he unable to understand? Either case would account for his silence.
What was I doing trying to chit chat with a man who spoke another tongue?
I say, man, but looking back, I could not see enough to judge who, or what, it was.
He was a shape.
A shape that did not talk and had not yet moved.
Judging by his bulkiness, I took him to be wearing a great-coat, tight and evidently poorly patched. Even in the shadows I could see holes. A long gray scarf wrapped several times around his head and face. The loose, frazzled end dangled off the boat side as he leaned forward, staring out over the glittering waves.
I stepped closer to the shape, determined to get a better look at him. As I said, the night was cold but not so cold to be bundled like an Esquimau.
Now the shape did move. Not to retreat, spider-like, into the dark crevice under the lifeboat, as I expected at this point, rather it pulled away from the rail, unbent, and stood tall. Quite tall he was. He continued to show me his back and not speak.
“Sir, I do not mean to disturb you in your duties…”
Foolishness – I started again.
“I mean, sir, firstly do you speak English?”
He did not turn his shrouded head.
But he answered my question with a low, wheezing chuckle.
Hearing this sound broke the tension between us, until I noticed that no cloud of exhalation formed around his face.
I was, on the other hand, making quite a fog.
Iciness zipped along my spine. I glanced toward the pilot house, thinking I would run there if I had to, and wondering how fast I could traverse the distance.
I risked one look back at the shape.
He – It – was gone.
I heard no splash.
There were two men behind the glossy black windows of the pilot house. I told them what I had seen. A man, maybe a man, who was there one moment, then not.
“Did you see him?” I asked. “Did you see the man who went overboard?”
They did not completely comprehend my words, but they did understand the meaning of overboard. We looked past the stern. We circled round. The sailors conducted a quick head count. All hands accounted for. No sailor on board matched my description. A huge man, tattered coat, a very long scarf. The captain, disturbed from his sleep, regarded me with annoyance and later, pity. I believe he thought me mad.
“Very well, then,” I said. “I am mistaken. Good night to you all.”
Blankness in their stares, and as I walked off, I could not mistake their snickering.
On my way back to my bunk, I passed by the lifeboat and saw something I had not noticed earlier. I crouched and rubbed it between my fingers. A trail sparkled on the deck, leading from the lifeboat to the cargo hatch. My legs were vibrating.
A trail of sand.
11
New York, New Orleans
New Year’s Day, 1920
Manhattan, New York City
Let me pause here in my tale, dear Reader, to wish you a Happy New Year. It is quiet in the offices of the Waterston Institute as the calendar turns to welcome a new decade. I am alone and adding another log to the fire. Likely as not, those who might worry about me will assume I decided to sleep at the lab, which I often do when I work late. I have drunk a fair bit of whisky, but I am an accomplished imbiber and feel none the worse for wear. I feel quite good, relaxed finally, though I think the telling of my tale – letting the weight of it go – may have had as much to do with my state of mind as this fine bourbon. Time is a funny thing, funnier the older I get. And by funny I do not mean whimsical. I mean strange.
Where was I?
On the Derceto, yes, in the briny Atlantic, sand on my fingertips…
Perhaps it is not so odd to find sand on a boat. Yet this sand did not feel like it had been scuffed up from a sunny Mediterranean beach. I know that makes no sense. I even had gritty remnants of the desert stuck inside my own shoes. But somehow this sand, this glittery track on the deck boards, felt wrong, out of its proper time and place. Time again. It changes us, and it changes on us. It moves differently for different people. It passes not at all the same in foreign lands either, and if you have traveled much you know what I mean. Time changes over time, too. Time in the Manhattan of 1920 is not what it was in 1888. I should know, I was there then, and I am here now. Today everyone rushes around like they have escaped the Bellevue insane pavilion. I suppose a seasoned man will always feel the current of time speeding around him as he struggles not to sink in the flow. I’m beginning to sound morbid.
Now then, where am I?
I am here in the comfort of my office, dusting bits of log off my trousers and refilling my glass. I am looking out at a nighttime Central Park where the falling, mounding snow fills up the park like ice cream scoops.
Also, I am at sea soon before I saw the cliff-like skyline of New York, before I met my fate, before death and love and the deathless one converged and forever altered–
But I am getting ahead of myself. Let’s go back then, you and me…
New York.
The port… less than a month after a blizzard ravaged the city… the Great White Hurricane of 1888…
I am about to see the clipper ships in the crowded harbor, the New York and Brooklyn Bridge connecting the boroughs, spanning the East River, a density of buildings, of milling immigrants, business and crime, new life created in a New World.
New York Harbor, 1888
A pilot boat met us.
We could not yet see land. A week had elapsed since my nighttime encounter with the apparition – what I believed to be Amun Odji-Kek’s spirit manifestation. (Or was it a stubborn remnant of the suffocating burial nightmare that had earlier awoken me? A waking dream perhaps, a hallucination inspired by over-breathing the engine fumes? Did I create as well as witness it?) Skepticism engaged, nagged at me. I tried to dismiss the incident but the best I could manage was to ignore it. The sea at night plays upon the nervous mind I told myself. Men see things around big water. Let it be.
The rest of my voyage was notable because nothing unusual happened. I was bored and eager to see my homeland again. I wanted to meet Waterston’s emissary at the dock and talk to someone in English, to walk on solid American ground, and be done with oceans for a while. I wanted a mug of beer.
Mostly, I wanted to open the sarcophagus and examine the mummy.
When we came into sight of land, the city coastline appeared much as I remembered it when I left for my expedition many months ago. Clipper ships crowded the harbor and the marvelous East River Bridge loomed above. Evidence of the historic snowstorm that had killed several hundred people weeks earlier, paralyzing the Eastern seaboard and creating general havoc, was disappearing fast. Most of the snow had melted away into slush and fog. Though I was ignorant of the storm’s passage at the time – no newspaper delivery at sea – I could not miss the terrible damage to the piers. Windy water is a great ram. The tide bullied many chaotic shipwrecks even as it filled them with its inescapable opaque weight. Damp salty wood, wet bricks, streets gray and glistening – whatever did not slurp against pilings flooded down the gutters to the bay.