by Alan Baxter
They watched him stalk off back down the street towards the museum and the river.
“Well, that was proper creepy,” Crowley said.
They returned to their hotel to try to piece together what little they had learned. The tall gold and green building pushed a dozen stories or so up into the impossibly blue sky. Stepping into the cream marble interior, Crowley and Rose both sighed with relief as they were enveloped in air-conditioned cool. They had adjoining rooms, both identical in earthy shades of brown, tan and cream, with a generous queen bed and a wide window that gave a beautiful view over the broad expanse of the Nile. The skyline on the other side was blocky and lit gold as the afternoon began to wear toward evening.
They went into Crowley’s room and Rose fell onto the bed, staring up at the ceiling, as Crowley sank heavily into a large armchair and put his feet up on the matching footstool.
“What now?” she asked.
Crowley pulled a tablet from his messenger bag and said, “Let’s do some research. I’ll look more into the Book of the Dead that your sister was so interested in. You see what you can learn, if anything, about the Anubis Key that crazy guy was talking about.”
Rose sighed and sat up. Grief tugged at her chest, along with a myriad of other conflicting emotions. She needed to know where her sister was, but she was angry with Lily, too. Angry with her for going missing, but also for their estrangement over all these years. What Lily had done, that Rose could never forgive. Lily made life so difficult for everyone, always so combative, so vindictive. Then, just as Rose or her parents, or both, were about to declare the woman a lost cause and give up on her, Lily would do something loving or kind, something redemptive. Or show up for one of her rare in-person appearances, and make the family think perhaps there was something worth holding onto after all. This time, Rose would find Lily and she would demand to know not only what was happening now, but what the story was for all these past years. What Lily expected of her family. An ultimatum, perhaps, to try to stem this tide of heartache.
With another sigh, Rose pulled out her laptop and logged onto the hotel wifi. She thought back to the strange man in the market. The path you follow leads to the Anubis Key... and certain death. She would have simply written him off as a crank if it weren’t for the disturbing state of his left hand and arm. It looked like the mummies they had been so enthralled by only minutes before. He may well be a crank, after all, but perhaps not one they could ignore.
She began a search for the Anubis Key. Not surprisingly, there were hundreds of results for Anubis himself, the Egyptian dog-headed god of mummification and the afterlife. Anubis had varying roles in different contexts, sometimes depicted as a protector of graves, an embalmer, lord of the underworld until Osiris took over that role. Among the most prominent of his roles was the god who ushered souls into the afterlife, attending the “Weighing of the Heart” to determine whether a soul would be allowed to enter the realm of the dead or not. For all his frequent mentions in the Egyptian pantheon, Anubis played almost no role in Egyptian myths. Rose went back to her original search. All this about Anubis himself was no news to her, common knowledge to anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of Egyptian mythology. The Anubis Key was the important thing and that garnered few mentions.
She skimmed over a few wild notions on a variety of conspiracy theory websites. They all seemed to speculate of the existence of the Anubis Key, but none had any concrete ideas about what it might be. Rose frowned. Was it a physical object, an idea, a place? All the stories she looked at agreed it had something to do with summoning the dead.
Then Rose found a few suggestions that it might be a spell or incantation, and that played into the idea of raising the dead.
She sat back, stretched her arms high over her head. Crowley watched her, glanced quickly away when she saw him looking. Poor Jake, forced to share her life again but not a bed. They had more important concerns right now, but she would have to talk to him at some point about why she had distanced herself. She owed him at least that much. Maybe more. She derailed that train of thought and brought herself back to the present predicament.
“Anything?” she asked.
Crowley shook his head, put his tablet face down on his lap. “Nothing we didn’t already know. You?”
“Not really. Except one possibility. There’s some conjecture here that the Anubis Key might be some kind of spell relating to the summoning of the dead.”
“Interesting.”
“And Lily was really focused on the Book of the Dead, right? Which consists of various spells related to the afterlife.”
Crowley nodded slowly, eyes narrow. “Right. But what’s your point?”
Rose wasn’t sure herself where she was going with this, but she let her mouth run away with it to see where it led. “Well, Lily was looking for a Book of the Dead with more than the one hundred and eighty-nine known spells. So what if that guy with the weird arm overheard us asking about that and suspects that the Anubis Key might be a previously unknown spell. Or a spell thought to be lost, but that might be found in a book containing more than the standard set? Or maybe he knows the spell and it did that horrible thing to his hand.”
Crowley tapped his fingertips together, thinking silently for a moment. Eventually he said, “You could be right, although the hand thing is maybe a bit of a leap. It would connect the Book of the Dead with whatever that guy feared. Regardless, it’s the only thing close to a lead we’ve got, so it’s worth following up. And according to what I’ve been reading here about the Book of the Dead and its various incarnations, there’s only one scholar who seems halfway reliable.”
Rose smiled, daring to hope they might have found a way forward. “Okay, then. Let’s go and talk to him.”
Chapter 9
Siwa Oasis, Egypt
The Siwa Oasis lay between the Qattara Depression and the Egyptian Sand Sea in the Western Desert, some thirty miles east of the Libyan border. The trip of nearly three hundred fifty miles from Cairo into the desert had reminded Crowley unpleasantly of tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, but had afforded them time to study up on the oasis. According to the research Crowley had done the previous evening, Siwa Oasis was about fifty miles long and twelve wide, and one of Egypt’s most isolated settlements. Around twenty-three thousand people lived there, mostly Berbers, who had apparently developed a unique culture and a distinct language called Siwi. The place gained its reputation mainly from its historical role as home to an oracle of Ammon, which gave it its ancient name, Ammonium. The associated ruins had become a popular tourist attraction.
After the dry landscape they’d driven through, the greenery surprised Crowley. Lush trees surrounded the large town, the blocky pale tan sandstone buildings standing out against a range of conical hills in the distance behind. The late afternoon sun painted one side of every building a deep gold as Crowley guided the Land Rover up the main street, between buildings with darkened windows. People in white or pale pastel thawb, the flowing ankle length clothing common throughout the region, watched as Crowley cruised by. Their eyes in deep tan faces under checkered headscarves were narrowed in interest, but perhaps not unfriendly.
“So this Professor,” Rose said.
“Dado Hamza,” Crowley reminded her.
“Right, Professor Hamza. He’s not in the town itself, you said.”
“Well, he’s probably living here, but working at the Amun Oracle dig, which is at the mostly abandoned village of Aghurmi, about two kilometers east.”
“Can we drive there?”
“Yeah.” Crowley looked at the map he held open on the steering wheel, then squinted out the windshield again. “This way, I think.”
It wasn’t long before the road led them out between the trees again and soon to a broken down sandstone village, the tumbled buildings casting long afternoon shadows across the ground. The place was largely deserted and Crowley parked the Land Rover in one of those deep shadows. When they stepped out, the dry heat hit t
hem like a wall. Crowley sniffed, picking up the aromas of plant life and water, incongruent in the desiccated environs all around.
Crowley pointed. “That’s the Temple of the Oracle of Amun. The dig is apparently on the other side of the mount.”
As they walked, Rose said, “I was reading about this last night. Some people think it’s an ancient solar calendar thing, you know, like Stonehenge, only a temple.”
Crowley laughed. “Yeah, I got lost in a lot of conspiracy theory and whackjob websites last night, too. It’s a pretty interesting place.”
They gained the top of the flat rock on which the Temple stood and walked in across the sandy floors among the fallen stones. From one point they saw across the tops of dark green trees to a series of rugged mountains, striped in alternating layers of light and dark rock. No one else seemed to be around.
“I guess all the tourists have left for the day,” Crowley said. “Maybe we’re too late as well.”
“Over here,” Rose said.
Crowley moved to see where she pointed and saw the archeological dig on the far side of the temple. From their elevated position it was clearly laid out below them, a grid of trenches, surrounded by tents and vehicles. Several people milled around, seemingly packing up tools and equipment.
“Or perhaps we’re just in time,” Crowley said.
They made their way down and approached the first people they met, a man and a woman loading up a battered old pickup truck with plastic crates.
“Professor Dado Hamza?” Crowley asked.
The woman frowned, but turned and pointed to a tarpaulin supported on four long poles, rippling slightly in the hot breeze. An old man stood in the shade beneath it, talking to a small group of people.
Crowley and Rose waited respectfully outside the covered area until the man stopped talking and the group moved away. As they approached, Professor Hamza looked up and seemed momentarily startled. Crowley realized he’d spotted Rose and thought he recognized her. The Professor’s face hardened.
“Yes?”
“We’d really like to talk to you about something important,” Crowley said.
Hamza shook his head, his shock of iron-gray hair waggling comically. “Sorry, I can’t help you.” His voice was deep, heavily accented. “You’ve wasted your time coming all the way out here.”
Crowley bristled, annoyed at the summary dismissal, but Rose put a hand on his arm before he could speak up.
“You recognized me at first,” she said. “You thought I was Lily.”
Hamza frowned. “Lily?”
“Sorry, you thought I was Iris. Iris Brown. Her real name is Lily and she’s my sister. She’s missing and I really need your help, sir.”
Hamza looked around nervously, his face twisted in indecision. After a moment, he sighed. “We can’t talk here. Go back to town, find the Kenooz Siwa Restaurant. I’ll see you on the roof terrace there at eight.” Without another word he turned and strode away.
Chapter 10
Kenooz Siwa Restaurant, Siwa Oasis, Egypt
The restaurant Professor Hamza had suggested turned out to be on the roof terrace of the Shali Lodge in the middle of Siwa Oasis. Crowley and Rose had found themselves a place to stay nearby, then wandered the streets of Siwa as the day gently cooled into evening. Heat still clogged the air, but not oppressively like it did during the day. By around seven pm, they headed up to the Kenooz Siwa Restaurant and got a table beside a sandstone arch where they could look out over the town. Stars began appearing in the indigo sky as evening fell slowly into night, an aromatic breeze drifted past, bearing scents of spices and night blossoms.
Their table was low to the ground and they sat on thick white cushions. Palm trees grew along one part of the wall to their left, their deep green leaves shifting and whispering in the soft breeze. They ordered mint tea and some of the restaurant’s Siwan specialties, baked lentils, eggplant with pomegranate sauce, and a goat curry with a rich, spicy sauce.
They didn’t talk much, enjoying the moment’s peace and calm as they ate. Eventually, Crowley said, “Are you okay?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Within the context of what’s happening, sure. Why do you ask?”
Crowley swallowed down nerves and said, “It’s just that you’ve been avoiding me a bit. I’m not trying to seem possessive or stalkery or anything, I’m just concerned that everything’s all right with you.” He felt a little creepy, wished he could have kept his promise to himself and let her address the subject in her own time, but he genuinely worried about her. And his ego was slightly bruised; that was undeniable.
Rose finished her mouthful, looking down at the table. Then she raised her gaze to meet his and opened her mouth to speak, but something behind him distracted her. Crowley glanced around and saw Professor Hamza approaching. Great timing, old man! Crowley thought, but shook his head slightly. It would have to wait.
He stood and shook Hamza’s hand. Rose did the same.
“Thank you for your time,” Rose said.
They sat down again and Crowley gestured to their food. “We have plenty here, please help yourself.”
“Thank you, but I’ve eaten.” Hamza caught a waiter’s eye and ordered an iced tea.
“Earlier, you did mistake me for my sister, didn’t you?” Rose said after the waiter had left.
Hamza nodded, looking at Rose with narrowed eyes. “You say her name is Lily?”
“Yes, though she seems to be traveling under another identity, Iris Brown. Her real name is Lily Black. I’m Rose Black. And this is my friend, Jake Crowley.”
Crowley smiled but kept quiet to let the two of them talk.
Hamza looked over the low wall, his attention drifting out across Siwa Oasis, and maybe across time as well. “She did come to me, yes. You look a lot alike, but she’s older, yes?”
“That’s right.”
His gaze returned to Rose. “I see the differences now I’m paying more attention.”
Rose smiled. “People so often thought we were twins when we were kids. What did she ask you about, Professor?”
“She initially expressed interest in the Siwan Manuscript. You’ve heard of it?”
“I read a little last night, but I know very little about this area or its history.”
Hamza accepted his iced tea from the waiter with a smile. “The Siwan Manuscript was written during the middle ages. It’s the best example we have of a local history book. It tells of a benevolent man who arrived here and planted an orchard. Afterward, he went to Mecca and brought back thirsty Arabs and Berbers, and subsequently established himself, along with his followers, in the western part of Shali. But Iris’s interests…I mean Lily’s interest, didn’t really lie with our history. She guided our conversation around to the Anubis Key.”
Crowley’s heart gave a quick extra thump of excitement at the connection, the long journey seemingly not wasted after all. If Rose shared his enthusiasm, she hid it well.
“We’ve heard about that, but only in passing. What is it?”
Hamza frowned, looked around himself as though checking no one else was in earshot. Then he shook his head. “It’s a myth, nothing more. And that’s what I told your sister.”
“Humor us,” Crowley said. “Suppose it’s real, just pretend, you know? What can you tell us about it?”
Hamza sighed, sipped his iced tea and thought for a moment. Then, “Okay, let’s start with Anubis. He is the god of mummification and the afterlife in ancient Egyptian religion. A man with a canine head, yes?” Hamza smiled. “Did you know, archeologists had originally identified the sacred animal of Anubis as an Egyptian canid. At the time it was called the golden jackal, but recent genetic testing has meant the Egyptian animal needed to be reclassified as the African golden wolf.”
“A wolf, really? I’d always heard the jackal association.” Rose’s interest was genuine. Crowley smiled inwardly, enjoying the sight of museum brain engaging again.
Hamza nodded. “But I digress. So Anubis
had many roles depending where in history you read about him, but probably most famously he ushered souls into the afterlife, weighing their hearts to determine if they would be permitted to enter the realm of the dead.”
Crowley knew all this, and he was certain Rose would know it too, but she was smart enough to let the professor talk at his own pace. The more they claimed to know, the more he would clam up, Crowley was sure. As an academic himself, he knew that to let a professor speak on his area of expertise was the best way to put that professor at ease.
“Anyway,” Hamza went on, “assuming that the Anubis Key is a real thing, which it isn’t…” He paused and looked from Rose to Crowley. Crowley motioned for him to go on. Hamza shook his head. “Well, assuming it is real, there are a few theories. One is that, since Anubis was the protector of tombs, that perhaps the Anubis Key is a spell to protect tombs, or even to open tombs. Another theory, related to Anubis’s association with mummification, is that the Anubis Key explains the Egyptians’ secrets of mummification. This, incidentally, is the theory I would consider most likely. The most pragmatic answer is usually the right one. It’s easy to get caught up in ideas of spells and magic and mysticism, but we are intelligent, educated adults, are we not?”
“We are, of course,” Rose said quietly. “But are there any other theories? Perhaps things that educated adults might scoff at but that remain theories nonetheless?”
Hamza smiled crookedly. “We would be delving into the most far-fetched.”
“Let’s do that,” Crowley said. “Just for fun.”
“All right. Given that Anubis is the spirit guide and the weigher of hearts, some believe the Anubis Key unlocks the door to the world of the dead.” He shook his head, his expression clearly betraying what he thought of that idea.