Secrets of the Dead Read online

  ‘Wow.’ John stared. ‘Finally, I get chance to meet them … in the flesh.’

  ‘Here they are, frozen in time. We’ve halted decay the best we can, and we’ve repaired damage caused by rats, mice and downright neglect over the last hundred years.’ She walked along the line, indicating each body in turn. ‘This is the mummy of the teenage girl, which we’ve named Amber. The smallest mummy is of a boy aged between ten and twelve, who we’ve nicknamed Ket; a knife was found tucked alongside him in the coffin.’

  ‘A weapon to take into the afterlife?’

  ‘Probably. Next up, a youth in his late teens. He’s called Bones. Then we have Isis. Of course, the names are just our inventions, enabling us to differentiate one mummy from the other. When you’ve put the papyri back together, perhaps we will have documents that nicely confirm that we have, in this room, a king and queen.’

  John shuddered when he reached the last of the mummies. The male figure sat on the chair. Its lips had shrivelled back, exposing the teeth in an eternal snarl of anger. The skin was flame red in colour, adding to the impression that this figure was the essence of fury. Of course, the reddening of the skin would be caused by salts used by the embalmers to preserve the flesh. One of the most striking features of the mummy’s skull was that it appeared to be wearing a headband. Made of greenish metal, it ran around the entire skull just above the eyebrow line.

  Samantha noticed that he was particularly interested in the strip of metal encircling the skull. ‘We’re not sure whether the headband is some kind of adornment, or a minimalist crown that the man wore when he was alive, or whether it was placed there after death as part of a funerary rite. Then, this has to be one of the most mysterious interments I’ve ever seen. And take a look at this oddity.’ Samantha bent down to gaze into the dead face. ‘See? The eyelids are closed. There’s no shrinkage of the eyeballs. They haven’t sunk inwards, so it looks as if Kadesh is just sleeping.’

  ‘Kadesh?’

  ‘Our name for the mummy until you can reveal the actual one this gent was known by.’

  ‘Are the results of the DNA tests back yet?’

  ‘No, but we’re hoping they will prove that this is a family related by blood.’

  ‘It’s unusual for an Egyptian to be buried in a sitting position.’ Shivers ran up his backbone as he, too, examined the dead features. And, yes, the man really did appear to be merely sleeping. However, time hadn’t been kind to the face; cracks in the flesh revealed bare cheekbones, and part of the jaw was denuded of flesh.

  Samantha whispered, ‘When people sleep that’s when the mummies wake up.’

  ‘What made you say that?’

  ‘Oh, it’s something the servants use to say when the castle was home to the Kemmis family. They claimed that the mummies would prowl the corridors when everyone else was in the land of nod. Several maids claimed that when they woke up they found dust on their mouths. You see, they believed that Kadesh had crept into their bedrooms and kissed them on their lips when they were asleep. Super creepy, huh?’

  ‘A collection of mummies like this would lead to all kinds of stories being invented.’

  ‘You don’t believe that when we sleep the mummies wake up?’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘I have to admit that these mummies do walk into my dreams when I’m asleep.’

  John remembered last night when he’d dreamt that a mummy lay under a sheet in his son’s bed.

  Samantha went on, ‘In fact, I dream about them nearly every night. Once I woke up and …’ She touched her lips before rubbing her fingertips together as if they were covered in dust. ‘I’m just a romantic, aren’t I? Dreaming that an Egyptian king returns from the dead to kiss me when I’m sleeping.’ She smiled. ‘Perhaps stories about being kissed by mummies are ones for the psychiatrist rather than the archaeologist?’

  ‘Egyptian mummies are potent figures. Collections of mummies in museums are what visitors make a beeline for. It’s hardly surprising you dream about them.’

  ‘Sometimes the dreams aren’t so nice.’ She shivered, gooseflesh puckering the skin on her bare arms. ‘I have nightmares about this one, the adult female corpse, which is believed to be the mother. I dream that she stands outside my house at night. She calls up to me. I can’t understand the words, but she seems to be begging for help. She’s terrified, panicky, beside herself; really, really frightened that something terrible will happen. But what?’ Samantha shrugged. ‘That’s the mystery, because I don’t understand the language.’ She shuddered again. ‘Dreams, huh? Sigmund Freud could have written a book about mine.’

  Despite the woman’s normally cheerful and decidedly sexy come-hither nature, John saw that memories of those dreams had really got under her skin. The images she saw inside her head troubled her. He noticed a light box on the wall; clipped to it were a number of X-ray photographs.

  ‘Are these of all your mummies?’

  ‘They are. You can see that Isis still wears several rings on her fingers under the bandages. The internal organs are still present, which is unusual, of course, because the embalmers usually removed those and put them in jars, which would then be placed in a different part of the tomb from the body.’

  ‘This is a highly unusual burial,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t conform to the ancient Egyptian norm at all, does it?’

  ‘In fact, it’s so mysterious as to be out-and-out weird. No internal organs were removed; the adult male was entombed in a sitting position; and there were no names on the coffins or on the walls of the tomb. One thing any self-respecting Egyptian would never do is go to the grave anonymously, because that would hinder their prospects of a happy afterlife. In fact, their nameless spirits would be inclined to tragically roam the earth, or so the Egyptians believed.’

  ‘Then such a burial might be punishment for the family?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  He took a swallow of coffee. ‘I should get back to work. I want to copy the first batch of papyrus fragments today.’

  ‘Sorry, John.’

  ‘Sorry for what?’

  ‘A couple of days ago I was just a bit too mischievous by suggesting that our family of mummies here were similar to your family.’

  ‘I guess they are, age-wise.’

  ‘I was teasing you.’ She did seem genuinely regretful. ‘It’s my nature. I can’t resist giving people’s chains a yank.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. I knew you were joking.’

  ‘I was also inaccurate, as you rightly pointed out.’ She waved her hand to indicate the mummies. ‘There are five here. You are a family of four.’

  He stared at the five corpses in front of him – a mother and father, perhaps, with three children. Suddenly, he had the feeling of standing on the edge of a cliff and looking down such a long way, while having the frightening sensation that he was beginning to topple forward.

  ‘Samantha, you were right, though.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘They do resemble my family.’

  ‘Now, who’s joking?’ She laughed. ‘John, Ingrid, Vicki, Oliver. Four people, not five.’

  ‘You don’t know this, but I have another son.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘He’s called Ben Darrington. He came to stay with us yesterday. I’ve never seen him before. He’s nineteen, pretty much the same age as Bones here.’ John felt light headed. ‘You see, he’s broken his leg and can’t look after himself; his mother’s travelling overseas.’ He looked at Samantha. She appeared stunned by what he’d told her. ‘We’re a family of five, after all.’

  ‘What did you say about him breaking his leg?’

  ‘Some kind of accident. I don’t know the details, other than he broke his leg in three places here.’ He patted the side of his thigh. ‘Is there something significant about him breaking his leg?’

  The woman appeared to be in shock. Even so, she stammered out, ‘No. Not at all.’ She took a deep breath and tried to laugh off the sudden air of tension in the roo
m. ‘Well, it was still ridiculous of me to compare your family to this one. Apart from a slight coincidence of ages.’

  ‘And physical build, I should say.’ He wondered whether he should tell Samantha about the 3D model of Amber’s head, which the printer had constructed, and which resembled his daughter so closely.

  ‘Just random chance; superficial similarities – happens all the time.’ Samantha waved her hand at the X-rays. ‘Besides, take the adult male. You’re nothing like him.’

  ‘He was the same age as me when he died. Late thirties or so.’

  ‘Ah, take a closer look at the X-ray. What do you see, or more accurately, what don’t you see?’

  ‘One of his hands is missing.’

  ‘Precisely. Which means he’s not like you.’ She laughed. ‘Though why we’re having this bizarre conversation, I don’t know. It’s not as if you and your family are living replicas of the mummies we have here. The adult male, after all, is missing a hand. You have both your hands. Look.’ She abruptly grabbed his hands. For a moment, she looked into his eyes as she squeezed his hands tight.

  John could have sworn that she was silently pleading with him not to continue the conversation. At that moment, also, he realized an important truth. Samantha is frightened of these bodies. No … it’s more than that. She lives in dread of them.

  She released her grip, whirling away as she did so, to point at Kadesh in the chair. ‘The stump where the hand has been severed is still wrapped in plenty of cloth, but the X-ray shows the hand is missing. It must have been amputated at least a number of months before his death, because there are signs of the wound healing. But Kadesh here has one hand, while you have two.’ She walked briskly – perhaps even gratefully – out of the room.

  John looked at the bandaged figure sitting there on the throne. The dead man with one hand. Beyond the seated figure was a large window that looked out over the grounds of Baverstock Castle. John saw a figure pacing back and forth across the driveway. He recognized the figure as Philip Kemmis. The living man with one hand.

  THIRTEEN

  Midnight. Fletcher Brown climbed the hill to where meadow turned into moorland heather. Here, black rocks stood like soldiers waiting for the start of a battle. Fletcher wore the red cap that his friend Oliver had given him. The twelve year old had spent so much time outdoors at night that starlight was enough for him to see by. His father slept soundly, not that it bothered Fletcher whether the man was awake or not, because his father didn’t care if Fletcher was at home or roaming the countryside. Fletcher knew that his father didn’t like him. He often overheard his father saying to people, ‘That boy of mine, he’s not right in the head.’

  Fletcher understood that he wasn’t like other boys of his age. He found it difficult to make friends. Heck, he even found it difficult to have conversations with other people. He could tell they saw something they didn’t like in his behaviour; they would make their excuses and leave. If it was other boys, they might shove him and punch him before they left him alone – they didn’t trouble themselves with anything as subtle as excuses. Whatever adults or children did in order to avoid him, the message was all too clear: Go away, Fletcher. We don’t like you. We don’t want to speak to you. You’re strange.

  Fletcher had learned to embrace the strange. He took pleasure in being different. When people looked up at night they saw stars. Fletcher, however, knew that stars were suns like the one that shone down upon the Earth. Yet those other suns were a vast distance away. Their light might take thousands of years to reach this planet. And that light of theirs might fall on planets that circled those distant stars. Alien eyes might use the light to see their own strange worlds.

  Fletcher walked along the crest of the hill, picturing bizarre life-forms on those faraway planets. From up here, he could see the outline of Baverstock Castle. A little closer were the cottages on the lane that ran through the woods. That’s where Oliver lived with his family. Oliver’s parents were nice. They’d been kind to Fletcher. Not like the Oldfield family, who shunned him; their son, Mark, liked to hit Fletcher in the face.

  Fletcher moved amongst the tall outcrops of rock, those dark stones that resembled a gathering of warriors on the moor. He continued along the hill, intending to find the family of foxes that lived beneath thick gorse bushes. The vixen had had cubs a few weeks ago. Fletcher liked to watch them emerging from beneath the bush to play in the starlight.

  He approached the clump of bushes, moving as quietly as he could so as not to scare the foxes away. It seemed to Fletcher that the stars had begun to shine brighter. Points of light above him burned out of the blackness like the eyes of animals from the shadows of the forest. He had a sudden sense that the world around him – no, the entire universe – had experienced an abrupt surge of energy. A breeze sprang up, one fierce enough to make bushes hiss violently. His teeth tingled. There was a strange electric taste on his tongue. His muscles tensed, the way they did when he knew a bully was about to punch him. The twelve year old turned round, confused and even frightened (strange, because he never felt fear when night-walking); tonight was different, however. The hill became a menacing place. The rocks that haunted the moorland seemed on the point of jolting into life before they attacked him.

  Fletcher walked faster, wondering why he felt this way. His father said that Fletcher wasn’t right in the head. Did his father speak the truth? Was he entering a new phase of insanity? Fletcher’s heart pounded. The grass, stones, bushes, and even the bones of a dead sheep seemed to be alive with energy that sent silvery sparks shooting into the air.

  I’m going mad, he told himself with a jolt of fear. Dad’s right. Something’s wrong with my brain. He ran in panic. He didn’t know where he was running to, but he had an overwhelming need to run away from … from … from what? He didn’t know what he fled from – only that he had this gut-feeling he was in danger … that someone wanted to attack him, to hurt him, make him cry out … make him die.

  He found himself on a track on the other side of the hill. There, in the starlight, he made out a white box-shaped vehicle. A camper van had been parked facing out over a valley. It was a beautiful lookout spot for walkers, though the camper van shouldn’t have been parked there. The twelve year old knew that all this was private property. The driver of the camper van must have sneaked in along some back lane in order to park for free. It was a beautiful, elevated position, some two hundred feet above the valley floor, giving wonderful views by day of fields and woodland.

  The electric tension in the air made Fletcher jumpy and fearful. A fox darted from the undergrowth, startling him, making him yelp in fear. The animal seemed more frightened than him and sped away into the night. Gales roared across the hillside, making it look as if invisible claws ripped at the long grass. Birds, disturbed in their roosting places, flew past, screeching in fury.

  Then Fletcher saw him. The figure walked purposefully along the track. Starlight illuminated that gaunt totem of dried-out flesh. He clearly saw bandages fluttering in the breeze. The reddish skin almost appeared to glow – a fierce, angry red – the colour of danger. He made out a greenish metal band around the skull of the mummy. Fletcher had seen it before on visits to the mummy collection in the castle. Fletcher knew the identity of the figure. This was Kadesh.

  Fletcher now understood why the world had turned so strange in the last few minutes. He’d sensed an uncanny force crackling through the air. The mummy had caused that. Its presence, and the very fact it moved like a living human being, offended nature. It distorted the laws of life, because a dead thing had been animated again, just as it had when it had carried Oliver Tolworth away. Poor Ollie, poor dead Ollie …

  The mummy strode in the same way an angry schoolteacher would stride towards the back of the class where a child was being badly behaved to an infuriating degree. There was a vengeful purpose in that walk. Its body language radiated a burning need to inflict punishment. The creature was angry. It wanted to fight. Fletcher understood
that much. And he saw that the figure was headed for the camper van …

  Fletcher knew that when the mummies woke up, people sometimes entered a magic sleep. They couldn’t be woken, no matter how hard you shouted or shook them. How Fletcher knew this, he had no idea. Often he wondered if he suffered from delusions. People certainly believed he had bizarre ideas. Then, everyone thought that Fletcher was strange in the head. At that moment, Fletcher wanted to believe it, too, and that the mummified figure walking along the track was pure hallucination, because if this monstrous apparition was real, then his life was in danger. He sensed total menace radiating from Kadesh. Its body seemed to glow with pure aggression, just as the stars glowed because they were worlds of fire.

  Fletcher got ready to run back home. Yet he paused, because he understood a worrying fact. ‘The mummy’s going to attack the people in the camper van.’ He’d murmured the words aloud, feeling his blood run cold. ‘It’s going to kill the people in the van.’

  The mummy was perhaps a hundred yards from the vehicle. It walked quickly, yet Fletcher knew he could reach the van first, hammer on the door, try to wake the people and get them to safety. He dashed down the slope to where the van was parked, facing out over the valley. Just beyond the front of the vehicle the ground sloped away sharply, down to a stream that glistened like a line of tears. Fletcher reached the van. He hammered on its aluminium door at the back with both fists.