Dan Simmons - Drood

I could feel the scarab in my brain scuttling to and fro even as I writhed and moaned. I sensed—I knew —that an identical scarab in Mother was reacting to my (and my parasite’s) presence.

There was nothing I could do but moan and collapse into Charley’s arms. He half-dragged, half-carried me to the sofa in the other room. Mother’s screams abated somewhat when we were out of her presence. My scarab quieted. I caught the shadow-glimpse out of the corner of my eye of Mrs Wells hurrying in as Charley tended to me near the fireplace in Mother’s main living area.

And so it went for the three days I was with Mother—or that clawing, screaming, writhing, agony-filled thing which had been Mother—in her cottage at Southborough just beyond Tunbridge Wells.

Charley was there the whole time, which was good, since Mrs Wells certainly would have given up her duties caring for Mother if he had not been there as a buffer. If my brother ever wondered why Mrs Wells and I took pains never to be alone together in a room for a single moment, he never asked. On Friday, Frank Beard came—announced again that there was no hope—and injected her with morphia so that she could sleep. Before he left that night, he injected me with morphia as well. Those may have been the only few hours of silence in which poor, hurting Charley found a few hours’ sleep while Mrs Wells watched over Mother.

I TRIED TO work while I was at Mother’s. I had brought my japanned tin box of notes and research materials and sat as long as I could at Mother’s tiny desk near the front windows, but my pen hand seemed to have no power in it. I would have to shift the pen to my left hand just to dip the nib in ink. And even then no words would flow. For three days I stared at a manuscript page unblemished by fiction save for three or four lame lines which I eventually scratched out.

After three such days, we all surrendered the pretence that my presence there was needed. Mother could not abide my proximity; every time I entered the room she would get worse, raving and writhing, and my pain would increase until I swooned or retreated.

Charley packed my things and brought me back to London on the afternoon express. He had wired ahead and arranged for Frank Beard and my servant George to meet us at the station—it took the three of them to lift me into the rented carriage. Once carried through my own front door and upstairs to my room, I did not fail to see the look that Caroline G— gave me: there was alarm in that look, and perhaps affection, but there was also embarrassment and disdain, perhaps even disdain bordering on disgust.

Beard gave me an extra-large injection of morphia that evening and I fell into a deep sleep.

Awake in peace!

You yourself beautifully awaken in peace!

Heru of Edfu wakes himself to life!

The gods themselves raise to worship your spirit,

You who are the venerable winged disc that rises in the sky!

For you are the one, the ball of the sun that pierces the sky,

That now floods the land rapidly in the east,

Then sinks as the setting sun each day, passing the night in Inuet.

Heru of Edfu

Who wakes himself in peace,

The great master god of the sky,

The one whose plumage is multi-coloured,

Rising on the horizon,

The great winged disc that protects the sanctuaries!

You yourself awake in peace!

Ihy, who wakes himself in peace,

The Great, son of Hwt-Hwr,

Made noble by the Golden One of the Neteru!

You yourself awake in peace!

Awake in peace!

Ihy, son of Hwt-Hrw, awake in peace!

The beautiful lotus of the Golden One!

You yourself awake in peace!

Awake in peace Harsiesis, son of Osiris,

The inheritor without reproach originating from the Powerful One,

Produced by Ounennefer, the Victorious!

You yourself awake in peace!

Awake in peace Osiris!

The Great God who takes his place in Iunet,

The elder son of Geb!

You yourself awake in peace!

Awake in peace the Neteru and the Neteretu that are in Tarer,

The Ennead around His Majesty!

You yourself awake in peace!

I AWOKE IN darkness and pain and confusion.

Never before had I dreamt only in words—in chants of words—and in a language I could not understand but which my mind—or scarab—somehow had been able to translate. The reek of incense and oily smoke from the braziers lingered in my nostrils. The echo of long-dead voices in stone barrows rang in my ears. Burned into my vision, as though a retinal red circle from staring into the sun for too long, were the faces and bodies of the Neteru, the Gods of the Black Lands: Nuit, Lady of the Stars; Ast, or Isis, Queen of Heaven; Asar, or Osiris, God of our Fathers; Nebt-Het, or Nepthys, Goddess of the Death Which Is Not Eternal; Suti, or Set, the Adversary; Heru, or Horus, Lord of Things to Come; Anpu, or Anubis, Guide to the Dead; Djewhty, or Thoth, Keeper of the Book of Life.

Filled with the pain of the scarab’s stirrings, I cried out in the darkness.

No one came—it was sometime in the earliest morning hours, the door to the bedroom was closed, and Caroline and her daughter were downstairs behind their own closed doors—but as the echoes of my scream faded in my aching skull, I realised that there was someone or something else in the bedroom with me. I could hear its breathing. I could sense its presence, not as that slight, subliminal sensing of human warmth by which we sometimes become aware of the presence of other people near us in the dark, but by a perception of the thing’s coldness. It was as if something were pulling the last warmth from the air.

I fumbled on the dresser, found matches, lighted the candle.

The Other Wilkie was sitting there on the small, hard chair just beyond the foot of my bed. He was wearing a black frock-like coat that I had cast away some years earlier and had a small writing board on his lap with some blank paper on it. There was a pencil in his left hand. The nails on his hand were bitten down closer than mine usually were.

“What do you want?” I whispered.

“I’m waiting for you to begin dictating,” said the Other Wilkie.

I noted again that his voice was not as deep or as resonant as my own. But then… does one ever really hear the tone and timbre of one’s own voice?

“Dictating what?” I managed to ask.

The Other Wilkie waited. After a hundred of my heartbeats he said, “Do you wish to dictate the content of your dreams or the next part of The Moonstone ?”

I hesitated. This must be some sort of trap. If I did not offer to begin dictating the details and ceremonies of the Gods of the Black Lands, would the scarab begin tunnelling its way out through my skull or face? Would the last thing I ever saw or felt be the huge pincers cutting their way out of my cheek or eye?

“ The Moonstone, ” I said. “But I will write it myself.”

I was too weak to rise. A half-minute of struggling only got me propped awkwardly higher on my pillows. But the scarab did not assassinate me. Perhaps, I thought hopefully, it did not understand English.

“We should lock the door,” I whispered. “I’ll do it.” But again I did not have the strength to rise.

The Other Wilkie got up, shot the bolt home, and resumed his seat, his pencil poised. I saw that he wrote with his left hand. I was right-handed.

He closed the bolt and locked the door, part of my aching brain was trying to tell me. He… it… can affect things in the physical world.