Douglas Preston - The Book of the Dead

Bulke paused to catch his breath. A twilight gloom had descended. The face casts hung everywhere on the walls, white faces with their eyes closed, each one with a name attached. They all seemed to be Indians: Antelope Killer, Little Finger Nail, Two Clouds, Frost on Grass…

“Think all these are death masks?” asked Morris.

“Death masks? What do you mean, death masks?”

“You know. When you’re dead, they take a cast of your face.”

“I wouldn’t know. Say, how about another shot of Mr. Beam?”

Morris obligingly removed the flask. Bulke took a swig, passed it back.

“What’s that?” Morris asked, gesturing with the flask.

Bulke peered in the indicated direction. A wallet lay tossed in the corner, spread open, credit cards spilling out. He went over, picked it up.

“Shit, there must be two hundred bucks in here. What do we do?”

“Check out who it belongs to.”

“What does that matter? Probably one of the curators.” Bulke searched through, pulled out the driver’s license.

“Jay Mark Lipper,” he read, then looked at Morris. “Oh, shit. That’s the missing guy.”

Feeling a strange stickiness, he looked down at his hand. It was smeared with blood.

Bulke dropped the wallet with a jerk, then kicked it back into the corner with his foot. He felt abruptly nauseous. “Man,” he said in a high, strained voice. “Oh, man…”

“You think the killer dropped it?” Morris asked.

Bulke felt his heart thumping in his chest. He looked around at all the shadowy spaces, the shelves covered with the leering faces of the dead.

“We gotta call Manetti,” said Morris.

“Gimme a moment… Just gimme a moment here.” Bulke tried to think through a fog of surprise and rising fear. “Why didn’t we see this on the way in?”

“Maybe it wasn’t there.”

“So the killer’s up ahead.”

Morris hesitated. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

Bulke felt blood pounding in his temples. “If he’s in front of us, we’re trapped. There’s no other way out.”

Morris said nothing. His face looked yellow in the dim light. He pulled out his radio.

“Morris calling Central, Morris calling Central. Do you read?”

A steady hiss of static.

Bulke tried his radio, but the result was the same. “Jesus, this frigging museum is full of dead spots. You’d think with all the money they’ve spent on security, they’d put in a few more repeaters.”

“Let’s start moving. Maybe we’ll get reception in another room.” And Morris started forward.

“Not that way!” Bulke said. “He’s ahead of us, remember?”

“We don’t know that. Maybe we missed the wallet on the way in.”

Bulke looked down at his bloody hand, the nausea growing in his gut.

“We can’t just stay here,” Morris said.

Bulke nodded. “All right. But move slowly.”

It was now twilight in the attics, and Bulke slipped his flashlight out of its holster and flicked it on. They moved through the doorway to the next attic, Bulke flashing the light around. This space was crammed with elongated heads carved from black volcanic stone, packed so tightly that the two could just squeeze down the center.

“Try your radio,” Bulke said in a low voice.

Again, nothing.

The attic corridor took a ninety-degree angle into a tight warren of cubicle-like rooms: rusted metal shelves stacked with cardboard cartons, each carton overflowing with tiny glass boxes. Bulke shone his light over them. Each contained a huge black beetle.

As they reached the end of the third cubicle, a crash came from the darkness ahead of them, dying away in a rattle of falling glass.

Bulke jumped. “Crap! What was that?”

“I don’t know,” said Morris. His voice was trembling and strained.

“He’s ahead of us.”

As they waited, another crash came.

“Jesus, sounds like someone’s trashing the place.”

More shattering glass, followed by a bestial, inarticulate scream.

Bulke backed up, groping for his own radio. “Bulke calling Central! Do you read?”

“This is Central Security, ten-four.”

Crash! Another gargled scream.

“Jesus, we got a maniac up here! We’re trapped!”

“Your location, Bulke?” came the calm voice.

“The attics, building 12! Section 5, maybe 6. Someone’s up here, tearing up the place! We found the missing victim’s wallet, too. Lipper’s. What do we do?”

A hiss of static, the reply breaking up.

“I can’t read you!”

“… retreat… do not engage… back…”

“Retreat where? We’re trapped, didn’t you hear me?”

“… do not approach…”

Another deafening crash, closer this time. The stench of alcohol and dead specimens wafted back through the darkness. Bulke backed up, screaming into the radio. “Send up the cops! Get a SWAT team up here! We’re trapped!”

More static.

“Morris, try yours!”

When Morris didn’t answer, Bulke turned. The radio lay on the floor, and Morris was running like hell down the crooked passageway, away from the noise, disappearing into the gloom.

“Morris! Wait!” Bulke tried to ship the radio, dropped it instead, and heaved along after Morris, putting one huge slow thigh after the other, desperately trying to overcome the inertia of his enormous body. He could hear the tearing, smashing, screaming thing coming up behind him, fast.

“Wait! Morris!”

A shelf covered with specimen jars went over with a massive crash behind him, and there was the sudden ripping stench of alcohol and rotting fish.

“No!”

Bulke lumbered forward as awkwardly as a walrus, groaning with both fear and effort, his fleshy arms and chest jiggling with each footfall.

Another scream, feral and chillingly inhuman, tore the darkness just behind him. He turned but could see nothing in the darkness except the flash of metal, the dim blur of movement.

“Noooo!”

He tripped and fell, the flashlight hitting the floor and rolling away, the beam wobbling crazily off the rows of jars before spotlighting a gape-mouthed fish floating upside down in a jar. He struggled, clawing the floor, trying to rise, but the screaming thing fell upon him as swiftly as a bat. He rolled, swatting feebly at it, hearing the tearing of cloth and then feeling the sudden biting sting of his flesh being slashed.

“Noooooooo-!”

Nora sat at a small baize-covered table in an open vault of the Secure Area, waiting. She was surprised at how easy it had been to gain access-Menzies had been instrumental in helping her with the paperwork. The fact was that very few curators, even the top ones, were allowed access without jumping through all sorts of bureaucratic hoops. The Secure Area wasn’t just used for storing the most valuable and controversial collections-it was also where some of the museum’s most sensitive papers were kept. It was a mark of how important the Tomb of Senef was to the museum that she had gotten access so quickly-and after five o’clock, at that, even while the museum was in a state of high alert.

The archivist appeared from the gloomy file room carrying a yellowing folder, placed it in front of her. “Got it.”

“Great.”

“Sign here.”

“I’m expecting my colleague, Dr. Wicherly,” she said, signing the form and handing it back to the archivist.

“I have the paperwork for him all ready to go.”

“Thank you.”

The woman nodded. “I’ll lock you in now.”

The archivist shut the vault door, leaving Nora in silence. She stared at the slender file, feeling a prickle of curiosity. It was marked simply Tomb of Senef: correspondence, documents, 1933-35.

She opened it. The first item was a typewritten letter, on elaborate stationery with a gold and red embossing. It was written by the Bey of Bolbassa, and it must have been the one described in the newspaper articles Nora had seen, full of assertions that the tomb was cursed-an obvious ploy to get the tomb back for Egypt.