The Book of the Dead Read online

  The rain fell steadily, more than drizzle but less than a full shower. El-Kafir el-Sheikh shivered and jerked in his seat. The shower showed no signs of ceasing, and water began filling the front and rear footwells, so Gurbati announced—shouting, to be heard over the downpour—that he was stopping to put up the roof. But no sooner had he done so, and stepped out of the car, than the rain stopped completely.

  “Put the roof up anyway,” Suyuti instructed. “Now that we’ve stopped.”

  On cue, a wolf’s cry – loud, musical, mournfully sustained but at the same time intensely frightening – sounded in the white air. The fog made it impossible to know whether the beast was far away, or near by. “Get back in the car!” el-Akkad yelled; although Gurbati needed no prompting. He leapt back into the driving seat and started the engine.

  They bounced and jarred a half mile or so further on; but when the road curved right Gurbati drove straight on. The passengers all hallooed in fear, and the driver stomped on the brakes, but he wasn’t prompt enough to stop the car colliding with the broad black pillar of a roadside tree. “What are you playing at!” Suyuti yelled at him. “You stupid Dom– you’ve crashed us.”

  “The wheel is slippy and these gloves don’t grip,” Gurbati snapped back.

  “Take them off then,” Suyuti ordered him. “Oh, you’ve broken the engine! I just know you have!”

  Gurbati pulled the ignition lever, and the engine made a noise like a stick being run along a stretch of palings. But it caught, and came shudderingly to life. Gurbati backed the vehicle up, and hopped out to examine the front bumper. “Banana’d but not broken,” he announced. “Let’s get on. I’ve had enough of this place. Back to the hotel without further prevarication, I say.”

  “Gloves off,” Suyuti repeated.

  “Easy for you to insist on that,” Gurbati grumbled. “My hands will be carved from ice by the time we get back to the hotel.” But he did remove the gloves.

  He took hold of the steering wheel and slowly rolled the car forward and around, until they were back on the road. “Maybe slower but more sure?” he said. “More haste less speed, after all. All.” The car wasn’t moving. “All,” Gurbati said again, in a higher-pitched voice. “All! A-a-a-a-all!”

  “What on earth are you gabbling about?” Suyuti called. But Gurbati wasn’t speaking now; it was a cry of sharp pain, a howl. The vowel slid half an octave upwards, and Gurbati started thrashing in his seat, bucking and jerking.

  “What’s the matter!” boomed el-Akkad, who was seated beside him. “What? What?”

  “Steering!” Gurbati shrieked. “Wheel!”

  “His hands are seared to it!” el-Kafir el-Sheikh cried, leaning forward. “Help me –” He and el-Akkad took an arm each, and pulled hard, but it took several tugs before they could dislodge Gurbati’s hands, and they came away in a spray of blood. By then it was too late. Gurbati slumped back, and a horrible, splashy noise replaced his screaming. Red slime spewed down his front. He stopped twitching.

  The other three exited the car in a scrabble. The engine throbbed and throbbed, the gears in neutral. Because it seemed like the thing to do, el-Kafir el-Sheikh reached in and turned the motor off.

  For a long time the three of them stood there, silently aghast, in that whited-out, chill space. El-Akkad consulted his watch. “Two forty-five,” he noted. “How far do you think it is from here to the hotel?”

  Suyuti turned on him. “How can you be so callous?”

  “I’m not getting back in that automobile,” el-Akkad returned, hotly. “It is cursed. This whole evil landscape is cursed! I’m walking back to the hotel, and then I’m getting on the next boat back to civilisation.”

  “You never liked him,” Suyuti spat. “You were envious of him. He had twice the intellect you did. And now look at him!”

  “Envy?” scoffed el-Akkad. “Don’t be absurd.”

  “It happened,” el-Kafir el-Sheikh said in a small voice, “when he took his gloves off.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Suyuti snarled, turning on him. “Are you blaming me? Is it my fault?”

  “You organised the trip,” el-Akkad said, accusingly. “You brought us all here. Ultimately of course you’re to blame.”

  “I only meant,” a conciliatory el-Kafir el-Sheikh explained, “that it was only after his bare flesh touched the steering wheel, that…”

  But the other two were not listening. “You are a disgrace to archaeology!” Suyuti yelled.

  “At least I am an archaeologist! You’re just a jumped up pen-pushing civil servant!”

  “He was my friend – you never liked him. Petty professional jealousy!”

  “I’m going back to the hotel,” el-Akkad fumed. “And tomorrow I’m getting the boat and going home, whereupon I hope never to see you again.” He stomped off and was lost in the mist almost immediately.

  “Come back here!” Mohammed Suyuti shrieked. “We are not leaving Gurbati’s body to be devoured by wolves! We are just not – leaving – him – here!”

  His words were swallowed by the muffling fog. There was no reply. The whiteness and silence. El-Kafir el-Sheikh looked around. There was the car, the ground at his feet, and Suyuti’s form. But apart from that, a few black tree-trunks like spectral versions of themselves, everything was milky and blank. Suyuti hid his face in his hands.

  After a while, el-Kafir el-Sheikh asked: “I suppose we can’t trust the car.”

  “No,” agreed Suyuti.

  “And what about Gurbati? Shall we bury him?”

  “I don’t suppose we can,” Suyuti replied, into his palms. “I don’t suppose that’s practical, without shovels. Poor Hussein!” He dropped his hands to his sides and stood up straighter. “Let’s put the roof up, at any rate. Maybe that will keep the wild beasts off his body.”

  “Alright,” el-Kafir el-Sheikh said, and although he had a flinchy desire not to touch the automobile at all, he pulled his gloves tighter and helped Suyuti unpack the canvas roof from its rear compartment. It came out on unfolding metal struts, like an umbrella, and they pulled it to the front windshield, fixing it into place. “Do you want to say something?” el-Kafir el-Sheikh asked.

  “I’m no imam,” was Suyuti’s reply. “And anyway: we can have a proper funeral later. After we’ve got home and sorted this sorry business out. We’ll have servants come retrieve the car tomorrow.” He leaned through the opened door, and when he stood straight again he was holding a pistol. “Here,” he instructed el-Kafir el-Sheikh. “It’s no good to him any more, but you may need it.”

  “I haven’t so much as touched a firearm since national service,” el-Kafir el-Sheikh replied.

  “There are wolves in the woods,” was all Suyuti said, and he slammed the door shut. El-Kafir el-Sheikh slipped the pistol into his jacket pocket.

  They set off trudging along the road, walking through the silent and unchanging white. Dark trunks toyed with el-Kafir el-Sheikh’s peripheral vision, as if trying, and failing, to manifest into full presence only to fade into nothing again. The road squelched underfoot. His feet were soaked inside his shoes. His clothes, still wet, slapped and rubbed uncomfortable against his skin as he moved.

  “Mohammed,” he said, shortly. “What do you think happened?” When the other man did not reply, he pressed. “To Gurbati, I mean. Back there.”

  “He died,” Suyuti returned.

  “But how? And that native boy, back at the dig. I have never heard of a form of tubercular infection so rapid in its pathology.” He was interrupted by a long, mournful, bassoon-like howl – far away or nearer by, it was impossible to say. Both men stopped, and in the absence of their squelching footsteps everything was perfectly quiet. There was another long lupine call, and then nothing. “We’d better hurry along,” was Suyuti’s opinion.

  They picked up their speed.

  “There must be a scientific explanation,” el-Kafir el-Sheikh pressed. “I mean, must be! But what? El-Akkad said –”

  Suyuti broke
in with a scornful barking laugh. “I consider him no longer my friend and colleague,” he said. “I’ll not even say his name. He fell into superstitious nonsense almost as soon as he arrived on these shores. Magic and nonsense, and the worship of devils. I’ll tell you what’s wrong with these people? I’m no racist, Gamal; but they’re a primitive people, closer to apes than true men. Ancestor worship. Human sacrifice!” They squelched on for a while without talking. The road dipped down, and then climbed once again. There came a new drizzle, and soon enough it thickened into full rainfall.

  One consequence of this was that the fog – finally – began to dissolve and vanish. The trees all around them came into focus, like a photograph being developed. Soon enough the fog was gone, the whiteness filled in with a retreating vista of trees. It was a development that gladdened el-Kafir el-Sheikh’s heart. The rain thrummed onto his head, and water was dribbling from his beard, but he felt somehow cleaner with it.

  “Ah well,” he called to his companion. “One can only get so wet, and no wetter!”

  Suyuti looked back, over his shoulder, and if he didn’t exactly smile then at least his scowl shrank away. He nodded.

  Then he flew to the left, and rolled on the ground between the trees in a tangle of limbs and grey.

  It took el-Kafir el-Sheikh a slow moment to comprehend what was happening, and then another moment to act. His limbs responded only slow and sluggish to his mental command. Suyuti was yelling. He came up, struggling, and the wolf covered him again. A snarl, a snap, and Suyuti’s yells shifted to throttled gulps.

  E-Kafir el-Sheikh brought out from his jacket pocket Gurbati’s pistol, but slowly, and then he took aim. The beast had Suyuti by the throat. He could not afford to shoot at the creature’s head, for fear of hurting Suyuti. He took hold of his right wrist with his left hand. Then he stopped.

  Slowly he turned his head.

  A dozen feet away were four more wolves, and all of them were eyeing him.

  El-Kafir el-Sheikh felt his lungs contract. His heart felt stiffer as it pumped, even as it began to gallop behind his ribs. He could not take his eyes from the four wolves. He heard a succession of ripping sounds, from the direction in which Suyuti lay. It was the noise of tearing flesh, audible even over the sound of the rain. But there was no space in his head to think about that.

  His whole chest trembling with his accelerated heartbeat, el-Kafir el-Sheikh rotated his body, bringing his pistol around until it was aimed at the four other wolves. He was thinking: how many bullets in this gun? He was thinking: how hungry are these wolves?

  The four beasts stood, not snarling, barely even breathing; motionless in the curtaining rainfall. Can I scare them off with a gunshot? el-Kafir el-Sheikh asked himself. The rain would not help; it would muffle much of the bang. Still: what else could he do?

  He pointed the gun at one wolf. The beast’s coat was a light-grey streaked with black; its doggish eyes yellow as honey. El-Kafir el-Sheikh’s fingers refused to close on the trigger. He was frozen. “Are you hypnotising me, old wolf?” he said, his voice croaky. The rain was slapping the top of his head, and water running into his eyes. Words came to him, he wasn’t sure from where. “Your turn now,” he said. “My turn later.”

  He fired.

  The wolf made no sound; but it flinched back, its rear legs folding up. Then the creature fell over to the side. El-Kafir el-Sheikh pulled the trigger again, but nothing happened. He wasn’t thinking straight. He recocked the gun – a wolf was in mid-air, hanging right in front of him. El-Kafir el-Sheikh didn’t even have time to yell out in fear. It was as if the lines of rain were silver cords, suspending the bulky animal right there. He yanked the trigger, more on reflex than anything. The gun discharged a second time. The bullet went down the wolf’s throat, but its leap had enough momentum to carry it on. It collided with el-Kafir el-Sheikh, all wet pelt and seven-foot-long muscular body, more than enough to bowl him completely over. El-Kafir el-Sheikh rolled, came up on his knees, overbalanced and got up again. His heart was yammering and yammering. The wolf that had taken Suyuti had looked up in the middle of its feast. Of the other two, one was disappearing away, loping off between the trees. But one remained, its hunger more pressing than its fear. It lowered its head, keeping its yellow eyes on its prey.

  El-Kafir el-Sheikh got to his feet and held out his arm. Two from two shots was lucky, but perhaps the gods of Jutland were favouring him; and there was nothing he could do except try again. But he was shaking now, shaking with both cold and fear.

  He aimed as best he could and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.

  He looked at the gun. It had been beneath him when he rolled in the muddy turf. A chunk of brown earth had been packed into the barrel, and the firing pin was clogged with dirt. He looked up at the wolf, and back at the gun. With shivering fingers he tried to pick away some of the muddy matter, but it didn’t seem to want to come out of the weapon. Suyuti had a pistol too, he thought. But Suyuti’s was underneath a feeding wolf.

  He tried to remember what he knew about wolves. His nurse had read him fairy stories when he was a child, and many of those had been set in faraway forests filled with ogres and wolves. Could they climb trees? He felt the answer was yes; but then he found himself thinking – or was that bears?

  The beast in front of him put out a paw and took a step in his direction, testing the ground, waiting for the pistol’s report. El-Kafir el-Sheikh held out the useless gun. “Back off,” he called. “Shoo away.”

  The wolf took another step, closer still.

  El-Kafir el-Sheikh could feel his resolve beginning to give way. He would crack, and turn, and run; and then the wolf would be on him in moments. He could not outrun it, he knew that. But his heart was going so hard and fast it felt like it would burst inside him.

  He chucked the gun at the muzzle of the beast, and heard, or thought he heard, over the sound of the rain, a yelp of pain. But he wasn’t looking; he had turned and was sprinting away, a sort of struggling gallop over the soggy ground. “I don’t want to die,” he gasped. “Not to die – ” A forked tree loomed out of the falling water, and he scrabbled up the shallower of the two trunks, up to a bough. But when he looked back he saw that the wolf was following him. It leapt half way up the angled trunk, claws digging into the bark.

  El-Kafir el-Sheikh yelled, scrabbled along a bough and was pitched off when the branch broke. The ground below was ferny, but he fell hard onto his shoulder. A bolt of pain shot down his left arm. When he got himself upright again it hung at his side. Every fibre of his being was desperate to run, to get away. He took three steps, got his feet tangled in something in the undergrowth and went down again. Up again, breathing hard and heavy, he ran a dozen broad strides. Looking behind him he saw the wolf disentangling itself from the tree, and leaping down in an insolently easy motion. It came trotting after him.

  El-Kafir el-Sheikh ran on, looking back over his shoulder. He turned to face front again, but the tree was right there – he could not avoid the collision. He didn’t even have time to bring his hand up; he just ran smack into the trunk, recoiled and fell back, his face stinging.

  He got somehow to his feet, blinded and stunned. With his right hand he wiped water from his face. The wolf was standing directly in front of him, snarling, his teeth like rows of sharp horns in a mouth long as a canoe. This was it: death. But nothing happened. Only then, gasping and agonized by anticipation, did el-Kafir el-Sheikh look to his left.

  The Tollund mummy was standing there: large as life and twice as ugly. Water ran down his dark brown leathery skin, and his withered skeletal arms moved in slow circle. There was nobody holding him up. However this magic trick was being performed, it was not obvious. El-Kafir el-Sheikh took a step, unable to stop himself recoiling. But looking back at the wolf he could see the beast’s attentions had been distracted by this apparition. The beast began snarling.

  The rainfall was dying away.

  The wolf leapt and el-Kafir el-Sheikh shrieke
d, holding his right hand, the only one that worked, in front of his face. But the beast had jumped the mummy, not him. Through his fingers el-Kafir el-Sheikh saw the dead man hold out a dark brown arm – saw the wolf’s jaws snap on it – saw the hand come clean away. When the wolf landed and it was holding the mummy’s hand in its mouth.

  The rain had stopped. There was only the sound of water dripping from the trees all around, and the panting of the wolf. It wasn’t the wolf panting; it was el-Kafir el-Sheikh himself. Gasping, gasping. A strange clarity possessed the air. The Tollund mummy stood there, so vividly present it seemed almost to pass beyond real into some dreamlike state beyond it.

  The wolf coughed. It spat the mummified hand from his jaws, and it put its long snout down and it coughed again. It placed a paw over the top of its nose, a peculiar, strangely human gesture. Then it barked, or coughed, and leapt backwards. Red fluid gushed copiously from its open mouth. It danced and gambolled. Its grey fur darkened, and a black ooze slicked through its covering of hair. In moments it lay dead on its side.

  Breathing in, and out. The sound of el-Kafir el-Sheikh breathing in and out, like surf; and the drips and drips of water from the wet trees.

  The mummy was looking at him.

  “To touch you is poison,” el-Kafir el-Sheikh told the mummy. Sunlight, swept by the broom-end of a retreating cloud somewhere far above them, rolled through the trees. The water on the mummy’s skin gleamed like jewels.

  “Yes,” the creature replied. “I regret to say.” Its voice was creaky but strong. It spoke Masri with a thick northerner accent; but el-Kafir el-Sheikh could understand it perfectly well.

  “You killed the boy,” el-Kafir el-Sheikh said. “And Bille. And poor old Gurbati! And now you will kill me!”

  “I will not,” said the mummy. “Attend! Here is a word. Nanomachine.”

  How el-Kafir el-Sheikh’s left shoulder hurt! He breathed, breathed. “I have never heard such a word,” he said.

  “Of course not. But you must learn it.”