The Book of the Dead Read online

  “Sorry I’m late,” says the Wolfman when he turns up an hour later. He doesn’t apologize for anything else, but the Mummy doesn’t expect him to — the man cannot be held accountable for the crimes of the wolf. The Mummy firmly believes monsters must respect one another’s monstrosity; no one else will. What sets the Mummy’s teeth on edge is the creature floating down the hall beside the Wolfman.

  Her hair is dark as freshly turned gravedirt and her skin is the pale shade of moonlight on tombstones. Among the charms on her chain-laden neck is an ankh, but the Mummy isn’t fooled. Even with the crucifix hanging beside it he can recognize a vampire when he sees one. Probably one of those slutty Karnsteins, to go on the shortness of her skirt and the dark marks on the Wolfman’s neck from where she’s fed. She must be a powerful example of her wretched kind to openly wear the symbol of her enemy, but perhaps stacking the religious emblems together they cancel one another out.

  “That’s all right,” says the Mummy. “I was late as well. Just arrived.”

  The Vampire raises a crudely pierced eyebrow, and the Mummy’s stomach turns over in its canopic jar in the display case beside them. He remembers, too late, that this fiend was among the crowd around the bogman when he first arrived. She doesn’t say anything, though, doesn’t laugh at his petty deception, and the Mummy dares to hope that this godless creature believes the undead owe one another some measure of allegiance.

  “I’m Kelly.” The Vampire extends a black-nailed hand.

  “Shit, sorry,” says the Wolfman. “Kelly, Seth; Seth, Kelly. You two want to wander around?”

  “I was on time,” says the Vampire, squeezing the Mummy’s fingers as they shake hands. “So I’ve seen the sights. Besides, the film starts in an hour so we should get a move on. Nice meeting you, Seth.”

  “You want to see a film?” asks the Wolfman, failing to notice the Vampire’s frown. The Mummy is about to make up an excuse other than his empty wallet, when the Wolfman adds,“ My treat. It’s some American nasty, should be just your thing.”

  “It is nice to meet you as well…Kelly,” says the Mummy, speaking in the slow, stately fashion of Boris Karloff, which he thinks masks his accent. “It would be my pleasure.”

  It isn’t the Mummy’s pleasure at all, as it turns out, because the Wolfman gnaws on the Vampire’s face for the whole picture while the Mummy sits stiffly beside them, pretending not to notice.

  Later, in his room, the Mummy envisions a variation on the afternoon, one without the meddlesome Vampire. The Mummy tells himself that because in their former lives the Wolfman was actually a woman, and the daughter of the High Priest of Amun at that, their love makes sense, even in their current bodies. This belief in their shared past, their future destiny, doesn’t diminish his shame when he stashes the sticky mummy’s wrap of ill-used tissues at the bottom of his rubbish bin.

  Cleopatra’s Needle rises above the fog-brushed Thames, a trophy for the Englishmen, a reminder to the Mummy of all he has lost. Would his own people welcome him if he were to return, triumphantly bringing home a horde of stolen antiquities, or would they fear him as well, mistaking his honey-thick English for the genuine artefact instead of an artifice erected to deceive the British? Both the white and the brown fear him, he decides, both tremble at the abomination of his existence, but perhaps the latter have some small measure of respect for the trials he has undergone to be here, girded again in mortal flesh.

  “Oy, Arab!” The hostile voice cuts through the Mummy’s defences. He doesn’t turn to face the bully on the pavement, instead keeping his eyes on the hieroglyphs carved into the granite. “I’m talkin’ to you, son!”

  The Mummy can’t believe this is happening. Traffic flows by just beside the obelisk – is some maniac really going to attack him here, in public? Should he run?

  “Oy, Seth!” The Mummy turns, then, realizing it was the Vampire, disguising her voice. That utter bitch. He’s been forced to spend time with her on half a dozen occasions now, and it disappointed to see that yet another of his rare, friendly meet-ups with the Wolfman is to be crashed by this undead slag. “Thought you’d turned to stone for a minute there.”

  A pause while he coldly appraises her.

  “Just fucking with you, mate.” The Vampire smiles…nervously? Who can tell with the damned.

  “Yes,” says the Mummy. “You were just fucking with me, weren’t you?”

  “Uh, yeah? Whatever. So Rich…”

  “He’s late,” says the Mummy, looking up and down the riverwalk.

  “He’s not coming,” says the Vampire. “Called me to say.”

  “Oh.” The Mummy reminds himself that his is a waiting game, that being reunited with the oblivious reincarnation of an ancient lover is never easy. He should not feel disappointment the way mortals do. “Very well then, Ms. Webb. Good afternoon.”

  “What?” The Vampire cants her head, oil-black hair pooling on the shoulder of her black hoodie dress. “How’d you know my last name?”

  “It is my business to know such things,” says the Mummy, which is such a good line he can’t help but smile.

  To his frustration, the Vampire smiles back. She says, “You want to watch a film? My mum does the night shift, so she’ll be out of the house soon and we could just watch something at my place, save some dosh?”

  “Why?” The Mummy winces to hear his voice without its carefully cultivated accent, and he struggles to restore his illusions. Like a vision in a magic pool, he summons up the image of the Wolfman’s sneering face as he, Smith, and the rest of their gang upend his rucksack into a mud puddle. In his best Karloff, he says, “You will not make Richard jealous by inviting me into your home, Ms. Webb.”

  “Why?” The Vampire asks. “Because he’s an arsehole, or because you’re a bender?”

  “I’m not,” says the Mummy, but again he hears the weak protest of a boy instead of the imperious denial of a pharaoh. This Karnstein chippie is siphoning away at his powers, and he flees as fast as he can without breaking into a trot. She glides alongside him, her foundation-pallid cheeks split in toothy grin.

  “It was a joke, Seth,” she says. “You’ve never heard of those before?”

  “I did not find it amusing,” says the Mummy, slowing to a regular walk now that it’s clear she’ll just keep up unless he flat out runs from her. He wonders if he was being naïve about her motivations. What if instead of seeking to provoke the Wolfman by giving his friend attention, the Vampire actually wants to feed on him? What a dreadful possibility. She’ll be awfully disappointed when she gets a mouthful of dust.

  “Then why are you smiling? Never mind, come on,” she says, grabbing his hand. “Let’s skip the make believe and get straight to the real deal. You ever been to Abney Park?”

  “I am unfamiliar with this place,” says the Mummy as she leads him up through the Temple. “Are there gardens there?”

  “Plenty of pansies,” says the Vampire. “It’ll be right up your back passage.”

  After forty-five uncomfortable minutes sitting beside the Vampire on the bus, Abney Park turns out to be a sprawling, overgrown cemetery with a ruined chapel at its heart. The Mummy is delighted. This is the first time in his life that something truly appropriate has happened – usually the lurching Frankenstein’s Monsters just play rugby, the prowling werewolves steal your lunch money, and the ghouls haunt Camden, not churchyards. The only thing weirder than this girl genuinely liking to hang out in graveyards is all the older men loitering around the monuments, more than one of them licking his lips as the two young monsters pass. Cannibals, probably.

  They talk about horror movies, because that’s about all they’ve got in the way of a common interest. Other than the Wolfman.

  “Mummies are the worst,” says the Vampire as they wander through the paths, the nettle leaves dripping from the burned-off fog. “So boring. What’s good about mummies?”

  The Mummy is used to this icy reception to his kind. If people had any bloody respect for
mummies, there would be far fewer curses and risen pharaohs, wouldn’t there? Nevertheless, here among the mute dead he feels obliged to stick up for them. “Even now, we barely understand how they kept them so intact. Their arcane methods of preserving the dead were known only to a chosen few, and the last High Priest of Amun took this knowledge with him to the tomb. Even after studying all the mummies we’ve unearthed and stolen from Egypt, we can’t be sure of how they did it. The grave does not readily relinquish its secrets.”

  The Vampire appraises the Mummy, seemingly impressed, and the Mummy adds, “What could be cooler than that?”

  “You’re a proper nerd, Seth,” says the Vampire, which take a little of the air out of him. “Mummies are just zombies wrapped up in rags.”

  “In the newer versions, but not the original,” argues the Mummy. “In the Karloff picture, he’s only like that for the first scene. After that he makes himself look a normal man named Bey, Ardath Bey, and he stays that way for most of the film.”

  “Wow,” says the Vampire, “I didn’t think it was possible, but that sounds even duller than a rag zombie.”

  “So you haven’t seen it?”

  “I hate old films. If I wanted to take a nap I’d go to bed, not the cinema.”

  “Whuz it?” The Vampire rubs her eyes, sitting up on the couch. The Mummy had to sit through two separate nights of her Hammer Horrors before she’d consent to a screening of his favourite film, and even then only on the condition that they first watch one of the later, inferior mummy movies. The Vampire has a thing for Christopher Lee, because of course she does. The Wolfman hasn’t joined them for any of the movie nights, as he and the Vampire seem to be on the outs. The Mummy hasn’t pried for a reason, as she seems disinclined to discuss the matter, and the Wolfman has been spending more and more time with Smith and his gang. “Izzit over?”

  “No, I paused it so you could watch the thrilling conclusion,” says the Mummy, then smiles at her alarm. “Joking, Ms. Webb. Your ordeal is at an end.”

  “So they got him, right? Stopped him from getting on the girl.”

  “Yes,” says the Mummy sadly. “They always do.”

  “And this is your favourite film?” She’s sitting up a bit straighter now, and wipes some drool from her lips. “Like, ever?”

  “I like it,” says the Mummy defensively.

  “The movie about an evil Egyptian trying to steal a stupid girl from her boyfriend.”

  “Uh…” The Mummy scoots a little further away from the Vampire, worried she might try to kiss him or something.

  “So isn’t the whole thing about how Egyptians are scary monsters, and you should keep them away from your good Englishwomen, lest they fall under the sultry spell of the Arabs?

  “Uh…”

  “Kinda racist, innit?”

  “No! I mean…” The Mummy is even less comfortable than if she had tried to put the moves on him. The R-word always makes gives him the fidgets. “The monster always loses, even your Count Deep-voice. That’s just how it works, and then they come back. And Egyptians aren’t Arabs. Well, I mean, a lot of us are, of course, but mummies aren’t Arabs. They’re Egyptians. I mean…”

  What the Mummy means is that this was the first film he ever saw where an Egyptian, albeit one played by an Englishman, was the whole point of the movie. The first time he could look at a scratchy picture and see himself, or some part of himself, anyway. Certainly not the best part, but anything is better than absence.

  Then there is that delicious allusion to Karloff’s Imhotep spending a full decade living a mortal life in Cairo, in between when he is raised from the dead by an English archeologist and when he is undone by Isis herself; in the end, it is the good of Egypt that puts down the bad, but before that, before his ambitions undo him, the Mummy has ten precious years to himself, free from those who ruin him.

  But the Mummy cannot articulate any of this; not yet, anyway, in the cluttered bedroom of one of his only friends. Years later, when he’s studying Postcolonialism at Cambridge, well, maybe then he will learn to untangle the way this film has taken root in his heart, and also incorporate the Vampire’s sleepy critique. Even now, though, her complaint strikes him as so obvious as to be embarrassing, and he leaves before she can make him feel any worse for liking a stupid film. Age will bring wisdom, as it sometimes does, but even when it does the Mummy will only be able to parse through Edward Said’s Orientalism with one eye, for the other is about to be bottled out.

  As the Mummy leaves the Vampire’s flat, the Wolfman leaps from the shadows with a howl of “Paki!” He swings the bottle that transformed his misguided jealousy into a violent rage. It doesn’t sound like breaking bottles do in the movies when it shatters against its target. The Mummy doesn’t fall back, but sways in place, limbs stiff as any of his cinematic ilk. His first thought is that the bottle was full and he is soaked in cheap alcohol, alcohol that his parents will think he has been drinking. This terrifies the Mummy, and so it is something of a relief when he realizes the warm liquid is his own blood.

  “Fucking hell!” Smith crows from behind the Wolfman, the rest of the gang clustered close for a better look under the flickering streetlight. “That’s killing the Arab, bruv!”

  “I’m sorry,” the Mummy says, or tries to, anyway. He is concussed, and his sliced lip opens up as he mouths the words at the only other friend he has in the world besides the Vampire. “Just… a film.”

  Then the Mummy collapses, the Wolfman screams, his pack flees, and lights flick on in the block of flats.

  The Mummy smiles as he feels the bandages on his face, but the Vampire looks like she’s about to cry again. He asked his parents to wait outside while he talks to her, and while they frowned about it they obliged. Despite his protests they still hold the innocent Vampire accountable, but the Mummy knows this is entirely his fault, not hers.

  “We’ll fix them,” she assures him, leaning close. “Got it all sussed how to fix the lot, especially Rich.”

  “Nah,” says the Mummy, annoyed that with the stitches in his lip and cheek he cannot do a proper Karloff. “I’m okay. It’s fine.”

  “The fuck it is,” she hisses, furious. “We’re coming for those ASBO cunts.”

  “Silver bullets.” The Mummy giggles, still a little high from the painkillers.

  “The normal kind,” says the Vampire, leaning in even closer. “You ask around your mosque and get some guns, I’ll take care of the rest.”

  The Mummy is stunned. “…Kelly, I don’t –“

  “Jesus, mate, give me a little credit!” The Vampire’s smile is watery. “Someday we’ll have us a long talk about what a joke is. I’m talking about court, Seth. I got filled in by my neighbours and told the copper they sent round that I was looking out the window and saw everything. Star witness for a hate crime. Attempted murder. Rich is going down so hard. His mates, too, with any luck – accomplices.”

  “No,” the Mummy shakes his head. “No, it was just… I shouldn’t have… I…”

  “You didn’t do anything!” The Vampire is livid, which the Mummy thinks is appropriate. “Those… bastards are the ones who deserve this, not you. Heartless fucking arseholes.”

  The Mummy realizes that tears are only running down one of his cheeks. Heartless. He wants to tell the Vampire that the reason mummies were buried with their hearts intact, instead of removed to canopic jars along with the bulk of their organs, is that the soul resides there, and must be present for when Anubis weighs their deeds against the Feather of Truth. There is no such thing as a heartless man, any more than there is a heartless mummy.

  Try lecturing a vampire about matters of the heart, though.

  A week later, an eye-patch bedecked Seth Rasul is let out of hospital and strides from his would-be tomb not as a bandaged mummy, but a living man once more. Six months later, Kelly buys him a fez for his birthday just like the one Karloff wore, and tries to stay awake for the duration of The Mummy. She almost makes it, too.


  Old Souls

  David Thomas Moore

  “It’s weird. I honestly never talk about this sort of stuff, even with my friends.”

  She smiles at me, vulnerably, warmly, with a hint of a frown, genuine confusion in her eyes.

  It’s getting late. The sun’s setting, somewhere out of sight behind the shops and terraces of whatever backwoods town it is I’ve got stuck in. The sky’s deepening to that rich lavender colour it holds for maybe a quarter of an hour before the evening truly sets in. A few of the cars drifting past every few minutes now have their lights on. There’s the beginning of a chill in the air; she’s started to hunch her shoulders, and has taken to reflexively tugging her cardigan tighter every few minutes. I don’t think she’s even noticed, yet.

  The table outside the coffee shop – Costa, AMT, something like that; the first place we found outside the train station – is cluttered with the detritus of a wasted afternoon. Wide cups holding drying teabags and the foamy dregs of lattes. An overflowing ashtray, and an empty Silk Cut packet. A battered old book that was too big to keep in my pocket. The scarf she took off when the sun was still out and has, for the moment, forgotten. Her notebook. Plates bearing the crumbs of the sandwiches we ordered an hour or so ago, when her stomach audibly gurgled. She laughed, then, easily and happily, and suggested, since we were showing no signs of leaving, that we get lunch. It wasn’t a question, anxiously feeling out my intentions – you do want to stay, right? – but an admission of something we both knew.

  That’s over-romanticising a bit. She’s bold, self-assured, but I’d be lying if I said there was no insecurity in her at all. She knows she wants to stay here with me, knows I want to stay in turn, but she doesn’t know why – doesn’t understand – and so she doesn’t quite trust it. She’s waiting to wake up from a dream. It would be more honest to say she’s enjoying the moment and choosing to take me at face value, than that she doesn’t feel any uncertainty at all.