The Book of the Dead Read online

  With a dramatic sweep he lowered his arms, closing his eyes and mouth at the same time. The theatre went completely dark. Marjorie clapped along with the rest when the footlights came up, though the applause was more sporadic, hesitant than for the film. Everyone seemed more confounded than impressed by Zupan’s first trick.

  This proved to be the case for most of his act. Unlike many magicians, he used no equipment beyond a few handheld objects – a glass sphere threaded with silver glyphs that, when he held it above his head, glowed bright enough to cast shadows like a forest all over the walls and people, a flugelhorn that emitted mist that changed color with the tone, a tiny blue bottle full of something that turned to cobalt flame the moment he dripped it onto the stage with an eyedropper, a white pigeon in a bronze cage that he bewitched with a touch, and without a cry of pain submitted to having its beating heart plucked out and replaced with a candle, whereupon it flew about, shitting wax all over the audience. He spoke but little, making no claims beyond avowing the reality of what he showed them, and how instead of presenting illusions, he was sweeping them away.

  “Remarkable,” murmured Edgar, his eyes shining like a child’s. “I’ve never seen such magic – never knew anything like it could be done.”

  Marjorie, distracted, ceased applauding for a moment. “You haven’t seen his act before?” she asked, over the din. That seemed queer, if they were such good friends.

  Edgar never got a chance to answer. As he turned to face her, cloudy-eyed once again, there was a powerful crackle from the front of the theatre. Question forgotten, Marjorie gaped, heart pounding, to see Zupan suddenly standing atop a small pyramid that had not been on stage a moment before, dressed in the robe and headdress she’d thought she’d seen at the beginning of his act. The headdress was Egyptian, of the nemes-style made famous by Tutankhamun, except that Zupan’s looked to be of no real substance, comprised instead entirely of chryselephantine electricity. As were his robes, Marjorie realized, when as he began to descend the pyramid one bolt of crackling energy moved strangely, momentarily revealing a flash of flesh that left her blushing. She kept her eyes on his face after that. He was naked under the garment – if garment it was.

  “For my next trick,” he intoned, “I require a volunteer from the audience. A brave volunteer, I must specify – and one, hopefully, familiar with certain rites known to the ancient peoples of Egypt.”

  Marjorie dreaded his gaze as it raked over the audience. She knew that unless Zupan had been listening in to her conversation the previous evening, there was no way he could know her interest in matters Egyptian… but just the same, after his queer displays that evening, mind-reading didn’t seem so very unbelievable. Thus, when one of the tendrils of light jetted out from his heart and touched her on the forehead with a faint thrill, like static shock, Marjorie wasn’t entirely surprised – just alarmed.

  “Go,” hissed Edgar. He looked almost jealous, to her surprise. So did most of the audience. She stood, dazed, and begged the pardon of those sitting between her and the aisle, making her way toward the leftmost steps to the stage with trembling legs.

  Zupan greeted her solemnly, kissing her hand like he had the night before. She tried not to let her eyes slip downward, acutely aware of his nakedness now that they were so close.

  “Miss Olenthiste joins me in a sacred ritual tonight,” he said, holding her hand aloft as if declaring a simultaneous victory. “Tonight, my delightful assistant had no idea that journeying to the theatre would be her final trip. For tonight, she leaves us not by cab or by car – but by spirit journey down the Nile, to stand before Osiris and have her heart weighed against a feather. Are you ready for this, Miss Olenthiste? Are you ready to cross over?”

  Marjorie knew it was all an act, but all the same, his words put the spook on her. Still, the audience was clearly enjoying the spectacle, and she hated to disappoint them. She nodded, but was too nervous to speak.

  “Then come with me,” he said, and led her up the steps of the pyramid.

  Once they were atop the structure, she noticed that four cages had appeared on stage below them, each with a creature trapped inside. The three larger cages sat on the stage itself; the smallest, atop a pedestal table. It contained a hawk, and the other three she recognized as a baboon, a jackal, and – was it possible? A small man-like creature, pale-skinned as a mushroom and just as puffy. She knew then that Zupan’s trick would involve something having to do with mummification, as these creatures represented the four sons of Horus, the guardians of sacred human organs in traditional Egyptian canopic jars. Zupan confirmed her theory by explaining exactly this to the audience as he produced from nowhere the hilt of an ancient-looking knife.

  “Are you ready,” he murmured. The hairs on the back of her neck all stood up. “Are you sure?”

  “I think so,” she murmured back. “It’s just… just a trick, an illusion – right?”

  Zupan smiled at her, his eyes dark limpid pools, comforting and yet somehow satyric, mischievous. “Your belief makes it real,” he said. “Shall we give them a show?”

  Before she could answer, a blade of pure light erupted from Zupan’s dagger hilt, deadly sharp and yet ephemeral. Marjorie trembled but he steadied her, moving behind her and grasping her around the waist with his free hand. She was again very aware of his being largely nude, but had no time to think about it – he brandished the knife and then plunged it into the fleshy area just above her right hip, and then slid it upwards and along the area under her ribcage. She gasped; the sensation was not so much painful as peculiar. Peculiar, too, was that she felt anything at all. It was all supposed to be an illusion…

  Marjorie gasped. Something, some part of her, flopped onto Zupan’s waiting palms, translucent as a jellyfish and colored like afterbirth. He held it delicately in both hands as he began walking back down the steps of the pyramid. Marjorie, horrified and fascinated in equal measure, found she could not move, had no power to control her limbs whatsoever. This was for the best, however, as she could not actually faint when Zupan released the horrible pale man-thing and it accepted whatever Zupan had taken out of her into its sharp-toothed maw, chewing and swallowing each bite thoughtfully.

  The moment it finished its bizarre meal the thing froze and – in a flash of lightning, disappeared – only to be replaced with an alabaster canopic jar, the head of which was the exact likeness of the creature.

  Zupan cried out, “Thus, Imsety!” and bowed deeply… but the audience did not applaud. They looked, instead, revolted, and began to murmur and shift as he repeated the process three more times, with the baboon, jackal, and hawk consuming and being transformed by ghostly illusions of Marjorie’s lungs, stomach, and large intestine.

  “The ancient Egyptians knew that proper mummification cannot occur until the four organs are removed,” Zupan told the audience, as he walked backwards up the pyramid, creepily sure-footed. “Then the body may be wrapped, dried, so that the person may live forever in the afterlife once the ka – the soul – has returned to the body in the sight of Osiris. Therefore, my assistant is now ready for her final voyage. Aren’t you?”

  Marjorie found she could nod – and did. She was uncertain, but no harm had come to her so far. The only consequence of Zupan’s strange actions was her feeling slightly light-headed, but that might have been stage fright, being up so high, or realizing she was no longer frozen in place.

  Zupan was now holding held a large bolt of rough linen cloth and, kneeling, began wrapping her legs together at the ankles. Marjorie blushed at the indecency, but quickly enough he moved up her legs, binding them together, then wrapping her arms at her sides, her neck, and then her face.

  “You kept your heart, for your judgment,” he whispered in her ear, as he tucked the end of the binding somewhere behind her head. “Do not be afraid. If there is nothing you leave this world wanting, it will be lighter than Maat’s feather.”

  Marjorie briefly imagined the treasures waiting for her in Mrs. Qui
ldring’s collection – and how, when she told the tale of how she’d submitted to everything this night, even public mummification, the woman better cut her a deal. Then Marjorie felt a sensation like thunder sounded, screamed, and knew no more.

  She came to in Zupan’s dressing room. Someone had put a pillow behind her head and under her knees so she was resting comfortably on the couch. She felt fine. Really good, actually – euphoric, almost, like the time her grandmother had given her some Bayer Heroin for a toothache.

  Unfortunately, given the conversation occurring as she returned to consciousness, that sense of peace left her quickly. Before she opened her eyes she heard Zupan speaking in a louder tone than she had yet heard him use. He was talking to – arguing with, really – Edgar. Over her, of all things.

  “You just had to wow her like that, didn’t you?” Edgar sound really angry. “I… we… things were going well, even coming to your show and her knowing I’m a magician and… oh, bushwa!”

  “I don’t see why you are so put out,” replied Zupan, who, she noted with relief, had donned his suit once again. “I needed an assistant, so I chose your friend. I daresay she won’t forget this night any time soon, yes? But you are not pleased?”

  “No, I’m not pleased!”

  “That was not my intent.”

  “Well! Now all she’ll talk about when I take her back to Auntie’s is you,” said Edgar bitterly. “I liked her, you know. She was all right, for being frumpy and boring.”

  Any goodwill Marjorie had for Edgar disappeared, like one of Zupan’s tricks. Boring! The nerve! All she’d done was try to talk about him and his interests. So much for the rules in that one issue of McClure’s she’d read on how to behave on a date!

  “You’re no prize yourself,” she said, still reclining on the couch. When both gentlemen turned to her, surprised, she sat up, glaring at Edgar. “I don’t know who you think you are, but your company wasn’t the most pleasant, either.”

  Edgar sneered at her. “I know very well you weren’t ever interested in my company. Well, trust me, I’ll make sure you never so much as see that disgusting mummy you were using me to get at.” He turned to Zupan. “I was going to bring her back stage, you know, impress her, show her a good time… thanks a lot, you oily little bohunk. But you always had all the advantages. Manners and a three-letter mustache, that’s what woman want.”

  “Stay,” urged Zupan. “It is a misunderstanding.”

  Edgar looked to Marjorie. Marjorie shrugged, not really interested in prolonging his stay.

  “So long, Marjorie.” Edgar tossed two backstage passes onto the carpet. Zupan twitched as the door slammed behind him. Then he turned to Marjorie, and smiled shyly.

  “I am sorry.” He shrugged. “I did not realize, did not mean to upset him. And it turns out you had a stake in all this?”

  She nodded. “Yes, actually. His aunt has a mummified cat I wanted to look at. My library – well, the library in which I work – got a grant, was looking to purchase more Egyptian antiquities. Oh well.”

  Zupan sat carefully beside her on the couch. She tried not to think that just a while before – how long had it been? – they had been pressed close together, him naked. He really was very handsome; something about him was electric, magnetic, even when he wasn’t actively performing miracles.

  “Let’s go to their house,” he said. “I can explain what happened, apologize for my lack of understanding. I happen to have a bottle, a real bottle, of Glenmorangie, that I smuggled across when I came to America… that should help smooth things over, don’t you think?”

  Marjorie considered, then nodded her assent. However their plan turned out, Zupan’s company was proving to be immensely pleasant; his chivalric concern for her was endearing, if unnecessary. If only the dates her friends and family pushed her into were with this sort of enjoyable young man! She might actually contemplate matrimony if someone like Zupan made her an offer…

  She had no notion of what time it was when they left the theatre through the back, but it felt very late indeed. The streets were dark and empty, and there were so few cabs still on the road that they began walking toward the wealthier French Hill district. She began to sweat, much to her embarrassment. Not only had winter finally yielded to spring, spring had apparently had yielded to summer. Much to her relief, eventually they were able to hail a cab and arrived at Mrs. Quildring’s house – which, surprisingly, was entirely dark.

  “What do we do?” she asked. “Looks like they’ve gone to bed.”

  “No matter,” said Zupan. He leaped from the cab, handed some money to the driver, and opened her door, bowing her out onto the dark street.

  “How so?” Marjorie’s heels made a clicking sound as they connected with the pavement. The driver tipped his hat to her and then sped away. She wondered if she’d made the right choice, accepting Zupan’s help.

  “You wanted to see the mummified cat, did you not?” Zupan smiled at her, and she melted a little inside. “I am a magician – many things that are impossible for regular mortals are possible for me.”

  “On the stage, maybe.”

  Zupan looked at her. “You saw my performance tonight,” he said softly. “Do you believe my powers are purely illusion?”

  Marjorie, never one to believe in ghosts and magic, found she was unsure. Zupan was holding his hand toward her; after hesitating for a moment she took it, deciding to trust him.

  “I just want to look at it,” she whispered. “To see if it’s worth all this trouble, you know?”

  He nodded. “Then let us go look at it.”

  Despite Marjorie’s expectations, Zupan performed no further feats of magic to get them into Mrs. Quildring’s darkened home. Instead, he helped her hop the fence, led her around to the back door… and picked the lock.

  “What about burglar alarms?” asked Marjorie, as Zupan put his hand on the doorknob.

  “What about them?”

  “What if we set one off?”

  “I do not think we will,” he said. “This door feels fine.”

  He was right, though what Zupan meant by “feels fine” eluded Marjorie. The door opened without a creak, revealing the service area of Mrs. Quildring’s modest mansion. They made their way carefully through the kitchen, into the living room, and then down a carpeted stairwell. Zupan seemed to instinctively know where to go, which further baffled her, but when they came down in what was essentially a museum in miniature, and Zupan flipped on the lights, revealing all kinds of fascinating Egyptian artifacts, she forgot everything but the pure joy of discovery.

  “Amarna-period glassware,” she whispered over her shoulder. “Look at the little – hello?” Zupan was not behind her.

  “Marjorie.” She heard his low voice from a different corner of the room. “Come and see.”

  She padded over and found him standing before a glass case. He had an irresistibly warm, loving expression as he looked at the mummified creature inside. To her surprise, he put his arm around her waist, pulling her in closer as he gazed. She did not protest.

  The unfortunate animal had been mummified in the traditional way, limbs bound into a flat-bottomed cylinder, with a clay head atop. This specific cat-face was more feral-looking than most of the photographs Marjorie had seen over the years. It was beautiful in its own way, however, and certainly the best of the lot. The best she’d ever seen. A small label of yellowed cardstock was at its feet, saying only Mummified Cat, Allegedly Belonging to The Black Pharaoh.

  “It’s a lovely specimen,” whispered Marjorie, knowing she was making the understatement of the decade; knowing, too, that she would need to make up to Edgar, and to his aunt. If she could get this artifact at a good price, let alone a bargain, her reputation at the library as an employee of quality would be assured. “Definitely worth it.”

  “Oh, I know.” Zupan squeezed her playfully. “Mau-Mau was mine. Half wildcat, if not more. Such a little menace! Claws like you’ve never seen, and when she bit you, if you di
dn’t bleed, you’d bruise. When they tricked me into sleep, twenty-seven long centuries ago, she was sent with me. They did us that honor, at least. But when that man Quildring discovered my tomb, he separated us, keeping her but destroying me. He was a fool, but he knew he had not discovered the final resting place of Nehesy, but another Black Pharaoh entirely.”

  Marjorie, though intrigued by Zupan’s odd speech, was extremely discomfited by it. Zupan had seemed reasonable up until this point, but was now raving like a madman. No, not raving – chatting like a madman, which was even more disturbing.

  “He burned my corpse to ash in the belly of a steamship heading up the Nile,” continued Zupan. “He thought that would be the end of me. But I had been mummified with my mouth and eyes closed—so to speak—in order that my soul should not reunite with my body in the afterlife. When they burned me, however, my soul became free to find a new body, and live again.” He turned his head to meet Marjorie’s eyes. “But how could I live without Mau-Mau? She was the only creature in the world who was never afraid of me. Curious, awed, but never afraid. So I listened, biding my time in ways that seemed more or less interesting, until I heard her mentioned.”

  It was, Marjorie decided, time to go.

  Zupan’s speaking volume had increased over the course of his declamation, and so not only were they risking being overheard, he and the situation were becoming increasingly unstable. She inched away from him, hoping his grip around her waist would loosen, but instead he slid his hand down to her hipbone and clutched her there so hard she cried out.

  “Your part in this is not yet done,” he said. Marjorie gasped, the strange knife from his final trick back at the Coliseum was in his hand, glowing and jagged with writhing tendrils of light. He flipped it up, improbably grabbed it by its blade, and used it like a hammer to strike at the glass of the display case. It shattered loudly and rained down glass upon the carpet.