Authors: Jonah Hewitt
Only a living human soul was complete. The
Ka
departed at death and remained only in the land of the living. The light and shadow could only be at peace inside the soul of a living human being. Once dead, the heart or light had to depart for the afterlife. Usually the
Ba
and
Akh
came with it, but that was not mandatory. The other pieces might end up anywhere in a variety of unpleasant combinations. A
Ba
without an
Akh
would become a mindless shade in the afterlife. A
Ba
without his
Akh
in the land of the living became a ghost or a specter.
The shadow was a powerful, ravenous force: amorphous, unpredictable and consuming. Imps were made of the disembodied shadows of souls that long ago consumed their other, better parts. The shadow could re-animate the once-living body, making it undead. Nephys assumed the souls of necromancers returned the same way – by pouring their shadows and
Akhs
into the re-animated body. There were dozens of types of undead: blood-drinkers and
ka
-stealers, revenants, mummies and skeletons. Nephys shuddered. Shades were scary enough. He hated to think of what it might be like to meet up with any of the others, but then he was already dead. What could they do to him?
The Herald led him across the antechamber to another identical door with the now-familiar triangle overhead. This one actually had a solid door of blackened bronze that opened unbidden when the Herald came near. Nephys followed and was pleased to see that this room was empty and mercifully free of morbid inhabitants. It was impossibly tall and even though the walls were lined with torches of blue flame, Nephys couldn’t make out the ceiling. On the opposite side was another door of identical bronze. Unlike the outside halls, which were transparent and crystalline, both the doors and the ceiling above were impenetrable to the Death Sight. Nephys realized he was standing and gaping at the architecture and not following so he rushed to catch up. The Herald walked to the center of the rectangular room and abruptly stopped. Nephys nearly ran into him. The Herald turned around and looked at him with the empty space above the stub of a nose he still had left. There on his chest was the usual triangle, but below it was the
Ka
sign with outstretched arms, burning with a faint blue outline.
That
was definitely not there before. Only now did Nephys realize that the Herald must be one of the nameless ones too.
Nephys swallowed hard.
“Wait here,” The Herald said once. This was the first time Nephys had heard the Herald speak and he sincerely hoped it would be the last. It was somehow quiet yet shook him like a thunderclap immediately overhead. He felt it more in his stomach than in his ears and it made his bones and teeth ache and his skin crawl. He couldn’t imagine that even the voice of Death himself could be more frightening. No wonder he was chosen to be Herald of Death. Who could ignore that?! When Nephys recovered from the unavoidable cowering the words had forced him to assume, the Herald grimaced at him, huffed and then brushed by him and walked towards the doors they had just entered. Nephys watched him go as they opened magically before him and closed silently behind him.
Nephys was alone. There was a dawning realization that he must be just one door away from the Great Master. He was numb from fear. He immediately scanned the room looking for an exit in the delusion that he could make a run for it. When it became obvious that that was madness he began second-guessing all the decisions he had made in the last two days: going out to rescue Maggie, cracking jokes at Falco, pretending not to see the stone. He ran them over in his mind wondering whether if he had just decided differently he wouldn’t be here now, but that was worthless too. He could no more change the past than he could escape this room. He turned to look back and forth at the door behind and the door ahead. As he felt the panic start to consume him he felt his throat, the gash seemed larger and more ragged than before. If the presence of a shade could burn a soul, how much more would the presence of Death consume him?
The colorless world of the Death Sight was overpowering him, and it wasn’t doing him much good in this room somehow immune to its effects. So he decided to open his natural eyes. He wanted to see with them one last time. Instantly he was plunged back into darkness. The torches only seemed to give light to those using the Death Sight. Why would they need to do anything else? But now as his inevitable doom descended on him he found some measure of calm and took comfort in the sense of disembodiment that existed in this place.
Just then a narrow sliver of light appeared in front of him. It was bright and odd. It wasn’t blue or grey like everywhere else in Limbo. Instead it glowed amber and gold and the stream of light was full of dust. He had to shield his eyes from it at first, but as they grew accustomed to it, he saw the narrow sliver turn into a tall, narrow rectangle that progressively got wider. A golden pathway of light flooded over him. A dry breeze rolled forward, acrid and tainted with the smell of dust and rot. It was heavy and sickly sweet, like the myrrh, beeswax and spices used to embalm the mummies in his own land. It suddenly dawned on him what he was seeing. It was the other door! It was opening!! He instantly threw himself on his knees, dropping his reed pen case clattering to the floor. He bent his forehead to the ground placing both palms on the smooth floor and attempted to adopt the most reverential posture he could. He then tensed his body, like a person tightening against a blow. Nephys was certain he was destined for destruction, but the blow never came. Slowly as time passed, he lifted his head a little and risked a peek.
The wide door had opened to reveal a room full of lights. Thousands of candles, lamps and lanterns lined the walls, in endless profusion and variety, flooding the innermost chamber with a warm amber glow. He certainly had not expected that. In the center of the room were two figures illuminated by the radiant flickering amber light: one, was a figure of a man, sitting cross-legged on the floor in a posture of relative calm like a student before the other figure, a vast, gigantic beast of unfathomable size and shape. Nephys’ eyes shot back to the floor in terror. It was Death.
The living imagined Death in many forms. Some imagined him as a skeleton with a scythe and an hourglass, others as a corpse, and still others as a woman with long hair, but they were all wrong. None imagined him as he really was. Death was a monster, a great, terrible amalgamation of hideous forms and mismatched parts, gigantic and terrible. Nephys had heard stories of course, but there was an enormous difference between hearing rumors and seeing it firsthand. He trembled on the floor, too terrified to look again. He knew it was impossible, but it felt as if beads of cold sweat were rolling down his face and neck. He felt paralyzed, but inexorably, as seconds ticked by, he couldn’t control the urge to look once more. He looked up from his crouching position.
It was a terrifying sight. It was a gargantuan beast, bigger than the stone heads or the door to the Temple itself. Nephys wondered how it could even leave the room it seemed to fill. It was covered by broad drapes and ragged shrouds that hung nearly to the floor. These concealed its form, but not its sheer mass. Despite these coverings Nephys could tell that it was misshapen and oddly formed. Many limbs and appendages moved about under the drapery creating the impression of several great beasts writhing over each other under the coverings. Beneath the trailing edges of the shroud one could see the many clawed and monstrous feet of the monster. Here was an iron cloven foot like an ox’s hoof. There was a gray, giant paw like a lion, only many times larger. A vulture’s taloned toes scratched at the pavement. The edge of an enormous, black wing grazed the ground nearby. There were more than a dozen feet in all. Underneath the shroud the feet were constantly moving, making it nearly impossible to get a sense of the monster’s true form. All of this was so incongruous it was nearly impossible to imagine how these parts connected together to form a single creature.
There was an arching bulge in the draperies on the side closest to the sitting man that must have covered the creature’s head and neck. From where he was watching, Nephys could see the light from the candles shining through the linens covering its head. The backlit silhouette revealed an equally monstrous head of diverse shape. It was horned like an ox and maned like a lion, with a ruff like a griffin vulture. This strange profile at times looked like a vulture’s rapacious beak, and at others times like a man’s face.
But even as he watched the Great Master, transfixed, Nephys noticed something even stranger about the great beast than its shape or form. The wing was haggard and limp, the feathers gray and dull and several battered and threadbare giant feathers littered the floor beneath it. The lion’s paw was ashen and weathered as if from great age, its claws dull or in some cases, snapped off. The iron hooves were cracked and broken in several places, like a neglected and ancient plow ox, and the aged vulture’s foot scraped desperately on the floor, scrambling to gain a stable foothold like a sickened animal. It drew in great, rasping breaths with difficulty only to cough them back out. The closer he looked, the more improbable it seemed, but the creature stumbled and staggered, and shuddered like a frail and sick man, uncertain of its step or balance. Despite its size and many limbs, it seemed brittle, fragile, tired and impossibly old. This of all the characteristics of the Great Master was the most terrifying
and
puzzling.
Before Nephys had a chance to consider what this all meant the Great Master’s whole body began to shake from a racking cough that shook the entire chamber. The lanterns and candles flickered tremulously in the exhaust of its hacking, wheezing breath. It arched its great neck upward as if struggling for breath, its feet clawing away desperately on the floor. The man instantly stood up and raised his arms to placate the beast, as if it were only a rearing animal he was trying to calm and not the Great Master, but the flailing and struggling for breath continued.
The candles began to sputter and fade until the room was nearly dark. Nephys felt something terrible pull on his insides. It was like the tug on his soul when he had angry thoughts, only worse many times. Instead of pulling him in the direction of the Pits of Punishment, it was pulling him everywhere and nowhere. It was pulling him apart. He gasped for breath. Then slowly, slowly, the coughing fit subsided. Nephys could breathe again. He looked up. The candles had stopped flickering and began to burn steadily once more. The man stroked the neck of the great beast like he was stroking the neck of a favorite old horse that was very near the end of its life. The Great Master was lying on the floor, its chest heaving slowly as it composed itself. Suddenly, the face of the man turned towards him, followed by the shrouded head of Death himself.
Nephys forced his eyes to the floor and trembled. Even though he had thought he had long ago lost all faith he couldn’t help but call on the names of the gods of the black land, “Anubis! Isis! Osiris! Gods of the Underworld! Hear me!” he frantically whispered. He heard the clattering of a dozen clawed and horny feet scrape across the floor as the monster struggled to get up. It was coming for him. “Horus farsighted! Savior! Protector! Protect me! Amun, Hidden One, All-Father! Spare me!” He considered calling out to the gods of the Greeks and Romans too, and his Uncle’s favorite, Mithras, but then the amber light faded to a narrow sliver and then disappeared entirely. Then he heard the sound of footsteps. Not clawed, gigantic feet but simple sandals on stone. The door had closed. The Great Master had not come. The sound of the footsteps came closer slowly until Nephys saw the toes of simple silver Egyptian sandals stop directly in front of him.
“Arise, Nefer,” the voice spoke in his own language with a dialect older than even the one his grandmother used. The speaker’s voice was dead, calm and toneless, and strangely he had used the more ancient form of Nephys’ name. “Arise Nefer. We have been expecting you.”
Nephys slowly looked up. Before him was a tall man wearing a silver visor like a hawk’s beak over his eyes. He was dressed as one of Nephys’ own countrymen, but in a more ancient style.
“I am the Grand Chamberlain, High Vizier and Chief Lieutenant, Second only to the Great Master, Lord of all his Servants and High Priest of all his Mysteries.”
Nephys gulped. The man reiterated these titles without a trace of vanity and spoke them as if they were nothing more than a grocery list that had to be gotten out of the way before he could get on to business. He said the next thing just as monotonously, but it fell like thunder on Nephys’ ears.
“And I pray that you can help us.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
A Shirt
“What on earth are you two mouth-breathers
doing
?” Schuyler’s exasperated voice came unexpectedly from behind Miles. Miles and Tim turned around slowly only to see Schuyler leaning against a lamppost nonchalantly. He had snuck up on them without them even noticing while they were hiding in the bushes across the street from the hospital. He was looking at them as contemptuously as if they were a pile of dog crap stuck to his shoe.
“What does it look like were doing?! We’re hiding!!” Tim whispered back hoarsely.
Schuyler put his face in his hands and massaged his temples as if he was trying to forestall the onset of a stroke. “You two don’t have the brains God gave a
doorstop
,” he said at last. Then he dropped his hands and walked over to them shaking his head in subdued rage.
“NO! You are
not
hiding. You’re crouching in the bushes like a couple of low-rent peeping toms!
That’s
what you’re doing.”
“Well, you’re the one who told us to hide and wait for you!!” Miles shot back.
“I did not tell you to hide. I told you to stay out of sight!”
“So that’s what we did!!”
“Yeah, but not like THIS!” After yelling at them, Schuyler tried to calm himself. He closed his eyes, gritted his teeth and held out his trembling hands as if he were wringing the thick neck of some invisible person.
“How. In. The. Heck!! Did you survive this long as a vampire, Miles?!!” Schuyler’s frustration was palpable. “Seriously!!! How did you get this far without learning the FIRST THING about being a vampire!! You do NOT hide in bushes!! People who hide in bushes attract suspicion. Muggers and perverts hide in bushes!! Not vampires!!”
“So where were we supposed to hide?” Tim asked innocently.
“You hide in plain sight, morons!! You blend in!!” Schuyler could tell he wasn’t getting through to them, so he went over to Miles’ shoulder, leaned over and pointed down the street. “Look, you stand at the bus stop where people assume you’re waiting for a bus,
OR
, you find a park bench and take a seat and fake a conversation like ordinary people,
OR
, you stand on the street corner opposite a pub or a coffee shop where people figure you just came out and are waiting for a cab,
OR
, you stand out in front of the hospital doors where people assume you’re on a cigarette break!”
Schuyler pointed out each of these locations in turn as he spoke. Now that he pointed them out, Miles had to admit they all seemed like far more obvious and plausible choices than bent over in a patch of scraggly park bushes, but Schuyler wasn’t finished.
“But whatever you do…” Schuyler went on, “You don’t hide in a bush under a streetlamp with your butts hanging out in full view of a jogging path!!”
Miles and Tim craned their necks behind them to see the clearly marked jogging path. Neither of them had seen it before, and Miles hadn’t even thought about the streetlamp! They exchanged embarrassed looks. Then they slowly stood up, shuffled their feet and stuck their hands in their pockets like children caught stealing candy. After a minute with Schuyler’s flared nostrils indignantly staring them down, Tim spoke,
“Dude, it was Miles’ idea.”
Miles rolled his eyes. It was bad enough that Schuyler snuck up on them unnoticed; it was another to be ratted out by a lousy Renfield. Miles punched Tim in the arm.
“Ouch!” Tim nearly fell over. “Remember what Hokharty said!! I’m not supposed to be harmed!!” Tim rubbed the offended arm and launched an accusing glance at Miles.
“Yeah, well don go an’ make me regret tellin’ ya Hokharty said that!” Miles shot back.
“Miles, don’t touch Tim,” Schuyler intervened.
“Why are ya takin’
his
side?!”
“Because he’s a lousy
Renfield
and YOU’RE the vampire! You should know better.”
“Thank you!!” Tim said. Then thinking it over, “Hey, wait…”
“If you girls are
finished?!
” Schuyler interrupted them. He was staring upwards as if wishing he could be anywhere else. “We have some work to do.” He trailed off and started walking off towards a darker section of the park along the riverfront. Miles and Tim elbowed for position for a moment before following sheepishly like a couple of whipped puppies.
Miles put his hands into the pockets of his denim jacket and stared at his shoes dejectedly as Schuyler led them to a less conspicuous spot away from the street opposite the hospital and closer towards the riverbank. It had been a miserable trip. The first half had been endless arguments of the route and the music selection, but amazingly, the second half was worse. Somehow, Tim and Sky had bonded over their favorite 70’s music. It turned out Schuyler didn’t hate everything about the 70’s after all. It started with the Eagles and then eventually ranged to the Steve Miller Band and some early Cars, but Miles never would have pegged Schuyler as an Earth, Wind and Fire guy. Along the way the two talked cars, music and even women. Listening to Tim earnestly seeking Sky’s sage advice on romance had to be lowlight of the trip.
Miles tried to point out to Tim the fallacies of Sky’s approach to women. “How desperate do you have to be to take advice from a bloodsucker?” or “Hey mate, you do know that Sky treats his women like meat…LITERALLY!” or “Isn’t this a bit like asking advice on roadkill from a vulture?” When that didn’t work, Miles tried a more subtle approach, “Excuse me, Miss, but me fangs seem to have gotten stuck in your neck” or “Pardon me, but Miss, but would you happen to be AB negative? Because O+ is a bit too common for me.” But all of Miles’ interjections from the backseat were ignored.
Thankfully the arguments returned once they hit the outskirts of Harrisburg. Tim was certain he knew right were the hospital was until he got them lost on the wrong side of the river. After the first fifteen minutes of arguing, Miles had to physically lie down in the backseat of the Impala and pull his jeans jacket up over his head to shut out the bickering. While the two sorted out the directions something really odd had happened though. Miles dozed off.
Vampires didn’t sleep, not really, but you could fade off a bit. The last time Miles remembered fading off like that was on a train outside Philly back in the thirties, but that wasn’t the oddest bit. Miles had actually
dreamed
, though it was more of a nightmare really. He saw some strange, pig-like thing that looked like it had been speared with three or four old flutes. Then there was a boy with a shaved head,
and
he was screaming and clawing his way through white rapids, or fog or something, Miles couldn’t tell. Then he saw what looked like big-eyed kittens in wimples and crowns. Whatever the heck that meant. Dreams were crazy. Then he saw the dirty face of a boy in a cap. The boy’s face was stern and cold and lifeless and he was doing yo-yo tricks of all things. His face morphed into the face of a beautiful woman with grey eyes and long hair. Just as that face lunged at him, Schuyler shook him awake. The three had finally arrived at the hospital. Tim parked down the street a block or two from the hospital and Sky went in to check things out and told them to stay out of sight. That’s when he and Tim had made the poor decision to hide in the bushes where Schuyler had found them.
Now following Sky down the short distance to the river’s edge, Miles scratched the back of his head and tried to remember the dream that was already disappearing from his memory. It seemed like he had seen the boy before, but he couldn’t remember where. Schuyler led them to the edge of the water. The top floors of the hospital hi-rise could still be seen above the trees in the park, but they were out of view of the street and the lobby entrance. Comfortable that they were now safely out of sight; Schuyler began his report.
“Alright, dudes, here’s the deal…she’s here.”
“You found her?!” Tim seemed surprised.
“Yeah, her room’s on the fourth floor, she’s fine physically, but they are worried she’s gone a little coo-coo.” Schuyler crossed his eyes and spun an index finger next to his temple.
“Coo-coo?” Tim asked.
“Yeah, apparently she ran into traffic this morning. They’re afraid she’s a little shell-shocked since the accident, and they’ve been keeping her under a tight watch ever since then.”
“Accident?” Miles asked, but before he got an answer, Tim interjected a question of his own.
“And you found this out…how?”
“The receptionist told me the whole story.”
“And she just told confidential patient information to a complete stranger who walked in off the street…
because
?” asked Tim.
“Dude…she’s a woman and…it’s
me
,” Schuyler smiled.
Miles sighed. This was Sky’s answer to everything. How a shirtless seventeen-year-old in a silk blazer with a fake plastic lollipop managed to get the most private information from unsuspecting women was a complete mystery to Miles, but he had seen him do it enough times to stop questioning it.
Schuyler went on, “Besides, she’s been pestered all day long by this orderly who’s been hitting on her and I think she was desperate to get rid of him. That’s when I came in.” Sky ran his fingers through his hair in a gesture of triumph.
“Sweet,” said Tim in admiration.
“I know,” Sky said affirmatively, basking in Tim’s misplaced respect.
After a few seconds, Miles had to jar the two out of this silent reverie. “So what now? An’ow are we supposed to convince ‘er to come with us?!” Miles said, exasperated.
“So
now
we have to find a way to talk to her,” Schuyler replied as if the matter were obvious.
“But you said she’s always bein’ watched! ‘ow do we…” Miles began, but Tim jumped in.
“Look, Hokharty left me in charge and he said we can’t just grab her, so what do we do? We need to get her alone. We need a plan.”
“
No.
What we need is an
introduction
,” Schuyler said emphatically, gesturing with the lollipop like it was a conductor’s baton. “Right now she’s in the coffee shop with some chick, probably a fancy lawyer from corporate judging from the expensive shoes.
Manolos
. Very nice.” You could always count on Sky to notice things like that. “BUT, they were heading for the gift shop when I left, so the situation’s perfect.” Sky stuck the lollipop in his mouth and fingered the stick. This always meant he was scheming.
Miles’ eyes widened. “Perfect? She’s never alone!! ‘ow is the bloody situation perfect?!”
Schuyler smiled and explained, “Hospital gift shop, public space, lots of traffic, perfect opportunity for two strangers to make a connection.” Schuyler raised his eyebrows at Miles and twirled the lollipop in his mouth.
Miles slouched. “Oh…no…Ya’ve
got
to be sassin’ me.”
“No seriously, don’t you see? It’s perfect!” Schuyler insisted. “We’ll bump into each other, apparently at random, just a friendly conversation. I’ll get to know her first and then we can slowly ease her into the whole trip back to the vampire den thing.”
“Bloody heck, SKY!! She’s not one of yur ditzy freshman bloodbags.”
“She’s a girl, she’s vulnerable, she’ll want to open up to a friendly ear….” Sky was ticking off his talking points on his fingers.
“She’s just a kid, Sky.”
“Even better. She’ll be working out certain
issues
…”
“She’s bloody thirteen!” Miles tried to inject some sanity into the conversation.
“No…no it’s a magical age, their bodies are changing, they are uncertain of themselves, they are just starting to recognize boys, perfect time for the
Schuyler
experience.”
“Ugh.” Miles thought he was going to be sick.
“I’ll be gentle, I promise. Whaddya say, Tim? Hokharty put you in charge.”
“Um…maybe…” Tim said, mulling it over.
“Saints ‘n Angels!! I canna believe ya are seriously considering lettin’ Sky hit on a thirteen year old.”
“All right, smart guy, so what’s your plan?” Schuyler jabbed the lollipop at Miles. “Walk up to her in a crowded lobby and say ‘Hi little girl! Hey, not to freak you out or anything, but we’re two vampires and a Renfield and we’re here on a mission from the Father of all Vampires to take you back to Philly. Come on and jump into our 1970’s landyacht! It’s got a trunk big enough to hold four girls your age!! OH! And did we mention that we have the corpse of your dead mother back at our place and it just might be the end of the world?’ Oh, no! Nothing suspicious about
that
! You might as well go trolling around the elementary school with a bag full of chocolate bars.” Sky stuck the plastic lollipop into his mouth and folded his arms across his chest and gave them a smug look.
Miles and Tim exchanged embarrassed glances. “Well when ya say it like that…” thought Miles. From their defeated postures, Sky knew he had won this argument.
“Ok, this is gonna take some thought.” Sky took the lollipop out of his mouth and stared out into the distance, lost in contemplation. “Thirteen year olds aren’t like college girls.”
“No foolin,’ yer gom,” said Miles. Sky ignored him.
“They aren’t looking for excitement or bad boys. No, they want to play it safe.”
“Canya
get
any creepier?” Miles was disgusted that Sky had actually thought it out this far, but no one was listening to him anymore. Schuyler continued his monologue as if he were pondering some deep philosophical truth.