Mar 24

Mar 24 Dawn Of The Mummy

Dawn Of The Mummy - book excerpt

Chapter One

The renowned Egyptologist, Professor Erland Kautz, clutched his chest with his right hand as the latest in a series of attacks took hold. This one was by far the worst since his last operation and he knew deep down that the time he had left was short, regardless of what his cardiologist, Dr Freedman, assured him.

Each breath the professor took was more laboured than the last.

His chest felt as if a great weight were sitting on it, pressing down, and making it harder for him to take in his next lungful of air.

With a quivering hand, he reached across to the occasional table beside his chair and fumbled with the catch on the tiny round pill box he always kept by his side.

When he eventually managed to flick the lid open, several of the tiny white pills within spilled out on to the table. Erland pressed his index finger down hard on one of them and pinched it between his thumb and forefinger before carrying it over to his open mouth.

He dropped the pill beneath his raised tongue, and collapsed back in his chair, spent from the effort.

After a moment, he could feel his chest starting to relax and the awful pressure slowly eased away.

That was it!

As far as he was concerned, tonight was the night. It had to be – fate might not give him another chance.

Since his retirement from the lecturing circuit, Professor Kautz had spent his time devoted to the one passion he had left in life, studying and translating the scriptures of ancient Egypt.

In reality, it had always been his passion. Or, as some of his erstwhile colleagues used to refer to it behind his back, his obsession. He had fallen in love with the history of the land at a very early age, when he was fortunate enough to have been taken on a dig led by his great aunt, a formidable and austere Egyptologist, on behalf of the British museum.

From that day, the young Erland spent every free moment he had in Egypt, volunteering for digs, and working on excavations under the watchful eye of his great aunt, until her unfortunate death as a result of a landslide.

Erland focused his formal education on a single goal; to become as renowned in the field as his great aunt had been.

And he had succeeded. Most academics agreed he had surpassed her triumphs, becoming a world authority on the subject and highly sought after for guest lectures at the most important universities throughout the world.

Throughout his long and distinguished career, Erland had also come into contact with some less-than-scrupulous characters, who nonetheless were able to get their hands on some of the most authentic and best-preserved antiquities he had ever laid eyes on.

Their price was always high, but worth every penny, in his opinion.

Erland had spent a major proportion of his inheritance on such artefacts, but each purchase was, to him, a treasure.

He had donated so many finds to the major museum in the nearby town that they had even erected an extension, specifically for the display of his many endowments, in his honour.

But there were some rarities with which Erland could not bear to part.

These were the ones that he had taken special care not to reveal to anyone, not even those academic colleagues whom he considered his equal when it came to their hunger for knowledge about ancient Egypt.

Erland had gone to extreme lengths to acquire some of these items, and, although he was ashamed to admit it, even to himself, he had turned a blind eye to everything from bribery to murder itself to lay his hands on them.

As soon as he felt strong enough, the professor rose from his chair and walked slowly down the long corridor that led to his cellar.

Switching on the overhead light, Erland descended the wooden stairs to the cellar floor. Once there, he checked around and listened for the sound of approaching footsteps.

There were none.

He knew that all his servants had already left for the day but, whenever he decided to visit his secret chamber, a cloak of paranoia enveloped him, which always had the effect of making him believe that there were thieves hiding in the shadows.

As soon as he was satisfied that he was alone, he walked over to the far wall and slid back a mock-stone-covered panel in the wall, revealing a keypad concealed in the brickwork.

With bated breath, Erland tapped in his code and, within seconds, a large section of the wall pivoted silently to reveal a hidden chamber beneath the cellar.

Just like the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt, Erland had ensured that the builders he had employed years earlier to carve out his underground hideout did not live long enough to reveal their endeavours to anyone.

It was a necessary, if somewhat regrettable, precaution, over which the professor had, to his credit, lost an immense amount of sleep.

As the stone door pivoted open, the underground chamber flooded with a dim light. The strip lights in the ceiling held tubes of a low wattage, to ensure that their glare did not damage any of the delicate artefacts on which the professor secretly worked.

Even after his generous donations to the museum, the professor’s underground collection was immense. Most consisted of ancient scripts, pieces of jewellery, trinkets and relics, some of which were merely broken fragments although, to the professor, they were all priceless treasures.

But the pride of his collection stood at the far end of his chamber, still encased in its sarcophagus.

The mummy of Anlet-Un-Ri.

The sarcophagus had been unearthed in a dig in 1975 in the Valley of the Kings. At the time, the professor was an invited guest in Egypt, representing the British Museum, when the tomb of Mehet-Met-Too was discovered.

At the time of his death, Mehet-Met-Too had been only a boy. The third son of the pharaoh by his second wife was buried with all the grace and ceremony befitting a member of the royal household.

During the excavation of his tomb, some of the local workers discovered a separate tunnel that, on later inspection, led to the burial chamber of the servants of the young boy.

Among them stood the sarcophagus of Anlet-Un-Ri, a female warrior of distinction and a decorated soldier in the pharaoh’s army.

Erland was immediately captivated by the find.

There was something mysterious and almost mesmerising about the ornate carvings and intricate detail that had gone into the construction of her sarcophagus which, for a mere servant, even a decorated soldier, was extremely unusual.

A script discovered inside the chamber recounted how Anlet-Un-Ri had volunteered to be buried alive in the chamber to protect the young royal when he passed over, and that the warrior would without mercy tear asunder anyone who violated his tomb.

As Erland happened to be the only official on the site at the time, he bribed the workers to steal Anlet-Un-Ri’s sarcophagus and hide it until he could find a way to have it exported to England without the knowledge of the authorities.

During the endeavour, several guards who would not accept bribes were killed, and in the morning, it was assumed that thieves had attempted to rob the tomb of the young royal and been chased off by the surviving guards on duty.

But there was another script of equal fascination that Erland discovered in the warrior’s chamber on that night. One that he also kept hidden from the rest of the party.

It bore the ancient seal of the dead, and, although it was not the first of its kind to be discovered, it piqued Erland’s interest enough that he knew he had to study it in secret.

Sure enough, his suspicions were confirmed when he finally managed to decipher the ancient parchment. It was indeed one of the missing parts of the ancient scripture of the dead, and the professor knew that its value as an artefact would mean more to him than diamonds or gold.

Since then, it had taken the professor more than forty years to piece together the ancient scripture, which was supposed to have been written by the high priests, from fragments he had managed to collect from the famed Book of the Dead.

Even when the priests wrote it, they knew that the whole contents could not be entrusted to any single individual, not even the monarch himself. So they devised a system whereby they created smaller individual scripts, each one on its own incapable of providing the reader with sufficient knowledge to appreciate the immense power the complete manuscript could impart.

These parts were then passed down from high priest to high priest, each endeavouring to secrete one piece of the overall scripture in the tomb of the next pharaoh who died during their time in office.

The secret of the forbidden scripts became legendary over the centuries.

But it was not until the first piece was unearthed in the mid-19th century, and eventually verified, that the leading authorities in Egyptology throughout the academic world finally acknowledged its existence.

The other extracts from the forbidden scripture were housed in various museums and universities throughout the world, depending on which country financed the excavation from which the script was unearthed.

Erland had used his not unsubstantial credibility as one of the world’s most formidable experts in the field, to gain access to each parchment in turn. Those he was not able to decipher immediately, he copied and brought back with him to England so he could work on them in his own time, far away from prying eyes.

Unable to rely on the discretion of even his most trusted colleagues, Erland worked alone, unhindered by outside distractions.

Now, finally, he had mastered the cryptic message that the ancient priests had hidden within the various scripts.

Tonight would be his final unveiling, with a chosen audience of one – himself.

The professor moved to his desk where he had set out his copies of the ancient scripts.

Without delay, he began to recite the long-dead language of the high priests of ancient Egypt.

Out of nowhere, a thunderstorm erupted above him. Even from down here in his hidden chamber, he could hear the roar of each ear-splitting clash growing louder with each word he spoke.

As he recited the ancient text, Erland could feel the dark power of the high priests flooding through his veins, demanding that he cease his blasphemy before it was too late.

But, for him, that time had already passed.

As he continued to read, he could hear the sound of movement behind him.

Erland turned in his chair and stared at the sarcophagus of Anlet-Un-Ri.

With an unsteady voice, he continued to recite the sacred text.

Suddenly, the sarcophagus began to shake.

At first, it was a minor movement, so slight it was barely perceptible.

But, as Erland continued with his forbidden task, the vibrations grew stronger, until, as he read out the last few lines, the lid of the casket shuddered open, and the mummy of Anlet-Un-Ri opened its eyes and turned its head to see who had awakened it from its eternal rest.

Even though this was a day that the professor had dreamt about since he first entered the chamber of the mummy, all those years ago, the sheer shock of seeing the mighty warrior come to life was more than his heart could stand.

Erland immediately felt a tingling in his chest, which he knew all too well was the first sign of another angina attack.

Keeping his eyes fixed on the mummy, he reached into his old-fashioned smoking jacket pocket for his pills but, to his horror, the box was not there.

Frantically, he searched his other pockets, all to no avail.

As the hammering in his chest grew more acute, it felt to Erland as if his heart was in competition with the mounting thunder outside.

It was only then that he remembered leaving his pill box on the table next to his armchair.

The distance would be only a short stroll to anyone else. But to him, in his present condition, it might as well be a marathon.

He looked up to see the mummy take its first tentative steps in more than 3,000 years. Although he knew he had nothing to fear from it, the sight of its eyes boring into him from behind its wrappings caused his heart to skip several beats.

As fear and panic took hold, the professor could feel a hand reach into his chest and squeeze his heart, cutting off the blood flow.

He tried to stand, but the effort was too much for him.

As he slumped back into his chair, his book of scriptures fell to the floor.

In his final seconds of life, Professor Erland Kautz knew that what he had done was both unearthly, as well as ungodly, and no human alive had the knowledge or power to stop it.

He had unleashed an undead spirit into the world, and although he had spent over half his life building towards this moment for all he was worth, he wished he could take it back.

As he closed his eyes for the final time, he prayed that God would forgive him.