Secrets of the Dead

  ‘God help you, there must be thousands of the bloody things. Turn left here. Watch out for our serpent friends, they’re all over the hill. One sank its fangs into Fletcher Brown last year. Of course, adder bites are rarely lethal, but they do sting to high heaven.’

  If anything, Philip was like the old Philip from boyhood. John remembered the posh voice, the idiosyncratic phrases, and that he could be so damn bossy at times.

  They crossed the brow of hill. Black rocks protruded from the heather; they always reminded John of soldiers waiting for an order to attack. A long, thin shape moved across the path in front of him; it was one of the snakes that Philip had warned him about. He paused until it had slithered away under the heather before moving on. He hoped that Oliver wouldn’t venture up here; even so, he decided to warn him that there were venomous snakes in this part of the world. Ahead of him, Philip Kemmis walked swiftly with a straight back, the aristocratic air all too apparent.

  A moment later, Philip stopped and pointed. ‘There,’ he said. ‘Do you see the oak at the bottom of the slope?’

  ‘The one with the white mark on the trunk?’

  ‘That’s the one. The camper van hit the tree last night, ripping off the bark at the bottom.’

  ‘You wanted to show me the scene of an accident?’

  ‘No, not exactly, though you’ll realize the significance of the accident after I show you what I’ve found.’

  ‘You know something, Philip? I’m going to go back home now.’ John suspected that the accident excited the man in a ghoulish way. Perhaps Philip would show him splashes of the victims’ blood on the ground, which would be in bad taste, if not downright sick. John didn’t want to poke around the site of a tragedy that had claimed the lives of two people.

  Philip didn’t appear to have heard what John had said about returning home; he crouched down in front of a bush that was little more than knee-high.

  ‘Philip, I’m going home. I’ll see you later. Goodbye.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘I’m not interested in gawping at the aftermath of accidents.’

  ‘Wait, there’s something here you must see. I found it this afternoon.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Take a look for yourself.’

  Warily, half-suspecting Philip would pull some weird trick, John leaned forwards to look at the gorse bush with its spiky leaves.

  ‘Do you see what’s there?’ Philip asked.

  ‘Just a tiny piece of cloth.’

  ‘Is it familiar?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Look closer.’

  John crouched down in order to examine the fragment of cloth that was no bigger than a postage stamp. The fabric was grey, with a loose weave that revealed the individual strands. The fragment was ragged at the ends, torn rather than neatly cut.

  Philip nodded. ‘You know what that is, don’t you?’

  ‘It looks like, but … No … It’s not possible.’

  ‘Go on, John, tell me where it’s from.’

  ‘It appears to be a piece of cloth from one of the mummies. How on earth did that get up here?’

  Philip looked him directly in the eye as they both stood up straight. ‘John, do you remember the night when you stopped overnight in the castle? You’d have been ten. I was eleven. You’d asked to see the mummy collection that was kept in one of the tower rooms.’

  ‘I think I remember something or other … exploring the castle, going up into the tower and such. It was a long time ago, though. It’s all very hazy.’

  ‘No, you don’t consciously remember all the details, do you? Not everything that happened to us. You locked the memory away due to the shock you suffered that night.’

  ‘What shock? Nothing happened that shocked me.’

  ‘Oh, but it did, John.’ Philip spoke with quiet authority. ‘We climbed up into the tower. We went into the room where the mummies were kept back then. They were covered with sheets. When I—’

  ‘That’s not a piece of the mummy’s binding.’ John pointed at the scrap of cloth caught on the bush. ‘It can’t be!’ John felt hot, breathless, he was shouting the words. ‘You put it there for a joke, or to make me think—’

  ‘Think what, John? That the mummies fail to obey the rules relating to death?’

  ‘It’s just a scrap of old bed sheet. And nothing happened regarding the mummies in the tower!’

  ‘Try to remember, John.’ Philip spoke softly. ‘We went into the room, and I turned on the light. The mummies were under sheets. I began to remove the one from Kadesh that sits on the chair. The light went out.’

  ‘Oh, God … oh no.’ John’s heart pounded. His mouth flooded with a horrible metallic taste. He’d have fallen if Philip hadn’t caught his arm and steadied him.

  ‘You ran downstairs, John. Later, I followed you into the corridor. You turned to me and you asked …’

  ‘Philip! What happened to your hand?’ John clutched his throat as if in a desperate attempt to stop the torrent of words erupting from his mouth. ‘Your hand … I remember! That’s where you lost your hand. There was blood pouring from your wrist. There were strips of torn skin hanging down. Oh God, I’d never seen anything like it before.’ Purple flashes appeared in front of his eyes. He knew he was close to passing out, there on the hilltop. ‘How the hell could I forget something as terrible as that? Until a moment ago, I’d have sworn on my family’s life that it had never happened. Now I can see you in my mind’s eye. You’re walking slowly towards me … There’s blood … Your wrist is in such a mess … like raw meat.’

  ‘I lost my hand in the room with the mummies. I pulled back the sheet that covered Kadesh. The light went out. Then someone grabbed my hand. After that I felt pain like … well, pain beyond any comparison I can make. What separated my hand from my wrist? I’m not sure. I couldn’t see, on account of the darkness. I believe, however, it was teeth. My hand was bitten off.’

  Blood thundered in John’s skull. His entire body felt strangely stiff, as if some evil magic was turning him to stone. Shock, he reasoned. He found himself shaking his head as he repeated, ‘To forget what happened? It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘It makes perfect sense. You were ten years old. The human mind often protects itself by sealing away traumatic memories. My mind didn’t hide away the memory of what happened to me; that is why I had a nervous breakdown and was sent away to a psychiatric institution in Denmark. The memory of what happened to this …’ He twisted the artificial hand clad in the black leather glove, separating it from the wrist with a click. ‘The memory of what happened to this ruined my life. I couldn’t function properly after the attack. I couldn’t attend school. No woman looks at me twice. I’m the man everyone avoids. They say I’m insane.’

  John stared at his childhood friend. He saw tragedy in his eyes. The events of that night still haunted him. The gruesome and terrifying memory still ate into his bones and his mind like acid eats into flesh. At that moment, Philip Kemmis spoke lucidly. A powerful sense of calm radiated from him. It was as if he’d been waiting all his adult life to speak these words, and now that the time had come he’d found the inner strength to speak clearly. He seemed incredibly focused – totally in control of his emotions and thoughts.

  ‘John, listen carefully to what I say next. When the light went out in that room thirty years ago, I was attacked. Some Thing in the room detested the intrusion. It attacked me. And that Thing was Kadesh that sits in the chair. The creature, for want of a better description, bit clean through my wrist in the darkness. My parents said later that I suffered a freak accident. I know better.’ He pointed at the shred of cloth caught on the gorse bush. ‘That same mummy walked up here last night. A piece of its wrapping was torn off by a thorn and left there. Then the creature pushed the camper van, containing two sleeping people, over the edge of the hill.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘That three-thousand-year-old corpse is absolutely determined to protect the other four mummies. It w
ill ruthlessly defend them. Anyone who comes here is seen as a threat. Therefore, that vile husk will attack living people.’

  John felt unsteady on his feet. The shock of remembering how his injured friend had looked all those years ago confused his thoughts. Some part of him realized that he should be loudly refuting what Philip told him. Yet just to close his eyes for a second brought back the vivid image of his friend, with shreds of torn skin hanging from his wrist.

  Philip continued, ‘For years I’ve seen visions of the mummies. They have the power to superimpose images of their faces over living people. When I see a man or woman walking by the gatehouse I often see them wearing the withered face of one of the mummified corpses. When you arrived here in your car I saw you driving what appeared to be a car full of ancient mummies – yet they were dead and alive all at the same time, if you understand what I mean.’

  ‘That’s why you struck the car? You thought my family were mummified bodies.’

  ‘I tried to warn you, John.’

  ‘You were hallucinating.’ Yet even as he said those words he couldn’t bring himself to believe them. All too vividly he recalled Samantha Oldfield telling him how his family resembled the mummy family in the castle. The one called Bones with the broken thigh-bone, just like Ben. The 3D model of the head that resembled Vicki. John backed away from the bush with its shred of cloth that had once been pressed to dead skin.

  Philip said, ‘The real reason I brought you here is far more important than showing you that piece of mummy cloth. I brought you here to warn you. The mummies have started walking. Your family is in danger. If you don’t leave now, they will be destroyed.’

  Ten minutes to eleven at night. The lamp on the bedside table cast a soft glow over the bedroom. Ingrid’s naked body gleamed with the same rich hue as dark honey. She yawned, stretched – the way her body lengthened during that sensuous stretch gave a wonderful shape to her breasts, something that only rarely failed to send tingles of desire through John. Yet fail it did tonight. John was utterly preoccupied with the conversation that he’d had with Philip Kemmis this evening. John still continued to struggle with the truth: that he’d been in the castle tower with Philip thirty years ago when Philip’s hand had been … what, exactly? Torn off due to a freak accident? Bitten off by one of the mummies? Despite not accepting the notion of such a bite from a corpse for one moment, he found himself imaging those ancient teeth of a dead man, crunching through the skin, tendon, muscle and bone of a boy’s wrist. A bitter taste flooded his own mouth. His blood ran cold, yet he felt his hands become clammy with perspiration.

  Ingrid pointed at one of her breasts. ‘Look at this, John. A mosquito bite; the thing itches like crazy. Would you like to rub on some cream for me?’

  He stared at the red mark on her smooth skin without answering.

  ‘Hello? John, did you hear me?’

  ‘Uh? Yes.’

  ‘Then will you?’

  ‘Will I what?’ He blinked, realizing that he’d been so fixated on what happened in the castle three decades ago that he hadn’t, in fact, heard her question. ‘Sorry, I was thinking about what Philip said to me tonight.’

  ‘How did it go?’ She slipped on the T-shirt she’d be wearing for bed and climbed in beside him.

  ‘Uh, not well. He’s clearly mentally disturbed.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that. You were good friends, weren’t you?’

  ‘When we were boys we were inseparable. We spent hours together, either fishing, or riding our bikes up on the moors.’

  ‘It must be hard to see him in this state.’

  ‘The loss of his hand seems to be the root of it all. Not long after the accident, his parents sent him away to a mental hospital in Denmark.’

  ‘They sent him away? Like he’d become an embarrassment to the family?’

  ‘They’ll have thought they were doing the right thing.’

  ‘Did Philip tell you about the accident?’

  ‘No. He didn’t want to discuss it. The memory’s probably too painful for him.’ John wondered why he’d lied to her. Maybe this doesn’t seem the right time, he thought. I’d have to tell her the whole story about staying with Philip when he lived in the castle with his parents, and how we sneaked up into the tower where the mummies were kept. However, for some reason, he found it difficult to fully accept that something bizarre had happened to him, too, because he’d suppressed the memory of Philip emerging from the spiral staircase at the bottom of the tower with his arm bleeding from the wound at the end of his wrist. Those mental images sickened him as much as they alarmed him, and he didn’t feel ready to reveal all this to Ingrid yet. He knew he would in the next few days, preferably in the bright light of day. Of course, he wouldn’t repeat Philip’s assertion that one of the mummies had torn his hand off with its jaws when the lights went out. Surely, that must be some bizarre, if decidedly gruesome, fantasy that had developed later as the boy’s mind had crumbled due to the trauma of the accident.

  Ingrid, bless her kind heart, chatted about inviting Philip over. Once again, this golden-hearted woman wanted to rescue someone in distress. John had watched her do exactly this dozens of times before when her students had suffered some tragedy or other.

  Memories of that horrific night continued to rebound inside his head though. Now he understood why he’d felt so strange when he’d seen the castle for the first time in years a few days ago. And those strange episodes of dizziness and anxiety he’d had recently were all explicable. The suppressed memory was beginning to break out: it was trying to erupt into my conscious mind. Once again he felt panicky – the emotion he felt was that of a ten year old who’d just seen his friend step through a doorway after having his hand ripped off. John realized he needed to divert this alarming train of thought, so he changed the subject.

  ‘When we go to Hele Bay on Saturday … I wonder if we could somehow get Ben on to the bus. The cast runs from his ankle to the top of his thigh so it won’t be easy. It doesn’t seem right to leave him here, though.’

  Ingrid smiled. ‘That’s such a sweet thought. Yes, we should take Ben with us.’

  ‘He seems fairly mobile on crutches. I think he’ll manage OK, and there are pubs in Hele Bay where we could eat.’ John felt the muscles in his chest relax; his heart stopped pounding, and its rhythm became less frantic. ‘I’ll take a picnic, though, just in case it’s not easy for Ben to reach the pub.’

  ‘Make him one of your chicken curries. They’re lovely to eat cold, especially if you put lots of raisins in. Oh, I noticed that Ben likes reading on his phone. We could treat him to some new e-books.’

  ‘Tomorrow, I’ll ask him for his bank account details. I’ll transfer some cash to his account so he can buy some more. Do you think fifty pounds will be enough? No … I’m being stingy, aren’t I? I’ll make it a hundred pounds. Ingrid … what do you think to a hundred? Ingrid?’

  He glanced at her. A moment ago, she’d been wide awake. Now, she lay there with her eyes lightly closed. Her chest rose and fell slowly.

  ‘Ingrid, are you awake?’ Silly question, he thought. She’s fast asleep.

  John turned on to his other side so that he could reach out and switch off the lamp on the bedside table. He managed to reach perhaps half way. Suddenly, however, he felt odd. His arm felt so incredibly heavy. Even though he tried, he couldn’t lift his head from the pillow. For a moment, he froze in that position. The lamp shone on his phone and on his wristwatch. The time was just five minutes after eleven. A light breeze made the curtains undulate – a ghostly movement. He heard his own respiration; his heartbeat seemed to have slowed to a ponderous thud with long intervals of silence in between. John had just enough time to experience a surge of surprise. I’ve never felt like this before … what’s happening? Why can’t I move?

  The next moment he became submerged in a deep, dream-filled sleep where his ten year old self asked the boy with the dripping wrist: ‘Philip. What happened to your hand?’

&n
bsp; At six minutes past eleven, Philip Kemmis paced through the rooms in his home. He heard the television in the adjoining apartment. Philip felt an explosion of rage. How can I sleep with that bloody cacophony? Philip knew full well, however, that it wasn’t the sound of a TV drama booming through the wall that bothered him; it was the same old thoughts that haunted his every waking moment. The memory of something sharp piercing the skin of his wrist thirty years ago when the light went out. The white hot eruption of pain. How he was engulfed in terror when he was attacked in the darkness. Then he’d entered the living nightmare that was the Danish madhouse. He gave a harsh laugh – a sound full of distress and absolute despair, rather than a reaction to something humorous. When he looked at ordinary men and women, as they went about their business, he watched as the mummies superimposed images of their own dead and ravaged faces on the living faces. So many times he’d pass an attractive woman in the lane, only for her face to be transformed in front of him into a mask of dead skin, shrivelled eyes, and lips that had dried so much that they’d shrunk back to expose her teeth in a vicious snarl.

  Hallucinations, his doctor said.

  ‘Hallucinations be damned,’ he muttered angrily to himself as he paced the lounge. ‘And how will I ever sleep with all this noise?’ He pounded on the wall that separated the two apartments. ‘Hey! Turn that damn thing down, will you? It’s keeping me awake!’

  The clock on the wall told him it was eight minutes past eleven. The television sounded louder than ever. A booming noise monster in its own right. The screech of tyres from a car chase blasted through the walls. The heroine screamed constantly. Drums thudded, guitars were howling. Yet, at that instant, Philip stopped his restless pacing.

  His mouth fell open as the muscles in his jaw went slack. With a huge effort, he managed to reach an armchair, where he flopped down.

  ‘But I’m not even tired,’ he managed to utter before falling into what seemed a vast emptiness where even his own anxieties that constantly gnawed on his nerves could not reach him.