Amulet of Doom

  But the sound of the slow, deliberate movements of whatever had climbed out of Zenobia’s casket fueled her imagination, and she could almost see the dead eyes looking into hers, feel the cold hands closing on her neck.

  Unable to think of anything else to do, she started to sing.

  Later, she could never understand exactly why she reacted that way. At the moment she didn’t even think about it. It just happened. She opened her mouth to scream, some instinct took over, and the words to “When You Walk Through a Storm”—the anthem of hope in the midst of darkness from Carousel—started pouring out instead.

  The funny thing was, it worked. She actually felt better, at least for the first few notes.

  Better yet, the noise in front of her stopped.

  Unfortunately, the moment of relief was short-lived. She had just reached the line “And don’t be afraid of the dark” when a harsh voice grated, “Silence, wench! Hand me that amulet!”

  At that moment the terror she had been fighting to stave off all night finally came crashing in on her. Her old fear of the dark was multiplied a thousandfold by all the genuine horrors she had had to face, and she began to scream, hopelessly and uncontrollably. Somewhere in the background she could hear Kyle. She thought he was screaming, too, but she couldn’t be certain.

  “Silence!” ordered the voice again.

  The scream died in Marilyn’s throat. She was too frightened to force it out.

  The amulet was burning in her hand.

  Suddenly it blazed into life. A red glow burst from the jewel in its center. By its fiery light she could see Zenobia’s corpse standing in front of the coffin.

  “Give me the amulet!” repeated the voice. The corpse began lurching toward her, its pale white fingers twitching with anticipation.

  “Marilyn, let’s get out of here!”

  It was Kyle. His wits had finally returned, and he was beside her, his hands on her shoulders, trying to turn her around.

  It did no good. She was rooted to the spot, mesmerized by the horror moving step by step in her direction.

  “Marilyn!”

  “Give … me … the amulet!”

  The corpse was almost upon them now. They could see, by the amulet’s glow, a look of something close to madness in its eyes.

  Kyle put his arm around Marilyn’s waist and pulled her back. He tried to run, but got no help from her. He turned and linked both hands around her stomach, then began backing toward the door.

  “There is no use in fleeing. There is nowhere to run! Give me the amulet!”

  Suddenly Marilyn began to struggle with Kyle. “Let go of me!” she cried, twisting in his arms.

  Zenobia’s corpse, moving slowly, was almost upon them.

  The glare from the amulet was brighter than ever.

  Kyle tightened his grip; spurred by terror, he lurched backward. As he did, he stepped on Brick, who had been lurking behind him. The cat emitted a piercing yowl of pain and shot away to hide under one of the chairs. But the damage had been done; Kyle’s footing had been destroyed. He struggled wildly to keep his balance, but finally failed and fell backward, still holding Marilyn.

  Her feet thrust out and tangled in Zenobia’s legs, causing the corpse to fall on top of them.

  When her aunt’s body landed on her, Marilyn screamed, convinced she was going to die of fright if nothing else.

  The corpse reared back and opened its mouth. With a fresh jolt of horror Marilyn realized it was going to bite her. She thrust upward with her palm, catching Aunt Zenobia’s body under the chin, slamming her head back. “Oh! I’m so sorry!” she gasped.

  The corpse howled with rage and began to scrabble at her hand, trying to rip the amulet from her fingers. Marilyn beat at it with her fists, trying to push it away. She was still screaming and crying.

  Kyle, pinned beneath both of them, struggled to free himself so he could help Marilyn.

  The whole scene was illuminated by the bloody red light still pulsing from the amulet.

  “Guptas, let go of that body!”

  The voice was Zenobia’s, but it did not come from her body. Looking in the direction from which it had come, Marilyn was astonished to see another version of her aunt standing next to them. She had her hands on hips. A furious expression contorted her face. And her body, rather than solid and heavy like the corpse with which Marilyn was now wrestling, was clearly that of a ghost.

  “Guptas, let go!” repeated Zenobia.

  A howl of despair ripped through the night. Suddenly Zenobia’s corpse went limp, trapping Kyle and Marilyn under its dead weight. The light in the amulet died, so that the only illumination in the room came from the pale figure of Zenobia, who was still scowling.

  “I hate to see that body treated that way,” she said bitterly. “It served me very well for quite a number of years. And you be careful there, young man!” This last was addressed to Kyle, who was trying to roll the corpse away so that he and Marilyn could sit up.

  Zenobia’s ghost turned and walked toward the coffin, which had shifted when the corpse climbed out of it. Reaching out, she tried to move it back into place. Nothing happened, and she made a little noise of frustration.

  “Well, at least we have the amulet back,” she said, turning her back to the coffin.

  “Will you help us get out from under this?” asked Kyle, his voice testy.

  “I can’t!” snapped Zenobia. “I haven’t learned how to move things yet. It’s all I can do to materialize.”

  Marilyn, still in a daze, began to come to her senses. Gently she helped Kyle push Zenobia’s now empty body away from them. Then she shoved the amulet into her pocket, got to her feet, and reached down to help him up.

  When he was standing beside her, she turned to her aunt. “Don’t you vanish on me this time,” she said. Though she was trembling, her voice had an angry tone, and her jaw was set in a firm line that made it look remarkably like Zenobia’s. “I think it’s about time you filled me in on a few things!”

  “You’re right,” said Zenobia, looking a little shamefaced. “I should have before. Only I didn’t know much. I only had guesses. I still don’t understand all of it, but I’m beginning to make sense of things.”

  She looked around nervously. “We’ll have to hurry. We won’t have much time before it starts again.”

  Kyle and Marilyn glanced at each other. “Before what starts again?” asked Marilyn.

  “Sit down,” said Zenobia. “I want to tell you a story.”

  Kyle went to the row of chairs that had been set up for calling hours. He picked up two, then turned back to Zenobia and asked, uncertainly, “Do you want one?”

  Zenobia shrugged. “I have no need to take the weight off my feet,” she said with the ghost of a smile. “I’ll stand.”

  Kyle returned with chairs for himself and Marilyn. He placed them side by side, then took Marilyn’s hand. The two of them sat down together.

  “Damn!” said Zenobia. “This isn’t going to be easy. I wish I had a cigar.”

  “We can do without the smell,” said Marilyn impatiently. “Let’s get on with this.”

  “Aren’t we touchy?” said Zenobia.

  “Considering that I’m sitting in a funeral parlor, which I broke into, in the middle of the night, and having a conversation with a ghost whose body just tried to kill me, I think I’m doing pretty well! Tell me you had an experience that topped this one in all your famous travels.”

  She was holding Kyle’s hand with a crushing grip and pressing herself against him to keep the violence of her trembling from being too visible.

  Zenobia shook her head. “Nope. You’ve got me on that one. I’ve been almost everywhere and never had an experience to top this one. Nothing like your own hometown for a good time.”

  Marilyn made a sound of exasperation.

  “All right, all right,” said Zenobia. “I’ll get on with it. But this isn’t easy, because a lot of it’s my own fault, and I’m going to have to admit to scre
wing up in a way that I’m not used to.”

  She looked wistfully down to where her body lay on the floor. “If I’d handled things a little better, I might still be inside that, instead of struggling with all my might just to stay visible for you.” She shrugged. “But that’s neither here nor there. What you want to know is, what’s going on.”

  Marilyn nodded.

  “Well, I don’t know,” said Zenobia flatly. “At least, not entirely. But I can tell you this much: That amulet is haunted by a demon named Guptas, who was bound to it by the great Suleiman himself.

  “What Guptas wants most of all is to be free. But he is subject to whoever owns the amulet. If you know how to use it, you can command incredible power.

  “But that’s the problem: knowing how to use it. If you try to summon Guptas without knowing the proper procedures, you can end up in big trouble.”

  “Which is what happened to you?” asked Marilyn.

  Zenobia nodded sheepishly. “I really should have known better. Even though I’d never seen anything like that in action, I’ve spent enough time in the ancient parts of the world to know what can happen. There are strange stories—things we would call primitive nonsense—that crop up over and over, linger in the mind, have touches that just don’t want to let you explain them away. I should have known better than to fool around with this thing after Eldred died.”

  “Eldred Cooley?” asked Kyle.

  “Yes,” said Zenobia with a scowl. “If I ever catch up with him, I swear …”

  Marilyn caught her breath as a second form shimmered into sight beside Zenobia. “Don’t!” it said sharply. “Don’t swear to anything, Zenobia. You have no idea how binding an oath is for someone in our condition.”

  Marilyn had seen Zenobia angry before. She had seen her, in the last week, frightened. But she had never seen her quite this surprised.

  “Eldred Cooley!”

  The figure standing before them was a small, dapper-looking man. He was slightly overweight, slightly balding, and somewhere, Marilyn guessed, slightly over the age of fifty. Or at least, he had been when he died.

  “What is going on here?” asked Kyle. Marilyn squeezed his hand. He sounded like a little kid who had lost his mother in a department store.

  Nobody answered him. The two ghosts were looking at each other with an expression Marilyn could not decipher, though it seemed to contain elements of respect, anger, and longing in equal measure.

  “Well, what are you doing here, Eldred?” asked Zenobia at last.

  “The same thing you are,” answered Cooley. “Trying to make up for past mistakes.”

  Marilyn felt Brick rubbing about her legs. She reached down to pick him up and suddenly felt the hair on the back of her neck begin to rise. She sat up straight, the cat still in her hands, and said, “Danger!”

  Even as the word left her lips, a searing heat burst against her leg. The amulet had blazed into life again.

  Eldred Cooley shouted something in a language that sounded unlike any she had ever heard before. It was too late. Whatever had been started was in motion. There was no stopping it now.

  Marilyn leaped to her feet, dumping Brick to the floor. She fumbled desperately for the amulet and finally drew it from her pocket by its chain. Holding it before her, she looked at it and cried out in horror.

  The amulet was looking back at her. A single eye, round and red, seemed to be staring into her very soul.

  12

  “HELP ME!”

  Despite the horror of it, Marilyn couldn’t tear her own eyes from the gaze of the eye in the amulet. She had a feeling that the amulet had become a bridge of some kind, between her world and this other place, the place from which the eye was looking at her.

  This other place filled her with dread. Something spoke to her through the fiery gaze, spoke without words, lashing into her soul with a message that told of thousands of years of waiting, of sorrow, and of anger.

  Dimly she could hear the others calling her name. She tried to answer, but could not force her lips to form the words. Frustration began to boil within her, causing her chest to feel painfully full, as if there were a balloon swelling inside.

  Once, when she was five or six, Kyle and Geoff had tied her up while they were playing some stupid game. Being unable to move her arms or legs terrified her, and after only a few seconds she had begun to scream.

  She had the same sensation now, only it was worse because there was nothing binding her—nothing but the blazing eye of the amulet. She wanted to scream. She wanted to throw the amulet as far from her as possible. She wanted to grab Kyle by the hand and run from this place, fleeing the terror they had found here.

  But she couldn’t. She couldn’t even move her lips to ask for help. Her breathing had become short and shallow, and her throat felt as though there were a Coke bottle wedged in it.

  Then she heard the voice—the same rough voice she had heard before, first speaking through Brick, and then through Zenobia’s corpse.

  Only now it was whispering.

  And it was saying what she longed to say.

  Help!

  The word blossomed in her mind, where none of the others could hear it, and she thought her heart would break, for it sounded like nothing so much as the cry of a lost child.

  A teardrop trickled down the amulet.

  Help me, whispered the voice in her mind. Please, help me.

  Marilyn had never heard such sorrow, such longing. It made her think of a warm night the previous summer, when she had been lying in the grass behind her house, staring at the stars, and had suddenly started to weep because she wanted so desperately to reach out and touch them. She had actually raised her hands toward the sky, stretching toward the stars. But they were too far, hopelessly far away. She had felt very small then—small, and trapped, and infinitely sad.

  She had felt the way this voice sounded.

  Help me, it pleaded again.

  And for Marilyn, who was so softhearted she had been known to walk out of her way to avoid stepping on bugs, there was only one possible answer:

  “Yes,” she whispered. “I’ll help you.”

  A flood of elation seemed to envelop her body. A pleasant warmth surrounded her.

  But somewhere in the distance she heard a horrible sound. After a moment she realized it was Kyle, screaming.

  “She’s on fire! Help her, she’s on fire!”

  As the words pierced her consciousness, she became more aware of the heat around her.

  “Marilyn!”

  Zenobia’s voice was the final jolt. She tore her gaze from the amulet. Immediately all the screams that had been pent up in her from the time she first saw the eye came tearing out of her, propelled by a new horror.

  Her body was surrounded by leaping, crackling flames.

  Don’t be afraid, whispered the voice in her mind. I will keep you safe.

  The reassurance did no good. She buried her face in her hands and screamed over and over—until suddenly she realized that, despite the flame, she felt no pain at all.

  She was being held in arms of fire, arms that were enclosing her, taking her someplace she had never been before. Someplace where she was desperately needed.

  Are you ready? asked the voice.

  “Yes,” she whispered, before she could even think of what she might be doing.

  The sense of heat increased.

  Now! cried the voice.

  Marilyn felt herself begin to fade.

  “Grab her!” cried Zenobia at the same instant.

  Marilyn whirled away from the others, saw them spin into the darkness. She felt a hand clutch at her heel. Then everything went black, and it seemed to stay that way for a long, long time.

  When Marilyn came to, she found herself lying on a cold, smooth floor. She brought herself to her knees and shook her head, trying to remember what had happened, how she had gotten here.

  She looked up. In the distance she could see windows—huge windows, so wide an eagl
e could fly through them without brushing its wings on either side.

  The amulet was still in her hand.

  She rolled over and whimpered, pulling her knees against her chest to make herself into a small ball.

  Where was she?

  She looked up again. How could the windows be so far away? How big was this place?

  And where was it?

  She noticed something and put her hand on the floor, next to her face. The smooth stone beneath her fingers was pitted and scorched, as if something incredibly caustic had fallen upon it.

  A cold wind blew over her. She shivered, huddling into herself for warmth.

  We’re here!

  She didn’t know if she was glad the voice was still with her or not.

  The thought was interrupted by a low moan from somewhere nearby.

  She turned in the direction of the sound.

  “Kyle!”

  He lay sprawled on the floor about ten feet to her left. At the sound of her voice he shook his head and pushed himself to his elbows. A bump the size of a small egg protruded from his forehead.

  Raising his fingers, he gingerly touched the lump. “Ouch!” he whispered, making a face. As he did, he seemed to become aware of the room around him. A look of shock crossed his face as he took in the monumental size of the place.

  “Where are we?” he asked in a very small voice.

  In the Hall of the Kings, replied the voice.

  When Kyle made no response, Marilyn realized that the voice was speaking only in her mind. So she repeated the words aloud.

  Kyle looked at her. “What’s the Hall of the Kings? And how do you know that’s what this place is called?”

  Marilyn smiled nervously. “A voice in my head told me.”

  Kyle was still probing at the lump on his forehead. “Are you all right?” he asked, his voice filled with concern.

  “No, I’m not all right! I’ve been attacked by a corpse, swallowed by fire, kidnapped to who knows where by who knows what, and I’ve got a voice in my head. How can you say ‘Are you all right?’ I’m going out of my mind!”

  “Calm down,” said Kyle and the voice in her mind simultaneously.

  “I can’t stand it!” she screamed. “You! Whatever you are, get out of my head!”