Another Pan (14 page)

“It was in Dad’s notes,” John answered. “The gates apparently open the way to the world of the dead. That’s why they’re called gates, see? They lead to the
other side
.” John flicked the Q-tip aside and pulled out another.

“Creepy. Do you have the death god placard?” Wendy turned in place a few times, scanning the room for the missing placard, then got on her knees and started peeking under the display tables.

“Just make another one,” said John. He was now elbow deep in a vase, cleaning out the bottom with a dry sponge. “Hey, you know what else I found in his notes? The ancient Egyptians used to divide the day into twelve hours and the night into twelve hours. So during the summer, when the night was short, the night hours were shorter. But there were
always
exactly twelve between sunset and sunrise.”

“Huh,” said Wendy. “You shouldn’t be snooping around in Dad’s notes.”

“He left them out on the coffee table. What’s he expect? So anyway, in the underworld, there are gates that lead to the afterlife, each with its own guardian, which, by the way, are supposed to be the worst kind of monsters. So the book is all about the journey of the dead soul through the night when he is carried to the afterlife, passing through each gate one by one. Cool, huh?”

“I thought the book was about the five legends.”

“That’s not
all
there is, Wen. It’s a big book. Geez.”

“And what’re the guardians for?” Wendy asked.

“To protect the gates to the afterlife!” said John in his most irritated
this-is-obvious
voice. “Come
on,
Wen!”

Wendy laughed at John’s enthusiasm — a quality he showed only to her. She wished he would be this happy, eager John more often instead of the John that came out in public. “Don’t scrub that one so hard.” Wendy cocked her head, and her hair tumbled past her shoulder like a strawberry-blond waterfall.

Wendy was about to return to her search for the missing placard when a strange ticking caught their attention.
Tick-tock. Tick-tock
.

“There’s that cretin”— Wendy rolled her eyes —“with his lame-ass scuba watch.”

“Don’t be a hater,” said John. “Me and Simon are bros. You’re just mad because he’s way smarter than you.”

“Everyone keeping busy? Keeping on task?” Simon’s eyes flitted this way and that as he walked down the steps to the basement. He glanced at the exhibit items and gave a cursory examination to each without bothering to properly inspect it. “Things look shipshape here,” he said, pointing to John’s vase. “Wendy, get busy on those placards. Chop-chop.”

Wendy was about to mention, for the fourteenth time, that he wasn’t doing his share of the work, but Simon had already turned to leave. He walked distractedly toward the stairs, knocking old, discarded items out of his way as he went. Just as they were going back to work, Wendy and John heard a sloshing sound followed by a frenzy of curses. Simon had stepped into the large puddle near the steps, the result of a recent leak, that both Wendy and John had known to avoid. There were electric cords all around the puddle, and Wendy had seen a spark or two flying from exposed wires touching the water. She had called the maintenance crew, but they were backed up till tomorrow.

“Careful, there,” said Wendy. “You don’t want to get fried.”

“This place is a disgrace,” said Simon bitterly. He waved a hand on his way out, like a king dismissing his subjects. “Put a towel on that,” he said. “I’ll be doing important research in Darling’s office. Don’t disturb me unless it’s life or death.”

“No problem, Simon!” John shouted after him.

“No problem, Simon,” Wendy mimicked in a squeaky, mocking voice. “How can you kiss his butt like that?”

“If you cared at all about this stuff,” he said, pointing at the artifacts, “you’d understand how important the guy is. The
British Museum
sent him to protect them.” He said the words
British Museum
with extra emphasis, as though the entire question would be settled on the strength of the museum’s credentials.

“John, can’t you see that the guy doesn’t
actually
care about this stuff? You and I know more than he does. Who cares about his title?”

John ambled back toward the vase, and Wendy began cataloging items again.

“Dad thinks he has an early version of the
Book of Gates
somewhere in here,” said John.

Wendy, who was thumbing through a stack of papyri, looked up. “Oh, right,” she said. “I was gonna show you the other day. There’s an old book in here that I figured was the one Dad was talking about. I put it over there.” She pointed to a far table where she had laid the book, but before she had put her arm down, John was across the room.

“It’s probably not the original, John,” she said. “Back then they used scrolls.”

John picked up the book, which was hidden behind a statuette. He flipped through the pages carefully, lowering himself to a sitting position on the floor. “You don’t know anything, Wen. It
was
a scroll, but a million people have been searching for it over the years. Everyone knows it was cut up into pages and made into a book to disguise it.”

Wendy got up and walked toward him. She said in a teasing tone, “Riiiight . . . so, Professor, what’s your expert opinion? Is that the original?”

“Well, obviously I don’t know, Wen,” John snapped, insulted. But they were alone now, so he didn’t go into his usual brooding silent treatment. Instead, he turned the book over in his hands. “But it’s definitely a copy of the
Book of Gates
. Who knows if it’s the first copy or the thousandth or what . . . ?”

John spoke with confidence, and Wendy was amused by how much he knew about this subject — much more than she did.

Wendy took a seat beside her brother, and they carefully lifted each page, examining the pictures and hieroglyphs. Many of the pages were empty, and everything else was in ancient Egyptian — besides being worn-out and just barely visible.

“These must be the guardians.” John pointed to a picture of a long snakelike creature and another one that seemed nothing more than a blur of ink. “And look, you can tell where each hour starts.” John pointed to each of the sections as Wendy leaned over to get a better look. The book was ancient, the pages so crinkly and delicate that any sharp move would have snapped them. When John turned the pages, they crackled like dry leaves. The color had worn to a sort of pale yellow, and the edges were frayed, sometimes torn. On each page, color pictures of mummies and jackals and serpents gave hints about the contents of that hour.

“I can’t believe they let us have this at Marlowe,” said John with obvious awe.

Wendy chuckled. “It was a political thing.” She decided to let her little brother in on what she knew. “I heard Dad on the phone. The museum director called Dad a loon in some magazine and one of Dad’s big-shot fans was offended. This was payback. Besides, Dad’s the only one who believes in five legends lore, so they probably think it’s safer with him.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t be touching it,” said John, his tone blasé, as if he didn’t really want what he was suggesting. “Dad was really clear about how to handle the artifacts.”

Wendy shrugged, also too curious to care. “We’re wearing gloves.”

After that, neither of them pushed the topic of setting the book aside.

“I wish I could read this,” said John after another few minutes. He shut the book and opened it again, somewhere in the middle. “See these titles? They must be the names of the hours.”

“How do you know?” Wendy asked.

“That’s not so hard to know.” John shrugged. Then he pulled out a piece of notebook paper from his pocket. “See?” He held it out to her, and she opened it. Inside were words — English letters in her father’s handwriting — that read like gibberish.

“They’re the Egyptian names of the hours,” said John. “For some reason Dad’s been pretty obsessed with them lately.”

“You shouldn’t have taken Dad’s notes,” said Wendy, looking toward the door. John shrugged again. Wendy began to read aloud from the paper, sounding out the strange words one at a time.

“Shesat-maket-neb-s,”
she read. “That’s the name of the second hour. Why don’t they just call it two o’clock?”

“Shut up. You’re not even pronouncing it right.” John made to grab for the paper. But Wendy was too quick. She pushed him away with one hand and kept reading.

“The third hour is called
thentent-baiu
. At least that one’s shorter.”

“Fine,” said John. “You have fun with your little list, and I’ll just sit here and read the original in ancient Egyptian.” He cradled the book in his lap.

“Urt-em-sekhemu-set,”
Wendy read, enunciating the name of the fourth hour. As soon as the last syllable had left her lips, something stirred in the Marlowe basement. A tremor passed between John and Wendy and they both leaped back.

“Did you feel that?” said John.

Wendy laughed nervously. “It’s a creepy old basement. It’s probably just someone banging around upstairs. . . . Let’s finish up, OK?”

“Yeah, one sec,” said John. He was trying to read the title page, based on the very little he knew of Egyptian lettering. As he brushed the dust off the book, the corner of a page snapped off in his hand.

Wendy let out a little scream. “John, Dad will
kill
you! Do you know how much it would cost to —?”

“Stop distracting me!” John said. He tried to fit the corner back on the page. But then they noticed something changing. The ink on the page began to fade, until there was nothing there for John to decipher.

“Put it away, John.” Wendy’s voice trembled as she spoke. “Just put it away and let’s go.” But John didn’t say a word. His gaze was fixed on the blank page of the book, and he motioned for her to come closer. She leaned tentatively across him, holding her breath. Words, in English letters, were appearing on the page, faint and unreadable at first and then stronger and stronger, so that they could have been printed off a modern printer.

“What . . . what’s it doing? John, what’s it doing?”

John’s face was pale. He looked the way he used to just before he was about to throw up at someone’s birthday party. Wendy thought for a second about pulling the book off his lap. “Well?” said Wendy. “Read it. What’s it say?”

John pulled Wendy by her sleeve so that they could read it together.

You speak truly: this fourth hour of Egypt’s night

Open the gates and enter here

Next to the final word appeared a black symbol, the Eye of Ra, which both John and Wendy recognized. They were silent for another moment. John moved to turn the page, but Wendy grabbed his hand. “I think we’re supposed to open something.”

John’s eyes sparkled. “So you
do
realize that we’re about to open the door to the freaking underworld, right?”

“OK. Don’t have a nerdgasm,” said Wendy, faking bravado. “It doesn’t really lead to anything. It’s a trick. Don’t you want to know if someone’s messing with Dad’s exhibit?”

It took only a second for John to be convinced. “OK, fine, what do we do next?”

Wendy was silent. John looked at the book and asked again, “What next?”

“John,” said Wendy, one eyebrow raised, “it’s a book. It’s not gonna start talking to you. Gimme that.” She snatched the book from him. She read slowly, all the while chewing one nail nervously.

A barely perceptible tremor ran through Wendy’s fingers. Otherwise, everything was exactly the same. They swiveled around on their haunches, clinging close to each other, wondering what horrors they had unleashed. But nothing happened. The Marlowe basement was still the Marlowe basement. The exhibit was in the same state as before. And the book sat, still and harmless, in John’s lap.

Neither John nor Wendy noticed the minuscule detail, the tiny alteration that occurred in their basement hideaway almost at the same moment as the appearance of the message in the book. Silently, it waited there, during all the minutes they spent trying to figure out the next step, while they passed the book back and forth between them, and while Wendy read and reread the passage. It took Wendy several minutes to notice it, and she only did so after a second and then a third glance around the room. A barely perceptible etching of the Eye of Ra, no bigger than a quarter, appeared above the nearest door, the one leading to the janitor’s broom closet. Its elegant curls shone coal-black and fierce, boring deep into the wooden door. Wendy approached, thinking at first that it was some sort of projection or hologram. She looked around for its source, but then, as she came closer, she saw that it was embedded into the door, its creases branded on and singed like scorched firewood.

As she drew closer, John got up and followed. They stood in front of the door, unable to decide, their mouths too dry to articulate all the possibilities that lay beyond the broom closet. Finally, Wendy said, “We might as well open it and see. Hold on to my hand.”

John looked behind to make sure Simon wasn’t there (since he wasn’t about to let his sister hold his hand like a little kid).

“OK, ready,” he said finally, grabbing hold of Wendy’s hand and squinting his eyes into a ready-for-anything frown. Wendy pulled open the door.

“I don’t get it,” spat John.

Brooms. Brooms and buckets and an old toilet. That was all they saw in the tiny room. They looked at each other, puzzled. John dropped Wendy’s hand and rolled his eyes. He threw his arms in the air and began pacing. “That’s it? So this is what —?”

And then he was gone. Vanished in mid-sentence. One step inside the little room and John had disappeared. Wendy was about to scream, but a pang of instinct kept her silent. Without wasting another second, she took a step into the broom closet.

Wendy expected to fall a long way down some black hole and land hard. So when her feet prematurely hit an ordinary stone step, she lost her footing and stumbled right into her brother, whose mouth was hanging open. He was standing on the step above her, on a patch of stringy green lichen. The first thought that went through Wendy’s mind was that they had lost their way back, that they were forever trapped here. She whipped around frantically, her heavy breaths almost too loud in the perfect silence of this place. But when she turned, there it was, the same glowing black Eye of Ra that had appeared on the door, now hanging in midair behind her, in the exact spot from which she had emerged. She took John’s arm and approached the eye, inching closer until it was above her. Beyond the eye she saw stone pillars and more winding steps leading up and down all around them, but Wendy guessed that this didn’t mean anything. After all, beyond that invisible curtain in the broom closet they had seen brooms and buckets. In one quick motion, she thrust her hand into the space past the eye. Her arm was gone, cut off at the exact plane that contained the charred black symbol. There was Wendy, just standing there with a bloodless stump and empty space where her arm should be. John screamed, his voice reverberating through the space behind them. Wendy pulled her arm back. “OK, at least we know how to get back.”