The Mummy Read Free Page B

particularly with Imhotep himself at their head. This place was guarded from thieves and heretics, not the high priest of Osiris.
    Soon Imhotep—on the pretext of paying a visit to the god who lived in this place—was alone in the grandly pillared chamber of the central open temple that looked out on the sandy courtyard of the complex. Kneeling at the feet of the enormous jackal-headed statue of Anubis, the high priest of Osiris might have been praying before the great god; but in fact Imhotep was finding the small trip lever that would open the hidden compartment at the base of the statue.
    The small heavy stone door swung open with an accusing creak and Imhotep removed an ornately carved and painted chest. He opened it, lifting out a big heavy brass-hinged book which in size and shape and, to some degree, form and ornamentation mirrored that of The Book of Amun Ra; however, this intimidating volume was not fashioned of gold, but carved from pure obsidian.
    Imhotep stared upon the black face of The Book of the Dead, and in the smooth stone surface, his own face looked back at him. For a frozen moment, his tortured expression questioned what it was he was about to do.
    Then he returned the chest, now empty, to the base of the jackal-headed statue, closed the compartment, and went swiftly—massive stone volume held in one hand, slipped under his flowing black robe, hidden away from the eyes of any stray warrior priest—to gather his followers for the ceremony.
    Into the catacombs that were the underground necropolis of the City of the Dead, the high priest—now bearing The Book of the Dead before him like an offering—led his black-robed followers, again with torches in hand. The procession—which included two priests solemnly conveying the mummy of Anck-su-namun—descended a stairway carved from the rock into a cavernous chamber; black hairy rats the size of small dogs scurried as sandaled footsteps echoed through the ampitheaterlike area, its cavelike walls painted orange with torchlight. At the periphery burbled moats of black muck that might have been tar, but was instead the decayed residue of human remains mingling with what had once been water, a soup of despair in which skulls bobbed like onions.
    In the center of the open area was a strange, twisted altar of heavy dark stone adorned with golden decorative touches—winged scarabs, cobra heads, rams’ horns—and onto its smooth surface the priests carefully placed Imhotep’s mummified beloved.
    Then Imhotep’s followers gathered in a circle around the mummy on the altar, and began to chant, eyes hooded, faces lifeless, bald heads rocking, bodies swaying. The eerie hum of their chanting filled the chamber as, one by one, Imhotep received from five of his priests the five precious canopic jars, placing them around the altar, around his loved one, in the precise position the incantation required. Had more time passed than a mere forty days, the concubine’s vital organs would not have remained fresh enough for this unholy procedure, and a human sacrifice would have been needed to replace the contents of the canopic jars.
    Imhotep opened the immense pages of the obsidian book and began to read. The withered, gnarled mummy shuddered, and then shimmied and shimmered and blurred, as it magically resumed the shapely form of Anck-su-namun. The high priest’s eyes were wide and his teeth were bare in something like a smile as he began to unwrap the linen bandages, pleased to find young, vibrant flesh beneath, the naked form of the woman he loved, her physical state restored.
    The first stage of his sorcery, this reversal of the spells he’d previously cast, was successful. What must come next would make every other incantation he had made on this horrendous night seem like the rhyming of a child at play.
    Imhotep began to read from The Book of the Dead, as the monotonous chanters circled around him and the beautiful dead woman on the altar, droning on. The foul