I try to speak but find I cannot. I am not able even to open my mouth or to move my tongue. I can feel my arms, legs, fingers, and toes, but cannot will them to move. Only my eyes and eyelids are mine to control.
He faces to my right, with the dagger in his hand.
“Un re-a an Ptah, uau netu, uau netu, aru re-a an neter nut-a.
I arefm Djewhty, meh aper em heka, uau netu, uau netu, en Suti sau re-a.
Khesef-tu Tem uten-nef senef sai set.
Un re-a, apu re-a an Shu em nut-ef tui ent baat en pet enti ap-nef re en neteru am-es.
Nuk Sekhet! Hems-a her kes amt urt aat ent pet.
Nuk Sakhu! Urt her-ab baiu Annu.
Ar heka neb t’etet neb t’etu er-a sut, aha neteru er-sen paut neteru temtiu.
May Ptah give me voice, remove the wrappings! Remove the wrappings which the lesser gods have placed over my mouth.
Come unto me Djewhty, bearer of Heka, full of Heka, remove the wrappings! Remove the wrappings of Suti which fetter my mouth.
May Tem turn back those who would restrain me.
Give me voice! May my mouth be opened by Shu with that divine instrument of iron with which the gods were given voice.
I am Sekhet! I watch over the heaven of the west.
I am Sakhu! I watch over the souls of Annu.
May the gods and their children hear my voice, and resist those who would silence me.”
He takes the dagger and traces a vertical line in the air to my right, cutting downward in a smooth down deadly motion.
“Qebhsennuf!”
What sound like a hundred other voices—all belonging to forms out of my line of sight—cry out in unison:
“Qebhsennuf!”
He turns to the direction my feet are pointing and traces a vertical line in the air.
“Amset!”
The choir of bodiless voices answers him:
“Amset!”
Drood turns to my left and draws a vertical line in the air with the dagger.
“Tuamutef!”
“Tuamutef!” cries the choir.
Drood raises the dagger towards my face and traces another vertical line in air that I now realise is thick with smoke and incense.
“Hapi!
I am the flame which shines upon the Opener of Eternity!”
The invisible chorus cries out in a single, sustained note that sounds like the baying of jackals along the Nile at midnight.
“Hapi!”
Drood smiles at me and says very softly, “Misster Wilkie Collinss, you may move your head, but only your head.”
Suddenly I am free to move. I cannot lift my shoulders but I throw my head from side to side. My glasses are gone. Everything more than ten feet away is cloaked in blur: marble columns rising into darkness, hissing braziers breathing smoke, robed figures by the score.
I do not like this opium dream.
I do not think that I’ve said this aloud, but Drood throws back his head and laughs. Candlelight glints on the gold and lapis collar around his thin neck.
I try to move my body until I weep from frustration, but only my head obeys my commands. I thrash my face back and forth, tears spilling onto the white altar.
“Misster Wilkie Collinsss,” purrs Drood. “Praise to the lord of truth, whose shrine is hidden, from whose eyesss mankind issued, and from whose mouth the godsss came into being. As high as isss the heaven, as broad as isss the earth, as deep as isss the sea.”
I try to scream but my jaw and lips and tongue still will not obey me.
“You may speak, Misster Wilkie Collinsss,” says the pale face. He has moved around to my right side now, the red-tipped dagger held in both hands against his chest. The circle of hooded forms has pressed closer.
“You filthy bugger!” I cry. “You wog bastard! You stinking foreign piece of dung! This is my opium dream, damn your eyes! You are not welcome in it!”
Drood smiles again.
“Misster Wilkie Collinsss,” he whispers, the smoke from the braziers and incense burners swirling around his face, “above me stretchesss Nuit, the Lady of Heaven. Beneath me liesss Geb, the Lord of the Earth. At my right hand Ast, Lady of Life. At my left hand Asar, the Lord of Eternity. Before me—before you—risesss Heru, the beloved Child and the Hidden Light. Behind me and above us all shines Ra, whose namesss even the godsss do not know. You may be silent now.”
I try to scream but once again I cannot.
“From this day forward, you shall be our scribe,” says Drood. “In the yearsss remaining to your mortal life, you shall come to uss to learn of our faith’s old daysss, old waysss, and eternal truthsss. You shall write of them in your own language so that generationsss yet unborn shall know of usss.”
I flail my head from side to side but cannot will my muscles or voice to work.
“You may speak if you wish,” says Drood.
“Dickens is your scribe!” I cry. “Not I! Dickens is your scribe!”
“He isss one of many,” says Drood. “But he… resistsss. Misster Charlesss Dickensss believesss that he iss the equal of a priest or priestessss of the Temple of Sleep. He believesss that his force of will isss equal to our own. He hasss taken instead the ancient challenge that would exempt him from being our full-time scribe.”
“What is that exemption?” I cry out.
“To kill an innocent human being in full sight of othersss,” hisses Drood with a return of that small-toothed smile. “He hopesss that his imagination shall provide the equal service, that the gods will be fooled, but so far he… and hisss much-vaunted imagination… have failed.”
“No!” I cry. “Dickens killed young Dickenson. Young Edmond Dickenson. I am sure of that!”
I understand the motive for the murder now. Some sort of ancient, pagan, spiritual escape clause that allowed Dickens to avoid complete control by this foul magus. He traded the life of that orphaned young man for his freedom from Drood’s total domination.
Drood shakes his head and beckons a robed and hooded follower forward from the blurred circle of forms I sense all around me. The man pulls his dark hood back and down. It is young Dickenson. He has shaved his head and his eyes have that same heathenish blue shadow on them, but it is young Dickenson.
“Missster Dickensss was kind enough to suggest this soul for our small fold and our small fold to this soul,” says Drood. “Both Brother Dickenson’sss money and hisss faith are welcome here. The offer of thisss convert to our Family has brought Missster Charlesss Dickensss a… small dispensation.”
“Wake up!” I cry to myself. “For God’s sake, wake up, Wilkie! Enough is enough! Wilkie, wake up!”
Dickenson and the circle of robed figures take several steps back into the gloom. Drood says, “You may be silent again, Misster Wilkie Collinssss.”
He reaches down at the side of the slab, below the level I can turn my head to see, and when he straightens up, there is something black in his right hand. It is large and fills almost all of his pale palm with an even larger crescent on one end of the thing running almost the length of his absurdly long white fingers.
As I stare, the black thing stirs and moves.
“Yesss,” says Drood. “It isss a beetle. My people call representationsss of thisss a scarab and venerate it in our religion and ritualssss.…”
The huge black beetle flails six long legs and tries to crawl off Drood’s hand. He cups his fingers and the huge bug falls back into his palm.
“Our usual scarab wasss modelled after several speciesss in the Family Scarabaeidae,” says Drood, “but most were based upon the common dung beetle.”
I try to writhe, kick out with my legs, stir my untied arms, but can move only my head. A great nausea fills me and I have to relax on the cold stone, focusing on not vomiting. If I were to vomit now, without the ability to open my mouth, I would surely asphyxiate.
“My ancestorsss thought that all beetless were malesss,” hisses Drood, raising his palm so that he can study the loathsome insect more c
losely. “They thought that the little ball that the dung beetle ceaselessly rolls wasss the male beetle’sss seed substance—its sperm. They were wrong.…”
I am blinking madly, since that is one of the few actions I can take. Perhaps if I blink rapidly enough, this dream will fade into another one or I will wake and find myself back on my familiar cot in the warm rear alcove of King Lazaree’s den, not far from the small coal stove he keeps stoked there.
“In truth, as your British science hass shown us, it isss the female who, after dropping her fertilized eggsss on the ground, covers them in excrement on which the larvae feed and rolls thisss soft dung ball across the ground. The ball of dung grows larger and larger as it accumulates more dust and sand, you see, Missster Wilkie Collinssss, which is why my great-great-grandfathers’ great-great-great-grandfathers associated thisss beetle with the daily appearance and movement of the sun… and the rising of the great sun-god, the god of the rising sun rather than the setting sun, Khepri.”
Wake up, Wilkie! Wake up, Wilkie! Wake! I scream silently to myself.
“Our Egyptian name for the common dung beetle was hprr,” drones on Drood, “which means ‘rising from, or coming into being itself.’ It issss very close to our word ‘hpr,’ which means ‘to become, to change.’ You can see how this made the small change to ‘hpri,’ the divine name ‘Khepri,’ standing for the young rising son—our god of Creation.”
Shut up, God d—— n you! I mentally scream at Drood.
As if he hears, he pauses and smiles.
“This scarab shall represent unalterable change for you, Misster Wilkie Collinsss,” he says softly.
The hooded figures around us begin to chant again.
I strain and lift my head as Drood holds his palm over my bare belly.
“Thisss is not the common dung beetle,” whispers Drood. “Thisss is your European-variety stag beetle—thusss the huge… what do you call them in English, Misster Collinsss? Mandibles? Pincers? They are the largest and most ferocious in all the beetle family. But this hprr—this holy scarab—has been consecrated to its purpose.…”
He drops the palm-sized black insect onto my straining bare belly.
“Un re-a an Ptah, uau netu, uau netu, aru re-a an neter nut- a.
I arefm Djewhty, meh aper em heka, uau netu, uau netu, en Suti sau re-a.
Khesef-tu Tem uten-nef senef sai set,” chants the invisible crowd.
The scarab’s six barbed legs scrabble at my cringing skin and it begins to crawl upward towards my ribcage. I raise my head until my neck comes close to snapping, my eyes bulging as I watch the black object with pincers longer than my own fingers climbing towards my chest and head.
I have to scream—I must scream—but I cannot.
The chorus of voices rises in the incensed gloom:
“Un re-a, apu re-a an Shu em nut-ef tui ent baat en pet enti ap-nef re en neteru am-es.
Nuk Sekhet! Hems-a her kes amt urt aat ent pet.
Nuk Sakhu! Urt her-ab baiu Annu.”
The stag beetle’s gigantic pincers pierce my flesh just below the sternum. The pain is beyond anything I have ever experienced. The tendons of my neck audibly creak as I strain to lift my head further to watch.
The scarab’s six legs flail at my flesh, the barbs finding purchase to push first the black crescent pincers and then the head of the beetle into the soft flesh of my upper belly. In five seconds the huge beetle is gone—completely submerged—and the flesh and skin close over its entry point like water sealing itself after being pierced by a black stone.
Jesus! God! No! Dear Christ! God! I scream in the silence of my mind.
“No, no, no,” says Drood, reading my thoughts. “ ‘For the stone shall cry out of the wall, and the beetle out of the timber shall answer it.’ But the scarab, not your man-god Christ, is the ‘only begotten,’ Misster Wilkie Collinsss, sir, even though your people’s pretender god once cried out, ‘But I am a scarab, and no man,’ in envy of the true Khepri.”
I can feel the huge beetle inside me.
The choir of black-robed forms chants:
“Ar heka neb t’etet neb t’etu er-a sut, aha neteru er-sen paut neteru temtiu.”
Drood turns his empty palms upward and closes his eyes as he recites: “Come, Ast! Life-truth comes to this stranger as it has come to our parents. Accept this soul as your own, O Opener of Eternity. Cleanse his former soul in the rising flame which is Nebt-Het. Sustain this instrument as you nourished and sustained Heru in the hidden place among the reeds, O Ast, You, whose breath is life, whose voice is death.”
I can feel the thing move inside me! I cannot scream. My mouth will not open. My eyes shed tears of blood in my agony.
Drood lifts a long metal rod with a sort of bowl on the end.
“May this scribe’s mouth be opened by Shu with that divine instrument of iron with which the godsss were first given voice,” chants Drood.
My mouth opens—stretches wider, continues to open until my jaw cracks and groans—but still I cannot scream.
Inside my belly, the scarab’s insect legs scrabble along my intestines. I can feel the barbs finding purchase. I can feel the chitinous hardness of its shell in my guts.
“We are Sekhet!” cries Drood. “We watch over the heaven of the west. We are Sakhu! We watch over the soulsss of Annu. May the godsss and the children hear our voice and hear our voice in the wordsss of this scribe, and death to all those who would silence usss.”
Drood forces the ladle end of the long iron rod into my open, gaping mouth. There is something round and soft and covered with hair in the sharp bowl at the end. Drood tips the rod and the haired mass falls to the back of my throat.
“Qebhsennuf!” cries Drood.
“Qebhsennuf!” shouts the invisible chorus.
I cannot breathe. My throat is completely blocked by the furry glob filling it. I am dying.
I feel the beetle stop in my lower abdomen. The sharp legs scrabble against my intestines, rip at the outer walls of my stomach, climb higher under my ribs, towards my heart.
I will myself to vomit the hairy mass out of my throat but cannot do even that. My eyes have bulged until I am sure that they will explode out of my head. I think—This is the way that famous novelist Wilkie Collins dies. No one will ever know. Then all thought abandons me as my vision begins to narrow down black tunnels as the last breath in my lungs is trapped and useless.
I feel the scarab’s legs flailing at my right lung. I feel the scarab’s pincers dragging across the outside surface of my heart. I feel the scarab crawling up my throat, feel my neck bulging as it rises higher.
The insect seizes the hairy mass in my throat and drags it down deeper with it, back into my gullet and upper belly.
I can breathe! I cough, gasp, gasp more, try to retch, remember how to breathe.
Drood is passing a lighted candle over my chest and face in circular motions. Hot wax dribbles onto my bare flesh, but the pain of that is nothing compared to the pain of the scarab moving within me. It is climbing again.
“I fly up asss a bird and alight asss a beetle,” chants Drood, deliberately dripping more hot wax across my chest and throat. “I fly up assss a bird and alight asss a beetle on the empty throne which isss on your bark, O Ra!”
The huge insect has filled my throat with its impossible, chitinous hardness and burrowed into my soft palate as easily as it would have burrowed into sand. I can feel it now filling the sinuses behind my nose, behind my eyes. Its barbed legs flail at the backs of my eyeballs as it forces itself higher. I can hear the huge pincers scraping bone as it burrows through the soft matter opening into my skull.
The pain is terrible—indescribable, unsupportable—but I can breathe!
Still unable to focus on anything beyond Drood—the jackal’s-head and great-bird’s-head statues mere blurs, the dark-robed figures melded together as blurs—I realise that I am looking out through a film of the blood I have wept.
I feel the huge stag beetle burrow
into the soft surface of my brain—deeper, deeper. If this continues another second, I know I shall go mad.
The scarab stops moving near the centre of my brain. It begins to feed.
“You may shut your eyessss,” says Drood.
I squeeze them shut, feeling the tears of blood and terror streaking my wax-spotted cheeks.
“You are our scribe now,” says Drood. “You alwaysss will be. You will work when bidden. You will come when summoned. You belong to usss, Misster Wilkie Collinsss.”
I can hear the scarab’s pincers and jaws clicking and moving as it eats. I can visualise the insect rolling my half-digested brain matter into a grey and bloody ball and pushing it ahead of itself.
But it does not move forward again. Not yet. It has made a nest for itself in the lower-central base of my brain. When the scarab’s six legs twitch, it tickles and I again have to fight the absolute need to vomit.
“All praise to the lord of truth,” says Drood.
“Whose shrine is hidden,” chants the chorus.
“From whose eyesss mankind issues,” says Drood.
“And from whose mouth the gods came into being,” chants the choir.
“We send forth this scribe now to do the bidding of the beloved Child and the Hidden Light,” calls Drood.
“Behind him shines Ra, whose names the gods do not know,” chants the crowd.
I try to open my eyes but cannot. Nor can I hear or feel.
The only sound or sensation in my universe now is the ticking and scrabbling as the scarab twists, turns, burrows slightly deeper, and eats again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Iawoke from my opium nightmare to find that I had gone blind.
It was absolute darkness. King Lazaree always had diffused lights in each room of his den, light from the main room always filtered through the red curtain, and the coal stove near the entrance to my niche of the opium den always gave off a warm orange glow. Now there was only absolute darkness. I raised my hands to my eyes to make sure they were open and my fingertips touched the surface of my eyeballs. Wincing away, I could not see my fingers.
I cried out in the darkness and—unlike my dream—I could hear my screams very well indeed. They echoed off stone. I cried for help. I cried for King Lazaree and his assistant. No one answered.