I knew. I have written of De Vermis Mysteriis myself, and there are times when the words of Ludvig Prinn fill me with a vague fright and an indefinable repulsion.
Vanning opened the latter volume. “You are familiar with this, I believe. You’ve mentioned it in your work.”
He pointed to the cryptic chapter that is known as Saracenic Rituals.
I nodded. I knew the Saracenic Rituals only too well. The account dealt with Prinn’s mysterious sojourn in Egypt and the Orient in what he claimed were Crusader days. There is revealed the lore of the efreet and the djinn, the secrets of the Assassin sects, the myths of Arabian ghoul-tales, and the hidden practices of dervish cults. I had found within it a great wealth of material on the legends of ancient Inner Egypt; indeed, much story material was culled from those tattered pages.
Egypt again! I glanced at the mummy-case.
Vanning and the others watched me intently. At last my host shrugged.
“Listen,” he said. “I’ll put my cards on the table. I—I must trust you, as I said.”
“Go ahead,” I rejoined, impatiently. Such mystery of manner was irritating.
“It all started with this book,” said Henricus Vanning. “Royce, here, dug it up for me. We got interested in the Bubastis legend, at first. For a while I contemplated some investigations in Cornwall—looking up the Egyptian ruins of England, you know. But then, I found a more fertile field in actual Egyptology. When Professor Weildan, here, went on his expedition last year, I authorized him to obtain anything of interest he might discover, at any price. He returned last week, with this.”
Vanning stepped over to the mummy-case. I followed.
He didn’t have to explain further. One detailed inspection of that mummy-case, combined with what I knew of the Saracenic Rituals chapter, led to an inference that was unmistakable.
The hieroglyphs and markings on the case indicated that it contained the body of an Egyptian priest; a priest of the god Sebek. And Saracenic Rituals told its own story.
For a moment I mentally reviewed my knowledge. Sebek, according to reputable anthropologists, was a lesser deity of Inner Egypt; a fertility god of the Nile. If recognized authorities be correct, only four mummies of his priesthood have ever been found; though numerous statuettes, figurines, and pictures in tombs testify to the veneration accorded this deity. Egyptologists have never fully traced the history of the god, though some unorthodox surmises and wild linkages have been made or hinted at by Wallis-Budge.
Ludvig Prinn, though, had delved further. I recalled his words with an appreciable shudder.
In Saracenic Rituals, Prinn spoke of what he had learned from Alexandrian seers; of his journeyings into the deserts and his secret tomb-lootings in hidden valleys of the Nile.
He told a tale, historically authenticated, of the Egyptian priestcraft and its rise to power—how the servants of the dark nature-gods ruled the Pharaohs from behind the throne, and held the land in their grip. For Egyptian gods and religions were based on secret realities. Strange hybrids walked the earth when it was young; gigantic, lumbering creatures—half-beast, half-man. Human imagination alone did not create the gigantic serpent Set, carnivorous Bubastis, and great Osiris. I thought of Thoth, and tales of harpies; thought of jackal-headed Anubis and the legend of werewolves.
No, the ancients trafficked with elemental powers and beasts of the beyond. They could summon their gods, the humans with the heads of animals. And, at times, they did. Hence their power.
In time, they ruled over Egypt; their word was law. The land was filled with rich temples, and every seventh man owed allegiance to the ritual bodies. Incense rose before a thousand shrines—incense, and blood. The beast-mouths of the gods hungered for blood.
Well might the priests adore, for they had made strange and curious bargains with their divine Masters. Unnatural perversions drove the cult of Bubastis out of Egypt, and a never-mentioned abomination caused the symbol and story of Nyarlathotep to be forgotten. But ever the priests waxed stronger and bolder; their sacrifices more outrageous, and their rewards greater.
For the sake of life everlastingly reincarnated, they pleasured the gods and assuaged their curious appetites. To safeguard their mummies with divine curses, they offered up scapegoats filled with blood.
Prinn speaks of the sect of Sebek in particular detail. The priests believed that Sebek, as a fertility deity, controlled the sources of life eternal. He would guard them in their graves until the resurrection-cycle was completed, and he would destroy their enemies who sought to violate their sepulchers. To him they offered virgin maidens, to be torn between the jaws of a golden crocodile. For Sebek, the Crocodile god of the Nile, had the body of a man, the head of a crocodile, and the lustful appetites of both.
The description of these ceremonies is grisly. The priests all wore crocodile masks, in emulation of their Lord, for that was his earthly aspect. Once a year, they thought, Sebek himself appeared to the High Priests in the Inner Temple at Memphis, and then he too assumed the form of a man with a crocodile head.
The devout believed that he would guard their graves—and countless screaming virgins died to support their faith.
This I knew, and hurriedly recollected, while glancing at the mummy of the Priest of Sebek.
For now I looked into the case, and saw that the mummy had been unwrapped. It lay under a pane of glass, which Vanning removed.
“You know the story, then,” he said, reading my eyes aright. “I’ve had the mummy here a week; it’s been chemically treated, thanks to Weildan, here. On its chest, though, I found this.”
He pointed to an amulet of clear jade—a saurian figure, covered with ideographic images.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Secret code of the priesthood. De Marigny thinks it’s Nacaal. Translation? A curse—as the Prinn story has it—a curse on the heads of tomb-looters. Threatens them with the vengeance of Sebek himself. Nasty wording.”
Vanning’s flippancy was forced. I could tell that by the restless stirring of the others in the room. Doctor Devlin was coughing nervously; Royce twisted his robe; de Marigny scowled. The gnome-like Professor Weildan approached us. He glanced at the mummy for some time, as if seeking solution to a secret in those eyeless sockets that blindly brooded in the gloom.
“Tell him what I think, Vanning,” he said softly.
“Weildan, here, has done some investigation. He managed to get this mummy past the authorities, but it cost him plenty to do it. He told me where he found it, and it’s not a pleasant story. Nine of the caravan boys died on the return journey, though it may have been bad water that did that. The professor has gone back on us, I’m afraid.”
“I have not,” interrupted Weildan, sharply. “When I tell you to get rid of the mummy it is because I want to live. We had some notion of using it in ceremonials here, but this is not possible. You see, I believe in the curse of Sebek.
“You know, of course, that only four mummies of his priests have ever been found. That is because the others repose in secret crypts. Well, the four finders are all dead. I knew Partington, who found the third. He was investigating this curse myth quite thoroughly when he returned—but he died before publishing any reports. It was rather curious, his end. Fell off the bridge into a crocodile pit of the London Zoo. When they pulled him out, he was a mess.”
Vanning looked at me. “Bogey man,” he said, deprecatingly. Then, in more serious tones, he continued. “That’s one of the reasons I asked you here to share this secret. I want your own opinion, as a scholar and occultist. Should I get rid of the mummy? Do you believe in this curse story? I don’t, but I have felt quite uneasy of late. I know of too many peculiar coincidences, and I have faith in Prinn’s veracity. What we intend to use the mummy for does not matter. It would have been a—a desecration great enough to anger any god. And I wouldn’t like to have a crocodile-headed creature at my throat. What do you say?”
Abruptly, I remembered. The man in the mask! He had
been dressed like a priest of Sebek, in emulation of the god.
I told Vanning what I had seen of him. “Who is he?” I asked. “He should really be here. It makes things—appropriate.”
Vanning’s horror was not feigned. I regretted having spoken, after observing his terrified reaction.
“I never saw that! I swear I didn’t! We must find the man at once.”
“Perhaps it’s a polite form of blackmail,” I said. “He may have the goods on you and Weildan, and frighten you into paying hush-money.”
“Perhaps.” Vanning’s voice held no note of sincerity. He turned to the others.
“Quickly,” he said “Go back into the other room and look among the guests. Collar this elusive—stranger; bring him here.”
“Police?” suggested Royce, nervously.
“No, you fool. Hurry, all of you!”
The four men left the room, and their footsteps echoed in the outer corridor as they receded.
A moment’s silence. Vanning tried to smile. I was in a strange oblivious fog. The Egypt of my dreams—was it real? Why had that one glimpse of the mysterious man in the mask so impressed me? The priests of Sebek spilt blood to bind a bargain of vengeance; could they satisfy an ancient curse? Or was Vanning mad?
A soft sound . . .
I turned. And there in the doorway stood the man in the crocodile mask.
“That’s the fellow!” I exclaimed. “That’s—”
Vanning leaned against the table, his face the color of wet ash. He just stared at the figure on the threshold, but his tormented eyes telepathically conveyed a dreadful message to me.
The man in the crocodile mask . . . nobody had seen him but myself. And I was dreaming of Egypt. Here, in this room, was the stolen mummy of Sebek’s priest.
The god Sebek was—a crocodile-headed god. And his priests were dressed in his image—They wore crocodile masks.
I had just warned Vanning about the vengeance of the old priests. He himself had believed and was afraid when I told him what I had seen. And now, in the doorway, stood the silent stranger. What was more logical than to believe it was a resurrected priest, come to avenge this insult to his kind?
Yet I could not believe it. Even when the figure entered, sinister and still, I did not guess its purpose. Even when Vanning cowered and moaned against the mummy-case, I was not convinced.
Then, everything happened so swiftly that I had no time to act. Just as I was about to challenge the unnatural intruder, doom was unleashed. With a darting, reptilian movement, the body beneath the white robe undulated across the room. In a second it towered above the cringing figure of my host. I saw clawing hands sink into sagging shoulders; then the jaws of the mask descended and moved. Moved—in Vanning’s quivering throat.
As I leapt, my thoughts seemed sluggishly calm in contrast. “Diabolically clever murder,” I mused. “Unique death-weapon. Cunningly contrived tooth-mechanism in a mask. Fanatic.”
And my eyes, in a detached fashion, observed that monstrous muzzle biting into Vanning’s neck. Moving, the squamous horror of the head loomed like a camera close-up.
It took only a second, understand. Then, with sudden purpose, I had seized a sleeve of the white robe, and with my free hand wrenched at the mask of the murderer.
The killer wheeled, ducked. My hand slipped, and for a moment rested on the crocodile snout, the bloody jaw.
Then, in a flash, the invader wheeled and disappeared, while I was left screaming before the ripped and tattered body on the mummy-case of Sebek.
Vanning was dead. His murderer had disappeared. The house was crowded with revellers; I had but to step to the door and call for aid.
I did not. I stood for one stark second in the center of the room, screaming, while my vision veered. Everything was swimming around and around—the blood-blotched books; the sere mummy, its chest now crushed and crimsoned by the struggle; the red, unmoving thing on the floor. All blurred before my eyes.
I could see nothing but my right hand—the hand that had brushed the masked muzzle of the killer. There was blood on my fingers. I stared at it and shrieked.
Then, and only then, did volition come to me. I turned and ran.
I wish my tale could end there, but it cannot. There is a hideous conclusion to be drawn. It must be revealed so that I can know peace once more.
I’ll be frank. I know it would make a better story if I had asked the butler about the man in the crocodile mask and heard him say that no such person entered the place. But this—God save me!—is not a story, but truth.
I know he was there, and after I saw Vanning die I did not wait to interview another soul. I made that last desperate clutch at the masked murderer, then screamed and ran from the room. I rushed through the revellers on the floor without even giving an alarm, dashed out of the house and panted up the street. Grinning horror bestrode my shoulders and urged me on, until I lost all consciousness and ran blindly back to the lighted lanes and laughing throngs that dwelt smugly safe from the terrors I knew.
The stranger in the crocodile mask—of Egypt. I don’t care to write Egyptian stories any more, now that I know.
Knowledge came during that last moment, when I saw the stranger sink his curiously constructed crocodile muzzle in poor Vanning’s throat—sink in with saber-teeth slashing. It was then that I grabbed him for a moment before he slipped away; grabbed at him, screamed, and hysterically fled. The murderer was not a priest.
I grabbed him, in that horrible moment, by the bloody muzzle of the frighteningly realistic crocodile mask. Just a single moment of horrid contact, before he disappeared. But it was enough.
For when I seized that bloody, reptilian muzzle, I felt beneath my fingers, not a mask, but living flesh!
Fane of the Black Pharaoh
Bloch takes up Lovecraft’s intriguing reference (in “The Haunter of the Dark”) to Nephren-Ka, the Antichrist counterpart to the heretic Pharaoh Ikhnaton or Akhenaton, who proclaimed himself the hierophant and revealer of a single solar deity. He sought to supplant the traditional Egyptian pantheon in the name of his divine patron Aten. He was promptly deposed, his monotheistic reforms reversed.
Some readers may have experienced déjà vu upon reading Archie Goodwin’s tale “Collector’s Edition”, illustrated by Steve Ditko, in Creepy magazine (see James Warren, ed., The Best of Creepy {Tempo Books, 1971}). Goodwin’s well-told tale seems to be a creative fusion of elements borrowed from no less than three Bloch originals. The colorful history of the grimoire Dark Visions by the decadent Marquis le Mode, eventually slain by the Inquisition, is highly reminiscent of Ludvig Prinn’s career and fate. The dealings between the narrator and the seedy bookseller Murch recalls rather closely those between the dubious Marco and collector Maitland in “The Skull of the Marquis de Sade”. And the finale wherein Goodwin’s narrator beholds his own death prophetically depicted in the illustrated pages of Dark Visions surely owes a great debt to the climax of “The Fane of the Black Pharaoh”.
Fane of the Black Pharaoh
by Robert Bloch
“Liar!” said Captain Cartaret.
The dark man did not move, but beneath the shadows of his burnoose a scowl slithered across a contorted countenance. But when he stepped forward into the lamplight, he smiled.
“That is a harsh epithet, effendi,” purred the dark man.
Captain Cartaret stared at his midnight visitor with quizzical appraisal.
“A deserved one, I think,” he observed. “Consider the facts. You come to my door at midnight, uninvited and unknown. You tell me some long rigmarole about secret vaults below Cairo, and then voluntarily offer to lead me there.”
“That is correct,” assented the Arab, blandly. He met the glance of the scholarly captain calmly.
“Why should you do this?” pursued Cartaret. “If your story is true, and you do possess so manifestly absurd a secret, why should you come to me? Why not claim the glory of discovery yourself?”
“I told you, ef
fendi,” said the Arab. “That is against the law of our brotherhood. It is not written that I should do so. And knowing of your interest in these things, I came to offer you the privilege.”
“You came to pump me for my information; no doubt that’s what you mean,” retorted the captain, acidly. “You beggars have some devilishly clever ways of getting underground information, don’t you? So far as I know, you’re here to find out how much I’ve already learned, so that you and your fanatic thugs can knife me if I know too much.”
“Ah!” The dark stranger suddenly leaned forward and peered into the white man’s face. “Then you admit that what I tell you is not wholly strange—you do know something of this place already?”
“Suppose I do,” said the captain, unflinching. “That doesn’t prove that you’re a philanthropic guide to what I’m seeking. More likely you want to pump me, as I said, then dispose of me and get the goods for yourself. No, your story is too thin. Why, you haven’t even told me your name.”
“My name?” The Arab smiled. “That does not matter. What does matter is your distrust of me. But, since you have admitted at last that you do know about the crypt of Nephren-Ka, perhaps I can show you something that may prove my own knowledge.”
He thrust a lean hand under his robe and drew forth a curious object of dull, black metal. This he flung casually on the table, so that it lay in a fan of lamplight.
Captain Cartaret bent forward and peered at the queer, metallic thing. This thin, usually pale face now glowed with unconcealed excitement. He grasped the black object with twitching fingers.
“The Seal of Nephren-Ka!” he whispered. When he raised his eyes to the inscrutable Arab’s once more, they shone with mingled incredulity and belief.
“It’s true, then—what you say,” the captain breathed. “You could obtain this only from the Secret Place; the Place of the Blind Apes where—”
“Nephren-Ka bindeth up the threads of truth.” The smiling Arab finished the quotation for him.