A hand from the murk of the study lightly settled on my shoulder and I flinched. Monty smiled as if this had been his intention. “Let’s get back to it, Tim.”
* * *
So far we had removed over a hundred pieces of jewelry and protective amulets from within the wrappings of the monkey, each one delicately set aside. This had been one regal cynocephalus (sacred baboon). I had told Monty that all the other baboon mummies in the chamber had been positioned as though seated, representing the baboon god Thoth, a lunar divinity and also scribe to the gods.
Again reflecting on this creature’s remarkable burial, Monty reiterated, “This one was so large and important to them, they did it up like a king. From the looks of it, they even cut his tail off to further the effect. Definitely more Hapi than Thoth.”
Where Thoth was an actual baboon god, Hapi was more a baboon-headed god, as Horus had the head of a falcon, Anubis that of a jackal. Hapi was one of the four genii whose heads appear atop the canopic urns into which the internal organs of mummies were removed, these four protecting the soul of the departed when it was called before the judgment of the great god Osiris. Defense counsels for the dead, I thought. What would Hapi and his three comrades think of the great plunder of Egypt’s tombs through the ages, all the body-snatching in the name of curiosity?
“Here’s our boy,” Monty breathed through his surgical mask, as we unveiled the face of the mummy at last…
It was the canine face of a hamadryas baboon. Leathery, blackish, but very well preserved. The lips were twisted back grotesquely from the dark stained teeth, as though the baboon was exposing its fearsome tusks in a snarl.
We took pictures, then went on. As I was gently handling yet another protective amulet, Monty gasped my name. I looked up and he gestured me around the table to his side.
“My God!” I hissed.
“Am I losing my mind, Tim, or…”
“No,” I said. I examined the right hand and forearm Monty had just unwrapped. The hand was well enough preserved, though skeletal, to show that it bore no hair. Shaved perhaps. But there was no mistaking that this hand was, in size and proportion, more human than simian…
“Easy!” I warned Monty, but he had moved excitedly to the feet.
I shifted to help him. Within several minutes we had one foot exposed, and we were both speechless.
It was not the prehensile foot of a monkey, but the long and splendidly preserved foot of a man.
“Jesus, Monty, we can’t do this anymore! We have to get this X-rayed!”
“It’s almost finished, Tim, and it’s mine. We’re doing fine…”
“Monty, this is unheard of! To make a representation of Hapi, they sewed the head of a baboon onto the body of a man. Like those mermaids they used to exhibit in sideshows; a mummified monkey torso stitched to the tail of a fish.”
“Yes…incredible!”
“And like I say, unheard of! What we have here is a startling new find! Never before has there been any indication of such a thing in our studies of ancient Egypt. Never! This is a priceless mummy, not just another monkey mummy. To go on with this now would be arrogant and irresponsible!”
“But we’ve nearly finished, Tim, and as I say…it belongs to me. Their government let me take it. Now, I’ll allow people to come see it. I’ll let them copy my tapes. But we’re almost finished, and we’re going to finish. Okay?”
And what do you think I did?
* * *
By the time I went to bed it was nearly dawn. Monty stayed on with his prize, his birthday present, and out of a kind of disgust for him I blew out the new candle he had put inside his jack-o’-lantern on my way to my room. My sleep after the long day and night was a deep one, but it was a restless sleep nonetheless. Most of the nightmares were mercifully a dispersing mist when I awoke; just fragments lingered…
I recalled some kind of a dark door that opened; not so much an actual door, however, as a sort of tear opening up out of the shadows. A group of wispy dark figures slipped from it. In the course of the dream, however, these things apparently became animals, because next there came a distant roaring, growling, as though from a pit of wild dogs. And a horrible wet gurgling, as if someone had been thrown into that pit…and been seized by the throat before he could scream.
I lay awake, staring at the ceiling, sunlight streaming into the clean guest room. I remembered the remarkable composite mummy as we had left it, fully unveiled. There was no doubt whatsoever, with it completely exposed, that it was a human body. The funny thing was, I could find no stitches, no signs of fastening at the neck where the baboon head joined human shoulders. Of course, in places the wrappings had merged with the skin, so I imagined the stitches had merged with the flesh and that future analysis would reveal them.
I crept out of bed. Monty’s door was closed; still sleeping. Good. I needed the fresh air of independence. I showered, then dressed. Made myself a coffee, and wandered idly to go look in on the mummy again…
The door to the lab was open, showing the bright white of that room. And also, a vivid contrast, garish splashes of red…
I hurried to the door and looked in. I dropped my coffee mug and it shattered. I didn’t feel the burns of the coffee on top of my slippered foot until later.
The police came. I waited for them outside the house; wouldn’t return to it until they went before me.
How could I have slept through it while the murderers were at work on Monty? They had been so savage, and there had to have been more than one to have inflicted such terrible damage. But could there be more than one person so maniacal as to tear a man apart like that? To rend him with their teeth like that, all over his body?
Some strange cult, the police opined. Southern California had had them before. Who else would have left so many expensive material goods, opting instead to steal only Monty’s collection of the dead? For they were all gone. The new mummy from the table. The mummies in the study. The Maori head, the shrunken heads, even the freak babies were gone from their bottles. Julia Pastrana and her hairy infant were also missing from their large glass sarcophagus.
And who, but some cult of madmen, would have gone through the trouble of breaking off teeth from a few of these mummies—including one tusk from the model of Hapi—to bury them in several of Ronald Montgomery’s wounds?
How, I wonder, were they able to accomplish that other strange thing? At first, the police said the naked footprints in blood all around the body were those of the killers. But some prints belonged to tiny infants…too tiny to be walking. And the adult prints looked deformed, shriveled. The killers must have dipped the feet of the mummies in his blood, the detectives decided, to create an odd effect.
But how had the killers avoided making prints of their own feet in the process? I wonder these things still. Perhaps not really wanting to know the true answers…
Whatever hands were responsible for his death, Ronald Montgomery’s body was so mauled that—despite the provision in his will that it be embalmed—his family had it cremated.
Family Matter
I’ll tell you this about my family and me, but please, I must insist that you don’t repeat it to anyone. I think I can trust you…
Early one evening last autumn my dead father came knocking on my door. For a moment I didn’t recognize him; for one thing, I hadn’t been expecting him…and also, the massive injury which had killed him had left a gaping hole in his head from hairline to mid-nose, as if the top half of his face, eyes and all, had crumpled to fall inside like the cracked rubber head of an old doll. A spiked corona of split and creased flesh surrounded the dark pit like the rim of a blasted lunar crater.