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 closely. “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.”