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.