“It’s simple, really. All you have to do is get us what we want. Anything else you find or do is up to you, but we need the product in this building in a week.” The voice over the phone hissed.
Jenks hung up the phone, gave it back to the bartender, and asked for another shot. He took his glass over to a table on the sidewalk and watched the city dwellers mill about the street. He pulled out a small box, opened it up, and pulled out the last pinch of dirty brown powder. The powder went up his nose, followed by the shot. He was going to steal a mummy.
A couple of hours later and he had a crew. Shifty men with no names that didn’t care about curses. Most were addicted to the drug found in the caskets. The powder was mostly mummified bodies ground up with the different chemicals the ancient Egyptians used to honor their kings. A professor in Jenks past had discovered it on an expedition, claimed that the drug was why people thought the pyramids were haunted. He refined it and started testing it. Word got around, it was tested, addicts were grown. The professor had kept the exact mixture a secret to control the flow. They called it “casket dust”.
Jenks had the men meet him in a back room of the bar. A creaky old ceiling fan pushed heat around in the barren room. The men sat around wooden tables drinking beer and tea. Jenks walked around and greeted them. He recognized some from other jobs he had done, others filled in for the ones that didn’t make it back. A few of them had the tell-tale signs of being casket addicts: sunken in eyes, lips pulled back, rotten finger nails. The newer ones were looking for a chance to strike it rich and sell it for themselves. Good luck, he thought. Most end up testing it out and getting strung out on the dust.
“We are going out to the lonely pyramid tomorrow morning. I need to bring a mummy back, intact.” Jenks said.
“The lonely pyramid? The last group that went out there never came back. It is is said that the wicked king kept them as his slaves.” One said.
“Really? They probably just took too much dust and forgot how to get back. Besides, are you going to tell me you still believe in curses?”
“If you don’t believe it, why do you have so many of us?” The voice said.
“Well, because it is a long journey for one man to go. And you know how heavy a casket is? No way for me to do that by myself.” Jenks said.
“What do we get out of it? Sparing our lives like this, it’s a tall order.” Another said.
“Dammit guys, why’d you come if you didn’t want to do it?”
“When the great Jenks puts out a call for a crew, you come.” A man standing in the back said.
Jenks recognized the voice. It was Wayne.
“Well, thanks Wayne. You guys can take all the casket dust you want. Hell, you can even take any of the gold.”
Wayne eyed him.
“So, someone put in an order?”
“I guess they got a hold of me first. I’m glad to see you here Wayne.” Jenks said.
“Just wanted to see what was on the table.”
He directed the crew on what to bring and where to meet. After they dispersed he wandered the town looking for a place to sleep. The sky was as dark as an empty crypt. The light brown stone buildings crowded the streets, funneling people around the city. Jenks shuffled along the street, itching at his fingers. There was only one place he knew that would be open this late and let the likes of him in, the night bazaar.
The night bazaar was in a wide alley in the stranger part of town. Canvas was strung up between the buildings, blocking out the elements. Lights hung below the canvas festively filling the alleyway. Jenks strolled through the bazaar looking at the wares merchants had on their tables. He found a stall that sold strange machines, engine parts, and weapons. Another had bones, bottles full of vile looking liquids, and little idols. Giant centipedes, snakes, and spiders hung from one vendor’s stall; men stood by the stall eating the creatures out of cups. In a dark corner of the stall, men ground up the giant centipedes into a yellow powder. Jenks signaled one of the men and walked away with a jar of the powder. He found an ancient tea shop and took a table near the front.
Jenks sat down with a glass of absinthe and watched the patrons of the bazaar. He was hoping this would be the job to get him back into the states. As much as he liked the freedom of the outlaw town, he knew he was killing himself and it was time to go home. Years of being a crypt thief had finally caught up to him, it was no longer fun. At first, the thrill of escaping the jaws of horror had been exhilarating, like exploring the end of the world. But now, it was just a job. A thing he had to do to feed his addictions. Addictions that he developed to deal with the nightmares.
A man walking down the street paused in front of the tea shop and started to vomit. No one stopped at first, but the vomit kept coming. It splashed on the street while the man groaned. Jenks stood up from his table to get a better view. The vomit was black and full of squirming shapes. Onlookers backed away. Some made the sign to ward off evil spirits. The man fell to his knees, arching his back to expel more. The vomit began to thin, like someone slowly turning off a faucet. He swayed and fell face first into the puddle. A hissing sound came and the man gurgled and screamed as the smell of burning flesh filled the bazaar. The show finished. Jenks sat down and finished off his absinthe.
Time passed slowly under in the bazaar. Jenks thought about the job he had the next day. He wondered how many of the crew would survive. The numbers seemed slim, which made him pop open the top of the jar with the centipede powder. After sampling some of it he thought about Wayne.
Wayne always seemed to be around when it came to exploring the pyramids. No one knew much about him. But, he had been there before Jenks, and always took jobs that placed him in a pyramid. It wasn’t surprising that Wayne came to the bar, though how he knew about it and what Jenks was after was a bit of a mystery. Jenks put some more of the yellow powder up his nose and decided he didn’t care.
Dead men in rotten bandages tore at Jenk’s clothes. He sank into a pit of corpses. Everytime he clawed out of the pile, more bodies fell onto him. A greyish black face appeared in front of his. It coughed out dust and death. The breathe entered into Jenks’ lungs choking him. Bugs crawled out of ears, nose, eye sockets, and mouth of the mummy and leapt onto Jenks. They burrowed into his skin and laid eggs. A black veil covered his eyes while strips of fabric wrapped around him.
An old man shook Jenks awake. The old man smiled a toothless grin and spoke gibberish. Jenks squinted at the man’s round face as he tried to decipher the man’s words. The man pouted thick lips then rubbed his nose and laughed. Jenks touched his nose to find it crusted over. On the table was a puddle of yellow powder mixed with blood. He checked his watch to discover that he was late.
The men were at the outskirts of town. Sand-blasted square huts marked the meeting of civilization and desert. Jenks spied on the men from the shadows of a building. Three quarter of the men from last night milled about. One man wrapped head-to-toe in brown fabric sharpened curved swords while others played with their rifles. Wayne was not among the group. Jenks emerged from his hiding place and joined his crew.
“This it then?” Jenks asked no one in particular.
“It is. They fear the lonely pyramid. Not even all of the mummy dust in the pyramid would convince them to cross the desert.” A bare-chested man with a mustache said.
“And you? Are you scared of a curse?”
The man pulled back his thin lips in a smile revealing rotten teeth. “No sir. I’ve faced much worse than the desert or a curse.” He pounded his rock hard chest with a brown fist.
Jenks nodded and then hollered at the men to mount up. He whistled and a brown and white spotted horse trotted up to him. Before jumping on to his horse, Jenks pulled out his bottle of centipede powder and snorted a pinch full. Then he was on the horse and leading the men into the desert.
The morning was bright with an unblemished blue sky to greet them as they entered the desert. There was nothing between the riders and the horizon except sand. The curtain of sky melted into the horizon, dancing and shimmering with the heat. If someone didn’t know the desert, the blank canvas in front of them would swallow them. There were no landmarks once they got out of sight of the town. The wind erased their tracks, leaving no trace of where they had come from, as if the men were placed there by a cruel god. Someone traveling the desert looking for the pyramids had to have enough nerve or be crazy enough to believe they would eventually find their goal.
They pushed hard through the waste. Clouds of sand followed them. Jenks’ mental compass pointed him to where the lonely pyramid was located in the desert. Clusters of pyramids dotted the never-ending desert like stars in a constellation. In the center of the constellation presided the lonely pyramid. The space between the pyramids were where death laid. Jenks heard stories of riders that steered their horse toward the empty space in the desert. The stories always ended with the rider never being seen again.
Night came upon the riders without notice. Each were lost in their own thoughts, letting their horses lead them through the sandy expanse. Jenks was nodding off in his saddle when the sun was out, when he awoke, he was face up in the sand staring at the ceiling of night. There were no stars and he couldn’t find the moon, yet there was a glow emanating from the sand. He rolled to his side and saw that the men had built a fire and were cooking dinner. He asked the man with the mustache how long he had been out, the man couldn’t say.
“We all woke up like you. I ordered the men to set a campfire and there are a few out standing guard.”
“We all were asleep?”
“I guess so.”
They must have passed out in the sun and heat of the desert. Jenks stood up and scanned the desert. He could see for miles. There was no sign of the town, so he knew they traveled far enough away from it, however there was nothing else for him to see except more sand, which was covered in the eerie glow.
The men were huddled around the fire. Their faces awash in the red and yellow light. Each one was quiet, staring into the fire. The light danced on their faces, highlighting the signs of their mummy dust addiction. Some were further along in their addictions, the fire caught in their sunken eyes and sallow cheeks. It would have been frightening to see, if Jenks wasn’t in his own grip of addiction. He assumed that the men didn’t see the fear either, that their only thoughts were with the amount of potential powder they would find at their destination.
His thoughts were scattered. He imagined flushing out the drugs and going back to the states. He thought about Wayne. He thought about what he was searching for in the desert. Jenks stared at the fire and tried to focus his mind on the next couple of days.
They must be on the right path. He had never been to the lonely pyramid, but had heard the tales of those that were seeking it. They would find themselves facing their worst fears. Passing out in the desert and losing your way is one of the biggest fears someone out here faces.
Lost in his thoughts, he didn’t notice the strange moaning traveling on the wind. A few of the others did, they sat up and peered into the dark. The sound broke Jenks focus, burrowing its way into his mind. He stood up with the others. It was clear on everyone’s face that the sound wasn’t imaginary. The moaning sounded human. No one could pinpoint the source of the sound, it came from all corners of the desert. The mustached man whistled for the sentries to return. One came back.
“Is that all you sent out?” Jenks asked.
“No sir, there should be two others out there.” Mustache said.
Jenks stared into the goggles of the man that came back. It was the man wrapped in cloth. A turban sat on top of his head and cloth covered his face and rail thin body. Swords popped out of the red sash around his waist.
“Did you see anything out there?” Jenks asked.
“Nothing. It is absolutely dead out there.” The man mumbled through the face wrap.
Jenks stared into the goggles that replaced the man’s eyes. Flames reflected off of the hard plastic. He’s a mummy, a voice popped into Jenks’ mind. And for a split second the cloth around the man rotted away revealing grey dead flesh. Centipedes and cockroaches poked through the paper thin skin. Dead hands reached for Jenks. He could smell the dry flesh that so many coveted. Its fingers were so close to his face he could count the cracks in the black fingernails. Jenks reeled back and screamed.
The mustached man put an arm around Jenks’ shoulder and walked him away from the turbaned man. Jenks peeked over his shoulder and saw that the sentry was back to normal. They sat down by the fire. His second in command looked at the others and slowly shook his head. Then he put a horse blanket on Jenks.
“That centipede powder is bad stuff. It makes people go crazy. You should lay off of it, it’s still a long ride to the lonely pyramid.”
Jenks nodded and pulled a blanket tight around his body. One of the men produced a small tin box filled with mummy dust. He sprinkled it into a cigarette, rolled it tight and put it to his lips. The man’s eyes glowed as he lit it and took a drag. There all addicts, who are they to judge? Jenks was transfixed on the man. He watched him, then studied the rest. He wondered how much their lives were worth and if it would be enough for the next couple of days.
A boot nudged him in the ribs. A grey face filled his view.
“Boss, you awake?”
“My eyes are open.”
“We lost another one last night.”
Jenks sat up. The sky was purple. The moaning had morphed into a monkey’s chatter.
“What do you mean we lost another one?”
“There was eight of us, we’re six now.”
“No one noticed? Did he not scream? Call in the sentries!”
The grey faced man said something to the man with the mustache, who whistled to the others. Once they came in, Jenks ordered them all to mount their horses, they were heading out. Two packs were left next to the remains of the fire. Jenks poked around in the bags, ignoring the men on the horses. He found lost men’s stashes of mummy dust. Sticking them in his pocket he got on his horse and lead the men back out into the desert.
Watercolor brown and blue painted the view ahead of the men. If the count of men or the amount of drugs he had wasn’t different than yesterday, Jenks would have sworn they were repeating the same day. With nothing marring the landscape, it was hard for him to determine if they were actually moving or just staying in the same place. No one talked about the missing men. Jenks didn’t know their names. And he couldn’t really remember what they looked like either. He spurred his horse to speed up. The rest of the group kicked up sand and they pushed further into the waste.
A dust cloud in the distance woke Jenks up from his trance. It was to the right of their path. The cloud was headed to cross their path. Jenks looked up into the sky to determine how long he had been out, but couldn’t find the sun in the cloudless sky. He looked back to the other riders and pointed toward the cloud. One of them shrugged, “I just noticed it.”
They marked their time to the distance the dust cloud traveled. Weapons were drawn as they got closer to the disturbance. The size of the dust cloud shrank the closer they got unit it appeared to be just one rider. Who’d be out here riding by themselves?
Jenks slowed them down to a trot. He couldn’t see what was creating the cloud, though he was sure they were close enough to see a human on a horse. The dust cloud was almost in front of them when the cloud dissipated, leaving a clear blue sky in its place.
The riders stop. Where the dust cloud had been moments before was back to being an undisturbed patch of sand. Jenks ordered one of his men to dismount and search the area.
The man stared at Jenks without moving a muscle. He shook his head in insubordination. Jenks pulled out his revolver and pointed it at the man. The man crossed his arms across his chest. A thunderclap broke the silence, the man slumped in his saddle, then slide to the desert floor. Before Jenks could order another man to search the area, the ground rumbled kicking up sand.
All of the horses started to scream and jump. A whirlpool formed in the sand underneath the dead man. Cries and snarls mixed with the rumbling. Jenks couldn’t comprehend what he saw, dark shapes reaching out from the whirlpool to pull the body under the sand. The dead man’s horse tried to escape the sinking sand, but its back legs were caught and the horse slowly sunk in. The horse’s eyes rolled around in its skull, human-like screams poured out its mouth. A few of the men covered their ears. One of the men began to claw at his ears, cutting his flesh with his ragged nails. Jenks remembered the gun in his hand and put the horse out of its misery.
The whirlpool slurped up the horse. The symphony of sounds and movement slowly faded. A concave area was the only reminder of what had happened moments before. Shaky hands reached into Jenks’ jacket pocket and pulled out the vial of yellow powder. The hands acted of their own accord, detached from Jenks thoughts. A flash of centipede legs danced on the outside edge of his vision. Without looking at the rest of his men, he pulled the reigns on his horse and continued his mission.
They stopped when the sky turned black and the sand began to glow. No one mentioned that the moon hadn’t risen, nor do they mention the events of the day. The mustache man and the one wrapped in cloth talk and the wrapped man walked out into the night. The man with the torn ears muttered to himself. The muttering had frayed the last nerves of everyone sitting around the fire.
Childlike crying replaced the moaning of the previous night. The crying and muttering mixed to tear at their sanity. Jenks shook one of the tins he had taken and heard the whisper of powder against metal. He had wanted to make the drugs last. His body had been urging him to dig in, his skin itched and his mind clouded. A constant insect clicking was in his ears, whispering to him unearthly secrets. It took all the strength he had to not snort it all. He itched at his arms when one of the men jumped on to the muttering man.
The fight was brutal. It was a fight between two feral dogs. The sense of dread and death was all over the battle. Two men who knew that one was going to die at the end of it. Desperation oozed out of the cuts and scars, mixing with the blood and sand underneath them. Grunting and flesh being pounded filled the air; the crying on the wind had stopped, almost as if the world waited for the outcome. No one got up to stop the fight, each secretly happy for the muttering to stop. A horrible popping sound punctuated the end of the fight, as the muttering man’s eyes were pushed into his skull.
“Take his body out into the desert. We don’t want coyotes or wolves sniffing around here.” Jenks said to the victor of the fight.
The man stood up. His face was bruised, knuckles cut, and white jelly dripped from his thumbs. He grabbed the body by the feet and dragged him into the darkness. His breathing was shallow and labored from a broken rib. They could hear him curse and spit. Jenks dug into the dead man’s bag, eyeing the others.
“You didn’t win that fight. His gear goes to the other.” The mustached man said.
“I’m the leader, I get my share.” Jenks said as he pocketed the man’s wooden box.
The box had beetles and centipedes carved on it. He opened up the hinged box and saw the yellow powder of ground up centipede. He wondered if he would eventually start muttering to himself, but then carefully poured the powder into his vial. He sat down across from the fire when the victor came back.
Everyone felt the rumbling before they heard the horrible sounds of dry sucking in the distance. The fire became the center of attention until the sounds ended. Now there were four.
A green sky welcomed them to the new day. Hyena laughter traveled across the wind on a loop. Jenks woke up to stiff joints and a bloody nose. The victor’s face was pale and his hands vibrated uncontrollably. The man with the turban and bandaged face was missing, along with his horse and pack. Three riders headed deeper into the desert with grim determination.
Lightning dotted the skyline. There were no clouds. Jenks and his two riders felt electricity in the air. The three horses rode close together, the riders didn’t complain at the proximity of the others. A black dot on the edge of the horizon grew with every step as if it was sprouting from the earth. The lonely pyramid.
A grin appeared on Jenks’ face. He smiled at the others. The victor swayed in his saddle, saliva dribbled out of his cracked lips, his skin pale and pulled tight against his skull. Mustache man smiled under his mustache and steadied the other one. They spurred their horses and pushed forward. Invisible insects buzzed, their intensity increased as the pyramid grew taller on the horizon.
The pyramid was too tall to have been man-made. It took the riders all day to hit the edge of the pyramid’s shadow. They rode through the night, not wanting to stop. Sweat glistened on the horses from the glowing sand. They stopped for a moment to tie the victor to his horse; he was delirious, rambling in a language Jenks didn’t understand. The next morning the green sky in front of them was blotted out by the pyramid.
Bones of a horse poked out of the sand next to the entrance of the pyramid. Jenks and the mustached man dismounted their horses. They untied the victor and sat him down against the base of the pyramid. Jenks tried to look up at the point of the pyramid, but the height of the structure was dizzying and he looked down to fight vertigo. Inside of the black maw of the entrance, red and orange shadows danced on the walls, someone was in the pyramid.
The two men creeped into the cool tomb, leaving a man on the brink of death to watch their back. Jenks shuddered, the drastic temperature change felt like being on another planet. The unseen torchlight was enough light for them to see their way. They both had their weapons drawn, whatever had the torch was not going to stop them. Something rustled behind the stone walls, but there was no other sound ahead of them. The path they were on turned left ahead of them. Jenks stopped at the edge and peered around; he lowered his gun and his mouth hung agape.
The mustached man poked Jenks in the ribs. “What do you see?” he whispered.
Jenks shook his head and went down the hall.
The hall opened up into a large antechamber. A couple of torches on poles lit some of the room, the back of the room hidden in shadow. The two men cautiously walked in and looked at the sarcophaguses along the stone walls. They walked past an empty casket and stopped when they found one with an intact mummy leaning against the side of its casket. An errant breeze disturbed some cobwebs hanging in front of the tombs. The scrape of stone on stone echoed from the edge of the room, where someone standing in front of a table.
A human like shape wrapped in cloth with a turban on its head had its back to Jenks and the mustached man. The shape blocked most of Jenks view of the table, allowing him to only see a pair of boots attached to legs. The metal click of Jenk’s revolver echoed throughout the room. The shape turned toward the sound. Light reflected from the goggles on its eyes.
“Wayne is that you? Why don’t you back away from that table and I won’t put a hole in you.”
The shape turned around to face them. Its chest was covered in a black stain. A lipless mouth with wet teeth growled below the goggles. A dry shriek emerged from its mouth. The shape raised a rotten hand and shambled toward them. Jenks fired his gun into the chest of the shape. Dark clotted blood splurted out from the wound. The thing continued toward them as they backed away.
The mustached man wasn’t paying attention and backed into a hole in the ground. He screamed before something muffled him. Jenks looked down into the hole, something squirmed and writhed, but it was too dark to make out what was happening. The wrapped shape was closer.
Jenks backed himself into the empty sarcophagus. He aimed and fired at the shape’s foot, blasting it clear off. The thing stumbled and fell to the ground. It continued to crawl towards him. Jenks fired again, shattering the goggles. The thing stopped, leaking syrupy blood. Jenks slid down the back of the casket and sat on the ground in front of it, breathing heavy.
The light from the torches danced on the walls. The sound of the thing writhing under the floor filled the room. Jenks thought about the mustached man and wished he knew the man’s name. Did the man have a family or was he just an addict like him, going to the end of the world for a fix? He put his hand through his hair and tried not to think about anything.
Time passed. Jenks woke up stiff in the tomb. The shape that was wrapped in cloth watched him with dead eyes. He got up and went to the body. There wasn’t much left of its head, but he had to see. He picked at the wet cloth until he could get enough off of the face to reveal a mummified Wayne. Was Wayne riding with him the whole time? What made him like this?
He decided to push the body into the hole. It was a lot lighter than he thought it would have been. The blood was sticky and covered his hands as the body slide into the hole. A cold sweat broke out on his forehead and he wiped it away with his hand, leaving a sticky trail of blood.
Jenks went to the table where Wayne had been working. On the table was one of the men that had been with him on his journey. His torso had been torn open and the organs removed. A few jars were covered in blood. Jenks turned and threw up on to the floor. His head began to swim, but he dismissed it, blaming it on the lack of water and drugs.
Oh God, Wayne was the professor. Jenks realized that was why Wayne always was around when a group went to the pyramid. He needed a group to take him to a pyramid and he couldn’t tell them that he was the one that had the formula, they would probably have tortured until he told them how to make it. Jenks tried to piece it all together, but his thoughts kept slipping.
Time began to blur and skip. Images played in his mind, but he couldn’t grasp one long enough to process it. He wanted to find Wayne’s house, discover the secrets to the mummy dust. He remembered grabbing the mummy in the other open casket. Then dragging it outside. The man they left was still out there. Jenks shot him. He tied the mummy to the mustached man’s horse. He took the man he had shot and tied him to the other horse. Then he was riding with two horses behind him.
Day became night.
He was hungry. He started to eat the man. He crumbled up the mummy’s finger and snorted it.
Night became day.
Something reached out of the sand and took a horse. Something that looked like a dead centipede. He ran his horse until it passed out. Blood leaked from Jenks’ ears. His vision blurred and twisted. He hitched the mummy up to his back and crawled through the sand. Eventually the weight of the mummy was too much and he laid down.
Time escaped him.
He dreamt Wayne came to him. Wayne told him that the powder was bad, got in his system and messed him up. Wayne grew extra arms and legs while he talked to Jenks. Don’t mix the powders, but Jenks knew it was too late.
He came to walking through the bazaar at night. His body burned. He could feel his blood thickening and sticking in his heart. His stomach growled, but the smell of food made his stomach repulse. He couldn’t hold it down any more and began to vomit. He couldn’t stop it, the vomit kept coming. His body weared down and he fell to his hands and knees. It was like a hose. His eyes focused on what was coming out of him. Centipedes squirmed around in the puke. Hundreds of them. He passed out into the puddle. The stomach acid burned his skin. The centipedes squirmed and crawled into his mouth and nose, into the wounds that the acid burned in his skin.
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