The Mummy from Blood's Tomb

“The Valley of the Tombs of the Kings – the name is full of romance, and of all the wonders of Egypt it is the most thrilling to the imagination. Here in this lonely valley head, from every sound of life, guarded by the Horn, the highest peak in the Theban hills, which like a natural pyramid above, lay buried thirty or more Egyptian kings, amongst them the greatest Egyptian ever knew.”

Leon Valery, Ph.D. (honorary) read a few more paragraphs from Howard Carter’s The Tomb of Tutankhamen. Then he replaced the book in his rucksack. “This won’t get the work done.” Those whispering-in-the-dark words seemed to be absorbed by the thick stone walls that surrounded him.

As an amateur archaeologist, blessed with an inexhaustible private income, Valery’s wild imagination had been captured by the Land of the Pharaohs ever since he was a spoiled little rich boy who would later get ahead in the world by buying his way through it – literally. Lord Carnarvon had sponsored the 1926 Tutankhamen expedition. Valery had gone one step better by putting himself in both financial and operational charge of his own Egyptian desert dig.

Just as he had bought his doctorate, Valery hired several leading archaeologists to carry out the actual work done by the well-publicized Valery Expedition. Rhonda, his chorus-girl trophy wife, added glamour to the mix. But there was no time lost in painstaking scholarly research and exploratory excavations. Osman Bey, an ‘Egyptian’ of uncertain nationality, had come forward with information about a man-made cave beneath the sands near Luxor. It was called, he claimed, the Tomb of Shezmu, lost to history until being partially uncovered by a recent earthquake. The experts looked puzzled, but their paymaster asked no questions and so neither did they – publicly, at any rate.

The massive bronze door held the usual hieroglyphic threats against tomb robbers or anyone else who defiled the last resting place of an Egyptian pharaoh. Valery’s savants for-hire provided him with an exact translation, in which the word – or name – “Shezmu” came under a heavy vocal stress. Someone all-but shouted: “Executioner!” But he didn’t even pay them lip-service attention.

They found several vaulted chambers inside the tomb, containing an alabaster solar boat, jewellery, weapons, and cat-god statuettes. All this indeterminate dynastic memorabilia excited the Egyptologists no end – but left Valery out in the intellectual cold. He also failed to share in the general disappointment over the absence of a mummy within the centrepiece sarcophagus. Rhonda insisted upon a photograph being taken – of herself, in what the well-dressed female archaeologist was wearing that season.

Meanwhile, Osman Bey was muttering away to himself, in a mad mixture of Egyptian and broken English. Certain words sounded again and again: “Blasphemy . . . Sacrilege . . . the Book of Life . . . Rightful things . . . Proper place . . . Shezmu . . .”

The tides of time rolled on. As it is written, so shall it be.

It didn’t take long for the team to clear the tomb of its meagre treasures. This find was nowhere near in the same league as the Howard Carter Tutankhamen excavation. But it suited Leon Valery’s egotistical purpose to a tall T. A world tour took place, at Valery’s own costly expense. His Egyptian exploits were told in a ghost-written tome self-entitled Sleep No More, Shezmu the Splendid. Publication coincided with the original release of The Mummy, starring Boris Karloff, on 22 December 1932. Shezmu duly topped all the Christmas and New Year bestseller lists.

The worldwide media made great play with the ‘Curse of King Tut’ phenomenon that had dogged the scholarly footsteps of professional archaeologists like Howard Carter since even before 1926. But the happily amateurish – and opportunistic – Doctor (hon.) Valery couldn’t get enough of all the free publicity.

Not that all that much suitable material presented itself, at first. A junior member of the expedition had been almost suffocated by a cave-in when one of the more inaccessible vaults had collapsed around him. More impressively, Professor Mannering – Valery’s most senior colleague, was non-fatally poisoned by scorpion venom when he picked up an age-old scarab ring found inside the otherwise empty sarcophagus. A hidden needle shot out from a groove in the ring upon being picked up. Immediate medical treatment had saved his life. But after that –nothing.

Nothing, this is, until Mrs. Rhonda Valery suddenly awoke in their London apartment, two months later, screaming that a “Pharaoh-figure” was walking across the bedroom. The word “Shezmu!” also escaped her lips. It happened again in Paris, New York City, and Los Angeles. Rhonda was almost driven mad with out-and-out fear. She eventually took refuge at a Poverty Row studio in the Hollywood area, where she made some exploitation ‘B’ films under her maiden name of Rhonda Flanders. The Mummy Stalks the Night became a cult classic even before it went on general release.

For some reason, Valery wouldn’t – or couldn’t – tell his wife that he had also seen the mummified apparition in all its grey-bandaged and red-eyed horror. He-she-it had actually spoken to him, however, using a silent voice that said only one word, over and over again.

“Shezmu, Shezmu, Shezmu . . .” A silent and strangely familiar voice.

“All these . . . incidents . . . are easily explicable,” Valery told himself. “There can be no such thing as an ancient Egyptian curse on grave robbers. Coincidence. Suggestibility. Only this, and nothing more.” But common sense and logical thinking went right out the metaphysical window. Rhonda had seen something – and he had both seen and heard that very same something.

“A few stiff drinks will help straighten me out.”

But alcohol had just made things ten times worse for Valery. The walking Pharaoh vision stayed inexorably with him. Now here he was, back – back inside the mummy-less tomb that had been long since stripped of its meagre material wealth. “Exorcizing a ghost” was how he’d rationalised this return journey, with the uneasy feeling that something did close behind him tread.

The expedition camp itself now left little or no trace on the desert sands. A native guide had driven Valery out the site and awaited his return, car parked safely outside the tomb. Old superstitions die hard – if ever.

Valery had sent instructions for a few work lights to be re-installed in the entrance and main vault of the tomb. They were unusually dim but better than nothing. Just about. He had also picked up the abridged edition of Howard Carter’s book before leaving London. “Better late than never. Or should that be the other way round?” There was, it seemed to him, another book set on a stone table near the sarcophagus. No, he thought, it looks more like a papyrus scroll . . .

A wind blew up where no wind should have been. The work light wavered on its tripod, casting jet-black shadows all over the vault walls and floor. As the wind just as suddenly died and the dust settled, Valery caught sight of a robed male figure bending over the rolled-open scroll. Where did he come from? The man was solemnly intoning what might have ancient Egyptian (or even pre-Egyptian) words from the rolled-up scroll.

“Who the –?”

Valery stopped talked when he recognized the man as being Osman Bey, who had led him to this very tomb. Osman wore an elaborate head-dress that matched the design etched upon the sarcophagus. He gestured towards Valery with an imperious wave of his right arm, reading just one more but emphatic word from the scroll: “Shezmu.”

Then the mournful howl of a jackal split the twilight air. Valery felt his feet move forward, with no conscious command from him. Darkness came. It was all over so quickly that he didn’t know what had happened until it was over. Or nearly over.

“The Book of Life knows all, Doctor Leon Valery.”

Valery reacted to the sound of his name. Light returned. He found himself lying in the Pharaoh’s sarcophagus, naked save for a skimpy loincloth, and with arms folded across his chest. The stone mummy case felt incongruously warm against his skin, or that might just have been the effect of an overheated metabolism. Or an overheated brain . . .

 “The English word ‘mummy’ comes from the Persian mum, meaning wax,” Osman Bey explained, with a better command of the English language than he had shown up to now. “It refers to an embalmed and wax-like corpse.”

“By God, you don’t mean – “

“By the gods, I do mean it. You will not just be a footnote to archaeological history, Leon – if I may make so bold – you will be made an integral part of it.”

Valery tried to sit up, but the effort defeated his spell-weakened body.

“I am the High Priest of Shezmu, the Unjustly Forgotten Pharaoh.” Osman’s voice overflowed with pride. “As were all my first-born ancestors since Time itself was born.

His earthbound form was robbed from this tomb many of your puny centuries ago. Now his Ka – or astral self – will be at one with what little is left of your vile body.”

“But that’s murder – worse than murder.”

“Be silent, impious one. This is the part Shezmu loved the best.” Osman Bey held a flint knife before Valery’s face. “First, I must drain your body of its most vital fluid. I shall make the first incision . . . here.”

Leon Valery remembered that Shemzu is the ancient Egyptian word for blood, as he felt his bodily life slip away.

THE END

Bio: Graham Andrews did not include a bio.

E-mail: Graham Andrews

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