Book of the Dead Page 3

  Alex had seen a lot of scrolls, but never one like this. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a sign next to the case. He wanted to read it, but for some reason he couldn’t stop staring at the strange scroll.

  Finally, he peeled his eyes away and read three words he couldn’t believe.

  THE LOST SPELLS

  He almost wanted to laugh. That was impossible.

  The Lost Spells were just a legend.

  “They’re not real,” he whispered, even though there was no one around to hear him.

  But they were real. He was looking at them. In fact, he still couldn’t stop. His eyes were beginning to burn.

  He finally managed to blink — and reality rushed back in. His body was betraying him again. There was the weakness and fatigue, the pinpricks in his chest and the tingling in his limbs. There was the sense of fragility, as if he were living his life on a narrow ledge a hundred feet above the street. But there was something else now, too. His head was buzzing, and when he closed his eyes again, all he saw was a jumble of golden symbols.

  I have to get out of here.

  He shook his head, trying to clear it, and stumbled into one of the Old Kingdom rooms but couldn’t go any farther. Just past the entrance there was a small tomb, and Alex leaned heavily on the ancient stone. Next to him was a false door — a vertical strip in the rock, like a narrow passage, with inscriptions on either side.

  It was a gateway for the spirit to travel between the world of the living and the world of the dead.

  The buzzing in Alex’s head was louder now. The surface of the false door seemed to flicker and shift. He tried to keep going, but once again his view of the stone seemed to bend and warp, as if he were looking at shimmering pavement on a hundred-degree day.

  He felt a sudden sharp pain in his stomach. Without looking away, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his medicine. But before he could unscrew the cap, he saw something new.

  Shadows edged the false door in the stone, and for just a second he saw those shadows take shape. The head of an animal turned to face him, a long dark snout and two eyes that glittered red like rubies. A fresh wave of pain shot through him. He fumbled with the safety cap on the bottle. It popped off just as a stronger jolt rocked him.

  Alex felt like he’d been stabbed with a power cable. He collapsed and a shower of white pills went everywhere, skittering across the floor and into the corners.

  There was a long silence.

  The pain was duller now, far away. Alex could feel the shadows coming, covering his body, crowding toward his heart.

  Then there were footsteps. Distantly, he could hear a scream. Distantly, he could hear people come running. The marble floor felt cold against his cheek and his nostrils filled with the faint, vinegary smell of tile cleaner. He watched as shoes crushed the precious pills into powder. He wanted to say something, but the pain had traveled up into his chest now, and the only sound he could make was a low gurgle.

  A guard was there.

  Then his mother was there.

  Alex tried to say something to her. He wanted to apologize, though he couldn’t remember exactly what for. He let his eyes close. There was the open door — and on the other side, the jackal’s eyes gleaming in the dark.

  “We’re losing him,” someone said. “We’re losing him.”

  They were not letting Ren in to see Alex, and she was not cool with that. She looked around the waiting room, which was full of people in varying degrees of misery. Ren diagnosed a few. There was a middle-aged woman with a hacking cough; an old man with a head wound, still bleeding; a little kid with an ice pack on his knee: probably sprained.

  Lucky, she thought. At least they know what’s wrong with them. At least they’re in a place that can fix it. Meanwhile, she could do nothing but sit next to her dad and wait for news. She snuck a sideways look at him. He was wearing a blue button-down shirt, the sleeves rolled up past his elbows for a workday that was long over. She tried to read his expression, but the angle was weird.

  “How bad is it, do you think?” she asked. “When will they let us in to see him?”

  “I don’t know, Ren-Ren,” he said. She didn’t know if he was answering the first question, the second question, or both.

  There was a TV mounted on the wall in the corner of the room, playing a news channel without the sound. She watched it for a while. Something bad had happened in India. She saw smoke and flames and a train on its side. She looked away once she saw the first body.

  “Will they call our name?” she asked. “Even though we aren’t patients?”

  Ren knew it was a dumb question as soon as she said it. She hated sounding dumb, especially around her dad. But this time, the guy famous at the museum for having all the answers hadn’t even heard the question.

  “Uh-huh,” he said without bothering to look over. He was staring intently at his phone. A scientific diagram filled the little screen. That was the other thing about him: always busy. Having all the answers took time.

  “You’re working?” Ren said loudly.

  Now he looked over. “There’s not much else to do, Ren-Ren. We just have to wait until he’s healthy enough for visitors.”

  The way he said it made her feel better, like it was just a matter of time. She was still a little mad: It wasn’t just the dumb things she said that he missed. But she took a deep breath and tried to let it go. This trip was not about her. “What is that, anyway?” she said, nodding toward the diagram on his phone. “The Death Star?”

  “Plumbing system,” said her dad. “There’s some kind of problem with the new exhibition. Things are a little too … fresh. Think there might be too much moisture in the room.”

  “But the rooms are climate-controlled,” she said. She listened carefully to him, even if he didn’t always return the favor. “How do you think it’s getting in?”

  Her dad looked up from the phone and into the distance, as if picturing something. “That’s a good question,” he said, and Ren felt her cheeks flush. “Those rooms are right over the drainage subbasement, though. So the plumbing could have something to do with it.”

  He went back to staring at his phone, and Ren went back to worrying about Alex.

  “Did you mean it?” she asked her dad after a while. “What you said?” She was thinking of “until he’s healthy enough,” but they weren’t on the same page.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I think it’s the plumbing.”

  Two floors up, Alex was lying on a very clean bed. He had electrodes taped to his chest, a sensor clamped to one finger, and an IV tube running into his left arm. The rest of him was tucked tightly under crisp white sheets. The adjustable bed had been raised so that his upper body was slightly higher than his feet. His eyes were closed and he wasn’t moving.

  That was the story of his body.

  His mind was more active. It flickered and buzzed like a lightbulb about to go out for good. He wasn’t quite conscious, but he occasionally rose close enough to the surface to hear something. Sometimes it was a scrap of conversation between nurses. More often, it was just the beep and hum of machines.

  Under the noise of the machines — in between the beeps, at the low ebb of the hums — was another, quieter sound. It was a steady stream of soft words, mostly too muted to make out, but he recognized the rhythms. He knew on some level that it was his mom. She was reading to him, like she had when he was little. He wanted to listen, but the more he tried to climb to the surface, the more he slipped away.

  He felt himself going under.

  And then, for a while at least, he felt nothing.

  When he came around again, Alex could see the hospital room very clearly. The doctors were gone, and his mom was, too. An empty chair was pulled up at an angle, one arm nearly touching his bed. And there he was, tucked under the sheets with his eyes closed. The sheets had been folded back and he had a surprising number of tubes and wires attached to him.

  That’s when he realized that he wasn’t supposed
to be looking down at his own body like this. His head swam with the realization. Except he was looking at his head, so … He couldn’t process it. He felt like he was all eyes and no brain, and just like that, he was out in the hallway.

  His mom was there, too, just outside the door. He tried to say, “Mom, I’m here,” but nothing came out. She was waving her arms, shouting. A moment later, a small squad of doctors and nurses came charging down the hall and ran right past him.

  They all rushed into the room, and his mom went in after them. Panic broke over him like a wave. He knew what this was now. He was dying. His body — his stupid body — was finally giving up.

  No wonder it all seemed so peaceful.

  The fight was over.

  He had lost.

  But he wasn’t ready for this.

  He had to try. Something. Anything.

  He remembered the old Egyptian legends, the ones his mom had read to him. He suddenly realized that that’s what she’d been reading to him from his bedside.

  Because in those stories, the soul could travel.

  He had no legs or arms. All he had was what he saw. He tried to push forward with that, like he was leaning in for a better look.

  Nothing happened. Panic mixed with despair. He called out silently to his mom again. And then, slowly at first and then all at once, his vision turned and raced back through the open door. He felt the rush: equal parts exhilaration, fear, and hope. The machines were all going crazy, screaming out their beeps. He saw his body, and the circle of people around it. He tried to push past, but they were blocking him. The fear surged. He pushed again. He screamed out along with the machines.

  His world went dark once more.

  Maggie Bauer was standing as stiff as a board just inside the door. She wasn’t really supposed to be there, but the hospital staff had more pressing concerns. Her hand was at her neck, wrapped around her scarab amulet. The room was a hive of activity, with hospital staff coming and going like frenzied bees.

  “Clear!” shouted the lead doctor. The light above her dimmed briefly, and then her son took a long overdue breath — a gasp, really. Technically speaking, he’d been dead for just under two minutes.

  The lead doctor tried to brush past her on his way out of the room, but she stepped in front of him and looked him in the eyes. She needed an honest answer, now. He just shook his head.

  Her son was living on borrowed time, and it wouldn’t last.

  Ren and her dad had left the hospital with no news, but at breakfast the next day, she knew she was about to get some.

  “Hey, Ren-Ren, we need to talk about something,” her dad said as he sat down at the table, pronouncing each word like he was being graded on it.

  “It’s about Alex, isn’t it?”

  “ ’Fraid so,” said her dad.

  Ren looked across the table and there was her mom, dressed in her standard spray of bright colors and leaning toward her in Emotional Support Position. Perfect as usual, not an eyelash out of place.

  “Oh my God, is he …”

  “No, no,” said her dad, putting his hands up in a double stop sign.

  Ren exhaled.

  “But he had a close call over the weekend,” said her dad. “Really close.”

  Ren looked down at her Cinnamon Toast Crunch, which was slowly turning to Cinnamon Toast Mush in the skim milk.

  Her mom put her hand on her wrist, and it really bothered Ren how much she appreciated that. She looked down at the freshly painted nails on her mom’s hand, and the freshly chewed ones on her own.

  “His heart stopped for a while. It was a close call.”

  Ren absorbed the news like a body blow. Her mom squeezed her wrist, but this time she shook her off.

  “His condition has stabilized, but …”

  Ren nodded again. She read her dad’s tone as much as his words. Arrows stabilize before they fall, too. Her parents’ body language told her the same thing: downcast eyes, slumped shoulders. However they’d gotten Alex’s heart started again, she knew he wouldn’t make it through Round Two.

  “Can I see him?” she said. It was a test as much as anything.

  Her parents exchanged a quick look.

  “They think that would be possible,” said her mom, finally joining the conversation.

  They don’t expect him to make it, she thought. But they’re wrong.

  “But it won’t be …” her mom began before pausing to fumble for the right words. Her years of public relations experience crumbled against the gritty details of life and death. “There’s a breathing tube now and …”

  Ren gave her a look: Does it look like I care about that?

  “You promise you’ll take me?”

  Her dad nodded, and that was the end of the conversation. Ren got up and dumped her sugary skim-milk mush in the sink.

  She spent the day at the museum. She wanted to be close to her dad, in case anything changed with Alex and they had to make a quick trip.

  A last trip.

  She tried to delete those words from her mind as soon as she thought them.

  She went and sat in her favorite place in the museum, probably her favorite place in the world. It was on the second floor in European Paintings: a little bench in the middle of a roomful of paintings by Rembrandt.

  She looked around at the familiar artworks. They were dark and mysterious, with lively eyed, ruddy-faced men and women emerging from the black and brown murk. She didn’t know why she liked these particular paintings so much. The Met was full of world-famous masterpieces.

  She liked that these were realistic, though. Rembrandt was a great painter, not just a great artist. She admired his competence as much as anything, how he somehow made recognizable images out of thick swoops of goopy paint. She had no patience for the painters who slapped down a few quick lines or splashes of color and walked away. She didn’t understand genius — how some things came so easy to some people — but she understood hard work. She understood that if you worked hard enough, you could get the same results as the people who didn’t have to work hard at all. And she could see the work in Rembrandt’s paintings. The figures were built up in layers, carefully crafted. They were realistic, just really dark. And now, for the first time, she thought maybe she understood why she liked him best.

  She thought about Alex, lying in a hospital with a tube in his mouth. She thought about that night in the waiting room, watching a train wreck on TV, surrounded by the sick and injured and a dad too busy to hear her. And finally, she thought this: Dark is realistic.

  Tuesday morning was bright and sunny, which Ren resented. She and her dad were finally on their way across town to visit Alex in the hospital. Their taxi was stuffed full of all the cards, flowers, and gifts the Met staff had given them for Alex.

  The taxi was quiet and Ren searched her brain for something to say. She peered around a Get Well Soon! balloon to see her dad. “There was a really big line for the new exhibition,” she offered.

  Her dad nodded and went back to looking out the window on the other side. He had that same far-off look on his face, puzzling out some new problem.

  That was dumb, she thought. It wasn’t a question.

  She tried again. “What are they all there to see?”

  He glanced over. “The Lost Spells,” he said. “They’re big news.”

  “Oh, right, those,” she said. “Yeah, those are pretty important.”

  As soon as he looked away again, she hid behind the balloon, slipped her phone from her pocket, and typed Lost Spells into its web browser.

  The first page of results was all from sword and sorcery games and fantasy movies. She added Egypt and things improved. She picked an official-looking link — from the British Museum in London — and began to read. The first part, she already mostly knew: The Egyptian Book of the Dead has long been thought to consist of some two hundred known spells. Ancient priests used these texts to help the spirits of the dead transition smoothly into the afterlife.

 
The next part was more interesting: However, there were reputed to be nine additional spells. Though some scholars believe them to have been lost or destroyed long ago — and others insist they never existed in the first place — these so-called Lost Spells were said to be far more powerful. Some were even reputed to allow the spirits of the dead to return to their physical —

  “What’re you reading over there?” her dad interrupted.

  She tilted the screen away from him. “I’m on the British Museum site.”

  Her dad smiled. “My little Einstein.”

  Ren looked away. She wished he wouldn’t call her that. He was the Einstein. He was the one who grew up speaking only Spanish at home and put himself through the best engineering school in the US. She had it ten times easier, and it still wasn’t enough.

  He had no idea how much extra work — how many extra questions — it took her just to keep up. Plus Ten Ren … she hated that, too. Alex was the only one who’d never called her that. He’d always understood, because he was trying to seem better than he really was, too.

  The taxi pulled up at the hospital and they went inside. The waiting room looked a little different in the daylight, but it smelled the same. The scent of chemical cleaners tickled Ren’s nostrils. Underneath the bright scent of fake lemons she could just make out the last stubborn traces of sweat, urine, and decay.

  Almost immediately, a nurse came out to lead them up to Alex’s unit. A sign read: PEDIATRIC INTENSIVE CARE. Sick kids, thought Ren. She couldn’t believe how nervous she was. She wanted to see Alex, but she was dreading it, too, which made her feel like a jerk.

  “This is his room,” said the nurse, reaching down and pushing on the door handle. “I’ll be right outside.”

  “Thank you,” said Ren’s dad before shouldering through with his armful of flowers.

  Ren — who was holding the cards and gifts — didn’t trust her voice, so she looked up at the nurse and nodded.

  “Hi, Maggie!” called her dad in an exaggeratedly cheery voice. “Special delivery.”