Rick breathed a relieved sigh and flexed his neck to relieve the tension. It had been a close call, one of many, too many. He had barely survived another harrowing adventure courtesy of Never-Met-A-Drink I-Didn’t-Like Carnahan.
He wished Evie had listened to him. They would have been delayed for five days if they’d taken the ship without the casino. But noooooo, they had to leave right away as if a city that stood for five thousand years would collapse if they didn’t hop the first steamer out of New York.
He was going to pay dearly for this.
He surveyed his surroundings taking a quick assessment of the damage. No one was dead, that was good. The three men Jonathan had been playing poker with had all left the casino unharmed. Someone would probably not make it off the ship alive though. That was bad. The odds that the Frenchman, who’d been caught cheating, would live through the night were very slim.
At least it wasn’t Jonathan, which was good. He’d also been cheating though much less successfully having gotten caught with an ace up his sleeve. It was a very lucky break that Frenchie had run off taking all the cash and chips with him. At least it had the benefit of distracting the gamblers from the beating they were inflicting on his ne’er do well brother-in-law. In Rick’s opinion walking away with only a black eye and broken nose wasn’t too bad, he was likely to be the only one with that perspective.
It could be worse he concluded…but not much. The trouble in the casino was only the first part of the gauntlet. He still had to explain things to his wife.
~~~~~
Lying in the dark, eyes wide open and staring at distant stars, Evelyn listened to the powerful engines churning though the Mediterranean.
Cracking her aching knuckles, she laid her journal aside and sat up. She had been utterly convinced that returning to Egypt was the right thing to do.
Since steaming from the harbor that decision had taken on a much darker patina.
Gone were the pleasant memories. She could no longer muster joyful visions of her beloved home. Her marriage on the Nile and her first few nights of wedded passion were marred with persistent thoughts of another couple’s passion that had crystallized into vengeance.
Cleo’s first steps, tottering toward a book that was bigger than she was, were overshadowed by the fact that the book had been a funerary text. Her first words, Egyptian words that had been a source of so much pride were overshadowed by thoughts that swirled with malignant persistence in ever widening circles.
Hamunaptra.
The word was a dagger slicing through every effort she made to find peace. It made her doubt the wisdom of returning to the land that had spawned magic, mystery and periodically mayhem since the dawn of time. She feared even thinking the word, much less speaking it. Power flowed from that place, long ghostly fingers caressing her skin with evil intent and she shuddered.
She got up and collected her journal, suddenly unwilling to be alone.
~~~~~
With the aid of the blonde barmaid who’d been his savior, Rick carried Jonathan back to his cabin. “Thanks for your help back there, ah…” he struggled for a name, forgetting that they had not been introduced.
“Aria. My name is Aria. It was my pleasure.” She looked down at the slumped Englishman with a gentle smile and brushed the remains of his hair off his high forehead. She turned to leave, glancing up at Rick’s angry face. “He means well, you know.”
Rick was silent. Jonathan’s intentions meant less than nothing. His actions were going to get both of them killed one day. Intentions wouldn’t mean a damn thing then.
She left and Rick watched her go, long legs weaving a seductive path on stiletto heals. An avalanche of blonde waves shivered in the wind enveloping her body and creating the illusion of a naked goddess in a cloud of gold. That was one hell of a woman.
“Richard Evan O’Connell!”
Oh no, his entire name. He lowered his gaze to find Evelyn in front of him, just a little too short to have been directly in his line of sight. She looked very angry. If trouble were mud, he was in it hip deep.
~~~~~
“It was not my fault! Damn it….” Rick was pacing in a wide circle around his wife who stood absolutely still in the center of their cabin.
“Don’t you curse at me Mister O’Connell! I asked you to go get him at least an hour ago. If you hadn’t wasted time chatting up that, that woman none of this would have happened. This is absolutely your fault.” Her tiny fists were balled against her hips and her stubborn chin was raised. Brown eyes shot angry sparks at her husband of 22 years. This was an argument she hated.
~~~~~
Jonathan didn’t sleep long, the adage that there is no rest for the wicked proving all too true. Wide-awake and in pain, he got up from his bed and retrieved a half-empty whiskey bottle from one of his bags.
He stumbled, fell dramatically back on his narrow bunk and, once settled, tried to remember what happened. Gambling. Well, that explained his injuries. He and Rick had run out of the casino just in time.
Why do I keep doing this, he asked himself again. And again, there was no good answer. He smashed a pillow over his head in a futile effort to drown out the nagging thoughts stomping through his befuddled head.
He almost immediately removed the pillow and sat back up. The swelling in his eye and his very black and blue nose hurt too much for that. So did his pride.
He checked his pockets. Empty. The last of his cash was gone. He had spent the last 20 years gambling away his entire share of the treasure. Tonight he had finally wiped himself out. He took another drink and then glared at the bottle. The decidedly awful whiskey he was drinking certainly wasn’t helping.
As he lay back to contemplate his own depravity, he shrugged and raised the bottle to his lips again, wishing his cabin resided on the starboard side of the ship. The paper-thin walls separating his room from his sister’s did nothing to spare him from the noisy goings on next door. From the sound of it they were having one hell of an argument. He was, no doubt, the main topic. He pushed the thought aside. When wasn’t he a hot topic for them?
In the morning they would dock at Alexandria and hop a steamer into Cairo. The thought of traversing down the Nile on another floating tinderbox was less than appealing. Their luck with riverboats was a fifty-fifty proposition. The first one had gone up in flames. The second had spawned a brother-in-law. Jonathan chuckled bitterly at the thought that personally he was a two-time loser on riverboats. He and Rick were not exactly chummy. The events of the evening certainly wouldn’t help.
Thinking of Rick, he hadn’t saved them this time. She had. He tried and failed to remember her name but his memory of her beauty was crystal clear. What a vision the barmaid had been. She looked like an angel. Maybe she really was one, he thought. She’d saved them after all. Odd, they’d been on the ship for a week and he had spent every night in the casino but had never seen her before. Women that beautiful were not easily overlooked, even if you were blind drunk. It was too bad they were docking in the morning. He would have loved a chance to meet up with her again. Instead, he would have to settle for dreams. If his sleep could have been dominated by images of his blonde savior he would have succumbed in a second.
Unfortunately, any sleep he was likely to have would be marred by nightmares of the City of the Dead. It had been a reoccurring theme for 22 years but the closer they got to Egypt the worse they became. Thoughts of Hamunaptra were digging razor sharp teeth deep into his consciousness and holding on with the tenacity of a pit bull.
Following his life long custom when presented with unwelcome thoughts and feelings Jonathan resorted to the peaceful oblivion promised by a near constant state of inebriation. He slurped down the last of the foul liquor and dropping the empty bottle on the floor, retrieved a second.
~~~~~
“What in the world are you talking about? I was in the Army, World War II, remember?” He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
She turned away from him again. “Yes, I do Rick. I am very proud of what you did there. So is Cleo. I mean that before the war, you were hardly ever home. Did you really have to go big game hunting? What about your rafting trip up the Nile? What is it about us, about me, that always drives you away?”
His heart sank and his anger melted a little as her shoulders began to shake. Filled with conflicting feelings he wanted desperately to leave, to walk away and think. Instead, he wrapped his arms around her, hoping that she would allow him to comfort her and collect himself. She cried harder, her face buried in his chest. After years with his wife her rare bouts of crying still reduced him to uncomfortable platitudes making her tears far more dangerous than her anger. For a man with Rick’s poor verbal skills it almost made mummified soldiers seem like a viable alternative. “That was 16 years ago, honey. Why did you wait until now to talk to me about this?”
“I…. I don’t know. I just don’t think I could take another absence, Rick. I need you – at home, with your family. Promise me you won’t leave again.” Her words were almost unintelligible through her sobs.
He could feel his wet shirt sticking to his skin where her face was pressed against his chest. He had seen her cry a few times but never like this. Her nose was always buried in a book. He left because he felt ignored, her passion for her study eclipsing all else, including him. She never seemed to care when he left and was always so indifferent when he got back that he never really thought his trips bothered her. “Evie, I promise I won’t leave. If I get restless, I’ll find something local to do, okay?”
~~~~~
Jonathan’s quest for an alcohol-induced blackout ended in failure. His cash exhausted and his alcohol depleted, he could do no more than gaze with slightly glazed eyes at the empty bottles and think. It was the very thing he’d been trying to avoid. Even puffing on a cheap unfiltered cigarette failed to offer any noticeable distraction.
As an amateur archeologist of limited skill, stumbling across the City of the Dead had been the find of a lifetime. Thoughts of it had plagued him ever since. Not so much because of He Who Shall Not Be Named and his assorted homicidal friends, but because they had seen the wealth of Egypt and returned virtually empty handed. There was a huge treasure chamber in the city filled to the vaulted rafters with gold. Some of that gold would come in real handy given his current situation.
He’d left Chicago owing money to several loan sharks. He ran out on them, figuring that he would be half a world away and they wouldn’t track him down. He had no intention of returning to the windy city.
The trouble was, he had done the exact same thing when he left Cairo. He owed some very nasty people obscene sums of money. His only hope was that they were dead or had forgotten about him. Well, dead would be preferable, he thought with a strained smile, loan sharks never forget.
For the millionth time he wished they had brought back more of the treasure. He kicked himself every time he thought about dropping the golden book of Amen Ra. If only he’d held on to it. It was a tragedy to leave behind treasures like that. Of course, they’d had other, more life threatening problems at the time, but he still couldn’t believe all that treasure remained buried in the Sahara. After what he’d witnessed the last time he was willing to forgo another trip to the City of the Dead.
Yes, he definitely preferred to take his chances with the loan sharks. Loan sharks, though nasty, were still human and subject to all humanities frailties and shortcomings. Nothing at Hamunaptra had such limitations and, treasure or no, it was Jonathan’s plan to die of cirrhosis not scarabs.
~~~~~
While Evie’s tears flowed freely, Rick cuddled her close. “Evelyn, this isn’t just about me or Jonathan. This is about Hamunaptra isn’t it?”
She drew away from him for a moment, angry that he would try to lay blame for his bad behavior on…oh dear. Well, for once her husband had a valid point. She did resent his frequent absences but it would be a lie to say that at times she didn’t welcome them. The arrangement had been worked out over decades and she was just as responsible for it as he was. The truth was, she didn’t want to be alone in Cairo just in case something happened and she needed him.
“Well…yes.” She offered him a weak smile, conceding victory, and sat heavily in a chair.
He looked down at her with barely contained exuberance evident in the twitching at the corners of his lips. He thought he’d won…and deserved a reward for it. A comely smile spread across his handsome face and he stretched out one arm to grasp her hand and pull her to him. “Why don’t you come to bed?”
As she reached out to take his offered hand her mind latched on to another outstretched arm and the man behind it. He had also been beautiful, terrifyingly so. She shuddered and pulled back her hand, folding it in her lap and dropping her eyes to the floor.
“Look, Evelyn,” Rick started irritably. He didn’t want to talk any more, she knew. He sat on the edge of the bed and made an Alamo worthy attempt at putting her mind to rest and her body to work. “This is going to be okay. It’s what you always wanted. You got your wish. The Bembridge Scholars finally got their act together and accepted you. You’re the second in command at the Cairo Museum. Cleo is already there and she is doing great. It’s gonna be fine. Trust me. Quit thinking about that damn city. It’s over and done with.”
She offered another weak smile and walked into her husband's open arms willing herself to believe it really was over.
~~~~~
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