Another Pan (41 page)

Now Simon was waiting in the corridor, holding a wooden box, waiting for the Darlings and Peter to arrive with the book. When they opened the locker, he would wait until they disappeared and then follow them. The fourth mummy was here — beyond that bikini-clad bimbo taped to the metal door. Simon was sure of it. He could almost feel it.

He closed his eyes and tried to imagine what it would be like to be famous. He would be on TV, of course — that was a given. He’d need a bigger apartment, and a fancy office. Simon’s daydream about the honorary diplomas he would receive from all the colleges that had rejected him was interrupted when he heard Peter kick off the lock. He clutched his box and followed. A moment later, he was standing on a sand dune, with more dunes all around him and pyramids dotting the horizon. As always, the air was stifling, as if all this openness was happening somewhere underground. He turned around to see three figures running away from him into the distance, toward the largest pyramid.

“Stupid kids!” he said, and began chasing them, his box clutched to his chest. He ran through the sand as quickly as his new sneakers would allow, but still the box weighed him down. He was sweating profusely, cursing and spitting as he heaved his feet out of the sand with each labored step. The whole place was dark and musty. It smelled like old gym socks, making it even more unbearable down here. He passed many tombs, pyramids of all sizes collected under the umbrella of the giant pyramid. Simon knew what this was. He had already studied it, read every word of the fourth legend in three different languages, hunting for clues about the guardian. He knew who it was. He knew what form it would take. He knew how to beat it. He tilted his head and let out a bemused sigh, slightly curious how the children would fare under the shadow of the ghost. Finally, he arrived at the biggest pyramid, the one at the center, where Peter and the Darling children were surely in for a surprise. He took two steps forward, unafraid, grasping on to the box with all his strength.

Then, before he had taken a third step, he saw her.

Peter, Wendy, and John stood clutching one another’s arms, staring, mesmerized, into the guardian’s massive gray eyes. She was as tall as the pyramid, white-faced, with a robe of all white and a five-pointed star on her head. She hovered in front of the pyramid, partly solid, partly carried by the wind. A strong smell hovered around her. It was the smell of death and loss and ancient bones.

Then, in a second, she was gone, replaced by gust after gust of wind. A massive sandstorm smashed into them, driving them to their knees. Every inch of exposed skin felt grated and raw. They had to cover their faces and lie flat on the sand, hoping that the storm would subside before they were buried alive.

Then Simon arrived. The noise was deafening, but he didn’t seem bothered by any of it. In fact, he made a point of stepping over the three kids as he approached the ghost-guardian. When he stepped forward, she turned her attention from the children and wrapped her body around Simon, whipping around him and creating a wind tunnel, as though she were made of dust particles. As the three watched, Simon walked directly into the center of the storm.

“Simon!” John shouted. The sound was almost lost in the storm. It didn’t matter, anyway. None of them could move, or even stand.

“I hate that guy!” growled Peter.

Simon cleared his throat loudly and shouted into the sandstorm.

“I have a gift!” he screamed.

The wind stopped.

The ghost of the white woman disappeared. And then she appeared again, a regular-size person, not transparent but corporeal and wearing a sandy tunic that looked dirty and timeworn. Her face was no longer terrible, but striking — ominous in the most ravishing way. Her skin was porcelain-white, her hair jet-black, her eyes a deep, piercing gray.

“
What
is that idiot doing?” Peter asked no one in particular. They were still pinned to the ground. The sandstorm had quieted a little, but they knew it would pick up again if they stood up or moved forward.

The woman nodded to Simon, and he placed the wooden box at her feet. A heavy wind continued to twist around her body.

“Why is he talking to it?” John wondered aloud. “Hey, who in the story do you think —?”

“Praxis’s wife,” whispered Wendy, remembering what Layla had been called in the story:
an unstoppable force: a windstorm
. “Who else would be here? This is his house now.”

With his eyes dejectedly on Simon, Peter began mumbling a part of the legend, which, like most of the stories in the
Book of Gates,
he had committed to memory.
“It is said, only in the quietest corners of the city, that beautiful Layla, who died soon after her marriage to Amun-Ra, wanders the dead city to this day, searching the intricate maze . . .”
He sounded positively mournful. Wendy wondered if this was partly the effect of the labyrinth — the way it crept into your soul and sucked the joy out of you.

“We should have looked at the passage more carefully,” said Peter, “like we did with Harere. It says, she wanders the
maze
. I just assumed . . . I mean, in the story it sounds like she’s wandering around the city after her husband’s death. But the city isn’t a maze. The underworld is. There was nothing about her ghost. . . .”

“I didn’t even notice that word when I heard the story,” John admitted.

“I can’t believe I let this happen,” said Peter, his voice shaking and angry.

“We were rushed,” said Wendy. She touched his arm and smiled weakly. “We were in a huge rush this time around. There wasn’t any time to read it carefully like with Harere.”

“I’ve read that story a hundred times,” whispered Peter.

“Whatever,” said Wendy. “Maybe Simon figured out who she is, but that doesn’t mean he’ll get past her. She’s a
guardian,
plus she’s Amun-Ra’s angry wife. She’s not going to just hand over the bones. . . .”

Simon was bowing low before Layla now. “Will you accept my gift?”

Layla nodded again, and he opened the box.

Inside were four beautifully carved wooden jars: a baboon, a man, a falcon, and a jackal.

“What’s he doing with canopic jars?” said John.

The other two watched silently as the woman ran her finger down each of the jars. As she picked up each one, Simon presented the gift with flourish and fanfare.

“The human, representing the South, to contain the liver. The baboon, representing the North, to contain the lungs. The falcon, representing the West, to contain the intestines. And finally, the jackal, representing the East, to contain the stomach.”

“To store whose stomach?” asked Wendy.

“Marcus Praxis’s?” John guessed.

“Can’t be,” said Peter. “His organs were removed by Hurkhan, remember? Then he made the mummy as a trophy.”

Layla took the four jars in her arms and cradled them like babies. She brought them to her face and touched them gently, as if they really did contain her husband’s remains. She bent over them, mesmerized. Then she began shedding tears into the jars.

“I thought I could just fight them all off.” Peter shook his head angrily. “I never thought about . . .” He trailed off, then sighed loudly and rubbed his face with both palms. “The story says that Layla roams the maze,
looking for a token of her beloved
.”

“How the heck did he decipher that?” shouted Wendy. “How did he know what token she was looking for?”

“It’s another injustice we missed,” said John, impressed. “He was mummified, so his organs
should
have been preserved in the jars. The empty jars mean something to her!”

As Layla dropped to her knees and began losing herself in the inspection of the jars, Simon slipped into the pyramid.

“No way,” said Peter. He got up to run after him. John and Wendy followed. But before they could cross the threshold of the pyramid, the wind kicked up again and they heard a scream pierce the air. Layla had risen up, still holding the jars, and was taking back her ghostly form — a shadow on the pyramid’s side. She turned to face them, stabbing them with her terrible gaze. Then she stirred the sand around them, keeping them back, while Simon was left free to search the pyramid.

For what seemed like twenty or thirty minutes they struggled. They tried to crawl on their bellies to go past her, to run into the wind with all their strength. None of it worked. They struggled until they were exhausted and parched and coughing out sand.

“Can you pull away?” Peter shouted at the others. It was almost impossible to hear one another over the wind and Layla’s mournful cries.

Wendy stepped back, and to her surprise, she easily broke free from Layla’s grasp. “Hey, yeah,” she said. “Just step backward.”

But no matter how much they pulled, John and Peter couldn’t break free.

They were still battling Layla when Simon emerged from the tomb, a bandaged leg strapped to his backpack.

“No!” Peter called as he attempted to run after Simon. But the wind had formed a funnel around him and John, and Simon was long gone before they were finally able to break free.

Peter stalked the halls of Marlowe in the dead of night. He didn’t seem bothered by the cameras. As he strolled, he took a path that eluded the gaze of every single one.

Last night, he had barely made it out of the labyrinth. If Wendy hadn’t broken free from the ghost Layla, run back through the gate, and brought a canopic jar from the exhibit to throw into the wind, he and John could never have gotten away. Once again, she had saved him. But what did it matter? Simon had the fourth bone.

Wendy had replaced the
Book of Gates
in Darling’s bedroom late last night, after their trip into the labyrinth. By the morning, the book was in a dehydrator in Professor Darling’s office, and the old man was none the wiser.

Peter stopped at the door to Professor Darling’s office. He slipped in the key and opened it without a problem. During the governor’s gala, the valet had made copies of every key in the professor’s key chain. Peter strolled into the room. The orange light of the dehydrator caught his attention immediately. He didn’t turn on the lights but walked straight to the device. The book sat under the lamp, slowly drying.

He gazed at the book wistfully. Until now, no one in the history of the world had come as far as Peter had. But now Simon had the fourth bone and was probably gunning for the fifth. Peter would have to go in again. He had already promised John and Wendy that they would wait until the book was returned to the exhibit. Then they would go back for one final journey into the labyrinth — together. They would find the fifth mummy and get the fourth batch of bonedust back from Simon. Wendy was eager to help him; Peter knew that. And she had already been so useful. He liked Wendy. She brought him good luck and happy thoughts. But Peter didn’t really want her there for the fifth mummy. He didn’t want her to see what he was willing to do to get the fourth bonedust back from Simon. Besides, what is a promise when a whole life’s work is at stake?

Peter would have to find the location in Marlowe that coincided with the fifth and final gate. All these years, and there were still parts of the labyrinth that he had never seen. But he couldn’t start now. He had to wait for the Egyptian night to begin. Tomorrow, Peter thought, he’d have to make the best use of the time he had. He’d have to be quick and do most of his work while the Marlowe kids (John and Wendy included) were in class. Everything would be so much easier that way.

The only noise was the low hum of the dehydrator and Peter’s cavalier humming. He gathered up the book, carefully laid the copy he had stolen from the New York Public Library in its place, and walked out.