The Night's Legacy (12 page)

Chapter 10

It took nearly a week before Dr. Johnson went back to his office.  None of the Thorne Museum employees could get into the building during that time.  The police had the whole placed locked down while they investigated the robbery and the security guard’s death.

There was some talk of Dr. Johnson taking over as the interim director.  No one had been with the museum as long as he had, so it would only be fitting.  He had quickly shot that idea down.  He wasn’t an administrator.  Even if he was, he couldn’t spend time running the museum, not when Jessie and Lois needed him.

He was especially concerned with the latter. 
Lois had always been wild, that much had been obvious ever since she climbed atop Jeff when she was a child.    She had her mother’s raw intelligence but not the patience to go with it.  Lois could memorize entire books in hours, but she couldn’t stand digging in the sand and hoping to find something or staring through a microscope at an ancient artifact.  She wanted instant results, to know everything
now
.

But her wildness had never been dangerous, not until he saw her choking the life from Dr. Pavelski.  There had been something in
Lois’s eyes, something feral as she attempted to ring the neck of her mother’s doctor.  That Lois didn’t seem to remember the incident he found even more concerning.

She hadn’t acted like that again.  Not that he knew of.  For the most part she stayed in the waiting room until Dr. Pavelski cleared her to go inside and visit her mother.  Jessie woke up for a few minutes every few hours.  She was breathing on her own now, which was a miracle in itself.  From what they could determine she had feeling in her hands.  Her legs were another story.  She couldn’t move them at all.  Despite Dr. Pavelski’s assurances that this might be temporary, Dr. Johnson doubted it.  The damage to her spine had been catastrophic; that she had any feeling left anywhere was the greatest miracle of all.

When the hospital did kick her out for the night, Lois refused to go very far.  She stayed in a motel—a flophouse really—nearby.  He had offered his house and her new friend Melanie had offered her apartment, but Lois didn’t want to stray too far.  He couldn’t blame her; she felt so guilty about running away for seven years and then about not finding a way to save her mother during the robbery.

She had gone home when he decided to check in on the museum.  His assistants had already gone over the exhibits and offices to inventory the missing items, but he wanted to check for himself.  They might have missed something.  For the museum’s sake he hoped not.

The police had gone, leaving things more or less normal.  He tried to imagine the pool of blood by the front door from the security guard, Stan Stevens.  It still seemed impossible that anyone would want to shoot Stan, who had worked at the museum nearly as long as Dr. Johnson.  There was a lot of crime in Ren City, but to attack an institute of learning and murder an innocent person and cripple another seemed especially bloodthirsty. 

The museum was quiet as he walked through the great hall.  Everyone had gone home for the day except for the security guards, hired from a private agency to replace the others who had failed to protect the museum.  One of these stopped him in Jeff’s shadow and demanded to see his badge.  Dr. Johnson handed it over.  “Thank you, sir,” the guard said.

The exhibit off the great hall was a disaster area.  The glass had been cleaned up, but there were still empty pedestals and items hanging crookedly on the walls.  Dr. Johnson tried to right a tablet hanging at a thirty-degree angle at the moment.

As he walked through the exhibit, he jotted down notes on a pad of paper.  The thieves had taken the gold necklaces, bracelets, and other jewelry he’d dug up from the Valley of Kings more than a decade ago.  The mummies and sarcophaguses had been left intact, probably deemed too bulky to take.

At the end of the hall he came to a shattered glass case with a mannequin decapitated and its chest lying at its feet.  The right arm had been yanked off as well and thrown into the corner.  The right hand was empty.

So it was true:  the Staff of Set had been stolen.  As had the corresponding headdress.  Dr. Johnson shook his head at this.  The public gravitated towards the mummies, but the staff and headdress were the most valuable artifacts in the exhibit.  He had found them thirty years ago in a remote corner of Egypt, not far from the ancient city of Alexandria, which was mostly underwater now. 

It was the only time in his long history as an Egyptologist when he’d followed a vision.  He had been staying at the new city of Alexandria for a conference.  He had been fast asleep that night when he saw an ancient temple.  At the altar inside he saw two figures.  One wore the dog-faced headdress and carrying the staff of the god Set.  The other wore the eagle-headed headdress and carrying the staff of the god Horus.  The two gods were traditional enemies, which made the dream—the vision—seem especially odd.

Odder was when he began digging and found the temple, looking just as in his vision.  A temple as large as a shopping mall, its stone walls adorned with images of all of the Egyptian gods.  The hieroglyphics on the wall told all of the stories of Egyptian mythology, from creation to an apocalyptic end to everything.  That final story featured a war between Set, the god of chaos and Horus, the god of war that wiped out everything.  A statue of each god stood on a dais, each god with a headdress and golden staff.

To get permission and funding for the dig, Dr. Johnson had joined forces with the Field Museum in Chicago.  Thus when it came time to divide the spoils, the headdress and staff of Horus went to Chicago while those of Set went to Ren City.  On a few occasions they had swapped, but at the time of the robbery they had been in their usual homes.

Now the staff and headdress of Set were gone.  According to the hieroglyphics in the temple, those items had been created by the god himself.  Dr. Johnson didn’t really believe this, but he always had an uneasy feeling whenever he spent time around the items.  In a way he should be glad they were gone.

The doors at the other end of the exhibit slammed shut.  Dr. Johnson looked back, wondering if it were one of the guards.  He didn’t see anyone.  “Hello?” he called out.  “Anyone there?”

“There’s no one,” a voice hissed.  “Just you and me.”

A pair of red eyes appeared from the darkness.  Dr. Johnson gasped at the outline of a dog’s head.  The Staff of Set tapped him on the chest a moment later.  The staff’s eyes glowed red too.  “Hello, Dr. Johnson.”

“Who are you?”

“Don’t you recognize me?  I am Set.”

“Set isn’t real.  He’s a myth.”

“My power isn’t a myth.”  Set moved the staff to the right and fired a bolt of lightning at the mannequin that had formerly held it.  The plastic mannequin melted into a puddle.  “That will be you if you doubt me again.”

“What is it you want?  Money?”

“I care not for your money.  I want your knowledge.”

“Knowledge?”

“Everything you know about me.  I want all of your research notes.  Every slip of paper and computer disk.  Do you understand?”

“It’s up in my office.”

“I know.  That is where we will go.”

“Security—”

“Has been dealt with.”

“What did you do?”

“That is not your concern.  Your concern is doing as I wish.”

“Fine.  Let’s go.”  Dr. Johnson went first, the man calling himself Set following behind, the staff leveled and ready for use.  Getting it to shoot lightning was a neat trick.  Maybe this man was some kind of special effects whiz.  In which case he should be working in Hollywood.

In the great hall he found the guards lying facedown on the floor.  They appeared to still be breathing, which meant Set had just knocked them out.  Apparently he wasn’t as bloodthirsty as whoever had robbed the museum.

They took the elevator up to the third floor.  Along the way Dr. Johnson didn’t hear any alarms.  The other guards they came across were unconscious.  No one was going to help him.  He would just have to hope Set only wanted his notes.

Egyptology had a block of offices near the end of the hall.  He stopped at the frosted glass door with his name stenciled on it as the department head.  He had hoped someday Lois’s name might be stenciled beneath his as the assistant head of the department.  He thought of her and hoped again this character only wanted his notes.

Newcomers often mistook his office for a vacant one.  He had never bothered with decorating it or replacing the furniture he had inherited.  Most of his time he spent in the field, where a good Egyptologist should be.  He sat down at his desk, seeing the picture of
Lois and Jessie next to his and Betty’s wedding photo.  It might not be much longer until he was reunited with her.  Would Jessie be far behind?  Then poor Lois, who had already lost so much before she was even born, never knowing her father.

While he waited for the computer to boot up, he unlocked his desk drawers.  Set motioned for him to roll back while he rooted through the papers inside.  The supposed god leaned his staff against the wall.  Dr. Johnson considered trying to grab it, but he doubted he could make it in time.  Even then he didn’t know how to use the thing.

Once the computer’s welcome screen came up, he typed in his password.  He wheeled back even farther so that Set could ransack the computer for whatever he wanted.  Dr. Johnson watched the man claiming to be a god, trying to figure out who this person might be.  He wore a black jacket, pants, and gloves with the headdress covering his face so that nothing was visible.  If he told the cops a man with the head of a dog had accosted him they would probably throw him in the loony bin.

After a tense half hour, the dog headdress turned to face him, its red eyes glowing.  “Is this everything?”

“Yes.  Everything I have.  I swear.”

“Good.”

“Now can I go?”

“That was never part of our arrangement.”  A very traditional revolver appeared in the man’s hand.  Before Dr. Johnson could say anything, the man fired twice.  Both bullets tore into Dr. Johnson’s abdomen.  He collapsed to the floor.  Putting a hand on his midsection, it came back covered in blood.

The red eyes looked down at him.  “Now there will be nothing to stop me.”

Dr. Johnson heard the door shut.  He flipped himself onto his belly, screaming with pain as he landed on the wound.  His only hope was to crawl about ten feet to his desk and reach the phone.  With two bullet wounds the ten feet might as well be ten miles.

He forced himself to think of Lois and Jessie.  He couldn’t abandon them now.  Especially not Lois.  What would she do without him?  With this thought in mind he forced himself to crawl forward, leaving a trail of blood behind him.

By the time he reached the desk his vision consisted of two narrow tunnels.  Even those were getting fuzzy.  He swatted at his desk, trying to reach for the phone.  His first attempt knocked the pictures from his desk on top of him.  He took a deep, rattling breath and then levered himself up, screaming as he did so.  His bloodstained fingers snagged the phone and wrenched it down on top of him. 

He picked up the receiver, pressing it to his ear.  Nothing.  He still had the wherewithal to make sure the cord was plugged in.  It was.  Set had been smart enough to cut the phone lines before taking Dr. Johnson upstairs.

With a sigh he tossed the phone aside.  His fingers brushed against the pictures on top of him.  He held up the one of Jessie and
Lois.  He focused on Lois’s face.  She had been only ten years old but already in middle school.  Her freckled cheeks were slightly red and her eyes looking down, as if she were ashamed to be having her picture taken.

As he stared at her, he had a second vision.  He saw the doom predicted in the ancient temple in living color.  Set was only beginning.  He would unleash plagues of horrors upon the world.  If left unchecked, he would cover everything in darkness.

With his last ounces of strength Dr. Johnson dipped his finger into his midsection as if dipping a quill into ink.  Then he began to write.

* * *

When Lois heard a knock on her door she grabbed the two-by-four she kept next to the bed.  Drs. Johnson and Pavelski had warned her about this being a dangerous neighborhood.  Lois knew she could take care of herself, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t use a little help.  She clutched the piece of wood as if it were a baseball bat while she eased towards the door.

“Who is it?” she asked.

“A friend,” a man’s voice said.

Lois
tossed the board aside and then threw open the door.  She wasn’t sure how she would react when she saw Tony again, whether she would hug him or punch him in the face.  She decided to hug him first and then punch him hard in the arm.

“Ow!  What was that for?” he said.

“Where the hell have you been?  Mom’s been in a hospital for a week now.”

“I’m sorry.  Hospitals aren’t really my thing, you know?” he said, raising his voice to sound like
Melanie.

“As if I were throwing a fucking party in there.”

“I’m sorry, Lois.  I wasn’t sure you really wanted to see me anyway.  After what happened when we went out.”

“I am still steamed about that, but that doesn’t mean I don’t ever want to see you.”  She motioned to the interior of her room.  “Come on in.  Though I’ll warn you it’s not exactly
Better Home & Gardens
in here.”