The Anubis Gates

The men gasped, and one yanked a little wooden monkey out of a pocket and apparently squeezed its head between thumb and forefinger. “We’ll be calling up no gorgio ghosts for you, you chal of the Beng!” he hissed. “Aye, though the number of the beast is indeed in the gorgio Bible!”

At that moment a dog came into the tent, walked in a quick circle with its tail between its legs, and scuttled out.

“The rya is back,” said the one with the monkey. “Go out through the back, Wilbur.”

“Avo,” said Wilbur heartily, and crawled out under a flap of the tent.

Doyle was staring at the tent flap. When the dog had knocked it aside coming in, he’d glimpsed open night outside, and there had been a breath of cold air scented with trees and grass. His memory had at last shaken off the ether fumes and clicked into gear, and he was anxiously replaying the evening in his head. Yes, the jump had worked, and then the city, and that slum area, and yes, Coleridge! And Mrs. Thibodeau kissed him… suddenly Doyle’s abdomen went hollow and cold, and he could feel cold sweat pop out on his forehead, for he remembered the bald man seizing him. Oh my God, he thought in horror, I missed the return jump, I was outside the field when the gap ended!

The flap was pulled open, and the bald man who’d abducted him from the Crown and Anchor entered the tent, bouncing wildly as he moved. He took a cigar out of a pocket and crossed to the table, bent down over the lantern and puffed it alight. Moving to the cot, he grabbed Doyle’s head in one powerful hand and held the lit end of the cigar toward Doyle’s left eye. In panic Doyle arched his body and thumped his bound heels up and down, but in spite of the most strenuous struggling his head was held motionless. He could feel the heat on his eye through his clenched shut eyelid; the coal couldn’t have been more than a half inch away. “Oh my God, stop it!” he burst out. “Help, stop it, get him away from me!”

After a moment the heat went away and his head was released. He rolled his head from side to side, blinking tears out of his left eye. When he could look at things again he saw the bald man standing over the cot, puffing thoughtfully on the cigar.

“I will know it all,” the bald man remarked. “You will tell me where you people came from, how you use the gates for travel, how you discovered the gates—I will know all of it. Do I make myself plain?”

“Yes,” wailed Doyle. God damn J. Cochran Darrow, he thought furiously, and may his cancer eat him alive. It wasn’t my job to go fetch the coaches! “Yes, I’ll tell you everything. In fact, I’ll make you a wealthy man if you’ll do me a favor.”

“A favor,” repeated the old man wonderingly.

“Yes.” Doyle’s cheek itched where tears had run across it, and it was driving him mad that he couldn’t scratch it. “And I’m not kidding about making you wealthy. I can tell you property to buy, things to invest in… I can probably even tell you where to find hidden treasure if I can have time to think about it… gold in California… the tomb of Tutankhamen… “

Doctor Romany clutched a couple of the loops of rope over Doyle’s chest and lifted him half off the cot, bending down so that his face was only inches from Doyle’s. “You people know that?” he whispered. “Where it is?”

Doyle’s half dangling position was making the rope bite into his sides and shoulders so painfully that he felt near losing consciousness again, but he could see that he had somehow displeased this murderous old man. “What,” he choked, “where King Tut’s tomb is? Yes—put me down, I can’t breathe!” Romany opened his hand and Doyle slammed back onto the cot, his already dizzy head rebounding from the canvas. “Where is it, then?” asked Romany in a dangerously quiet voice. Doyle looked around wildly. The only other person in the tent was the old gypsy with the monkey, and he was staring at Doyle fearfully and muttering some word over and over again. “Well,” Doyle said uncertainly, “I’ll make a bargain with—”

A few moments later he realized that the reason his ear was ringing and his cheek felt both hot and numb was that the old man had given him a hard open-handed blow to the side of the head.

“Where is it, then?” Romany repeated gently.

“Jesus, man, take it easy!” Suddenly he was certain that his tormentor somehow already knew where it was, and was in effect calling his bluff. He saw Romany’s hand draw back again. “In the Valley of Kings!” he blurted, “under the huts of the workmen who built some other pharaoh’s tomb! Ramses or somebody.”

The old man scowled, and for several long seconds did nothing but puff on his cigar. Then, “You will tell me everything,” he said. He dragged a chair over and sat down, but at that moment the dog trotted in again and, turning around toward the tent opening, growled softly.

“Gorgios,” whispered the old gypsy. He peered through the tent flap. “Duvel save us, rya, it’s prastamengros!”