The Eye of the Moon Read online

  The Eye of the Moon

  TO THE READER:

  On page 145 of The Book With No Name, the Mystic Lady issued this warning about the Eye of the Moon:

  It has a powerful presence, and it will draw evil towards it wherever it goes. You’re not safe as long as you have it with you. In fact, you’re not really safe if you’ve ever had contact with it.

  Dear Reader,

  In your hands you now hold The Eye of the Moon.

  Enjoy it while it lasts …

  ANONYMOUS

  The Eye of the Moon

  A novel (probably)

  Anonymous

  Michael O’Mara Books Limited

  First published in Great Britain in 2008 by

  Michael O’Mara Books Limited

  9 Lion Yard, Tremadoc Road

  London SW4 7NQ

  Copyright © The Bourbon Kid 2008, 2009

  The right of the author (under the accredited pseudonym The Bourbon Kid) to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him/her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978-1-84317-429-5 in Epub format

  ISBN: 978-1-84317-430-1 in Mobipocket format

  Designed and typeset by www.glensaville.com

  www.mombooks.com

  One

  Joel Rockwell couldn’t remember ever being this nervous before. His career as a nighttime security guard in the Santa Mondega Museum of Art and History had been uneventful, to say the least. He had wanted to follow his father, Jessie, into the police force, but he hadn’t measured up at the Academy. In some respects he was relieved that he had failed. Police work was far more dangerous. As had been proved just three days earlier, when his father had been gunned down by the Bourbon Kid in the aftermath of the eclipse during the Lunar Festival. So a soft job as a security guard had seemed like a safer option. Or at least it had done, until about five minutes ago.

  The most burdensome part of his nightly duties was having to sit in the security office watching a bank of monitors, which generally showed that absolutely nothing was happening within the museum walls. The grey uniform suit that Joel was obliged to wear in the job was itchy as hell, too. It had probably been worn by countless other employees long before it had been handed to him on his first day, and it just wasn’t designed with sitting around in mind. Staying comfortable in it was usually the biggest task of the night. Except that what he’d just seen on monitor number three had changed all that.

  Joel Rockwell was not an imaginative man. He was not an especially intelligent one, either, and it was the lack of these two qualities that had eventually led to him flunking the Police Academy course. As one of his instructors – a grizzled thirty-year lieutenant – had noted on his confidential report, ‘This guy is so dumb even his fellow cadets noticed.’ None the less, he had a certain doggedness and honesty that made him a good witness and a reliable guard, if only because he lacked the imagination and intelligence to be anything else.

  If his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him, he’d just witnessed a murder on the screen. His colleague Carlton Buckley appeared to have been attacked and killed while wandering around on the floor below ground level. Rockwell would have called the police, but describing what he thought he’d just seen would only have made them laugh, and maybe arrest him for wasting their time. So he did the next best thing, and called Professor Bertram Cromwell, one of the museum’s directors.

  He had the Professor’s number saved in his cell phone, and despite feeling a little uneasy about calling him at such an ungodly hour he went ahead and did it anyway. Cromwell was one of those exquisitely polite gentlemen who would never make him feel bad for calling, no matter how trivial the issue.

  With his heart pounding in his chest and his phone held to his ear waiting for Cromwell to pick up the call, he headed out of the security office and down to the lower level to check out for himself what he thought he’d just seen in the Egyptian display.

  He reached the foot of a flight of stairs and had just taken a right turn into a long hallway when Cromwell finally answered. Unsurprisingly, the Professor sounded like a man who’d been woken from a deep sleep.

  ‘Hello? Bertram Cromwell speaking. Who is this, please?’

  ‘Hi Bernard, it’s Joel Rockwell at the museum.’

  ‘Hi Joel. It’s Bertram, by the way, not Bernard.’

  ‘Whatever. Look, I think we’ve got an intruder here at the museum, but I’m not totally sure, so I thought I’d call you before I, you know, got the police an’ everything.’

  Cromwell seemed to wake up a little. ‘Really? What’s happening?’

  ‘Well, this is gonna sound kinda nuts, but I think someone just broke out of the Egyptian Mummy display.’

  ‘Say again?’

  ‘The Mummy display. I think someone just came out of the goddam tomb thing.’

  ‘What? That’s impossible! What on earth are you talking about?’

  ‘Yeah, I know it sounds nuts. That’s why I called you first. See, I think whoever it was has just attacked the other security guard.’

  ‘Who’s the other guy on with you tonight?’

  ‘Carter Bradley.’

  ‘You mean Carlton Buckley?’

  ‘Yeah, whatever. I’m not sure if it’s him, like, playing a prank or not. But if it’s not a joke, then he’s gotta be in serious trouble. Like real serious trouble.’

  ‘Why? What’s happened?’ The Professor, now wide awake, paused for a second to gather his thoughts, then said quietly, ‘What have you actually seen, Joel? Facts, my boy – I need facts. If you’ll forgive me saying so, you’re not making a great deal of sense at the moment, and I’m rather tired.’

  During his conversation with Cromwell Joel had continued walking along the broad, dimly lit hallway until, sooner than he would have liked, he arrived at the end of it. He took a deep breath, then turned right into the vast open gallery known as Lincoln Hall. That was when he heard the music. A light piano tune was being played. A gentle sad tune, not unlike the ‘Lonely Man’ theme tune played at the end of The Incredible Hulk TV show that he had loved as a kid in the late seventies. He knew there was a piano down here somewhere, but who the fuck was playing it? Yeah, and playing it so fucking badly, as well …

  ‘Hold on a minute, Professor Crumpler. You’re not gonna believe this, but I can hear a piano playing. I’m just gonna put my phone in my pocket for a second. Hold tight and I’ll let you know what I see.’

  Rockwell slipped his small phone into the breast pocket of his grey shirt and pulled his nightstick from its loop on his belt. Then he stepped into the huge hall to investigate further. The piano was tucked away behind a sand-coloured wall on his left that ran halfway down the hall. Paintings of famous musicians were hung along its entire length. Ignoring the music for a second, he focused his attention on the Egyptian display to his right, an imposing permanent exhibit billed as ‘The Mummy’s Tomb’. It had been trashed. There was glass all over the floor where the protective shield around the display had been shattered. And, mixed in with the glass,
there was blood. Lots of blood.

  Most notably, the golden sarcophagus that stood upright in the centre of the display was open. The front of it was lying on the floor, and the mummified remains of its late occupant were gone. Rockwell knew that Professor Cromwell loved this particular exhibit. He would be mighty upset if his prized possession had been stolen, or even tampered with. It was the museum’s centrepiece, the rarest and most valuable object in the entire, vast collection. And now the best part of it was missing.

  Rockwell thought back to what he believed he’d seen on the monitor in the security office, and shook his head in confusion. Only a few minutes had passed since then, but he was already beginning to think he’d imagined the attack on Buckley. This had to be a prank, yeah? Not a well-timed one, what with all the recent killings in Santa Mondega and thereabouts – kinda tasteless, really, you wanted his opinion – but a prank even so. And what was the deal with the fucking piano? Learn to carry a tune, whoever you are! he thought, with, even for him, breathtaking inconsequentiality.

  To reach the piano – which, if rumours were true, had once been owned by a famous composer – he was going to have to manoeuvre himself around the mess of glass and blood and past a giant statue of the classical Greek hero Achilles to a small alcove on the other side of the long, sand-coloured wall. If he remembered correctly, a life-size wooden mannequin sat at the piano, styled and dressed to resemble the noted composer who had owned it. Who was it? he pondered. Beethoven? Mozart? Manilow? It wasn’t important enough to dwell on, and in any case he soon had his answer. As he headed past the statue of the great, if sulky, Greek warrior and rounded the end of the sand-coloured wall, he saw the mannequin lying on its back on the floor some distance from the piano, as though thrown there with considerable force. It was wearing a purple-coloured jacket over a white shirt, the ensemble finished off with dark flared trousers above shiny black shoes. There was a name tag pinned to the left breast of the jacket. ‘Beethoven’, it read, but Rockwell didn’t notice it as he stepped over the wooden figure, so he was still none the wiser as to which composer this was meant to be.

  Clearly it wasn’t the mannequin that was playing the piano. It was something else. He took a few steps closer to the instrument in the corner of the alcove in order to get a look at the musician responsible for the badly played tune. When he was finally close enough, he saw a figure sitting on the small stool in front of the grand piano, tinkling the ivories with rather more verve than skill. The sight sent a cold shiver down his spine.

  This figure was wearing a long, hooded robe of rich scarlet cloth. With the hood pulled up over its owner’s head, it looked like the kind of thing a boxer heading into ring might wear. The cloaked individual with the hooded face was passionately moving from side to side, swaying its head like Stevie Wonder as it played its terribly-out-of-tune piece of music. There was no sign of Rockwell’s colleague, Buckley, although, rather worryingly, a trail of blood spatters led across the floor to the hooded figure at the piano.

  Keeping his distance, Rockwell decided to call out and hope to get a look at the face of the mysterious pianist. If he didn’t like what he saw, he had at least a twenty-yard head start if he had to take the ‘run-like-fuck’ option.

  ‘Hey, you!’ he called out. ‘Do you know we’re closed? You shouldn’t be here! Time to go, buddy.’

  The figure stopped playing, its bony fingers quivering almost imperceptibly above the gleaming black and white keys. Then it spoke.

  ‘You hum it, and I’ll pick it up!’ a rusty-sounding voice crackled from beneath the scarlet cowl. A loud guffaw followed; then the hands dropped as the figure took up the tune again.

  ‘What? Hey, where’s Carterton?’ Rockwell called out taking a step closer, his hand sweating on the nightstick he was gripping so very tightly.

  Again the figure stopped playing, and turned its head to look directly at him. Since Rockwell was not exactly walking briskly towards it, stopping dead in his tracks was not a problem. There followed an awkward moment during which he seriously considered pissing his pants.

  Within the hood, the figure had only half a face. In the shadow beneath the cowl, the terrified security guard could make out what looked mostly like a yellow skull. Foul remnants of flesh still clung in places to the cheeks, jaw and brow, and there was one rather odd-looking green eye, but the other eye socket was empty, and the face appeared to have no lips or nose. Revolted, Rockwell looked away, only to realize that the bony fingers that had been tapping away at the piano keys were exactly that. Bones. Fingers with no fucking skin on them. Oh Christ.

  Before he had time to turn and run, the cloaked figure rose from its stool. It stood well over six feet tall, seeming to dominate the vast gallery, its bony fingers reaching out in his direction. Then it did something strange. It waved one of its hands through the air as if it were manipulating the strings of an invisible puppet. All the while its expressionless face somehow managed to look as though it was smirking at him.

  To Joel Rockwell, even though he was twenty or so yards away, those bony hands looked like they were gonna start coming his way pretty goddam soon. As he turned on his heel with the intention of running like fuck out of the hall – hell, something that dead couldn’t be much of a sprinter – he received the second massive shock of the past few moments.

  The mannequin of Ludwig van Beethoven had climbed to its feet, somehow animated by the waving hands of the – the thing – at the piano. Now it was right in front of Rockwell, its glass eyes staring vacantly at him from beneath a great mane of hair, its arms extended and wooden hands thrust out to grab him by the throat. The stunned security guard swiped at it with his nightstick, but the effect was only a loud thudding noise as the dummy’s wooden head absorbed the blow, although part of one ear splintered. Fingers stinging, Joel dropped the useless weapon, pulled the cell phone from his breast pocket and held it to his ear, even as the mannequin took a grip on his neck. As he fell to the ground with the wooden assassin on top of him, squeezing his neck tightly and driving the breath from his lungs, he managed one brief cry for help into the phone, hoping above hope that Cromwell might hear it and, somehow, come to his rescue, or at least send a rescue party.

  ‘Bernard, fer Chrissakes! You gotta help me!’ he gasped. ‘I’m bein’ attacked by fuckin’ Barry Manilow!’

  Whether the Professor replied, or even heard, Rockwell was never to know. Dropping the cell phone, he battled with every ounce of his fading strength to escape his attacker, but to no avail. The mannequin was too strong, as well as impervious to his weakening attempts to fight it off. It simply kept him pinned to the floor, its hands around his throat.

  Rockwell struggled on despairingly until eventually a figure loomed over him and he found himself staring up into the hideous face of the mummy. The undead Egyptian needed to gorge on yet more human flesh to help replenish his decayed body, and Rockwell’s would serve that purpose admirably.

  During the next ten minutes the terrified security guard was ripped apart and devoured by the barbarous creature. It took some minutes for Joel Rockwell to die in unbearable agony. It had taken only three days for him to follow his father into the afterlife.

  Having feasted on the flesh of the two dead security guards, the mummy – the immortal, formerly embalmed remains of the pharaoh once better known as Rameses Gaius – felt just about ready to re-enter the world of the living. He would seek – indeed, demand – two things. Revenge on the descendants of those who had incarcerated him for so long, and the return of his most prized possession during his days as ruler of Egypt: the Eye of the Moon.

  Two

  31 October – eighteen years earlier

  Santa Mondega High School’s annual Halloween fancy-dress ball was, to the students, the highlight of the year’s social calendar. Fifteen-year-old Beth Lansbury had waited patiently since the beginning of term for this night. This was her great chance – probably her only chance, she thought – to catch the eye of a certain boy in th
e year above her. She didn’t know his name, and she would have been way too embarrassed to ask anyone else, in case they realized that she had this big crush on him and teased her for it. Which they would certainly have done.

  Beth had no friends at the school. She was still fairly new there, and being extremely pretty didn’t exactly help matters. This was one of the principal reasons why all the other girls seemed to resent her. More to the point, Ulrika Price didn’t like her, and had made it clear to all the other girls that Beth was not to be spoken to, unless it was to say something spiteful to her.

  As was the vogue in these parts, the school’s gym hall was the venue for the ball. Earlier in the day Beth had helped Miss Hinds, her English teacher, to decorate the place. It hadn’t looked all that great when they had finished, but now, on the night, with the flashing lights and the music, it took on a whole new vibe. Beth was pleased to see that despite the spasmodic flashing of the disco lights, the hall was for the most part very dark – perfect cover for outsiders and loners like her.

  There was another cause of Beth’s anguish. Her overly controlling stepmother had insisted on choosing her costume, and, typically, had picked a hideously unsuitable outfit. While everyone else was dressed appropriately in Halloween attire (such as ghosts, zombies, witches, vampires, skeletons – even a rather unconvincing bat and at least four Freddy Kruegers), Beth was dressed as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, right down to the shitty red shoes. She had convinced herself she would have a good time in spite of it, but she was still upset that her stepmother had picked such an inappropriate and stupid outfit.

  To say that Olivia Jane Lansbury was extremely domineering was akin to saying that Hitler could sometimes be a bit naughty. Worse, she seemed to be hell bent on preventing her stepdaughter from ever meeting any boys. This may have stemmed from a certain degree of bitterness she felt at having been widowed shortly after she had married Beth’s father. Beth’s real mother had died giving birth to her, so Olivia Jane had been her only parent for most of her life. Growing up had been pretty tough for Beth so far. And tonight wasn’t going to be a bed of roses either, she reflected.