Ed Sutter's 3-Book Box Set, page 6
The hospital had already done a number of tests, but wanted to keep her under observation for at least one night, maybe more, and they wanted to do some more comprehensive testing the next day. Then they’d see about releasing her. Colleen would be all right, and although she hadn’t regained consciousness, we were allowed to go in and see her for a little while.
Mom couldn’t take her eyes off Colleen and refused to leave for a very long time, but my mind was elsewhere.
Macedonia. This is too weird.
Maps
We stayed at the hospital until they threw us out at around eight o’clock that night, then we went home and tried to sleep. Mom was all set to stay all night, but the doctors assured her there was nothing she could do. Besides, I needed a ride home, and we both needed some sleep. I’m not sure how much sleep Mom got, but I was restless all night, worrying about Colleen. I don’t think I got more than two hours of solid sleep. For one thing, what should we do tomorrow? The hospital had kept her overnight for observation, but when we brought her home, what was the next step? At least for a while, I was sure someone would have to stay home with her. Mom had to work, which probably meant me.
Mom and I both called in to our respective jobs and explained why we wouldn’t be coming in, and then we headed back to the hospital. We didn’t have to take Colleen home, however. That was the good news, I guess, because the bad news was that she’d lapsed into a coma. The doctor tried to be soothing, but reading between the lines of what he was telling us, I realized that the reality was that they really don’t know all that much about comas. There’s no cure. Either the patient comes out of it, or they don’t.
I held Mom for a while as she cried on my shoulder. I think I would have cried too, but I was too numb. Then, I started to get angry. That jerk of a boyfriend had done this to her. He’d hurt my sister, and then run off, leaving her unconscious. She might have died if I hadn’t gotten home just then.
You could safely say that the day sucked. We stayed at the hospital for hours, finally leaving at dinner time. After we ate, Mom went back, but I stayed at home and made some calls. I wanted to find this elusive boyfriend. I didn’t know his name and therefore had little luck. I’d find him, though. It gave me something to look forward to.
* * * *
The next day brought little change in Colleen’s condition, and the hospital was way too depressing, so I went in to work at about ten. Mom understood, but I guess she felt obligated to hang out there for a while.
Zack was sympathetic and even understood that I didn’t want to talk about it too much.
“I’ve dug up some more information on your amulet,” he said. “It seems that Alexander wore it pretty much his whole life. Contemporary accounts agree that he felt that in some way it helped him achieve his goals in life. Almost as though it were granting his wishes.” At this last remark, he gave me a meaningful look.
“I don’t know what to think,” I replied. “At first, it seemed like it was granting my wishes, but then, when I tried to do it consciously, nothing happened.”
Zack rubbed his eternally clean-shaven chin. “Hmmm. You know, there was some speculation that the amulet protected Alexander from magical attack. I wonder if someone was trying to harm you or simply find the amulet when you tried your experiment.” He smiled. “Would you like to try again?”
Part of me said ‘YES!’ But then I thought of my sister. “I don’t know, Mister Torres. I don’t want to hurt anybody else. I’m afraid I might have had something to do with my sister being in the coma. Maybe I wished her into it without meaning to.”
“I disagree. You’re just not that kind of guy. I don’t think that you’d intentionally hurt anyone. C’mon, let’s give this a try. We’ll wish for something completely innocuous, like for more customers, like you said you did while I was gone. God knows, this place is dead enough this week. What do you say?”
“Well, okay. Should I just go ahead and give it a try?”
Zack was thoughtful. “No, let me try first. That should give us a control for the experiment.”
He picked up the amulet, and looking at it intently, said, “I wish we had more customers.”
We waited. In the silence, I could hear the air conditioner pumping air through the vents. We waited some more.
After about fifteen minutes, Zack said, “I think we can count that as a failure.” He handed me the amulet. “Now you try.”
I slipped the whole thing over my head, took a deep breath, and said, “I wish we had more customers.”
There was a screeching of tires and a huge crash right outside the door. Zack and I exchanged wide-eyed glances, and then headed toward the front door. In the street outside, a huge tour bus was stopped in the middle of a turn onto Maryland Street. A pickup had apparently smashed into the left front end of the bus as it was making a right turn. The truck hadn’t fared well, but the driver was apparently in excellent health and certainly in fine voice. We could hear him yelling at the bus driver from thirty yards away. Some of what he was yelling was very creative, but there’s no way he could have known all those things about the bus driver’s parents.
As the altercation continued, people began coming out of the bus. Several of them saw us and came over.
One man, a doughy-looking accountant-type, asked, “Say, do you have any food for sale?”
Zack pointed up at the sign and said, “No, we’re a magic shop. There are several restaurants over on the other side of the streets. There and there,” he ended, pointing.
A skinny, weather-beaten, peroxide-blond came up and peered at us over her sunglasses. “A magic shop, you say?” She turned, and in a grating, shrill voice yelled, “Ethel! It’s a magic shop!” She turned back to us and said, “We were on our way to a psychic fair in Scottsdale. God only knows how we wound up here, but we’d all love to take a look in at your store.”
Zack bowed and held the door open. “Please enter my humble establishment.”
The doughman followed the blond into the store, saying, “I wonder how we got so far off course?”
I turned to Zack and whispered, “I think I know.”
He winked back at me, and we went back inside to serve our new customers.
* * * *
Some time later, once the rush had died down, Zack and I sat at his desk.
He smiled and said, “Well, that was interesting. I’m almost afraid to try any other experiments. Not yet, anyway.”
“No argument here. I’ve had enough customer service for one day.”
Zack looked serious, though, when he said, “No one knows the whole history of this amulet, at least since the death of Alexander, but I thought I’d better tell you, there is rumored to be a curse on it.”
I suddenly sat very upright. “A curse?” I could feel my eyes go wide. I immediately flashed on a picture of the old lady who’d given me the amulet. A curse…
“Yes. An unusually high number of its owners over the centuries have died mysteriously or disappeared.”
“That doesn’t sound very healthy.”
Zack smiled. “Don’t worry about it too much. I personally don’t believe in the curse business. I suspect the deaths and disappearances were arranged in attempts to steal or gain control of the amulet. No supernatural agency needed to be involved.”
“The dead or disappeared folks might not have cared whether they were done in by a curse or a bad guy,” I told him. “They were still goners. Speaking of which, I’m not sure I told you what happened to the old lady who dropped off the amulet for you.”
Zack nodded and said, “Did she give a name? I’d like to pay her for it.”
“No, she never told me her name, and now she never will. She’s dead. Murdered. Given what you’ve uncovered, I’m convinced that whoever killed her was after this amulet.” I proceeded to fill Zack in on all the details of finding the old woman’s body in the river. “Why would anyone want this particular amulet so bad that they’d kill for it? I mean, it’s gold and all, but there must be thousands of Egyptian gold artifacts around. Why this one?”
“Good question. There is, of course, the magical provenance, but real practitioners of the occult, despite Hollywood’s rendering of them as evil sorcerers, are usually pretty mild people. No, I think there must be some other reason, and I just might know what it is. I think that the amulet is a key of sorts.”
“A key? A key to what?”
“It is said to be able to show the location of the tomb of Alexander the Great.”
“Why? Did they misplace him somewhere?”
Zack laughed. “After a fashion. His body was originally buried in the city bearing his name, Alexandria, at the mouth of the Nile River in Egypt. At some point, the body and its sarcophagus disappeared, and no one has seen it since.”
“Other than archaeologists, why would anyone care?”
“At one time, Alexander’s body was considered something of a talisman. It was thought to have an innate magical power, granting victory or at least security to the kingdom possessing it. Alexander himself was revered as a god incarnate. Since he conquered virtually all of the Middle East, the beliefs in his magical or divine ties are pretty widespread in that region, and that’s not to mention the thousands of military types who all but adore him as one of the greatest generals of all time. It’s possible that even today there are those who wish to possess his sarcophagus. It would be priceless as an archaeological find over and above the fact it was made out of solid gold. The precious metals alone would be worth a fortune.”
“And nobody knows where he’s buried?”
“No. There are some theories of course, but none of them has been proven. No body has ever been found.”
“You’d think something like that would be hard to hide for so long.”
“Well, whoever hid it did a fine job. Treasure hunters, fanatics, and archaeologists have hunted all over Egypt and North Africa for his tomb for centuries and never found it.”
I’d taken the necklace off and was holding it in my hand. As we talked, I idly turned it over and gazed at the worn rear. The back of the medallion wasn’t as intricately worked as the front, but maybe there was something there…
“What’s this mean? It doesn’t look at all like the front.”
“Let me see it again.”
I handed it to him, and he examined it for a moment, then went behind his desk, rummaged in one of the drawers for a moment, and pulled out a jeweler’s eye loupe. He continued to examine the piece for several minutes.
Marina chose this moment to drop by. I realized that it was lunchtime and that I was starving. With Colleen and all, I hadn’t eaten breakfast, and my system was demanding fuel.
Marina walked around to where her uncle was examining the amulet.
“What are we looking for?”
Zack looked up and said, “Alec asked about the markings on the back of the medallion, and I was trying to decipher them.”
“And?” she asked.
Zack shook his head. “I’ve got no idea. It’s just some hieroglyphic symbols connected by lines. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Marina held out her hand. “May I?”
“Sure,” he said, handing it to her.
She turned the amulet over and over in her hands, studying the front and the back intently and eventually borrowed his loupe. Then, she lifted her face to her uncle and said, “Uncle Zack, I know that this symbol represents Ammon Ra, the chief Egyptian god.”
“That’s correct.”
Marina was nuts about ancient Egypt. She’d even learned something about hieroglyphics. I was personally amazed that there were actually books in the public library that dealt with such an unusual subject, but if it were there, Marina would find it.
“Okay,” she said. “And I think this symbol here definitely means a temple.”
He took the loupe back, and examined the amulet. After a moment he said, “Yes, I agree.”
“Well, since this combination of symbols is repeated twice, and the symbols are connected by lines, could this be a crude map?”
A map. The ancient volume Zack had consulted had said that the amulet was a key to the location of the tomb of Alexander. Was this what it had referred to?
Map to Nowhere
“A map?” I said. “A map to where?”
Marina replied, “I have no idea. There’s nothing but these symbols and lines. Nothing’s labeled other than showing these temples of Ammon Ra.”
I took my turn with the loupe and medallion.
“What are these wavy lines here in the middle?” I asked.
Zack said, “They’re not hieroglyphics. They may represent the sea.”
“Well, wouldn’t that give you your reference points?” I asked. “What sea would it be? Wouldn’t it have to be the Mediterranean?”
“Probably,” answered Marina. “The Egyptians weren’t great sailors, although they were very good boat builders. Their world centered around the Nile. It was as though the world outside Egypt wasn’t important to them.”
“Then these are points inside Egypt?”
Zack said, “I don’t know. The relative distances are all wrong.” He moved back behind his desk and started rummaging through books and papers. “Ah, here it is. When he visited Egypt after defeating the Persians, Alexander made a side trip to the little oasis town of Siwa, in the Egyptian western desert. It was there he was declared the son of Ammon Ra. Some archaeologists believe that it is to Siwa that his sarcophagus was taken when it disappeared from Alexandria, to a place where they considered him sacred. If the amulet shows a map to Siwa, maybe those wavy lines are supposed to indicate sand.”
Marina asked, “But if it had been taken to Siwa, wouldn’t someone have found it by now? I think I read that National Geographic had sponsored at least one archaeological expedition over there with no results.”
Zack looked thoughtful for a moment. “Well, there are some problems with the Siwa theory. First of all, there are, to my knowledge, no great tombs or temples in Siwa, despite the digging you mentioned. Despite a lot of excavating of the ancient oasis, no candidate for the tomb of Alexander has been found. One last thing, I don’t know if this has anything to do with anything, but Alexander had said that he wanted a great pyramid erected over his tomb to equal those of the pharaohs. No such pyramid exists in the Western Desert, and I should think that any true believers in Alexander’s divinity would make some attempt to comply with his wishes.”
“Maybe they had to hide it, so the king of Egypt wouldn’t come and take it back,” I suggested.
“Or the Romans,” added Marina. At my puzzled look, she added, “Several of the Caesars were just fascinated by Alexander. Both Julius Caesar and Augustus came to view his sarcophagus, along with probably thousands of other devout and not-so-devout Alexander wannabes.”
“Well, wherever Alexander is, he’s probably hungry. I know I am. Is anybody up for lunch?”
Zack said, “You two kids go ahead. Bring me something back. I want to explore the possibilities of this map business for a while.”
I could tell that Marina wanted to stay and help, but she accompanied me to lunch anyway.
“I’m really worried about my sister,” I said as we walked across the square.
“Colleen? What’s her problem now?”
“Well, she’s in a coma for starters.” At Marina’s look of surprise and shock, I explained the circumstances.
“Oh my God!” she said as I finished. “What are you going to do?”
“There’s not too much I can do for Colleen, but I’d sure like to find the kid who gave her the drugs.”
“What does he look like?”
“He’s taller than me, about six-one, with sandy blond hair. Blue eyes, I think. Fairly muscular, a track star type. Oh, and he likes younger girls.”
Marina said, “That sounds like Dick Stapley. He’s eighteen and fits the description. He likes his friends to call him ‘Big Dick.’”
“Big Dickhead is more like it. Okay, I’ll find him.”
“And do what?”
“I don’t know yet. Something. I don’t want him feeding any more thirteen-year-olds drugs.”
“Why not just go to the police?”
“Good idea. I’m afraid I didn’t get a lot of sleep. I’m not firing on all cylinders today.”
* * * *
After lunch, instead of going directly back to the Magic Shop, I walked over to the police station across Arizona Avenue.
It seemed to take forever to get to see a detective, and when I did talk to Detective Kenneth Stapley, he wasn’t very helpful. I wondered about the name for a moment. Could he be some relative of Big Dick’s? Well, even if he is, he’s cop, right? He’ll look at the facts and make his decisions according to the law.
Right.
“So you didn’t actually see this kid give your sister drugs?” he asked.
“No, sir. I didn’t, but he ran out of the house as I came in, and she was there, unconscious.”
“He could have conceivably just come in, found your sister like that, and panicked.”
“I suppose he could have, but I don’t think so.”
“Well, I’ll ask around a bit, but the one we really need to talk to is your sister. Call us when she wakes up.” The interview was clearly over. Just one more kid on drugs, and this guy didn’t seem to care less.
This was frustrating to say the least, and I thought of ways to handle the situation myself. Of course, the amulet came to mind immediately. Could I wish the kid some sort of harm? I didn’t know. Did I even want to get that drastic? Might there be some other solution to the problem? Despite the detective’s skepticism, I was convinced that Dickhead Stapley was at fault. Even in the unlikely event that he hadn’t supplied the drugs, he’d left my sister to die, and I didn’t want him to get away with that.
Unfortunately, like the map on the amulet, this all seemed to be leading nowhere.
I’d cleverly forgotten to bring Zack anything back for lunch, so when I returned to the shop, it was his turn to go, and he left even before I had a chance to ask him about the map, if that’s what it really was. I mean, after all, it was just some pictures and wavy lines. Not much of a map.
