The Parliament of the Dead by T.A. Donnelly Read Free Book Online Page B

American with a tiny camera round his neck,“you’re not the guy who took the other walk.”
    “Yeah, well, old Arthur who usually takes this walk is sick today.  I’m his apprentice and I know all he knows, and with me you’ve got added youthful enthusiasm .”
    The large American’s equally large wife spoke up,“Exactly how old are you, honey?”
    Iona toyed with the idea of saying twenty-one, but she knew they would not believe it, so she settled for eighteen: old enough for them to listen to her. “Eighteen madam, but with wisdom beyond my years.”She winked at the crowd.
    The excitement of addressing the group rose in Iona’s chest.  She had so many unanswered questions, and she was achingly tired after a sleepless night, but she wanted to take this tour.  She had listened to Arthur often enough, she knew the route, and she knew all the stories.
    “OK, OK, Ladies and Gentlemen, our tour starts with Cleopatra’s Needle…”Iona imitated Arthur’s theatrical story-telling style as best she could.
    She told how this was a popular site for suicides, and how strange figures were sometimes seen throwing themselves into the river by the Needle.
    At first she wanted to be exactly like Arthur, and tell all the stories precisely as he had done.  When she reached her own front door, however, she began to deviate from the script.
    “At this point Arthur would tell you about Sweeney Todd, but he’s a creep, so I’m going to tell you the story of the axe murderers’convention...”
     
     
    Chapter Fourteen
    Playing-cards
and Bandages
     
    Later that night, in a dimly-lit room, four dark shapes were hunched around a very old table.
    “Queen of hearts,”hissed a wheezy voice.
    “Seven of clubs,”said the next figure, with the same wheeze in its speech.  As he spoke, his bandaged hand placed a card on top of the one before.
    “Snap!”shouted the third figure, slamming a seven of diamonds on top of the pile.  A cloud of grey dust erupted from the impact of his hand on the table.
    “No way man!”protested the fourth figure. “You always do that Nubkheperra.  You’re not allowed to look at the card before you put it down.”
    “But I didn’t,”complained the third figure huffily, then crossed his arms in front of his bony chest.
    “You said‘Snap’before it touched the table–you must have looked!” Some of the bandages slipped from the fourth figure’s face as he spoke, revealing his ancient skeletal features.  His waxy black skin was hanging off yellow bones.  All the players were dead: long dead.  They were mummies who spent their days in display-cases in the Egyptian Gallery of the British Museum, and their nights bickering over games of chance.  It had been their nightly ritual for centuries.
    “Henutmehyt is right.  You don’t play fair.” The first figure stood up, knocking the table over in his outrage. “It was the same in Egypt, just because you were Pharaoh...”
    “But we didn’t have cards in Egypt,”the ancient King protested.
    “No but whatever we played you still sodding cheated,”snapped Henutmehyt,“knuckle-bones, marbles, the snake game: you cheated at the lot.”
    Suddenly they stood rigid and still, listening intently to a sound they’d all heard at once.  Although their ears had long since withered into tiny wrinkles of skin, their hearing was supernaturally keen.
    “Quick, back to the sarcophagi!”
    The mummies shambled down a dimly-lit corridor.  Their ancient limbs were dry and stiff and their joints rustled like old tissue-paper.  Although they were true ghosts and could float free from their long-dead bodies, they had taken to reanimating their mouldy cadavers after seeing a film starring Boris Karloff in 1932.
    There was a sudden crash behind them as a black-clad figure smashed through a window.  The electronic wail of a burglar-alarm competed with rasping shouts of panic and the cackle of military-like radio messages.
    “Father Pious, I’ve