The Metropolitan Natural History Museum was a grand, ancient structure that belonged in an even larger museum itself. Strung across giant Corinthian columns, a fabric banner advertised Special Necronomicon Exhibition, Limited Time Only: The Original Book and Its Influence Throughout the Ages.
On either side of the stone steps, two immense pedestals held fearsome gargoyle statues. Real gargoyles loved to stand next to the statues, making faces and mugging for the cameras so that their friends could take souvenir photos.
Robin drove recklessly through the streets and pulled up in front of the museum, stopping so abruptly that the old Maverick shed more shards of rust. Her desperation to intervene with Ramen Ho-Tep became even more apparent when she parked the Pro Bono Mobile illegally close to a fire hydrant and didn’t even seem concerned about it. We ran up the steps, swimming upstream against a flood of evacuating patrons. A harried teacher herded an unruly class of fourth graders out of the museum.
The kids looked fascinated. “Why can’t we stay and watch?” cried one little girl. “That was interesting!”
“It’s not supposed to be interesting. This is an educational field trip.” The teacher ushered them along. “Go on, move.”
Robin and I ran through the front door, where an alarmed-looking cashier tried to charge us admission. I took command. “No time. This is a crisis.” I didn’t know if the mummy had threatened anyone; we just knew it was an emergency, something that was life or death … or other. “Where’s the Egyptian wing?”
“South hall,” the cashier blurted. “But it’s being evacuated.”
“We know.” Robin pulled out her pocketbook, flashed her bar card from the Board of Professional Responsibility. “I’m the attorney representing Ramen Ho-Tep. I need to see him before the situation gets out of hand.”
“You’re a little late for that,” the cashier said.
Robin and I were already running through the security scanner. Since we hadn’t paid admission—and also because I was carrying my .38—an alarm went off, but the museum guards were otherwise occupied. Robin seemed very upset to be breaking the rules, so I said to her, “Don’t worry, we’ll pay before we leave.”
Oddly enough, that mollified her.
We ran past the arachnid display, then the Sorcery and Alchemy Hall on our way to Ancient Egypt. In the central hall, we encountered the ambitious Necronomicon exhibit. The Metropolitan Museum had pulled strings and fought challenges in court for the right to display the thick tome. Two lawsuits claimed the book posed a danger to the human public, although the time to worry about danger had already passed.
Though we needed to get to Ramen Ho-Tep, I hesitated, feeling an eerie connection to the magical book. This very copy of the Necronomicon, bound in leather made from the cured skin of infants and penned in human blood, was the reason I had come back from the dead—the reason all the unnaturals were now alive and abroad.
More than ten years ago, every rational person would have laughed at the possibility. Not anymore.
The planets had aligned in some sort of pattern that only astrologers considered significant. The original copy of the Necro-nomicon had inadvertently been left out under the light of a full moon, and a virgin woman (fifty-eight years old but a virgin nevertheless) had cut her finger (a paper cut, but a cut nevertheless) and spilled blood on the pages—which activated some buried spell and caused a fundamental shift in the natural order of things, unleashing ghosts and goblins, vampires and werewolves, zombies, ghouls, and all manner of monsters. Even the previously existing ones had come out of the closet.
The Big Uneasy.
Any further explanation, scientific or otherwise, was above my pay grade. The world had been dealing with the repercussions ever since.
“Dan, quit looking at the exhibits,” Robin called. “Come on—Mr. Ho-Tep needs us!”
We encountered a crowd at the entrance to the Ancient Egypt wing, but Robin pushed past the people. “I’m his attorney. Let me through!”
The large display chamber held papier-mâché replicas of a pyramid, a gaudily painted sphinx, a shelf filled with canopic jars, and a diorama of papyrus marshes with Egyptian mannequins.
And Ramen Ho-Tep, who held them all enthralled.
I heard the mummy’s distinctive British voice. “Not one step closer, you wankers! I’ll do it! I’m warning you—I’ll do it!”
Patrons who had been evacuated—by only ten or fifteen feet—watched in horrified fascination, leaning forward to get a better view. Three uniformed museum guards stood tense, ready to tackle the mummy to the floor; if they did that, he would probably shatter into bone dust and lint.
Ramen Ho-Tep had not, after all, taken hostages, nor had he seized one of the guards’ weapons. It was worse.
In front of the exhibit’s open sarcophagus, the mummy sat cross-legged on the floor. I couldn’t imagine how he’d managed to bend his dried-jerky muscles and petrified bones into such a configuration. He dangled a red can of gasoline in his clawlike hands, threatening to dump it on himself. One of the guards held a long canvas fire hose, ready to open the valve if Ho-Tep should succeed in igniting his bandages; I suspected the high-powered spray would damage the mummy as much as a fire.
One man in a clean dark business suit, a neat tie, and gold wire-rimmed glasses looked highly agitated. Ramen Ho-Tep seemed most upset with him. I recognized the human museum curator, Bram Steffords, who had been so proud to obtain the Necro-nomicon exhibit after reopening the Metropolitan Natural History Museum “in these exciting, though darker times.” I had shaken the curator’s hand during the ribbon-cutting ceremony, but I doubted he remembered me.
Steffords growled, “If you carry out your threat, Mr. Ho-Tep, I promise we will bring you up on full charges for destroying priceless antiquities. The museum will sue you for damages to yourself and to this exhibit, as well as lost revenue.”
“I don’t give a bloody damn about your revenue, or your antiquities! I am the antiquity! But I’m a person, not property!”
“We have the paperwork to prove otherwise, Mr. Ho-Tep. Now stop this nonsense and put down that gasoline!”
To solidify his threat, Ramen Ho-Tep unscrewed the fuel cap. Fumes wafted up, and the guards backed away.
“I’ve got this,” Robin said to me and pushed forward. “Excuse me, excuse me!”
The mummy turned toward her. Behind the bandages on his face, his chapped lips twitched in what might have been a surprised smile.
In that moment of hesitation, Steffords yelled to the guards, “Now! Jump him!”
But Robin threw herself between them and Ramen Ho-Tep. “You’ll do no such thing! This man is my client!”
Steffords looked at her. “And who the hell are you?”
“Robin Deyer, Esquire, of Chambeaux and Deyer.”
I reached into my jacket pocket, withdrew a business card, and handed it to the curator.
“I shan’t go back on display,” the mummy said. “I’d sooner burn myself and let my ashes join the river of time.”
“He’s been going on like that for an hour,” one of the guards said to me out of the side of his mouth.
“We can resolve this, Mr. Ho-Tep,” Robin said. “Think about the loss to history. Please give me a chance.”
“I’ve waited quite long enough, thank you. I shall no longer endure being a prisoner. I was Pharaoh of all Egypt, and I deserve to be treated with respect!”
“Ask him if he had a girlfriend or something,” the curator said. “Maybe we can dig her up and add her to our museum display if he wants companionship.”
“I wish to be a free man!”
“And I want to be the King of England,” Steffords quipped, imitating the mummy’s British accent. “But that isn’t likely to happen, is it?”
“Bloody hell, don’t you disrespect me, you insignificant grave robber!” Ramen Ho-Tep sloshed the gas can, and a few drops spilled onto his brown gauze bandages. Clutched in his left hand was a disposable butane lighter, but I saw, like everyone else did, that he was holding it upside down. The ancient mummy had no idea how to use a lighter.
Robin said in a plaintive voice, “Mr. Ho-Tep, you’re only hurting our case. We have to make our appeal according to the law. The law is the safety net that holds society together. This is not a solution. If you strike that lighter, no one wins: You lose everything, the world loses your priceless knowledge, and I lose a friend.”
The mummy’s hand wavered.
“I’m going to set up mediation so both parties can discuss this matter as adults.” Robin glared at the curator. “Mr. Steffords, I suggest that you and your legal counsel attend. After airing grievances, we’ll see if we can’t reach some kind of compromise. We all want this to work.”
“The bugger’s going to have to make some damned hefty concessions,” the mummy said.
“And I’m tired of this melodrama,” said Steffords. “Our artifacts are supposed to be on display, not on stage. This is a respectable museum, not vaudeville.”
I relieved the mummy of his gas can, capping it gingerly.
“How about ten a.m. Tuesday?” Robin suggested.
The curator fidgeted. “I’ll have my secretary check my schedule.”
“Clear your schedule,” I said. “Ten o’clock. Tuesday.”
Robin looked at Ramen Ho-Tep. “Are you busy at that time, Mr. Ho-Tep?”
“My calendar’s been open for thousands of years.”
“We look forward to seeing you, then.” She slipped her arm through mine, and we walked out of the south wing and made our way to the museum entrance.
And yes, Robin did insist that we pay admission before we left.