DOGHEAD - The First Chapter

The following is the first chapter from DOGHEAD. Enjoy!

EGYPT, 1922

The preparation was just as it should be. Painstaking. Immaculate. It had to be, to have any chance of fending off what had been unleashed. The young man patted his pocket, just to assure himself that the letters were there. Then, with a deep breath, he picked up his instruments and set about the body.

First the brain, chopped up inside the head and, with a long hook, withdrawn in pieces through the nostril. The wobbling grey mass was discarded into a bucket, like the guts of a fish. There would be no need for it now.

Not so the other organs. They were carefully withdrawn and stored in their little jars, to be watched over for all eternity by the figureheads attached to the lids of the stone urns: the stomach, guarded by Duamutef; the lungs, nestled under the baboon head of Hapy; the intestines in the jar beneath Qebehsenuef of the falcon head. The only human-headed god of the four, Imsety, sat aloft and imperious, not minding that the intestines of an expired human swam in gore and untold filth in the jar beneath it.

The person performing the organ removal minded though. The stench was unbearable. The gods alone knew what the corpse beneath his hands had eaten last.
Curried goat, perhaps, or something French steeped in garlic. His own eating habits had changed rather a lot recently, since meeting the girl. ‘Good Lord, Jay – couldn’t you stick to bread and cheese like the rest of us?’ he hissed, retching, eyeing the bucket before averting his eyes quickly from the jellied brains and pulling himself back into the moment. Through gritted teeth, the man muttered in a low chant as he sealed the jars closed with a candle . . .’‘I am the horned bull who rules the sky, Lord of Celestial Appearings, the Great Illuminator who came forth from the heat . . . I detest what is detestable. I will not eat faeces. I will not drink urine. I will not walk head downward . . .’

The jars were placed alongside the body. ‘I am loosed from my windings,’ continued the man, pulling his spectacles further down his nose to focus as he turned his attention to the most important part of the process. ‘I make ready the ferry boat of the sky; I eat of what they eat, I live on what they live, I have eaten bread in every pleasant room.’

Swallowing back the rising tide of nausea, the temporary surgeon picked up the golden beetle from the table. The scarab would protect the heart, the most vital of all the body parts, the only organ to remain in the body, the critical piece in the final judgement, without which there could be no balance, no passing through . . .

The surgeon moved aside the corpse’s crossed hands, exposing the linen that covered the heart, ready to lay the golden amulet upon it. But just as he was about to lower the great scarab there was a commotion at the far end of the tunnel, followed swiftly by a dull explosion. Dust billowed into the room, snuffing out the candles, and then what the surgeon had dreaded all along.

He – it – was coming.

Staggering from the awful realization and the aftershocks of the explosion, the man only just managed to refrain from grabbing the side of the coffin and toppling it to the floor. The golden scarab slid off the corpse’s chest, landing near the surgeon’s outstretched hand. It gave him an idea. Only one thing could save his master now. A green aura, the fetid breath of a long-dead spirit, was thickening in the gloom along the tunnel, fogging the entrance. Soon the whole crypt would be plunged into darkness.

Time had run out. He had to act. Now.

The young man raised his scalpel. ‘Forgive me, my friend,’ he whispered, and he plunged the glittering blade into his master’s chest, thanking his own gods that the heart he was about to plunder was no longer beating.

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