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  About Book of the Dead

  When a massive sinkhole opens up and swallows a retired couple from Iowa it seems like a freak occurrence. But it’s not the only one. Similar sinkholes are opening all over the world, even on the sea floor. And they’re getting bigger.

  People living near the pits begin reporting strange phenomena—vibrations, sulfurous odors, and odd sounds in the stygian depths. Then the pets begin to go missing.

  When people start disappearing as well, the government is forced to act. Professor Matt Kearns and a team of experts are sent in by the military to explore one of the sinkholes, and they discover far more than they bargained for.

  From the war zones of the Syrian Desert to the fabled Library of Alexandria, and then to Hades itself, join Professor Matt Kearns as he attempts to unravel an age-old prophecy. The answers Matt seeks are hidden in the fabled Al Azif—known as the Book of the Dead—and he must find it, even if it kills him. Because time is running out, not just for Matt Kearns, but for all life on Earth.

  Contents

  About Book of the Dead

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  PART 1 – And The Earth Shall Fall

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  PART 2 – Rise Up The Ancient Gods

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Epilogue

  Author’s Notes

  About Greig Beck

  ​Also by Greig Beck

  Copyright

  To H.P. Lovecraft (1890 – 1937); the first father of macabre horror. Your legacy lives on, sir.

  That is not dead which can eternal lie,

  And with strange eons, even death may die

  H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu

  Hell is empty, and all the devils are here

  Shakespeare’s The Tempest

  The Book of the Dead, otherwise known as the Book, The Necronomicon, or the Al Azif, is an ancient grimoire of magnificent beauty and unspeakable horror. Many early-translated copies exist, but they contain little of the secrets of the Old Ones, and the incantations that deliver power over life and death. Rumor has it these details were intentionally omitted in the copies. The original remains lost to this day.

  The Gated Deep

  They slumber, a race far older than man’s first word,

  In a city more ancient than Lemuria’s first brick.

  The sleepers in the dirt, the burrowers below us all.

  We who climb down into the depths find not just caverns of wet and slime,

  But carved faces beautiful in their hideousness, carrying not one visage of mortal man.

  Pathways spiral ever downward to hopelessness and eternal blackness.

  There, find mighty columns, towering edifices, and streets too wide for a sapiens’s feet.

  A primal city long past anything the tiny human mind could comprehend.

  Gates of red granite so huge they could hold back an army. Now swung wide.

  Past them the Old Ones eternally slumber – dreaming, and still reaching out to us.

  And the Earth shall fall before they rise.

  Abdul Alhazred, from the Al Azif (The Book of the Dead)

  Prologue

  City of Damascus, Syria, 738 AD

  Abdul Alhazred dodged his way down the street, weaving between stallholders and layabouts and mothers with too many small children. He passed the newly built Umayyad Mosque, and briefly contemplated entering, before swerving hard, knowing that there would be no sanctuary anywhere for him now.

  He babbled and cursed in between ragged breaths, and even giggled as people stepped from his path, thinking he was mad. Alhazred threw back his head and roared with laughter. He was mad – the Mad Arab – insane, sent insane by the things he had seen, things he had uncovered through his travels and then his further studies.

  He looked up, and saw birds circling above him, faster and faster – sparrows, wrens, shrikes, geese, and dozens more species all twisting together in a tornado of feathers and flesh.

  He screamed at them, and cursed again at mankind’s stupidity, his stupidity, and…curiosity. A scrap of information here, a whisper there, and he’d been off like a hound on a scent. He had travelled to the ruins of Babylon, and then meandered into the great red deserts of Arabia, that vast and empty sea of nothing but heat and sand and scorpions. And then he had found them – the caves; he wished now he hadn’t. The legends said they were protected by djinn, evil spirits and monsters of death. He had found out too late that in their depths lay things far worse than that.

  Alhazred felt the book under his robe. His fingers touched the soft cover of forbidden leather, and pictured the words he had transcribed within in a mixture of blood and charcoal as he had been instructed. Some of the words were incomprehensible even to him – the Old Ones spoke a harsh tongue the primitive mind of man could not possibly understand.

  The book, the Al Azif, had taken him half a lifetime to write, and now he needed to hide it, get rid of it or pass it on, the ideas too important for mankind’s future to be reclaimed now by the Old Ones or their vile servants. The information was not just for the living, but instead, was a book of the dead.

  Alhazred had been given their secrets, told to him in fever dreams, in return for the betrayal of his race. But the more he wrote down, the more frightened he became, and the more his sanity left him. They had promised him a kingdom, but all he saw was slavery to masters who would look upon him in the same light as he viewed an ant.

  He turned briefly, glimpsing from the corner of an eye the shape appear and then dissipate like oily smoke. Too late: they’d found him.

  He had fled, stolen their plans, and disobeyed them. With his help, the Great Old One had expected to return to the world of man, to own it once again, but he had outsmarted them all, stopped them, or at least slowed them down.

  He sucked in hot breaths, feeling the sweat pour down his body. He was nearly spent as he saw his target, a holy man leaving the mosque. Abdul put his head down and raced toward him. At the last second, he ripped the book from his robe, and jammed it into his hands. “Keep it safe, holy one. Mankind’s fate depends on it.”

  He tore away and sprinted down a dark alley, but less than halfway to the end, the shape boiled up again, squeezing from the very cracks in the path and forming now into a shapeless mass of some viscous black substance, studded with disturbingly human eyes. Alhazred screamed: “Shoggoth!”

  He looked high and higher as the thrashing tentacled mass grew. Lidless eyes swiveled toward him and a round sucking maw opened like a dark bottomless pit. He dropped his arms, surrendering. He was grabbed then, around the neck, the arms and waist, the black tendrils holding him tight, and sizzling and stinging like poisonous fire.

  Abdul Alhazred, the Mad Arab, was lifted to the massive maw and jammed into that foul orifice. Mercifully, his mind left him completely as the jaws closed.

  PART 1 – And The Earth Shall Fall

  Chapter 1

  Red Oak, Iowa

  Big Bill Anderson sat in his favorite chair – red faux leather, soft, deep, an
d comfortably shaped by decades of sitting into a perfect reverse image of his ample butt. His chinos were pulled up a little high, and his blue checked lumber shirt was a tad tight across the gut, but at his age, he’d earned the right to get a little out of shape.

  He turned the page of his paper, looking down the ads for pet adoption, scanning the older dogs: Labradors, terriers, schnauzers. Most had pictures beside them, and insanely happy, beseeching, or frightened faces stared back at him, all wanting new homes, just one more game of fetch with an attentive new owner, or to be far away from the guy who used beat the shit out of them.

  He stopped at one, a shepherd, five years old, big guy with the tip of one ear missing, eyes that were clear and sharp with whip-smart intelligence – Rusty.

  “I wish, boy.”

  Bill had desperately wanted another dog ever since Bella had died ten years earlier. He felt that now he was retired, and had his days on his hands, he might be able to swing the old girl toward it one more time. He tore the page out and let it rest on the small side table beside a new cup of steaming tea.

  The vacuum cleaner started in the other room, and he knew that Margaret would be pushing the infernal machine in under his feet any moment. He grimaced, imagining the rush of warm, stinking exhaust air, the roar of a jet engine, and her light smile revealing her perverse delight in either loud cleaning devices or another opportunity to simply bug him.

  He leaned forward to look at the picture once again. “Maybe later, Rusty.” Bill let his eyes slide to the small table. A huge roach was edging across its smooth top. He rolled up the paper, and whacked it. “Ha.”

  A vibration beneath his feet tickled his soles. He forgot the roach and frowned in the direction of the vacuum-cleaner noise. “What the hell setting has that woman got it on?”

  Another vibration and he noticed the surface of his tea shimmy. He reached for the cup just as there came a thump from below. The vacuum went off, followed by silence for several seconds.

  “Bill?” Margaret called from the other room, apprehension in the word.

  “Wasn’t me, honey.” Bill sat still, silent, waiting. There was another thump, then another, the latest from overhead. “What the hell?”

  A deeper thump, again from below, sounding like someone was shifting heavy furniture in their basement. An antique plate on the mantelpiece tilted forward and fell to the rug.

  “Margie?” Bill slowly rose to his feet as his wife entered the room, her forehead creased, her hands wringing a cleaning cloth.

  “Bill, are you…?”

  Bill shook his head, turning it slowly, concentrating on listening, his arms out from his sides slightly, as though to help with his balance.

  Several more thumps came from above, and Margaret squeaked and hunched her shoulders. Bill looked to the window. Outside, there seemed nothing unusual – the garden and, beyond that, the Wilsons’ house, with the lemon tree just covered in green bulbs not yet ripe enough to pick overhanging the fence in between.

  More thumps, and, as Bill watched, something black struck the lawn, and then another. Bill squinted – birds.

  “Hey, birds are –”

  Bill never finished that thought: another thump cracked the plaster in the walls, and the house actually seemed to drop a few inches.

  “Whoa.” Bill noticed Margaret’s face was white, and her wringing hands continued to move up to her breasts, as though she was praying. She was shaking her head; her eyes were watering.

  He smiled at her. “Stay there. We’ll be fine.”

  There came a blast of thick heat, and then the house simply…fell. Bill felt himself become weightless, as if gravity had been suspended. Outside the windows went black at the same time as the power shut down. The only light was thrown down from above, and outside he could still see movement, but rapid, as though walls were shooting upwards past the windows.

  There was a crash. Margaret screamed, and Bill was smashed to the floor. His wife of thirty-five years began to sob, and that hurt him more than anything else. He got to his knees, staying there for several seconds as he checked his numerous aches and bruises. He was relieved to find that nothing was broken – at sixty-five, bones were like kindling.

  “Oh god.” He gagged, and put a hand over his mouth and nose, as a God-awful stench filled the house. His brow ran with perspiration from the heat.

  “Margie, you okay, girl?” He stayed on his knees and crawled toward her.

  His wife lay on her side, moaning. He bet it was her hip; she’d had a replacement half a dozen years back, and still complained of it.

  Bill went to an upturned table among the debris of furniture, broken pottery, papers, sheets of plaster, and something else – dozens more of the scurrying roaches.

  “What the hell?” He bet it was an earthquake, and a big one by the feel of it. He scrambled around in the murky light, just the ghost of a glow coming in through the windows. He pulled a drawer and emptied it, rummaging until he found a small flashlight, and flicked it on.

  Margaret was sitting up, holding her stomach. There was blood on her face.

  “You okay?” he whispered, not knowing why quietness was important.

  She nodded. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know yet.” Bill used the table to push himself to his feet and walked to the window. He was right – there looked to be walls built all around them. He frowned as he followed them upward, and placing his face close to the glass he saw that the walls loomed hundreds of feet over the house. At the very top, there was sky…and maybe a lemon tree.

  “Holy…” These weren’t walls that had sprung up; instead the house had fallen down into some sort of pit.

  He still had his cheek pressed to the glass when something rushed past. “Christ on a cross!” He pulled back as though electric shocked. The shadow had been huge: twice as big as a man.

  “Bill, is there a fire?” Margaret had managed to get to one knee.

  “You just stay there a moment, old girl. I got to check on something.” Bill licked his lips and ran a forearm up over his head. It was blistering hot, and though he couldn’t smell smoke, he could smell something that refused to be identified – sulfur, methane, and fishy like. He remembered being at a beach when he was a kid, and there was a shark carcass high and dry on the sand, all bloated up in the hot sun – it was that sort of smell.

  He turned his small light beam to the floor, checking the rubble, and then picked his way through it to the front door. The frame was warped, and deep cracks run up past the lintel, and across the ceiling. The house was warped. Forget about repairs; this is a knock-down job, he thought. Hannity’s Insurance would have a fit.

  He grasped the handle, and immediately jerked his hand away – it was damned hot. He gritted his teeth. “Man up,” he whispered, and grabbed it again. The brass knob was hot, but not searingly so. He turned and tugged, and the door moved a quarter inch and them jammed tight. Plaster dust rained down onto his head and neck. Bill grunted and tugged again, and this time the door flew inwards.

  A shock of horror ran through his entire body. He dropped the flashlight, and the breath caught in his throat. He didn’t smell the vile air, or feel the inferno heat on his face; instead every atom of his being was focused on the thing that filled the doorway.

  Octopus man, was the thought that jumped into his mind. The creature towered over him, all thrashing arms sticking from a bulbous head. He stared, his mind trying to assemble it into some sort of category of man or beast he recognized, and failing miserably. The thing was a massive amoeba-like creature made out of iridescent black slime. Multiple eyes floated over its surface, popping open to stare, before sinking back into the mass, and rising in another position.

  Something wrapped around Bill’s neck, wrists and waist all at once and began to drag him outside. It was hot and greasy against his flesh, and hurt like a jellyfish sting. He tried to pull against it, began to struggle, but made zero impact on the monster. As he was dragged along the rema
ins of his lawn toward one of the walls of the pit, he managed to look back in time to see more of the lumpen things wedge themselves in through his doorframe.

  He heard Margaret scream, and he began to weep. Big Bill Anderson, her protector, her rock, was now useless. He wished he had a dog, and a big one, as he was pulled toward the wall of dirt.

  *

  “Yo, Frank, racked and ready.” Andy took one last look around as he teetered on the edge of the cavernous sinkhole. The grass behind him was littered with dead birds, which was why he specifically had been called in from his home base at Cedar Rapids.

  Andrew Lincoln Bennet was an environmental geologist, and one of the best authorities on sinkholes in the state, if not the country. His job was to try and ascertain any connection between the land sink and the avian deaths. So far, he had no idea. The birds’ lungs (he had hastily dissected a few on a trestle set up beside their van) showed no sign of gas inhalation, and their eyes were clear, so no toxin deployment either. Still, he had breathing equipment slung on his back as he knew methane, sulfur dioxide, and even chlorine gas could belch up from the earth with little warning, as if the planet had ingested something disagreeable.

  Andy nodded to his second-in-command, Frank Kelso. Frank was twenty years older and knew rocks like they were his family, but Andy had the modern expertise and had seen a lot in his thirty-five years. Frank was more than happy to defer to his young protégé, as he liked to call him.

  “One away,” Frank, yelled, manning the winch, and gave him a thumbs-up.

  Andy stepped back to quickly rappel down into the darkness. The sinkhole crater was more than two hundred feet across, and about twice that in depth – a biggie in anyone’s books. Andy knew of larger ones – Louisiana had one at Lake Peigneur that went down fifteen hundred feet – it was huge. But the current record was held by a monster in China in the Chongqing Municipality, that was a thousand feet across and two thousand deep – it could have swallowed a small village. As he rappeled down, kicking off the wall, he thanked his lucky stars this one wasn’t like that. The big ones could collapse, and a few hundred thousand tons of cascading rock and soil meant you just earned a free burial.