Okay, here’s something a bit different. A rejected outline
for a Jago and Litefoot story from 2014. I can’t remember why it was rejected –
I daresay you may come up with a few reasons, and they may
probably be right. Anyway, after it was rejected I came up with The Year of the Bat which was better; a
kind of glorious collision of four ideas at once (a time postbox, young Jago
and Litefoot, vampire nannies and Wyld’s
Great Globe doing James and the Giant
Peach). That story is still available here, obligatory plug.
What I wanted to do was this story was to do a story based
around the literature of Victorian Egyptomania. To avoid all the stuff in Pyramids of Mars but to combine/pastiche
The Jewel of the Seven Stars, Lot No
249 and The Beetle, with maybe a
bit of the Frenzy of Tongs episode of
Dr Terrible’s House of Horrible creeping
in at the end. I think, on reflection, the pastiche was too ‘straight’ so my
story lacked originality. But see what you think.
(Normally any stories I come up with which are rejected goes back into
the 'ideas' folder in case I can repurpose them, but I don't think this one can be repurposed).
I did two versions. This is the first one, I’ll post the
second one tomorrow.
JAGO & LITEFOOT
“THE CLAWS OF THE SCARAB”
Our heroes and Ellie attend an opening of a newly-found
sarcophagus at the British Museum Archaeologist Randall Brooks Morton – a colleague of Flinders Petrie – is there
with his fiancée Constance Drake.
The sarcophagus is of a long-dead Egyptian Queen, Aret-Hanutma. As the mummy is unwrapped, it momentarily seems to spring
to life, gasping for air. Constance faints of revulsion/shock. The mummy is
clasping an amulet in the shape of a beetle.
After the evening’s end, Constance is taken home by Ellie
while Litefoot examines the mummy, in his capacity as a pathologist. He thinks
the gasp was just the result of gases that had built up inside it. Aret-Hanutma
seems to have died by being mummified alive. Jago spots a movement in the
shadows, and one by one, Jago, Randall and then Litefoot are knocked out by an
unseen assailant. When they come to, the mummy has vanished. Jago thinks it was
the mummy that attacked them, and it has now escaped into the night!
Ellie puts Constance to bed; she seems feverish, delirious.
Ellie notices she is holding the beetle amulet and refuses to let it go. Ellie
then hears a sinister scuttling sound but can’t see its source...
She reports this back to Litefoot at the Red Tavern the next
day. Jago fails to turn up because he has been kidnapped. He wakes up in an
underground temple. The temple is home to the Cult of Khepri, led by Tarik Ahmed. At knifepoint, Tarik
forces Jago to relate what happened after the sarcophagus was opened. When he
mentions Constance fainting, Tarik realises ‘We were too late! She must have already
been chosen’. He asks Jago where Constance is and Jago refuses to say. He is
then locked up with a young girl kidnapped by the Cult, Josie. Jago and Josie manage to escape from their prison and make
their way back to the surface. Jago sends Josie home to recover from her
ordeal.
Meanwhile, Constance awakes. Randall talks to her but she no
longer recognises him. Instead, she claims to be Aret-Hanutma! She remembers being
mummified alive, after being given an ‘elixir’ to keep her in a state of living
death, entombed with the amulet of Khepri (a relic of the gods) which would
transfer her ‘essence’ into the nearest young woman when she was exhumed. That
way, she would be resurrected and live forever. She goes for a walk with
Randall and sees a little of Victorian London, remarking on how different the
world is from the one she left.
Jago reaches Litefoot and Ellie and tells them of his recent
adventures. Jago and Litefoot hurry to Constance’s house - unaware they are
being followed by Tarik and his fellow cult members (who allowed Jago to escape
precisely so he would lead them to ‘the chosen one’). They arrive and are
filled in regarding Aret-Hanutma and her possession Constance’s body. She
explains that the Cult of Khepri were the ones who mummified her, thousands of
years ago, forcing her to become immortal. When her mummified remains were
taken to England by Randall, the Cult followed. Not in order to prevent the
sarcophagus being opened, but to make sure there was a suitable ‘vessel’ for
Aret-Hanutma’s spirit nearby when it was (i.e. Josie). They were the ones who
broke into the Egyptian Hall and stole the mummy, but then they must have
realised that it no longer contained Aret-Hanutma’s essence. Aret-Hanutma
explains that the Cult of Khepri want her alive not so they can worship her,
but so they can use her as a tame god and force her to do their will.
The house is besieged by Tarik and the Cult. Aret-Hanutma
explains that the amulet of Khepri gives her the power to summon familiar
spirits in the shape of insects. She holds the amulet, opens her mouth, and a
horde of locusts stream out and set upon Tarik and the Cult. They flee in
terror. Aret-Hanutma tells our heroes that she wishes for her essence to return
to the mummy; that way, Constance can get her body back. Aret-Hanutma has no
wish to be immortal at the expense of another’s life.
While Randall stays with Aret-Hanutma in Constance’s house,
Jago leads Litefoot to the temple. When they get there, they discover it is
deserted. All the Cult must be elsewhere.
The Cult of Khepri turn up outside Constance’s house with
Ellie as their hostage. They force Aret-Hanutma to surrender herself and
Randall.
Jago and Litefoot hide in the temple as Tarik and the Cult
return with their prisoners. They watch as Tarik informs Aret-Hanutma she must
do as he commands, or they will be forced to make sacrifices in her honour – beginning
with Ellie and Randall, who are placed on a special altar. Aret-Hanutma submits
and summons a giant scarab as a sign of her obedience. Then she weakens and the
beetle disappears. Tarik orders the Cult to place Aret-Hanutma in a special
chamber to recover. After she has gone he orders his followers to destroy the
mummified remains of Aret-Hanutma so her spirit can never return to it; but the
mummy has disappeared!
The mummy has, in fact, been stolen by Jago and Litefoot.
They manage to sneak in to see Aret-Hanutma and devise a plan between them. But
it will involve following some precise instructions.
A few minutes later, Tarik enters the prison to find Jago
and Litefoot with Aret-Hanutma who is attempting to return to her mummified
remains. Tarik interrupts the process. He then has them taken back into the
temple along with the mummy. He then tells Aret-Hanutma to summon the giant
beetle again so that Jago and Litefoot can be sacrificed to it. She agrees and
the beetle appears. But before it feeds, Tarik sets fire to the mummy so
Aret-Hanutma can never return to her old body.
But it turns out that she already returned to it. When she
was with Jago and Litefoot she released Constance from her possession and put
her essence back in the mummy. Ever since, Constance has been pretending to be
Aret-Hanutma prompted by Jago and Litefoot and following instructions left by Aret-Hanutma
on how to summon the giant scarab using the amulet of Khepri.
As the mummy is burned, a terrible supernatural force is
unleashed; the final vengeance of Aret-Hanutma. Realising what is happening, the
members of the Cult either flee or sacrifice themselves to the giant scarab. But
rather than feeding on our heroes, the giant scarab turns on Tarik. He orders
Constance to call the beetle off or he will kill Ellie and Randall but she genuinely
doesn’t know how to. It devours Tarik and then approaches Ellie and Randall. In
the nick of time, Litefoot destroys the amulet and the scarab dissolves into a
swarm of locusts and disappears.
With Constance herself again, she and Randall are reunited
and give Jago and Litefoot their thanks. They return to the Red Tavern, as they
owe Ellie a round of drinks...
