And now, the revised version of Jago and Litefoot: The Claws of the Scarab. As you will read, I
completely changed the nature of the villains of the story. Is it better or
worse? I don’t know. It still got rejected!
This version has all the changed bits in red, which
is a thing that I do to be helpful to producers, so they don’t have to read the
whole thing again.
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 a room resembling an Egyptian
temple/pyramid interior, full of Egyptian relics. It turns out this is the cellar
of the mansion of Hortense Delacroix,
a flamboyant, wealthy widow (think
Eleanor Bron/Frances De La Tour) fascinated
by Egyptology and its related mysticism. She is assisted by her taciturn butler
Mr Cecil. The vanished mummy is now
the pride of her collection. Delacroix forces Jago to describe what happened
after the sarcophagus was opened. When he mentions Constance fainting, Delacroix
realises ‘We were too late! She must have already been chosen’. She asks Jago
where Constance is, but Jago refuses to say. He is locked up with a young flower-seller
kidnapped by Delacroix, Josie. Jago
and Josie escape through a coal-hole. Jago sends Josie home to recover. (Note:
Josie and Cecil are doubling-up characters of few lines.)
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 late Victorian London, remarking on
how different the world is from the one she left. An
unconventional romance blossoms. (Note: the ‘possession’ is more like a
dissociative identity disorder/fugue state.)
Jago reaches Litefoot and Ellie and
tells them of his recent ordeal. Jago and Litefoot hurry to Constance’s house -
unaware they are being followed by Delacroix and Cecil (who
allowed Jago to escape precisely so that he would
lead them to ‘the chosen one’). They arrive and are filled in regarding
Aret-Hanutma and her possession of Constance’s body. She
explains that she was mummified, thousands of years ago, by her cruel husband,
during an uprising. He had a secret plan for them both to escape retribution by
having their ‘essences’ resurrected in new bodies when the time came. But his
mummy was destroyed and the plan was forgotten. But Delacroix must have
discovered it, as part of her research into Egyptian relics/mysticism. She
instructed Cecil to break into the Egyptian hall and steal the mummy, intending
to transfer Aret-Hanutma’s ‘essence’ into Josie!
They are
visited by Delacroix, escorted by Cecil. Delacroix explains that she was secretly
funding Randall’s expedition because she wanted Aret-Hanutma found and
resurrected – so she could rule once more. Delacroix is essentially
Aret-Hanutma’s biggest fan, and wants a return to the glory days of the pharaohs.
Aret-Hanutma has no wish to rule and 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 Delacroix
and Cecil. They flee. Aret-Hanutma tells our heroes that she wishes for her ‘essence’
to return to the mummy so Constance can have her body back. Aret-Hanutma has no
wish to be immortal at another’s expense. She has enjoyed her day with Randall,
but now her life must come to an end.
While Randall stays with
Aret-Hanutma in Constance’s house, Jago leads Litefoot to Delacroix’s home to search for Aret-Hanutma’s mummy.
When they get there, they discover it is deserted. Delacroix
and Cecil must be elsewhere.
Delacroix
and Cecil return to Constance’s house, this time with Ellie as their hostage. They force
Aret-Hanutma and Randall to surrender.
Jago and Litefoot hide in the cellar-temple as Delacroix and Cecil
return with their prisoners. They watch as Delacroix
informs Aret-Hanutma she must do as she is told or she 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. Delacroix instructs Cecil to place Aret-Hanutma in her ‘royal chamber’ to recover. After they have gone Delacroix orders Randall to
destroy the mummified remains of Aret-Hanutma so her ‘essence’ 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 will involve following some precise instructions.
A few minutes later, Delacroix enters the prison to find Jago and Litefoot
with Aret-Hanutma, who is attempting to return
to her mummified remains. But Delacroix interrupts the
process. She has them taken back into her
temple, along with the mummy. She orders
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 Delacroix sets fire to the mummy so Aret-Hanutma can
never return to her old body.
But it turns out that she had 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. Rather
than feeding on our heroes, the giant scarab turns on
Delacroix and Cecil. Delacroix orders
Constance to call the beetle off or she will kill Ellie and Randall, but she genuinely
doesn’t know how to. The beetle devours Delacroix and
Cecil and 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 (with no memory of anything that happened while her body was
occupied by Aret-Hanutma), she and Randall are reunited, and give Jago
and Litefoot their thanks. They return to the Red Tavern, as they feel they
probably owe Ellie a drink.
