The Whisperers

‘What are you doing?’ said Herod. ‘These are complex mechanisms. They need to be examined. Their order needs to be established…’

But even as he spoke, a series of clicks and whirrs began to sound inside the box. Still the Collector’s fingers moved, and as they did so the mechanical noises were drowned out by another. It was a whispering that seemed to fill the room, rising in terrible joy, voices clambering over one another like insects in a nest. One lid opened, then another and another. A shadow appeared against one of the bookcases, hunched and horned, and quickly it was joined by two others, a prelude to what was about to be revealed.

‘Stop!’ I said. ‘You can’t do this!’ I moved to my right, so that the Collector could see me, and I shifted the muzzle of the gun from Herod to him. ‘Don’t open that box.’

The Collector lifted his hands in the air, not in a gesture of surrender, but of display, like a magician at the end of a particularly fine conjuring act.

‘Too late,’ he said.

And the final lid sprang open.

For a moment, all was still in the room. The shadows on the wall ceased to move, and what had for so long been without substance assumed concrete form. The Collector remained standing, his hands still raised, a conductor waiting for the baton to be placed between his fingers so that the symphony might begin. Herod stared into the box, and his face was illuminated by a cold white light, like sunlight reflected from snow. His expression changed, altering from fear to wonder at what was revealed to him, but concealed from the Collector, and from me.

And then Herod understood, and he was lost.

The Collector spun away, diving toward me in the same movement, forcing me to the ground, yet I was compelled to look. I saw a black back curved like a bow, its skin distorted and torn by the eruption of sharp spinal bones. I saw a head that was too large for the torso that supported it, the neck lost in folds of flesh, the top of its skull a fantasy of twisted yellow bones like the roots of an ancient tree stripped of bark. I saw yellow eyes glitter. I saw dark nails. I saw sharp teeth. One head became two, then three. Two descended on Herod, but one turned to me-

Then the Collector’s fingers were pressing into the back of my head, forcing my face to the floor.

‘Don’t look,’ he said. ‘Close your eyes. Close your eyes, and pray.’

There was no sound from Herod. That was what struck me most. He was silent as they worked on him, and though I was tempted to look again, I did not, not even when the Collector’s grip upon me eased, and I felt him stand. I heard a series of mechanical clicks, and the Collector said, ‘It is done.’

Only then did I open my eyes.

Herod sat slumped in his chair, his head tilted back, his eyes and mouth open. He was dead, but appeared uninjured except for a thin trickle of blood that ran from his left ear, and the fact that every capillary in his eyes had exploded, turning his corneas red. The box on his desk was closed once more, and I heard the whispering return, now filled with rage like a hive of bees shaken by an outside force.

The Collector picked up his cigarette from the arm of his chair. A long finger of ash hung from the tip, like a building about to fall. He tapped it into Herod’s open mouth, then returned the cigarette to his own mouth and drew lengthily upon it.

‘If you’re going to taunt the dogs, always check the length of the chain,’ he said. He picked up the box and tucked it under his arm.

‘You’re taking it?’ I said.

‘Temporarily. It’s not mine to keep.’

He wandered over to one of the shelves and removed a tiny ivory statue of a female demon. It looked oriental, but I was no expert.

‘A souvenir,’ he said, ‘to add to my collection. Now, I have one more task to accomplish. Let me introduce you to someone…’

We stood in front of the ornate mirror outside Herod’s study. At first, there was only my reflection and that of the Collector, but in time we were joined by a third. Initially, it seemed little more than a blur, dark gray absences where eyes and a mouth should have been, but then it formed itself into recognizable features.

It was the face of Susan, my dead wife, but with holes burnt into her skin where her eyes once were. Then, like a rattle being shaken, the face blurred again, and it was Je

For he was in all of them, and they were all of him.

Finally, there was just the figure of a man, one in his early forties, of a little more than average height. There was gray seeping into his dark hair, and his eyes were troubled and sad. Beside him was his twin, and next to him was the Collector. Then the Collector stepped away, the two reflections became one, and I stared back only at myself.

‘What did you feel?’ asked the Collector, and there was an uncertainty to his voice that I had not heard before. ‘What did you feel when you looked upon it?’

‘Rage. And fear. It was afraid.’ The answer came before I had even become aware of the thought. ‘Afraid of you.’

‘No,’ said the Collector, ‘not of me…’

I saw thoughtfulness in his face, but there was something else.

For the first time, I felt the Collector’s own fear of me.

Epilogue

I wish I lived in my house with only a third part of all

These goods, and that the men were alive who died in those days

In wide Troy land…

Homer, The Odyssey, Book 24

The warehouse in Queens was known as the ‘Fortress,’ an art storage facility guarded by the US government. The Fortress had already seen many antiquities from the Iraq Museum pass through its doors. It was there that the headless stone statue of the Sumerian king Entemena of Lagash had been taken after it was retrieved, and there that 669 items from the museum, seized by US Customs at Newark Airport in 2003, were brought for authentication. Now, in the Fortress’s gloomy confines, Dr. Al-Daini began the process of cataloging what had been recovered during the raids in Maine and Quebec, even as he mourned that which he had mostly fervently sought, and which had now been lost to him again.

When he found himself tiring, he left the Fortress and wandered to a nearby coffee shop, where he ordered soup and read an Arabic newspaper that he had bought that morning. Later, he would say that he smelled the man who sat down opposite him before he saw him, for Dr. Al-Daini did not smoke, and the stink of nicotine had tainted his soup.

Dr. Al-Daini looked up from his newspaper and his meal, and stared at the Collector.

‘Excuse me, but do I know you?’ he asked.

The Collector shook his head. ‘We have moved in similar circles, that’s all. I have something for you.’

He laid a box wrapped in string and brown paper upon the table, and Dr. Al-Daini felt his fingertips vibrate in tune with the box as he ran them over the parcel, then glanced around him before he used his knife to cut the string. He pushed aside the paper before opening the top of the long white box that was before him. Gently, he examined the locks. He frowned.

‘The box has been opened.’

‘Yes’, said the Collector. ‘The results were most interesting.’

‘But they are still trapped in there?’

‘Can’t you feel them?’

Dr. Al-Daini nodded, and closed the top of the white box. For the first time in many years, he felt that he might sleep well.