THE SHADOWS ON THE SCREEN

by Alfred D. Byrd

	I doubt whether you will believe my story; these days, I myself am often uncertain of its 

veracity.  Indeed, I pray that the events to be retold form only the product of a disordered 

imagination, for, if they are real, the world is in danger of falling into a final, terrible darkness for 

whose onset I bear part of the blame.  Thus, I speak these words in hope that, if they are true, 

someone with imagination and resolution may act in time to prevent disaster.

	My story began when I was a freshman at Michigan State University.  One evening, while 

I was studying in my room in McDonel Hall, my resident advisor entered the room and began to 

discuss with me the plight of a certain student who had incurred the displeasure of his 

roommates.  The resident advisor went on to propose that, because of my "abnormal" interests 

in science, ancient history, and theology, I would be the perfect companion for this unfortunate 

outcast.  I was skeptical of the proposal, but, being a biddable sort, I agreed to it.

	Thus, Wesley Herbert entered my life.

	I quickly learned why his former roommates had felt adversely towards him.  To begin 

with, his physical appearance was somewhat unusual:  he was extremely thin, with an unruly 

shock of ash-blond hair and mouse-colored eyes that stared unwaveringly through thick lenses 

whether he was speaking or (less frequently) listening.  Furthermore, in both his personal 

grooming and his housekeeping, he was extremely untidy.  Worst of all, however, from the point 

of view of living together with him in peace, was his obsession with ancient Egyptology.  He 

spent much of his time in poring over texts printed in hieroglyphics and muttering to himself in a 

language composed largely of sibilants and harsh gutturals.  When he was not reading, he was 

more likely than not lecturing me or whoever else was in earshot in a dry, slightly nasal voice that 

shot out words in stacatto bursts.

	It is impossible, if one consents to live with a person like Wesley Herbert, not to become 

to some extent caught up in his enthusiasms.  Soon he had taught me the rudiments of both 

written and spoken Ancient Egyptian, and I became conversant with the history, sociology, and 

religion of the Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms.

	Only then did Wesley Herbert confide to me the ultimate goal of his studies.

	"The ancient Egyptians," he explained to me late one night, "believed in the possibility of 

animating drawn or carved images and the preserved remains of animals and human beings.  

They produced this animation by the use of hekau -- words of power, which, correctly 

pronounced in the proper tone of voice, bound the power of a god or gods to human service.  

According to ancient texts, Egyptian sorcerors achieved mighty works by means of these 

hekau.  Nowadays it is impossible to perform such works, for the correct pronunciation and 

intonation of the hekau has been lost.  It is my goal, therefore, to rediscover the use of the hekau 

and restore to the world the ancient science of necrology."

	He called his enthusiasm "the ancient science of necrology," but I recognized it as the 

ancient superstition of necromancy and was initially repelled by it.  On the one hand, I feared 

that it revealed the stigma of insanity in my roommate; on the other hand, in a part of my 

psyche that I was ashamed to admit existed, I feared that he might attain his goal.  I had just 

begun my studies towards a degree in microbiology, however, and, with the fervor of a recent 

convert to the scientific method, I believed that no hypothesis, however seemingly wild, should 

be rejected without experimentation.  If my roommate's researches proved fruitless, perhaps he 

would be cured of his obsession; if they proved successful, what a boon to science they would 

be!

	Thus, in the name of what I then called objectivity, I agreed to help Wesley Herbert.

	Our first attempts at animation involved the funerary objects called ushabti figurines, 

buried with the rich and powerful to provide them with servants in the afterworld.  Because 

Wesley Herbert could not obtain the exquisite statues of wood, ivory, or precious stone carved 

at the height of power of the native pharaohs, he had to content himself with the inferior 

specimens of glazed pottery mass-produced during Greco-Roman times.  Whether because of 

the inadequacy of our experimental subjects or because of our lack of true knowledge of the 

hekau, our initial experiments were failures; throughout night after night of incantation, no image 

ever stirred to life.

	Undaunted, Wesley Herbert proceeded to work with the formerly animate.  I dared not 

inquire too closely where he obtained his specimens, although I suspected his surreptitiously 

removing unexhibited acquisitions from the campus museum.  Because our earlier work had led 

to complaints on the floor, we moved the site of our experimentation to the Sanford Natural 

Area, a tract of woods between McDonel Hall and the Red Cedar River.

	I recall vividly our last attempt at animation during our college days.  Our subject that 

night was the bandaged corpse of an embalmed monkey, perhaps the favorite playmate of a 

Theban prince.  Beneath a nocturnal sky brewing a thunderstorm, by the flaring light of a 

Coleman lantern, we placed our subject on the stump of a fallen tree.  Wesley Herbert's voice 

rang out shrilly in an incantation that sequentially invoked the gods Anubis, Ma'at, Thoth, 

Am-mit, Horus, Osiris, Isis, and Nephthys.  His words were answered with a sudden gust of 

wind and rain and with a blinding flash and a deafening crash that struck our senses together.  I 

lost consciousness for a length of time that I cannot determine; when I came to myself, I was 

staggering back to the dormitory with a babbling Wesley Herbert leaning on my shoulder.

	I never asked him what became of the monkey.

#

	As one might expect, our academic work suffered neglect; Wesley Herbert's did so to 

such an extent that the university expelled him.  From sporadic letters and phone calls I learned 

that he had moved to a large city on the East Coast and obtained a position as a night watchman 

in a museum.  He still continued his research, but with the previous lack of success.

	As for me, I completed my studies in microbiology and relocated to a Southern university, 

where I took a modest position that allowed me to pursue my interests in ancient history and 

theology.  I discarded Egyptology, however, as a field of lore best forgotten, and let all contact 

between Wesley Herbert and myself lapse.  Thus, several years passed.

	It was late at night when Wesley Herbert got in touch with me again.  It astounded and 

somewhat disturbed me to receive his call, since I had carefully sent him no forwarding address 

after my last move, and my current phone number was unlisted.  Thus, his reaching me spoke of 

a persistence in searching for me that I found alarming.

	He spoke in an almost incoherent rush of words about "successes" that he had achieved.  

He was vague on detail, but told me that, because I had been his first collaborator (his only 

collaborator, I suspected), he wanted me to witness his triumph before he revealed it to the 

world.  He invited me to come (at my own expense) to the city on the East Coast and gave me 

the addresses of his walk-up apartment and of the museum at which he worked.

	I was noncommittal on the phone, but after I hung up it came to me that his call might have 

been a cry for help.  I had reached a critical point in my theological studies, and I was ashamed 

at recognizing that I was in no small way responsible for Wesley Herbert's condition.  After all, 

had I not aided him in his mad pursuit; might I not at times even have encouraged him in it?  

Now he was alone, trapped in a squalid lifestyle and in a madness from which he could not 

escape on his own.  Who, if not I, could lead him to seek the help that he needed?

	Thus, with good intentions, I went to see Wesley Herbert.

	When I entered his apartment two nights later, I felt that, for him, time had not passed.  He 

was still the same excessively thin man whom I had known, and had the same shock of 

ash-blond hair and staring, bespectacled, mouse-colored eyes; his clothing and his room were 

as unkempt as I had recalled them to be.  The room was littered with ushabti figurines, many of 

them of fairly fine quality.  It occurred to me that he had been pilfering from the museum, and I

spoke to him gently of his need to return the figurines before he incurred criminal charges.

	"The ushabti belong," he replied, "not to the museum, but to the one who can control them 

by hekau.  I have now succeeded in doing so!  Moreover, I have succeeded in animating, not 

only wood and ivory and precious stone, but also that which was formerly living flesh."

	He pointed to a terrarium containing a frog, which, to my unenlightened eyes, looked like 

any other frog.  He then went on to describe his success with an infant crocodile, which, 

"unfortunately," he said, had bitten him on the hand (he exhibited to me a pair of 

crescent-shaped scars) and escaped down a drain.  I smiled, thinking that the reptile had 

probably joined the throng of others of its kind rumored to infest the sewers of the city.

	Perhaps he noticed my smile, for his face darkened.  "Do you doubt my competence?" he 

cried out.  "I shall demonstrate it for you!"

	He called my attention to an ushabti standing in a clear space on a nearby coffee table.  

The figurine was elegantly carved from ebony and depicted a young Nubian woman kneeling 

and strumming a ten-stringed harp.  As I looked at the statuette, Wesley Herbert, standing 

behind me, called out in Ancient Egyptian a phrase that he later explained to me meant, "Arise, 

O Ushabti, and do my bidding!"

	Gradually, almost imperceptibly, the ushabti seemed to enlarge and begin to stir.  The 

wooden features of the Nubian harpist seemed to soften into flesh, her fingers swept across the 

strings, and from somewhere a fast-paced, non-Western music, somewhat Arabic in tone, 

began to play.  I stared, entranced, at the woman, whose mild brown eyes gazed straight ahead, 

and whose lips shaped themselves into an unfathomable smile.  Her music seemed to draw me 

into a lost world where the benevolent rays of Amon-Ra poured down on the life-giving water 

of Hapi, the Nile . . .

	After a time, the music faded, and the ushabti stood once again inert in the center of the 

coffee table.  I shook my head, partly in disbelief, and partly in clearing my senses from what 

seemed to be the effects of a powerful drug.  I had witnessed, I knew, a virtuoso display of 

magic -- but of stage magic, I was convinced, not of true thaumaturgy.

	Delicately, I tried to explain to Wesley Herbert my misgivings.  The animation, I told him, 

was dazzling, an almost incredible revelation of skill, but one that would fail to convince a 

hardened skeptic.  He or she, unfortunately, would see it as an illusion -- a masterful one, it was 

true, but still an illusion.  Perhaps, however, if the animation were presented as the work of an 

hypnotist --

	The mouse-colored eyes seemed to blaze behind their magnifying lenses.  "Do you call my 

animation an illusion?" he cried out.  "I shall show you something that you cannot doubt!"

	He convinced me to drive him to the museum, where, with a passkey, he admitted us to 

the basement.  He led me to a room littered with sarcophagi and ushabti and other relics of 

faded glory.  There he took from a tiny casket a bundle completely swathed in linen strips.  He 

held the bundle up to me and cried out, "Here, from the time of the Eighteenth Dynasty, from the 

sacred city of Bubastis in the delta of the Nile, is the proof that you require!"

	He handed me the bundle and bade me assure myself of there being nothing alive within it; 

then he bade me select at random a table on which he could work.  He required me to keep my 

hands at all times on the subject while he unwrapped it.  As he removed each strip of linen, he 

revealed an inscribed amulet, over which he chanted an appropriate chapter of the Book of the 

Dead.  It impressed me that he had apparently committed the entire work to memory.  At 

length the last strip of linen came free, and I held in my grasp the three-thousand-year-old 

preserved body of a black cat.

	Its body was firm and its fur sleek; the cat seemed to need only a breath to revive it.  

Wesley Herbert departed for a moment and returned with a short bronze staff surmounted with 

the sacred uraeus, the cobra's head that adorned the crowns of the pharaohs.  Four times he 

touched the staff to the cat's mouth, and four times he called out a phrase in which I recognized 

the words "breath of life," the name of a god, and the phrase neter neb ankh, "O thou god, the 

lord of life."

	At the fourth touch and the fourth call, the cat stirred in my hands.  Crying out, I dropped 

it and sprang backwards.  It moved about on the table; then the cat opened its eyes and stared 

at me with round-pupilled eyes of green.  As my tongue froze in my mouth, the cat lifted its 

head and uttered, in perfect Ancient Egyptian, the word for its species:  Miw!"

#

	To my shame I must now confess to a certain eagerness for the next phase of Wesley 

Herbert's project.  My religious scruples and atavistic fears faded before the allurement of his 

final goal:  the revival of a human being who had actually trod the banks of the Nile during the 

height of pharaonic power.

	Wesley Herbert explained to me that, at least initially, he would require a subject whose 

sarcophagus remained unopened, since in such a case the amulets over which he would recite 

the appropriate chapters of the Book of the Dead would be in the correct order and position.  

Fortunately for his work, such a subject was not long in coming; in fact it was in anticipation of 

its arrival that Wesley Herbert had called me.  Recently, near the Valley of Kings, a previously 

undisturbed rock-cut tomb had been excavated, and some of its contents, among them the 

sarcophagus that had piqued Wesley Herbert's interest, were being sent to the museum.  From 

studying photographs of the hieroglyphics inscribed on the lid of the sarcophagus, Wesley 

Herbert learned that it contained the mortal remains of a young Theban priestess named 

Nefer-per-Ra, 'Beautiful-Is-the-Appearing-of-the-Sun-God.'

	Wesley Herbert and I watched with covetous eyes from the back of the crowd that had 

gathered on the steps of the museum to watch the arrival of the ancient find.  Television cameras 

recorded the words and gestures of the curator as he explained to unseen watchers that the find 

would undoubtedly yield a significant advance in archaeology.  Wesley Herbert and I smiled at 

each other; little did the curator know in what direction that advance would take place!

	That night, with Wesley Herbert's passkey, he and I admitted ourselves into the room in 

which the sarcophagus was stored.  As we removed its lid with crowbars, I felt a pang of guilt; 

after all, we were desecrating a national treasure.  Success, however, would expunge the stain 

of desecration from our hands as we presented to the world a live ancient Egyptian, able to 

explain mysteries that had baffled generations.  As the lid came free, papyrus scrolls showered 

onto the floor.  Wesley Herbert picked one up, glanced at it, and discarded it with a gesture of 

disdain.  The scrolls, he explained, were merely transcriptions of chapters of the Book of the 

Dead, with which he was probably more familiar than the scribes who had copied it.

	We removed from the sarcophagus a linen-swathed figure and lay it on its back on a table.  

I felt a loathing of what might lie beneath that swathing, and I fought down an impulse to flee.  

Would that I had obeyed that impulse!

	With trembling hands I began to remove the swathings.  Wesley Herbert chanted the 

hekau from the Book of the Dead as elaborately carved amulets of gold and turquoise and 

malachite and carnelian and jasper and lapis lazuli came to light.  As we worked, the cat Miw, 

whom we had given a home in the museum, wandered in.  She leapt onto the table on which 

our subject lay, and sat, daintily licking a paw and seeming to watch the proceedings with 

knowing, yet dispassionate eyes.  For my part, I felt a growing horror of the outcome of our 

labors, yet such was the mastery of Wesley Herbert in that hour that I dared not voice my 

misgivings.  At length the last strip of linen came away, and the body of her who had been 

Nefer-per-Ra lay revealed.

	It seemed an act of sacrilege for Wesley Herbert to break the silence.  "We have 

accomplished so much," he said softly.  "There remains but one more act to perform."

	Taking in his hands the uraeus-crowned staff, he touched it to Nefer-per-Ra's lips and 

cried out an invocation.  Three times he repeated the act, and on its fourth and final 

performance the cat Miw added her voice in a long, ululating wail.

	For a moment nothing happened; then the body of Nefer-per-Ra quivered, her mouth 

opened as she drew in a shuddering breath, and her eyelids fluttered open.  Fragments of 

half-remembered prayers tumbled from my lips, but I could neither shift my gaze nor move 

away.  She raised her head, and her eyes widened and she cried out softly as she looked upon 

her body, freed of its linen bindings.  She began to feel quickly about her, turning her head from 

side to side and crying out, as if she were looking for something that she needed urgently.  At 

some point the cat Miw approached her and rubbed its body against her arm; she smiled at the 

cat, stroked its back, and crooned some indistinct words.  She then began to look around the 

room, and her eyes widened and her mouth gaped as she caught sight of Wesley Herbert.  She 

spoke clearly for the first time, and, although, as I have said, I have little facility in Ancient 

Egyptian, I had enough to understand and be amazed by her exclamation:  "You are not 

Anubis!"

	In an instant I understood the reason for her actions.  She had undoubtedly expected to 

awake in the Hall of Judgment, where her heart would have been weighed against the feather of 

Ma'at, and where she would have needed the scrolls that had been sealed into her coffin -- the 

scrolls that Wesley Herbert had carelessly flung away -- to ensure her passage into bliss.  In the 

Hall of Judgment it would have been Anubis who first greeted Nefer-per-Ra, and for her to see, 

instead of the jackal-headed god, the unkempt visage of Wesley Herbert must have given her a 

shock -- and no small disappointment.

	She and Wesley Herbert entered a long conversation conducted entirely in rapidly spoken 

Ancient Egyptian.  I gathered that Wesley Herbert was explaining to her that, indeed, he was 

not Anubis, but a powerful sorceror who had revived her in order to learn from her the ancient 

mysteries of her land.  At this revelation she drew back and hugged the cat Miw tightly to her 

bosom.

	At this juncture it dawned, first on me and then on Wesley Herbert, that we had made no 

provision for our subject beyond the moment of her resuscitation.  Belatedly we recognized that 

we owed her at least some elementary instruction in surviving in our century.  Thus, perhaps it 

was guilt at our lack of foresight, or perhaps it was exhaustion from the work that we had just 

performed, that led us to commit a terrible error in judgment.  In order to commence her 

education at once, we coaxed her from her table and led her into the curator's office, where we 

seated her on a couch and activated a certain box through which, by means of both sound and 

moving pictures, she could learn about our world.

	As the screen flared to life, Nefer-per-Ra cried out.  At first I thought that her alarm was 

due to the nature of the film, which was one of those violent epics, so common in our day, in 

which a veteran of an unpopular war, rejected by society, wreaks vengeance on it in a hail of 

bullets.  Nefer-per-Ra disabused me of my notion, however, as she pointed to the screen and 

exclaimed a single, significant word:  "Ushabti!"

	She and Wesley Herbert began to argue; I gathered that he was trying to convince her that 

the images on the screen held no magical significance, but were merely for her information.  

Nefer-per-Ra and the cat Miw stared at him with remarkably similar expressions, and the 

woman repeated, with increasingly greater vehemence, that the images were ushabti.  Finally, 

she pointed at the screen and spoke words that I had heard Wesley Herbert use -- words that 

are now indelibly imprinted on my brain -- "Arise, O Ushabti, and do my bidding!"

	I perceived no transition between absence and presence; within the blinking of an eye the 

image of the berserk warrior, drenched with sweat, darkened with grime, and cradling his 

implement of destruction in his arms, had taken shape, life-sized and fully solid, within the 

curator's office.

	Horror rooted me to the spot, yet I noticed that Wesley Herbert had grown paler than his 

usual sickly hue, and his slack jaw trembled.  "Send him back!  Send him back!" he shrieked; 

then he repeated his command in Ancient Egyptian.  Nefer-per-Ra, however, defied him; at her 

sharp speech and imperious gesture, the warrior swung the muzzle of his automatic rifle in line 

with Wesley Herbert --

	To this day I cannot recall what force impelled me from that room.  At some point during 

my flight I may have dove headlong through a plate-glass window, for, when I staggered, 

incoherent, into a police station some time later, I was bleeding profusely from gashes on my 

head and arms.  I endured an agony of suspense while the police obtained treatment for my 

wounds and questioned me, yet at last I persuaded the authorities to send a team of officers 

with me to the museum.  The scene that met our eyes as we entered the curator's office was the 

one that my worst fears had predicted:  Wesley Herbert was dead, his body riddled with bullets, 

and the room held no sign of Nefer-per-Ra or her animated protector.

	I urged the officers to leave no stone unturned in their search for the ancient evil that I had 

helped loose on the world.  The shortsightedness of their response to my pleas still astounds 

me:  they arrested me for the murder of Wesley Herbert!

	In vain I remonstrated with the officers, with my defense attorney, with the judge and jury, 

and with members of the press to seek evidence of bizarre new cults or unexplained 

disappearances.  The travesty of my trial ran to its inevitable conclusion:  I was exiled for the 

rest of my natural life to a place of concrete walls and steel bars.

	At times it is permitted to me, in the company of my fellow inmates, to watch the images in 

the fateful box that gave Nefer-per-Ra her power.  As I watch the images, I am appalled by the 

parade of violence, greed, cruelty, and folly that passes before my eyes.  At such times I 

wonder whether this parade of madness, seemingly bound for a final, tragic chaos, has been set 

in motion by a resurrected Egyptian priestess, lost in time, who manipulates the rich and 

powerful through their shadows on the screen.  Sometimes I truly believe so; at other times I 

recognize that the world is as it has always been.