Page 38 of The Secret Shape of Worship
Mina wanted to cry. He wanted to scream. But most of all, he wanted to be back in Anubis’s arms. To thank him for everything. To worship him. To mate with him, finally, and become his for as much time as they had left together. This had been a mistake. He needed to get back to Anubis.
“Professor, I need you to let me go now.”
“You’ll feel better once we get you out of here.”
“Let go,” Mina said more forcefully, though unable to keep the quake of fear out of his voice.
“Someone help me, he’s getting hysterical. The boy has obviously hit his head and suffered some kind of brain damage.”
Suddenly, there were hands all over him. Squeezing, pulling hands wanting to drag him from this place. Away from his Anubis. Away from his home.
“Let go!” he shouted. “Anubis, help!”
“Shh, it’s ok, we’re going to get you help,” said the professor. “Relax. Just relax.”
Mina’s bare heels dragged painfully along the hard stone ground as he was dragged down the hall. This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be. Where the hell was Anubis? Why wasn’t he coming?
And then, there was a rumble. Far below. So low that Mina felt it before the others, rising up through his toes.
Anubis. Finally. His god was coming for him. He only hoped he could convince him to just reset their memories and not massacre them all.
A wave of cold air blasted down the hallway, knocking the group off their feet. Mina felt the dozen hands release him as a tangled mass of limbs and bodies tumbled and toppled over one another. The room quaked with such violence that Mina looked around for signs that the ceiling was coming down or the walls closing in. But there was only the deep, relentless quake. The rope light that ran along the ceiling of the tunnel flickered once, twice, and finally blinked out.
And then everything went still.
“Everyone ok? Anyone hurt?” The professor’s voice rose above the rest, trying and failing to get the group under control as they all scrambled to untie themselves from the tangled mess.
And then, one by one, the group fell silent as something unnamable descended upon them. A dreamlike quality to the air. A complete stillness. A deathly cold. An overwhelming smell of something rotten. And then the long, slow, regular, and unmistakable whisper of a breath.
Towering above them, the sounds of ragged breathing. A glowing pair of red eyes, piercing through the darkness. Eyes that rose and fell in time with its slow breath.
“Anubis?” Mina’s voice was barely above a whisper.
A throaty rasp like a violent wind through dead branches came in reply. A waft of putrid air.
This was not Anubis.
This was someone…something else.
Mina rose to his feet, trembling worse than when the earthquake shook them all. Because if this was who he thought it was…
“Everyone, just shut up and let me do the talking,” he said.
“I hardly think…” started the professor.
“Professor Cornelius, if you want to keep all of your limbs attached to your body, I need you to shut the hell up right now.”
Mina heard the professor’s mouth open and close several times and finally snap shut with a huff.
“Osiris,” said Mina, as bravely and with as much volume as his tiny mortal voice could muster. He had faced a god before. And this was only Anubis’s father after all, right? Plenty of people had to be nervous meeting their boyfriend’s dad for the first time. This was no different than that. Right?
A bright golden glow emanated before him, around the shape of this new creature. Though the ceiling of the tunnel was only slightly higher than the tallest student, probably a little over 6 feet, the god Osiris stood at least twenty feet high. Somehow, the stones had grown insubstantial in his presence. They were in a world of infinite darkness, and only the vaguest impression remained of the structure around them.
As the glow intensified, Osiris cut a terrifying shape in the darkness. Whereas his son was full and muscular, Osiris, god of the underworld, was like a skeleton wrapped in old leather. His skin was a pale green, and long yellow nails hung from the ends of his fingers, which themselves hung limp at the ends of his arms at his sides. Tattered shreds of brown cloth clung here and there. Mina might have thought him a reanimated corpse but for the firm set of his jaw and those very alive and very red, piercing eyes.
Mina stood his ground and steadied his voice. “Where is Anubis?”
“He has returned to the Duat,” the voice like dry leaves and cracking limbs replied. “He was unable to fulfill his duty, and so he will spend his days in isolation and despair.”
