The Amulet. A.R. Morlan

the book, and only ended up putting it out because she had missed the accept-or-reject deadline once I sent the diskettes to her husband. Even though the book was cancelled from reprint status within a year of its release (along with DJ, which was summarily canceled immediately after the first sales statement arrived), it did earn back its advance plus some royalties. I have no idea to this day if all the copies of both books which had been sent to stores sold out, or if the rest were pulped. No one there seemed to know what happened with the two novels after my editor was fired a few years later—save that the rights ultimately reverted back to me.

      Although the genesis of this novel was not the most pleasant creative experience I’ve ever had, the end result seemed to please a lot of folks, and it did eventually emerge as a serviceable prequel to DJ. I made every effort to produce an interesting read.

      I ended up dipping into my own family history, so some of the events in this book were inspired by real (and deadly) occurrences. A brother-in-law of my maternal grandmother actually did kill his mother with an axe—this happened in the late 1930s in the Chicago area. No one knows why, and the man was never tried, just shipped off to the state mental hospital. Neighbors heard his mother calling the man’s name, and shortly afterward, he was seen wandering around with the bloody axe still in hand. He wasn’t a blood relative of mine, just a stray leaf on the family tree.

      Lucy Miner is based on my maternal grandmother in virtually all ways save for being an only child (even though she did act like one), having a living grandparent to bond with, and, of course, her choice of a real-life mate (my maternal grandfather wasn’t much of a catch—he was born blind with prenatal cataracts, remained legally blind as an adult, became an alcoholic, and had only a fourth-grade education). My grandmother was pretty much the Poster Child for Back Alley Abortion—one of those people the world said would have been much better off without her having graced it with her presence. She destroyed her only child’s life, and she destroyed mine; and I know if I’d had a child, she would have destroyed that kid’s life too. It was simply in her nature. Out of the ten children her parents had raised (five died in childhood), she was the one whom they feared and disliked the most.

      I don’t know why she was the way she was; all I know is that virtually everyone who came in contact with her ended up disliking her—or using her for what they could get out of her, then dumping her. She was a flirting machine: if she saw a man, she felt compelled to flirt with him, be he married, underaged, or openly not interested.

      The “real” Lucy Miner was far more evil, frightening, and dangerous than my fictional creation could ever be on her own. To this day, I still have nightmares about her, even though she’s been dead for many years. I wasn’t even able to write about the worst of what she did to us; for that bit of information, check out my short story “Powder” in the out-of-print Smothered Dolls collection (to be reprinted in an upcoming Borgo Press book).

      I do know one thing: if I were writing this novel today, I’d add one more quote at the beginning of the book, something which hadn’t been written back in 1989. In a seventh-season episode of his show The X-Files, creator/writer Chris Carter had one of his characters say this about his blighted background: “A big ugly dog lifted its leg on my family tree.”

      So...consider that added to this novel. It sums things up better than I could.

      There’s an old, old saying that starts off “The sins of the fathers...” which Anna Sudek came to know by heart; but the past sins in her family were far stranger—and far more pervasive—than anything most people might encounter in their lives. A long-ago theft of something more dangerous than financially precious, a mysterious death by axe, and—worst of all, a grandmother who continues to cast her manipulative spell over the life of her only granddaughter—these are the sins that are continually visited upon this young woman.

      But once she learns the nature of the first sin, and figures out a way to fight its insidious powers, Anna realizes that she might have a chance to combat the forces in her life which threaten to destroy not only her, but those who come between Anna and her malign blood relatives.

      —A. R. Morlan

      July 2007 & April 2012

      PROLOGUE

      Prague, Bohemia, Late October 1880

      Night Skirt

      Chill wind scattered blown leaves along the lamp-lit cobbled street outside Karel Nezval’s diamond-paned front parlor window. An occasional clawed leaf raked the window glass with a faintly chitinous sound, disturbing Nezval’s sensitive ears. He paused to rub the shell-curled surface of his left ear as he read his archaeologist friend’s latest letter, which had arrived simultaneously with a small wooden box carefully wrapped in oiled paper and thin but incredibly strong twine, said box also sent by his boyhood friend.

      Shifting his slightly protruding, yet deeply hooded brown eyes away from the fine feathery tracery of Josef’s penned words, the glass manufacturer (and armchair Egyptologist, a holdover from his student days in Berlin) glanced at the opened wooden box, which rested on the small, round cherry wood table near the hissing and sputtering fireplace. The box itself was propped up slightly, the upper end resting on the box lid, so that Nezval could better view the small treasure Josef Zeyerhad so recently freed from Egypt’s sandy soil. The deep yellow-gold and green basalt surfaces of the object were warmly illuminated by the red and orange tongues of flame in the fluttering fire. Nezval leaned across the left arm of his chair and squinted as he admired his unexpected gift from Josef—the delicate, almost impossibly fine detailing, especially on such a small piece of jewelry; the way the scales on the lower half seemed to strain through the oily-smooth skin of the thing, as if originating from within the gold, and not merely molded or incised upon it.

      “Beautiful,” Karel Nezval whispered, his tongue darting out to almost touch the deep indentation of flesh under his lower lip, before he reluctantly returned his gaze to Josef’s letter:

      ...most unusual sort. As you see, the end with the serpent head is not fashioned of red stone, paste, or jasper at all, as is fitting for a symbol of the snake goddess Isis. I do not know for certain, nor do I wish to know, dear Karel, what the maker of this amulet had in mind when he cast the serpent in gold, but according to the hekau inscribed on the underbelly (what I have been able to translate of them), he was seeking power greater than that of a scarab alone, yet not necessarily the customary one of a serpent’s head-to protect the deceased from the bites of the snakes in the underworld. Instead, he sought deviating powers, whose range and intensity are most intriguing, albeit thoroughly atavistic, and most genuine, as I myself can attest.

      This is why I have sent the amulet to you for safekeeping—the natives in our camp fear it, with good reason, and those of us in charge of the excavation respect it mightily. But it has proven too much of a temptation for us, dear Karel, which is why I have entrusted it in your care. I implore you to heed the warning enclosed in the box, and written at the beginning of this letter: do not touch the amulet with your bare hands, or with gloves, unless they are of asbestos. Use the tongs provided in the box, or tweezers, if you have them.

      Please heed me in this, Karel. One man, a native worker, died as a result of the power of this piece. We killed him out of necessity, before he killed us and demolished the entire dig. The hekau inscribed on the amulet (and, I suspect strongly, amplified by more “words of power” uttered over the amulet upon completion) are, as far as I can tell from a limited translation, most detailed and specific, with the most malicious of intentions.

      Imagination fails when I attempt to envision the master plan of this object’s maker. One of my col­leagues, Herr Dobbershutz, has surmised that the maker of the amulet introduced quicksilver or some similar alloy in the casting of the gold, and added the ground up bodies of a real scarab beetle and a serpent to the crucible. Upon witnessing the unfortunate state in which our native man met his demise, I find myself in agreement with Herr Dobbershutz. Words of power alone do not account for what happened when that fellow held the amulet.

      Dear Karel, if you can further decipher the hekau on this amulet, please do so. But, I implore you, remain cautious in all your contact with it. I knew not where else to send this entity, to keep it in safe, sober hands.