The Curse of Neferiset

By R.B. Ashton

After centuries entombed, an unholy queen is about to rise. And rise some more…

 

Billie Forcet plans to have fun this Halloween. Unlike her archaeologist father and sister, she's not interested in fame, fortune or the stuffy past. In fact, she plans to prove just how phoney they are, by busting into the museum and opening their latest empty ancient Egyptian casket.

 

Except ... Neferiset's sarcophagus is not empty.

 

And it's more a prison than a tomb.

 

When Billie and her friends break into the museum, they unlock a terrible darkness. Neferiset wakes up hungry – and she has the power to shrink her prey! Can they escape her deadly grasp? And what other horrors is she capable of?

 

Step into the latest Halloween horror adventure from R.B. Ashton, for size-warping thrills that jump from a miniaturised shrinking chase to a monstrous giantess battle!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Neringa Press
• Release date: Oct 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223638339

Book preview

Prologue

THIS IS A BAD IDEA, Dr Ana Forcet warned. Probably the twentieth time now. But her father had never much listened to her, and didn’t look like he was going to now. He was the great Professor Rupert Forcet, after all, foremost Egyptologist in the world. At least, he intended to be after this latest find. The excitement was making him reckless.

No one had expected them to uncover this tomb. Most people weren’t even convinced of the existence of the pharaoh Neferiset, a violent usurper queen who had rested power for a brief but ferocious period almost four thousand years ago. But the trail of her legends had occupied much of the Forcet family’s careers, fascinated as they were by rumours of Neferiset’s occult powers. Records of her were scant, but the few that remained were vivid: she was variously referenced as some kind of titan, a devourer of worlds. A being too powerful to live.

Only together had Ana and her father finally unravelled the clues to this chamber fifty feet beneath the sands, twenty kilometres from Farafra and close to absolutely nothing else. Far from the great pyramids and elaborate chambers of the better-known pharaohs, they now stood in a dusty room barely five metres wide with only a couple of empty alcoves for decoration, none of the riches left to accompany this queen into the afterlife. No surprise there: Rupert had tracked various of Neferiset’s belongings over the years, with bracelets and jewellery scattered to far abroad places, including the crucial so-called blood amulet that had pinpointed this location. The pharaoh’s possessions had apparently been stripped from her before she died.

But what the tomb lacked in decoration, it made up for in its eerie air of importance – and danger. Ana had a sense of foreboding the second she set foot in here, their electric lanterns illuminating the ominous sarcophagus at the back. Neferiset’s final resting place was standing upright, a tall, chiselled coffin of stone with faint hieroglyphs etched on the surface mostly worn by age. The simplicity of the place warned against its nature: this was not a queen who had been left celebrated. She had been entombed somewhere to be ignored and forgotten – somewhere secure.

While it had been hard to find, and lacked adornments, this was still a formidable tomb: buried deep, with great stone walls, no small feat of engineering. And the sarcophagus was grand in its size and weight if not its decoration. Ana couldn’t help thinking that whoever had put this queen here had deliberately built something sturdy enough to contain the ruthless ruler’s power, even after death.

But they couldn’t let such concerns get in the way. Fairy tales, really, her father quipped. And even if not, who were they to let ancient threats get in the way of important discoveries . . .

Rupert eagerly ran his hands around the edges of her coffin lid, searching for a way in. He was a wiry man, sprightly at sixty-two, and especially lively now. It was a monumental finding, after all, and one that was the private pleasure of just he, Ana and their aide, Vincent. Vincent, a tall, broad-shouldered man whose dark suit was somehow much less dusty than Rupert’s shabby brown one, stood alongside Ana’s father, calmly sorting through a bag of tools.

We should set up a perimeter, get some extra equipment from the university, Ana suggested, but Rupert flapped an impatient hand at her.

Let them take half the credit? he said. You know how they’d frame it. They’d want an official photographer, contracts over how exactly we describe the find. Credit given to Professor Briggins. No. When we reveal this discovery to the world, they will know it was the Forcets alone who rediscovered Neferiset. He clicked his fingers at Vincent, and the lumbering aide presented a crowbar.

Father – Ana attempted one more time, but without giving it a moment Rupert jammed the tool into the crack in the sarcophagus. He pushed hard, straining, but no chance he was letting Vincent take over now. The stone creaked, and for a moment Ana thought it would merely crack apart, a historic monument destroyed – then the large stone slab shifted with a croaking shudder. The sudden movement threw Rupert off balance and he dropped the crowbar with a gasp, staggering to keep upright. Then they were all motionless, staring in.

It was open.

Neferiset’s great stone coffin stood with an angled gap barely a foot wide, the lid having pivoted on a corner. It was unnaturally dark inside, as if the chamber sucked away all light, and Ana couldn’t make out any hint of its occupant. Rupert apparently couldn’t either, as he crept closer, pushing his head right up to the gap. Vincent bent in, too.

Oh sweet marigolds, Rupert muttered,