The Wrath of Bast
by Jonas Mueller

1

Had Sean or Tiamat Grey survived that grim horror they had unearthed with their own derangements , had Ambrosia Kensington remained sane after our encounter with the Cat Goddess , had Adrian Smith not killed himself on that accursed , moonless night , I believe none of them would have permitted me to put on paper this record of our horrid experience . Yet , I feel compelled to record my encounter with Bast , if only as a test to my own vanishing sanity .

It had begun a decade before , when I had met Tiamat Leanaun in my seventh csemester at college . She was a small , dark girl , unusually intelligent , with the brown hair and eyes common to Great Britain . She had been shy , but friendly , with a quick , ironic wit that refused to take anything seriously . I had taken a liking to her , and had dated her several times . However , our personalities had clashed , as she was far to Epicurian for me , and we had seperated , though cleanly and without problems . We went so far as to remain friends , and I was one of the first to learn of Sean Grey .

Sean was a student of Egyptology and Parapsychology whom Tiamat had met at a meeting of the local fraternity . After downing various intoxicating substances, they had gone window shopping in the local outlet mall . They had then returned to Grey's apartment and engaged in carnal pursuits for several hours before retiring for the night . I , personally , felt something evil about the man , and swiftly diagnosed him as mentally ill . It was partially conjecture at the time , but in the following years , I became sure of it .

Grey , like Tiamat , suffered from an intense dislike of cats that made him do almost everything to eliminate them . he had gone so far as to trap and kill some of the felines around the campus . While this made Professor Ambrosia Kensington , a Parapsychologist rumored to be involved in white witchcraft , quite unhappy , it earned the pair salutations from Proffesor Jan Aubrey , the Egyptologist , who had grown to dislike the cat's incessant caterwauling at certain seasons of the year . He proposed upon the two to assist him in deciphering some hieroglyths , and so began their descent into their doom .

Tiamat and Sean had interpreted the hieroglyths within a month , for both had a surprising talent for cryptography that had made their deaths such a sad loss to archaeology . The interpretations had revealed only a further riddle , though , and Dr. Aubrey swiftly took all written records of the job under his care , paid Mr. Grey and Ms. Leanaun , and bade them farewell . Tiamat had informed me the next day that the hieroglyths had been translated to mean : The curse of the Cat Queen Bast shall befall those who disturb her tomb , wherein rests the body of Queen Nem-Shalar , incarnate of Bastet . They who enter shall be smited within the Moonless Night and shall be devoured by Ubasti , Empress of the Feline , and they shall be judged cruelly by the Scales of Justice .

This disturbing message had them both on edge , for it pointed the way to an unknown tomb of an unknown queen of the Nile . However , both soon learned that no leads pointed to the location of the tomb . They would have to wait .

Within two years , Tiamat and Sean had married , and the reception had been rather smashing , causing even me to become inebriated . I feel that the alcohol may have clouded my memories , but it also loosened the tongues of Sean and Tiamat Grey , causing them to tell me horrid things about Sean's past : his abuse by a cat-loving aunt as a child , his killing of cats in large amounts , and his torture of the animals , a practice that had stopped after his aunt's sudden death of heart failure . He told of horrid sacrifices while a member of the Cult of Atlach-Nacha , of strange rituals and orgies in a Satanist grotto . Ultimately , though , he had recovered , and been in much better mental stature over the years . Still , he often felt that , beneath their all-seeing , nocturnal eyes, the cats knew what he had done , and were plotting revenge against him . Never could he look at a cat the same way again . Had I remembered more , I would have probably feared him and his Welsh bride , but , in the end , I was only slightly nervous around him . My evaluations , trained by my studies , had judged him to be only slightly neurotic . If only I had judged him more accurately, he might have been salvageable .

My administrations would not be needed until five years later , when Tiamat entered my office . I hardly recognised her , as she had shrunk and stooped into a pale waif of a corpse that appeared to have crawled from the grave . She greeted me in a cheerless , soft voice that had lost all it's shine , as well as her Welsh accent . She had a grim problem to see me about : Sean had begun torturing cats again , and she had joined in . He had also begun praying before idols of strange " Great Old Ones " and sacrificing various felines to them. Tiamat had somehow not seen the dangers of these idols until , one day , Sean had gone berserk and attempted to murder her . She had run out , and come to my office , pleading for me to see him .

Sean Grey had never been my friend , but I feared for Tiamat , who seemed to be slowly wasting away , so I offered my services free of charge . We found him in a dark room , surrounded by ghastly idols the likes of which almost made me faint . Sean Grey's raven hair lay matted against his scalp , and blood was visible on his torn clothes . He smelled of urine and feces . At least half a dozen mutilated cat corpses lay on the ground near him . My services were put to work immediately , but it took over a month of intensive therapy to return him to semi-coherency and Tiamat to sanity . Until then , he babbled incessantly about the cats , which were out to avenge his treatment of them during his early years . He raved about recieving protection from such entities as Yog-Soggoth, Zhar , and Cthulu . All these names I had read about before , in the dread Necronomicon , and I was shocked that their dread cults even existed anymore.

After several months , he had come to end his worship of these strange , eldritch entities . He had also mentioned that he had found a lead to the tomb of Bast . He asked me to continue my ministrations on him in Egypt . I obliged , but insisted he hire others . Pr. Kensington , the parapsychologist from the univer-sity, reluctantly signed on , as the tomb of a supposed goddess could use an occultist's knowledge . A proffesional bodyguard named Adrian Smith was also hired to guard against the increasingly active Muslim extremists .

2.

We left for Cairo a month later , under the title of " The Grey and Kensington Expedition " , with fourteen retainers , including drivers , medics , extra guards , laborers , and a guide named Abdul Muhammed . We arrived in Cairo at midnight on the night of November 12 , when the desert was , contrary to the stereotype , quite chilly . Proffessor Kensington , having had three decades of life in Alaska behind her , was not at all bothered , nor was Smith , who was hard as nails . Sean was affected mildly , however , while Tiamat and I were shivering and numb .

Abdul guided us through the dirty slums of Cairo with expert grace , teaching us where to go to not get our cars hijacked . We arrived at our hotel twenty minutes later , checked in , and went to bed .

That night came the first tremor of what was to befall us . I awoke some time past midnight to the yowling of a cat outside my window . Not wishing it to awaken Sean , I went quietly towards the window with scraps of food . The cat on the other side of the threshold , however , was not to be seen . Assuming it had fallen , for the windowsill was so narrow that I could not imagine the cat even getting onto it , I looked down . When I did , though , I saw nothing . Then , I felt what I am certain must have been a cat brush against my cheek . Looking , I still saw no cat . Assuming that the cat had survived the twenty-foot fall and that the brushing had been merely a freak wind , I returned to bed . The next morning, I told not even Ambrosia about it .

We went out into the Valley of Kings that afternoon , scheduling our dig so as to work mostly at night . I succeeded at being of little help to the muscular diggers ,but Adrian Smith assisted them whenever our lives were placed in his underling's hands. At sunset , I retired with old Ambrosia to watch the sunset .

The bright red hemisphere on the horizon had always been appreciated by me , but that evening , I felt a strange sense of forboding aound it . You see , I was certain that the clouds around it were all in the shapes of cats , and that those cats were drifting towards the site of the dig ! Ambrosia must have noticed it , too, for she quickly made a mano figa with her left hand and held it as such . Still, nothing happened , save that , when we were taking our leave of the laborers' camp , I noticed Abdul eyeing Sean and Tiamat in a way that was not hatred , not malice, not contempt , but something else , something so queerly predatory and alien that humanity possesses no word to quite suit it . It was like the gaze a cat god would give a dying mouse god , or a trapped dog god . I thought nothing of it , for I was a skeptic of epic proportions at the time , save that Abdul might have a touch of Shiite Muslim bigotry in his soul . I informed Adrian , and that was that .

Our next day was interrupted by the fact that another archaeological group , the Davidson Expedition , was digging near us . We met with them , and shared drinks for about half of the time that the paranoid Egyptian government had given us to dig. Oddly enough , I saw the cloud-cats again that evening , but they were closer to the tomb . This unnerved Ms. Kensington quite a bit , and even I felt a bit nervous about it . Still , I did not mention it to anyone .

The next morning , I awakened early , as I had scheduled a session with Sean Grey that morning . During the session , Grey informed me that he had been having strange dreams as of late , dreams about cats charging into Cairo by the hundreds , even thousands . He dreamt of them massacring the expedition , slaying all of us , except Abdul , who was not touched at all , and who shifted form into a white lioness to lead the army of felines further into Egypt . These dreams had been becoming more frequent and frightening over time , and Sean had come to fear Abdul . I suggested that he avoid the man . Sean did so by firing the Arab .

The next few days went normally , with days of digging interrupted by Sundays of drinking with the Davidson expedition . Over those days , I noticed both of the Greys moving closer towards the many guard dogs employed by Mr. Blake Davidson , the Expedition's leader . And every night , I noticed the cloud-cats , as did Ambrosia , who was on the verge of a nervous breakdown after two weeks .

The next three horrors piled up on top of one another rapidly enough that I became suspicious of cult activity against us and that Ms. Kensington had to be kept ignorant of them by being kept in bed for a week to relax . The first occurred to me and a guard while walking in Cairo . We had wandered into the slums when , suddenly , we entered a street so unnaturally dark for late afternoon that I could not see my hands in front of my face . Clawing my way through the shadows in terror , I suddenly felt something brush against my arm , something wet , furry , and frightening . I shrieked and fled into the streets , barely hearing my guard shriek even more loudly . He was never seen again , and the attack was attributed to a rabid dog .

The next morning , I heard of shocking news : someone had broken into the Davidson camp during the night and slain the guard dogs . Oddly enough , although the killing had been done with a scimitar , no human blood could be found . Nobody could determine why , for there had been twenty dogs in the cage , and all were so vicious that most people would not go within twenty feet of them . Muslim terrorists were suspected .

The last of the three horrors occured in the morning . I awoke in my bed to a scream from the hall , followed by the sound of someone falling . It was an old maid , fat with excessive meat consumption , who had had a sudden and severe heart attack . I called for a doctor immediately , and was greeted by a Shiite practitioner who worked rather poorly and inadvertantly ensured the woman's death before the paramedics and police arrived . That was when I noticed a dripping sound . It came from Sean and Tiamat Grey's door , where , nailed to the area just above the peephole , was the bloody , decapitated head of Blake Davidson .

3.

After that murder , which was also tied to Muslim terrorists , we never went anywhere without at least two non-Muslim guards and a Sunnite shield who pretended to be a guide . I myself almost never visited the tomb , for those cloud-cats had assumed a position similar to a cat about to pounce . Ambrosia also avoided the place , as did Tiamat . Sean and Adrian , however , went there every night , even on Sundays , which had become grimmer after The Davidson Expedition had left Egypt in fear . In two months , we had hit the carved rock of an unopened tomb door .

Half of the retainers had by then quit , so Sean had decided to return the next morning with a battering ram and some temporary employees . He also insisted that Ambrosia , Tiamat and I accompany him into the tomb . With varying degrees of reluctance , we all came , and thus our fate was sealed .

When we arrived , it was noted that there were no hieroglyths on the door , just a gap into which the stone that Sean and Tiamat had researched for Dr.Aubrey fit.

Two very strong gutterfolk wielded the ram , slamming the door to the tomb's black interior open . Neither of the two , however , would enter , and most of the retainers also left , leaving only Sean , Tiamat , Ambrosia , Adrian , and I , as well as one laborer and a photographer , to enter the black space beyond .

Lighting a gas lantern , Adrian stared transfixed at what was within the tomb , while Sean just noted the richness of this tomb . Golden statues of cats , ivory pendants depicting Bast , and anything else that could possibly be connected with Bast was in the main room . Tiamat noted the oddness of placing the treasures in the entrance chamber , and went off to the next room with the laborer and Ambrosia . The rest of us stayed in the main room , staring at the wondrous treasures . As this went on , I barely noticed fog forming outside . Memories of the cloud-cats filled my mind for a second , but I brushed them aside , somehow forgetting how rare clouds and fog were in Egypt .

About half an hour later , our revery was broken by a shriek . It was Ambrosia's , and it had come from the adjoining room . We all ran inside , and were halted with wonder at the poetic scene . It was a shattered temple , torn apart by heathen forces , enveloped in mist that held two corpses , with a goddess crying in the center of the wreckage . Yet it was not , for the whimpering form was Ambrosia Kensington , and the corpses , those of Tiamat and the laborer , were slowly being eaten by the mists . Both were torn horribly , and I still have nightmares over Tiamat's body , for it still struggled and cried out in postmortem anguish . The mists themselves had the fom of cats , large and rabid . The photographer shrieked and fell to the floor in a fetal position .

That was when the other cloud-cats attacked . They came , a dozen to a hundred , I never figured out how many . They tore the photographer to pieces in seconds .

Then those evil mists pulled together , leaving the few remaining pieces of Tiamat to fall to the blackened ground , and dissipated , leaving only a form that resembled Abdul in a way , but was certainly not him . For Abdul was not female . Nor wasAbdul eight feet tall . And , finally , Abdul did not have six-inch-long claws covered in blood . No , this was a hideous avatar of the cat goddess, sent by Bast herself to slay us and avenge the murder of dozens of cats. The half-Abdul walked towards Sean , who lay in a corner , crying and begging for mercy . But there was no mercy for the tormenter of cats , no more pity than he had shown the cats in his early years , no more respect than he had shown the place where Bastet herself had rested all these untold centuries . So she-he-it told him as Adrian and I watched it slowly tear him apart . Most horrifying , though , was the hideous way in which he shrieked for a full minute after he should have been dead , as Adrian , Ambrosia, and I watched in horror .

Bast then turned towards me eyes shining golden in the mists . Her claws sprang out of her hands which where still covered in pieces of Sean . She would rend me apart , torment me for all eternity , or so she told me as I fled into the night , followed by Adrian and a gibbering Ambrosia. Cats of all sizes and forms hounded us, and Adrian was viciously torn at by unseen forces after shooting them . All the while , visions of that yellow-eyed Arab hermaphrodite tearing me apart hounded me , probably the work of the Catqueen herself . I shut them out , thought only of reaching the saftey of Cairo . I reached it after Ambrosia , who had to be committed to an asylum . Adrian was drawn to the desert , where he claimed he heard Sean , still screaming . Two days later , he walked into the desert with a revolver and probably shot himself . That night , a sandstorm rose up and buried him and the tomb . May it be buried forever.

Of all those who entered that horrid tomb , only Ambrosia and I survive . Sadly , the witch is currently in an asylum , babbling about the cats in the mist and inadvertantly fueling the anti-wicca campaigns , even though none shall ever really know whether or not she was of that faith . Still , I pray for madness to come over me , to give me sanctuary in it's temple . For I feel the eyes of the cats are still upon me , as in that moonless Cairo night when the wrath of Bast was made known to me in the most hideous way .

© Jonas Mueller 

June 2000 HofP