#FridayFlash - Sightseeing

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The statue coughed twice, sending a cloud of dust into the air. Tendrils of ectoplasm snaked out of the statue's nose, and billowed into the display case. The cold fingers of phantasmic goo sought the key hole near the top of the glass, and oozed through the lock mechanism. The figure coalesced on the other side into that of a slender man with delicate hands.

He peered at the statue through the glass and shook his head. The artist was more of a mere craftsman, and simply hadn't managed to capture the boyish line of his jaw, or the laughing smile in his eyes. They'd dressed his statue in gaudy fabrics befitting a prince, conveniently ignoring his more simple attire in life.

Prince Aken-Aten stretched, imagining his joints popping as they did before he died, and looked around the room. He'd grown tired of exploring the Egyptian Gallery, filled as it was with familiar things. He wanted to see the world, and learn more of what happened after his death.

He walked away from the case and stuck his head into the corridor. Tableaux of stuffed animals lined the route, re-enacting scenes from the North African desert. Aken-Aten bowed before the noble lion, and marvelled at the cobra, rearing as it ready to strike. He followed the passage and the decor changed, turning from desert vista to lush jungle. Aken-Aten recognised the greenery but the animals were alien, covered in stripes, or shaped like hairy men.

The Prince spent the evening touring the Natural History gallery, teaching himself to read the strange symbols on the wall beside each display. He even visited the gift shop, marvelling at the small reproductions of the stuffed animals. He believed them to be toys, albeit ones very different from the wooden or bone games they had at his father's court. His sister would have loved the soft fur of the lion cub.

The sky beyond the windows grew pink, and Aken-Aten made his way through the museum to return to the Egyptian gallery. He allowed himself to dissipate, feeling his limbs grow long and his body expand, and his ectoplasm fingered a path through the key hole into the case. It forced itself up the nose of the statue, and turned its thoughts to sleep as the dawn broke.

* * *

Roland peered into the display case containing the funeral effects of Prince Aken-Aten. He stared at the statue in disbelief for a full five minutes, before turning to shout for his assistant.

"Mavis? Mavis? The statue's moved again!"

* * *

This flash was inspired by this news story!

#FridayFlash - Tomb Raiders

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The man known as Al Shabah slipped between the pillars of the crumbling ruin. He spotted the gaping hole across the site, the entrance littered with discarded tools. The tomb raiders thought they’d located the lost tomb of Mekerepsut. Al Shabah smiled – as long as they occupied themselves with the false tomb, they wouldn’t disturb his exploration of the real one. Judging by the silence of the site, they wouldn’t disturb him at all tonight.

The real tomb of the 22^nd Dynasty princess lay at the edge of the ruin – Al Shabah found the entrance by accident the day before. Before the revolution, its location would have been reported to the authorities, but now it was every man for himself. Some would call him a grave robber, but the way Al Shabah saw it, he sold what he found to collectors, not pawn brokers. At least he was keeping antiquities in circulation.

A quirk of ancient architecture hid the tomb’s entrance, turning the narrow gap into a shadow cast by a nearby pillar. Al Shabah slipped through the gap, and made his way down the tunnel. Mekerepsut’s burial came long before the temple that hid her tomb, and given her reputation for darker magic, Al Shabah wasn’t sure she’d be pleased to lie beneath the feet of Isis worshippers.

Al Shabah felt his way along the tunnels, his fingers becoming his eyes. Before long, his nails scraped the smooth stone that signalled the entrance to the tomb. He switched on his torch and breathed a sigh of relief to see that the seal was still intact. He knelt down and forced his hand pick into the wall. He always broke in below waist height – if anyone came snooping around they’d expect to see a hole at eye level, not down by the floor.

The rhythm came easily as he chiselled away at the gaps between the bricks before prising them free, and he soon had a neat pile of stones at his side. The hole was large enough to crawl through, although he’d need to enlarge it to remove anything of note. He slipped a white mask over his nose and mouth, and crawled through the gap.

Al Shabah stood up on the other side of the wall and frowned. The tomb was smaller than he expected, its walls carved instead of painted. The sarcophagus lay on the other side of the chamber, surrounded by statues of animals. He thought there would be gold, or perhaps fine furniture, not a stone menagerie. Al Shabah ran his hand over the head of a leopard – he knew a dealer in Cairo who might give him a decent price, but removing them all would take some time.

He flicked the beam of the torch around the tomb. A smaller chamber lay to his right, but he would explore that after he’d looked inside the coffin. He’d sometimes found riches hidden with the body, and someone like Mekerepsut was bound to have plenty of amulets within her wrappings. If she was as dark as he’d been led to believe, those amulets would fetch a fortune on the black market.

Al Shabah smirked at his own joke as he knelt before the sarcophagus. He pushed hard on the lid to test its weight, and it heaved aside with a scrape of stone on stone. More carvings filled the sarcophagus, and Al Shabah recognised snippets of familiar stories among the hieroglyphics.

It’s like they gave her something to read.

He shuddered, and leaned in to examine the coffin. Her painted eyes stared up at him, and their slanted angle made her look sly.

Like she’s plotting something.

Al Shabah found the edge of the lid and wiggled his nails into position. The wood of the cartonnage gave way easily, and he hooked his fingers under the lid. He prised it upwards, and spluttered. The air smelled old, even through his mask.

He gave himself a moment to recover, and peered into the coffin. He expected to see a mummy, swathed in ancient cloth, perhaps weighed down by amulets, or surrounded by shabtis. He once even found a mummy wearing an elaborate death mask, surrounded by scrolls.

What he saw this time was an empty coffin.

“What? Someone got here first?” He swore aloud, and bent over further, running his hand across the wood as if he might find a secret compartment. It wasn’t unheard of.

Something tapped on his shoulder. Al Shabah stifled a shriek and leapt to his feet. One of the grave robbers at the fake tomb must have followed him. The thought his assailant could be armed drove a yelp from his mouth, but then he thought of the empty coffin. Anger replaced fear.

Something long and pointed tapped on his shoulder again. The ghost of a whisper rasped in the stale air behind him. Al Shabah spun around. He had no time to see anything before his world imploded.

His lifeless husk would be found in three days’ time.

Three days is a long head start.

* * *

If you enjoyed this post, why not check out my post over at Nerine Dorman's blog, where you can meet Bakt en Hor, the lady in the image adorning this flash?

#FridayFlash - Sand and Snow

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Outside in the cold, bells toll around the city to ring in the special day. Delicate flakes of snow dance and whirl through the frozen air in their own celebration ballet. Strangers exchange seasonal greetings in the street, warm with the glow of red wine and mince pies.

Inside the museum, whispers echo around empty halls, and ancient words entwine with plaster and glass. Syllables slide through cracked stone; the sarcophagus fills with spells not heard in three thousand years. Dessicated flesh stirs inside flaking wrappings and sparks flare within empty sockets. Skeletal hands press against wood; the coffin lid clatters to the floor. The owner of the voice steps forward to push aside the stone slab.

A pale hand grips the gnarled ancient fingers and helps the figure clamber to its feet. Recognition flickers in the eyes of the mummy princess. Many centuries have passed since she last laid eyes on the man before her. Her heart would skip a beat if it had not been replaced by a clay amulet.

The arcane priest leads her across the parquet floor of the Egyptian Gallery, one hesitant shuffling step at a time. He places a cold finger to his lips, calling for quiet. The beam of a torch swings through the doorway as the night watchmen performs his rounds. He does not notice the wizened mummy princess and her curious pale companion in the shadows.

They leave their hiding place and make their way through the museum. The sparks in the mummy's eyes grow brighter as she takes in the wealth of history, all younger than her but older than the museum, as they tread through the empty halls. They reach the entrance atrium, and the priest waves his hand. The glass doors swing open, and he leads his princess outside.

Snow lies several feet thick, heaped against the gutter, blown aside to clear the road. The black trees of the avenue wear their wintry white coats with pride, limbs extended to the heavens in silent thanks for the seasonal bounty. The mummy princess gawps, her jaw hung loose by withered tendons. The snow reminds her of the sand of her youth, though she does not remember white sand that glitters beneath light. She marvels at the lamp posts with their artificial suns.

The priest leads his ancient prize into the street. Snowflakes drift toward them, settling on yellowed wrappings and worn cloak alike. The princess spots patterns traced in the frost on the windows. Her face labours but produces a smile, and the sparks in her eyes glow white with pleasure. The priest returns the smile, and their hands find each other in the cold.

They stand watching the snow fall as the bells ring out for Christmas Day.

#FridayFlash - Ghost Train

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The train lurches out of the Tottenham Court Road station and rattles east. Elsa flicks from her Kindle app to the clock - another ten minutes and she'll be at Liverpool Street. Plenty of time to catch the train to Stansted before her flight to Naples.

The train slows, and rumbles to a stop. Elsa looks up, expecting to see Holborn station. Instead, she sees simply darkness outside the window. Across the carriage, she sees the familiar tunnel walls, with their cables and metalwork. Just another random stoppage on the London Underground.

A scraping sound, like nails on glass, scratches behind her. She turns to look over her shoulder, and sees empty space where there should be a tunnel wall. She presses her face to the window and peers into the gloom. She makes out a wall several feet away, and the remains of old tiles form a sad mosaic of abandonment. Fragments of facts, dispensed at a party like ice breaking sweets, flit through her mind. Nothing substantial, just enough to amuse for a second or so. Elsa stares into the darkness, wondering if she's really looking at the remains of the British Museum station, closed almost eighty years previously.

A face looms large at the window, its eyes lined in thick kohl and beads hanging among braided hair. Elsa scrambles out of her seat and over her suitcase, terrified not just by the face, but by the fact she can see the outline of the tiles through it. Dark eyes catch sight of Elsa, and painted lips turn up at the corners. Elsa fumbles with her phone, scrolling through the apps to find the camera. She doesn't want a permanent record of that rictus grin, but no one will believe her without one.

The shutter sound breaks the silence in the carriage, and Elsa looks around to see if her fellow passengers have noticed anything is amiss. It is still too early for most commuters, and those few who ride the train with her are asleep, or engrossed in battered paperbacks. No one is aware of the smiling face in the tunnel, or the fingers that now stroke the windows. The curved nails leave grooves in the grime caked on the glass. Elsa stands and reaches for her case, intending to move down the carriage.

She glances at the face, the grin now replaced by a wide open mouth. A scream both surrounds and penetrates Elsa, buffeting her body and echoing inside her head. Elsa throws herself into a seat and clamps her hands over her ears. The scream is wild and unbridled, full of arcane lore and ancient deeds.

The train shudders into life and hauls itself onwards, leaving behind the ghost station and its resident. Elsa leans her head back against the window and closes her eyes, forcing her breathing to slow. The driver makes an announcement, mumbling futile apologies about unexpected delays.

Without looking at the screen, Elsa fumbles to slide her phone into her pocket. She does not see the saved image of the Egyptian princess with the grin of Death itself.

* * *

This flash was inspired by a Twitter conversation with the very excellent Nerine Dorman, whose latest book, Inkarna, is heavily steeped in ancient Egyptian mysticism. It's also inspired by the legend that tells of the ghost of a mummy who allegedly haunts the old British Museum station, that was closed in 1933. It lies halfway between Tottenham Court Road and Holborn, and you can read more about it here, here, and here, if that tickles your fancy. As a side note, I was once on a train that stopped in the station, and I could just about make out where the old platform would have been (before they tore it up). Sadly (?) no faces peered in at me that day.

#FridayFlash - Eyes That See

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The swing band in the corner fought for attention over the din of chatter in the hall. Women in furs quaffed champagne as their menfolk told dreary jokes and ignored the exhibits. Gabriel scowled at them – no appreciation for history at all. He’d assembled the finest pieces ancient Egypt could offer, and they were more interested in society gossip.

Marie St John sashayed up to him, all shining eyes and pearl strings. Marie’s mother was one of Gabriel’s greatest supporters, although she might not invest as much if she found out about his tiny crush on her daughter.

“Gabriel, darling. Splendid show you’ve put on.” She kissed both of his cheeks, leaving scarlet imprints like plague posies beside his mouth.

“I’m glad you approve, Miss St John. Your mother had a lot to do with this. So sorry she couldn’t be here tonight,” replied Gabriel.

“She’ll come along and see it in a few weeks when she’s back from Paris, I expect.”

Gabriel nodded. Mrs St John’s other daughter lived in France, and felt obliged to help out now the war was over. Pity she wasn’t in Paris in 1940 – the Germans wouldn’t have stood a chance.

“So has anything in particular caught your eye?” asked Gabriel.

“The jewellery is fascinating.” Marie looked across the room at a large glass case. Women clustered around it, cooing over the ornate collars and gold bands.

“Very different from what you wear.” Gabriel nodded to the Lalique brooch on her dress.

“I daresay Mother would wear it!”

Gabriel laughed. Mrs St John was no shrinking violet, and it was easy to picture the mountain of a woman draped in white linen, and dripping with Egypt’s finest. Marie smiled and looked away, her eyes roving the crowd. Feeling his chance slip away, Gabriel laid a hand on Marie’s arm.

“Have you seen this piece?” asked Gabriel. He steered Marie through the crowd towards a glass case set on a plinth in the middle of the room. A wooden box lay inside the case. Scenes of Egyptian life were painted on three sides, with hieroglyphics adorning the lid. One side was blank, except for a pair of painted eyes.

“What is it?” asked Marie. She wrinkled her nose.

“A coffin.”

“I thought mummies came in things like that,” said Marie. She pointed across the room to a brightly painted sarcophagus. A young man lounged against the case containing the sarcophagus, a cigarette in one hand and a cocktail glass in the other. Gabriel frowned.

“Later ones did from around 1550 BC. Before that, coffins were rectangular. The mummy lay inside on its side, facing the east, and the eyes were painted on so it could ‘see’ out,” said Gabriel. He pointed to the eyes. Marie shuddered.

“That’s awful.”

“Why do you say that? It’s no different from burying a body in the hope it’ll be resurrected on Judgement Day.”

“Is there a body in there?” Marie stared at the box, her rosebud mouth turning down at the corners.

“I daresay there is. I don’t believe in opening them up.”

“So you brought me over here for a dead body in a box?”

“I thought you might be interested. It’s not every day you come this close to an ancient civilisation.”

“Indeed. If you’ll excuse me.”  Marie tossed her head and stalked away, heading for the throng of young men around the statue of a bare-breasted goddess.

Gabriel sighed. He thought Marie had the same fascination for history as her mother. Still, he’d been wrong about women before. Two ex-wives proved that.

“I despair of humanity sometimes. I’m so sorry you had to witness that,” said Gabriel, laying one hand on the glass case.

He looked down at the coffin. The eyes on the box blinked.

Friday Flash - Anonymous

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Photo from Popular Archaeology

Maria scrawled her signature on the form, and handed the clipboard back to the courier. He scurried out of the lab, leaving her and Tom with the coffin.

"Where exactly did Sasha find this?" asked Maria. She ran her hands across the smooth wood.

"There was a stone sarcophagus in a sub-chamber of the main tomb. Total accident they came across it, apparently there was a false wall, or something. Here, she took some photos of the sarcophagus itself.”

Tom handed her a sheaf of photos. Maria flicked through them. Her brow knitted and her lips pursed as she got further through the stack.

“But the sarcophagus is blank. No carvings, no paintings, no nothing.”

“I know. Just like the coffin. So we have no idea who’s in it.” Tom glanced at the coffin. At seven feet long and three feet wide, it was the largest coffin he’d ever seen. He hoped it would fit in the CT scanner.

“We’ll find out soon enough. Can you help me get it into the CT?”

With much huffing, puffing and swearing, Tom and Maria manoeuvred the coffin into the scanner. Maria pressed buttons on the console and the machine began to hum. She was glad the department had found the funds to buy a full scanner. She hated the old ones, scanning only a portion at a time.

“Was there anything in the chamber at all with it?” asked Maria.

“Apart from a staff, no. The walls were completely bare, too. This guy clearly mattered enough to be mummified, but it’s like they were ashamed of him, and didn’t want him going into the afterlife with everyone else.”

Tom pulled on a pair of white cotton gloves and lifted the staff out of a long case on the table. Maria whistled. Normally wood deteriorated over time, even in the largely airless environment of a tomb, but the staff looked like it had only been carved yesterday. A hunk of black rock, the size of an egg and polished to a smooth finish, nestled between the two prongs at the top of the staff.

“What kind of wood is that?” asked Maria.

“No idea. We’re going to submit it for testing. Sasha thought the rock was obsidian but I’m not so sure. It’s the wrong area for obsidian.”

The machine beeped to announce it was ready to go.

“Right, let’s see who we have.” Maria pressed another button and the coffin slid into the scanner. Tom moved closer to see the screen.

“Bloody hell,” he murmured.

The screen displayed a tall figure, male by its size and proportions, and clearly well-built in his day. Maria imagined a seven foot tall Henry Cavill.

“Hang on...do you see anything strange or am I imagining things?” asked Tom. He pointed at the legs.

“His feet...they’re incredibly misshapen. You can hardly tell they’re feet at all. I wonder if it was a birth defect of some kind? Perhaps he was a genetic mutation. That would certainly explain his height...and possibly why he needed the staff,” mused Maria.

“And look here,” said Tom, pointing further up.

“Are those stumps on his shoulders? I’ve seen them at the base of the spine when individuals have had vestigial tails, but never on the shoulders.”

“The tomb was for a prince, so maybe this side chamber was for another member of the royal family, but one they weren’t proud of. Look at his face – the poor guy has a deformed skull along his hairline.” Tom pointed out two jagged stumps about three inches up his forehead from his eye sockets.

“Poor guy. I just wish they’d put his name on the coffin so we can return him to his rightful place in history.”

Tom sneezed, and the staff fell from his hand. It clattered against the floor, and Maria gasped to see sparks between the tiles and the black egg-shaped rock. Tom bent to pick up the staff. The lights dimmed, and the computer screens crackled. Her own machine displayed an unwelcome blue screen. She moved away from the scanner to read the error message but Tom caught her arm.

“Look,” he whispered. He gestured at the screen.

The lips of the figure curved upwards, and sparks glittered in the depths of the sockets. Maria’s mouth dropped open. She looked from the screen to the scanner.

A thump, of a fist against wood, came from inside the coffin.

Friday Flash - Waking Up

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Dry lips moved without words inside dusty bandages. Empty eye sockets stared into the suffocating darkness of millennia. Voices echoed in the world beyond, voices strange and unfamiliar. Rotting ears strained to hear, and a lost mind struggled to understand. Ragged nails tore through ancient wrappings. Fingers more like talons scraped against thick painted wood. A panicked corpse thrashed against imprisonment.

The tourists moved away to another part of the museum, taking their cameras and guidebooks towards ancient Rome. A figure stepped forward from the shadow of Anubis. White hands pressed against the cold glass. Hungry eyes looked down at the sarcophagus, reading the story spelled out in hieroglyphs. Blackened lips curved in a smile to see the turmoil inside the case.

"Soon, my pretty, soon."

The necromancer turned away.

Friday Flash - No Flash

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Bridget Ledersmark made her way through the group from the coach trip. The tourists clustered in the entrance to the exhibition. They clutched pamphlets detailing the history of the ancient Egyptian treasures on display. The attendant nodded to her - she'd already run through the rules with the group. No eating or drinking, no running, no re-entry, no touching the exhibits, and no flash photography. Bridget grimaced.

I'd be amazed if any of this lot knew how to take photos without the flash on those fancy cameras of theirs, she thought. They spend all that money and leave them on automatic.

The tourists jostled one another into the exhibition. Bridget followed, smiling at their enthusiasm for fragments of dirty wood or tattered scraps of yellowed papyrus. An elderly woman engaged her in conversation about the faded sarcophagus in room 3. Bridget was amazed to discover Mrs Brown was a former academic, specialising in the Book of the Dead. They stood discussing the nobleman quietly decomposing in the display case.

The other tourists reached room 6. Various trinkets and broken pieces of pottery sat in the cases around the room, accompanied by photographs of the archaeologist that discovered them. A single display case occupied the end of the room. In it, the blackened remains of a priest leaned against an iron bar holding him upright. Fragments of cloth clung to the dark skin, and empty sockets stared out at the gawping tourists. A single crack ran the length of the case from the floor to the top.

"Mummy! Daddy! Look, a mummy!" exclaimed a blond child.

He tugged on his father's sleeve, pointing at the mummy. His mother knelt on the floor beside him, reading out the description from the information board. According to the museum's curators, the priest's remains were discovered in 1937, and he had toured museums ever since. The blond boy stared up at the dead priest in amazement.

A brand new Canon 550D hung around his father's neck. He flicked the camera on, ignoring the settings for aperture, white balance and ISO. Leslie Kinnock didn't even know what ISO meant, but he knew the 550D was an 18 mega-pixel beauty with several automatic shooting modes. A blue-haired girl stood near the case, snapping the mummy with an old manual camera. Leslie found its click and the whirr irritating. He smirked to think her film would be ruined.

Why, she's not even using a flash! he thought.

The blue-haired girl noticed him waiting and stepped aside to allow him to take his shot. He popped up the on-board flash. The girl opened her mouth to speak as he pressed the shutter button. The flash lit up the glass, the reflected white light filling his viewfinder.

"No!" shouted Bridget, entering room 6 with Mrs Brown.

Leslie turned to look at her. Bridget wore an expression halfway between fury and fear. The sound of breaking glass caught his attention before he could review his image. Twenty pairs of eyes swivelled towards him. A dried hand snaked out of a jagged hole in the case behind him. The blond boy screamed as blackened fingers fastened around the 550D. The mummy jerked its arm and Leslie lurched forwards, crashing into the case. The glass exploded. Leslie fell to the floor, his camera still gripped by the dead priest.

The tourists stared, frozen to the spot. The mummy heaved on the camera. The strap snapped, flapping across Leslie's chest. The mummy closed its fist, crushing in the camera into shards of plastic and glass. It opened its fist, dumping the remains of the 550D onto the floor. It bent towards Leslie and, after drawing fresh air across 4000 year old vocal chords, rasped in his ear.

"No flash photography!"

Bridget and Mrs Brown picked their way through the room. Mrs Brown helped the mummy back into his shattered case, while Bridget helped Leslie to his feet. She glared at the dead priest. He would end up costing them a fortune in insurance claims.

* * *

This flash was inspired by all of those people who insist on taking expensive cameras to museums, and then using the flash to photograph things in glass cases. I consider these people to be complete tools. So yes, that IS my photo accompanying the story and no, I didn't use the flash. A longer shutter speed and a wider aperture will do the hard work for you.