Baksheeshed

“There are times in your life when you have to face your own mortality and question what you’ve been taught to believe in.”

“And?”

“And ask yourself if it’s the only truth. He needs his name to be restored, unknown mummy 4233 is a man called Psusennes-Amun, a beloved husband and father. Could you do that, give him back his name?”

The curator sighed and shook his head.

“I can suggest it, but without proof, I doubt they’ll take any notice of me. So all right, what did you do in that ten minutes the camera didn’t record?”

“I didn’t do anything, they came back for their soul.”

“Who did?”

“My shabtis. At least there’ll be one happy ending for this tragic room and maybe one day, if man ever realises what he’s done here, maybe they’ll all get to go back to their afterlives.”

“Look love, I don’t know what you’re on but…” Jessie slowly reached out and took the man’s hand, then closed her eyes and turned round to face the room. When she opened them a few seconds later, he turned as white as a freshly bleached sheet and staggered back against the wall in a way similar to how she’d originally done. He jerked his hand free and shook it, as if to make sure it was still his own. “Jesus on a pogo stick!” He yelped, but the vision was already fading from his eyes and becoming lost.

“Don’t you see? We took them years ago, either just plain stole them or did it in the name of knowledge and science, but we know nothing and now they’re lost souls, cursed to stay with their earthly remains until their shabti guardians can find them and return them to the afterlife.”

“Jesus, oh Jesus!”

“Psusennes-Amun’s lucky, his guardians found him and now I can take them all back home, but these, all these lost, sad souls, they’ll have to wait behind until their time comes. Maybe it won’t, maybe they’ll never find peace again, I don’t know, I can only do what I can. I’m sorry if my shabtis mucked up your camera and I’m sorry I scared you, I didn’t mean it that way.”

“So many!”

“Don’t forget his name, Psusennes-Amun.” Jessie turned and left the trembling curator to pull himself together and as he watched her go, he did just that, while keeping one eye on the mummy room that had inexplicably returned to normal. He crept to the chair he’d sat her down on earlier and stared into the otherwise empty room.

“So many.” He sighed again, his outlook on life and death changed forever.

Back in Victoria coach station, Jessie sat hugging her backpack tightly. She’d completely lost the return journey and if she’d been asked, could no more have explained how she’d got from the museum to the coach station than she could’ve explained the theory of relativity to a gerbil. The gods, exhausted by their magic in the mummy room, non the less climbed up the inside of the bag to tell her off about what she’d just done. It wasn’t as foolhardy as it seemed though, there were others, street dwellers under the influence of whatever liquid escape they could afford who were also seemingly talking to themselves and so with them as cover, no one gave her a second look.