The Curse Of The Wrappings

Written in response to Friday Faithfuls:
“King Tut”. Here’s my take.

This week at Friday Faithfuls, Jim Adams is discussing ancient Egypt, primarily the tomb of King Tutankhamun. I hope you will all pop over and check out Jim’s fabulous post; it is educational, interesting, and very well done. Jim has asked us to respond by writing about anything to do with ancient Egypt or whatever we think fits the theme. I have it on good authority that Jim is hoping someone will write a story about a cursed mummy’s tomb. Well, Jim …. hold on to your canopic jar! Here’s a story for you.

𓀪  𓁀  𓀬  𓁀  𓀬  𓁀  𓀪

The Curse of the Wrappings

The smell reached them before the light did …. something between a tannery and a church, animal fat and dried herbs, and underneath it all, a sweetness so deep and wrong that it coated the back of their throats like a finger pressing from the inside.

The chamber should not have existed. Every ground-penetrating scan had shown nothing behind the false wall but compacted limestone. Yet, here it was …. a room the tomb had been hiding as though waiting to be found by something other than computers.

The black granite sarcophagus sat in the center. It was ordinary with no inscription and the lid had been sealed with a dark resin. The site foreman, Omar, identified the smell beneath the pitch, then refused to say what it was. He moved to the doorway and did not come back in.

The canopic jars in the wall niches were sealed and facing the wrong way …. outward, as though watching the sarcophagus …. all with identical faces – blank eyes, mouths stretched in a grimace. In every photograph taken of the jars, the angle of the mouths appeared slightly different; the photographers assumed it was the light.

Inside the sarcophagus, unknown and unseen by anyone, the linen wrappings across the nose and mouth did not lay flat. They rose and fell very slowly, almost imperceptibly. But make no mistake …. they rose. And they fell.

On the inner face of the sarcophagus lid, invisible from the outside, scratched by a hand working in absolute darkness, were demotic words that translated as:

THE WRAPPINGS HAVE BEEN COUNTING
WHEN THE NUMBER IT SEEKS IS REACHED IT WILL REMEMBER
WE DO NOT KNOW THE NUMBER
WE ONLY KNOW THE WRAPPINGS ARE PATIENT
FORGIVE US FOR WHAT THEY WILL DO TO YOU
WE TRIED
WE FAILED

They found this inscription on the third day. By then, one of the laborers was already standing motionless in the outer passage, facing the wall, hands at his side. When touched, he turned. His face held no expression recognizable as human feeling, simply vacant, as though something had looked out through his eyes once and left a door open.

After being brought to the hospital, the laborer whispered only one thing before falling forever silent: “It counted us. It counted all of us.”

Omar, the site foreman, went home to Luxor. He slept well for one night. On the second night, he woke to the familiar smell of burnt sweetness. And on his bedroom floor lay a single strip of dark linen, loosely coiled, still faintly warm. He understood then that the thing in the sarcophagus had found its number …. not years, not heartbeats, but something stranger: moments of being seen. He had witnessed it, briefly, through a doorway in the tomb before crossing himself and turning away.

That glance, it turned out, had been enough.

From the hallway outside Omar’s bedroom came slow, deliberate footsteps …. the footsteps of something that had been bound for a very long time and was now relearning how to walk.

Omar sat on his bed unable to move as the deep, wrong sweetness, filled the room. He watched, eyes wide with fear, as the door handle began to turn very slowly. And with that fear, the unmistakable sensation that had first struck him in that hidden chamber: the sense of being recognized.

It had counted him then. It had been patient.

Now the time for being patient was over.

𓀪  𓁀  𓀬  𓁀  𓀬  𓁀  𓀪

This is “Powerslave” by Iron Maiden

King Tut

Thanks to Jim Adams for keeping us entertained, aware and on the ball. And thanks to you all for stopping by for a look and a listen.

That’s all she wrote, kids. See you on the flip side. 😎


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