Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome Weirdos. I'm Darren Marler and this is Weird Darkness.
Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore,
the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and
unexplained coming up in this episode. As we head into
(00:30):
a new year, I thought it'd be appropriate to make
something old new again. It's a story I shared many
years ago in the podcast, and I really enjoyed narrating it.
Plus it's very appropriate for the day. The story was
written in eighteen eighty by Grant Allen. It's titled My
New Year's Eve among the Mummies. If you're new here,
(00:52):
welcome to the show. And if you're already a member
of this weirdo family, please take a moment and invite
someone else to listen. And while you're listening, be sure
to check out Weirddarkness dot com for merchandise, my newsletter,
to connect with me on social media and more. Now,
bult your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights,
and come with me into the Weird Darkness. Belgravia, eighteen
(01:34):
eighty I've been a wanderer and a vagabond on the
face of the Earth for a good many years now,
and I have certainly had some odd adventures in my time,
but I can assure you I never spent twenty four
queerer hours than those which I passed some twelve months
since in the great unopened Pyramid of Abu Yillah. The
(01:59):
way I got there was itself a very strange one.
I had come to Egypt for a winter tour with
the fitzsimkinses, to whose daughter Aditha I was at that
precise moment engaged. You'll probably remember that old Fitzsimkins belonged
originally to the wealthy firm of Simkinson and Stokoe, worshipful
(02:21):
vint Nurse. But when the senior partner retired from the
business and got his knighthood, the College of Harolds opportunely
discovered that his ancestors had changed their fine Old Norman
name for its English equivalent sometime about the reign of
King Richard I, and they immediately authorized the old gentleman
(02:42):
to resume the patronymic and the armorial bearings of his
distinguished forefathers. It's really quite astonishing how often these curious
coincidences crop up at the College of Harold's. Of course,
it was such a great catch for a landless and
briefless barrister like myself, dependent on a small fortune in
(03:02):
South American securities and my precarious earnings as a writer
of burlesque to secure such a valuable prospective property as
Aditha Fitzsimkins. To be sure, the girl was undeniably plain,
but I have known plainer girls than she was, whom
forty thou pounds converted into my ladies. And if Aditha
(03:25):
hadn't really fallen over head and ears in love with me,
I suppose old Fitzsimkins would never have consented to such
a match as it was. However, we had flirted so
openly and so desperately during the Scarborough season that it
would have been difficult for Sir Peter to break it off,
And so I had come to Egypt on a tour
(03:46):
of insurance to secure my prize, following in the wake
of my future mother in law, whose lungs were supposed
to require a genial climate, though in my private opinion
they were really as creditable a pair of pulmonary appendages
as ever drew breath. Nevertheless, the course of true love
did not run so smoothly as might have been expected,
(04:08):
Adita found me less ardent than a devoted squire should be,
and on the very last night of the old year,
she got up a regulation lover's quarrel, because I had
sneaked away from the boat that afternoon, under the guidance
of our Dragamonk, to witness the seductive performances of some
fair guazie the dancing girls of a neighboring town. How
(04:32):
she found it out, Heaven only knows, for I gave
that rascal Dmitri five piastres to hold his tongue. But
she did find it out somehow, and chose to regard
it as an offense of the first magnitude, a mortal sin,
only to be expiated by three days of penance and humiliation.
(04:52):
I went to bed that night in my hammock on
deck with feelings far from satisfactory. We were moored against
the Bankla, the most pastiferous hole between the cataracts and
the delta. Mosquitoes were worse than the ordinary mosquitoes of Egypt,
and that is saying a great deal. The heat was
oppressive even at night, and the malaria from the lotus
(05:16):
beds rose like a palpable mist before my eyes. Above all,
I was getting doubtful whether a death of Fitzsimpkins might not,
after all, slip between my fingers. I felt wretched and feverish,
and yet I had delightful, interlusive recollections in between of
that lovely little Yusaia who danced that exquisite, marvelous, entrancing,
(05:41):
delicious and awfully oriental dance that I saw in the afternoon.
By jove, she was a beautiful creature, eyes like two
full moons, hair like Milton's pensoso, movements like a poem
of swineburns set to action. If Aditha was only a
(06:01):
faint picture of that girl, now upon my word, I
was falling in love with a Josiah. Then the mosquitoes
came again. Buzz buzz buzz. I make a lunge at
the loudest and biggest sort of prima Donna in their
infernal opera. I kill the prima Donna, but ten more
(06:24):
shrill performers come in its place. The frogs croak dismally,
and the reedy shallows. The night grows hotter and hotter.
Still at last I can take it no longer. I
rise up, dress myself lightly, and jump ashore to find
some way of passing the time. Yonder across the flat
(06:45):
lies the great unopened pyramid of Abu Yila. We're going
tomorrow to climb to the top, but I will make
a turn to reconnoiter in that direction. Now I walk
across the moonlit fields, my soul still divide between Aditha
and the Josiah, and approach the solemn mass of huge
(07:06):
antiquated granite blocks, standing out so grimly against the pale horizon.
I feel half awake, half asleep, and all together feverish.
But I poked about the base in an aimless sort
of way, with a vague idea that I may perhaps
discover my chance the secret of its sealed entrance, which
(07:27):
has ere now baffled so many pertinacious explorers and learned Egyptologists.
As I walk along the base, I remember old Herodotus's story,
like a page from the Arabian Nights, of how King
Rampsanidas built himself a treasury wherein one stone turned on
a pivot like a door, and how the builder availed
(07:49):
himself of this his cunning device to steal gold from
the king's storehouse suppose the entrance to the unopened pyramid
should be such a door. It would be curious if
I should just chance to light upon the very spot
I stood in the broad moonlight, near the northeast angle
of the Great Pile, but the twelfth stone from the corner.
(08:12):
A random fancy struck me that I might turn this
stone by pushing it inward on the left side. I
leant against it with all my weight and tried to
move it on the imaginary pivot. Did it give way
a fraction of an inch? No, it must have been
mere fancy. Let me try again. Surely it is yielding,
(08:34):
gracious Osiris, it has moved an inch or more. My
heart beats fast, either with fever or excitement, and I
try a third time. The rust of centuries on the
pivot wears slowly off, and the stone turned ponderously round,
giving access to a low, dark passage. It must have
(08:56):
been madness which led me to enter the forgotten corridor alone,
without torch or match at that hour of the evening.
But at any rate I entered. The passage was tall
enough for a man to walk erect, and I could feel,
as I groped slowly along that the wall was composed
of smooth, polished granite, while the floor sloped away downward
(09:21):
with a slight but regular descent. I walked with trembling
heart and faltering feet for some forty or fifty yards
down the mysterious vestibule, and then I felt myself brought
suddenly to a standstill by a block of stone placed
right across the pathway. I had nearly enough for one evening,
(09:43):
and I was preparing to return to the boat agog
with my new discovery, when my attention was suddenly arrested
by an incredible, a perfectly miraculous fact. The block of
stone which barred the passage was faintly visible as a
square means of a struggling belt of light streaming through
the seams. There must be a lamp or other flame
(10:06):
burning within. What if this were a door like the
outer one, leading into a chamber, perhaps inhabited by some
dangerous band of outcasts. The light was a sure evidence
of human occupation, And yet the outer door swung rustily
on its pivot, as though it had never been opened
for ages. I paused a moment in fear before I
(10:30):
ventured to try the stone, and then urged on once more,
by some insane impulse, I turned the massive block with
all my might to the left. It gave way slowly
like its neighbor, and finally opened into the central hall. Never,
as long as I live, shall I forget the ecstasy
(10:52):
of terror, astonishment, and blank dismay which seized upon me
when I stepped into that seemingly panted chamber. A blaze
of light first burst upon my eyes from jets of
gas arranged in regular rows, tier above tier, upon the
columns and walls of the vast apartment. Huge pillars, richly
(11:14):
painted with red, yellow, blue, and green decorations, stretched in
endless succession down the dazzling aisles. A floor of polished
cyanite reflected the splendor of the lamps, and afforded a
base for red granite sphinxes, and dark purple images and
porfyery of the cat faced goddess pasted, whose form I
(11:36):
knew so well at the Louver in the British Museum.
But I had no eyes for any of these lesser marvels,
being wholly absorbed in the greatest marvel of all. For
there in the Royal State, and with mitred head, a
living Egyptian king surrounded by his cuifered court, was banqueting
(11:58):
in the flesh upon a real throne before a table
laden with Memphian delicacies. I stood transfixed with awe and amazement,
my tongue and my feet alike forgetting their office, and
my brain whirling round and round, as I remembered it
used to whirl when my health broke down utterly at Cambridge.
(12:18):
After the classical tripos, I gazed fixedly at the strange
picture before me, taking in all its details in a
confused way, yet quite incapable of understanding or realizing any
part of its true import. I saw the king in
the center of the hall, raised on a throne of
granite inlaid with gold and ivory, his head crowned with
(12:42):
the peaked cap of ramses, and his curled hair flowing
down his shoulders in a set and formal friz. I
saw priests and warriors on either side, dressed in the
costumes which I had often carefully noted in our great collections,
while bronze skinned made with light garments round their waists
and limbs displayed in graceful Picturesqueness waited upon them, half nude,
(13:07):
as in the wall paintings which we had lately examined
At Karnak and Syine. I saw the ladies, clothed from
head to toe in dyed linen garments, sitting apart in
the background, banqueting by themselves at a separate table, while
dancing girls like older representatives of my Yesternoon friends, the jasuis,
(13:29):
tumbled before them in strange attitudes to the music of
four stringed harps and long straight pipes. In short, I beheld,
as in a dream, the whole drama of everyday Egyptian
royal life playing itself out anew under my eyes, in
its real original properties and personages. Gradually, as I looked,
(13:52):
I became aware that my hosts were no less surprised
at the appearance of their anachronistic guest than was the
guest himself, that the strange living panorama which met his eyes.
In a moment, music and dancing ceased, the banquet paused
in its course, and the King and his nobles stood
up in undisguised astonishment to survey the strange intruder. Some
(14:17):
minutes passed before anyone moved forward on either side. At last,
a young girl of royal appearance yet strangely resembling the
Jasiah of Abu Yilah and recalling in part the laughing
maiden in the foreground of mister Long's great canvass at
the previous academy. Stepped out before the throng. May I
(14:40):
ask you, she said, in ancient Egyptian, who you are
and why you come hither to disturb us? I was
never aware before that I spoke or understood the language
of hieroglyphics. Yet I found I had not the slightest
difficulty in comprehending or answering her question. To say the truth,
(15:01):
Ancient Egyptian, though an extremely tough tongue to decipher, in
its written form, becomes as easy as love making when
spoken by a pair of lips like that Puronic princesses.
It really was very much the same as English, pronounced
in a rapid and somewhat indefinite whisper, and with all
the vowels left out. I beg ten thousand pardons for
(15:24):
my intrusion, I answered, apologetically. But I did not know
that this pyramid was inhabited, or I should not have
entered your residence so rudely. As for the points you
wish to know I am an English tourist, and you
will find my name upon this card, saying which I
handed her one from the case which I had fortunately
put into my pocket with conciliatory politeness. The princess examined
(15:48):
it closely, but evidently did not understand its import In return,
I continued, may I ask you in what august presence
I now find myself by accident? The court official stood
forth from the throng and answered, in a set heraldic tone,
in the presence of the illustrious monarch brother of the
(16:09):
son Thaumis, the twenty seventh king of the eighteenth dynasty.
Salute the Lord of the world, put in another official
in the same regulation, Drone I bowed low to his
majesty and stepped out into the hall. Apparently my obeisance
did not come up to Egyptian standards of courtesy, for
(16:32):
a suppressed titter broke audibly from the ranks of bronze
skinned waiting women. But the King graciously smiled at my attempt, and,
turning to the nearest nobleman, observed in a voice of
great sweetness and self contained majesty, this stranger Ambos is
certainly a very curious person. His appearance does not at
(16:53):
all resemble that of an Ethiopian or other savage, nor
does he look like the pale faced sailors who come
to us from the Achaean land beyond the sea. His features,
to be sure, are not very different from theirs, but
his extraordinary and singularly inartistic dress shows him to belong
to some other barbaric race. I glanced down at my
(17:17):
waistcoat and saw that I was wearing my tourist's checked
suit of gray and mud color, with which a bond
street tailor had supplied me just before leaving town, as
the latest thing out in fancy tweeds. Evidently, these Egyptians
must have a very curious standard of taste not to
admire our pretty and graceful style of male attire. If
(17:39):
the dust between your Majesty's feet may venture upon a
suggestion put in the officer whom the King had addressed,
I would hint that this young man is probably a
stray visitor from the utterly uncivilized lands of the north.
The headgear which he carries in his hand obviously betrays
an Arctic habitat. I had instinctively taken off my round
(18:02):
felt hat in the first moment of surprise, when I
found myself in the midst of this strange throng, and
I was standing now in a somewhat embarrassed posture, holding
it awkwardly before me like a shield to protect my chest.
Let the stranger cover himself, said the King. Barbarian intruder,
(18:22):
cover yourself, cried the herald. I noticed throughout that the
King never directly addressed anybody save the higher officials around him.
I put on my hat as desired, a most uncomfortable
and silly form of tiara, indeed, said the great Thomies.
Very unlike your noble and auspiring MIGHTA lion of Egypt,
(18:45):
answered Ambos. Ask the stranger his name, The king continued,
It was useless to offer another card, so I mentioned
it in a clear voice, an untooth and almost unpronounced
sible designation, truly, commented his majesty to the Grand Chamberlain
beside him. These savages speak strange languages, widely different from
(19:10):
the flowing tongue of Memnon and Cissostres. The chamberlain bowed
his assent with three low genuflections. I began to feel
a little abashed at these personal remarks, and I almost think,
though I shouldn't like it to be mentioned in the temple,
that a blush rose to my cheek. The beautiful princess,
(19:32):
who had been standing near me meanwhile, in an attitude
of statuesque repose, now appeared anxious to change the current
of the conversation. Dear father, she said, with a respectful inclination. Surely,
the stranger barbarian, though he be, cannot relish such pointed
allusions to his person and costume. We must let him
(19:54):
feel the grace and delicacy of Egyptian refinement. Then he
may perhaps carry back with him some faint echo of
its cultured beauty to his northern wilds. Nonsense. Atassu replied
Thomi's the twenty seventh Testily, savages have no feelings, and
they are as incapable of appreciating Egyptian sensibility as the
(20:18):
chattering crow is incapable of attaining the dignified reserve of
the sacred crocodile. Your Majesty is mistaken, I said, recovering
my self possession gradually and realizing my position as a
freeborn Englishman before the court of a foreign despot. Though
I must allow that I felt rather less confident than usual,
(20:40):
owning to the fact that we were not represented in
a pyramid by a British consul. I am an English tourist,
a visitor from a modern land whose civilization far surpasses
the rude culture of early Egypt, and I am accustomed
to respectful treatment from all other nationalities as becomes a
citizen of the first name power in the world. My
(21:02):
answer created a profound impression. He has spoken to the
brother of the Sun, cried Ombos in evident perturbation. He
must be of the blood royal in his own tribe,
or he would never have dared to do so otherwise,
added a person whose dress I recognized as that of
a priest. He must be offered up in expiation to
(21:25):
Amunrah immediately. As a rule, I am a decent, truthful person,
But under these alarming circumstances, I ventured to tell a
slight fib with an air of nonchalant boldness. I am
a younger brother of our reigning king, I said, without
a moment's hesitation, for there was nobody present to gainsay me,
(21:48):
and I tried to salve my conscience by reflecting that
at any rate, I was only claiming continguity with an
imaginary personage in that case, said King Tomy's, with more
geniality in his tone. There can be no impropriety in
my addressing you personally. Will you take a place at
our table next to myself, and we can converse together
(22:11):
without interrupting a banquet which must be brief enough in
any circumstances. Hatasu, my dear, you may seat yourself next
to the barbarian prince. I felt a visible swelling to
the proper dimensions of a royal highness as I sat
down by the King's right hand. The nobles resumed their places.
(22:32):
The bronze skinned waitresses left off, standing like soldiers in
a row and staring straight at my humble self. The
goblets went round once more, and a comely maid soon
brought the meat, bread, fruits, and date wine. All this
time I was naturally burning with curiosity to inquire who
(22:52):
my strange host might be and how they had preserved
their existence for so many centuries in this undiscovered hall.
But I was obliged to wait until I had satisfied
his Majesty of my own nationality. The means by which
I had entered the pyramid, the general state of affairs
throughout the world at the present moment, and fifty thousand
(23:13):
other matters of a similar sort. Tholmis utterly refused to
believe my reiterated assertion that our existing civilization was far
superior to the Egyptian because he said, I see from
your dress that your nation is utterly devoid of taste
or invention. But he listened with great interest to my
(23:34):
account of modern society, the steam engine, the permissive prohibitory bill,
the telegraph, the House of commons, own rule, and other
blessings of our advanced era, as well as to a
brief resume of European history, from the rise of the
Greek culture to the Russo Turkish War. At last, misquestions
were nearly exhausted, and I got a chance of making
(23:56):
a few counter inquiries on my own account. And now,
I said, turning to the charming Hatasu, whom I thought
a more pleasing informant than her august Papa, I should
like to know who you are. What don't you know,
she cried, with unaffected surprise. Why we are mummies. She
(24:20):
made this astonishing statement with just the same quiet unconsciousness
as if she had said, we're French or we're Americans.
I glanced round the walls and observed behind the columns
what I had not noticed till then, a large number
of empty mummy cases, with their lids placed carelessly by
(24:41):
their sides. But what are you doing here? I asked,
in a bewildered way. Is it possible, said Tatasu, that
you don't really know the object of embalming, though your
manners show you to be an agreeable and well bred
young man, you must excuse my saying that you are
shockingly ignorant. We are made into mummies in order to
(25:04):
preserve our immortality. Once in every thousand years, we wake
up for twenty four hours, recover our flesh and blood,
and banquet once more upon the mummied dishes and other
good things laid by for us in the pyramid. Today
is the first day of a millennium, and so we
have waked up for the sixth time since we were
(25:25):
first embalmed, the sixth time, I inquired incredulously. Then you
must have been dead six thousand years exactly so. But
the world has not yet existed so long, I cried,
in a fervor of orthodox horror. Excuse me, Barbarian prince,
(25:46):
this is the first day of the three hundred and
twenty seven thousand millennium. My orthodoxy received a severe shock. However,
I have been accustomed to geological calculations and was somewhat
inca to accept the antiquity of man, so I swallowed
the statement without an or ado. Besides, if such a
(26:07):
charming girl as Atassu had asked me to turn mohammedan
or to worship ostereies, I believe I should incontinently have
done so. You wake up only for a single day
and night, then, I said, only for a single day
and night. After that we go to sleep for another millennium,
unless you are meanwhile burned as fuel on the Cairo railway,
(26:30):
I added mentally. But how I continued aloud, do you
get these lights? The pyramid is built above a spring
of inflammable gas. We have a reservoir in one of
the side chambers in which it collects during the thousand years.
As soon as we awake, we turn it on at
once from the tap and light it with a lucifer match.
(26:53):
Upon my word, I interposed, I had no notion you
ancient Egyptians were acquainted with the use of matches. Very
likely not. There are more things in heaven and earth,
sophrines that are dreamt of in your philosophy, as the
Bard of Philea puts it. Further inquiries brought out all
the secrets of that strange tomb house, and kept me
(27:15):
fully interested till the close of the banquet. Then the
chief priest solemnly rose offered a small fragment of meat
to a deified crocodile, who sat in a meditative manner
by the side of his deserted mummy case, and declared
the feast concluded for the night. All rose from their places,
wandered away into the long corridors or side aisles, and
(27:37):
formed little groups of talkers under the brilliant gas lamps.
For my part, I strolled off with a Tasu down
the least illuminated of the colonnades and took my seat
beside a marble fountain, where several fish gods of great
sanctity Hatasu assured me were disporting themselves in a pro
fiery basin. How long we sat there I cannot tell,
(27:59):
but I know I know that we talked a good
deal about fish and gods, and Egyptian habits, and Egyptian philosophy,
and above all Egyptian love making. The last named subject
we found very interesting, and when once we got pully
started upon it, no diversion afterwards occurred to break the
even tenor of the conversation. Natasu was a lovely figure, tall,
(28:23):
queenly with smooth, dark arms and neck of polished bronze,
her big black eyes full of tenderness, and her long
hair bound up into a bright Egyptian headdress that harmonized
to atone with her complexion and her robe. The more
we talked, the more desperately did I fall in love,
and the more utterly oblivious that I become of my
(28:46):
duty to Aditha Fitzsimpkins, the mere ugly daughter of a
rich and vulgar brand new knight, forsooth to show off
her airs before me, when here was a princess of
the blood Royal of Egypt, obviously sensible to the tensions
which I was paying her, and not unwilling to receive
them with a koi and modest grace. Well, I went
(29:07):
on saying pretty things to Atasu, and Titasu went on
depreciating them in a pretty little way, as who should
say I don't mean what I pretend to mean one bits,
until at last I may confess that we were both
evidently as far gone in the disease of the heart
called love as it is possible for two young people
on first acquaintance to become. Therefore, when Hatasu pulled forth
(29:31):
her watch, another piece of mechanism with which antiquaries used
never to credit the Egyptian people, and declared that she
had only three more hours to live at least for
the next thousand years, I fairly broke down, took out
my handkerchief, and began to sob like a child of
a five year old. Hatasu was deeply moved. Decorum forbade
(29:53):
that she should console me with too much impressment. But
she ventured to remove the handkerchief gently from my faith,
and suggested that there was yet one course open by
which we might enjoy a little more of one another's society. Suppose,
she said quietly, you were to become a mummy. You
would then wake up as we do every thousand years,
(30:16):
and after you've tried it once, you will find it
just as natural to sleep from millennium as for eight
hours of course, she added with a slight blush, during
the next three or four solar cycles, there would be
plenty of time to conclude any other arrangements you might
possibly contemplate before the occurrence of another glacial epoch. This
(30:37):
mode of regarding time was certainly novel and somewhat bewildering
to people who ordinarily reckon its lapse by weeks and months.
And I had a vague consciousness that my relations with
Aditha imposed upon me a moral necessity of returning to
the outer world instead of becoming a millennial mummy. Besides,
there was the awkward chance of being converted into fuel
(31:00):
and dissipated into space before the arrival of the next
waking day. But I took one look at a tassu
whose eyes were filling in turn with sympathetic tears. That
look decided me. I flung Aditha life and duty to
the dogs, and resolved at once to become a mummy.
(31:20):
There was no time to be lost. Only three hours
remained to us, and the process of embalming, even in
the most hasty manner, would take up fully two. We
rushed off to the chief priest, who had charge of
the particular department in question. He at once acceded to
my wishes and briefly explained the mode in which they
usually treated the corpse. That word suddenly aroused me. The corpse,
(31:46):
I cried, but I'm alive. You can't embalm me living.
We can, replied the priest. Under chloroform. Chloroform, I echoed,
growing more and more astonished. I had no idea the
Egyptians knew anything about it. Ignorant barbarian, he answered, with
a curl of the lip. You imagine yourself much wiser
(32:08):
than the teachers of the world. If you reversed in
all the wisdom of the Egyptians, you would know that
chloroform is one of our simplest and commonest anesthetics. I
put myself at once under the hands of the priest.
He brought out the chloroform and placed it beneath my nostrils.
As I lay on a soft couch under the central court,
(32:29):
Petasu held my hand in hers and watched my breathing
with an anxious eye. I saw the priest leaning over
me with a clouded file in his hand, and I
experienced a vague sensation of smelling mirror and spikenard next,
I lost myself for a few moments, and when I
again recovered my senses in a temporary break, the priest
(32:51):
was holding a small greenstone knife dabbled with blood, and
I felt that a gash had been made across my breast.
Then they applied the chlorophorm once more. I felt a
tassu give my hand a gentle squeeze. The whole panorama
faded finally from my view, and I went to sleep
for a seemingly endless time. When I awoke again, my
(33:19):
first impression led me to believe that the thousand years
were over and that I had come to life once
more to feast with a tassu Anthomi's in the pyramid
of Abu Yillah. But second thoughts, combined with closer observations
of the surroundings, convinced me that I was really lying
in a bedroom of Shepherd's hotel at Cairo. A hospital
(33:40):
nurse leant over me instead of a chief priest, and
I noticed no tokens of Adeita Fitzsimkin's presence. But when
I endeavored to make inquiries upon the subject of my whereabouts,
I was peremptorily informed that I mustn't speak as I
was only just recovering from a severe fever and might
endanger my life by talking. Some weeks later I learned
(34:02):
the sequel of my night's adventure. The Fitzsimkinses, missing me
from the boat in the morning, at first imagined that
I might have gone ashore for an early stroll, But
after breakfast time, lunchtime, and dinner time had gone past,
they began to grow alarmed and sent to look for
me in all directions. One of their scouts, happening to
pass the pyramid, noticed that one of the stones near
(34:25):
the northeast angle had been displaced so as to give
access to a dark passage hitherto unknown. Calling several of
his friends for he was afraid to venture in alone,
he passed down the corridor and through a second gateway
into the central hall. There the fella hen found me
lying on the ground, bleeding profusely from a wound on
(34:46):
the breast and in an advanced stage of malarious fever.
They brought me back to the boat, and the Fitzsimkinses
conveyed me at once to Cairo for medical attendance and
proper nursing. Aditha was a first convinced that I had
attempted to commit suicide because I could not endure having
caused her pain, and she accordingly resolved to tend me
(35:08):
with the utmost care through my illness. But she found
that my delirious remarks, besides bearing frequent reference to a
princess with whom I appeared to have been on unexpectedly
intimate terms, also related very largely to our cassis belly itself,
the dancing girls of Abuyila. Even this trial, she might
(35:28):
have borne setting down the moral degeneracy which led ME
to patronize so degrading an exhibition as a first symptom
of my approaching malady. But certain unfortunate observations, containing pointed
and by no means flattering allusions to her personal appearance,
which I contrasted, much to her disadvantage, with that of
(35:49):
the unknown princess. These, I say, were things which she
could not forgive, and she left Cairo abruptly with her
parents for the Riviera, leaving behind a stinging note in
which she denounced my perfidy and empty heartedness with all
the flowers of feminine eloquence. From that day to this
I have never seen her. When I returned to London,
(36:11):
and proposed to lay this account before the Society of Antiquaries.
All my friends dissuaded me on the grounds of its
apparent incredibility. They declare that I must have gone to
the pyramid already in a state of delirium, discovered the
entrance by accident, and sunk exhausted when I reached the
inner chamber. In answer, I would point out three facts.
(36:32):
In the first place, I undoubtedly found my way into
the unknown passage, for which the chief and I afterwards
received the gold medal of the sosai U Kavial, and
of which I retain a clear recollection, differing in no
way from my recollection of the subsequent events. In the
second place, I had in my pocket when found a
ring of a tassus, which I drew from her finger
(36:55):
just before I took the chloroform and put it into
my pocket as a keepsake. And in the third place,
I had on my breast the wound which I saw
the priest inflict with a knife of greenstone, and the
scar may be seen on the spot to the present day.
The absurd hypothesis of my medical friends that I was
wounded by falling against a sharp edge of rock, I
(37:16):
must at once reject as unworthy of a moment's consideration.
My own theory is either that the priest had not
time to complete the operation, or else that the arrival
of the Fitzsimpkins scouts frightened back the mummies to their
cases an hour or so too soon. At any rate,
there they all were ranged around the walls, undisturbed the
(37:37):
moment the Fellahin entered. Unfortunately, the truth of my account
cannot be tested for another thousand years, but as a
copy of this book will be preserved for the benefit
of posterity in the British Museum, I hereby solemnly call
upon collective humanity to try the veracity of this history
by sending a deputation of archaeologists to the pyramid of
(38:00):
Abu Yila on the last day of December two thousand,
eight hundred and seventy seven. If they do not then
find Thalmies and Hatasu feasting in the central hall exactly
as I have described, I shall willingly admit that the
story of my New Year's Eve among the mummies is
a vain hallucination, unworthy of credence at the hands of
(38:22):
the scientific world. Thanks for listening. If you'd like to show,
please share it with someone you know who loves the
paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters, or unsolved mysteries
like you do. You can email me anytime with your
(38:43):
questions or comments through the website at Weirddarkness dot com.
That's also where you can find all of my social media,
listen to free audiobooks, shop the Weird Darkness Store, and more. Plus,
if you have a true, paranormal or creepy tale to tell,
you can click on Tell your Story. The fictional story
My New Year's Eve among the Mummies was written by
Grant Allen. Weird Darkness is a production and trademark of
(39:06):
Marler House Productions. Copyright Weird Darkness. And now that we're
coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a
little light Saw ninety six, verses one through three. At
the dawn of the new year, I'm filled with hope
for what is to come, and I have thankfulness in
my heart for what is already passed. I pray that
I will keep my focus where it needs to be
(39:27):
this year, and that we all have a year filled
with joy, love and happiness. And a final thought from
Brad Paisley Tomorrow is the first blank page of a
three hundred and sixty five page book. Write a good
one on, Darren Marler. Thanks for joining me in the
weird darkness.