HP Lovecraft's Magazine of Horror - Weird Tales

A
Hatshepsut Temple. Then back to your ship. You stay on a
ship? Right? All that for seventy.”
“Seventy pounds! I won’t give you more than thirty.”
“Thirty dollars. But no Hatshepsut.”
“Who said anything about dollars? Egyptian pounds.”
The man protested. Thirty pounds was nothing, wasn’t
even gas money to cross this bridge. But he took her.
Grumbling all the way, he took her. She smiled as she sat in the
back seat. In her business, she had a reputation for being a keen
negotiator.
She intentionally got out of the cab before paying him. He
cursed the three red bills and drove away quickly. She asked
where King Tut’s tomb was. There were never any signs in
Egypt. A man pointed way off in the distance to a rim of cliffs.
She thought he hadn’t understood. But she was the one who
was wrong. She was at the Valley of the Queens.
The women were not buried anywhere near their husbands.
The women were given smaller and less spectacular
tombs, on the far side of the Theban Hills from the marvels
which Merril had intended to see.
SHE can’t afford to get upset. Her anger only makes her hotter.
She forces herself to take deep breaths. She will focus on
what she can do. She will not fight battles she can’t win. That
is how she has built her success.
THE postcard of the Manhattan skyline had been purchased at
JFK airport. Merril had not wanted Karla to buy it, since leaving
the gate necessitated another agonizing wait to pass through
airport security. But Karla insisted. The writing was in purple
ink, large loopy letters decorated with hearts and flowers and
smiles.
Dear Kyle, I miss you sooooo much. I didn’t eat the chocolate truffle
they gave me on the jet. I’m saving everything for you. My aunt’s kind of
weird. She keeps talking about maximizing my potential. Whatever that
means. All I know, is I love you. Love, Karla. XOXOX!!!!!!
Merril grabs her pen and writes.
Maximizing potential means making the most of opportunities! Not
wasting chances by going to Banana Island!
Her handwriting is much smaller than Karla’s, the black
ink intricately woven between the lines like the threads of a carpet.
But here I am. Nothing to do but wait. I guess I’ll be as
famous as Howard Carter for discovering this tomb. No gold
here, though, like in King Tut’s. Just broken bits of pots and
probably bones somewhere. That is the purpose of the place.
But I refuse to add mine to the collection.
!t the Antiquities Museum in Cairo, all the other tourists
crowded around the golden treasures which had been
removed from King Tut’s tomb. But Mido took his
group into another nearby room, which contained no statues
and no gold, just glass cases displaying broken bits of rock.
“Why have you brought us in here?” Merril said.
As usual, Mido preferred to address his remarks to Karla
whose wide eyes appeared perpetually in admiration even when
she was not paying the slightest bit of attention. “This is the
ostraca. You may think the pyramids are nothing but a pile of
rocks. But this is not true. Each giant block had to be carved to
fit together perfectly. To make the angles which reach to the
sky. These bits of stone are what’s left of that carving. The
ostraca prove that space aliens did not make the pyramids with
super technology. My ancestors chipped away each fragment.
Then on these shards, the artisans practiced their hieroglyphics.
They left their own names here on the ostraca.”
“They should have found bigger pieces to write on,”
Merril said, making yet another attempt to expand her niece’s
ambitions.
Mido said, “They wrote on what they had. And left a mark
which outlasts the centuries.”
Dear Kyle: This is a picture of Hatshepsut. She was like the only woman
to be a pharo. That’s why she has a beard. Mido calls my aunt
Hatshepsut. She hates it, but it suits her, so we all do, when she can’t hear
us. I’ve been praying to love her in Christ’s name. But it’s a real test of my
soul. You are so easy to love. Love, Karla
I NEVER asked to be loved. Just respected. I can’t help how
I am. And Hatshepsut couldn’t help that her husband died
before she could produce a male heir. Why should she have
been deprived of power just because another wife had given
birth to a son? Let her rule, if she can. Only the boy grows up,
hating her. And once she’s dead, he orders all her statues
defaced and her name scratched out, unwritten, and everything
she tried to do undone.
“SHUKRAN!” Her mouth is very dry from shouting. The
guidebook does not list the Arabic word for help. So she calls
out “Shukran!” Thanking somebody, anybody, if they might
H . P . L O V E C R A F T ’S M A G A Z IN E O F H O R R O R 55