HP Lovecraft's Magazine of Horror - Weird Tales

she puts it in the sun. She is hoping the change in temperature
will cause condensation. It is the hottest part of the second day,
but she is still hoping. She is not praying yet.
SHE stood alone on the deck of the floating hotel, looking off
toward the setting sun. The western side which was the land of
the dead. She felt the ship insert itself into its surroundings like
a wicked thought. Off along the shore, women washed clothes
in the river. Children splashed and played in the mud.
Mido came to stand beside her. “I didn’t really mean you
couldn’t enter the dining room unless you wear Egyptian
clothes. We can’t keep you from your dinner.”
She shrugged her shoulders. She had no interest in the
Egyptian Night festivities.
He lit a cigarette. Most Egyptians smoked a great deal,
since that vice was not expressly forbidden. He offered her the
open pack. But she hadn’t come to Egypt to resume a habit she
had struggled to give up.
The ship carried them onward. The chugging of the
engines was like a pulse. The night air was soft and warm. She
was still trying to determine just what made Egyptian air feel so
lovely to the skin. “You know, I imagined myself here like this,
only with a moon.”
“The moon is over there.” He put his hand on her arm.
Together they walked to the other side of the ship. Toward the
land of the living.
Since the bank was closer on this side, she could see the
children on the shore, shouting and gesturing at the ship.
“What are they saying?” she asked.
But Mido only shook his head.
“I understand. They hate what they can’t have. Probably
the only way their mothers can explain these grand ships is
to call us infidels. They don’t want to tell their children
that they’re stuck in a poor country with no prospects and
no hope.”
Mido threw his cigarette into the Nile. “I must return to
the dining room.”
“Wait,” she said, not knowing why she wanted to keep him
with her. “Can I have that cigarette?”
He walked off, however, just barely turning back to say,
“Since you are so wealthy, you can buy your own.”
Dear Kyle, We didn’t get to see this old temple lit up in pretty colors like
it is on the card. Oh well. Tonight is Egyptian Night. We are all dressing
up in Egyptian clothes, except of course my aunt. She should give her
sorrow to the Lord, along with her baby, and let Him help her with the
burden. My costume is green trimmed with little gold bangles. I can’t wait
for you to see me in it! There’s going to be a belly dancing contest. Mido
wants me to enter but I don’t think I will although I probably would win.
love, Karla
OK. I give my sorrow to the Lord. I give Him this whole
bloody hell of a mess. I pray to Him and all the other gods
Osiris, Isis, even that cow god with the horns, whatever her
name is, I pray to her especially to DELIVER ME FROM
THIS. Oh God, deliver me from this.
* * *
BUILDING the High Dam was supposed to accomplish
much for the Egyptian people. No longer would they be at the
mercy of the whims of the Nile. The flow of water could be
controlled. And from that control would come irrigation,
hydroelectric power, and all the miracles of modernization.
But when the waters rose behind the dam, certain tombs and
temples would be drowned. Amazingly enough, funds were
found to elevate Abu Simbel and to move the Philae temple
to higher ground on a different island altogether in the new
Lake Nasser.
It was lovely on the island, in a way that Egypt had not
been. Egypt was starkly beautiful and awe inspiring, but Merril
never found a place where she wanted to linger until that row
of windows through which Isis was supposed to have
mourned her husband Osiris. Under each opening were a
series of deep scratches. Parallel lines, three inches deep and
four inches long—they seemed to have been made by the
claws of monsters.
“Did the Christians do this too?” she asked Mido.
Whenever the early Christians took refuge in an ancient temple,
they hacked out the faces of the Egyptian gods and did their
best to obliterate the penises.
But Mido placed his hand over the indentations and
rubbed his fingers through the gouges. “This is how they were
made. Time after time, woman after woman, century after century.
Even the rock will wear away.”
“But why?” Merril said.
“They want to have the help of Isis. So that they too can
have children.”
“You’re kidding,” Merril said.
“Of course you wouldn’t understand,” Karla said. “You
never wanted any.”
But Merril wasn’t shocked by the desire, just the absurd
method of accomplishing it. She put her own fingers into the
grooves. There was no reason not to tell Karla. It wasn’t a
secret. In fact, her sister had been so good about commemorating
all the holidays in those first few years, when Merril still
had care of the boy, that Merril was surprised and disappointed
that the contact had not continued. “I did have a child.
A son.”
“How did he die?”
Karla was so young, she still thought that death was the
only way to lose somebody.
MERRIL takes the money out of her wallet. She buries the
thirty dollars she had not wanted to give the cab driver. She
makes a pile of coins for the man who stood just outside the
bathroom at a restaurant near the pyramids. In this land of few
trees, there was so little paper, that the towel he gave her was
just a scrap. He wanted his tip so badly, he whined like a dog
when she walked on by without giving him his baksheesh..
In New York, she never gave money, especially not to
street musicians who reminded her of her son. She used to
believe that money would do them no good. Money in their
hands would only be drunk up or shot up or otherwise disappear
in smoke. But the money in her wallet would accrue and
amass until it acquired the vast weight of a pyramid.
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