Mummy on the Loose

All was dark and quiet. Then the silence was broken by a creaking noise. If anyone had been there at that moment, they might have noticed that the lid of the sarcophagus shifted ever so slightly. But the room was empty. The last visitor had left the museum a good two hours earlier. The lights had been turned out, and outside the windows, it was a dull and damp evening. The lid tentatively lifted a few more times, and each time it knocked against the inside of the glass case.

All at once there was a huge bang and the sound of shattering glass. The lid of the sarcophagus flew right off and a very angry mummy climbed out of what remained of the exhibit case.

Sanechet, Pharaoh Ka’s right-hand man, had been a mummy for several thousand years. All that long time, he had woken up every year on the feast of All Saints. On that day he would climb out of his tomb and spend one night in the land of the living. When he had been alive, he had also enjoyed travelling around meeting ordinary people so that he could report to the Pharaoh what was going on in the world. He had absolutely no intention of giving up doing so now!

But this year, for the first time in five thousand years, he had been unable to open his sarcophagus. He hadn’t realised that while he had been asleep this year, archaeologists had discovered the pyramid in which he and Pharaoh Ka were buried. And they had taken his sarcophagus, with him inside, to a museum. How dare they!

Sanechet got to his feet surprisingly quickly and swaying slightly as he walked, headed directly for the nearest exit. As he…