Chapter one

 

 

THE
MUMMY’S CURSE

 

It was the first day of August,
but a thin slick of ice defied the blistering heat of summer and

crept over the sundial’s
weathered face. The rest of the garden grew perfectly wild the way

an abandoned landscape should.

   The over-excited little ghost was undaunted as
she rubbed a small hole in the window frost

and peered down. She saw the
same things she always did: a marble sundial leaning slightly towards the
stables, a maze that looked like a giant green puzzle, and a bright carpet of
flowers that shimmered like jewels. Beyond them, a topiary sphinx basked under
a blazing sun.

   For a moment, the ghost-child sensed the
delightful fragrance of carnations that wafted up to the attic from below, and
she allowed herself to feel the thrill of anticipation at the thought of
meeting her friends again, but the garden was deserted. Her eyes searched in
vain for a familiar figure until snowflakes obscured her view.

   For the second year in a row no-one had
come. Sadly, she melted back into her wintry room. Haunting, as she knew only
too well, was mostly a tedious business.

 

Other than a spectacular
address and two last names, which made them sound rather glamorous, nothing
about the twins, Kit and Bash Stratford-Smyth (that rhymes with myth) was extraordinary.
Except, that is, for their ability to know what each other was thinking… and
the ghost of a little girl in their grandmother’s deserted stately home.

   But the ghost belonged to Bede Hall and the
month of August, and for the moment, Bede Hall belonged to no-one.

   The three-hundred-acre estate of Bede Hall
had been on the market for two years with only one interested party, but last
month the deal had unexpectedly fallen through for unknown reasons, and with
the market for large stately homes slow at the best of times, it looked as
though it wasn’t going to sell anytime soon.

   The old lady and the great estate languished
restlessly in empty parallel states of unrest while its ghost pined, expecting another
lonely summer.  It was only June.

_

Kit stood in the center of an
Egyptian tomb and directed his sister’s attention away from the sad sight of
three skeletons jumbled together in a discarded heap of bones.

   “It’s all right; they’re safe now,” he
comforted, but his voice couldn’t reach her.

   Bash should have known something terrible
was about to happen because she’d woken from a disturbing dream with skeletons
chasing her. She’d arisen with a wobbly feeling in her legs as if she was a
skeleton herself. Her brother Kit felt uneasy too, but then, sharing feelings
was fairly normal for twins.

   “It was awful,” she told Kit, “I was trapped
in a dark room. The air was all musty and I think there were bats because I
could hear them squealing, and something was crawling in my hair. It felt like
the fingers of the skeletons. I couldn’t breathe.”

   “It’s only nerves,” Kit reassured her, “you’re
just worried about the science exam,” but he felt anxious too. He hadn’t wanted
to alarm his sister, but he’d had the exact same dream.

 

The eleven-year-old twins were
so un-extraordinary it was rather tricky for new acquaintances to describe
them. They were of average height, neither fat nor thin, and had brown hair and
brown eyes. They were never ‘alike as two peas in a pod,’ but they did share
the same cheery enthusiasm and infectious good nature.

   Kit, short for Christopher, was
exceptionally curious about everything, and his sister Bash, short for
Bathsheba, was single-mindedly devoted to interesting words and anything

to do with gardens. The best
thing one could say about them was that they were the sort of people you’d want
for a friend, however; other than tongue-in-cheek, this could not be said about

their older brother, Rupert.

 

The twins dressed for school,
and each had a soft-boiled egg for breakfast with bread and butter cut into
‘soldiers.’ Bash ate hers with her science textbook open, her eyes desperately scanning
the pages, and barely tasted her food. Kit was looking forward to acing another
test on his

favorite subject, and savoured
the salty taste of the bread strips dipped into the runny yolk. He even
polished off two slices of toast spread with marmalade, and, as always, he cut
his toast into several isosceles triangles, leaving one of them plain for their
lanky deerhound, Jack.

   The open window brought the sounds of early
morning traffic drifting into the cosy kitchen the same way it always did. It
was unusually bleak for the last day of June, with the sort of grey sky that
promised drizzly rain all day. Already the first drops were spattering the
pavement below.

   Pigeon, their father’s ancient parrot,
resumed sharpening his yellow beak on a new cuttlebone after loudly reproaching
the family’s ginger cat, Feathers, for nibbling a plant.

   It was always unnerving when Pigeon mimicked
someone’s voice, but with the nightmare fading, nothing unusual warned the
twins that a message would bring their safe world tumbling

down like a pyramid made of
sand.

   Feathers continued to paw the pot of mint
growing on the windowsill hoping it would turn into its catnip cousin, while Jack
kept his unblinking eye on Kit’s toast with the anticipation only a dog can
know of a treat from a human’s plate.

   Mrs. S sipped her tea, and smiled happily as
she opened the letter with the foreign-looking stamp which arrived in the
morning post.

   “It looks like your father will be home
soon,” she said, reading. “His dig is over for the summer. He writes that the June
heat is quite unbearable, so the authorities are shutting

things down early this year. He
sends his love and some pictures of the pyramids.”

   “At least someone is having sunny
weather,” Kit said.

   “Rain is good for the gardens,” Bash added,
tilting her head to search for a word that momentarily escaped her. “I find
it… invigorating.”

   The twins were looking forward to their
summer holiday, but sadly they were no longer spending their school breaks at
Bede Hall. For two years their grandmother, Lady Nan, had been

half-asleep, fading away in ‘The
Beehive Nursing Home,’ no longer in residence at her grand manor which was for
sale.

   Lady Nan’s dreams were deeper than the usual
twilight wanderings of her elderly companions. Most of them slept adrift in a
pleasant happy-go-lucky sea randomly replaying their good old days, but Lady
Nan had always been different. Sometimes being of sound mind was too cruel to
bear.

Lady Nan made every effort to control
her dreams by concentrating on one of her favorite daydreams: she conjured up amazing
images of the golden sands of Egypt and the glory days of its ancient past. She
dreamed creatively in order to live there and leave England behind.

   Lady Nan begged her dreams to crowd out her
mistakes, shout down her enemies, and erase her sad memories. She dreamed
purposely to forget; she dreamed selectively to remember something wonderful. Her
dreamtime was a place to escape a series of tragic events because it was easier
to slip away than face the terrible truths which plagued her, but as hard as
she tried, old-family loyalty was in her blood, and messages of responsibility
crept in to disturb her blissful reveries.

   Her beloved old manor house was evermore insistent
she return home. It began to send her pleasant invitations and then ever more
urgent messages and stronger pleas, until, at last, it had no choice but to
order her return.

   But it was the fretful voice of a lonely
little girl she once knew, calling out for help, who disturbed Lady Nan’s
sanctuary the most.

_

The ice on the sundial had
sealed time in a narrow wedge of mauve shadow.

   It had been a scorching August day, over
seventy years ago, in the afternoon to be exact, when Bede Hall first heard two
little girls crying. One was distraught with an alarming headache; the other
from the worst sort of fear – that of being lost and alone.

   The ‘little girl lost’ had looked down on
the maze from her window, and beckoned the other with a frantic wave but had
hidden when the door opened, only venturing a timid look at the unwell girl
when she was sleeping.

   For a while they remained alone yet
together, dreaming now-and-again in the same wintry room, both in search of comfort.

   One girl sought refuge to avoid her father;
the second searched in vain, hoping to find her father. They were connected by
a secret neither of them knew and a window of friendship they pledged would
survive forever even though they were separated by a hundred boring tomorrows
that reached into an uncertain future.

   In spirit years, yesterday often seemed like
a lost trail of pale dreams and the present was most often a confusion of
restless memories, but this time the house had promised to intervene.

   The old sundial continued to wait patiently
in a sea of emerald grass like a lonely gravestone, sundrenched and frozen, and
for many years time jumped ahead in erratic leaps like a frightened rabbit. And
then the unthinkable happened – a third girl lost her father.

_

No-one was prepared for the
bomb of devastating news that dropped into the unsuspecting kitchen when the
telephone jangled.

   Mrs. S’s cup of tea crashed to the floor in
mid-conversation, startling poor Feathers into the next room in a blur of
orange fur and sent Jack slinking under the table. Pigeon squawked a louder
version of “stop eating that plant, you!” and flapped his bright, red
and green wings.

 

   “Mum what is it?” Bash said, “you’ve gone
white as a ghost.”

   Kit, who had been about to give Jack his
treat, nearly knocked over his chair getting up too fast. “What’s happened?” he
cried.

   Mrs. S slumped back into her chair. “Your
father… is… missing,” she said in a barely audible whisper quite drained of
emotion. “He never showed up in Cairo,” she continued

weakly, “the museum thinks he
may have been… kidnapped.”

   The twins stared at each other in disbelief.

   “I have to call Rupert,” Mrs. S said,
getting up suddenly. “He will have to come home. Oh dear, I’ve broken one of my
best cups. Be careful. Mind your feet, and watch out for Jack.”

   “Don’t worry,” Kit said, “I’m sure they’ll
find Dad. He’ll be all right. Egypt’s a funny old place. There’s been a
mistake.”

   Bash’s knees were more wobbly than ever as
she settled her mother in a chair and poured her a fresh cup of tea. But Mrs. S
abandoned her tea, jumped up again, and busied

herself, cleaning up the broken
china, all in a rush as if someone’s life depended on it.

   “Leave that Mum,” Kit said. “Sit down and
drink your tea. I’ll call Rupert.”

   Mrs. S obeyed and stared dry-eyed at her
letter, still in shock.

   Kit looked over at Bash and their eyes met,
widened with fear. Neither of them had any idea that their lives were about to
become more extraordinary than they could ever have

imagined.

 

 

AUTHOR’S BIO 

Veronica has a Fine
Arts Degree from the University of Alberta, writes and paints on Vancouver
Island, and is a freelance editor for her company, Silent K Productions. She
has written several novels of women’s fiction, all of which, have paranormal
elements:

 

The ‘Second
Lisa’ trilogy is an historical fantasy about missing paintings, lost
identities, the ‘Mona Lisa,’ and the life of Lisabetta Buti, one of Leonardo da
Vinci’s forgotten sisters. http://www.secondlisa.org

 

‘Woo Woo – the
Posthumous Love Story of Miss Emily Carr’ is a romantic ghost story about the Canadian icon,
artist, Emily Carr. http://www.woowoothenovel.com

 

‘The Day I Met Botticelli,’ Knox’s sixth novel, is
currently being edited – another ethereal romance set in the fifteenth century
of the Italian renaissance. Due for release in February 2014.

 

‘TWINTER
– the first portal’ is her first foray into writing for preteens (age ten
to twelve) – a series that will project into the young adult genre. All Knox’s
books are available on Amazon in e-book and print-on-demand formats. Currently,
‘Twinter’ is a kindle select feature.

http://twinterbooks.wordpress.com

Knox’s paintings
and her editing services may be viewed on her websites: http://veronicaknox.com 
and http://editorvknox.wordpress.com

She may be
contacted through her email:  veronica@veronicaknox.com

 

 

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