The Judgment of Osiris_Short Story

by Theresa Crater

  Owen smiled in the darkness. People did all kinds of things in here. Some toned, sat in lotus or made elaborate hand gestures. He set his phone to vibrate in two minutes, then leaned against the side of the box. Sweat ran down his face. He had a sour taste in his mouth and felt a little dizzy.

  I really need to drink more water.

  He took his handkerchief out and wiped his face. Pain stabbed at his mid-section and he suppressed a groan. He hadn’t gotten sick in Egypt in so long he’d forgotten how those bad microbes made you feel. He thought back through his last meal. Maybe the grapes. He always told his groups not to eat fruit with the peel on. But he thought he’d become immune to all Egypt’s bugs years ago.

  Only one more person to go, then it’s my turn. I can meditate then.

  Lying in the resonant chamber with Iris toning would set him straight. The phone vibrated and he leaned over to let Mike know his time was up. Mike scrambled out of the sarcophagus and walked with Owen back to his place along the wall. A wave of dizziness washed through Owen and he stumbled. Mike grabbed his arm, steadying him.

  “Thanks,” he mumbled.

  “You okay?” Mike asked.

  “Just hot.”

  Mike settled back in his spot and Owen tapped the last person in the group, Tarika from somewhere in Holland. She was ready. She jumped up with a bound and walked to the resonant box, Owen trailing behind her. The eerie, slightly disembodied chant still rose from Iris, haunting and lovely. Others chanted along. A wave of sorrow washed over him. He tried to take a cleansing deep breath, but his lungs burned. His guts churned. The phone vibrated and he managed to put his hand on Tarika, who obliged by getting out under her own steam.

  “Can you find your way back?” he whispered.

  “Sure.” She patted his shoulder. Discovered he was covered in sweat. “The energy is too much?” she asked.

  “Could you just help me in? I think I’ll be all right if I can meditate for a minute.”

  Owen leaned heavily on Tarika’s shoulder and hoisted himself over the lip of the box. He rolled in and stretched out flat.

  “I’m here,” he heard Tarika say. “I will stand guard for you.”

  “Thank you,” he managed, then faded into blackness. No sound. No thought for a while. Then he felt grateful that he wasn’t hot any more. Or dizzy. He lay there—was he lying down? He couldn’t feel the stone beneath him. He’d lost track of time, but he was conscious. Just a point of awareness in the dark.

  Then something heavy shifted close to him. Owen strained against the inky blackness, searching for the source of the sound. He heard low breathing, cloth sliding across stone.

  A faint blush of light, the hint of moonlight, broke the darkness. The light glowed stronger, outlining a seated human form. The head turned toward him and he caught a glimpse of a muzzle, pricked ears. Human arms stretched out on the sides of a throne.

  “Anubis?” Owen whispered.

  The figure stood and stretched out his hand. “It is time.”

  “Time for what?” Owen sat up and found himself on a polished rose granite floor. The growing light revealed evenly spaced columns rising to a high ceiling. “Where am I?”

  “Come with me.” Anubis turned and walked off, his lanky legs eating up the long passageway.

  “Wait.” Owen called, but the giant being did not turn back. Owen scrambled after him.

  He followed Anubis down marble steps into a garden. Flowers with exotic shapes filled the beds reaching up to the odd light all around him. A fountain played in the middle. A sudden buzz startled him and he turned to find a hummingbird hanging in the air just out of reach, its jeweled throat turning red, then green as it cocked its head to study him. Anubis climbed the steps of a larger marble structure and disappeared inside. Owen ran after him. With a dart, the hummingbird followed at first, then seeming to be satisfied, flew off, a blur of color.

  Anubis waited for him before two large cedar doors. Owen didn’t have time to study the carvings before his guide threw them open. A marble path stretched between two pools of water. At the back of the room three steps led up to a large dais. On the throne sat a woman with a crown on her head. Owen started to move down the path, but Anubis touched his shoulder. He looked up into those large, dark eyes and a wave of dizziness washed over him. He leaned against the doorframe and closed his eyes.

  * * *

  Iris stretched her sore back, wondering if Owen had lost track of time or if it was just her. Time ran differently in trance, but she could hear people shifting around her. Pushing against the granite wall of the King’s Chamber for support, she stood up, taking a few seconds to let the blood come back to one foot, then walked over to Tarika.

  Tarika nodded at her in the gloom and leaned over the lip of the sarcophagus. With a sharp intake of breath, she jerked back.

  “What is it?” Iris whispered.

  “He didn’t move,” she answered. “He feels . . .”

  “Sometimes he goes very deep.” Iris leaned over the granite box and touched Owen. His shirt was soaked with sweat. She felt his forehead. It was clammy and cold. She’d expected a fever. She shook his shoulder. “Owen, it’s time.”

  He didn’t move.

  A spike of anxiety ran through her, raising the hair on her arms. She leaned closer. “Owen?” She shook him harder, but got no response.

  “No,” she whispered. Her hand flew to his neck, feeling for a pulse. She waited for what seemed an eternity before she felt a heartbeat. Her knees, weak with relief, almost gave way.

  “Go get Mohammed,” she said to Tarika. Her voice must have conveyed her near panic, because Tarika took off across the chamber, almost tumbling over the lamp Owen had placed in the middle.

  “Is something the matter?” Mike asked from halfway across the chamber.

  “What’s going on?” another guest called out.

  Mohammed arrived at her shoulder. “What is it?”

  “He’s unconscious.”

  “What?”

  “His pulse is way too slow. Feel how cold he is.”

  “I’ll take care of this. Do not worry, Mrs. Wizer. Mafish mushkila.”

  Oh God, he’d just told her ‘no problem’. Owen always said when an Egyptian said ‘mafish mushkila’, then there was a big problem.

  One of the other participants stepped up, a tall man, almost awkward in his height. She couldn’t remember his name. “I’m a doctor. Can I take a look?”

  “Thank God.” Iris moved out of his way. He leaned over the sarcophagus, lifted Owen’s hand and placed his fingers expertly on his wrist.

  “Turn on the lights,” Iris said as Mohammed disappeared through the chamber’s opening. She heard him shouting outside in the Grand Gallery.

  The doctor glanced at the lit dial of his watch and waited. Iris forced herself to keep quiet. Then he laid his hand on Owen’s forehead.

  “How is he . . .”

  “George,” the doctor supplied his name. He probed Owen’s throat, checking his lymph nodes Iris assumed.

  The lights switched on. Owen’s face was white as paper. The group moved toward the stone box.

  “We need to get him out of here and to a facility,” George said. “He’s fallen into a coma.”

  People in the group began talking all at once. A few crowded closer.

  George pointed to two of the stronger tour participants. “Think you can lift him?”

  The two men moved immediately, one stepping up to Owen’s shoulders, the other coming around to Iris’s side. “Excuse me,” he said, shouldering his way past her.

  She stepped back, giving him room.

  George pointed to a woman against the wall gathering up her things. “He’s awfully cold. Can we wrap him in your blanket?”

  “Of course.” The woman shook out the white spread she’d been sitting on and handed it to George. He spread it over Owen, then motioned for the two men to pick him up. The doctor wrapped the blanket under him, tucked in the ends and nodded for the
two to carry him toward the door, the larger man carrying his shoulders, the other his legs. He looked for all the world like a mummy, but this one being carried out of the pyramid rather than into it.

  Iris tightened her eyes to stop tears. “The pyramid was never a tomb,” she said in a low, emphatic voice. Then she followed the wrapped Owen out the entryway and stayed close behind the two men maneuvered their burden down the ramp. About halfway down, Mohammed came running through the bottom entry of the pyramid followed by a policeman and two guardians.

  “We have a car,” he shouted up. “We can take him to the hospital.”

  When they reached the bottom, Mohammed put his hand on Owen’s shoulder. “I’ll take good care of you, Dr. Wizer.”

  * * *

  Owen heard someone calling his name and opened his eyes. Above him on the ceiling gleamed the legs of Nut painted in gold, a plethora of stars above her bent back. He seemed to be lying down again. He tried to sit up, but something restricted his limbs, holding his legs together and his arms tight crossed over his chest. He lifted his head and gazed down his supine form. He was wrapped in white linen, cocooned like a caterpillar.

  Before he could fully take this in, a hand pressed on his shoulder, the fingers bronze and slender, bedecked with gold and lapis, the fingernails polished. “Oh, my beloved,” she said in a voice choked with tears, “my beloved. He has taken you from me. I miss you so much. Who will be my companion in my elder years? Who will care for our children?”

  “Huh?” Owen struggled to sit up again, but the linens were wound too tight.

  “The Bright Hawk has fallen into darkness. Osiris is dead. Felled by his own brother’s hand.”

  Owen turned his head far enough to catch a glimpse of a tall, bronze-skinned woman, black hair streaming down her back, her head crowned with a gold and teak miniature throne.

  “Isis?” he blinked, but the vision remained. “But I’m not . . .”

  Another woman stepped up beside the first, her eyes outlined in kohl. Lapis powder dusted her lids. “Osiris is dead,” she repeated in a voice like black velvet. On her head sat a gold basket supported by a small image of a house. Nephthys. The sister of Isis. The wife of Set.

  “Wait a minute.” Owen struggled against his bindings. He knew this story.

  “Who will weigh his heart?” Isis asked, her voice haunted with grief. “How will my beloved find his way into Amenti?”

  Anubis appeared on Owen’s other side, the same powerfully built, dark man who had led him to this temple. “He is my father. I will stand for him.”

  Another man appeared at his feet. He could just make out the top of his fedora. “I will speak against him.”

  “Simon?” Owen’s words were muffled by the linen wrap over his mouth. “Is this some kind of joke?”

  Owen tried to rock back and forth, to throw himself off the altar he lay on. If he could just roll on the floor, the linen might catch on something, might tear. Maybe he could get free.

  * * *

  Owen’s body began to shake back and forth. Was he going into convulsions?

  “Hold him, but not too tight,” George called to the two men. “Lay him down.” The doctor ran to Owen and tilted back his head. “Just don’t let him roll off the edge.”

  The tears finally broke and Iris leaned against the outer wall of the Great Pyramid weeping. Owen lay on the narrow path that tourists took up to the entryway. “Oh, my God. Please don’t let him die,” she cried.

  The doctor couldn’t spare her a moment. Nela rushed up and took Iris in her arms, both wailing. Owen’s body stilled. Iris pushed away from Nela and knelt by him. “Please don’t go, Owen. What will I do without you?”

  “Where can we take him?” she heard the doctor asking.

  “The car is coming.”“Not an ambulance?”

  “This is faster,” Mohammed said.

  On the count of three, the two tour guests picked Owen up and carried him down the walkway and across the sand toward the parking lot. A car came bumping over the lot, slammed to a stop, the cloud of dust thrown up making Iris’s eyes water. Mohammed rushed ahead, threw open the door of the sedan, then jumped into the front seat, speaking in rapid-fire Arabic to the driver. The doctor ran around to the other side and got into the back. The two men pushed Owen across the back seat. Iris barely got her last foot off the sand before the car raced off, the wide circle slamming her door closed.

  They turned onto the road, Iris almost sliding across the seat. The car straightened and she lifted Owen’s legs onto her lap. His head rested on the doctor’s leg, who kept his fingers on the pulse in Owen’s neck.

  “Is your husband diabetic?”

  Iris made herself focus. “No.”

  “Does he have a heart condition? Any serious medical problem?”

  “No.”

  Owen began to mumble. Something about being clean in mind and body.

  A long chill ran up Iris’s spine. Goosebumps raised on her arms, even in this heat. “Oh, no.”

  * * *

  “Have you stolen?”

  Owen tried to find the source of the questions. He shook his head back and forth until the linen loosened, then tried to lift it again. He managed to catch a glimpse through the gauze of a long line of people sitting on stools across from the altar. Each held a scroll, men and women with the same squared off haircut. Each asked a question, one after the other. He struggled to answer. Anubis leaned over and touched his mouth with an ankh.

  “Stolen?” His words came out clearer.

  Owen frowned. Had he ever stolen anything? Surely something. He remembered a shop lifting dare as a ten year old. His best buddy Nat had said he had to steal a candy bar from the corner deli. He’d been terrified that Mr. Rosenthal would catch him, then ashamed when the old man hadn’t even noticed. Owen had gone back the next day to confess, but couldn’t. He left a nickel on the counter when Mr. Rosenthal turned to speak to another customer. Did that count?

  “Yes, I have stolen,” he answered. His voice sounded solemn in his ears, as if he were speaking in a court of law.

  “Have you honored all paths of the Light?” the next person in line asked.

  “Of course,” he answered without hesitation.

  Wait, were these the forty-two negative confessions? Was this some kind of nightmare? He pushed against his bindings again. It seemed real enough.

  “Have you been a joy to your parents?”

  Tears filled Owen’s eyes. “No, I’m afraid not. My mother wanted me to be a doctor.”

  * * *

  George looked up at Iris, surprise on his face. “Did you hear that?”

  She nodded. “She did but he loved Egypt. Explain to your conservative Jewish parents that their brilliant son is going to become an Egyptologist.”

  George smiled. “His breathing seems to be getting more even.”

  “Good.”

  The doctor frowned. “Has he eaten anything he shouldn’t? Drunk tap water?”

  “He’s been to Egypt so many times that he’s developed an immunity. He never gets sick anymore.” Iris shrugged. “I suppose he could have eaten something bad, but wouldn’t he be throwing up?”

  “Usually,” George said. “Can you think of anything new he might have been exposed to? A new essential oil? A spice?”

  “I don’t . . .” Then the scene replayed in her mind’s eye. The miniature wooden sarcophagus. Owen leaning close to spring the lock. The cloud of dust poofing up into his face. She told the doctor.

  “Who gave it to him?”

  “Simon.”

  George frowned. “I don’t know anyone on the tour with that name.”

  “No, he’s another Egyptologist.” She hesitated before adding, “A rival.”

  George’s eyebrows climbed up. “Do you think . . .”

  They stared at each other. The car screeched to a halt, threatening to unseat them again. George grabbed Owen before he rolled onto the floorboard.

  “We’re here,” M
ohammed shouted over his shoulder, then jumped out and ran for the hospital door. Two men raced out with a stretcher and manhandled Owen onto it. They rolled the stretcher back toward the hospital, throwing off the white blanket as they went. Iris managed to stick with them.

  “This is Dr. George,” Mohammed said, falling back on the habit of tour guides to use Dr. and a first name. The tall Egyptian standing just inside the emergency department with a stethoscope around his neck extended his hand. The two shook hands.

  Why are they wasting time, Iris wondered.

  George explained what he’d learned in the car. “We’re going to need a tox screen.”

  Two nurses rolled Owen into a cubicle and pulled a curtain for privacy, leaving Iris standing on the other side.

  “Can we get the key to your room at the Mena House?” Mohammed asked.

  “It’s in Owen’s pocket.”

  Mohammed dashed back through the curtain, then came out holding the key up like it was gold from Tut’s tomb.

  * * *

  “I love both my sons.” The woman spoke dramatically, holding her arms out as if beseeching the growing crowd of Neters. This speaker wore a pot on her head. Her deep blue robes sparkled with stars. Could this be Nut?

  “But he has spilled the blood of his brother.” She glared at the man wearing the fedora.

  “She left me.” The man in the fedora pointed to the Neter Nephthys. Apparently this was Set. “She went to him and together they conceived a child. Why did you leave me, wife, my very own sister?”

  Nut stood between them, her arms holding them apart. “When you two were born, you were the dark of night and the brilliance of those stars. The next two who came were bright like the sun. Isis and Osiris. They belonged together, just as you two did. Why did you leave Set, daughter?”

  “Even when we were children, he broke my toys. He frightened me with his loud voice.”

  Set pointed at a green man with a goose on his head. With a start, Owen recognized him as Geb. “My father, you always praised Osiris. Even when I bested him, you only encouraged him to do better. You never noticed my accomplishments.”