by Lisa Rayns
Anxiety rushed out of me like air from a popped balloon when he finally left, and the sterile room became quiet. Exhausted, I lay my head down on the pillow.
The desert heat had pelted our skin all day long and the cool night breeze felt invigorating. Our fathers were working the same dig, so Calvin and I had spent an entire month together. Inside the dig behind the small pyramid, we were hidden from the evening guards who protected the excavation. He lay on his stomach and I lounged on my back, looking up at the starry night sky.
“Calvin,” I said sweetly, batting my eyelashes. “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
“Your boyfriend,” he shot out, avoiding my eyes.
I giggled, feeling warm inside. “Really? Are you sure?”
“Yep.”
“Why?”
“’Cause you make me feel weird.”
“Weird?” Disappointed, I sat straight up to confront him, but he moved away from me like he was chasing a bug. “Where are you going?”
“You have to see this.”
I followed him and his little glowing red bug over to the edge of the pyramid and watched in awe as the bug started spinning in place. It rose off the ground for a second and then dove deep into the sand.
Calvin smacked the sand away with both hands, trying to see how far down the bug had burrowed. He seemed intent on finding the little bugger again so I helped, clawing and wrenching gobs of sand out of the way. When my hand hit something smooth, I pulled up a small box. Calvin ignored my findings and kept digging downward.
“Ow,” he finally said. “I hit a rock. Where did that thing go?”
I brushed the sand off his rock and turned on my flashlight. “That’s not a rock. It’s a tablet. Look, it has hieroglyphics on it.”
He nodded and then sat back, resting his head on his fisted hands with a defeated sigh.
I sat back too, frowning at his sadness. “It was probably poisonous anyway.”
He shrugged. “What did you find?”
“Oh, a box,” I said, handing him the flashlight. I set the embellished silver container between us and opened it. Inside, two gold necklaces gleamed from a velvety blue background; one had a snake on it and the other had a cat.
Calvin’s eyes lit up mischievously. “There’s two, one for each of us.”
“Do you think we can keep them?” I asked, my eyes widening with delight.
“We don’t have to tell,” he said easily. “It could be our secret.”
I smiled shyly at him. “Then we will always have a secret, and we’ll always be friends, right?”
He nodded as he looked at me, and his eyes darted to my mouth. Then he leaned over and put his lips on mine. My stomach swirled with warmth and excitement. It felt nothing like when my mom kissed me goodnight. I never wanted the kiss to end, but when it felt like I couldn’t breathe, I turned my head and hugged him. He looked happy too when we turned our attention back to the box.
“You pick first,” he said.
We’d been to a zoo a month before, and the large snakes had been the coolest to watch so I picked that one and left the cat necklace for Calvin. He picked his up and we put them on at the same time.
When the cold metal touched my chest, a surge of electricity ran through me, and my body stiffened. Calvin’s body did the same but when he looked up at me, he smiled.
“We’re friends forever now. And when we’re older, you’ll be my girlfriend?”
I nodded anxiously and hugged him again before we walked back to our tents, hand in hand.
Sober smiles were rare for me, but a genuine grin spread across my face when I awoke. Looking down at my necklace, I ran my fingers across the golden snake. The python’s large body was wrapped around what looked like a tablet transcribed with hieroglyphics. I no longer thought snakes were cool, but I wouldn’t wish my curse onto Calvin. He’d always been so sweet to me.
When the private detective called me back, I opened my phone with my fingers crossed. He told me Calvin’s last known U.S. whereabouts: Madison, Wisconsin.
“He was here?” I asked, my eyes flaring.
“Was. He spent a week in a motel and then got on a plane heading to Cairo, Egypt. The landlord from his last residence didn’t know why.”
My heart slumped with disappointment. “What about his mother and father?”
“Dead, I’m afraid. Can you afford to have me follow him?”
“No, that’s all right. Thank you,” I said, closing the phone.
I felt sick that Calvin’s parents had met the same end as mine, but it only made me more desperate to find him. He was alone in the world just like me and probably needed me too. I missed our friendship and the bond we shared.
After calling a cab, I dressed, and snuck out. I left a note for the detective even though I doubted leaving town could be any worse than a murder charge.
“Calvin will fix everything,” I assured myself repeatedly.
Determined to find him, I bought my ticket to Cairo and ignored the images of crashing and burning that ran through my mind. I watched out the gate window for a sign of hope, but the flash of lightning that illuminated the dangerous aircraft only reinforced my discontent. The apprehension made me tremble. To remedy that, I spent an hour in the airport bar and eventually Jack helped me step onto the plane on time. I laughed off the constant turbulence with another drink.
Chapter 3
The morning after we’d dug up the necklaces, the camp roared with excitement about the empty box and the tablet they’d found behind the pyramid. Calvin looked angry though, so I approached him carefully. “What’s wrong?”
“We’re leaving,” he said, leading me out into the desert away from camp. “My dad got called away on an important assignment.”
My heart fell heavily and a lump formed in my throat. “But…”
“I know,” he grumbled crossly.
When I hugged him, moisture filled my eyes. “I don’t want you to go. What if I never see you again?”
“Meet me,” he whispered. “When you turn eighteen, meet me at the Statue of Liberty. We’ll run away together and we’ll never be apart again.”
“Promise?” I asked, pulling back to stare into his sad eyes.
“I promise,” he vowed before he put his lips on mine for the second time.
The jolt from the landing gear hitting the runway hurled me from my sleep, and eventually I opened my tear-filled eyes. Restless people scuffled about, grabbing bags and rising to leave, but I remained seated, thinking about the day before my eighteenth birthday.
I had been packed and anxious for a week, but my father passed that morning. After his funeral, aunts and uncles who’d visited just started dying like even being around me caused death. I realized too late that relatives only needed to touch me, and not my necklace, to become victims. A few were considered heart attacks, but each body bore a dark bruise around the neck that showed through the funeral parlor makeup. I attended funeral after funeral until eventually, every relative was deceased. It took only two weeks to bury my entire bloodline.
By then I wanted more than anything to run away, but I knew I’d missed my chance. Even if Calvin remembered and had gone to our designated meeting place, he wouldn’t have waited that long.
One fake ID later, alcohol became my best friend.
After I departed from the airport, I took a cab from motel to motel, hotel to hotel, asking for Calvin Konrad’s room. It was a long shot but without a recent picture, I had no other way to find him in the large city. Stop number thirty turned out to be the lucky one. The owner of the rundown place on the outskirts of Cairo told me I’d missed him by a week. After a small bribe, he also told me Calvin had gotten a message from a man named Norman Clastrik.
Fifteen minutes later, I knocked on Mr. Clastrik’s door. Without shade, the small townhouse entrance heated to ninety degrees before he answered. As hot as it was, his sweater-vest and long pants did nothing to hide the goose bumps that formed on his arms w
hen he stepped into the doorway. His eyes were glued to the gold chain around my neck.
“Hi,” I said, momentarily refreshed by the cool air that poured out of his door. “I was told you left a message for Calvin Konrad last week.”
His curly red hair jiggled as he shook my hand anxiously. “You’re Calvin’s friend, aren’t you?”
I nodded, feeling encouraged by Calvin’s mention of me. “Can you tell me where he might be?”
“Oh.” He straightened, but remained in the doorway like he had no intention of letting me inside his cool house. “My specialty lies in artifacts, of course, but I sent him to another Egyptologist who specializes in curses.”
I waited for him to continue but he seemed in a trance, still staring at my neck.
“Can you tell me his name?” I urged.
He finally pulled his eyes upward and smiled. “I’m sorry. Of course. It’s just that…could I take a picture of it before you leave? I assure you I won’t touch it, but I would like to study it if you don’t mind.”
When I shrugged, he slammed the door only to return a moment later with a camera. He photographed the necklace and then pointed out another house two blocks down where the “curse man” lived. He took my name and number and promised to call me if he discovered anything that might help. After thanking him, I walked the two blocks to the other house.
The second Egyptologist regarded me warily from behind thick, wired glasses. He stood unspeaking for minutes as he eyed the golden chain. A bead of sweat rolled off his forehead, and his dark hair and beard pulled downward in a frown. He stared at my outstretched hand like I was diseased.
Maybe I was.
“Norman Clastrik said he sent Calvin Konrad here,” I said slowly, hoping he wouldn’t slam the door in my face. “Do you know where I might find him?”
His Egyptian accent was thick, and his deep voice sent chills down my spine. “To break a curse, you must return to the source.”
He did slam the door in my face after that, but at least I knew where to find Calvin–Siwa, Egypt.
****
On the bus, I tried to imagine Calvin’s mindset. He was searching for a way to break the curse, but why now after so many years? Was his curse getting worse as well? Or did he sense that I needed help? Regardless of the why, the idea excited me, and I hoped he had the answer by the time I found him.
If we broke the curse, at least I could go to jail without killing anyone. I knew that once I was convicted, the police would try to take my necklace and that held two particular problems: One, the person who touched it would die, and two, it would reappear around my neck. I could take the necklace off, swing it around, and play with it in my hands, but the minute the necklace lost contact with my skin, it disappeared and reappeared around my neck. I’d tried to remove it several times in the last ten years without success.
I got off the bus in Siwa one week after Calvin, but once there, his trail disappeared completely. No one had heard of him.
The city, home to Cleopatra’s Bath, a large body of water called the Oasis, and the oracle temple to Amun-Ra, looked just like I remembered. Watched over by the Mountain of the Dead, mud brick buildings and scattered impressive ruins created an endless sea of different shades of brown. It was relatively dirty, old, and comfortable. Natives stared for a moment but then moved on, just the same as they had ten years ago. Women wore cloth draped over their heads and small children giggled and waved.
I rented a hut at an eco-lodge on the outskirts of town because it reminded me of the place Calvin had picked in Cairo. They also let me pay cash so there was no real record of my being in Egypt once I got off the plane. The idea made me wonder about Calvin. Maybe he didn’t want to be found either. Could he be running from the police like me?
I sighed heavily, irritated at the thought. “I’m not really running,” I told myself. “I’m just avoiding them for a while until I find Calvin and break the curse.” My self-assurance failed to ease the guilt I felt for breaking the law.
Cracking open the bottle of vodka I’d picked up during the day, I blew out the lantern and curled up on the hut’s mattress. I drank straight from the bottle and imagined how my life would have turned out if I’d never been cursed. I would be married with kids, and I’d have a great job. I had always wanted to follow in my mom’s footsteps and teach children about the wonders of Egypt.
My mother had given up her chosen career as an Egyptian historian to homeschool me. She taught me how to read hieroglyphics and speak Egyptian Arabic. Whenever I’d fuss about all the work, she’d simply claim “the past is an eye to the future,” and then she’d tell me another myth or story until I was interested again.
She had hundreds of stories, collected from her years of research. Most encompassed pharaohs or gods like Ra, Osiris, and Seth, but she always said Seshat was her favorite. Seshat, the goddess of written words, didn’t have any stories of her own but she recorded them all, and my mother thought of her as a historian, like herself. I remembered trying to write Seshat her own story, to honor my mother after she died, but it had been so long ago that I barely remembered it.
The blizzard outside shook the windows of our large brick home. My mother knitted a hat for me as she rocked back and forth in the rocking chair. I warmed my hands by the fire and looked up at her.
“Tell me the one about the cat and the snake again.”
She smiled and began without a thought. “Apep was a huge python that people called the serpent of the Nile. He represented all evil and because of that, he was the natural enemy of the sun god, Ra. But Ra couldn’t fight Apep himself. The snake only appeared in the dead of night when Ra was at his weakest, so Ra called upon his daughter, Bast, the goddess of cats. She came to Earth to hunt down Apep, and in her cat form she was able to slay the giant snake and Egypt was saved.”
“What happened after that, mommy?”
“You know what happened after that.”
“Oh, yeah. Seshat wrote it all down.”
“That’s right.”
I sat up in the darkness and slapped my hand against my forehead, not knowing or caring where I was. The dream reminded me of so many things. The necklaces were together–the cat and the snake. The curse had to have come from that story. Calvin and I were supposed to stay together. The cat could fight the snake. The cat could kill the snake. Calvin could save me!
I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it before. My mother died right after Calvin left and without his support, my young mind blocked out so many things because I felt responsible, and it hurt too badly to remember. I tried to face things when my father died but it was so much easier just to get loaded and forget.
For the next two days, I walked around aimlessly asking the natives if they knew Calvin. No one did. It finally occurred to me that I hadn’t thought out my plan very well before I fled the United States to track him down. Now I was alone in Egypt on the night of the new moon. That meant my body would be worthless by morning.
Discouraged, I did what I was best at. I found a local bar and tried to drink my frustration away. Halfway through my sixth or seventh shot, I heard a man yell a cuss word in Arabic. The loud noise made me turn my head in time to see the man I sought.
Calvin wore brown cargo shorts and a blue polo shirt. I stared in awe for a few minutes, focusing on his unique, dark blue-turquoise eyes. His hair was still short and black as a cat, but his body had grown. He was muscular now, tall, and he wore his cheek a little scruffy, making him look like sin itself.
Damn, he has changed!
The man shouting had a thick, black mustache that curled upward on the ends. He was dressed in a police uniform. That couldn’t be good.
Finding Calvin felt like an enormous relief but seeing him again after so long, sparked a fear of rejection deep within me. He was my only hope. I prayed he’d help me out of friendship or kinship, but if nothing else, he wanted the curses lifted too. Hell, honestly I had no idea how to break his curse but my mother’s
story suggested that he could break mine. Maybe if he did, both would be broken.
Either way, I desperately needed his help, but I knew I had to approach him carefully. After an argument with a police officer, he was not going to be in a good mood and he didn’t look happy.
I wasn’t in a great mood myself. Tonight’s new moon meant another dance in the darkness with an evil snake. I had a lot to look forward to, the screaming, the gasping for breath, and then the pain. But if there was ever a time I needed to put on a friendly face, this was it.
I watched him carefully slip something to the irate man as they shook hands. I stood up and smiled when he headed toward the door but all six foot, two inches of him blew right past me to the exit. His sweating brow was set with deep lines that formed a scowl.
Chapter 4
Tension burrowed deep in my gut as the smile slipped off my face. I downed my last shot, slammed the empty glass on the bar, and then I grabbed my bag and followed him out.
“Calvin,” I called, trying to catch up to his long strides. People on the busy street scattered away from us when I raised my voice to be heard. “Calvin, it’s me. Calvin, stop!”
He kept walking until I caught his arm. He stood four inches taller than me when he turned around slowly and glared down on me with his fierce, beautiful eyes. “I’m not Calvin.”
I stumbled back a step, a little surprised and a bit fearful. “Yes, you are. I’d know those eyes anywhere.”
He tipped his head back, shook it, and began walking away again.
“Calvin, wait.” I rummaged through my bag for the picture.
“I’m not interested, lady.”
Grabbing his arm, I pushed the picture toward his face. “This is you! It’s me, Calvin. Cleo Patrix” A great joke by my father. I had my name legally changed to Emma when I was eighteen.
