the curse of the uncle

 running late today, bad night again. and the lovely sunshine has been swallowed by grey clouds. 

 

this one was written in response to a picture prompt from a friend who runs a page to help authors; I usually write poetry for her picture prompts but this one amused me enough to come up with a story.

The Curse of the Uncle

 

Visitors thought it was a novel, if gruesome lamp which Professor Lavery had on his desk, a skull as a 'lampshade' sporting a baseball cap, glasses and pipe.

They might have thought him a little cracked had they ever heard him referring to it as 'Uncle Silas' and talking to it.

 

They would, however, have freaked out when it answered him.

 

Mordecai Lavery came from what most people would call a strange family. They had been antiquarians, later known as archaeologists, since the eighteenth century. Mordecai himself was an eminent Egyptologist, like his Uncle Silas before him.

Silas, however, had disappeared on an expedition, and his nephew had gone looking for him. It had been while on this trip that he had picked up his novel lamp.

 

If investigated, one might have discovered that the lamp had no wires, nor any visible way to mount batteries.

Or a light bulb.

Nor did it ever go off.

Nor did Mordecai ever, under any circumstances, take it into his bedroom, or sleep anywhere but in his bedroom, around both doorframe and window-frame of which were carved hieroglyphs. Anyone sufficiently fluent in hieroglyphics and Ancient Egyptian would recognise them at once as protective. They formed a series of prayers to Osiris, Isis and Thoth to protect the ka, bai and khou of the protected person from evil or damage. Any Egyptologist worth their salt would have explained that the Egyptians believed that the soul had three parts, the ka or double, and also the life force which could take the form of the deceased, the bai  the soul, or uniqueness of a personality and the khou the spirit, or essence of animation. The Egyptians had legends of mighty magicians able to separate their spiritual parts from their bodies, leaving the ka guarding it, the khou hovering over it like a flame, while the bai in the form of a bird with the soul’s own head could fly off and explore elsewhere.

Anyone who was really nosy might find that the glowing skull sat in a recess carved for it, with runes inscribed to prevent flight of any kind.

 

Professor Lavery was fond of children, and permitted the village lads to play cricket on his broad lawn. However the look on his face almost frightened them all away, after small Hugh Brent hit the ball so hard that it went right into the professor’s study, and hit his unique lamp. The lamp fell out of its niche, flickered, and went out. Professor Lavery started muttering in ancient Egyptian, and then slumped, murmuring “too late ... too late.”

He cleared up the mess, managed to congratulate Hugh on his batting, and went to see his solicitor.

Life returned to normal, and Professor Lavery relaxed.

 

And then, a year later, came the news.

Hugh Brent brought it. He was learning Latin from the professor in the hopes of becoming an archaeologist himself, with hopes to specialise in Roman Britain. Professor Lavery had not been keen until Hugh had apologetically said he was not interested in Egyptology.

“And the new vicar is a very learned man who is also an Egyptologist, sir!” he declared, excitedly.  “And he’s a miracle himself!  Only think, sir, up to a year ago, he was in a coma, in a per...per....”

“Persistent vegetative state?” supplied Mordechai Lavery, who had a bad feeling about this.

“Yes, that’s it!” said Hugh, worshipfully.  “And they were about to turn off the machine, when suddenly he woke up!  They said he had a bit of a personality change, caused by being hit on the head, but he was able to complete all his exams and asked for this parish.”

“How splendid!” said Lavery, hollowly.  “I’d better go and see him.”

 

 

“Ah, my boy,” said the vicar. “As you see, I came home.”

“Hello, Uncle Silas,” said Mordechai.