The Curse of Egypt

Saturday, October 25, 1997

Zoe’s eyes flickered open. She was sure she had been having a nightmare but the memory was already fading away. Ah, well. It probably wasn’t that scary then. Her subconscious, though, remembered me slipping through Zoe’s dreams.

Zoe, still half asleep, stumbled from her bed to the bathroom. It was her custom to soak every Saturday morning. As she ran the bathwater, Zoe thought of last night’s events. They were still fresh on her mind despite the cobwebs of sleep still clinging to her brain. She couldn’t help but remember those last words of Claudia Lilith. Zoe still couldn’t shake the feeling that the witch had  absolute belief her own words.

What exactly is the “Curse of Egypt”? thought Zoe as she furiously brushed her teeth. Maybe I shouldn’t have angered the witch so much.

Oh, come on, Zoe, she told herself. You don’t think she really had the powers of Avi Socho or whatever. But a nagging suspicion still lingered. How had the seer, if she didn’t have real magical powers, know Zoe’s first and last name? She herself had certainly never told her.

Zoe leaned over the sink to spit out the toothpaste. When Wendy and Geoffrey had dropped her off, Wendy had had a queer expression on, like she fully intended to go home and research everything she could find in Avi Socho and the Curse of Egypt. Whatever it was, Zoe was sure that Wendy would have the answer with her at school on Monday. She straightened.

Grinning back at her in the mirror was a skeleton, pieces of dark hair still stuck to its skull. Zoe screamed and stumbled backwards, tumbling over the edge of the bathtub and into the water.

She came up spluttering. It was just your imagination. It was just your imagination, Zoe thought over and over, trying to convince her racing heart to slow. After a while, she raised an arm toward the edge of the bathtub. Instead of water, though, it dripped thick, red liquid. Slowly, carefully, Zoe turned her head downward to look at the water around her.

Swirling around her, like the inside of the crystal ball last night, was red. Zoe caught her breath. She stared in fascinated horror at it, transfixed as the beautiful patterns it made through the water. Somewhere, at the back of her mind, she knew it was blood, but she couldn’t tear herself away from the sight. Zoe could hear pounding feet in the hallway outside. Then the door burst open and Mr. and Mrs. Haber stumbled inside.

Now, from the Habers’ points of view, all they saw was their only daughter sitting in an overflowing bathtub, fully clothed, staring at the water around her like it was acid. I’m afraid that they expected something a little more dramatic than that after hearing Zoe’s scream from downstairs. The two were forced to pull Zoe out of the water themselves, as the girl seemed numb to everything around her, transfixed by the bathwater. While they were (attempting) to towel her off, she started mumbling something about “blood water”, the “Curse of Egypt”, and someone named “Avi Socho”. I’m even more afraid to say that Zoe’s parents, after this episode, were a little more than worried about their daughter’s sanity.

No one, though, noticed me hovering next to Mrs. Haber’s shoulder while they fussed

over Zoe. To be frank, I was a bit disappointed that she just didn’t keel over and die from the fright. It would have saved the teenage girl from even more anguish and pain.

Once Zoe had recovered from her shock and dried off, the first thing she did was call Wendy and tell her everything that had happened that morning. After she had finished, there was silence at the other end. Then, “I’ll be right over.”

 

“So let me get this straight. This morning, you fell into the bathtub and the water turned to blood.”