 Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and is intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised. Welcome Weirdos, I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained. Coming up in this episode, as we head into a new year, I thought it'd be appropriate to make something old, new again. It's a story I shared many years ago in the podcast and I really enjoyed narrating it. Plus, it's very appropriate for the day. The story was written in 1880 by Grant Allen. It's titled, My New Year's Eve Among the Mummies. If you're new here, welcome to the show. And if you're already a member of this Weirdo family, please take a moment and invite someone else to listen. And please, leave a rating and review in the podcast app you're listening from. Doing these things helps the show to keep growing. And while you're listening, be sure to check out WeirdDarkness.com for merchandise, my newsletter, to connect with me on social media and more. Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights and come with me into the Weird Darkness, Melgravia, 1880. I've been a wanderer and a vagabond on the face of the earth for a good many years now, and I have certainly had some odd adventures in my time. But I can assure you, I never spent 24 queerer hours than those which I passed some 12 months since in the great unopened pyramid of Abu Yillah. The way I got there was itself a very strange one. I had come to Egypt for a winter tour with the Fitzsimkins' to whose daughter Aditha I was at that precise moment engaged. You'll probably remember that old Fitzsimkins belonged originally to the wealthy firm of Simkinson and Stoko. Worshipful vint nurse, but when the senior partner retired from the business and got his knighthood, the College of Haralds opportunally discovered that his ancestors had changed their fine old Norman name for its English equivalent, sometime about the reign of King Richard I, and they immediately authorized the old gentleman to resume the patronymic and the armorial bearings of his distinguished forefathers. It's really quite astonishing how often these curious coincidences crop up at the College of Haralds. Of course, it was such a great catch for a landless and briefless barrister like myself, dependent on a small fortune in South American securities, and my precarious earnings as a rider of burlesque to secure such a valuable prospective property as Aditha Fitzsimkins. To be sure, the girl was undeniably plain, but I have known plainer girls than she was, whom 40,000 pounds converted into my ladies, and if Aditha hadn't really fallen overhead and ears in love with me, I suppose old Fitzsimkins would never have consented to such a match. As it was, however, we had flirted so openly and so desperately during the Scarborough season that it would have been difficult for Sir Peter to break it off, and so I had come to Egypt on a tour of insurance to secure my prize, following in the wake of my future mother-in-law, whose lungs were supposed to acquire a genio-climate, though in my private opinion, they were really as creditable a pair of pulmonary appendages as ever drew breath. Nevertheless, the course of true love did not run so smoothly as might have been expected. Aditha found me less ardent than a devoted squire should be, and on the very last night of the old year, she got up a regulation lover's quarrel because I had sneaked away from the boat that afternoon under the guidance of our dragamond to witness the seductive performances of some fair guajie, the dancing girls of a neighboring town. How she found it out, heaven only knows, for I gave that rascal Dimitri five piaustras to hold his tongue. But she did find it out somehow and chose to regard it as an offence of the first magnitude, a mortal sin only to be expiated by three days of penance and humiliation. I went to bed that night in my hammock on deck with feelings far from satisfactory. We were moored against the bank at Abuyila, the most pustiferous hole between the cataracts and the delta. The mosquitoes were worse than the ordinary mosquitoes of Egypt, and that is saying a great deal. The heat was oppressive, even at night, and the malaria from the lotus beds rose like a palpable mist before my eyes. Above all, I was getting doubtful whether Aditha Fitzsimkin's might not, after all, slip between my fingers. I felt wretched and feverish, and yet I had delightful, interlusive recollections in between of that lovely little guajie who danced that exquisite, marvelous, entrancing, delicious, and awfully oriental dance that I saw in the afternoon. By Jove, she was a beautiful creature, eyes like two full moons, hair like Milton's Penseroso, movements like a poem of swineburns set to action. If Aditha was only a faint picture of that girl now, upon my word, I was falling in love with a jaziah. Then the mosquitoes came again, buzz, buzz, buzz. I make a lunge at the loudest and biggest, sort of primadonna in their infernal opera. I kill the primadonna, but ten more shrill performers come in its place. The frogs croak dismally in the reedy shallows. The night grows hotter and hotter still. At last, I can take it no longer. I rise up, dress myself lightly, and jump ashore to find some way of passing the time. Yonder, across the flat, lies the great, unopened pyramid of Abu Gila. We're going tomorrow to climb to the top, but I will make a turn to reconnoiter in that direction now. I walk across the moonlit fields, my soul still divided between Aditha and the jaziah, and approach the solemn mass of huge, antiquated granite blocks standing out so grimly against the pale horizon. I feel half awake, half asleep, and altogether feverish. But I poke about the base in an aimless sort of way with a vague idea that I may perhaps discover my chance the secret of its sealed entrance, which has air now baffled so many pertinacious explorers and learned Egyptologists. As I walk along the base, I remember old Herodotus' story, like a page from the Arabian Nights, of how King Rampsonidas built himself a treasury, wherein one stone turned on a pivot like a door, and how the builder availed himself of this, his cunning device to steal gold from the king's storehouse. Suppose the entrance to the unopened pyramid should be such a door. It would be curious if I should just chance to light upon the very spot. I stood in the broad moonlight, near the northeast angle of the great pile of the twelfth stone from the corner. A random fancy struck me that I might turn this stone by pushing it inward on the left side. I lent against it with all my weight and tried to move it on the imaginary pivot. Did it give way a fraction of an inch? No, it must have been mere fancy. Let me try again. Surely it is yielding. Gracious Osiris, it has moved an inch or more. My heart beats fast, either with fever or excitement, and I try a third time. The rust of centuries on the pivot wears slowly off, and the stone turned ponderously round, giving access to a low dark passage. It must have been madness which led me to enter the Forgotten Corridor alone, without torch or match at that hour of the evening, but at any rate, I entered. The passage was tall enough for a man to walk erect, and I could feel as I groped slowly along that the wall was composed of smooth, polished granite, while the floor sloped away downward with a slight but regular descent. I walked with trembling heart and faltering feet for some forty or fifty yards down the mysterious vestibule, and then I felt myself brought suddenly to a standstill by a block of stone placed right across the pathway. I had nearly enough for one evening, and I was preparing to return to the boat, a gog with my new discovery, when my attention was suddenly arrested by an incredible, a perfectly miraculous fact. The block of stone which barred the passage was faintly visible as a square by means of a struggling belt of light streaming through the seams. There must be a lamp or other flame burning within. What if this were a door like the outer one leading into a chamber perhaps inhabited by some dangerous band of outcasts? The light was a sure evidence of human occupation, and yet the outer door swung rustily on its pivot, as though it had never been opened for ages. I paused a moment in fear before I ventured to try the stone, and then, urged on once more by some insane impulse, I turned the massive block with all my might to the left. It gave way slowly like its neighbor, and finally opened into the central hall. Never, as long as I live, shall I forget the ecstasy of terror, astonishment, and blank dismay which seized upon me when I stepped into that seemingly enchanted chamber. The blaze of light first burst upon my eyes from jets of gas arranged in regular rows, tier above tier, upon the columns and walls of the vast apartment. Huge pillars richly painted with red, yellow, blue, and green decorations stretched in endless succession down the dazzling aisles. A floor of polished cyanite reflected the splendor of the lamps and afforded a base for red granite sphinxes and dark purple images and porphyry of the cat-faced goddess Pasht, whose form I knew so well at the Louvre in the British Museum. But I had no eyes for any of these lesser marvels, being wholly absorbed in the greatest marvel of all. For there, in the royal state and with mitred head, a living Egyptian king, surrounded by his Coyford court, was banqueting in the flesh upon a real throne, before a table laden with Memphian delicacies. I stood transfixed with awe and amazement, my tongue and my feet alike forgetting their office, and my brain whirling round and round as I remembered it used to whirl when my health broke down utterly at Cambridge after the classical tripos. I gazed fixedly at the strange picture before me, taking in all its details in a confused way, yet quite incapable of understanding or realizing any part of its true import. I saw the king in the center of the hall, raised on a throne of granite inlaid with gold and ivory. His head crowned with the peaked cap of Ramsey's, and his curled hair flowing down his shoulders at a set and formal frizz. I saw priests and warriors on either side, dressed in the costumes which I had often carefully noted in our great collections, while bronze-skinned maids with light garments round their waists and limbs displayed in graceful picturesqueness waited upon them, half nude as in the wall paintings which we had lately examined at Carnac and Syene. I saw the ladies clothed from head to toe in dyed linen garments sitting apart in the background, banqueting by themselves at a separate table, while dancing girls like older representatives of my yesternoon friends, the jazwi, tumbled before them in strange attitudes to the music of four-stringed harps and long, straight pipes. In short, I beheld as in a dream the whole drama of everyday Egyptian royal life, playing itself out anew under my eyes in its real original properties and personages. Gradually, as I looked, I became aware that my hosts were no less surprised at the appearance of their anachronistic guest than was the guest himself at the strange living panorama which met his eyes. In a moment, music and dancing ceased. The banquet paused in its course, and the king and his nobles stood up in undisguised astonishment to survey the strange intruder. Some minutes passed before anyone moved forward on either side. At last, a young girl of royal appearance, yet strangely resembling the jaziah of Abu-Yila and recalling in part the laughing maiden in the foreground of Mr. Long's great canvas at the previous academy, stepped out before the throng. May I ask you, she said in ancient Egyptian, who you are and why you come hither to disturb us? I was never aware before that I spoke or understood the language of hieroglyphics, yet I found I had not the slightest difficulty in comprehending or answering her question. To say the truth, ancient Egyptian, though an extremely tough tongue to decipher in its written form, becomes as easy as love-making when spoken by a pair of lips like that pharaonic princesses. It really was very much the same as English, pronounced in a rapid and somewhat indefinite whisper and with all the vowels left out. I begged ten thousand pardons for my intrusion, I answered apologetically, but I did not know that this pyramid was inhabited, or I should not have entered your residence so rudely. As for the points you wish to know, I am an English tourist and you will find my name upon this card, saying which I handed her one from the case which I had fortunately put into my pocket with conciliatory politeness. The princess examined it closely, but evidently did not understand its import. In return, I continued, may I ask you in what August presence I now find myself by accident? A court official stood forth from the throng and answered in a set heraldic tone, in the presence of the illustrious monarch, brother of the son, Thomes, the 27th king of the 18th dynasty. Salute the lord of the world, put in another official in the same regulation drone. I bowed low to his majesty and stepped out into the hall. Apparently my obiescence did not come up to Egyptian standards of courtesy, for a suppressed titter broke audibly from the ranks of bronze-skinned waiting women. But the king graciously smiled at my attempt and, turning to the nearest nobleman, observed in a voice of great sweetness and self-contained majesty, this stranger, Ambos, is certainly a very curious person. His appearance does not at all resemble that of an Ethiopian or other savage, nor does he look like the pale-faced sailors who come to us from the Achaean land beyond the sea. His features, to be sure, are not very different from theirs, but his extraordinary and singularly inartistic dress shows him to belong to some other barbaric race. I glanced down at my waistcoat and saw that I was wearing my tourist's check suit of gray and mud color, with which a Bond Street Taylor had supplied me just before leaving town, as the latest thing out in fancy tweeds. Evidently, these Egyptians must have a very curious standard of taste, not to admire our pretty and graceful style of male attire. If the dust between your majesty's feet may venture upon a suggestion, put in the officer whom the king had addressed, I would hint that this young man is probably a stray visitor from the utterly uncivilized lands of the north. The headgear which he carries in his hand obviously betrays an octic habitat. I had instinctively taken off my round felt hat in the first moment of surprise when I found myself in the midst of this strange throng, and I was standing now in a somewhat embarrassed posture, holding it awkwardly before me like a shield to protect my chest. Let the stranger cover himself, said the king. Barbarian, intruder, cover yourself, cried the herald. I noticed throughout that the king never directly addressed anybody save the higher officials around him. I put on my hat as desired. A most uncomfortable and silly form of tiara indeed, said the great Thomis. Very unlike your noble and aspiring mitre lion of Egypt, answered Ambos. Ask the stranger his name, the king continued. It was useless to offer another card, so I mentioned it in a clear voice. An uncouth and almost unpronounceable designation truly, commented his majesty to the grand chamberlain beside him. These savages speak strange languages, widely different from the flowing tongue of Memnon and Cisostris. The chamberlain bowed his assent with three low genuflections. I began to feel a little abashed at these personal remarks, and I almost think, though I shouldn't like it to be mentioned in the temple, that a blush rose to my cheek. The beautiful princess, who had been standing near me meanwhile in an attitude of statuesque repose, now appeared anxious to change the current of the conversation. Dear father, she said, with a respectful inclination, surely the stranger barbarian, though he be, cannot relish such pointed illusions to his person and costume. We must let him feel the grace and delicacy of Egyptian refinement. Then he may perhaps carry back with him some faint echo of its cultured beauty to his northern wilds. Nonsense, a tossu! replied Thomy's the 27th testily. Savages have no feelings, and they are as incapable of appreciating Egyptian sensibility as the chattering crow is incapable of attaining the dignified reserve of the sacred crocodile. Your majesty is mistaken, I said, recovering my self-possession gradually and realizing my position as a freeborn Englishman before the court of a foreign despot, though I must allow that I felt rather less confident than usual, owning to the fact that we were not represented in a pyramid by a British consul. I am an English tourist, a visitor from a modern land whose civilization far surpasses the rude culture of early Egypt, and I am accustomed to respectful treatment from all other nationalities as becomes a citizen of the first naval power in the world. My answer created a profound impression. He has spoken to the brother of the sun, cried Ambus in evident perturbation. He must be of the blood royal in his own tribe, while he would never have dared to do so. Otherwise, added a person whose dress I recognized as that of a priest, he must be offered up in expiation to Amun Ra immediately. As a rule, I am a decent, truthful person, but under these alarming circumstances, I venture to tell a slight fib with an air of nonchalant boldness. I am a younger brother of our reigning king, I said, without a moment's hesitation, for there was nobody present to gain samey, and I tried to salve my conscience by reflecting that at any rate I was only claiming consinguity with an imaginary personage. In that case, said King Thomeys, with more genealogy in his tone, there can be no impropriety in my addressing you personally. Will you take a place at our table next to myself, and we can converse together, without interrupting a banquet which must be brief enough in any circumstances? Hathasau, my dear, you may seat yourself next to the barbarian prince. I felt a visible swelling to the proper dimensions of a royal highness as I sat down by the king's right hand. The nobles resumed their places, the bronze-skinned waitresses left off, standing like soldiers in a row, and staring straight at my humble self. The goblets went round once more, and a comely maid soon brought the meat, bread, fruits, and date wine. All this time I was naturally burning with curiosity to inquire who my strange host might be, and how they had preserved their existence for so many centuries in this undiscovered hall. But I was obliged to wait until I had satisfied his majesty of my own nationality, the means by which I had entered the pyramid, the general state of affairs throughout the world at the present moment, and 50,000 other matters of a similar sort. Thome's utterly refused to believe my reiterated assertion that our existing civilization was far superior to the Egyptian. Because, he said, I see from your dress that your nation is utterly devoid of taste or invention. But he listened with great interest to my account of modern society, the steam engine, the permissive prohibitory bill, the telegraph, the House of Commons, own rule, and other blessings of our advanced era, as well as to a brief resume of European history from the rise of the Greek culture to the Russo-Turkish war. At last, his questions were nearly exhausted and I got a chance of making a few counter inquiries of my own account. And now, I said, turning to the charming Hatasu, whom I thought a more pleasing informant than her August Papa, I should like to know who you are. What? Don't you know? She cried with unaffected surprise. Why, we are mummies. She made this astonishing statement with just the same quiet unconsciousness as if she had said, we are French or we are Americans. I glanced round the walls and observed behind the columns what I had not noticed till then, a large number of empty mummy cases with their lids placed carelessly by their sides. But what are you doing here? I asked in a bewildered way. Is it possible, said Hatasu, that you don't really know the object of embalming? Though your manners show you to be an incredible and well-bred young man, you must excuse by saying that you are shockingly ignorant. We are made into mummies in order to preserve our immortality. Once in every thousand years, we wake up for 24 hours, recover our flesh and blood, and banquet once more upon the mummy dishes and other good things laid by for us in the pyramid. Today is the first day of a millennium. And so, we have waked up for the sixth time since we were first embalmed. The sixth time, I inquired incredulously, then you must have been dead six thousand years. Exactly so. But the world has not yet existed so long, I cried, in a fervor of orthodox horror. Excuse me, barbarian prince, this is the first day of the 327,000th millennium. My orthodoxy received a severe shock. However, I have been accustomed to geological calculations and was somewhat inclined to accept the antiquity of man, so I swallowed the statement without nor ado. Besides, if such a charming girl as Hatasu had asked me to turn Mohammedan or to worship Osteris, I believe I should incontinently have done so. You wake up only for a single day and night, then? I said. Only for a single day and night, after that we go to sleep for another millennium. Unless you are meanwhile burned as fuel on the Cairo railway, I added mentally. But how, I continued aloud, do you get these lights? The pyramid is built above a spring of inflammable gas. We have a reservoir in one of the side chambers in which it collects during the thousand years. As soon as we awake, we turn it on at once from the tap and light it with a Lucifer match. Upon my word, I had no notion you ancient Egyptians were acquainted with the use of matches. Very likely not. There are more things in heaven and earth, Saphrinis, that are dreamt of in your philosophy, as the bard of Philea puts it. Further inquiries brought out all the secrets of that strange tomb house, and kept me fully interested till the close of the banquet. Then the chief priest solemnly rose, offered a small fragment of meat to a deified crocodile, who sat in a meditative manner by the side of his deserted mummy case, and declared the feast concluded for the night. All rows from their places, wandered away into the long corridors or side aisles, informed little groups of talkers under the brilliant gas lamps. From my part, I strolled off with Hitasu down the least illuminated of the colonnades, and took my seat beside a marble fountain, where several fish, gods of great sanctity, Hitasu assured me, were disporting themselves in a profiary basin. How long we sat there, I cannot tell, but I know that we talked a good deal about fish, and gods, and Egyptian habits, and Egyptian philosophy, and above all, Egyptian love-making. The last named subject we found very interesting, and when once we got fully started upon it, no diversion afterwards occurred to break the even tenor of the conversation. Hitasu was a lovely figure, tall, queenly, with smooth dark arms and neck of polished bronze, her big black eyes full of tenderness, and her long hair bound up into a bright Egyptian headdress that harmonized to a tone with her complexion and her robe. The more we talked, the more desperately did I fall in love, and the more utterly oblivious that I become of my duty to Aditha Fitzsimkin's. The mere ugly daughter of a rich and vulgar brand new knight foresooth to show off her heirs before me, when here was a princess of the Blood Royal of Egypt, obviously sensible to the attentions which I was paying her, and not unwilling to receive them with a coy and modest grace. Well, I went on saying pretty things to Hitasu, and Hitasu went on depreciating them in a pretty little way, as who should say, I don't mean what I pretend to mean one bit. Until at last I may confess that we were both evidently as far gone in the disease of the heart called love as it is possible for two young people on first acquaintance to become. Therefore, when Hitasu pulled forth her watch, another piece of mechanism with which antiquaries used never to credit the Egyptian people, and declared that she had only three more hours to live, at least for the next thousand years. I fairly broke down, took out my handkerchief, and began to sob like a child of a five-year-old. Hitasu was deeply moved. Decorum forbade that she should console me with too much impressment, but she ventured to remove the handkerchief gently from my face and suggested that there was yet one course open by which we might enjoy a little more of one another society. Suppose, she said quietly, you were to become a mummy. You would then wake up as we do every thousand years, and after you have tried it once, you will find it just as natural to sleep for a millennium as for eight hours. Of course, she added with a slight blush, during the next three or four solar cycles, there would be plenty of time to conclude any other arrangements you might possibly contemplate before the occurrence of another glacial epoch. This mode of regarding time was certainly novel and somewhat bewildering to people who ordinarily reckon its lapse by weeks and months, and I had a vague consciousness that my relations with Aditha imposed upon me a moral necessity of returning to the outer world instead of becoming a millennial mummy. Besides, there was the awkward chance of being converted into fuel and dissipated into space before the arrival of the next waking day. But I took one look at Aditha, whose eyes were filling in turn with sympathetic tears. That look decided me. I flung Aditha life and duty to the dogs and resolved at once to become a mummy. It was no time to be lost. Only three hours remained to us, and the process of embalming, even in the most hasty manner, would take up fully two. We rushed off to the chief priest who had charge of the particular department in question. He at once acceded to my wishes and briefly explained the mode in which they usually treated the corpse. That word suddenly aroused me. The corpse, I cried. But I'm alive. You can't embalm me living. We can, replied the priest, under chloroform. Chloroform, I echoed, growing more and more astonished. I had no idea you Egyptians knew anything about it. Ignorant barbarian, he answered with a curl of the lip, you imagine yourself much wiser than the teachers of the world. If you were versed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, you would know that chloroform is one of our simplest and commonest anesthetics. I put myself at once under the hands of the priest. He brought out the chloroform and placed it beneath my nostrils as I lay on a soft couch under the central court. The tossu held my hand and hers and watched my breathing with an anxious eye. I saw the priest leaning over me with a clouded file in his hand and I experienced a vague sensation of smelling myrrh and spikennard. Next, I lost myself for a few moments and when I again recovered my senses in a temporary break, the priest was holding a small green stone knife, dabbled with blood, and I felt that a gash had been made across my breast. Then they applied the chloroform once more. I felt a tossu give my hand a gentle squeeze. The whole panorama faded finally from my view and I went to sleep for a seemingly endless time. When I awoke again, my first impression led me to believe that the thousand years were over and that I had come to life once more to feast with a tossu and thommies in the pyramid of Abu Yillah. But second thoughts, combined with closer observations of the surroundings, convinced me that I was really lying in a bedroom of Sheppard's Hotel at Cairo. A hospital nurse lent over me instead of a chief priest and I noticed no tokens of Aditha Fitzsimkin's presence. But when I endeavored to make inquiries upon the subject of my whereabouts, I was preemptorily informed that I mustn't speak, as I was only just recovering from a severe fever and might endanger my life by talking. Some weeks later, I learned the sequel of my night's adventure. The Fitzsimkin's, missing me from the boat in the morning at first, imagined that I might have gone ashore for an early stroll. But after breakfast time, lunch time, and dinner time had gone past, they began to grow alarmed and sent to look for me in all directions. One of their scouts happening to past the pyramid noticed that one of the stones near the northeast angle had been displaced, so as to give access to a dark passage hitherto unknown. Calling several of his friends, for he was afraid to venture in alone, he passed down the corridor and threw a second gateway into the central hall. There, the fellow hin found me, lying on the ground bleeding profusely from a wound on the breast, and in an advanced stage of malaria's fever. They brought me back to the boat, and the Fitzsimkin's conveyed me at once to Cairo for medical attendance and proper nursing. Aditha was at first convinced that I had attempted to commit suicide because I could not endure having caused her pain, and she accordingly resolved to tend me with the utmost care through my illness. But she found that my delirious remarks, besides bearing frequent reference to a princess with whom I appeared to have been on unexpectedly intimate terms, also related very largely to our casus belly itself, the dancing girls of Abu Yillah. Even this trial she might have borne, setting down the moral degeneracy which led me to patronize so degrading an exhibition as a first symptom of my approaching malady. But certain unfortunate observations containing pointed and by no means flattering illusions to her personal appearance, which I contrasted much to her disadvantage with that of the unknown princess, these I say were things which she could not forgive, and she left Cairo abruptly with her parents for the Riviera, leaving behind a stinging note in which she denounced my perfidy and empty-heartedness with all the flowers of feminine eloquence. From that day to this, I have never seen her. When I returned to London and proposed to lay this account before the Society of Antiquaries, all my friends dissuaded me on the grounds of its apparent incredibility. They declared that I must have gone to the pyramid already in a state of delirium, discovered the entrance by accident, and sunk, exhausted when I reached the inner chamber. In answer, I would point out three facts. In the first place, I undoubtedly found my way into the unknown passage, for which Achievement I afterwards received the gold medal of the Sausage K. Avial, and of which I retain a clear recollection, differing in no way from my recollection of the subsequent events. In the second place, I had in my pocket when found a ring of a tassus, which I drew from her finger just before I took the chloroform and put it into my pocket as a keepsake. And in the third place, I had on my breast the wound which I saw the priest inflict with a knife of greenstone, and the scar may be seen on the spot to the present day. The absurd hypothesis of my medical friends that I was wounded by falling against a sharp edge of rock, I must have once reject as unworthy of a moment's consideration. My own theory is either that the priest had not time to complete the operation, or else that the arrival of the Fitzsimkins scouts frightened back the mummies to their cases an hour or so too soon. At any rate, there they all were, ranged around the walls, undisturbed the moment the fellow had entered. Unfortunately, the truth of my account cannot be tested for another thousand years. But as a copy of this book will be preserved for the benefit of posterity in the British Museum, I hereby solemnly call upon collective humanity to try the veracity of this history by sending a deputation of archaeologists to the Pyramid of Abuyila on the last day of December 2877. If they do not then find thommies and Hitasu feasting in the central hall exactly as I have described, I shall willingly admit that the story of my New Year's Eve among the mummies is a vain hallucination, unworthy of credence at the hands of the scientific world. The fictional story, My New Year's Eve Among the Mummies, was written by Grant Allen. Weird Darkness is a production and trademark of Marlar House Productions, copyright Weird Darkness. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. Psalm 96 verses 1 through 3. At the dawn of the New Year, I'm filled with hope for what is to come, and I have thankfulness in my heart for what has already passed. I pray that I will keep my focus where it needs to be this year and that we all have a year filled with joy, love and happiness. And a final thought from Brad Paisley. Tomorrow is the first blank page of a 365-page book. Write a good one. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness.