Human Touch

by Chris Pye

'I can't resist,' I mumble though gritted teeth. 'I'm going to do it.'

Carter would have tried to stop me only he's not here. He's back in London on his Tutankhamun circuit with Lord Carnarvon. Again. It's just me in this dry and musty stone chamber. My discovery this time.

I'm on my hands and knees because the ancient ceiling is too low for anything more than crouching. My flashlight dances shadows over the smooth sandstone walls and stale dust motes hang suspended in its beams.

On a whim, I turn the flashlight off.

Without the light, the darkness is chill and profound. My eyes sparkle stars into the blackness and I can only bear the tarry atmosphere for a short while before some primordial fear compels me to bring back the light.

The beam lands on a sandstone wall at the far end of the chamber, its surface covered in faded hieroglyphics; the only visible colour in the room.

I shuffle forwards and look closer. The Egyptian pictograms surround a discrete, rectangular block of stone set into the wall. It's a door - the hieroglyphs say so - but only big enough to crawl through.

Across the door, limp twisted rope spans between corroded copper staples. On one end, covering one staple, is a roughly flattened disc of clay: a seal. Impressed into the surface is an image of the Anubis, the Egyptian jackal god, protector of tombs and cemeteries.

There are no hinges to the door and my feeling is that this is not so much a 'door' in the wall as a fat, stone plug.

Three days ago, my assistant, Omar, and I discovered this new room off a minor side chamber to the min dig.

Two days ago, we cleared out a roomful of accumulated dirt and debris. We assumed it had been a small armoury because of the many bronze shields, spear heads, bows and arrows we pulled out and, given what we had been finding in the main tombs in this valley, we were not too impressed.

Until we saw this end wall.

It took Omar and me some while to see the outline of the door, well-camouflaged as it was by the accumulated dust and faded hieroglyphs.

We spent yesterday deciphering the time-worn writing; some images we'd never seen before. And the main thrust of the message seemed to be: Don't, under any circumstances, open this door.

Of course, Carter had to know; he's the one who wears the bow tie around here. So we telegraphed him.

You could almost hear him shout down the wire.

'Don't, under any circumstances, do anything until I get back!'

But he's shouted at me, appropriated my efforts, once too often. I'm going to ignore him. My turn for glory, I think, job or no job. I had thought of asking Omar to help but I didn't want him risking his job either.

It's just me then, here by the wall, in front of the door.

On my own.

Carefully, I pull on the copper staples on each side of the door. They remove easily and I lay them, along with twisted rope and fragile clay seal, cautiously to one side.

I use the bandana round my neck to wipe the endless sweat from my gritty forehead, then tie it over my mouth and nose. I put my flashlight down, pointing to the door, and reach for my long, iron pry bar.

In the end, the work is surprisingly easy. I jam the flat end of the bar into the top edge of the stone and lever.

Without warning, the whole block tilts and falls out, crashing flat on the floor beside me and just missing my legs. Dust curls up from the floor.

Hardly a door, then. It seems to me the block had been hastily jammed in at the last minute.

Without waiting for the air to clear, I shine my flashlight into the opening. The beam runs down a tight horizontal passage, about the length of three bodies, and with growing excitement I can see the far end opens into another space, another room. A chamber that has waited patiently through the millennia for me to visit.

Holding the flashlight in front of me, I wriggle into the hole. The walls are rough, scraping my elbows and knees.

My heart beats loudly as, confined, I feel I'm squirming through a long coffin.

The passage ends abruptly and I roll forwards inelegantly onto the floor, breathing hard. I'm in another small chamber with a ceiling too low for anything other than crouching.

Sweeping my light around, I see simple, bare walls. No hieroglyphs; no golden objects; no treasure. A pang of disappointment washes through me. So much for my great discoveries. Or my job.

With a sigh, I cast my light over the room again - and see something I'd overlooked. My breathing stops. Dead silence fills the room.

On the floor, near to a side wall and loosely wrapped in grey linen cloths, is a body,

I shuffle over on my knees and into the gap between the body and the wall to look closer. I feel reverent in its presence, and a gut need to have something strong and permanent at my back.

The mummy-like figure is lying on it's own on the floor, not even on a dais. No sarcophagus. No coptic jars. No designatory symbols. Fragile bandages cover the whole body but are slack, laid loosely; not the tight fit I'm used to.

It's as if the body had been hastily wrapped by the priests and dumped here and - the thought struck me - the room had been quickly plugged closed.

The body lying in front of me is long and thin. I can easily make out the anatomy: a man. His legs are bound together; his arms are bound separate from his body. The linen hadn't been soaked in preservatives and by its shape I doubt the body itself had been natron-treated in any way either. Just wrapped, as was.

I've never seen anything quite so casual in all our burial digs in the valley. I have to look more closely.

I lay the flashlight down and begin to peel back the linen coverings around the head. No matter how careful I am, the material breaks away like the paper layers of a wasps nest.

A desiccated face: sunken cheeks, hollow eyes, dry, wrinkled skin; a nose withered to a small beak. Definitely, the man had simply been left as he died rather than being subjected to proper embalming.

And, despite the egregious impact of time and a dry atmosphere, a very human expression, a sort of steely patience, lies over his face.

Who is this human being, this man who's lain here undisturbed for thousands of years?

My heart goes out to him and I fall to maudlin over the shortness of life in the big wheel of time.

Adjusting the light, I turn to the body's arm. The bandaging is even looser here and easily falls away. A pale and shrivelled hand, curled as if in the act of begging.

An impulse has me take this man's dry, stiff hand in my own, blood-driven, one. My nails are short; his are thick and black. His skin is dead and thin; mine warm and fleshy.

What had this hand touched? Whom had it held, or stroked?

There are no rings on the man's fingers or amulets on his arm. I can see the hand on the other side is a lot larger and bandaged quite differently, and I wonder excitedly whether there might be a clue to his world and who he was beneath those more tightly wrapped layers.

Moving my flashlight again and throwing monstrous shadows onto the chamber walls as I go, I shuffle round the mummy's feet and over to the other side.

Without hesitation I begin to tease away the grey, crumbly bandages around the hand a piece at a time. Unexpectedly, the whole front portion of the linen simply falls away.

At first I can't understand what I'm seeing.

It's a hand, yes, or rather there's a palm, four long fingers and a thumb. But the whole hand is made of bright shiny metal. No skin. Just articulated phalanges. I can see the forearm bones and wrist, also highly polished, hard and bright with reflection in the dark room.

I don't know how long I kneel there beside the body, looking at the cold, mechanical brilliance of that hand. It lies in appalling silence in the room, palm up, fingers hinged and splayed; a beautiful, polished alien spider on its back.

I play my flashlight over the metal. I can't comprehend the intricacies of the jointed structure; the feeling of strength in its flexible architecture.

Another impulse has me slowly placing my own hand inside the net of fingers as if shaking this unearthly hand.

I grip, palm to palm.

The metal is so cool, so hard.

'Who on earth are you?' I mumble into the chamber.

Suddenly, the metal hand twitches. And grips me back.

I jerk away, shocked, knocking my flashlight onto the stone floor.

Which leaves me in utter darkness.

—- the end —-