How to Curse in Hieroglyphics by Lesley Livingston Page A

nightmarishly grinning clown, and into an alleyway between two tents.

    â€œNow shut your yap if you want to be a part of this mission!”
    â€œBut I—”
    â€œBetter do what they say, Art-Bart,” Pilot said, following them into hiding, “unless you really feel like entering into an argument you’ve got no way of winning.”
    â€œYou got that right.” Tweed nodded. “If you knew half of the whole of what we know, you’d be running out of here screaming for your—”
    â€œMUMMY!” Artie blurted.
    Cheryl blinked. “That didn’t take long.”
    â€œNo .” Artie was positively bug-eyed. “Look!”
    He pointed toward a gap in the back wall of a canvas exhibit tent, half hidden by a bunch of painted railcars from a ride all parked in a row. The twins and their companions crept toward the tent and peered inside. In the gloomy shadows of the tent’s dim interior, they could see wooden packing crates strewn about, half of them with their tops off and spilling out entrails of shredded newspaper and wood chips.
    A large, painted plywood sign resting on one end informed the gang that, once it was set up and ready for carnival-goers, the tent would host a “Weird, Strange, Wondrous and Phantasmagorical Collection of Curiosities and Rare Artifactual Flotsam.”
    Pilot was skeptical. “Sounds like a cross between a flea market and a wax museum to me .”
    â€œSee?” Artie hissed in an exaggerated stage whisperthat carried just as well as if he’d yodelled. “Mummy! There. Right there!”
    â€œGadzooks!” Cheryl murmured, grabbing Tweed by the sleeve. “Look …”
    The girls stuck their heads farther through the opening. In the far corner of the tent, lit by a shaft of sunlight that poured through a gap in the canvas roof like the beam of a spotlight, a raised platform stood, decorated with a backdrop of purple-and-gold curtains hung on a wooden frame. In the middle of the little stage stood a bulky, vaguely person-shaped object covered in a drop cloth. Above it, a sign illuminated by a border of light bulbs, three of which were burnt out, read:
    ZAHARA-SAFIYA
    ANCIENT PRINCESS OF EGYPT
    And then, in bright, drippy crimson paint underneath those words—and made to look like someone had scrawled a hasty last warning—it read:
    BEWARE THE MUMMY’S CURSE!!..-
    Cheryl crossed her arms and glared through the tent flap. “So, Sa-ra-fa … er … Za-ha-ha … um … Mummy-Girl! Our paths have crossed once again.” She turned to Tweed. “Coincidence, partner?”
    Tweed thoughtfully tapped her chin. “I think not.”
    â€œWell, of course it isn’t!” Pilot rolled his eyes. “We came here lookin’ for this kinda stuff, didn’t we?”
    Cheryl ignored his attempts to deflate the exquisite drama of the moment and nodded decisively. “This calls for further investigation,” she said to her cousin, giving her the C+T sign.
    â€œYou are so right,” agreed Tweed, returning the gesture. Then she thrust one booted foot through the gap in the tent’s canvas wall. “Our regularly scheduled Mummy Week appears to have arrived early this month. Cameras rolling, aaaand—”
    â€œ Whoa! Whoa there …” Pilot wasn’t so sure that what they were about to do was a very good idea at all. “This isn’t one of your standard everyday monster-mashing make-believes. It looks like there might be real live—uh, dead—archaeological whatchamacallits in there. I don’t think those carnies are gonna be too happy to find us nosing around—”
    He stopped in mid-sentence as both girls disappeared through the flap in the tent, hand signals aflutter.
    â€œC’mon, Bartleby,” sighed Pilot, holding back the tent flap. “We’ve come this far, might as well make sure the girls don’t get themselves