Page 61 of Persephone's Curse
It was my sister. The ghost was my sister. ItwasEvelyn; I knew that down in the very marrow of my bones, Iknewmy sister.
But if my sister was a ghost, did that mean my sister was…
Was Evelyn…
No.
No. If Evelyn was (I couldn’t even say the word, I couldn’t eventhinkit)—
If something had happened to Evelyn, I would know. I would be able to feel it. I wouldknow,in the same way I knew, when I walked in the door of our brownstone, if my sisters were home yet.
And I knew Evelyn wasn’therebut I knew also, Iknew,I knew, I knew that she wasn’t dead.
Neither Clara nor I went to school on Monday. Bernadette called out sick from the flower shop. We went to a different diner for breakfast, taking a circuitous route to get there, so her boss wouldn’t see her.
The professor of classical mythology emailed me back just as my pancakes arrived.
Her response was bemused, indulging, concerned firstly with my well-being (I don’t know you, but you sound a little frazzled), and secondly with how she might, if she were so inclined, attempt to communicate with a ghost.
I read it aloud to my sisters:
Bang around the old places.
Visit a temple, if you can (there’s a very handy one in the Met).
Scrounge around in some grave soil.
Climb into a coffin (carefully).
Hold an urn in your hands and close your eyes.
Have a séance. Meditate. Light a candle at midnight. Etc., etc.
“The Temple of Dendur,” Clara said thoughtfully. “Fascinating.”
I made the decision not to tell either of them about Evelyn.
I didn’t want to fill them with the same worry, the same dread that I had gone to sleep with, that I had woken up with, that I carried around with me, that I felt settle and resettle in my body with every step I took.
Our parents were due back tomorrow and we would have to tell them that Evelyn had been missing for three days, since Friday night, and we had no idea where she was except I had seen her as a ghost in our house and I couldn’t think about what that might mean.
It started snowing while we ate breakfast, a light fall of flakes that lasted throughout the entire morning, resulting in an inch-thick dusting of powder. Everything a pale, soft white. Everything made beautiful and new, sounds muffled, footprints on the sidewalk, air that smelled cold.
New York looks like a postcard,Evelyn would have said, if she were with me as I headed into the Met, because why not, because I might as well explore all my options.
I was quiet as I walked through the lobby, past the Tomb of Perneb, past Egypt under Roman Rule, past the Facsimile Gallery, past Arts under the Ptolemies, past the Ramesside Period. And then, finally, there it was, in all its serious impressiveness: the Temple of Dendur. There was water in front of it, a U-shaped pool that was meant to represent the Nile River. I heard Evelyn’s voice in my head,The ancient Egyptians knew a lot more about death than we do.
At breakfast, Bernadette had saidBut the Temple of Dendur was built for Isis and Osiris. It has nothing to do with death.
And Clara had answered,Everything the Egyptians did had to do with death. They were obsessed with it. There was a crypt attached to the temple. It was said to hold the bodies of two boys who drowned in the Nile—Pedesi and Pihor. They were the sons of a Nubian chieftain.
And I had said,How do you know that, you’re so weird.
And Clara had taken that as a compliment.
The Met was actually pretty empty, given that it was a Monday and still early. There were about twenty or thirty people wandering around or sitting on benches and staring at their phones or examining the graffiti the temple had become famous for. One of the better-known pieces of graffiti was carved in 1817, which proved that humans had basically been assholes forever, and a young kid with a can of spray paint was nothing new or original.
The temple was actually quite small, once you were inside it. The walls were covered in beautifully carved hieroglyphics. Two massive stone pillars framed the entrance, giving way to a square room. Past that room was a doorway into another chamber, with asingle small statue on display in a glass case. Beyond the statue was a third room, but the statue’s case blocked the doorway.
