Horus and the Curse of Everlasting Regret by Hannah Voskuil Page B

with a bar and hangers for coats, that made a nice snoozing spot for Perch.
    “You need a nap,” Tunie said, giving Perch a gentle pat on the head. “Why don’t you sleep a little? I’ll see if Horus is still, uh, awake or animated or whatever.”
    Horus had said something about being able to move only at night. It was still quite early in the morning—six o’clock—and the museum wouldn’t open for another three hours. Given the inscrutable magic of his curse, she wasn’t sure if he’d be up and about or lying unmoving in his sarcophagus. Tunie opened the door to the Ancient Egypt exhibit and closed it behind her, flipping on the light switch.
    “Horus?” Tunie called softly. The exhibit was still. Then Tunie thought she heard a sound coming from the employee kitchen.
    “Oh, good!” Tunie said. She hurried to the kitchen. She couldn’t wait to tell Horus that there might be a way out of his eternal punishment. There would be a full moon that very night. If he could perform some act of kindness, it might help free him from his curse!
    Stepping through the doorway, Tunie gasped. It wasn’t Horus in the kitchen. She recognized the tall figure in his brimmed hat and unclean trousers. The thin, mustached man grinned evilly, grabbing Tunie and smothering her face with a cloth that smelled like some kind of awful chemical. Tunie drew in a breath and screamed for Perch, but the cloth muffled the sound, and the deep breath only made her inhale more of the chemical.
    The world went dark.

As Horus lay in his sarcophagus, tears ran from his eyes. He heard Tunie’s muffled scream and that unpleasantly familiar nasal voice. The thin man had peered into Horus’s sarcophagus when he arrived, presumably looking for Tunie, before hiding in the kitchen. Horus had tried to call out to warn Tunie, but the rising sun had rendered him mostly immobile. If only Tunie had come a few minutes earlier, when Horus could have stood by her and masked her presence with his curse!
    Horus could still move his limbs a little within his sarcophagus. He managed to tear a blank page from the back of a library book beneath him, and uncovered the pen he’d hidden, too. Horus sketched a perfect likeness of the thin, mustached man. His hand was stiffening even as he drew. Horus managed to write:
THIS MAN KIDNAPPED DOROTHY JAMES AND TUNIE WEBSTER
    But every second, the lettering became more difficult, until finally his hands froze and the paper and pen fell down into the shadowy sarcophagus, where his message would never be seen. Horus was trapped, unable to move until the sun set. He could not stand the thought of sweet Tunie in the clutches of that wicked man. Horus’s papery chest filled with despair, and the last tear he was able to cry slid down his bandages and dripped away.
    This was easily the worst day of his unnaturally long life.

Peter had been sitting in the shrubbery for more than an hour, dripping sweat tickling his lower back. To pass the time, he daydreamed about living with his mother—alive and healthy!—and father in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Peter knew in real life his mother would never come back. He was stuck with the twins for the rest of his life. This was his daydream, he thought stubbornly. He could envision what he wanted.
    Suddenly there was a loud crackling from WindUp, and Peter lowered the volume, turning the dial and holding his ear to the speaker on WindUp’s back. Finally!
    “Thanks, Doris,” came Detective Shade’s voice. “Oh, and, Doris—I’m expecting a visit this morning from a gentleman named Mr. Curtis Reid. You can show him in when he arrives.”
    The woman, Doris, murmured a reply.
    For a long while, Peter waited impatiently. He heard paper rustling, Detective Shade blowing his nose, and drawers banging. At last, a door creaked and Peter heard a recognizably nasal voice.
    “Heya, Peg Leg,” the nasal voice said in greeting. Peter flattened his back as hard as he could against the wall, to