Maureen shifted to get a better look. Something about the image struck her as familiar but she couldn’t place it. “What is it? A music player?”
“Perhaps. It would seem to be a celebration of music, considering how much of the tablet is taken up by these swirls. Assuming that’s what they represent. You can’t make assumptions.” Harold spoke in an offhand, lecturing way that faded as he looked closer at the artifact. “See here, while there’s the musician, the pipe does seem to be what it appears to be, there’s this bold line here, separating the musician from the... music? Maybe. I’m not certain.”
Maureen gazed at the engraved line Harold indicated. It did seem to separate the musician and the music. Almost like a barrier. She wondered if the piper was keeping something at bay. Again, the nagging sense of familiarity came to the forefront. She almost had it. “Is there anything on the back?”
Harold shook himself again. “Don’t you have other duties, Mrs. Burton?”
She took a step back. “I do. I’m sorry for rushing you. Would you like the rest of your mail here or...?”
“Put it in my box. You’ve given me enough work to deal with for one morning.” He didn’t look at her as he turned back to the package the stone tablet had been wrapped in. “Egypt,” he muttered, already lost in thought once more.
Maureen glanced at the tablet, then wheeled the mail cart out. She didn’t like it. She couldn’t put her finger on why, but she knew she did not like it at all.
Maureen sat in the greeter’s chair reading a book. Monday afternoons were slow. She often alternated between the information desk and the greeter’s chair to keep things interesting. Today, she wanted to be near the exits of the building. She didn’t know why, she just knew it was how she felt, and at her age of seventy-one, she’d learned to follow her instincts and urges.
Closing the book, Maureen sighed. She looked at the cover. It was a British murder mystery by one of her favorite authors, but she couldn’t remember what it was about. She couldn’t concentrate. “It’s a strange day,” she murmured.
A scream ripped the air from the direction of the administrative offices. Maureen dropped the book into her chair and was already hurrying that way before she identified the source of the short, sharp scream: Raven, Harold’s secretary.
Maureen was the second person to reach her. Ethan, the barista from the small museum café, was there, hovering about the woman with red and blue hair. They both looked frightened.
“...nightmare. Daymare. I don’t know. I dreamed that I wastrapped in a cave and there were spiders all around me. I could hear them in the dark. Moving. Whispering.” Raven shuddered.
Ethan, barely eighteen, shoved his hands in his pockets. “Want some coffee? I mean, if you’re tired?” He looked way out of his depth and implored Maureen to save him with a frantic look.
Raven turned to Maureen. “I wasn’t asleep. Not really. It was like I was daydreaming, but I couldn’t wake up. I’ve never... This has never happened to me before.”
Maureen nodded, touching Raven’s shoulder with a soothing hand. “Of course not.” She meant the words. In the six years Maureen had worked here—two part time, four full time—Raven had never dropped off for a nap while she was on duty. “I’m sure some peppermint tea will do the trick. Plenty of sugar and milk, if that’s the way you like it.”
Peppermint was one of those herbs that held a natural kind of magic that lent itself to the spell she’d augment it with as soon as she got to the café. Cleansing, happiness, healing, love, protection. All of these things were needed. Perhaps more.
Both Ethan and Raven nodded. They relaxed as Maureen took charge of the situation. “I can get it for you,” Ethan said.
Something niggled against her mind and she spurred the two of them onward with a gentle command. “Please, get one for me, too, if you wouldn’t mind. And Raven, go splash some cold water on your face.”
Raven stood as if snapping to attention. “Yes. Yes. I must look a mess.”
Maureen watched both of them go in opposite directions, then headed deeper into the administrative side of things down the back hallway. Just as she reached the break room—that was next to the mail room and one of the filing rooms—a man down the hall gave a muffled shout. Maureen abandoned her previous thoughtand took off in a hurry toward the voice. Jack, the museum’s maintenance man, if she wasn’t mistaken.
Jack burst out of one of the storage rooms and sprinted to the back door. He slammed it open without a pause and stopped when he made it to a shaft of sunlight. He turned his face to the sun and spread his arms wide as if bathing in it.
“Jack?”
He shook himself, then gave her a sheepish smile, but didn’t move from the sunbeam. “Bad dream. I don’t usually nap at work, but...” He stopped. “It wasn’t a nap. I wasn’t asleep, but I wasn’t awake. I was daydreaming.”
“Daydream nightmare?”
He nodded. “I was in darkness and suffocating. It was like the darkness itself had weight.” He shook himself again, a full-body gesture almost like a shudder. “Just needed to see the sun.”
After a couple minutes of silence, Jack glancing between her and the sky, Maureen beckoned him back into the museum. “Come on in and get some peppermint tea from the café. It’s a good time for it. I’m getting some myself.” As Jack did, Maureen knew something very strange was happening to the denizens of the museum. Right now, peppermint tea was what would help everyone, but she needed a better answer. There was only one person she could turn to.
Felicia opened the door before Maureen knocked. “What?”
“A pleasure to see you too, dear.”
The other older woman stepped back, letting Maureen into her tidy cottage. “It’s not Wednesday for tea. I could feel you coming miles away—all the way from the museum. Something’s wrong. What?”
Maureen clasped her hands together. “Youdocare.”
