Storytime: The mummy mystery
It had everything a kid needed to fill their summer: waterfalls, wishing wells and wet rocks that shone like diamonds. The flowers were exotic, and the air thick with growing things. We could come and go and meet our friends, and we did that freely right up until the weather turned cold. Chance Gardens was for everyone.
Especially for kids like me.
The garden was created by a big-thinking inventor named A.B. Chance, and I grew up hearing his name and about the legacy he left our town. Mr. Chance traveled extensively and marveled at the wonders in the world.
He was also a small-town boy who loved his small town. He began bringing the world back home with him, filling his backyard garden with travel treasures. From his upstairs window, he would look down at the quiet beauty and knew he had to share it.
So he did.
Mr. Chance opened his garden to everyone, and people came from everywhere to see it. A guest book lay open in the latticed foyer where the pen by its side never left. Guests signed in and, as a child, I would run my finger slowly down the list of names; names I couldn’t pronounce from places I would never see. People came to Chance Gardens to see the treasures of the world and I was certain they came for the very reason I did.
To see the mummy’s hand.
Back then, the mummy’s hand was displayed in a trophy case that hung in the sunlit foyer of Chance Gardens. The case held other treasures like carved stones and ivory figurines but, there at the bottom, for all the world to see, was a mummy’s hand.
A real-life mummy’s hand!
It had been severed at the wrist with a hint of weathered bone left as a reminder. The hand remained partially wrapped in a fragile, ancient cloth that covered it like a wisp of smoke. The fingers stretched out, the nails yellowed and brittle with age. And on one of the fingers was a solid band of turquoise, a ring that looked too alive to be on something so dead.
I had never seen anything like it.
As a kid, I stopped in at least once a week just to make sure the hand was still there. I would gaze into that case and measure my hand against the ancient one. I made up stories about it; romantic stories of love and mystery. Tales of hexes and curses placed on anyone who removed that ring from the mummy’s hand.
No one wants a hex put on them.
Then one day, I grew up and filled my days with other things besides curses and turquoise rings. I changed, and the garden changed when it was renovated and those treasures of my childhood were removed. The sign-in book with exotic names was also taken away — they could no longer keep a pen beside it.
That’s the last anyone saw of the mummy’s hand.
Maybe it was tucked away in a vault or packed in a safe. Maybe the hand was donated to a museum with a lighted trophy case. Maybe it is gathering dust under someone’s bed or stored in an attic in an unlabeled box. What happens to an old mummy’s hand, anyway? One day it was there, and one day it was gone.
As gone as that piece of my childhood and the book of names from exotic places.
As an adult, I still go, still walk the stone paths and breathe in the rich air. Chance Gardens is a gift, one given to my hometown by an adventurous man who loved to travel, but loved coming home even more. It is a place of history, a place that holds my memories and keeps my secrets. A garden of stories; stories of long-ago journeys, ancient treasures and forgotten mysteries waiting to be solved.
Like the mystery of the mummy’s hand.
You can reach Lorry at Lorrysstorys@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Storytime: The mummy mystery
