Luck of the Mummy

            The scene is right out of Bram Stoker’s Dracula.  No formal entry way.  Instead, a hole in the ground near the grey stone walls shows steep, narrow steps cut roughly into the bedrock.  Steps that grudgingly allowed entry into the burial vaults under the old church.   The low doorway forces visitors to stoop to enter.  Inside everything is covered in ancient dust and cobwebs.  Dim light from low wattage bulbs barely gives enough light for the visitors to see into the individual crypts where wooden coffins are haphazardly stacked.  The lids to several are broken.   Slightly hunched over, the caretaker/guide speaks in a high-pitched voice that holds a hint of a malevolent giggle.   He gleefully points out the coffin of the nun, the thief whose feet had been cut off, the brothers who were hung, drawn and quartered.                               

     At the end of the hallway, he waits in the gloom for today’s visitors:  two couples—one young, the other much older.  He rubs his hands together as he tells the story of the final coffin and its occupant.  A knight.  A crusader.  His legs broken and crossed to form a crude crucifix.  His right arm extending a bit above the level of the open casket.  

     The visitors peer into the gloom.  In the dim light, they see the open casket covered with dust and old dirt.  The mummified remains are a darker shade of grey/brown.  If the two men visitors are unnerved, they show no sign.  Both of the women, especially the young one, look nervous and uncomfortable.

            The guide, looking and sounding like Dracula’s slave who ate flies and bugs, makes an offer to the visitors, his voice tinny with glee and challenge:  “Would you care to shake hands with the mummy?” 
            With a barely suppressed squeal, the young woman brushes past the older couple and almost runs to the stairway leading out into the gathering dusk.  The young man follows her almost as abruptly.
            The older couple is left alone with the centuries-old mummies and the guide who still waits expectantly for an answer to his question.

            A novel? No.  A movie? No.  Just us. 

            Although Richard and I (the older couple) had found St. Michan’s Church in Dublin after the last tour of the day had started, the ticket seller assured us that we could join the tour at the half-way point, seeing the last half with the larger group, and then the guide would take us and another couple through what would normally be the first part of the tour. 
            The guide was delightful.  He had obviously studied the role of Stoker’s Enfield, especially as played by Dwight Frye in the black and white movie version with Bela Lugosi.  What could have been either a boring or more-than-slightly disgusting look at dirty coffins in a dry, airless basement became a dip into the past.   This was aided by the knowledge that Bram Stoker actually visited the vaults before he wrote Dracula.   At least, Stoker’s visit is one of the many legends surrounding the church, the vaults, and the mummies.  Legends a realist might question.
            But on this day, Richard and I aren’t being realists.  As the young couple fled the crypt, the guide continued, “Shaking hands with the crusader was said to bring good luck.”
            “Well,” Richard said.  “Let me in there."
            The guide opened the iron gate and Richard went inside, edging his way between the wall and the casket.  He took the mummy’s fingers in his right hand, touching it but not shaking it.  Then he carefully made his way back to me.
            My turn.   I heaved an inward sigh.  Then I followed Richard’s pattern.  When I touched the fingers, they felt leathery, like old modeling clay. 
            “Now you will both be lucky,” the guide told us.

            The next day, on our flight from Dublin to Faro, Portugal, Richard looked out the airplane window just in time to see another plane at the same level as ours but going in the opposite direction, close enough for him to read the logo and could have read, given more calm, the numbers on the tail.  Our plane veered away and onto another flight pattern.   Airlines call this “a near miss.”   We call it “luck of the mummy.”