Tired of poetry? Check out Cure for the Sleeping Woman
One of my fiction stories, Cure for the Sleeping Woman, is available free today on Amazon in the US.
From the book description:
Effie Gennings likes her history orderly and her small town museum ship-shape. Even if she and the museum are basically invisible to everyone. But when a mummy dubbed the Sleeping Woman is unearthed from a local bog, and displayed in the museum’s facility until the University can take charge, people take notice. Even Eddie Adams, whose fears drive him face to face with the Sleeping Woman.
Here’s the start of the story:
The line to enter the exhibit of the Sleeping Woman at the Clarkston Historical Museum went out the door and around the corner. Which, to be fair, was not that far a distance since the museum’s entry was just a mud room in a restored New England saltbox, and the door from the mudroom to the outdoors was only a few steps from the street corner. Still, Effie Gennings had never before seen so many people waiting in her line. She stood at the little podium in the renovated-but-not-authentic, Arts & Crafts-style entry way and smiled politely. Where had all these townsfolk been when she had presented the Clarkston Rail Days exhibit? Or the Founder’s Finds revolving display, after months of research?
Now people were just here so they could say they’d seen the Sleeping Woman, found mummified in the Anderson’s peat bog when a town crew was excavating in order to install a drainage pipe across the bog. The crew that found the body called her The Sleeping Woman, and the name had stuck. The Sleeping Woman was on display now, until the good folks from the University were able to come take her away, and Effie sure wished they would hurry.
Technically, though, the Sleeping Woman wasn’t supposed to be on display, and therefore Effie was probably not supposed to be collecting ticket money. The Museum was the temporary repository of the remains of the poor woman only because the Museum had the right size climate-controlled display case to hold the body until experts could arrive. Who knew how long the poor thing had been in that bog? Effie wasn’t an expert on mummification, but she had a history degree. And both history and common sense told her that anyone found in the local peat bog ended up there by foul play.
The mummy was an eerie reminder that what went into the earth couldn’t remain unchanged. This region’s original Mohawk inhabitants had stayed far away from the bog, calling the waters, the scrubby brush and reeds, and even the air of the bog evil. Later European settlers had avoided it as well, following the Mohawk example.
Effie knew all of the people in her line by face and most of them by name. There was Jim, from the town Water Department, who had cajoled Dougie and the others from the Highway Department into helping move the old Salton Homestead onto the Historical Society grounds when Portia Salton had passed away. All of Portia’s quilt collection had been bequeathed to the Museum, including some well-preserved Colonial examples. For now, they’d been moved to outside storage in order to make room for the Sleeping Woman in the museum proper.
Behind Jim was a group of younger women. Effie recognized their faces from the summer craft show. One was a potter, and Effie had bought one of the potter’s hand-thrown lotion dispensers. It was glazed in a combination of russet and blue, and the seam between the body and the pump dispenser leaked a bit if you angled it wrong. But that was to be expected with a one of a kind, hand-made item. Little flaws made it more unique.
Effie didn’t know how many more people waited outside, but she would find out soon enough. Meanwhile, she kept a sharp eye on Eddie Adams, who waited at the front of her line. Eddie ran the gas station just across the corner. He stood at her podium running the index finger of his right hand back and forth on the wooden edge. An index finger which she hoped was not as greasy as the stains on the back of his hand might indicate.
(If you miss the free day, don’t despair, it’s usually $0.99.)