LITMIR.BIZ

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were just shavings.”

      “Obviously, they can’t do work for the living and do it the other way around,” Ruslan suggested.

      “What if they do it on purpose? They are slaves of the dead. We, living people, climb into ancient pyramids, take out funeral paraphernalia without asking, and the ancient gods take revenge on us.”

      “It’s just a story.”

      “I have heard many such legends,” Dima admitted, “and their wording is very modern. Allegedly, many collectors have suffered because of Ushebti. The symptoms of all the unfortunates are the same. After the Ushebti got into their collection, they hear the sounds of hard work at night, see aggressive laborers who work hard for their owner, and wake up in the morning in complete bedlam. To a secretary who worked at an exhibition, they gutted all the folders with documents. The movers who transported them complain that the Ushebti deliberately punctured their truck tires. One wealthy businessman, who was renovating his cottage, received an Ushebti as a gift. He left them at the cottage at the time of repair. The Ushebti worked there as fitters, roofers and dyers. In the end, the cottage was just rubble. And it was worth a lot, but the Ushebti have cleaned it up in their way.”

      “And all of this was caught on security cameras?”

      “No, security cameras are always broken or damaged, but there are eyewitnesses. Usually, they’re unhappy people who left the Ushebti at their place. Then they all need psychologists. Ushebti are industrious, but you have to flee from their industriousness, otherwise they will bury you under the rubble of your house, or if you are working in the field, they will drive a tractor over your corpse instead of sowing. I heard that one seamstress was helping restorers of historical costumes. They put her alive under her own sewing machine. The needle stitched all the way through her skin, even on her eyelids. That’s the work of an Ushebti!”

      “How cruel is it!”

      “The ancient gods are cruel.”

      “Are they only the Ancients?” Ruslan had heard something frightening about modern sects.

      “Yes, probably all of them, otherwise the world would be a paradise if they were kind.”

      The truth seemed bitter. Ruslan regretted having unpacked the parcel. If it hadn’t been for the Ushbeti found in it, this philosophical conversation wouldn’t have taken place.

      “Let’s put them somewhere so that they could add to the local exposition,” Ruslan suggested.

      “I’m afraid there are no shelves for them here.”

      That’s right. There were only empty pedestals around, on which the statues would soon be placed. The package with them would obviously be more cumbersome than the one with the Ushebti. Ruslan clutched one figurine in his hand and wondered how he felt. Why did it seem to him that such fragile figurines held more power than the giants?

      “It felt like they could crush us all,” he thought aloud, but Dima didn’t listen to him. He walked around the rotunda with his phone and photographed the exhibits.

      “I’ll keep the pictures as a souvenir. Where else will you see such curiosities?”

      In any museum, Ruslan wanted to say, but bit his tongue in time. He himself had visited the Egyptian hall in the Hermitage and the Historical Museum on Red Square many times, had been to various exhibitions of Oriental and antique culture, but he had never seen such sinister and impressive figures. Somehow even the bandaged mummy in the Hermitage window did not make such a frightening impression on him as the beautiful statues?

      He had seen Ushebti before, too, in museums and on reproductions in encyclopedias, but not like these. The figures seemed alive and breathing. For some reason, when he looked at them, he thought of black locusts.

      “If they wake up, there won’t be a construction site left,” a voice whispered in his subconscious. He must have imagined it again.

      The Ushebti resembled gods. And they were not only ancient, but also modern, almost glamorous. It seemed as if they had been specially varnished and polished.

      Ruslan left the Ushebti in a box among a pile of shavings. They would not break here. If scratches appeared on the Ushebti, those who unpacked the box would have to account for the damage.

      Working at a construction site has brought Ruslan to a dead end. No architect and no engineer can cope here, because the employer demands to build a new fantastic building on the skeleton of an old structure. The future palace will have to have a bunch of wings: Egyptian, Persian, Indian, Babylonian, Chinese, Japanese, French, English, and so on. One wing will have to look like a Russian princely terem, only not made of wood. Usually terems were built of logs, but such material is short-lived, so Ruslan will have to choose stone or cement and process it so that the masonry walls resemble log walls. Even one wing in the shape of an Aztec pyramid is planned. All the wings will be connected by air passages. Hanging gardens and galleries will be located in the passages. We still need to design sites for fountains and greenhouses. The idea is grandiose! But how you could realize it?

      Ruslan worked on the drawings all day long. Dinner was modest, and they had to spend the night in a tiny carriage taken off its wheels. The workers jokingly called it a trailer. Some people didn’t have enough wagons, so they slept in tents. There was no hope of a luxury hotel. There are no hotels near the construction site. There is only an abandoned hospital.

      “I’d be happy to sleep there, too, if there were a decent bunk instead of a sleeping bag and a heater,” Dima complained as he fell asleep. He and Ruslan shared one trailer for two.

      After lights out, only the guard on duty remained at the construction site. He had his own booth in front of the entrance, and he certainly didn’t make any noise at night. There’s a strange noise coming from wherever, like someone’s still working.

      “Do you hear hammers banging there?” Ruslan called out to his colleague, but Dima just turned over on his other side and snored.

      The sound of hammers was monotonous, as if a whole army was working outside, but no sounds of conversation or footsteps could be heard. Probably it was just an auditory hallucination. Overwork can do that too. The sound of hammers has been joined by the whistle of a drill. That’s exactly the whistle of a drill.

      Ruslan woke up and crawled out of the cramped sleeping bag. Not even in the pioneer camp had it been so uncomfortable. His whole body ached. There was a noise and a strange hissing outside. Ruslan opened the door of the wagon, and barely managed to dodge the sparks that usually fly off from working welders. What the hell! They can’t have fireworks at night on a construction site.

      Some shadows were replacing the workers, carrying bricks from wheelbarrows, pouring cement, working with trowels and picks. The work was confused and inept. It did more harm than good.

      “Hey, you!” Ruslan called out, and flinched when red eyes stared at him.

      They’re not construction workers. They’re not wearing helmets or uniforms. And they were shorter than grown men. The strangers were small, thin and dark, like shadows. They hissed at Ruslan with needle-sharp teeth and continued working. They were industrious, but they were wasting building material. Everything in their hands was breaking instead of being useful.

      Ruslan couldn’t understand what was happening. Did he really see the Ushebti working at the construction site? Or was it all a nightmare?

      There was no time to think. No one was awake but him. The guard was nowhere to be seen, and the industrious laborers were tearing everything down. Their sharp teeth glinted like needles and easily ripped stones from concrete blocks.

      How to stop them? How could he justify himself to the oligarch if the building was destroyed the next morning?

      Ruslan didn’t know what to do. Maybe hit them all with a crane. The Ushebti only got angry when he tried to take action. Well, now they’re going to jump on him and bring everything down with it. They might even dance on

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