The Mysterious Statue

Amadeus Emanon sat quietly eating a peanut butter sandwich and reading a small leather bound copy of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.

Renfield R. Renfield who was on the computer cast a glance in Amadeus' direction and noticing what he was reading remarked, "I preferred the pre-Christmas Eve Scrooge to the post-Christmas Eve Scrooge. The pre-Christmas Eve Scrooge is more in line with my thinking."

"I'm not surprised," Amadeus reached for a warm mug of cocoa.

"Yes, this is very interesting," Renfield remarked between mouthfuls of tuna fish sandwich.

"What are you doing?" Amadeus asked.

"Well, the boss," Renfield was referring to their employer the multi-billionaire ancient Egyptian vampire Set, "has a list of statues from antiquity that he has asked me to be on the look out for."

"Why?" Amadeus looked curious.

"Well apparently many statues in the ancient world had spirits attached to them and so the boss is anxious to know if any of these statues should appear again," Renfield replied.

"Saint Paul once mentioned the same thing in one of his Epistles," Amadeus commented, "that's why Christians were forbidden to sacrifice to idols because such statues often had spirits, usually demons, attached to them."

"I don't think the Boss would be too happy if he heard you quoting Saint Paul," Renfield growled.

"Probably not," Amadeus admitted.

"Anyhow this statue that just washed up in the Israeli port city of Ashkelon," Renfield said, "after a massive storm in the eastern Mediterranean hit a couple of days ago- I have a feeling this statue could be one that's on the Boss' list."

"I don't recall hearing about that find," Amadeus sipped his cocoa.

"Yes," Renfield nodded, "the storm caused a cliff to collapse and a statue from Roman times was exposed and subsequently found by a passer-by. It's a white marble statue of a woman believed to be about 1,700 years old and weighs about 440 pounds and stands nearly 4 feet in height. The statue is missing its head and arms apparently which will make identification for our purposes slightly more difficult. But it does have delicately carved sandals which is interesting for our ID purposes as well. Interesting storm that hit the eastern Mediterranean that day. There were winds of more than 100 kilometres an hour which racked up 40 foot waves."

"And this happened in the Israeli city of Ashkelon you say?" Amadeus finished his cocoa.

"Yes, it's where King Herod had built his port of Caesaria," Renfield helped himself to another slice of bread and more tuna fish, "and it also served as the seat of government for Pontius Pilate when he was governor of Judea."

"So this statue," Amadeus was now even more curious, "who do you believe it to be a statue of? And how does it fit in with the Boss' list of statues and their possessing spirits?".

"That, my friend," Renfield smiled like a Cheshire cat as he bit into his tuna fish sandwich, "I'm not going to tell you."

To be continued.