Tales from the Haunted Mansion, Volume 3

by Amicus Arcane

  To the ardent observer, the gold relics of the tomb would have seemed the obvious treasures, and they were. But let’s face it: museums across the globe are filled with relics. Colonel Tusk did not want to explain the rules or laws that he had broken obtaining them—but no one was going to question a bunch of dried leaves. And that was something he could work with. People were always looking for a new taste in designer beverages; so move over, mochaccino. Tanis tea was the hidden treasure Colonel Tusk had been searching for.

  Tusk’s Tasty Tanis Tea would make its first appearance in the States the following fall. It was an instant success. But tanis tea also came with a curse, no extra charge. A curse that promised madness and death to those who defied the sacred tombs. And the harbinger of this curse would be the very marketing mascot Colonel Tusk had used to sell his brand around the world: A being no longer alive. A spirit as old as the pyramids, wrapped in molded linens, reawakened to carry out an act of vengeance 3,500 years in the making.

  Penny and Carter found themselves alone in a room with a dead man. They had purposely strayed from Ms. Fisher’s history class, but they weren’t expecting the dead guy. They were stuck on a field trip and bored out of their skulls, so they’d begun searching for a more lively location, hopefully equipped with a vending machine or two.

  They’d explored the dark corridors of the Museum of Ancient Antiquities before stumbling upon the Egyptian wing. The dead guy in question was a certain Prince Amenmose. A plaque above his golden sarcophagus read ON LOAN FROM THE COLONEL TUSK COLLECTION.

  “Check it out!” Carter pointed through the glass display. “He still has his teeth.”

  Penny climbed onto the railing for a better view. It was true. Underneath the molded linen, she could see inside the mummy’s twisted mouth—a pained grimace, it would seem, harboring a row of crooked, corn kernel–like dentures. The rest of the mummy’s face would prove even less of a bargain. A thin layer of human rind, putrid gray, was tightly matted to its skull. The embalming skills of the ancient Egyptians were beyond reproach—remarkable even by today’s standards. First they’d remove the internal organs of the deceased and place them in jars; then they’d bathe the body in secret preservatives and, finally, wrap it in linen. Without those skills, Prince Amenmose would be no more than a mound of dust. Just like your favorite uncle.

  Penny hopped down from the railing. “Is this what you wanted to show me?” Carter shook his head. “What is it? Before Ms. Fisher sends that weirdo Karl Freund to find us.”

  Carter dug in his pocket. At first he couldn’t find what he was looking for, and a second of panic set in. Penny smiled at his awkwardness. She knew where the moment was going and waited, somewhat patiently, giving Carter his space. Finally, he came upon the item, snug inside a bubble gum wrapper. It was a plastic friendship ring, inexpensive but not cheap. “Penny, I—” He stopped, as if he’d forgotten the rest of the words. He hadn’t forgotten the rest of the words.

  Something he saw took Carter’s words away.

  Penny bobbed her head, trying to kick-start his spiel. “Go on. You wanted to ask me…”

  But Carter couldn’t go on. There was something behind Penny he couldn’t take his eyes off of. And being that they were in the mummy room, Penny knew she’d better turn and see for herself. “What?”

  She saw nothing—certainly not a living mummy in tattered bandages reaching out to grab her, which was what she’d half expected. Oh, but there will be. Keep reading, foolish mortal. In fact, there was nothing out of the ordinary, so she asked, “What in the world are you looking at?”

  Carter pointed. “You. I’m looking at you!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I found them!” interrupted a whiny voice from the corridor. That weirdo Karl Freund was peeking into the mummy room, on direct orders from Ms. Fisher. Of course everyone in school knew it was the day Carter would ask Penny to the middle school dance. Everyone including Penny. The only one without a proper clue seemed to be Carter, which Penny had found somewhat endearing. But the interruption startled him, and Carter dropped the ring. “You guys are in deep, dark trouble,” Karl Freund continued, undeterred.

  Penny grabbed Carter’s hand, tearing him away from the sarcophagus. “Come on, let’s get back before we get detention.”

  Off they went, Penny never seeing what Carter had been looking at. But Karl Freund saw it, and he was astonished, too. A giant mural had been transported from the mummy’s tomb, depicting a scene from the past. It featured the prince’s great love, the beautiful Princess Hatshepsut. And yes, you guessed it, the princess’s face looked exactly like…Karl Freund’s. No, wait, that’s a misprint. It looked like Penny’s. By all the powers of the almighty cliché, Princess Hatshepsut looked exactly like Penny!

  Tusk’s Tasty Tanis Tea hit the marketplace running. Talk about an instant sensation. Mochaccinos had gone the way of the pharaohs. Billboards went up, and the ads flooded the airwaves. And of course Colonel Tusk found the perfect mascot: a cartoon version of the mummy, the once-proud Prince Amenmose, sipping tea inside its sarcophagus. As a marketing tool, it was pure genius. But to the followers of the ancient past, it was an insult, punishable by madness and death and all the other unpleasantries curses are generally known to cause.

  One such follower was the high priest Bahgal. The tanis tea craze was bad enough. But to see the image of a once-revered prince on toys and T-shirts and longboards…well, that was just too much for him to handle. So Bahgal hopped the next red-eye to America, determined to put a stop to these unspeakable crimes against the ancients.

  A taxi arrived at the Tusk estate just before dusk. And a massive house it was, too, with a full-size fountain featuring a stone likeness of the colonel himself wearing a pith helmet and matching safari outfit. A butler led Bahgal to the colonel’s private sitting room, where he found the colonel, well, sitting—privately.

  The colonel rose to his feet. “Bagel!”

  “Bah-gal.”

  “Yes, of course.” He extended his hand to shake.

  Bahgal bowed respectfully. “You appear in good health, Colonel Tusk.”

  “Seems that silly old curse lost all its potency. So what brings you to this part of the world, my friend?”

  “You, my friend.”

  The colonel jingled a gold service bell. Within seconds, the butler appeared in the double doors “Martin! Two cups of tanis. Original Blend.”

  “Very good, sir.” The butler moved off.

  “Not for me,” said Bahgal. “The tanis plant was not cultivated for such a purpose.”

  Tusk shrugged. “Your loss.” The colonel retreated to his cushy chair—burgundy, like his smoking jacket. “Why did you really travel all this way?”

  Bahgal hovered behind the chair. “Colonel Tusk,” he began, “I’ve come to appeal to your better nature.”

  “I’m not so sure I have one. If it’s to take Tusk’s Tasty Tanis Tea off the market, I suggest you take the first flight back to Egypt.” The butler returned, handing Tusk his cup of tanis. He took one sip. “Mmmm. The best tea ever brewed.”

  A violent impulse overtook Bahgal, and before he knew what his right hand was doing, he had slapped the teacup out of the colonel’s grasp, sending it crashing into the fireplace.

  Tusk sprang to his feet. “How dare you!”

  Bahgal clasped his hands, bowing his head in shame. “I apologize, Colonel. But I beg you to reconsider. I am here to plead with you to undo what you have done.”

  “Then you’ve wasted your time.” Tusk turned away, refusing to humor the high priest any longer. The butler returned with a rag to clean up the mess. “Never mind that,” barked the colonel. “Show Bagel to the door. He’s overstayed his welcome.”

  “I know the way out.”

  Bahgal left the Tusk estate, anger brewing in his belly like tanis in a teapot. So the colonel didn’t believe in ancient curses. He found them silly. But he would become a believer soon enough. They all would—th
e hard way. Bahgal was about to serve up a special batch all his own. No, not Earl Grey or Bountiful Boysenberry or Original Blend. That night the high priest would be serving up a flavor known as…

  Resurrection.

  It was after-hours at the museum, and all the patrons and workers had gone for the day.

  Bahgal had remained after closing, hidden inside the janitor’s closet. He squeezed himself next to several mops and had to shove one foot into a basin to fit. It was tight in there, but these were the things he did for Egypt. When he was sure the night guard had fallen asleep—the snores were a dead giveaway—he carried a small thermos of tanis tea he’d purchased from World o’ Coffee into the mummy room.

  The mummy appeared to be resting most peacefully in its sarcophagus, its arms crisscrossed over its chest. Bahgal approached the glass case. Rest while you can, he thought. With the help of a glass cutter, Bahgal scored a hole so he could reach inside. Tanis was only part of the magic. He had to speak some ancient words, too. Bahgal removed a parchment from his jacket and read from the ancient scroll of life. For your convenience, foolish reader, we have translated the words of the ancient text into modern English. “By the leaf of the tanis, by the howl of the jackal, make supple his limbs, bring this mummy back-el.” It rhymed in the original language, so we thought we’d play along.

  Bahgal unscrewed the top of the thermos and carefully poured an entire twelve-ounce serving of tanis tea down the dried-out throat of the long-expired prince.

  Bahgal watched and waited. He waited for more than twenty minutes—anticipating the magic, the triumphant rebirth promised by the ancient words. But nothing happened. The mummy did not move. It never even wiggled a finger. Prince Amenmose was as dead as he’d ever been.

  Had Bahgal messed up the ancient words? Was it the “back-el” part? Or the tea—too sweet? Or maybe, just maybe, Colonel Tusk had been right all along. There were no curses. No secret spells. Tanis was simply tea—mind you, the best tea ever brewed, as per the quote, but just tea nonetheless.

  Bahgal climbed down from the display, crushed by his own inadequacy. What would he tell the high priests back home? That the ancient scroll didn’t work? That tanis tea was just a tasty hot beverage, popular at malls? He ran his fingers through the hair beneath his fez. Lost in his thoughts, he backed into a gelatinous shape—a living blob standing right behind him! The high priest stiffened. Should he look? Should he turn? Well, he would have to, eventually. So he turned.

  The blob in question was a belly—a rather large one—belonging to Terry, the night guard. “How’d you get in here?”

  Bahgal attempted to explain: “Forgive me. I was admiring your mummy room and lost track of the time.”

  But the guard wasn’t interested in excuses. His job was to guard, not excuse. “You can tell it to the police!” And he lifted his cell to dial.

  For Bahgal, things had gone from ho-hum to horrible in a hurry. He had failed in his evil high priest duties and was two seconds away from spending the night in a foreign jail—not to mention he was down the six bucks he’d shelled out for tanis tea, and it wasn’t even a large.

  “Let’s go, pal!”

  Bahgal began to follow the guard when…

  The guard froze, his body stiffening straight as a board, as if he’d just been zapped with 100,000 volts. His glasses shot off his face, and his feet slowly lifted off the floor, one, two, three inches.

  What was happening?

  Bahgal was smiling. Because he knew. He knew just like you.

  He had spotted the fingers, wrapped in moldy linen, clutching the guard’s neck from behind. The tanis tea had done its job. The mummy was alive!

  Bahgal looked on with both horror and pride. He had succeeded. He had resurrected a dead thing, an ancient abomination. But the guard was not the target. He was merely an infidel, a worthless distraction, not worth a second of Amenmose’s 3,500 years.

  “Release him!” the high priest commanded. “He is not the interloper.”

  The mummy seemed to understand, if not the words, then their intent. He flung his arm back, releasing the guard like an afterthought. The guard went airborne, sailing clear across the corridor into a prehistoric-world exhibit and landing, unconscious, on the back of a saber-toothed tiger. The morning shift would have questions.

  Bahgal craned his neck, staring in awe at the death-defying being towering above him—a seven-foot-tall chiseled mountain of decay. “Go now, Amenmose. Destroy the nonbeliever!”

  The high priest’s commands penetrated the mummy’s finely preserved skull. The creature turned and shuffled toward the exit. He wasn’t very fast. You’d most likely outrun him if you tried. But what the mummy lacked in agility, he made up for in supernatural ability. He was no longer a thing of the flesh. He was a spirit as old as civilization, trapped within untold yards of linen. The shuffling of his footsteps was a whisper in the wind. He could see in the dark. He felt no pain. And he had a grip that could crush steel…or the throat of any victim he so chose. That night, the mummy had chosen….

  Penny and Carter stepped out of the World o’ Coffee onto the corner of Main and Anaheim, sipping their respective cups of Tasty Tanis, hoping to chase an unusual chill out of the night air. Naturally, Carter was hoping for a little more. As delicious as the beverage was—the best tea ever brewed, haven’t you heard?—there were bigger things at stake on a night that had started like most but would end like so few.

  Carter had retrieved the friendship ring from the museum’s lost and found—he lost it, they found it—so he could finally make his move. He would start by telling Penny how he felt about her, for his was an infatuation that had spanned the semesters.

  He had first noticed her in Ms. Fisher’s history class, second row, third desk from the whiteboard, where she sat, twirling her hair with a pen. There was something different about Penny’s appearance, as if she belonged in another time. Third period, perhaps? No, even further back than that. Maybe even another century. Penny was beautiful; that was true. But beyond her genetic gifts, there was something about Penny’s manner. She commanded respect, even when she was silent. Her casual requests were obeyed without question, as if she was the queen of the middle school. Not that she acted that way. Penny didn’t think of herself as anyone special.

  Oh, but she was. It was in her blood.

  It took Carter an entire month just to say hi. Two months later, he actually managed a complete sentence: “Was that the bell?” But when fate lent a hand, as it usually does in love stories—and ghost stories—Penny and Carter found themselves partnered up on a class project, researching the tombs of ancient Egypt. That had been three weeks earlier.

  They walked in the cold night air, drinking their Tusk’s Tasty Tanis Tea. Penny couldn’t get enough of it. She said it made her feel like she was reborn. It seemed to make her smarter by the sip, and that night was no different. Penny began to expound on the ancient past as if she was speaking from experience. Carter was fascinated. “That’s amazing! How do you know all that stuff? You don’t look that old.” He chuckled. But Penny didn’t hear his joke. Her mind was elsewhere, shrouded in visions of a past world it wasn’t possible to remember firsthand. Or was it?

  “I see a man. A prince. He has slayed many just to be at my side.”

  Carter shuddered. “You’re not talking about Will Hewitt, are you? Does he still want to beat me up?”

  “No!” she replied, sounding lucid for a moment. “He hailed from a time since passed. The pharaoh had him punished for his crimes. Mummified! And buried alive!”

  “Maybe you need to sit down,” Carter suggested.

  “His soul is awake! The mummy has returned from the world of the beyond to seek vengeance on those who would desecrate his tomb!”

  Penny seemed trapped inside a nightmare, almost as if she was in a trance. Carter had always heard it was dangerous to wake someone from a dream, but Penny’s words were starting to scare him, so he took the risk. He shook her and shouted, “P
enny! Are you in there? Wake up! It’s me! It’s Carter!”

  She blinked three times before awakening. The third time’s the harm, as they say. At once, Carter could see the fog lifting from her eyes. Penny was back to normal.

  “What happened?” she asked innocently.

  “I don’t know. You blanked out. You were saying some really strange things. I’d better take you home.”

  “No, I’ll be okay,” she insisted. “I’d like to finish my tea. Let’s sit down in the gazebo.” Carter looked across the lawn at the quaint wooden gazebo, the site of many first kisses, imagined or otherwise. At the moment, kissing Penny was the last thing on Carter’s mind. Okay, so it wasn’t the last thing on his mind, but it wasn’t the first. The very first thing on his mind was her well-being. He truly cared about her—which, conveniently, is generally the direct path to a first kiss.

  They walked arm in arm across the frosty grass, Penny looking to the stars as if the night sky carried a secret message only she could read. “You okay?” Carter asked. “What is it? What do you see?”

  Penny lowered her eyes, once again meeting his. “The mummy,” she replied. “He’s coming.”

  Colonel Tusk was pacing across his sitting room, back and forth, back and forth. The colonel felt uneasy. It had begun with Bahgal. Very sensitive, those high priest chaps. Why was he still so angry? It was only a cup of tea. The colonel hadn’t hurt anyone. He was a mostly honest businessman, and tanis tea had raked in an honest fortune, fair and square. If it hadn’t been Tusk, it would have been one of his competitors. Lord Henry Mystic, perhaps. The colonel had gotten lucky. What was wrong with getting lucky every once in a while? He wasn’t a bad guy. Hadn’t he shared his good fortune with others? Hadn’t he introduced the world to the best tea ever brewed?