“Look, kids, I’m trying to be nice. I don’t know how you got it here, but you don’t own that mummy.”
“Neither do you,” said Robert. “If anyone has any rights here, the mummy belongs to the museum.”
“I have an arrangement with them,” said the man sharply.
Josie scowled. “I bet it’s not legal.”
That seemed to hit a nerve. The tall man made himself taller.
“I will take it, if I have to.”
He reached to grab Josie’s arm, but she avoided him. This time, Leonard edged forward, bristling, and gave a low growl. The man kicked out but missed.
“Hello, Mrs. Gumster,” said Josie in a loud voice and waved.
The man looked round.
In the window opposite, Mrs. Gumster waved back. She held up a phone in her other hand, making it obvious.
“She’s probably written your license plate down.” Josie smiled. “She doesn’t get out, but she has very good eyesight.”
Trapped between a growling terrier, two stubborn children, and Mrs. Gumster, the man said something rude. He glared, and strode to his car. The cream- coloured car pulled away, and peace returned.
“Whoa!” Robert leaned against the door.
“Breathe slowly.”
They all went back inside.
Robert, when he was breathing properly again, had three points to make. One, the tall man didn’t seem to know that the mummy could move by himself. Two, the man probably wouldn’t give up. Three, they had no idea what to do next. He had a fourth point, when he got to the end. The dental appointment excuse, supposedly sent by Josie’s mother, wouldn’t get them out of afternoon classes.
“He won’t do anything today,” said Josie. “Mrs. Gumster’s sitting at her front window.”
So they packed up their school books, feeling frustrated.
* * *
Josie tried to think how to tell her mother what was going on and failed. They spent a normal weekend together, but her mother was back on long shifts.
“Can people be dead for a long time, but not really dead?” asked Josie over Saturday night hamburgers.
Her mother nodded, mustard dripping from her chin.
“Sort of. They might be in what we call a coma, where they seem as if they’re almost dead.”
“And do these coma people ever wake up?”
Her mother wiped away the mustard, letting Leonard lick her hand.
“Sometimes. We don’t always know which ones will wake up, though. And I’m afraid that some people never do.”
“They die, then?”
“Uh, yes, that can happen. Why do you want to know, pumpkin?”
“School project,” said Josie quickly.
In her bedroom, she sat next to the closet and kept her voice low.
“Mr. Menkhep, did you … die back then? In Egypt.”
“Do not. Remember. So long. Ago. Priests chanted. Like. The man. Who took some. Of me.”
It was a long speech for the mummy.
“We still don’t know what to do,” she admitted.
“Fate. It is. My fate. Then. The man will. Use me.”
“For what?”
No one had said what sort of magic this could be, if that was what it was.
“In my. Day. The priests could. Work wonders. Turn birds. To gold. Water to. Wine. Make people do. What the priests wanted.”
She sat cross-legged by the closet and sighed. That would be enough to get most people excited.
“So, he probably wants to do that sort of stuff, using you.”
“I. Think so. But I. Am not a priest. I do. Not know. Very much.”
A rumble told her that the mummy was slipping into his deep sleep again.
The cream car didn’t return Saturday or Sunday. But it was odd that Robert wasn’t at school on Monday morning. And when the principal announced that Robert Davis was missing and had not been seen since heading for the school bus, Josie had an attack of the shivers. This couldn’t be a coincidence.
They interviewed her, as his best friend. Had anything unusual happened recently? Had Robert been worried about anything, at home or school? She didn’t know what to tell them. In the end, she mentioned the tall man.
“He was asking for directions. I didn’t like him,” she managed to say. Half a truth. “The lady across the road saw him and his car.”
They took all this down and a description.
“May be nothing. Kids skip school all the time.” They said this with lips that were reassuring. Their glances were anything but.
She was allowed to leave early. Her mother was on call from the ambulance bay, so Josie told the school that she would go to her uncle’s, but she didn’t. She went home and hugged Leonard.
The man just wanted the mummy. He wouldn’t hurt Robert, surely?
Half an hour later, her phone rang. It was Robert’s number, but not his voice.
“I have your friend,” said the man. “You will place the mummy in your back garden after dark, behind the fence. It must be there at midnight. When you wake up, it will be gone, and your friend will be safe at home.”
“I’ll tell the police. They know about you, your car—”
“A car.” The tall man’s voice was colder. “And what I chose to look like when I came to your house.”
“How do I know Robert is okay?”
“Why would he not be? I don’t want him. I do not want either of you, so don’t be stupid.”
“Why do you want the mummy so much?”
“It is a link to a time of power. If I study the remains, I can master the arts of the Egyptian priests and speak to the past. You wouldn’t understand, little girl.”
The line went dead. She tried ringing back, but it looked like Robert’s phone had been switched off.
The closet door creaked open. A dark eye glinted.
“I do not. Want. Your friend. Hurt.”
“He wouldn’t dare,” said Josie, flushed with anger.
“I am. Not worth the. Risk.”
She looked at the mummy.
“What if he wants a whole arm next time? Or something important from you? We shouldn’t let him get away with this.”
The mummy stepped forward, but not too far from his safe place.
“Tell me. What he. Wants.”
Josie explained. It had struck her that she had no obvious way of stopping the tall man if he was that determined and if he really could alter what he looked like and swap cars so easily. This wasn’t a TV detective show. And the only adult she could talk to about this was Mr. Menkhep himself.
She ran through ideas in her head. A trap, some sort of anonymous tip-off that the man would be coming to the back of her house that night? How would she explain the mummy? Where was Robert being held? She could never risk anything happening to her friend.
The man might even have real magic.
“All that chanting, what he did when he was taking parts of you. Was that some sort of spell?”
The mummy was silent for a long time. Just as she was thinking that he had fallen asleep again, he spoke.
“Many. Spells in. Those days.”
“But you don’t know them, remember them?”
His response wasn’t helpful. He had been a builder, an architect. He had built places for grain, and fine houses, and a couple of small temples for a prince. He knew more about bricks than he did about spells.
She could make up a bundle that looked like a mummy, ask for Robert to be let loose first? No, he wouldn’t fall for that. He would know, if he’d already been able to track the mummy to here …
“Mr. Menkhep, this man has bits of you. If he can find you, why can’t you find them?”
“Find. Them?”
“Your finger, your toes, your wrappings, anything he’s taken from you. They’re all part of you.”
And she outlined her plan, going over it again and again until the slow brain of the mummy understood. It was mad, but so was having a talking mumm
y in your closet.
* * *
Nine in the evening, a cloudy night, and Josie had a thin figure in an old overcoat alongside her as they trudged the streets. She’d found a hat for him as well, left over from one of her mother’s parties, which covered most of his bandaged head, but the mummy was slow and frightened. She kept having to urge him on.
“It won’t be long.” She tried to sound soothing.
“Can. Not move.”
He had stopped again.
“Yes, you can. You made it all the way from your case to my house, a few days ago. We’ve hardly gone any further than that. And we’ll have you back in my closet again soon, for as long as you want.”
How that would work she had no idea, but it seemed the best thing to say. The mummy was acting like Robert did when an asthma attack was coming on. Which reminded her to check that she’d brought a spare inhaler.
“There.”
He lifted one arm, pointing to a badly lit street behind a filling station. There was very little traffic. She knew the area. There was going to be a new shopping centre here eventually, and the old houses could be rented for a few months at a time.
“I can. Feel me. Over there.”
They followed the mummy’s instincts, turning towards a run-down house at the end. There were dim lights on. Creeping from one straggly bush to another, she sneaked up to a window and peered in.
The man was sitting at a table. He had an old book in his hands, and he was muttering to himself. He looked annoyed. He was trying to read it, she thought, and not doing so well. That made her feel better. Maybe he wasn’t that good at what he was doing.
There was no sign of Robert. Josie was never scared, not really, but tonight she felt close to it. Her friend might be somewhere else; the tall man might have a gun or even have some thugs with him.
Suddenly her plan seemed stupid, but it was too late to back out now.
She clenched her fists and went to the rear of the half-derelict property. There was a big black truck parked there, but it was empty. She went back to the house. One of the windows was half open. It would do.
She signaled the mummy.
Mr. Menkhep took off his hat and coat, going as slowly as ever. Dropping them in the bushes, he lay down on the path to the front door. There was a soft rustle as he crossed his arms and stopped moving, the picture of any old mummy dragged from a museum display and dumped.
Josie slipped to the front door. Ring and run. It was a silly game, but tonight …
She pressed the bell twice, quickly, and ran to the corner of the house.
The door opened, slowly. The man looked around, frowned, and then saw the mummy on the path. He was cautious but at last came out. As soon as he knelt down by the mummy, she dashed to the back and was through the window, into the house. Hall and kitchen—nothing; same for the back room. She knew that Robert wasn’t in the front one, so she dashed up the stairs.
“Robert,” she hissed. “Where are you?”
She heard a muffled thump from the room on the left. The door wasn’t locked.
Robert was tied to a chair with a cloth wrapped around his mouth, gagging him. Josie thought she could have escaped from that set-up easily, but he’d never been the athletic type. With one finger to her lips, she untied the gag.
“What?”
“Shush. Plan.”
The ropes around his arms were harder to untie, but she had him free at last. She handed him an inhaler, and he took a grateful blast.
“Come on.”
They crept to the top of the stairs. The tall man was dragging the mummy into the hallway.
“You’ve given in?” Robert looked at her with big eyes.
“Wanted to make sure where you were and that you were safe first.”
She pushed him behind her and went forward.
“I’ve called the police,” she said in a loud voice.
The man looked up.
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll take this thing,” he nodded down at the mummy, “and be long gone.”
Josie took a step down and thwacked the baseball bat against the palm of her hand. The tall man laughed in that unpleasant way of his.
“You’re going to fight me?”
“Not me,” said Josie.
A rustle and a soft creaking sound came from by the stranger. The mummy was getting to its feet, prune-eyes fixed on the one who had abused him.
“This is Mr. Menkhep,” said Josie. “You haven’t been very nice to him. He can talk and walk, which you never bothered to find out.”
Robert, stiff from being tied up, hobbled to her side.
“We think you should give him his bits back.”
The man stared at the mummy, then the children, then the mummy again. For a second she thought he was going to run, but instead he began to chant, like Father Brannigan did at church, but not Latin. Something older. It didn’t sound nice.
The mummy hesitated, and Josie’s stomach lurched. She’d relied on him helping them. Maybe he just wasn’t strong enough to stand up for himself.
“Come on, Mr. Menkhep!” shouted Josie. “This is your chance!”
The mummy lifted his head, looking up at Josie and Robert.
Robert nodded encouragement. “This guy doesn’t know that much about spells,” he called down the stairs. “I’ve had to listen to him. He took parts of you because he wasn’t getting anywhere. Ritual, he called it.”
The tall man faltered in his weird chant, then started again. Josie, feeling desperate, started down, gripping the bat in both hands. Maybe she could get his shins.
“He thinks he knows magic,” she said, more positively than she felt. “But Mr. Menkhep, you ARE magic!”
A silent moment, and suddenly the hallway smelled of cinnamon and strange perfumes. The mummy drew himself up and pointed at the tall man.
“I want. What you took.”
A sharper, brighter glint came into his eyes.
“I am Menkhep, son of Amenem. I am not. Yours.”
And he himself began to chant, rustling words which filled the hallway. Josie and Robert watched, amazed, as the electric lights crackled.
“I built. A temple to Isis. By the Great River.”
The house creaked and groaned around them, and fragments spun in the air—a wizened finger floated from the front room and came to rest in its place on the mummy’s hand, followed by other things. Toes and lengths of bandage appeared, a small clay amulet, which landed on the mummy’s chest, and a dull metal ring, which settled on another finger.
“Yes. I remember.”
No longer so tattered and torn, the mummy pressed one hand to the man’s chest.
“I do not like you,” he said. “I do not. Like it that you threatened. These children.”
Swifter than they had ever seen him move, the mummy picked up the tall man in both hands, as if he weighed nothing, and threw him out of the open front door.
The man landed badly, with a groan.
“GO,” said Menkhep from the doorway.
The tall man looked stunned. They watched as he staggered away into the night.
Josie and Robert grinned at each other.
“I don’t think he’s ever seen the real thing,” said Robert.
“I remember.” Menkhep looked at his hands, working the finger which was now back where it belonged. “It is good. To be whole again.”
“Did you really call the police?” Robert asked Josie.
“No.”
“So you just hoped that Menkhep would be able to manage if he was pushed?” He took a blast on his inhaler. “You’re mad.”
“Maybe.”
“Josie was. Right. She is clever.”
On the street, all was quiet. Menkhep went outside and picked up the hat and coat.
“I am going back. To my case now. For a long sleep.”
“You could stay in my closet a bit longer,” said Josie. “If you want.”
She suddenly felt sad.
The
y walked together towards the museum in silence. Near the back of the museum, the mummy stopped.
“I do not mind. People just looking. And I must rest. Think for myself.”
He placed his hands on their shoulders.
“But you can come. Late, when there are. Not many people there.” It was almost possible to see a smile, somewhere in the complicated wrappings around the mummy’s mouth. “And we shall talk. Friends.”
“Friends,” agreed Josie and Robert.
They watched as Menkhep opened the back door and slipped inside.
“We never asked how he got out in the first place,” said Robert.
“We never asked a lot of things.”
Her friend stiffened. “Oh. How are we going to explain what happened to me—to my parents, the school, and everyone?”
Josie felt her sadness slip away.
“I have no idea,” she said with a grin. “But it should be fun.”
* * *
John Linwood Grant lives in Yorkshire with a pack of lurchers and a beard. He may also have a family. When he’s not chronicling the adventures of Mr. Bubbles, the slightly psychotic pony, he writes serious supernatural crime and fantasy tales. You can find him every week on his weird site, greydogtales.com, often with his dogs.
It was lunchtime at Casey Middle School. At the bell, the cafeteria, whose long tables and benches had been empty and silent, was flooded with schoolkids—me among them—looking forward to eating and hanging out with friends before being herded back off to classes in twenty-five minutes.
“Sasha!” squealed my friend Bethany, glomping onto to me from behind with an enthusiastic hug. “I just love your pink collared shirt! Is it new? Pink is SO your color. And it looks great with these black capris you got just last week!”
Bethany, as always, was dressed to kill in a sleeveless green blouse and a blue and green plaid wool kilt.
“Yes, it’s new, Miss Fashionplate.” I smiled as I broke from the hug and gave a twirl. “SO glad my outfit meets with your approval,” I finished in a lightly mocking tone.
The Monsters Hiding in Your Closet Page 5
