Mummy Brown

“I got him at a bazaar in Cairo,” Wallner said with a wicked little grin and then finished the last of his Chateau Cheval Blanc which had been swirling in the glass in his hand.

“Bizarre, indeed!” said Garrison, and just as he said so the black sky beyond the great window overlooking the garden erupted in a flash of bluish-white light, revealing momentary shadows that seared themselves onto the dining room table.

“What makes you so sure he’s a he?” Olsen added from across the table. He could see his host lifting a finger but, before he was able to clarify himself, the Wallner Mansion rattled with a great hum of thunder, as did all the china and glassware.  

Wallner, finger still raised, waited for the clattering to pass. “Reminds me. We forgot to toast,” he said, and then lifted the vessel which moments before held his Cheval Blanc. Garrison, Olsen, and his wife, Katherine, who had been quietly finishing her plate up until that point, followed him in the gesture. “To friends both young and old,” Wallner said, glancing to the hallway door wryly, “and to good health. Cheers.”

“Cheers!” the others echoed, and Wallner watched them sip silently. In the billiard room, which was just across the hall and a few doors down from the parlor, the sly voice of Fats Waller spun ever so playfully on the gramophone, as it did most nights in there.

“I know he’s a he, Olsen,” Wallner continued, prompting his guest to lift his eyes from what little morsels remained on the end of his fork, “because that’s what I paid for. And because the Good Lord made such a distinction painfully obvious. Even three thousand years ago.”

Olsen chuckled, his gut rattling the table, although not quite as violently as the thunder had. “But why the male, Wallner? Why not a female?”

Wallner smirked softly as his guest, as politely as he could, rammed his forkful into his mouth. Apparently, Katherine’s roast duck was the same hit it always had been. “I suppose it’d be a bit… unsavory to undress a lady just after supper. And with such company.” Wallner met eyes with Garrison, who already looked spooked, and Olsen chuckled again, harder than before as made apparent by the rumbling china.

“It would be an ‘unsavory’ practice with either sex, would it not?” asked Garrison, a wild look in his eye.

Wallner grinned, passing a short glance to both his wife and Olsen. “How do you mean, Garrison?”

“Well, I mean… what of the soul?”

“What of it?” Wallner said, not asking. “Do we not press butterflies into glass or pile our departed’s ashes into urns? What of their souls, Garrison? You mean to tell me,” Wallner continued, lifting his brows into an almost-mocking look of surprise, “we’ve trapped them?”  

Garrison wagged his head, perhaps slightly drunken from the wine. “I only meant that the act of… well, unraveling the dead might be a touch disrespectful is all.”

There was another exchange of glances about the table and a swift flash from beyond the window before Wallner, with the upmost kindness—as a good host always possesses—disputed his guest. “Ah, but you think those before us were of greater value than we. Well, see here, Garrison—” Wallner explained, lifting his fork impolitely and aiming it at his other guest, “—if I took Olsen, there, who is anything but remarkable, and buried him in the garden for a few thousand years… he’d be a relic! Just the same, old Olsen—well, perhaps a bit older—a relic! Without any change but the passage of time.”

“And, perhaps, a dirtier shirt!” Olsen cackled.

Garrison nodded and, after noting how all eyes had shifted to him, let out a soft sigh. “Your point being, Wallner?”

“My point being I’d hardly think it disrespectful to exhume Olsen’s body, never mind some ancient Egyptian’s. A body’s but a body, my friend. Nothing more, nothing less.”

Garrison grasped at his collar, his throat. “I believe it to be more,” he said, his voice but a mutter. Everyone still heard him. “But it’s a mute point now. It needn’t spoil such a marvelous meal,” and he turned to his host’s wife with a nod. She didn’t return it but rather grinned at him through pursed lips, her cheeks stuffed like a chipmunk with roasted duck.

“You’ve always been a superstitious one, Garrison,” Wallner said, picking at his plate with a tidy little smile. “I’m surprised this day’s not more ceremonious for you.”

Garrison looked about the table, then smiled out of obligation. “I’m here, aren’t I? I knew whatever surprises you’d have in store for us would be anything but… orthodox… and I was right.”

Wallner beamed. “You didn’t expect bobbing for apples out of the tub, did you?”

“Certainly not,” said Garrison. “But I also can’t say I expected… this.”

“Who ever would?” Olsen chuckled. “It’s not every day you see the next best king since Tutankhamun.”

“Priest,” Wallner corrected him. “Priest. When you asked me earlier how I knew the mummy was a male it was because that’s what I paid for. A male priest. A Sem priest, actually, as they called them. One who was involved in ancient funerals. So not only is there a mummy in the billiard room, gentlemen… but one whose very job–while he was still alive–was mummification itself.”

Olsen clapped his hands together just as the thunder outside did the same. “Spendid!” he hollered, and Garrison nearly jumped out of his skin. “When can we see it?”

“Patience, my dear Olsen,” Wallner said, exchanging a rather dry glance with his wife. “Our moldy old friend’s waited some few thousand years to meet us… surely, you can wait another fifteen minutes to meet him. Besides, we haven’t even had dessert.”

“I take it we’re not having popcorn balls,” Garrison joked. Wallner shook his head.

“I don’t care if we’re having crème brûlée,” Olsen said. “I need to see this mummy or I’m calling your bluff, Wallner.”

His host grinned, flashing teeth that reflected the warmth of the orange-yellow floorlamp in the corner of the room. “Now, when have I ever bluffed in your presence, Olsen?”

“Poker night for one,” said Olsen with a chuckle, and then with a roll of thunder the lights–including that of the floorlamp in the corner–flickered. Wallner could see Garrison’s skin glisten with gooseflesh. He turned then to Katherine.

“Suppose we could pay the antiquity a visit while we can still see it,” he said. “Honey, be a dear and grab the candelabra just in case, would you?” His wife silently agreed.

“Dessert to follow, then,” she added. Her voice was somewhat soothing and yet firm all the same, not unlike her husband’s.

“But of course,” Wallner said and then turned to his guests. “Gentlemen, consider this dinner… wrapped.”

Olsen cackled at the sheer irony of such a statement and that good humor continued as the party crossed the hall into the billiard room, where the voice of Fats Waller sang “Dry Bones.”

“You’re either playing this on purpose or you’re playing me,” Olsen said to Wallner, drink still in-hand, as his host ushered him through the doorway.

Wallner grinned. “I assure you I’m playing no games tonight, gentlemen. I’m saving my poker face for Tuesday.” He turned to meet the frightened face of Garrison, Katherine just behind him with their candelabra in-hand. The color of the flames licked the sides of Garrison’s otherwise pale complexion. “You too, now, Garrison,” Wallner told him. His guest sighed and with much hesitation walked through the doorway. Wallner then pecked his wife on the cheek with a kiss, allowed her and the five glowing candles to pass, and followed all of them into the billiard room.

Garrison stood in the center of the room erect like the hair on the back of his neck, gripped with fright. Katherine passed by him and the slight gust of stagnant air sent a chill down his spine and straight to his shoes which felt as if they were full of cement. Wallner then patted him on the shoulder and he let out a faint gasp.

“Don’t get too excited now, Garrison,” Wallner said, seemingly enjoying his guest’s discomfort. “We haven’t even unwrapped him yet.”

On the far side of the room, just before a crackling fire popping with all the coppery colors of the season, waited a billiard table; the rich, green hue of its velvety surface obstructed by a rather large object. A person swathed with browning linen strips.

The mummy.

“It’s not going to bite,” said Wallner. “And if it did, it’d bite Olsen,” he chuckled, pointing to the man not three inches from the corpse’s shrouded face, inspecting it like some kind of gem.

… the shoulder bone’s connected to the collar bone… the collar bone’s connected to the neck bone…

“My word, Wallner. You’ve really outdone yourself this time,” Olsen said, setting his glass in one of the table’s pockets. His host puffed out his chest, surveying the rest of the billiard room proudly. On the walls, the trophy mounts of his hunted game–amongst their ranks included elk, pheasant, bison, and the head of a Nile crocodile his wife not-so endearingly referred to as “Big Bruce” after his brother–stared back at him with glossy, lifeless eyes, black as the night outside. Beneath them all, proudly displayed above the fireplace, rested the Winchester which had slain them.

… the chin bone’s connected to the nose bone… the nose bone’s connected to the–

Katherine lifted the needle from the spinning record and the song died, leaving the room and its five inhabitants to only the sounds of the fire and the clacking of Olsen’s shoes as he paced about the corpse-dressed table. The lady of the house then lowered Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake Suite’s “Swan Theme” onto the player and the music returned.

“W-what’s his name?” Garrison asked. His voice trembled.

“According to the box,” Wallner said as he stepped closer to the lifeless thing on the table, "its name was Amenhotep.”

“What box? The sarcophagus?" asked Olsen, turning back to Wallner as he approached. The man’s eyes, though worn with age, shone brightly like a child’s on Christmas morning.

“Amun is pleased,” Garrison whispered under his breath. Once more, everyone still heard him. Especially Wallner, who appeared quite pleased with the utterance.

“You know, for being so craven about all this–shall we say–superstition… you’ve got quite the mind for it, Garrison.”

His guest nodded apprehensively. “We fear that which we do not know,” he said.

“And sometimes we fear that which we know all too well,” Olsen added. He was now bent almost reverently before the wrapped body, one childlike eye glimmering behind a monocle whose chain led to his breast pocket.

“You always carry that around, do you, Olsen?” Wallner asked, a bit contemptuously as evident by his one raised brow.

Olsen continued studying the corpse. “You never answered my question, Wallner.”

“You haven’t answered mine,” his host replied.

Olsen sighed, straightening up. He rolled his shoulders. “In the world of finance–such as my own–one wouldn’t be caught dead without some sort of spectacles.”

Olsen grinned, nodded, and clapped him on the back. “I never knew you were so… fashionable, my friend.”

“Very funny,” Olsen replied without so much as a smirk. Once more, he returned to the mummy.

“‘Amenhotep: Servant of the god’ was displayed on the sides of the mummy’s sarcophagus,” Wallner said. “That’s how they knew he was a male and a priest, and that’s how I knew what I was paying for.”

“And where is the sarcophagus now?” Olsen asked.

“In Cairo,” Wallner replied. “What in Heaven’s name would I need a sarcophagus lying around for?” He chuckled.

“What do you need a mummy for?” Garrison murmured from across the room. His voice was low, but not as low as the fire’s.

“You know, I’m glad you asked, Garrison,” he said.

“We’ll show you,” Katherine added. The mere presence of her voice caused both of their guests to turn in her direction as she approached the billiard table. She now held a pair of golden shears.

“To completely answer your question, Olsen,” Wallner continued, “Amenhotep–at least, what’s left of him–was delivered here in a crate. God forbid Pan Am allow us the courtesy of the cargo hold.” He rolled his eyes. “Nevertheless, I declined the sarcophagus. Clearly, price wasn’t an issue, neither was space as you can see… but we simply didn’t need it. Suppose we could’ve converted it into some sort of ice chest,” he said, glancing at his wife who was already shaking her head, “but frankly we don’t prefer our wines and spirits chilled… and why pay for and house something you don’t truly need? Besides, the vendor assured me that it would sell on its own. Not that it mattered to me, gentlemen, but as men of business yourselves, I take it you find that part quite interesting.”

“I do indeed,” said Olsen. Garrison didn’t reply. “I must insist on Garrison’s question, however… what on earth do you two need a mummy for?”

“Look here,” said Katherine. The sum of them, and at last Garrison, approached the table. The mummy. Wallner nodded and his wife lowered the shears to the ancient wrappings that bound the corpse. The blade, reflecting the fire’s light, slid around a stray piece of rigid paper and crunched through it like teeth through brittle.

“You know my wife’s the artist, don’t you?” Wallner asked. Both of his guests nodded. They had seen Katherine’s work every week before cards. Now they witnessed her hand at something entirely different.

Peeling away bandages.

“And quite the dedicated painter she is. Did you fellows know that on rare occasions she uses her own blood as a color?”

His guests shook their heads in disbelieving silence. Garrison looked even paler than before.

“Tell them what you call it, dear,” Wallner said.

Katherine lifted a strip of linen and peered into the darkness beneath. “Katherine Claret,” she said.

Thunder clapped and then Wallner did. “Isn’t that just brilliant?" he said. “And it’s one of her favorite pours.”

“I-indeed,” Garrison said. Wallner could tell he was attempting to still his voice and was doing a rather poor job at it. Wallner grinned at this before simmering his expression and tone. The room once again was silent, although the fire was now accompanied by the snipping of the shears in Katherine’s hand.

“On that notion,” Wallner continued, “have either of you gentlemen ever heard of ‘mummy brown’?”

Both men shook their heads.

“I take it that’s a color too?” said Olsen.

“Even if you haven’t heard of it, you’ve most definitely seen it. Recall the work of Delacroix, ‘Liberty Leading the People’. It was painted with mummy brown, and it happens to be one of Katherine’s favorites.”

“And where do you suppose it comes from?” Katherine asked, never once looking to any of them. Only down at the mummy.

Garrison looked from Katherine to Wallner, then to the mummy himself. “You don’t mean–?”

“But we do,” Wallner said with a slight nod. Once more, thunder cracked outside and the otherwise gloomy room was momentarily filled with light, like a photograph had been taken. Had it, the horrified expression now plastered onto Garrison’s face would’ve been clearly visible, as it was to Garrison who not-so-secretly delighted in it.

“That seems… wrong, does it not?” Garrison asked. He looked at Olsen for some sort of relief–some sort of reassurance that he hadn’t gone mad–but found none.

“A bit queer, I suppose,” Wallner said, “but wrong? Hardly.” Garrison was about to retort when he recognized the look on his host’s face.

We’ve already had this debate, Garrison. Remember? And you lost. This moldy mummy right here is nothing but a slab of dried meat. Practically jerky. Nothing more, nothing less.

“Has our species been so ‘wrong’ in using the hides of beasts to make clothes?” Katherine asked in her husband’s defense. Her head was now raised. “Or how about using their bones or antlers to make tools? Were our ancestors ‘wrong’ for that, Garrison?”

“Thank you, dear,” Wallner said with a gentle nod. He turned back to Garrison and found him eying Big Bruce on the wall above the Winchester, above the fireplace.

“I-I suppose you have a point, there–” Garrison said, although unconvincingly so. He was about to continue when the snap of Katherine’s shrill voice interrupted.

“Honey, look!”

Wallner spun around and converged with Olsen behind her, shoulder to shoulder. Garrison stepped up, too, but stopped when the crackling of the linens grew louder than those of the fire logs. In their glow, Wallner placed a hand on his wife’s shoulder and squeezed it gently as the shears snipped away the final bandages covering the cadaver’s face.

“Look at it,” she said, eyes widening. “Isn’t it grand?”

Wallner peered over her shoulder and down into the darkness. Olsen gasped excitedly and covered his mouth, hiccupping once into his hand. Garrison took a hesitant step forward but upon seeing the mummy’s face between Wallner and his wife’s silhouettes took two steps back.

Wallner was immediately reminded of a lemon pound cake his wife had left in the oven twenty minutes too long. Try 3,000 years, he thought, and this made him smile. His wife smiled too. However, the same couldn’t be said for their guests. Olsen, whose monocle had fallen from his eye, looked down in a sort of choked awe. Garrison, on the other hand, looked on in utter horror.

“Remarkable,” Olsen said, the chokehold finally loosening from around his throat.

“And what a remarkable hue,” Wallner added. “Perfect for your piece, dear.”

Indeed, the mummy’s hue was remarkable. It was a deep, nearly bronze shade of brown, as if the corpse were a crumbling statue like one of those victims of Pompeii covered in rusted ash. Its face was sunken, cheekbones protruding well above where eyes should’ve been. They were now merely hollowed craters covered by a thin stretch of crusted skin, not unlike the mummy’s lips pursed above its rotted teeth. Wallner assumed, had he pointed a flashlight into the dead Egyptian’s face, the light would’ve shown straight through. What little light flickered from the fireplace confirmed this.

“It’s a bit darker than I anticipated,” said Katherine, “but I suppose the white pitch ought to take care of that.”

Wallner nodded and watched along with his guests as his wife’s fingers unwound the linens covering the corpse’s hand. She held it in hers, a bit like the way she’d held Wallner’s on their wedding day. Atop her fair complexion, the mummy’s skin looked nearly black.

Then, without warning, she snapped its pinky finger clean off with a single motion. All the while, her expression never so much as flinched.

“Didn’t need the shears after all, hon,” Katherine said.

“That’s good, dear. I suppose your many years of cracking walnuts and lobster tails have done you well.” To this, his wife agreed.

Garrison, meanwhile, felt his stomach turn over. Olsen’s did too, although he’d never admit it and the reason was not the same. In his estimation–and stomach–she had just devalued an otherwise perfectly intact artifact.

Not that they’d care.

“Suppose we ought to retire to the parlor,” Wallner said, watching his wife cup the tiny finger in her palm. “Katherine has prepared us dessert, gentlemen. As promised.”

“Pumpkin chiffon pie,” his wife said, staring down at the pinky.

“Mmm wonderful, dear. Do wash your hands, though.” She agreed, not noticing his smirk which he offered to his guests in a sign of good humor. Garrison stood, pale as a ghost and stiff as a board. Olsen was shaking his head.

“Leaving so soon?”

“Oh, don’t you worry, Olsen,” Wallner assured him, “after dessert we’ll unwrap the rest of it. At least feast on more of my wife’s cooking before you feast your eyes.” Wallner winked–a slight twinkle in his eye–and Olsen hesitantly agreed, feeling as if he hadn’t much of a choice.

Of all the members of the household, it was Garrison who had been the most gay of spirit in the act of simply strolling down the hall from the billiard room to the parlor, and indeed what a stroll it was. Such was a gayness brought on by relief. Wallner and Katherine were gay too–albeit for motives still unknown to their guests other than that of dessert. And Olsen, least of all ready to leave the mummy, did so only with the intention of returning to it.

How long would it take to eat a slice of pie?

The sound of the record grew distant as the hall bent into the parlor, which was remarkably smaller than the billiard room, only housing a rather ornate aircharm, couch, and baby grand piano which neither Wallner nor his wife could play. In the corner beside it stood a rather large canvas resting comfortably on a wooden easel. Painted upon it could’ve only been described as a rather tan man, his expression quite plain not unlike that of the Mona Lisa. Only, he had no pupils or irises. Just two white holes beneath rather thick, black brows. Straight away, his golden collar, striped with blue and red, identified him as an Egyptian.

A depiction of Amenhotep as he was in life, no doubt, thought Olsen.

Garrison thought it merely looked perverse.

“Make yourselves comfortable, gentlemen,” said their host, and Garrison almost laughed. Comfort was the last thing he’d ever feel in such a place. Katherine continued on past her husband, retrieving what appeared to their guests to be a sort of glass muddler and saucer from a tiny table beneath the easel. Without a word, she tossed the finger she’d be palming into the bowl-like dish and began to mash it, twisting and pressing the glass. There were a series of crunches followed by that abrasive sound only likened to grinding sand. It made even the iron-stomached Olsen a bit uneasy, delegating Garrison to a rather unpleasant sensation in his gut and to the tightening of his jaw.

“Don’t worry. The house hasn’t caught fire,” Wallner added. “What you’re smelling is nothing but pitch and myrrh. Its notes are a bit woody and smoky, wouldn’t you agree?”

Garrison and Olsen nodded with some apprehension.

“Resins to make it paint,” said Katherine, still crushing the finger with vigor. “The pitch makes it darker. Texturizes it.  The myrrh binds it together.”

“My wife knows her stuff, as you can see.”

“And smell,” Olsen joked.

Wallner smiled impatiently. “Yes. But soon this room shall smell of pumpkin. Isn’t that right dear?”

“Mmhmm,” hummed Katherine. Her arm had slowed.

“Would you like some help with that?” Garrison asked.

“No. Thank you,” she said, unknowingly answering his prayer in the way he wanted. The smell alone was making him quite queasy. The sight of it might’ve made him sick.

That brown. That rotten brown.

‘Rotten’ wasn’t the right color he thought as she dipped a thin brush into the mix and began to swirl it onto the canvas. Maybe it was ‘burnt’. Or maybe the right color wasn’t brown at all, but orange. A deep, burnt orange, swirling into the whites of the Egyptian’s eyes.

Katherine lifted the brush and suddenly the lifeless image on the canvas had begun to stare at them. It was not a malicious stare, Garrison considered, but it was a stare nevertheless. And as he shambled toward the couch, its eyes had the uncanny appearance of following him.

Yes, Garrison thought as he hovered over the cushions, never sitting. It’s watching me.

Wallner noticed his color. Or, rather, his lack of it. “I see someone’s got a keen eye.”

That makes the two of us, Garrison thought, staring at the painting. It stared back. “Y-yes,” he finally said. “It’s quite remarkable, Katherine.”

“I’d say so,” added Olsen. “But, then again, we’re not truly saying anything you didn’t already know.”

If there was any one thing Olsen was particularly good at, it was his exceptional ability for cant. No doubt rather useful in his “world of finance,” as he’d put it, and given the rather businesslike demeanors of both of his hosts, quite suitable in his dealings with them too.

“I-it almost appears to be,” Garrison swallowed, “alive. H-how did you do that?”

“She has quite the knack for that, doesn’t she?” Wallner said, beaming as he did. “You should see the bowl of apples she painted last autumn. Every time I walk by it, I’m tempted to pluck one straight off of the canvas.” He chuckled and gently wrapped his arm around Katherine’s waist, almost like a snake around a willful mouse.

“It’s all in the eyes,” she said. “They are the gateway to the soul, so the proverb says. What’s more, they make for quite the illusion.”

“I’ll say,” said Olsen. Garrison remained quiet, lowering himself into the couch.

Wallner could sense the somewhat restless dispositions of his guests. “Suppose we could further discuss your piece over dessert, dear.”

Katherine opened her mouth to reply when the party fell silent at the sound of something crackling down the hall. It was the sort of sound one might expect to hear while breaking freshly baked bread. A sort of crisp, flaky sound.

Wallner immediately supposed that the record still spinning in the billiard room had naturally reached its conclusion. “And perhaps we ought to change out Tchaikovsky–” he began, when the distant music unexpectedly continued.

As did the crackling sound. Indeed, it had grown louder.

Remarkably, it was Garrison who least of all reacted to the noise. His was an attention arrested elsewhere, that being on the canvas in the corner of the room. He might’ve been a superstitious fellow but he wasn’t an ignoramus. Even he–frightened as he was–could tell the difference between an illusion of the senses and that which was the present reality. And, as it stood, the present reality was that the eyes of Katherine’s painting were dilating. They were glaring directly at him so intently that he expected the illustration to blink at any moment. A moment that surely would’ve vindicated him. Proved to everyone–including himself–that his credulity wasn’t in vain.

That he hadn’t gone mad.

“Olsen,” he hushed, never lifting his eyes from the canvas. “Olsen.”

Olsen, far too preoccupied with the sound in the hall to look in his direction, turned his head ever so slightly. “What is it, Garrison?”

“Look… look…”

“No, listen,” he replied. “Don’t you hear it?”

The room once more fell silent as the dry cracking sound grew ever louder.

“S-suppose I’ll accompany you to the kitchen, dear,” Wallner finally said. His words were of quick relief from the silent tension, but just as quickly as it dissipated it returned and in full effect.

Katherine agreed and began for the doorway, followed by her husband. Garrison, unable to speak for his tongue had swelled in his throat, watched in a frigid terror as the eyes of the portrait moved as his hosts did. He tried to scream but only a mild groaning escaped his lips, as if the wind had been knocked out of him. Perhaps it was.

And for Wallner and Katherine, it was about to be.

They rounded the hall, Wallner at his wife’s heels when he smacked into the back of her and nearly sent them both to the tile floor.

“Honey, what–?”

And that’s when he noticed it too. The thing standing down the hall. Not a person–no, no. It was much too thin to be a person. Yet, it certainly took the shape of one.

For Katherine–who had both stopped moving and stopped breathing at the same time–the thing looked as if it had been defying gravity. Like a thanksgiving turkey standing straight up or a dog on its hind legs for far too long. But it wasn’t a turkey or a dog. It wasn’t a person either. It was the body of a person. The mummy of a–

That’s when the face of the thing turned black. That’s when everything turned black. And that’s when Katherine swooned, falling through her husband’s arms and cracking her head on the cool, hard flooring. The shock didn’t register to Wallner until he saw the red begin to pool under her neck.

Katherine Claret, he thought. That brought him back from wherever he’d gone. Probably somewhere where the thing wasn’t. The horrible thing that stood down the hall.

When Wallner started to scream, Olsen–who had thought he’d heard Katherine drop a tray (not knowing it had been her skull hitting the floor)–sprang up on his toes and followed the sound which was at such a frequency that he didn’t believe his host could reach it.

Meanwhile, Garrison sat, mutely staring at the painting, seemingly entranced. Its eyes were still steadied on him although now the pupils had shrunk to a near pinpoint size. Garrison could hear nothing but his heart beating, jolting his entire body. Katherine’s head and Wallner’s screams had completely missed his ears. Only at the sound of Olsen laughing did he start to pay mind to the hallway at all, as if he had forgotten it was even there.

“Olsen,” he muttered. The laughing continued. It started innocently enough but rapidly grew maniacal. Garrison considered his friend simply drunk, and Olsen might’ve agreed if he could’ve. Although his drinking had never resulted in hallucinations before, it wouldn’t be beyond the realm of possibilities.

The mummy from the billiard room standing in the middle of the hall, slowly shuffling toward him and producing that hideous crackling, flaking sound as it did so, was.

“Olsen,” Garrison insisted. The laughter continued from just beyond the doorway. “Wallner?” There was no reply. He raised his voice. “Katherine? Hello?”

Garrison looked back at the painting, still watching him with those ugly, brown eyes.

Mummy brown.

Perhaps they had all returned to it. The mummy, the billiard room. Olsen had been quite fond of it, after all, although he seldom was as gleeful as his laughter sounded. Revisiting the corpse was the last thing Garrison wanted to do, however in that moment–alone with the painting–he deemed it better to be in even misguided company than no company at all. He rose and began for the hall, feeling that tingling sensation one only feels while presumably being watched. Only for Garrison, it was no presumption.

What awaited him in the hall was nothing short of surprising, albeit not in the way he had expected. Indeed, it was as if the only thing Garrison had expected was exactly what he found. The surprising part–especially to himself–was how he reacted to it, which was scantily at all.

Somehow, perhaps in a fit of madness on account of his wild superstitions, he figured the mummy dragging itself in a sort of teetering way down the hall was the least remarkable thing therein. The state of Katherine–however–that was a shock. As was the hysterical state of the otherwise level-headed Olsen and the silently screaming face of Wallner, who had hollered himself hoarse.

The mummy, toddling itself toward him, was quite unlike the ones featured in those cheap spook shows they’d play down at the drive-in; the ones where Lon Chaney Jr. stumbled around in what was essentially toilet tissue. The real thing–if it indeed truly was–looked less like a person and more like a starved orangutan. One arm, one pinky-less hand, dangling from its socket by not much more than a thread of its dried bandages, swung lowly beneath its gaunt, rather emaciated frame. Its almost-blackened skin flaked off like falling leaves, cracking with each slight movement of its frame. It lifted its eyeless face toward him and, as if trying to speak, snapped open its mouth. Only no sound emitted, aside from the racketing of its jaw as it tumbled to the floor like the bad end of a wishbone.

“Olsen!” Garrison cried. “Wallner!”

His host stood, unwavering. His mouth jittered as if trying to speak, only no words produced themselves.

“Wallner. Katherine is bleeding out on the floor you’ve got to–”

Wallner started to mutter something shakily. “Y-you you–”

Garrison, regaining what was left of his nerve, struck him across the face. Immediately, life flooded back into his host's eyes, his cheeks.

“Y-you were right, G-Garrison. I-I owe y-you an a-apology, my friend.”

Garrison heard rustling over his shoulder.

Like falling leaves.

“Apologize later,” he said. “Take off your coat and put it under your wife’s head. Snap Olsen out of that laughter and have him call the police and an ambulance.”

Wallner looked at him dumbfoundedly, as if he had just spoken Chinese. No, no–Egyptian, Wallner thought, and this made him grin. To Garrison, he looked as if he’d lost his mind.

“W-where are you to go, then?” Wallner asked.

Garrison shuddered as he pictured the mummy grasping his shoulder with those bony fingers, like the talon of an old bird.

A dead bird.

That made him think of Horus, the falcon-headed god of the sky, and his father, Osiris, god of the afterlife, god of resurrection, and of Ammit, the crocodile-headed devourer of souls. All these flashed through his mind in an instant, and an instant later he knew the answer to Wallner’s question.

“The billiard room.”

His host nodded in relief. Surely the Winchester would make quick work of such a fragile being as the mummy was.

Only, Garrison wasn’t going for the gun. He was going for Big Bruce.

Would it even work? He hadn’t the first clue. The knowledge of how to rid such supernatural phenomena was no more apparent than how they appeared in the first place. He only had his gut and, thus far, it hadn’t deceived him. Indeed, it was still speaking.

“Your shoe,” he urged Wallner as he rose. “Hand it to me.”

His host didn’t object, not bothering to untie its laces but rather yanking it from his foot. It was a long, shiny, and rather heavy black loafer.

Garrison turned back to the mummy–which had approached by a good foot in the time his back was turned–and raised the shoe over his head. With what little energy his already exhausted adrenaline could muster, he flung the shoe at the corpse, striking it in the neck and twisting its head nearly undone. The mummy didn’t react aside from stumbling upon its impact.

And this confirmed his suspicions. It cannot see, he realized. Perhaps only through the eyes of the painting.

Garrison backed himself into the wall and slid past the mummy as it continued forward, its head limply sagging to one side. It reminded him of a toy he had when he was a child, the kind which drooped when its stand was pressed.

At this distance from it, he could also smell the mummy now. The others hadn’t noted it before and it was unlike anything he’d expect a body of such years to emit. The scene was oddly pleasing, even sweet. A sort of aroma like juniper and old paper, like his father’s Bible.

As he hastened toward the billiard room, he could make out both the voice of Wallner behind him persuading his unconscious wife that everything would be alright and that, just ahead, Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake” had at length expired, leaving but the faintest crackling as the needle spun on grooveless vinyl.

No, he thought and quivered. No more crackling.

When he finally reached the chamber, it came to his attention–despite much else on his mind–that it had grown considerably darker than it had been before. The fire had started to die and only the flashes of lightning from beyond the window running with rainwater illuminated the walls and billiard table. In one of its pockets, Olsen’s unfinished drink remained, condensation dripping onto the carpet. The table itself–the green of its felt–was stained with the litter of preserved flesh that trailed to the open doorway where he stood.

Within, the room smelled like juniper and Dad’s Bible.

Lighting flashed across the dim space again and Garrison crossed gazes with Big Bruce. The crocodile’s vacant stare frightened him at first, all too reminiscent of the painting's gaze, but when the eyes failed to follow him as he approached it, he sighed in quiet relief.

Without giving himself another second to consider his actions, Garrison impetuously gripped the mantel and lifted himself upon the hearth. Suddenly, he was face-to-face with the Winchester which teased him with its practicality. However, he presumed that with such an unnatural problem as this three-thousand-year-old Egyptian back from beyond the grave, natural remedies would only prove futile.

Plainly, how do you kill that which is already dead?

He considered this, moreover, with the fire, supposing he could feed the painting to its embers. Would that destroy the mummy or merely render it blind? He couldn’t say. What he, in sooth, would never say–perhaps even to himself–was that he could never bring himself to destroy that which confirmed his greatest superstitions.

Ignoring his fevered thoughts, Garrison rose to the tips of his toes and pushed up on the underside of the large plaque-mounted lizard’s jaw. Big Bruce–despite his name–was exceedingly light, far more so than Garrison imagined. He could feel the dust which had accumulated atop the stuffed creature’s leathery head, and then the plaque being lifted off one… then two screws.

Oh, God–oh, God, he thought, carrying it across the room. Please let this work.

Garrison pivoted with the crocodile’s head so that he could steer it through the doorway. Down the hall, beyond Wallner’s shoe which rested idly on the floor, Olsen stood, still cackling to himself.

He hadn’t called the police or an ambulance.

Wallner, meanwhile, was cradling his still-bleeding wife, her head now nestled in his suit jacket. Mere inches from them both, the mummy continued in its march. It was presently grinding itself into the wall, unaware of where it was. A foot behind its limping body, its head writhed on the ground. Had Katherine been awake to see it, surely now–even more than before–the thing in the hall truly did look like a Thanksgiving turkey.

Garrison and Big Bruce raced down the hallway, the sound of the crackling now coming from beneath his shoes. He trotted cautiously past the mummy, past Wallner and Katherine, and straight toward the laughing Olsen.

“Olsen!” he shouted. “Olsen, snap out of it!”

His friend tried to catch his breath. “H-he h-he’s t-taking himself for a little walk,” he said, and then began another fit of hysterics. Garrison, considering him for the moment to be a lost cause, hurried past him into the parlor.

At once, Garrison locked eyes with the painting across the room. The deep brown Katherine had swirled onto the Egyptian’s face burned into him. The pupils of the image dilated smaller than they had before as Garrison hoisted Big Bruce before him, nearly shoving it into the canvas.

“He-re!” Garrison yelled, his voice breaking. “It’s Ammit!” He began to chuckle, perhaps fancying himself hysterical, now, too. “It’s Ammit, dammit!”

In his wild and provoked imagination, he envisioned the painting opening its mouth and screaming. This never happened. Rather unexpectedly, the house grew quite quiet, including Olsen and his laughter. The only sound that persisted was the spinning and ever-crackling record in the billiard room.

That, and the sound of the mummy’s crackling body frantically scurrying back up the hall.

With relief, Garrison dropped the crocodile's head to the carpet and dashed madly out of the room. Olsen, Wallner, and Katherine were still in their places. The mummy, however, had traversed nearly half the hallway. Its body flailed like a dying chicken–bashing into the walls as it tumbled away–until one of its legs snapped in two at the knee, forcing it down onto its rotten stomach. It made no sound, aside from those of its body crumbling, as it dragged itself aimlessly. Garrison followed, leaping over it, and without hesitation pushed open the front door of the Wallner Mansion, where the mummy was now heading.

He watched, trying to slow his breath, as the mummy crawled past him, inching itself down the stoop and into the garden, where the rain had turned the dirt to mud. The mummy–nearly the same shade–began to fall to pieces as the rain poured down upon it, first its toes then its feet then its legs then its arms.

It’s disintegrating, Garrison realized. A natural remedy for an unnatural problem after all.

He gazed with wide eyes as what was left of the corpse–but an arm and shoulders–pulled itself into the street. It appeared like little more than a squirming mass of muddied flesh until it fell limp, painting the gutter a sickly shade of mummy brown.

***

In the years that followed, the group that otherwise played cards weekly grew estranged, aside from that brief period just following the events of Halloween night in which they gathered in the hospital as Katherine underwent a craniotomy for what appeared to be epidural hemorrhaging.

Garrison, for the first time in over twenty years, returned to the church of his late father, although he could never stand the smell of the old Bibles. He would invite Olsen on rare occasions, mostly holidays. Once, he actually attended. Quite unlike him.

As for the estate, it was sold not long after. For Wallner and Katherine, it was a horrid reminder of that dreaded night in late October. They, along with many of Wallner’s prized trophy mounts–including Big Bruce, who needed slight repairs–and Katherine’s paintings moved sometime in the late winter of the following year to a much more modest, albeit still fanciful, property in the south. This one, however, would never see the likes of a Halloween party within its walls.

Regarding the one painting they left behind in the locked and otherwise untouched parlor room, it was sold for a bargain at the Wallner Mansion estate sale to a curator of a small museum looking to host an Egyptian art exhibit the following year. Today, the untitled painting remains somewhat peacefully in that museum in upstate New York, aside from the dozen-or-so visitors who’ve claimed, upon viewing it, the oddest sensation of being watched.