Chapter 3
Nonchalantly, they wandered into the galleries and made their way out of the new wing towards the ancient art collection. They entered the Roman hall where tall fluted columns surrounded a shallow pool with a bubbling fountain.
Elizabeth, still pressing a hand to her forehead, fell behind the others. She leaned against one of the columns to rub the pain out of her head and sensed a movement in the shadows behind her. When she turned, she saw nothing, but the silence that fell as her friends drew away from her was broken by a soft footstep. Holding her breath, she waited for another sound or movement to betray her follower, but the fountain burbled alone. Finally, she shrugged off the sense of being watched as nothing more than nerves. Her headache was fading rapidly now and she hurried to catch up with the others.
She joined them as they entered the narrow room, filled with canopic jars, whose floor sloped upwards to the entrance of mummy viewing chamber. They hurried past the great, gray granite form of the headless King of Kush guarding the entrance to the mummy's chamber. In the dim light which never had been any brighter, Elizabeth recalled, they approached the waist-high walls around the hole in the floor through which one viewed the mummy diorama. Through glass the murk, they could make out the edge of the sarcophagus and a mannequin of a kneeling archaeologist beside it, all that had ever been visible.
"Did you ever have the idiot in your class who claimed he could see it move?" asked Kevin.
"Oh, yeah," they all said. Elizabeth added, "Once it was me. I was so disgusted with having to stand around in this room forever and that was the one sure thing that would get the docents to make us move on."
They moved on into the next room of funerary art objects and Alice pulled Museum Boy's access card from her purse.
"Are there cameras in here?" asked Dirk. "I was wondering if—"
"I asked already," said Alice. "That's why we're going through here. All the cameras are pointed at the exhibits and this door is out of their line of sight." She waved the card in front of the sensor beside the door and the latch clicked. She pushed the door open and they filed into the service hall.
Stepping quietly, although there was no one around to hear them, they let the door fall closed behind them and crept down the metal steps to the door which led to the diorama. Alice fumbled with the keys for a moment and pulled the door open. She stepped gingerly into the chamber.
"Hey," she called quietly, "they have real dirt on the floor in here." She moved further in and they followed her one by one. The sarcophagus and the fiberglass archaeologist occupied most of the narrow space. In the dim light filtering down through the glass ceiling, they could make out artistically arranged clay pots, stone jars, and potsherds carefully embedded in the mix of dirt and sand. The archaeologist was heavily coated with dust. The air was stale and undisturbed.
Stepping around the archaeologist, Alice moved towards the head of the sarcophagus. The lid was tilted against the side.
"Be careful of the jars and stuff," said Dirk. "I doubt they put the real artifacts down here, but we shouldn't break anything. It's going to be hard enough to erase our footprints."
Click.
"That was the door, wasn't it?" said Elizabeth.
"Oh!" cried Kevin who had been the last one in. He pushed against the door but it did not budge. "I forgot! And it latched. Oh no!" he wailed.
"Don't worry. Museum Boy will come looking for us if we don't come back in a few minutes," Alice said.
"Yeah," said Dirk. "And he could let us out if we didn't have his keys."
"How much air is in this room?" asked Kevin.
Alice pulled her flashlight out of her purse and clicked it on. She leaned over sarcophagus. "Euw. There really is a mummy. Now I see why they kept the lights so low."
Dirk and Kevin were still pushing on the door.
"You might as well look, guys. As long as we're here."
They left off with the door and walked over to take a look.
Dirk wrinkled his nose. "Yes, that's a mummy all right. You think it might be a fake one and the real one is stored someplace else?"
"How could you tell? Are you going to touch it?" asked Kevin.
"No," said Dirk. "This is a museum. We aren't supposed to touch the exhibits."
"Considering that we are standing in the middle of an exhibit, it's a little late to be worrying about the rules," Elizabeth said. "Can I have a look?"
She edged around the boys to join Alice, who had kept hold of the flashlight, by the head of the sarcophagus. She could barely see her companions in the shaft of light from the exhibition room above. Alice directed the flashlight at the mummy's head.
"Euw." Elizabeth leaned closer. The mummy looked like a Hollywood prop mummy, a vaguely human form all wrapped in dirty, ragged strips of linen. She was glad that no bony bits were sticking out. "This is kind of anticlimactic," she said. "Does the sarcophagus look like anything? You'd think they would have put it on display where people could see it."
Alice played the beam of the flashlight around on the sarcophagus. The mummy was resting in the bottom part of a mummy case, not directly in the bottom of the sarcophagus. The inside of the sarcophagus was covered with hieroglyphic writing and the outside was decorated with more images. Elizabeth recognized the weighing of the feather from the Book of the Dead.
"Who's that chick with the hawk wings?" Alice pointed the flashlight at the image in question.
Elizabeth knelt, fingers tingling, and her hand reached out involuntarily towards the image. Words formed in her throat and spilled out in a voice deeper than her own. "Nephthys, lady of the house, mistress of death, decay, diminution, and rebirth, she shall gather together thy bones, thou art raised up, thy word is truth in respect of what hath been done unto thee … "
"Whoa, okay, enough with the creepy stuff," said Dirk, backing away.
Rising shakily, Elizabeth stumbled back from the sarcophagus. A potsherd cracked under her heel. The headache reared up again and a wave of nausea doubled her over.
A shadow broke the shaft of light from above.
"Somebody's up there," cried Kevin.
"Hush," said Alice. "Get away from the door. You can see that part of the wall from up there."
They drew back against the walls and listened silently for a sound from outside the chamber. The boys clung together and pressed into the darkest corner. Elizabeth tried not to vomit, or to think about how the dark, dirty, airless room was so very reminiscent of her nightmares.
Alice whispered, "It's probably Museum Boy. Since we haven't come back yet, he's checking on us to make sure we don't get caught and get him in trouble." Shrugging, she squatted on the floor and played with her flashlight some more. She looked at the clay pots and lifted the carved lid off a stone jar. "Do you really think all these jars are fake? Maybe they were part of the collection, but then turned out to be fake. There's something in this one." She stuck her hand inside the jar and pulled out a handful of crackly dried leaves.
Elizabeth closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths. She sensed the auras of the others, the boys glowing green in their corner, Alice sparkling purple where she knelt on the floor. Elizabeth directed her perception towards the sarcophagus, half expecting what she saw there. Sure enough, the sarcophagus exhibited the same negative space aspect as the Cadillac of Death. Small glimmers of red appeared at floor level, and a red glow in Alice's hand where she was holding the cover of the stone jar.
"Oh, this is just great," Elizabeth muttered and gulped her stomach back down.
Suddenly there came a rapping at the door. Dirk let go of Kevin to reach out a hand and knock back. Slowly the door creaked open to reveal their rescuer. Alice rose and turned with a smile to greet—
Joe.
"What are you doing here?" she demanded.
"I could ask you the same thing," he said as he took in the situation, the boys peering out from their corner, Alice manhandling artifacts, and Elizabeth propped up against the wall. "But we don't have time for that. That crowd is going to be along any second now. You'd better get out of here."
"We just wanted to get a look at the mummy," Alice purred. "Have you ever seen it?"
"No, it's always too dark. Now come on," said Joe.
"Well, now's your chance. Your last chance. Here, you can use my flashlight." Alice handed it to him.
Taking the flashlight gingerly, Joe stepped into the chamber as if he were already regretting it. Kevin nipped behind him and grabbed the door as it swung shut. The boys ducked out into the hallway. Elizabeth followed them and held the door. Alice stood behind Joe and jiggled from one foot to the other as if she were contemplating doing something very, very nasty.
Joe leaned over the head sarcophagus and got his look at the mummy. "Damn, this thing is dusty."
Shadows fluttered over the glass ceiling. A muffled voice said, "Hey, is somebody down there?"
Joe looked up, jaw dropped. The carelessly held flashlight illuminated his face from below. He froze for a moment, then reacted by dropping the flashlight on the mummy and jumping back against Alice.
"Get my flashlight," Alice hissed.
Joe scurried forward and removed the flashlight from the mummy. They both dashed out into the hallway and Elizabeth let the door fall closed behind them.
"Oh my God!" cried Joe. "They saw me! I'm so fucked!"
"Well, you didn't have to follow us," said Alice. "What are you doing? Stalking me now?"
"I'm not stalking you, I'm doing my job. When I see a known troublemaker sneaking out into a museum where there's all this priceless stuff, then it's my job to follow you."
"Troublemaker? Me?" Alice folded her arms and glared at Joe. "There are way worse troublemakers back at that stupid lecture, you should be keeping an eye on them. Give me my flashlight back." She held out her hand.
He handed it over. The flashlight was still turned on and he wasn't careful about not letting it shine into her eyes.
"Y'all? Need to keep it down. There are people right on the other side of that door." Dirk pointed at the access door to the gallery.
Alice ignored him. "And another thing. How did you get down here? You need an access card."
"I found one on the information desk," said Joe.
"Oh, found one. You just found it. Well, who's the troublemaker now?"
"Save this for later. Let's get away from here," said Dirk. He and Kevin started up the staircase.
The others tiptoed up the metal staircase after them and down the service hall away from the access door. As soon as they rounded a corner and were out of earshot of the visitors in the funerary objects room, Alice and Joe began to bicker again. The five of them made their way down the hall, passing occasional access doors to the other galleries. Dirk tried one. It led to a Magritte sculpture of a coffin sitting on a chaise longue.
"Bad sign." He closed the door and they went onward.
Eventually the hallway opened into a cavernous storage room filled with tall flat crates of paintings.
"Where are we?" asked Joe.
"Storeroom," Alice said nastily.
"Let's just look for a door marked Exit," said Dirk. He found one after a brief circumnavigation of the room, but the door was also marked "Alarm will sound."
"How about this door," said Kevin from over behind a large naked lady in marble. He cracked the door and peeked out, then pushed it the rest of the way to reveal a hallway lined with administrative offices. From out in the hallway, they could hear the clink of glasses and a murmur of cultured, self-conscious conversation.
"Cocktails," said Dirk and led the march to the bar. They tried to brush off the dirt and dust that marked their clothes to the knees.
"Why couldn't you all do this some other night?" asked Joe. "Like when nobody is around, especially me."
"Museum Boy doesn't have building access," Alice sniffed.
They crossed the lobby and went down the stairs to where the other visitors clustered around an ice sculpture shaped like the Sphinx and nibbled on canapés.
Dirk, Kevin, and Elizabeth politely thanked Joe for rescuing them. Alice looked pointedly around for Museum Boy.
Joe told them they were welcome and, pulling his hat down as low as he could get it, stalked away. Elizabeth hoped that he was going to return that access card that he had found, but she didn't see him head towards the information desk.
"Are you okay, Elizabeth?" Dirk asked. "You look kind of green."
"Just a headache," she said, leaning on the banister at the bottom of the stairs.
"You need a drink to settle your nerves," said Kevin. He went over to the bar and returned with a bouquet of drinks. He handed a glass of red liquid to Elizabeth. "Here, a Cape Cod. It's got vitamins and alcohol.
They all clicked their glasses together and exchanged a silent toast to having seen the mummy without getting arrested, so far. The boys excused themselves to check out the dessert table.
Elizabeth sipped her drink. Alice spotted Museum Boy, and went over to murmur in his ear and return his keys and access card. Elizabeth was certain that Museum Boy was getting a heavily edited account of their mummy viewing. Feeling better after a few sips of her drink, she accepted an hors d'oeuvre from a passing caterer.
Trip's sister Jennifer walked up to her, glancing over her shoulder. "I need to talk to you."
"I very much doubt that," said Elizabeth. "Ham biscuit? You look Famished."
Jennifer winced. "Listen, can we just—it's about my brother. I'm worried. I think that Titania is going to—"
"Well, if it isn't Miss Felony Trespassing," Alice walked up behind her. "Are we going to have to get a restraining order or something?"
"I need to talk with you," Jennifer repeated.
"So, let's hear it. Out here in public, with lots of witnesses and none of your apocalyptic friends," Alice said.
"No," said Jennifer and broke off.
Titania and Trip wandered very casually up to them. At least, Elizabeth supposed it was casual on Trip's part. He didn't even notice he was being herded.
"Good evening, girls," Titania purred. "Hen party?"
"Yeah, just us chickens." Alice smiled insincerely.
Titania smiled back. Her insincerity was better and she got extra points for not being disheveled. She wore a tailored suit of dark green raw silk and really good stockings. Her gaze swept over the sisters' dusty knit clothes.
Elizabeth glanced down and saw all the cat hair on her clothing stand on end. She felt a sudden stabbing sensation against her forehead. She quelled the urge to spit vodka and cranberry juice on Titania's suit. Smiling, she took hold of the little knot of anger in her belly, and stabbed back. Titania choked on her drink, but then her lips curved up in the smile of a fisherman who has just hooked a big one.
Trip said, "Isn't it too bad they're taking away the mummy exhibit? That was always my favorite part of coming to the museum as a kid. We saw the mummy every time we came on a school trip. I swear, sometimes I saw it move."
"Are you sure you're going to be okay, Elizabeth?" Dirk asked as she got out of his car. Alice was going home with Museum Boy. Dirk and Kevin were dropping Elizabeth off at home on their way to meet friends for more drinking.
"I'll be fine," said Elizabeth. She waved them off and ran up the steps to the front door, pulling her gloves on as she went.
Thomas appeared in the foyer as she pulled the doors closed behind her. "So, how'd it go? Did you get to see that infernal mummy? Was it as wonderful as you imagined?"
"Oh, it was great. Really, really great," Elizabeth said through a rictus smile. "I don't know how to tell you just how great it was." She stepped closer to him as she spoke and, still smiling, grabbed the front of his waistcoat in her gloved hands. She shoved him up against the wall. He sank partway into the plaster.
"What did you do to my brain?" she demanded.
"Nothing!" he yelped. "What happened?"
"Oh, nothing much. Just that in the last day I've projected myself out of my body and woke up on the floor of the bookstore. Been stabbed in the head several times by Titania's aura. I had a mummy talk out of my mouth. You tell me, is this something to be worried about?" Her throat constricted with anger and her voice squeaked. Even through the gloves, her hands burned with cold, but she did not release him.
He raised his hands as if to pat her shoulders, but drew them back when she shook him. Instead, he said, "You should be pleased. You've made quite a lot of progress. Would you put me down?"
"What did you do to me?" She shoved him further into the wall. Blue sparks cracked up her arms and he flickered like a television on the fritz.
"Nothing, or at least nothing that you weren't about to do yourself. You were so close to getting it, I only gave you a little push. Put me down or I will kick you."
As Elizabeth tightened her grip, sparks crackled up her arms again. Thomas flickered and then disappeared completely with an audible pop, leaving her standing in front of the wall with her raised hands balled into fists.
"Thomas?"
"That is quite enough of that," he said from behind her.
She spun around.
"Now," he said. "Tell me what happened to you. Because I can always put you back how you were, but that might not be warranted."
"You can?"
"Yes. But again, tell me what happened to you." Folding his arms across his chest, he leaned against the opposite wall and raised his eyebrows expectantly.
Elizabeth lowered her hands to her sides. Thomas looked relieved. She sat down at the foot of the steps and poured out the story of the evening's events. As she talked, she grew calmer and Thomas edged closer to her as it became evident that the urge to shove him through a wall had passed. He was undisturbed by her description of astral projection, very interested in the mummy, and appalled at what she said about Titania.
"You pushed back?" he asked, shocked. "What did she do?"
"Well, champagne came out of her nose," Elizabeth said. "And then she looked really mean."
"Oh, that's wonderful. Now she can be certain it was you and you've managed to annoy her. The only reason why she didn't squash you like a bug right then and there was because of all the witnesses." Thomas held his head in his hands.
"What do you think she'll do to me? That she wasn't already planning to do anyway," Elizabeth said.
"Let's just say that if for some reason you need to have your picture drawn, you should run away very, very fast," he said.
"Is that what happened to you? Why did you have your portrait made anyway?" she asked.
"Because I'm very vain?" He smiled. "No, I was humoring my relations who were humoring this artist and … things got out of hand. But that's beside the point. I don't think you need to worry about that business with the mummy. That was just a touch of spirit possession, which you can learn to shut out quite easily. You can shut out Titania in the same way, though she's very powerful. We must learn her Christmas plans. She's very single-minded and she probably wants to finish what was started over Halloween. What did Jennifer want to talk to you about?"
"I don't know. I think she's worried about whatever Titania is going to do to her brother. I guess we should talk to her, she might know what's going on." Elizabeth rubbed her forehead which still ached. "I think I need to get some sleep."
"Oh, speaking of which. I may have found the source of your nightmares, or at least some of them. We have a mummy in this house," he said.
"We do? Since when?"
"Since maybe one hundred years ago," Thomas said. "One of the previous owners of the house was involved in the Theosophical Society and was interested in the mysteries of the ancients. She was also rather a trend follower, apparently, and acquired this mummy for a mummy unwrapping."
"A what?" Elizabeth raised her head and stared at him.
"A mummy unwrapping," he repeated. "Back in the late nineteenth century when all those tombs were being excavated in Egypt, there developed quite a fad for anything to do with ancient Egypt. Since the antiquities trade was much more, shall we say, flexible than it is today, it was a fairly simple matter for people to import mummies and get a pet archaeologist or some charlatan to unwrap the mummy and give them a heavily embroidered lecture about the mysteries of the Pharaohs and so on. And in Richmond, this coincided with the arrival of the Prices back from Egypt with their collection of artifacts. Naturally there was considerable local interest."
"And people were really, really bored back in the late nineteenth century," Elizabeth said.
"Yes, people would do almost anything for entertainment before television came along. Although, considering the lengths to which you all went for a look at the outside of a mummy, you ought not judge."
"Where is this mummy? Is it cursed like the one at the museum?" she asked.
"What do you mean?" His brow furrowed.
"The mummy and the sarcophagus at the museum had this dark non-aura, exactly like the aura of the Cadillac. Miss Price told us that the Cadillac was cursed, so I figured that that was what a curse looked like."
"Oh. I didn't think to check, actually. Let's go look. Fetch a crowbar too, it's all crated up and I'm sure you'll want to see it."
They went back to the kitchen where Elizabeth found a crowbar in the broom closet. Thomas led her up the back stairs to the third floor, where Bob's room was. Elizabeth had only been up here a couple times before on trips to the attic. This floor had several bedrooms, but only one was in use.
"Only one other room up here besides Bob's has been used at all recently," Thomas said. "Most of the rooms ended up as storage rooms for things people were too lazy to carry all the way up to the attic. I never bothered to keep track of everything that piled up over the years." He pushed open the door to the bedroom that overlooked the side street.
Elizabeth flipped the light switch. Nothing happened.
"That light burned out decades ago," said Thomas. He walked over to the window and lifted the shade, which promptly fell from its bracket and flopped to the floor in a cloud of dust. In the light from the streetlight outside and the light from the hallway, Elizabeth could see furniture draped in dust covers and stacks and stacks of boxes and crates. She went to fetch a lamp. In the next room she found an old Tiffany table lamp, darkly shaded and unlikely to add much to the ambient light, but she hauled it back, grumbling about the weight of it, and placed it on the dresser. After much fumbling around with the cord and the socket, she turned on the light and in its rosy glow she saw Thomas standing beside to a long, coffin-shaped crate. It was huge, unmistakably someone's last resting place, and sinisterly dramatic.
"And you just forgot this was here?" she asked, picking up the crowbar.
"There is a lot of old junk in this house," he said defensively. "This was acquired decades before I arrived here. I think this steamer trunk here has some associated objects as well." He indicated a large, leather-covered trunk with a heavy padlock.
"Why didn't this woman have her mummy unwrapping party? A sudden attack of good taste?"
"A sudden attack of typhus, I believe. She was taken ill and died not long after she acquired the mummy," Thomas said. "After she died, her husband started consulting mediums in an effort to make contact with her. He ended up marrying one of the mediums, who promptly ceased working and squirreled away anything that reminded her of her profession."
"And now you want to take a look at this mummy. Why can't we just check out the aura through the crate?" Elizabeth hefted the crowbar and eyed the crate. The lid was secured by about fifty nails.
"I just did. It looks cursed to me. Go ahead and open it, though. There might be something else in there," Thomas said.
Elizabeth approached the crate and began to pry up the lid. The nails shrieked as they gave up their purchase in the wood which had dried and hardened over the decades of storage. By the time she was loosening the last nail, Elizabeth was sweating and coughing from the clouds of dust raised by her efforts.
She carefully tipped the lid off the crate and slid it down to the floor so that it rested at an angle with the exposed nails pointing their loads of tetanus towards the side of the crate. Inside the crate, she saw tufts of dirty, antique straw and more dust. She carefully brushed the straw away and found herself staring at a dusty gesso painting of the idealized, wide-eyed face of the occupant of the mummy case.
Elizabeth reached out a hand towards the lid, then drew it back. "I don't think that I want to open this up tonight."
Thomas leaned over and looked at the mummy case. He brushed lightly at the dust with a hand that wasn't quite there. He murmured, "Very well. I think some daylight would not be amiss. Does the aura look like what you saw in the museum?"
Elizabeth closed her eyes and watched the dark nothingness resolve. "Pretty much," she said. She allowed her perception to take in the other contents of the room. The steamer trunk Thomas had pointed out contained a couple glowing red items. She told him, saying, "What a surprise." The other boxes and furnishings seemed to be inert as far as the ether was concerned, but she had a feeling that her fatigue was interfering with reception. At least this mummy wasn't trying talk through her mouth. "What kind of curse is on this thing?"
"That's going to take some research. All I can tell is that it's very old. If we can find out more details, we should be able to break it. Let's look in the trunk," Thomas said.
Elizabeth opened her eyes and said, "Listen, I know that you don't need to sleep, but it's been a really long day. And I don't feel like trying to figure out how to pick locks right now."
"I can take care of the lock," said Thomas. He walked over to the trunk and touched a finger to the keyhole. Elizabeth had a sneaking suspicion that his fingertip was extruding a key and reaching into the lock, but she tried to get that image out of her head. After he fiddled around with it for awhile, the lock clicked and he pulled it off the hasp.
He raised the lid and another cloud of dust. Elizabeth coughed and, curious in spite of longing for a tissue, a shower, and bed, she joined him. The trunk contained stacks of newspapers, a hatbox, and dark, soft masses which turned out to be fancy, beaded shawls and mantillas.
"These must be the medium's working clothes." She gently lifted the clothing out of the trunk and carried it to the bed, a gentle patter of beads trailing behind her.
In the trunk beneath the clothing was a stack of leather-bound notebooks.
"Perfect. Notebooks are either completely useless or they hold all the answers," said Thomas, pulling one from the top of the stack. He carried the notebook over to the lamp and began to page through it.
Elizabeth sat down on the bed and carefully unfolded the medium's garments. The selection was exactly what she would have imagined a Victorian medium to have. There were two black lace mantillas and several light woolen shawls, heavily fringed, brightly patterned with flowers, and shot through with golden thread. There was a black scarf sewn all over with tiny black bugle beads. Some of the anchoring stitches had come loose and more beads pattered onto her lap. She unfolded a dense mass of black satin to find that it was a long, high collared cape with a red satin lining.
"Was this medium a vampire too?" she asked.
Thomas glanced up from the notebook. "That's not what it says here, although she may very well have had vampires in her extensive array of special effects. This book seems to be a catalog of her operations. It appears she worked with an assistant who helped out with the table tilting and mysterious phosphorus flames. They also seem to have worked out a trick with a glowing disembodied hand." He snapped the notebook shut.
"Nothing on the mummy?"
"No. That was just the medium's diary. She must have thrown her professional gear in with the mummy paraphernalia when she was establishing herself in the household." He went back to the trunk and lifted out the next notebook. Opening it, he said, "Ah, this one is in a different handwriting." He went back over to the lamp.
"Why don't you just take the whole stack over with you?"
"I can't lift that many at once," Thomas said. He frowned and bent closer over the pages. "This seems to be an archaeologist's journal. I think he may have been working, not with the Prices, but near them. He displays a certain amount of animosity towards the Prices for snagging the better site."
Elizabeth went back over to the trunk and rummaged around some more. She found an ornately decorated box covered with an embossed floral pattern and inset with a color portrait of a fashionable Victorian lady. She opened the box, which was fortunately not locked, and found a trove of glowing beads. She carried the box over to the light and showed Thomas.
"Alice is going to go nuts when she sees this," Elizabeth said. She pulled out an endless strand of blue Bakelite beads and looped it around her neck. The necklace hung down to her knees. She reached in for another shiny object and pulled out a glittering tiara. She set it on her head.
Thomas glanced up at her. "That's right, Alice is going to go nuts."
"Elizabeth?" Bob stood in the doorway, backlit by the hallway light which turned his hair into a reddish gold halo.
"Hi, Bob." She swiftly removed the tiara and replaced it in the box.
"What's going on?" he asked. He glanced at the notebook Thomas was paging through and hastily averted his eyes. "How did things go at the museum? I see I'm not going to have to post bail for you, at least."
"Yeah, funny how that worked out. We got trapped in the mummy chamber, but Joe happened to be working security. He let us out and didn't arrest us or anything."
"You all finally got to see the mummy?"
"Yes, and it was pretty much what you'd expect. But the fun didn't stop there." She pointed at the open crate. "Thomas happened to remember that there was a mummy right here in this house."
"How do you forget something like that?" Bob walked over to the crate and looked in at the mummy case. "You're not going to open it all the way up?"
"Not till daylight. If then," Elizabeth said. "Besides, it's cursed. That's probably what's been causing Alice's weird dreams."
"No kidding," said Bob. "You think anyone involved in the opening of the mummy is going to end up dead in the next few months?"
"It's not that kind of curse," said Thomas.
Elizabeth repeated his words for Bob's benefit.
"Oh, I feel so much better now," Bob said sarcastically.
"Not that kind of curse at all," said Thomas thoughtfully. "This archaeologist very properly copied down all of the writings in the tomb where he found this mummy. Much of it is the typical funerary text that was quite standard even for lesser tombs such as this one must have been, but some of it appears to be … idiosyncratic, shall we say? It seems that our mummy here was named Ananka. She was a priestess of Isis who got herself into trouble over a boy. They were both punished with the usual."
"Which was?" Elizabeth prompted.
"Death, of course." Thomas frowned. "And then cursed well and thoroughly from Egypt to the next world and beyond. Osiris this, Anubis that, and an extensive list of bits to be pecked by hawks and such. These people took their cursing very seriously. She is cursed to wake into the darkness of winter and wander the—I'm not sure about that—to search for her boyfriend, whom she'll never find because—ha! The really important sections of the text were damaged by water leaking into the tomb so they couldn't be copied."
"Is there a way to break this curse? Or should we just stick the mummy out in the carriage house, where hopefully it will stop giving Alice and I bad dreams?" asked Elizabeth.
"Give me time to go through these notebooks," Thomas said. "The archaeologist seems to have given an exhaustive description of the situation of this tomb and its contents, there may be some answers there. Alternatively, I could look around in the library. My collection is a little light on ancient Egyptian works, unfortunately, but some of the alchemical writings purport to be based on the those of the ancient Egyptians who could turn lead into gold."
"Could they really?"
"Of course not."
With only half the conversation to follow, Bob began to look concerned. "So, there is a curse on this mummy, but it's not going to kill us all?"
"Don't be so superstitious," Elizabeth said. "That whole curse of the mummy thing was only media hype anyway. And then Hollywood got hold of it and made up a bunch of stuff. But you don't believe in curses, right? Because you're Mr. Rational Science Man."
"Not entirely made up," murmured Thomas, turning a page.
"Why don't you just call the museum and tell them you would like to donate a mummy," Bob suggested. "Have you got any provenance for it?"
"Maybe. Thomas is reading the archaeologist's journal. That might be sufficient and there's probably bill of sale around here somewhere."
"Then you don't need to break the curse or anything. You can just give it to a museum and let them worry about it."
"It's my mummy," said Thomas. "I'll donate it when I feel like it."
Yawning, Elizabeth removed the long necklace and replaced it in the jewelry box. "I don't think that even this mummy could bother my sleep tonight."
Bob ran a hand through his hair and raised his eyes heavenward. "You never saw the Boris Karloff movie, did you? That's just sort of thing that the heroine says and then she goes and falls asleep and is possessed by the mummy. She ends up wandering around, speaking agent Egyptian and running off with Boris Karloff."
"That's not going happen," Elizabeth. "Boris Karloff is dead."
"Not the point I was trying to make."
Thomas rolled his eyes. "Please assure Bob that if any of you gets possessed by the mummy and starts wandering around, I will be awake to deal with the matter."
Elizabeth passed on Thomas's assurances, but Bob did not look reassured. He said, "That sounds like the sort of thing I'm used to hearing from roommates. 'Oh, don't worry about this very large stolen object sitting out here in the open. The police don't know anything about it and definitely won't come arrest everybody in the house.'"
"That really happened to you?"
"Almost. I totally didn't believe them so I managed to not be in the house very much until the police actually did come and arrest everybody," Bob explained. "Then I moved out."
From far below, they heard the sound of the front door opening and closing.
"Anybody home?" Alice's voice floated up the stairway.
"As far as your sister is concerned, there is no mummy here," Thomas said quickly. "At least not till tomorrow morning, when I know more about this curse."
"You don't think she could help you go through those notebooks?"
"Not unless she can read hieroglyphics," said Thomas.
Bob picked up on the salient issue. "We don't tell Alice?"
"Not until tomorrow," Elizabeth said.
Quietly, they bid Thomas good night. Bob went to his room to collapse until his next shift and Elizabeth headed downstairs to see her sister. Alice was too full of chatter about Museum Boy and the rest of the cocktail party to notice the extra dust on Elizabeth's coat, or even ask why Elizabeth hadn't taken her coat off when she came home.
Alice bubbled, "So, anyway, that Jennifer kept trying to talk to me, like we want to have anything to do with her. Titania went around looking daggers at everybody and Trip kept trying to pour champagne down her throat to cheer her up, but that didn't work. Museum Boy had to go talk to people because he was working and had to answer questions about the exhibit. Joe totally avoided me, of course, but that really didn't bother me since he was working too. I ended up hanging out with these art students who were all talking about using found objects and organic stuff to make, like, road kill art or something."
"I thought you were going home with Museum Boy," Elizabeth said.
"So did I, but it turns out that he has to get up really early tomorrow to help move the mummy over to the medical school. He said he wouldn't have time to drop me off at my house before I had to get to work, so he dropped me off tonight." Alice inspected her reflection in the hallway mirror as she pulled out her hairpins. "I'm beginning to think that Dirk is right about him. Because look at me, am I not irresistible?" She tossed her hair over her shoulders and thrust out a hip.
"Yeah, totally irresistible. Aren't those my earrings?"
"Oh, yes. I didn't have any that looked as good with this dress." Alice pulled off the earrings and handed them to Elizabeth. "But anyway, I can't be too annoyed with Museum Boy since it's thanks to him that we saw the mummy at all."
To Elizabeth it sounded like Museum Boy's stock was teetering on the edge of a precipitous drop. Alice would probably have liked him better if he'd refused to break the rules by handing over his access card, but then taken her home with him. Elizabeth hung up her dusty coat and the sisters climbed up to the second floor where their rooms were. "Sweet dreams," she said when Alice yawned.
Elizabeth showered a layer of mummy dust off her skin and out of her hair. She was half asleep by the time she got her hair dry enough to not dampen her pillow. The idea of the mummy upstairs was not as disturbing as she thought it should have been. She wondered if there were other dead bodies in the house and, if there were, whether Thomas had conveniently forgotten them too. As far as she knew Thomas was the only ghost in this house and he was not exactly a real ghost either, as he never failed to remind them.
She slept dreamlessly for a few hours, until the air in her room grew stale and she woke gasping for stray molecules of oxygen. The curtains which hung from the canopy of the bed had fallen closed and Rififi was sitting on her chest. She shoved the cat off and looped a curtain back behind its hook. Rolling over on her side to present Rififi with less surface area, she tried to go back to sleep.
Then the chanting began. The voice was familiar, though the language was not. The skin along Elizabeth's spine prickled.
"Shut up, Alice," she shouted and burrowed her head under the pillows, thinking half-formed thoughts about how inconsiderate it was for her sister to mess around with her Wicca stuff so loudly.
The chanting stopped briefly, but then resumed at an even greater volume.
Snarling, Elizabeth grabbed her robe and hauled herself out of bed, disturbing the cat in the process. Rififi followed her out into the hallway where they both froze, wide-eyed at the site before them.
Alice stood in her the doorway of her room, wearing only a thin, white summer dress and every piece of jewelry she owned. She also wore some jewelry that she didn't own; Elizabeth noticed a couple of her own necklaces in the jangling mass around her sister's neck. Alice held her arms out straight in front of her, palms upward and took a regal step into the hallway. Rififi brushed past Elizabeth's ankles and walked slowly down the hallway towards Alice in a ceremonial manner. He held his tail straight up and paused occasionally to look to either side as if he were Bastet acknowledging throngs of worshipers.
The door of Dirk's room cracked open and the sleepy faces of Dirk and Kevin appeared around the edge of the door.
"What's going on?" Dirk mumbled. His eyes widened when he saw Alice in her fully accessorized glory bearing down on him. She pointed a finger at him and issued a command that none of them could understand. When they didn't obey her, she grew angry and issued another command, gesturing behind her to a battalion of nonexistent spear carriers. When Dirk was not smitten where he stood, Alice turned and raised a fist at her unseen servants. Rififi hopped onto a cabinet in the hallway and yowled with approval.
"She's sleepwalking?" Dirk rubbed his eyes.
"I think so. She doesn't ever act like this when she's awake. Not exactly," said Elizabeth. She wondered if now would be a good time to tell the boys about the cursed mummy upstairs.
"Should we try and wake her up or should we shut her in her room?"
"I don't know. I've never had to deal with a sleepwalker before. Maybe we should ask Bob?"
"If he's here, he's asleep, and if he's asleep, then you'll never get him awake," said Dirk. "Do you think your ghost would know what to do? He's probably seen sleepwalkers before. At least he'll be awake."
"I'll go see," said Elizabeth. She backed away, making no sudden moves in case Alice's eyes were seeing more than she thought they were, then ducked into the back staircase and ran up to the third floor, hoping that Thomas was still poring over those notebooks. A rough spot on one of the risers jabbed a splinter into her bare foot. Limping, she hurried upwards, out into the third floor hall and down to where a pool of light spilled across the floor. He was there, standing beside the lamp with yet another book laid out on top of the dresser. He glanced up when she came in.
"Alice is sleepwalking. Can't you hear her? She's chanting in some language I can't even recognize and she's wearing all of her jewelry. Rififi is sort of joining in too. What should we do?" Elizabeth wrung her hands.
"Wake her up. If you've ever wanted to throw a bucket of water on your sister, this would be an opportune time."
"But what about the curse? Is this that walking in the darkness of winter?"
"Oh, you think it's spirit possession? And next she will run off with Boris Karloff?" Thomas asked.
"You tell me," said Elizabeth. "I was having that dream about being shut in a box at the same time that she started chanting. I know twins are supposed to have some kind of psychic connection, but I think that's pretty much hooey. At least I did … " She shivered and wrapped her robe more tightly around her body.
"What was she chanting?"
"I don't know. I even don't know what language it was." Elizabeth was beginning to get annoyed. "Why don't you go down and see for yourself. That's an idea, you can take care of it and the rest of us can go back to sleep."
"Very well," said Thomas. He took her elbow lightly and they went down the front staircase together. Alice was still standing out in the hallway, her back to them. Rififi sat upright before her and listened attentively while she continued to chant away. Dirk and Kevin, fully awake now, were lounging against the doorjamb and watching Alice with great interest.
Thomas left Elizabeth by the stairs and went to where Alice stood. Rififi scampered away when he approached. He walked slowly around her. Alice stopped chanting when Thomas entered her field of vision and she said something in a querying tones.
"What did she say?" asked Elizabeth.
Thomas said, "I have no idea. Something in Egyptian. Aren't these your red beads she's wearing?"
Alice repeated her query more forcefully. She had turned and watched Thomas as he circled her.
"What's she looking at?" asked Dirk.
"She must be able to see Thomas," Elizabeth said.
When Thomas didn't respond to her query except by annoyingly continuing to circle her, Alice shot out a hand and grabbed his arm. Immediately she let go with a cry in her normal voice. Thomas flickered and skipped back out of her reach, looking moderately alarmed.
Alice dropped to her knees and rubbed her hand. "What's going on? What happened? What am I doing out here and why am I wearing all this jewelry?"
"You're sleepwalking," said Kevin. "And having some pretty wild dreams. You probably ordered us all beheaded or something."
"What happened to my hand?"
"You grabbed Thomas," Elizabeth said.
"I could see him? Yes, that's right." Alice rubbed her forehead. "I saw someone dressed strangely, interfering with the ceremony. It was another one of those dreams. I was standing in this big plaza with the sun overhead. There were people all around. All these guys with spears who didn't do what I told them to, which only made me angry. They were there to do something, something bad, and I couldn't stop them." Shivering, Alice stumbled to her feet.
Thomas drew back from her. Quietly, he said, "Look at her aura, Elizabeth."
There was a disturbed edge to his voice. She closed her eyes without arguing. Alice's sparkling purple aura was wormeaten with dark passages which slithered through the brightness, never quite stopping, but occasionally pausing. At each pause, the aura would give a little shudder.
Elizabeth opened her eyes. Thomas raised a finger to his lips. "We will discuss it later. You should get your sister back into bed."
Dirk walked past Elizabeth, giving her a strange look, as he came out from Alice's room. He was carrying one of Alice's robes, which he threw around her shoulders. "It's December, you would think you'd have enough sense to channel the spirit of an Eskimo instead of, I don't know … " His voice trailed off and he helped Alice remove a layer of necklaces. Alice shivered harder. Thinking of the dark blots eating away at her, Elizabeth shivered in sympathy.
"I don't think I'm going to be able to get back to sleep," Alice said woefully. "This is too creepy, what if I fell down the stairs?"
"Don't worry. We'll put something in front of your door so that if you go sleepwalking, you'll fall over that before you can get anywhere near the stairs," Dirk said.
"Oh, and a warm-up!" Kevin ran downstairs and reappeared a minute later carrying a small bottle of brandy and a snifter. "You can tranquilize her the old fashioned way."
With the boys and Elizabeth orbiting her like nervous moons, Alice got back into bed, still wearing her robe, and choked down some brandy. Dropping the necklaces on Alice's dresser, Dirk went to his room and came back with a comforter. He said, "I'm a light sleeper. If you start walking around again, I'll definitely wake up." He wrapped himself up and nestled down in a pile of discarded sweaters on Alice's couch. Kevin gave him a goodnight kiss and placed a couple gilt chairs in the doorway on his way back to bed.
Elizabeth sat on the edge of her sister's bed for a little while longer and waited till Alice's breathing became slow and regular. She answered Alice's repeated questions about what she'd done and said while sleepwalking and vetoed Alice's suggestion that Elizabeth dig up Joe's old tape recorder to record anything else that might happen. "Or a video camera," she yawned. "If I had a webcam set up, then we might have caught some of it."
Eventually Alice dropped off and Elizabeth, her feet really freezing by now, turned off the light and went back to her own room with Thomas at her heels. Dodging Rififi who shot past her ankles when Thomas entered, she climbed back into bed and picked at the splinter in her foot. It was long, wicked, and deeply embedded. If her foot hadn't gone numb, she'd have been hollering long since.
"Let me get that," said Thomas. She held out her foot and he gently removed the splinter. She was so cold that even his touch didn't bother her. When he released her foot she pulled up the covers.
"Those dark spots," she said.
"It's the curse," Thomas said. "The spirit of that mummy is trying to possess your sister and it's carrying the curse along with it. You didn't notice any spots on her before?"
Elizabeth shook her head and held out her arms to inspect her own aura. "Am I cursed too?"
"No. Except for your nightmares, I wouldn't say that it's affecting you at all."
"I was having another one right as Alice woke me up. I dreamed about being shut up in the dark and suffocating, but it turned out that the curtains of the bed were closed and Rififi was sitting on my chest. I thought maybe the cat's been doing it all along, or something."
"Drinking your breath? No, I think that Alice is getting the mummy's curse and you are merely getting the mummy's nightmares. I've read most of the archaeologist's journals and I think I've pieced together the story of what happened to this mummy. Not only did this young woman get herself into trouble, she got herself into Trouble. She and the man who compromised her were both executed. He had a public execution, very nasty, lots of sharp objects. Because of her position as a priestess, though, her execution was rather different. She was entombed alive and then afterwards, when enough time had passed that the authorities were certain she must have died, they opened up the tomb and removed her body to be mummified."
"Does it get creepier?" asked Elizabeth. "Because I think we're at the limit here."
"It will get creepier," said Thomas. "Especially if we can't figure out how to break this curse and free your sister."
"Can we just destroy the mummy?"
"It wouldn't be that simple. The archaeologist's notes have given me some idea of what approach to take. I'll go down to the library and get started. You try to get some sleep."
He left her then with a light touch upon her heavily blanketed knee. She lay back against her pillows and stared into the darkness which fell after he turned off the light. He made no sound as he moved through the house, but she soon heard books sliding off shelves, leather covers whispering open, and the soft slapping of pages. The acoustics of the house created little pockets of sound linked by invisible threads, she imagined, through which vibrations flowed from one part of the house to the other. You could be standing in the living room and hear someone whispering all the way back in the kitchen. She was picturing the hallways draped in silvery skeins of whispers when at last she fell into a dreamless sleep.