Josie could smell the change in her room.
She noticed it as soon as she went up there after school. Dodgy trainers, the comforting pong of Leonard, her dog, and something else. The new smell was spicy and dry, but she couldn’t work out where it was coming from.
She gave the dog a gentle nudge on the behind.
“Go on, boy. Solve the mystery.”
Leonard headed straight for Josie’s closet, sniffing at it and looking puzzled. After a moment he scratched at the door with one paw …
And something on the other side scratched back.
Leonard jumped in surprise and sneezed.
Josie was a practical girl. There wasn’t supposed to be anything that moved in her closet. Whether it was a raccoon or someone playing a joke, she would be prepared. She grabbed her baseball bat from the corner, and, armed and ready, she tugged open the closet door.
“Oh.”
She stared. She knew exactly what it was. How or why it was in a twelve-year-old’s bedroom closet was a mystery.
Leonard edged forward, sniffed, and sneezed again. Josie could feel her own nose prickling at the musty waft from the closet, like stale cinnamon.
Wedged between sweaters and boxes of old toys was an Egyptian mummy. It was tall and battered, with loose ends of bandage hanging off here and there. It would have been rejected as a film prop. Arms crossed over its chest, it leaned at a slight angle, its head against a heap of clothes on the top shelf.
Leonard, who considered the mystery solved, wandered off to chew some furniture before Josie’s mother got back from work.
Josie prodded the mummy with the baseball bat. It didn’t move. She was sure she’d heard a noise, though. She sat down on the floor. If this was a practical joke, who had done it?
There was always her friend Robert, of course. As a fellow “reject” (which covered anyone in their year who didn’t seek popularity or attention), he and Josie shared a love of weird stuff. Into science fiction—and chunky and asthmatic—Robert was shunned by the “in” people. But she couldn’t see how Robert could have got hold of such a thing, or why he would hide it in her closet …
“Shut. Door. Please.”
She looked around.
“Excuse me?”
“Shut. Door.”
The second time, it was obvious that the words came from the mummy. One dark brown eye had opened, like a prune with a glint in it.
Despite her surprise, the mummy didn’t seem very threatening. Josie was young, fast, and armed. And Leonard was around. She was fairly sure that he would take to a dry stick-shaped leg as easily as he did to a dry leg-shaped stick.
“Uh … what are you doing in my closet?”
“I am. Hiding.”
A dead Egyptian (who smelled like an old cinnamon cookie) was hiding in her bedroom. Okay. She pushed the closet door so that it was only half open and pulled out her phone.
“Robert, are you busy at the moment? You might want to come over.”
Half an hour later, they were in conference, sitting on Josie’s bed. After a hefty blast on his inhaler, Robert nodded. He pulled out some horror DVDs he had brought, and they stared at the covers.
“It does look like a mummy,” he agreed. “And it definitely spoke?”
“Yes. It said it was hiding.”
Anyone else at school would have argued. Robert went over to the closet and opened the door wider.
“Do you have a name?” asked Robert.
The mummy’s head tilted slightly.
“Menkhep.” The voice was dry, hollow.
Robert looked excited.
“Are you a mighty pharaoh?”
“Archi. Tect. Builder.”
Josie thought that was slightly disappointing. A fabulous relic of the past in her closet, and he was a drywaller.
“What are you hiding from?”
“Every. Thing.” The mummy shivered.
It was a slow conversation, with very long pauses. Peanut butter sandwiches were made in between sentences, though the mummy didn’t seem to want any.
Menkhep was on the run. Or on the stumble. Josie doubted that he could run anywhere. After countless centuries of what seemed to be a pleasant sleep, he had been dug up and placed into a case to be displayed in museums. He hadn’t minded that. People stared; he dozed, safe in his comfortable case.
Then, quite recently, he had been shipped here, to the small museum in Josie’s hometown, and the trouble began. A stranger started asking about the new display. He said he was an expert. He asked to have the case opened and started coming in at night to do “studies.”
Those studies had involved breaking off one of the mummy’s toes, then another, then a finger, and taking away pieces of the wrappings. They also involved a lot of muttering and chanting, some of which Menkhep thought sounded familiar. Familiar from very long ago.
“Man. Took. Pieces.”
Menkhep moved one arm. Some of the bandages, and the little finger from his right hand, were missing.
Robert and Josie made sympathetic noises.
“Left. Place. Not want. To lose. More.”
“You wouldn’t,” they agreed.
They decided to ignore the unlikely fact that a mummy could wake up, think, or move at all. He was here, and that was that. Even Leonard, who pottered in to “borrow” a peanut butter sandwich, seemed to have taken it in his stride.
The mummy’s tale was fragmented, like scraps of an ancient parchment. The mummy was trying to escape the strange man but had spent too much time in his coffin. “Sarcophagus,” insisted Robert.
Josie was beginning to understand. This Menkhep was like Mrs. Gumster, who lived across the street. She couldn’t leave her house, even though she was a lot fitter than the mummy. Agoraphobic, that was the word. Being away from his safe place had proved to be a terrifying experience.
Staggering through the night, confused and lost, the mummy had found the garage door open at Josie’s house. With Josie on a sleepover and her mother on night shift, the bewildered Egyptian wandered around the empty house until he found a nice enclosed space.
Josie’s closet.
“How come you speak English, Mr. Menkhep?” Robert was flicking through screens on his phone.
“Listen. Many years. Many. Years.”
Josie and Robert considered the matter.
“I suppose you can stay here until we work something out,” she said at last.
But the mummy had gone stiff again. Maybe he was asleep. She pressed the closet door quietly shut.
Robert put down his phone. “I found this site online. They used to use bits of mummy as medicine. Long time ago, mind you. And for magic.”
“Magic. That chanting and so on. I bet that man wants to do something magical—and probably not in a nice way.”
They sat on the bed and watched some of an old horror film, keeping the sound turned down low.
“See?” She nodded as a man put on ancient Egyptian robes and started chanting over a sarcophagus.
Robert paused the film. “That wouldn’t be a good thing, then.”
“Not for Mr. Menkhep if they’re going to keep stealing his fingers—and maybe other bits.”
Their imaginations supplied the mummy’s head on an altar or his arms being waved around by hooded figures.
“Yuck. I have to go. Dad will be home soon, and he wants to play basketball again.”
His father was always hopeful that Robert would suddenly find an interest in sports. And always disappointed.
They parted with a promise to come up with a plan at the end of the week. The next two days of school were what the principal called “fun” tests, which wouldn’t affect their grades. No one but the principal thought this was fun, not even the teachers.
Josie said nothing to her mother, who worked on the ambulances. She came home tired most days. Or nights. Sometimes they watched TV or played a board game; sometimes her mother had to crash out soon after eating. Josie understood. And having the mummy around was quite pleasant. He said very little and asked for nothing but to doze in the closet. Once she got used to the odd smell, Josie found it quite reassuring.
“Are you sure I can’t get you anything?” she asked on the second night.
“Tired. Thank. You. Not moved. For so many years.”
He probably needed to get fit again, Josie thought, but she couldn’t imagine Menkhep doing aerobics. A leg would probably drop off.
She did drag a spare mattress into her room and suggested he sleep on that, which would be more comfortable. He managed five minutes on it and then had to get back in the closet.
“Too much. Space,” he moaned and pulled the door shut on himself.
It was Friday morning when the front door bell rang, minutes before she had to go to school. Puzzling over a lost pencil case, Josie answered the door without thinking.
“Yes?”
The man on the porch was tall and wore a suit. He had the sort of smile adults used when they hated children but didn’t want to show it. Wide and artificial, too many teeth.
“Hello, dear. Is your mummy in?”
Caught off guard, Josie made a mess of things.
“No! There’s no mummy here, never has been.”
The smile exposed even more teeth.
“Ah.” He rubbed the side of his nose. “I only speak to … mummies, you see.”
He gave a damp cough.
“How did you get it here?” he said. “No, that doesn’t matter. What matters is that it is mine. I’m sure you don’t want that dry old thing in your way, so let’s see about removing it.”
He reached into his jacket and pulled out a wallet.
“Ten pounds, perhaps? For the inconvenience. You can tell your parents you found the money.”
“I don’t take anything from strangers,” she said firmly and shut the door in the man’s face.
“He knows about Mr. Menkhep,” she said to Leonard, who had utterly failed to be any sort of guard dog.
How the man had found out where the mummy was, she couldn’t imagine. Maybe he had some clever way of following the smell. Even Josie’s mother had asked if she had bought a new air freshener.
She texted Robert. “Skip school. Meet me here.” It wouldn’t be the first time—she used her mother’s old phone to send texts to the school secretary.
They held their meeting in the kitchen, not sure what to say to the mummy himself.
“We could move him.” Robert took an extra drag on his inhaler, in case things got too exciting.
“Wouldn’t help. If that man could find Mr. Menkhep hidden in my bedroom, he can probably find him anywhere.”
“The bits,” said Robert. “Maybe he can track him through magic, using them. Use a finger or a toe to work out where the rest is.”
It made as much sense as anything else.
“So what do we do?”
“Well, he can’t say anything to your mother, can he? He can’t ask, ‘Please, can I have the Egyptian body in your daughter’s closet, the one from the museum?’ And I bet he won’t go to the police.”
Josie took the point. “He’ll have to steal the mummy, then.”
“Which means breaking in to your house.”
“Then we could go to the police.”
“Which would be too late for Mr. Menkhep.”
They looked down at the dog. Leonard dropped the carrot he had stolen from the vegetable rack and tried to look useful. It didn’t help. Neither did talking it over with the mummy, who groaned and seemed to accept his fate.
“Let him. Take me. Then. Not. Your fault.”
A knock on the front door interrupted further talk.
This time Josie pushed Leonard into position, and she had Robert with her. The three of them faced the tall man on the porch. Josie noticed the cream-coloured car across the street. That didn’t belong to anyone around here. He must have been waiting and thinking. No doubt he’d seen Robert arrive—and no adults.
“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 mummy 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.
They 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.