THE CHRISTMAS MUMMY
A Short Story
By W.D. Gagliani
Author of:
“The Christmas Zombie” (Tarkus Press); short story
“The Christmas Wolf” (Tarkus Press); short story
The Nick Lupo Series
Wolf’s Trap (Samhain Publishing) Nick Lupo 1
Wolf’s Gambit (47North) Nick Lupo 2
Wolf’s Bluff (47North) NIck Lupo 3
Wolf’s Edge (Samhain) Nick Lupo 4
Wolf’s Cut (Samhain) Nick Lupo 5
Also
Savage Nights (Tarkus Press); novel
Shadowplays (Tarkus Press): stories
“The Great Belzoni and the Gait of Anubis” (Tarkus Press); novella
Mysteries & Mayhem (with David Benton; Tarkus Press); short stories
“Mood Elevator” (with David Benton; Tarkus Press); short story
“Love at First Sting – A Splatterpunk Story” (with David Benton; Tarkus Press); short story
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THE CHRISTMAS MUMMY
First E-Book Edition, December 2013
Copyright © 2013 W.D. Gagliani
Cover by ProGnosis
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License Notes
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No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.
This ebook is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Twitter: @WDGagliani
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For Charles Spain Verral
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THE CHRISTMAS MUMMY
W.D. Gagliani
He feels the people nearby and he hears their voices in his head, but he doesn’t understand the words they speak. They are of foreign tongue and the sounds are harsh and frightening. He is bound, still bound, but he is not where he is supposed to be.
And he knows not why.
He listens carefully, for he knows instinctively he has time. Although the sounds of voices frighten him, soon he is lulled by the tones and he begins to accept that he is lost. His surroundings are unfamiliar, even worse than the infinite darkness he has come to think of as comforting, and these voices are more than merely harsh, their tone is foreign. But they are not aware he is nearby and they pose him no threat.
But the sadness he feels washes over him like a cold wave on a hot day, the kind of day now remote in his memory. The sadness is greater than any he has felt in centuries. For the first time he feels a loneliness down to his very soul, a loneliness that eclipses any sadness he has ever felt before.
He wishes he could cry but his eyes are forever dry.
* *
Racine, Wisconsin
December 1972
Danny fidgeted in the cold vinyl back seat of his father’s second-hand Ambassador as they drove north along the lake shore, the headlights carving a path through the intensifying blizzard conditions likely caused by the steely-dark waters to their right. Sand-like snow cascaded in waves across the wide windshield and gummed the wipers.
Highway 32 was getting slicker by the moment, but his father had promised to take family and grandmother for some late Christmas shopping, and Gram had picked Goldblatt’s in Racine as her preferred destination.
His father was grimly quiet, concentrating on the difficult driving, and Danny bit his lip. The tension between his parents was escalating in proportion with the weather and he feared there could be an explosion soon. Taking his wife’s mother shopping wasn’t the problem, but being forced to take her farther than necessary in a blizzard was… and Danny knew his father never let a good grudge die. There would be some kind of hell to pay for this sacrifice, and a perfectly good Christmas excursion would turn as bad as last week’s milk, sour in the stomach for days to come.
Danny forced himself to stop fidgeting after his mother fixed him with her warning stare. She knew his father well –– as did he –– and the slow burn was an indicator best not ignored.
His Gram, bless her, had picked up on the mood change and kept quiet. Seated in the front seat due to her back and leg problems, she stared straight ahead as if she could drive away the stinging lake-effect snow squall that was causing all the tension.
Danny’s father drove on in angry silence.
There might be hell to pay later, Danny thought, enjoying the sound the word hell made in his head. He was just beginning to stretch his swearing vocabulary and he’d been taught at school that saying hell was bad.. so it was showing up a lot in his thoughts lately.
“Daniele!”
His mother’s warning whisper cut through his reverie. He’d been fidgeting again, and his father was likely to pick up on it. He hated when she whispered at him, as if his father couldn’t hear. Sometimes he thought she couldn’t have made it any worse –– his father hated the feeling of being conspired against. And even if he wasn’t, he believed he was and that was it.
Danny hoped his father wouldn’t turn the car around out of pure spite, because he looked forward to checking out some of the store’s more obscure departments. Goldblatt’s was a slowly decaying department store that nevertheless carried some of just about everything, and he’d always been able to find some treasure, an unexpected pleasure. Soundtrack albums, for instance, seemed to show up there more often than anywhere else: recently he’d found The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and Kelly’s Heroes. Last year it had been a two-record set of James Bond themes. You never knew what would show up.
So even though they were on the edge of a blow-up, or a spin-out, or even an accident, Danny still secretly hoped the trip would be worth it. He also hoped he’d get a sense of what his parents would buy him for Christmas. What he really wanted was a Mego Batman and Robin set, and an even better Action Jackson figure, the one with the interchangeable bodies. Maybe if he stood in front of the display long enough, he reasoned, his parents would either get the hint organically or the force of his desire would work on them and bend their will to his. Of course, if his father was going to be in a foul mood, then all was lost and the trip would be rated a total fiasco. All he could hope then was no lingering grudge-holding, silent treatment, or overt malice… and he’d seen all of those, so anything was possible.
The tall blue letters spelling out the GOLDBLATT’S sign suddenly appeared ahead to the left, and the squared-off Ambassador slewed a little as his father navigated the growing ruts of unplowed snow in the road and then they were squirting into the slush-covered lot busy with harried last-minute shoppers.
Danny vibrated with unresolved tension, fear, and excitement in equal measure.
* *
The Bad One is nearby.
He feels the dark vibrations again and shivers. This is the one who separated him from his family, the one who tore him away from those in whose lap he had expe
cted to spend eternity.
The Bad One huffs loudly through thick, slab-like lips, humming tunelessly as he plans his new misdeeds.
All this is clear to him, and he stirs in his prison knowing he is at the Bad One’s mercy.
He begins to gather the force of his will. He begins to gather his strength.
He will need it all to fight the Bad One.
He will need an ally.
Then he feels other, quieter vibrations.
* *
Danny circled the store once, his standard procedure, looking for anything new since the last trip. He saved the book department for last, but found his way to the record bins quickly. They were wood, painted white, and stretched two-sided along the middle of a main aisle between luggage and shoes on one side and toys in the other. Danny wanted to check for the Mego figures, but sometimes he enjoyed letting anticipation build until he could barely stand it, and then catching the moment (as he thought of it) for all it was worth. So right now he hoped his family was as far away as possible as he flipped through the stacks of vinyl carefully, missing nothing.
There was a soundtrack from The Sand Pebbles. Not only a great movie, but a fabulous bit of movie music. Jerry Goldsmith was one of Danny’s favorite movie composers, so that was a keeper. Jealously he slid the record out of the bin and tucked it under his arm. He kept looking through the upright stacks of record sleeves, keeping an eye out for his parents and Gram… when his father decided they were done, they would have to leave immediately. His father had no patience for dawdling… when he said it was time, everybody had to jump to it.
They were nowhere nearby, so Danny finished with the records –– nothing else jumped out at him, sadly –– and he made his way toward the large but somewhat shabby toy department.
Goldblatt’s was starting to fade, and it was nowhere more obvious than their toy department, which seemed to have been recently picked over to the point where some shelves were bare, others displaying battered boxes that had been rejected as too damaged to buy.
Danny’s hopes fell.
As he approached the boys’ section, he could see holes where chipped-paint bare shelves held an occasional leftover accessory, but the ranks of Mego figurines he’d expected were not to be found.
Inexplicably, he wanted to cry.
It wasn’t the toys themselves, the lack of them, that made him choke up. No, as he stood in front of the bare shelves, he realized that the missing toys were a symbol. Did he want to face the symbolism?
Danny sniffled a little, but he was self-conscious. Only little kids cried when their toys weren’t available. He was much older than that.
But still…
Empty shelves at Christmas. Could anything be more depressing? His entire purpose for even making the trip –– not that he’d had a choice! –– was to point the way to one of his preferred gifts. Seeing shoppers brave the storm and prowling the harshly-lit aisles with prizes in colorful boxes left a bad taste in his mouth and a tugging feeling of envy…
No, it was jealousy.
Whatever it was, it hurt. His father was probably even now starting to wrap up the shopping trip (unlike his anger, his patience was remarkably short-winded) and pretty soon he’d be searching for his son. Meaning Danny had better make himself easily found…
Wait, though, there was one possibility.
Danny had been standing in front of the empty Mego display shelves, but from the corner of his eye he’d spotted one of the harried sales staff disappearing through a door partially hidden in the corner at the end of the aisle.
Curious.
He waited, and the guy came back out the same door with a stack of boxes in his arms.
Danny sidled toward the door. Clearly, it was a back room. Wasn’t that where stores kept the rest of their stock? The stock they’d use to replace the stock they’d sold.
In his mind, the picture solidified. The back room was like a warehouse, and it was filled with shelving to the ceiling on which was stored all the merchandise carried in the store, ready to be shuttled out to replace all the sold stock. All the Mego stock!
Danny realized that he was much closer to the door than he had realized. All he had to do was wait for some staff member to head toward the door and then Danny would ask him, or maybe it would be a her, to check. They would come back out with a stack of Mego boxes, and Danny’s mission would be accomplished.
But… he glanced at his boys’ Timex, a treasured gift from his father of two Christmases before, and did a double-take. They’d been here an hour! Surely his father’s patience was running low. Danny glanced around, but suddenly the toy department was a desert and there were no staff members to be seen. No customers, either. Maybe the store was closing early because of the snow? Had there been an announcement? He’d been so busy fantasizing that he hadn’t paid attention. He had no choice but to wait.
As he stood there, willing someone –– anyone –– to appear, he felt his mind reach out. Maybe somebody would pick up on the vibe he was producing. Hey, I’m a kid here, and I need somebody to go in back to look for something! I don’t have that much time!
His feet seemed to start dancing on their own, and the store lighting seemed to dim. Was that the snow? Was there an emergency? Where was the staff?
Danny felt an inexplicable chill dribble down his back like ice water, as if he’d parked himself under a roof leak and snow was melting and dripping directly down his collar. He even stepped aside, to see if the sensation would stop, but it didn’t. He shivered. His Timex said only a minute had passed since the last time he’d checked.
He wanted to scream. He stared down the three aisles that met at the intersection he’d blocked with his body. No sales guy was going to miss tripping over him.
Before he realized what was happening, he felt his teeth start to chatter. It was suddenly very cold, as if the dripping down his back had started to spread. Had they turned off the heat?
He felt compelled to approach the door. Well, why not? There didn’t seem to be any salespeople nearby, no one to take his request seriously before searching the hidden shelves.
Danny fidgeted. His father might even now be looking for him. Time was running out. And he was starting to feel a sense of urgency a little like having to go to the bathroom, but strangely more insistent as if time really were running out.
Was he crazy, or was a voice in his head telling him to open the door? To check out that warehouse back there himself?
For a second, he thought he heard his name.
Looking around, he saw no one. If his father was nearby, he would have known immediately, for the old man was not subtle when he wanted to find his kid. Danny set his record album down on an empty shelf. It would be safe there.
He stepped toward the white-painted door and was now close enough to see black chips in the paint at the edges. The brass-colored knob seemed loose, as if it were about to fall out. The voice in Danny’s head –– it wasn’t really a voice, it was more of an impulse –– urged him to enter, make his way through the portal. He barely realized when his hand moved toward the knob.
“Hey sport, step aside!”
Danny jumped as if he’d been electrocuted.
The chill down his back reached around and skewered his heart.
* *
The Other’s fear resonates in his dark cocoon and he feels it, too. They are kin, their courage tested by circumstances in which fear is thrust upon them. He feels –– or senses –– the Bad One confronting the Other, but he has no frame of reference. It is something about a portal, like an entrance to a tomb, but he cannot make sense of this century in which his consciousness has mysteriously reawakened.
Perhaps in which the Bad One awakened it. He had been content to sleep in the lap of the gods with his original kin.
He has been content to be silent. He can only be silent. His vocal cords are useless. They have long since dried to thin leather strips.
With caution he opens his new consciousn
ess and casts out his questing spirit, trying to engage the Other.
He senses this may be his last chance to find his way back to where he belongs. Time is a thin line of sand through a curved glass.
* *
It was an icicle spear through Danny’s heart.
The breath was sucked out of him, leaving him light-headed. Noise inside his forehead was like an ice cream headache after inhaling a huge frozen custard sundae, but there was a voice somewhere in there, rattling around, speaking words or making sounds that made no sense. At least, they weren’t a language he could understand.
But he was too busy to care, too busy trying to slow his heart rate from being startled by the deep voice behind him that now cleared its throat.
He didn’t move his feet, but he turned around enough to see that a burly guy about six feet tall and apparently almost that wide was shoving into him, trying to bump him out of the way.
Danny was a polite kid, his father had seen to that, but this guy was using his large body like a battering ram, and Danny instinctively stood his ground. Which was probably a bad idea because the guy was at least two hundred pounds heavier. Maybe more. He wore a blue pseudo-cop’s shirt with cheesy black epaulettes a wide shiny black leather utility belt like Batman’s, with stuff hanging off it in scuffed leather pouches. A flashlight and a nightstick and a huge ring filled with keys, a walkie-talkie, and more things Danny couldn’t make out. It made his pants ride low, but somehow did not make him look ridiculous.
The guy had a black plastic name tag on his chest that said SECURITY in white block letters, and below that, M. Sabin.
“I said move, kid, this ain’t a bathroom.”
His voice was gravelly and went with his size well, kind of like a rumpled Cannon, and Danny lost his bravado and suddenly felt intimidated.
Noise in his head confused him. Where was that coming from?
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