time of year to sell books,” Mr. Rapscallion told Billy. “It was like the Christmas holidays for a toy shop. Or Valentine’s Day for a florist’s. And each year I’d make a special effort to devise a new section in the bookshop and a new surprise to go in it.
“I’ve always loved Egyptology. And although I’ve never been there, Egypt’s a country to which I would dearly love to go. This year I decided I was going to do the next best thing and open a room of books dedicated to the Curse of the Pharaohs. Egyptian mummies coming back to life, living burials, flesh-eating scarabs and that kind of thing.
“So, I had a burial chamber built with golden bookshelves, a large stone idol of the Egyptian god Anubis—he’s the one with the head of a jackal, the Egyptian god of death—and, on its end, an open sarcophagus with a life-size mummy standing inside. It looked pretty good, if I do say so myself. The mummy was properly ancient and sinister. As if it really was an ancient Egyptian priest who had been buried alive for, well…many years. A man who had been wrapped in filthy gray bandages that were as old as the pyramids themselves.
“Of course, the best part was when the mummy came back to life. All you had to do was touch and read aloud the inscription written on the forbidden casket, activating the sound sensor and the touch sensor. This was in hieroglyphs, of course, but there was an English translation underneath for those who don’t know ancient Egyptian. It read: DEATH. ETERNAL AND EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT FOR ANYONE WHO DARES TO OPEN THIS CASKET.
“The sensors would pass an electrical signal to the sarcophagus and, oh so silently, the mummy would start to reanimate. This would happen very slowly, too—the idea being that you might not even notice. That you might be too interested in the book you were reading to be paying attention to anything happening quietly behind you.
“First, the eyes of the mummy would open just a crack, like something that really had been sleeping for thousands of years. Then they would open just a little more and glitter with supernatural life. After a few more seconds, the bony, half-decayed hands, crossed over the mummy’s chest, would shift underneath the dusty old bandages that wrapped him, and then drop slowly to his sides. Finally the horrible head would straighten on the mummy’s shoulders and the thing would take a step out of the sarcophagus and then reach out and touch whatever was standing next to it. And, hopefully, give that person one heck of a fright.
“Believe me, Billy, when I tell you that it was impossible to see the poor creature and not think it stranger than Dracula, more fantastic than Frankenstein, more mysterious than the Invisible Man. Was it dead or alive? Was it human or inhuman? The first time I saw it working, I felt the awful creeping, crawling terror that stands your hair on end like sticks of raw spaghetti.”
“Oh wow,” said Billy. “It sounds awesome, Mr. Rapscallion. Really awesome. I love all that Egyptian stuff. Can we go and see the mummy right now?”
“That room is now locked.” Mr. Rapscallion sounded grave.
“Why? Did something terrible happen in there on Halloween?”
Mr. Rapscallion looked pained. “Let me tell the story,” he said. “I had put up several posters advertising our Halloween event in the Hitchcock Public Library, and in all the school libraries in and around the town. Several local authors had said they would come and sign copies of their books: Esteban Rex, the author of the Rigor Mortis books; Horace X. Horror, who wrote
Imagined Terrors,
of course; and the bestselling novelist Deacon Wordz, whose Elvis Weird books have been made into several successful and, it’s fair to say, extremely scary movies. Victor Gespensterbruch, one of Hitchcock’s leading ghost hunters, even agreed to give a short talk on the types of ghosts that there are.
“Everything had been prepared. There was bread and cheese.
“I’ve always loved Egyptology. And although I’ve never been there, Egypt’s a country to which I would dearly love to go. This year I decided I was going to do the next best thing and open a room of books dedicated to the Curse of the Pharaohs. Egyptian mummies coming back to life, living burials, flesh-eating scarabs and that kind of thing.
“So, I had a burial chamber built with golden bookshelves, a large stone idol of the Egyptian god Anubis—he’s the one with the head of a jackal, the Egyptian god of death—and, on its end, an open sarcophagus with a life-size mummy standing inside. It looked pretty good, if I do say so myself. The mummy was properly ancient and sinister. As if it really was an ancient Egyptian priest who had been buried alive for, well…many years. A man who had been wrapped in filthy gray bandages that were as old as the pyramids themselves.
“Of course, the best part was when the mummy came back to life. All you had to do was touch and read aloud the inscription written on the forbidden casket, activating the sound sensor and the touch sensor. This was in hieroglyphs, of course, but there was an English translation underneath for those who don’t know ancient Egyptian. It read: DEATH. ETERNAL AND EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT FOR ANYONE WHO DARES TO OPEN THIS CASKET.
“The sensors would pass an electrical signal to the sarcophagus and, oh so silently, the mummy would start to reanimate. This would happen very slowly, too—the idea being that you might not even notice. That you might be too interested in the book you were reading to be paying attention to anything happening quietly behind you.
“First, the eyes of the mummy would open just a crack, like something that really had been sleeping for thousands of years. Then they would open just a little more and glitter with supernatural life. After a few more seconds, the bony, half-decayed hands, crossed over the mummy’s chest, would shift underneath the dusty old bandages that wrapped him, and then drop slowly to his sides. Finally the horrible head would straighten on the mummy’s shoulders and the thing would take a step out of the sarcophagus and then reach out and touch whatever was standing next to it. And, hopefully, give that person one heck of a fright.
“Believe me, Billy, when I tell you that it was impossible to see the poor creature and not think it stranger than Dracula, more fantastic than Frankenstein, more mysterious than the Invisible Man. Was it dead or alive? Was it human or inhuman? The first time I saw it working, I felt the awful creeping, crawling terror that stands your hair on end like sticks of raw spaghetti.”
“Oh wow,” said Billy. “It sounds awesome, Mr. Rapscallion. Really awesome. I love all that Egyptian stuff. Can we go and see the mummy right now?”
“That room is now locked.” Mr. Rapscallion sounded grave.
“Why? Did something terrible happen in there on Halloween?”
Mr. Rapscallion looked pained. “Let me tell the story,” he said. “I had put up several posters advertising our Halloween event in the Hitchcock Public Library, and in all the school libraries in and around the town. Several local authors had said they would come and sign copies of their books: Esteban Rex, the author of the Rigor Mortis books; Horace X. Horror, who wrote
Imagined Terrors,
of course; and the bestselling novelist Deacon Wordz, whose Elvis Weird books have been made into several successful and, it’s fair to say, extremely scary movies. Victor Gespensterbruch, one of Hitchcock’s leading ghost hunters, even agreed to give a short talk on the types of ghosts that there are.
“Everything had been prepared. There was bread and cheese.
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