Horror INC Presents: The Mummy#1
Jon Chopin stalked the dark corridors of London's British Museum glad that he was out of reach of the winds howling cacophony and the bitter sting of the rain. Really the British weather wasn't that different from his native Poland but he had not been back to Warsaw in over ten years and nostalgia made him wish for a Polish summer, one with little wind, no rain and definitely no snow. He was day dreaming about moving back to Poland and rejoining the Police Force, not in Warsaw this time, somewhere quite, somewhere in the country maybe.
He swept his torch down the corridor leading to the art exhibition, looking but not really looking. Jon sighed to himself and continued his sweep of the museum, he knew fine well that he wasn't going back to Poland any time soon, the simple fact was he couldn't afford it and he was stuck as a security guard in a British museum for the foreseeable future. It wouldn't have been so bad if he didn't have to work alone so much but the museum had decided that it wasn't financially viable to keep more that one guard.
Jon headed towards the Egypt display, artefacts dotted the room, stone tablets, ancient weapons and pottery decorated the walls but the main feature was the newly arrived sarcophagus that sat at the centre or the room. The final resting place of Pharaoh Tutankhamen, The Boy King. A monolith compared to the other objects in the room, Jon gave it no more than a glance, he had seen it all before.
The wind began to rise, no more a howl but a scream, Jon could feel something different in the air, something unsettling, lighting set the sky ablaze for a fleeting second and was followed by a wave of thunder crashing over the museum like the voice of a god, an angry god. The room was strong with the smell of ozone and the feeling of sourceless dread settled on him like a weight. He wanted nothing more than to run, run from the museum and to not stop until daylight, but he couldn't, something was pulling him towards the sarcophagus, something dark and unseen. He needed to open it, yes, that was it! All he had to do was open the thing and every thing would be OK, this horrible feeling of dread would leave and he would be unburdened. Jon moved towards the coffin with the sick look of a madman on his face, he was no longer fully in control of himself any more, he belonged to someone else now.
Jon took hold of the lid of the coffin and pushed with all his strength, if he had tried to move the lid of the sarcophagus on any normal night his arms would have buckled under the sheer weight, but not tonight, no, this night was different. The lid hit the ground with a shattering crash that sent dust flying everywhere.
"No, this is not right"
Revulsion ripped through Jon in a violent spasm, he shouldn't have done this, it was not right. Tutankhamen was known as The Boy King, having died at the age of 18 but what Jon Chopin saw was not a boy at all but something old, as old as sin it's self. Black empty eye sockets stared back at him from a face that had the look of cracked leather, it's mouth hanging open and to the side with a kind of slack jawed expression, it's frail body bound in gauze. Jon would have screamed if he had not been trying to stop him self from being sick.
Something awoke in the thing that had once been known as the king of Egypt, something deep and dark. a wanting. a needing. a craving. There was no thought inside the thing only instinct and that instinct was to take what it needed. It reached out a took the face of Jon Chopin with a gnarled claw, Jon's muffled screech turned in to a gargle then a sort of dry croaking noise, his eyes dried and cracked then turned to dust in there sockets. His lips, beneath the claw of the mummy, began to peel back in a grimace only known to the dead and the dying. His hair began to fade from black to a sick yellow colour and fell out in clumps, finally his skin crumbled to dust.
Cont. in The Mummy #2
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