Tomb - Dessert
Treats of an Ill-Graced Reception
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“PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!”
The scream shuddered past Honeydew, Tom, and Mr. Grey, as they ran full-tilt through the gleaming tomb. Over and over the mummy shook the gemstone with its double-utterance of, ‘put it out’. The first came out gritty, as from a throat shredded by swallowed glass, and rumbled like loose rock. The second followed in an airy, raspy whisper; like sandparchment rubbing out the scuffs left on the jet halls coarser tongue.
The mummy’s steps joined those of the three in leading the way through the silence. No longer did the echo-steps match. Honeydew’s were sparse and loping. Tom sent vibrations rippling through the smooth floor. Mr. Grey’s were just as before, but double-frequency. And the mummy’s steps came after them all; oddly sloshing, as though the corpse trod, not on thin sock-wraps of withered linen, but on galoshes full of the brine in which it pickled.
Their steps led them through a long, narrow tunnel, ripe with cuneiform and hieroglyphics and dust. Their steps ushered them into a tall chandelier-chamber, dense with closed doors. Blind candle-eyes flared open on every surface. They stopped and searched. The sound of their breathing the dense air replaced footfalls.
Another scream followed them into the room. “PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!” First a growl then a whisper.
Mr. Grey stood between Tom and Honeydew. His breath came rapidly through his nose, and his heart ran laps around his ticker. “We could follow the order,” Mr. Grey said. He paused to gasp. “Snuff out the candles.”
Honeydew and Tom looked at Mr. Grey as though he were mad. They immediately pulled their lights out of his reach; which widened every reflected set of eyes. Honeydew gasped out a mocking click and said, “You want to reason with it?” Mr. Grey dropped the thought. He too wanted the light.
“Which door to take then?” he asked. They looked at the array of exits. Rows of glittering doors studded the walls on all sides. A double set of stairs wound up to a gallery, railed in the same shiny jet, where yet more gemstone doors offered escape.
Honeydew breathed a sharp intake and said, “We split up. It can’t chase all three. Whoever’s free runs for help,” Mr. Grey revolted from the idea. If they split, he alone would be in the dark.
The mummy’s double scream reached them again, closer than before, first gravel, then hiss. “PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!” Mr. Grey lost the chance to voice his concern. Honeydew and Tom sprinted. They ran together at first, Honeydew in a long-striding lope and Tom with thunder to shake the chandelier. They split apart at the double stairs, rejoined where the steps met at the upper gallery, and split again to either side. Each carried their candle at a run between the railing and wall.
Mr. Grey couldn’t decide; should he follow Tom or Honeydew? The scream came again. “PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!” His shawl fluttered in the gravebreath.
Mr. Grey fastwalk-ran; not to either Honeydew or Tom, not to the double stairs, but to the closest heavy jet door on his right. He set his suitcase on the floor as gently and quickly as possible, and pushed at the shiny stone door with a matte stone hand. The door held firm. Mr. Grey splayed his fingers on the cool surface and leaned at an exact 45-degree angle. The door. Held. Firm.
“PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!” came the cry. Not from distantly down the hall, only as an echo. Directly from the entry, in the flesh. Mr. Grey turned.
The mummy stood at the threshold. Its neck crackled like a blazing hearth as it twisted its head. It scanned the room. Flakes and tatters sloughed from its withered body and drifted onto the glassy floor. The wrapping had unraveled in its sloshing pursuit, revealing the puckered and folded skin beneath. An odor of enormity wafted from the cadaver; a pungent, briny, peppery smell like kimchi, which cut through Mr. Grey’s stone-scent cologne.
Mr. Grey sneezed. The candle-eyes on every surface seemed to flicker with mirth. He brought his bow to the violin. He didn’t know how he’d use enchantment against the monster, but the feel of strings under fingers gave him the minutest sliver of comfort.
Mr. Grey expected the corpse-head to snap in his direction. Instead, the creature screwed its linen-hidden sockets on the balcony. First at Tom’s thundering form, then at loping Honeydew. The mummy took whisking steps over the glassy floor. It walked directly past Mr. Grey and made for the stairs. Mr. Grey wondered if enchantment might be a real weapon; if music perhaps rang painfully in the mummy’s rotten ears, accustomed to the grave’s silence. Seeing it following his friends, Mr. Grey let his bow hand idle, and rummaged in his treasure-purse for shiny pebbles. As the mummy rushed the steps, Mr. Grey wondered which of the two it would pursue.
Both.
The mummy stopped at the base of the stairs and screamed. “PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!” Then, separation of gauze and tissue tore deafeningly over the heavy breathing and hasty footsteps. Mr. Grey watched the mummy’s outer layer rip away along its spine. First its wrapping, then the withered skin beneath, peeled from the butter-soft bones; like a tangerine rind. This outer wrap of flesh and fabric, still vaguely doll-shaped, floated in the air before the standing skeleton. Then the floating skin fluttered after Honeydew, and the skeleton cracked its heels up the stairs behind Tom.
“PUT IT OUT!” croaked the bones.
“PUT IT OUT!” whispered the skin.
The skin flew through the air towards Honeydew while the skeleton went noisily up each step; tap, tap, tapping after Tom. Tom and Honeydew noticed. After fear’s first shock, they each tried the nearest glimmering door. Honeydew threw herself against hers with scratching, futile zeal. Tom’s strength too, great though it was, yielded to his unmoving exit.
Mr. Grey called to the sundered corpse in his loudest monotone. “Excuse me… sir, we only want shelter,” Neither part paid him mind. The skin reached Honeydew’s side of the balcony. It floated along the row of doors toward her. At the same time, the skeleton tapped its way to the top of the stairs, turned right, and strutted after Tom.
Honeydew and Tom each tried the next nearest door. And the next. And the next. They threw themselves against door after door, and were rejected. The mummy’s pieces closed in.
Honeydew flung herself from the latest door; her candle flickered, and one eye on every surface winked. She looked to the open space beyond the railing, ran, and leapt. With her free hand she caught the edge of the crystal chandelier. She scrambled to the prickly top. She crouched. All the while, she kept her candle burning. Honeydew scowled at the skin she’d left on the balcony.
The skin, of course, floated through the air after her.
Tom too recognized the doors as futile. He turned on the approaching skeleton. Tom cleared congestion from his throat and took three slow, controlled, breaths. He set a wide, solid stance, and drew the heavy mallet slowly across his shoulder from its back-holster. Looking between the weapon’s huge barrel-head and the osteoporotic bones, Mr. Grey didn’t think Tom’s chances terrible.
The skin drew nearer Honeydew, the skeleton closed with Tom. The twin cries of ‘put it out’, raspy and growling, reverberated off the walls, and the rails, and the chandelier. Mr. Grey shook himself - mentally - awake. He touched horsehair to string and made several shrill, out-of-tune notes.
The floating skin reached Honeydew. She swung with a fast chop. The leather and bandaging which had covered the mummy’s arm-bones slid over Honeydew’s hand like a glove. She tossed a shoulder at it, and the shoulder-skin adhered to hers. Bit-by-bit the wrapping of the mummy sewed itself over Honeydew. Mr. Grey fiddled desperately. He wanted a slick enchantment; something to lubricate, to make oily. But the screeching strings would not obey.
The skeleton reached Tom. Tom heaved the mallet overhead, and brought it down in a whooshing arc. The skeleton put a hand up. It caught the whooshing barrel. The bones didn’t so much as shudder. Tom stepped back but the other boney claw grabbed his wrist.
Mr. Grey tried a new tune; something lighter, something easier. Anything remotely enchanting. The notes, perhaps by their off-key tone, perhaps by their being only simple sound, had no effect. The skin and linen wrap enclosed honeydew completely. It whispered, “PUT IT OUT!” with an extended sigh. The withered body-suit forced her arms together. With a hiss, it snuffed her candle.
Half the blind eyes on the faceted walls winked out. The dark room dimmed.
The bones wrestled Tom. They growled, “PUT IT OUT!” They twisted Tom’s candle-holding wrist. The candle fell to the floor, snapped in two, and was extinguished.
The rest of the eyes vanished. Oil flooded all vision.
The last of Mr. Grey’s shrill notes faded; he gave up. He listened to Tom and Honeydew’s breathy struggle for a few tocks. Then all sound stopped. Mr. Grey’s friends had either given up, or stopped existing.
Time paused; silent and still; leaden and lightless.
Then the growl and the whisper came through again; once more in unison, but from opposite ends of the room, and calmly. “Sorry about the shouting, but the crystal’s photosensitive… You need shelter? Some other tourists dropped in already. If you’ll follow us to the waiting room...”
This has been In Different Color, a fairy tale.
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