McMummy (10 page)

“I was working in a bridal shop, altering brides’ dresses on that machine, when the shop went out of business and I got the machine for back wages. That’s how I got started at this.” Her arms took in the pageant dresses hanging around the living room. Her look softened. “If you had asked me …”

Neither boy spoke.

“What were you making?” She picked up the hood that had fallen from Batty’s mouth. “What are these?”

“They were hoods. We were going to wear them for Halloween,” Batty managed to say.

“Oh, all right. I’ll make the hoods for you.” And she had turned out two hoods that looked as if they had come from a Disney movie. They wore them. They got a lot of compliments. But it had been the worst Halloween of Mozie’s life.

Mozie continued to sit at the kitchen table, peering at the scrap of green before him. The sound of his mother’s machine continued, and Mozie wondered if that was what he had heard, what had caused him to rush into the forest, to pick up a scrap of green and imagine it was the pod.

The phone rang. “Can you get that, Mozie?”

“Yes.”

He picked up the phone. “Hello.”

Valvoline said, “Mozie, I was so excited over my dress, I forgot to ask you about my necklace. Did you ever find it?”

“No, the greenhouse is ruined.”

“Oh, I just hoped. I need that mustard seed. I’m wondering if you can buy them in the grocery store.”

“I don’t know.”

“I really feel like I need something lucky. You know what happened to me on the way home?”

“No.”

“This was so strange. I pulled into the old Esso station—where we parked that day—remember?”

“I remember.”

“And the reason I stopped was because I heard this humming noise and I thought it was the car engine. But when I turned off the engine, the humming got even louder. And then, while I was sitting there, I saw the bushes behind the station moving.”

Mozie glanced at the table where the scrap of green was drying, turning to dust.

“Moving?”

“Yes, like something was hiding in there. So I took off. I mean, I do not need to get mugged right before the pageant. But as I was driving away—this was the strange part.”

She paused, and Mozie said, “Yes?”

“You aren’t going to believe this, but it was like one of the bushes came to life. It just moved forward. Right out of the other bushes! I don’t know what it could have been! You don’t suppose somebody’s after me, do you?”

Mozie remembered the day Valvoline had stepped beside McMummy. He remembered she had put her arms around the pod, rubbed her hand on the top, and made wishes. He remembered that was the first time he had ever heard the mummy purr.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “I hope not.”

“Well, I tell you one thing, Mozie.”

“What?”

“If I hear any more humming, I’m calling 911.”

“M
Y PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE
is this …” Valvoline was saying.

She was on the stage of the Miss Tri-County Tech pageant in the dress Mrs. Mozer had created for her. Mozie and his mother were in the back row of the auditorium, watching.

Valvoline smiled into the microphone and then down at the row of judges in front.

“… Be not what you are but what you are capable of being. Make every minute count. Spend time with yourself and your other loved ones. You only pass this way wunst.”

“Once,” Mrs. Mozer said beneath her breath.

As if the whisper had carried all the way to the stage, Valvoline said, “I mean ‘once.’ Thank you.”

She got a lot of applause as she went back to join the line of other contestants. “Well, at least she’s got on the prettiest dress,” Mrs. Mozer said.

“That’s true.”

“And the little rose on the shoulder turned out to be just right.”

“Yes,” Mozie said.

There was a humming noise and Mozie shook his head to clear it. Ever since Valvoline had come onstage, he had been hearing this strange sort of purring sound. He wanted to rap himself on the side of the head to get rid of the sound.

Mozie had been slumped in his seat with his knees on the seat in front of him, but now he sat up straight. The humming noise was getting stronger now—so strong it might not be in his head.

The emcee was saying, “And now we move to the swimsuit portion of our pageant. While the contestants are changing into their swimsuits, the Tri-County Dancers will perform to ‘Greensleeves.’”

Mrs. Mozer sat forward in her seat because she had made the costumes for the Tri-County Dancers.

The girls came onstage and a murmur of appreciation rose from the audience. They wore long filmy green skirts that seemed to float in the air as the dancers leapt into place. A deeper green bodice was made up of leaves, with a large pink rose at the waist.

They held arches of roses in their hands, and as they swayed and bent to the music, the floral boughs caught the light and their green leaves shone like mirrors.

At the end of the number, after the applause, the dancers moved to the right of the stage. They held the boughs overhead, forming an archway for the contestants.

Mrs. Mozer leaned back. Mozie looked at her, but there was a frown on her face.

“Don’t you like them?” he asked.

“It’s not that. I just wish they’d fix the sound system. That humming is getting on my nerves.”

“You hear it too?”

“Yes, and it’s getting louder.”

“The first contestant in the swimsuit portion is Miss Valvoline Edwards.”

Valvoline came onstage in a white swimsuit. She walked carefully under the archway to the front of the stage.

There she turned. Mozie could see that Valvoline counted seconds the same way he had counted the time between the lightning and thunder on the night of the storm. He could see her lips moving in a silent one-thousand-and-one, one-thousand-and-two—

She never got to one-thousand-and-three because at that moment there was a disturbance behind the Tri-County Dancers.

Screams were heard from the right of the stage. The screams increased until it seemed that everyone back there had taken up the habit.

The emcee looked worriedly at the righthand curtain. He tried to make a joke. “Hey, the excitement’s supposed to be on the stage, folks, not off.” The screaming continued. The emcee tried reason. “Come on, you guys, we’re trying to have a pageant out here.”

The curtain behind the dancers swayed. It sagged. It seemed something was clutching the curtain.

There was a ripping sound of tearing fabric, and the curtain dropped to the stage. There was a heavy thud, as if a large object had fallen with it.

“Just a minute, ladies and gentlemen,” the emcee began because the audience was standing for a better look. “Keep your seats, please.”

And then out of the folds of the fallen curtain rose something green. No one could see exactly what it was because the curtain shielded it like a cape, but Mozie knew. “McMummy.”

The audience was on its feet now blocking the stage from Mozie’s view. “Get out of the way!” he cried. “What’s happening, Mom? I’ve got to see this.”

“It’s—it’s staggering forward,” his mother said. “It’s—Oh, get up on the seat.”

She helped Mozie up, and over the heads of the crowd he saw McMummy struggling forward, reeling among the dancers, and the curtain that shielded him fell away. McMummy swirled to the center of the stage and stood for a moment, trembling in confusion.

The dancers drew back in alarm and threw their arches of roses as they turned and fled. The roses fell, some to the stage and some around McMummy’s neck, giving him the appearance of having just won a horse race.

Now the people in front of Mozie were on their seats, again blocking the view. “What’s happening?” Mozie cried.

“I can’t see either,” his mother said.

“This lady’s fainted,” a voice announced at the front of the auditorium. “Get back, everybody.”

The crowd parted, and for a brief moment Mozie saw the green, luminous form. McMummy’s arms flailed at the air as if to push back the lights, the excitement, the terror. Then McMummy turned and, throwing off the roses, made his way to the back of the stage. The screaming swimsuit contestants gave him room.

There was a stage door open at the rear and McMummy disappeared through it.

“I’ve got to help him,” Mozie told his mother.

“What? Who?”

“McMummy.”

“That thing from the pod? Stop! Where are you going?” But Mozie was moving out of the auditorium and through the huge doors into the night. “I’ll be back,” he said.

M
OZIE RAN THROUGH THE
parking lot at breakneck speed. He rounded the back of the Stuart Center and stopped.

He could hear screams of excitement from the open door, and people were beginning to spill out of the auditorium. Their voices asked the questions Mozie was asking himself. “Where did it go?” “Does anybody see it?”

Mozie headed for the dumpsters at the back fence. He had an intimation, like a silent echo, that McMummy had headed that way.

Behind the dumpster Mozie saw a patch of green caught on the fence. His heart thudded with dread.

He ran along the fence. There was more green.

He ran out of the center’s parking lot, through a restaurant parking lot, and onto Main Street. The digital clock in the savings and loan said 8:32
P.M.

The town had installed new streetlights on Main, and Mozie had a clear view of the length of the street. Cinema III had just changed shows and people stood outside talking. Cars cruised idly, stopping at the stoplights, parking, pulling out of parking spaces.

Things were normal, so McMummy probably had not come this way.

He retraced his way through the restaurant parking lot, scrambled up a bank, and turned into the park. The park was poorly lit, and Mozie walked slowly down the path, watching on either side for another patch of iridescent green.

There it was—ahead, by the fountain. Mozie ran to the fountain. Green clung to the stone sides. In the moonlight, it could have been mistaken for moss.

Mozie ran his hand along it and moved to the light to examine it.

What was this stuff? Chlorophyll? And how much of it could a plant lose and still keep going?

He brushed his hands together and the green disintegrated and wafted to the ground like dust.

Mozie got the same feeling he had had earlier in the evening—during the pageant—of time running out. It was such a strong sensation that in his mind he saw sand trickling through an hourglass, like in old movies when the director wanted to make sure even the dumbest viewer knew time was passing. The thought made Mozie break into a run.

He had only moonlight now to guide him, but the iridescent patches of green had become more plentiful.

As he ran, he felt as if he were being fast-forwarded through the scene. Everything was speeded up, even the beat of his pounding heart.

He paused to catch his breath. His side hurt. His throat was dry.

He wondered what he would do when he found McMummy. His only hope was that McMummy would recognize his voice. McMummy seemed to have an attachment for Valvoline. Of course, she had given him his first real human contact with her quick hug, her joyous “I didn’t mean to hug it around the neck.” Mozie had given only food and water, so the attachment could not be so strong.

The green turned off the path, and Mozie did too. He realized now that McMummy was heading back to the greenhouse. He would never make it. The greenhouse was miles away. Mozie didn’t think he would make it either.

Mozie rounded a grove of trees and stopped. Ahead of him the green seemed to stretch out forever. It was plain what was happening.

Suddenly Mozie leaned against a tree. He put one arm around the trunk. He needed the tree for support.

He had just had the saddest thought of his life. He began to cry. Mozie never cried. Even when he wanted to—like that night in the guest room—he couldn’t. He could not even remember the last time he had actually shed a tear.

Now it was as if the crying had been held in for nine or ten years, and like one of those trick cans of peanuts that fill the air with snakes when opened, the lid was off.

The sadness hit him so hard he sank to the ground, his back against the tree now, his face resting on his knees.

The thought that had done him in was that it had actually occurred to him to collect all these green scraps, to go back and start at the beginning and put them in a container.

And then he saw himself putting that container beside the box containing his father’s things. And pretty soon he would be lining up another box and another and every important person in his life would be nothing but a box. He would never actually say farewell to anybody, just line them up in boxes.

It was the saddest thought in the world.

He wept until he could weep no more, and when the tears stopped at last, Mozie’s breathing was ragged, his eyes were swollen, his nose was stopped up. He continued to sit where he was. Finally he dried his face on his shirt and got to his feet.

He walked very slowly down the stretch of green. He had cried so hard that when he came across the remains of McMummy, there were no tears left.

Stretched out on the floor of the forest, McMummy didn’t look like anything special, just some debris left from the storm. Already the luminous quality was beginning to fade.

Mozie sighed. With one last look, he turned and started back the way he had come.

He retraced his steps, not looking down now, but ahead. He came through the park, scrambled down the bank, around the restaurant, and into the parking lot.

He walked through the doors of the Stuart Center. He crossed the lobby. He stood for a moment in the doorway of the auditorium.

He felt as if a decade, a lifetime, a century had passed, and yet, for the rest of the world, it had been no time at all.

The emcee was saying, “And now continuing with the talent portion of our pageant, here is contestant number ten.

“Each of us, at one time or another, has wanted to travel the earth like the Gypsies of old. And now Valvoline Edwards takes us on just such a trip with her baton-twirling rendition of ‘Gypsy Rag.’”