The day ended brilliantly. Sir Sheldon Kittrick felt renewed. Tired yes, but renewed. He felt so much better that day than he had felt ever before, he even found he had no compulsion to pace the floors of his residence, much to the surprise of Mrs. Shaw. At last, at long last, he’d found the prescription he always knew existed. Alive! He felt so very, very alive! But his body said sleep was needed. His draped bed beckoned to him even as his mind whirled with stimulating thoughts and his heart beat at a pace he had not known before. His legs felt somewhat stiff, but warmth coursed through every centimeter of his limbs. Sleep would be a welcome end to the day. He decided to seek a drink of water to quench a growing thirst once and finally; to put on his sleeping clothes; and to surrender the rest of the day to the beckoning hours of the night. Eternal life! But sleep first. Sleep. Comforting sleep…
The door to Kittrick’s room opened and a scream jolted him awake. That is, jolted his mind awake. Nothing of his body could he move. He lay there stiff and immobile unable to respond to Mrs. Shaw’s hysterics and subsequent tears. Hands, arms, legs, feet, hips, shoulders, neck, head, lips, and even his eyes would not respond to any mental effort at moving them, no matter how hard Kittrick tried. His mind echoed Mrs. Shaw’s distress by its own screaming for human attention; but no breath emanated from his rigid lungs, no vocal cord vibrated in response and no sound came forth from his rigid body. He silently shouted “I’m alive! See me! I’m alive!” The room remained silent save for Mrs. Shaw’s initial screams and subsequent crying.
“That thing in the bed, that’s what made me cry out and what brought the others,” Mrs. Shaw explained. “At first I did not know what it was, it frightened me so. Then I realized it was Sir Sheldon; and that made me cry out a second time.” She glanced at the bed and the desiccated body that lay under its sheets and blankets. “How could such a thing happen. I never heard of anything like this before. Even my Uncle James, as old and sick as he was when he passed, he never looked the likes of Sir Sheldon. I mean, he looks like, like… something I saw in the museum! Wrapped. No,” Mrs. Shaw corrected herself, “unwrapped, it was.”
“A mummy?” ventured Inspector Allen of Scotland Yard.
“Yes, that’s right, a mummy. All wrinkled, dried and dusty. Horrible! Just horrible! What could have caused this, Inspector?”
“We won’t know, Mrs. Shaw, until we investigate further. We’ve sent for help to collect Sir Sheldon’s body. Some lads will be along shortly. You won’t have to be bothered by this or us much longer.”
Mrs. Shaw turned reddened eyes to the inspector and nodded. Then she looked at the small cloth in her hands she soaked with tears. “Horrible. Simply horrible.”
A commotion downstairs caught the inspector’s ears. Loud, unschooled voices announced their arrival. “Where’s the cargo, gov’nor? We’re here like you says to be to collect the cargo. Upstairs? Easy as pie, gov’nor.” Footsteps up the wooden stairway followed. Two men entered Kittrick’s bedroom. One was much shorter than the other and did all of the talking. The taller man with the long oily hair said nothing. He carried a once white sheet of cloth obviously intended as a sling to take Kittrick’s body down the stairs.
“’Ere we are, gov’nor. Right on time. Charlie, I says, we need to do this job just as right as we do the others. Glyn, says he, I’ll make me horses fly if I has to.” Glyn started to laugh. “Course Charlie there doesn’t say anything at all, he doesn’t. Made that part up, I did. Thunk it, he did. Off to our business now, right gov’nor?”
Inspector Allen nodded, hoping that would get them on their way and finished.
“Aiee, look at that, Charlie! Seen this before, we ‘ave gov’nor. Took care of it smartly, we did.” Glyn shot Charlie a meaningful glance. Charlie’s expression stayed the same as he spread the sheet out on the side away from Kittrick’s motionless body.
“No! I’m alive! Touch me! Why can’t you see it! I’m moving my hand! See?! My legs! See them move?!” In his tortured mind, Kittrick cried out as loud as he could imagine loud to be. No sound of his mind’s making could so much as stir a falling feather. Nothing of Sir Sheldon Kittrick moved.
“Right! Shove him that way onto the sheet. I’ll get him this way. Push! Good. Stop now.” Glyn and Charlie readied the sheet for wrapping and lifting. “Right dead character ain’t he?” Glyn observed to the ever-silent Charlie. “Like them things from Aye’gypt” Glyn paused when he noticed a strange expression on Charlie’s face. “What’s the matter?” Charlie pointed to the body’s left arm. It had broken in two, right near the elbow. “Well, those things happen, Charlie. We do our best, right?”
Glyn and Charlie finished wrapping Kittrick’s body, lifted it and leaving the room began maneuvering it down the narrow, steep staircase. Glyn waited until nobody was in earshot. He said in a conspiratorial whisper to Charlie, “Think Greeson would give us a bonus for this one? Cheap, he’ll be. No long boat ride. Who’s gonna know this ain’t no mummy?” Charlie shrugged his shoulders. “Your right, o’ course, Charlie. E’s a tight one, that Greeson. Usual fee, it is then.” They carried Kittrick to their horse drawn wagon. As they ungently loaded Kittrick’s body into the cargo bay Glyn started to laugh. “Well, there’s another for the grinder, Charlie. Let’s go get our pay.”
As the horse drawn wagon made its way over the cold stones of this and other London streets towards its destination, a dingy, dirty warehouse; nobody, certainly not Glyn or Charlie who were closest, not anybody at all ever heard Kittrick screaming “I’m alive! I’m alive! Oh God, I’m alive!”
And, of course, the waiting grinder was not something that cared.
THE END
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