An Un-American Haunting

“Don’t touch anything; I’m not supposed to have visitors in here”.

“Sarah relax, I won’t touch your precious mummies!” said David. Sarah was studying anthropology at the University of Tennessee. She was paying for school with a multitude of student loans and a few work study programs and this was one of them. Sarah was to keep watch over the collection of Egyptian mummies that the department had recently acquired. One hard sneeze could turn some of these bodies into piles of dust.

“Hey what’s this one”, said David walking around a wooden box marked: VALLEY OF THE DEAD- UNKNOWN. David’s curiosity got the best of him and he lifted the lid directly off the box, tossing it aside like a child tossing wrapping paper on Christmas day. “What the hell David I told you not to touch!” Sarah marched over to her rambunctious peer surveying the damage that he had possibly done. “See! Not a scratch”, said David leaning on the box which came crashing down off its pedestal like a Grecian urn. “Shit David! I’m going to get fired because of you!” Feeling remorseful, David helped her stand the box upright but the mummy was destroyed. “Who am I kidding, I won’t get fired, and I’m going to jail! International property has been destroyed! by who? An idiot and his idiot girlfriend!” shouted Sarah on the brink of tears.

“Don’t cry, we will figure something out......hey......I think I have an idea, I have a favor I can call in to a buddy of mine”, said David. They got in the car and drove.

“David what are we doing in the cemetery?”

David and Sarah parked and walked up the gravel road up to the main house of the cemetery. John was waiting for them inside. “Hey dude, what brings you to my neck of the woods?” said John. He was obviously high off his ass, if not for the glazed look in eyes but the trail of smoke coming from the main house was a dead giveaway. “ Remember when I took the heat for you in McMillan’s physics class last semester? Your ass was about to get kicked out of school for cheating on that final exam”. “Your point being?”, said a still stoned John. “My point being is that you owe me one” said David. “Dude, I just smoked the last of my stash”. David pulled Jason further away from Sarah so she couldn’t hear any of the conversation. A few minutes later she saw John walk back into the main house and retrieve a shovel.

“What’s this for?”, said Sarah as she watched her boyfriend motion over to a grave in the distance. “No way, how could you? That’s just sick...and wrong on top of that!”.

“Dude, that grave and that grave only, no one has been in that section of the yard in years, no one will miss it” said John.

“Sarah just listen to me, do you want to continue going to school? Or better yet, do you want to go to jail for damaging international property?”, said David sarcastically.

Sarah followed the two up the hill to the forgotten part of the cemetery. Sarah closed her eyes as she listened to the sound of disturbed dirt hitting the cold steel shovel.



The clock struck 1:30 am as David and Sarah came pushing through the double doors of the anthropology department with their newly acquired corpse. “Help me undo the bandages from the mummy...pass me those tweezers, alcohol and cotton balls. And a pair of gloves from that top drawer”. David was like a nurse assisting the surgeon with a very important operation. Carefully, Sarah removed what could be salvaged from the mummy and hot glued it to the new corpse. She placed the faux mummy back into the box and onto the pedestal as though nothing ever happened.

“What’s this?” A glowing green amulet lay on the floor. Moving in close to see a symphony of fireworks going off in the inside, the amulet burst open into Sarah’s face, forcing her to inhale its contents. Inhaling deeply, Sarah blinked her eyes and caught her reflection in a mirror. Something was wrong, she felt as though she was looking at someone else. “WHAT’S HAPPENING TO ME?” Sarah’s face developed the hue of rotting meat. Her once pink and otherwise perfect lips now resembled a burned, crusted biscuit. Sarah’s head turned backwards, neck bones cracking into this new alignment and she began to crawl up the walls.

David watched in horror as her girlfriend went through this horrid transformation. The creature that now inhabited Sarah stared down at David like an eagle eyeing its prey. In a demonic voice it spoke: THE AMULET OF OSIRIS BELONGS TO THAT OF JUTUNAHUM...A SWIFT DEATH SHALL FOLLOW FOR ALL THOSE WHO DISTURB JUTUNAHUM

“I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have knocked over your box mannnnn....or Sarah?” David didn’t know whether to run in fear or stay for the one ounce of his girlfriend that may be left inside of the demon.

Suddenly, the creature’s mouth opened 10ft. wide and what came out was thick, bloody vomit, and filled with the internal organs that had once belonged to Sarah. Her heart was chucked at David’s face; he literally “had her heart in his hands now”. With a supernatural swiftness, the creature leapt from the ceiling onto the head of David and with its unearthly hands, tore it from his body, allowing the blood to drip into its mouth like sweet nectar. Then taking the beheaded corpse, the creature snapped David’s back in half and cast away the newly mangled corpse with the one that David dug up only an hour prior. The creature looked at itself in the mirror, returning its head back to its normal position. Inhaling deeply the creature morphed its looks back into Sarah. Giving a menacing look into the mirror, she and the demon were now one.