TIL DEATH DO US START

This work is in the Public Domain in that it was published in the United States 

between 1923 and 1977 and without a copyright notice.

{A living mummy stalks the beautiful woman he believes 

is the reincarnation of his lover.}

The League of Five loved THE MUMMY.  

Now, you might think it had many sequels.  It may surprise you to find it did not.

It was followed with a series of Mummy movies, staring, not Imhotep, as the Mummy but Kharis:

THE MUMMY'S HAND (supposedly occurring in 1940), THE MUMMY'S TOMB, THE MUMMY'S GHOST, and the last THE MUMMY'S CURSE.

In a strange storyline that stretches the decades, THE MUMMY'S TOMB supposedly happens in 1970 and the hero and his sister are killed by the arisen Kharis.

THE MUMMY'S GHOST also occurs in 1970 and evil things happen to the heroic folks of THE MUMMY'S TOMB.

For the last film, THE MUMMY'S CURSE, although it was filmed in 1944, the action zips to the year 1995! 

And the setting is Louisiana where we lived!!

I and the other League of Five members fell in love with the animated mummy, Ananka.

In a breathtaking sequence, the mummy of Ananka (Virginia Christine) rises from the swamp 

after being partially uncovered by a bulldozer during the excavation. 

She immerses herself in a pond and the mud is washed away, revealing an attractive young woman.

I decided to tell my own story of an animated mummy girl-child, the Princess Shert Nebti.

She is first introduced in THE THREE SPIRIT KNIGHT at the novel's end.

Princess Shert Nebti is the bane of Samuel McCord in THE STARS BLEED AT MIDNIGHT and RED LAND, BLACK DEATH (yet to be written.)

And following the Universal tradition of visiting Mummy Vengeance on the children of the hero, 

I have the undead Princess seek revenge on McCord's son, Victor Standish in CARNIVAL OF THE DAMNED.

So here is a Halloween SNEAK PEEK at Carnival of the Damned, I call:

TIL DEATH DO US START

The mummy wrappings were alive, writhing around my body caressing me tighter and tighter.  I struggled in the moving golden throne, but it did no good.  

Closer and closer it flowed like mist towards the waiting arms of Princess Shert Nebti.  

She was almost dressed in an ancient Egyptian outfit that she must have thrown into the washer on the Hot cycle.

Her moon-white face creased in fine lines from the mummy wrappings that had smothered her for centuries, 

she smiled a thing of nightmares as I flowed nearer those outstretched fingers.

The horizon around me was impossible.  I mean, I knew Carnies got around, but to the Nile?

I looked out across the flowing yellow Nile that is the mother of eons and dynasties.

Beyond it lurked the menacing sands of the Libyan Desert, rolling and burning and evil, murmuring ancient mysteries. 

The red sun sank low, bringing the relentless chill of Egyptian dusk.

And as it stood poised on the world’s rim like that ancient god of Heliopolis—Re-Harakhte, the Horizon-Sun— hey, I read in those libraries I hid in - 

I saw silhouetted against the velvet chasm of night the black outlines of the Pyramids of Gizeh—

those age-crusted tombs that were heavy with a thousand years when Tut-Ankh-Amen mounted his golden throne in distant Thebes.

Then I knew that I was done with civilized sanity, and that I was about to taste the deeper mysteries of primal Egypt—

the black Khem of Re and Amen, Isis and Osiris.

Sin-black mists swallowed me, and then their lips parted to reveal the Sphinx.   I struggled silently beneath the spell of those terrible unseeing eyes. 

On the vast stone breast I could faintly make out the emblem of Re-Harakhte, for whose image the Sphinx was mistaken in a late dynasty.

And though sand covered the tablet between the great paws, I recalled what Thutmosis IV inscribed on it, and the hellish dream he had when a prince. 

The dream that had driven him mad.

It was then that the smile of the Sphinx unsettled the hell out of me, and made me wonder about the legends of subterranean passages beneath the monstrous creature, 

leading down, down, to depths none might dare hint at—

depths connected with mysteries older than the buried Egypt modern Man excavates, 

and having an evil relation to the lingering of abnormal, animal-headed gods in the ancient unhuman pantheon.

And with the thought of those depths, I found myself there – 

with Princess Shert Nebti not a foot away from me in the swirling dark mists.

An ocean of glistening wet scarabs surrounded her, scuttled up over her, and tittered back down.  

I swallowed hard as I saw she was chewing a few who had scurried too close to those thin lips.

A dank breeze moaned around us in barely understandable words:

“The subterranean nymph that dwells

’Mid sunless gems and glories hid—
The lady of the Pyramid!”

I forced a smirk, “Lousy poetry, Princess.”

She smiled with very sharp teeth.  “Just wait until you see our wedding night, Victor.”

I forced out the words.  "Looks like there's not another soul in miles."

"No, victim mine.  We are quite alone."

I laughed relieved, and she frowned to which I smiled wide, "I guess I never told you about my Death Scream, have I, Princess?"