“So they got that mummy on purpose?” I asked.

Lucas shrugged. “It’s assumed so. Some also speculate that the party was less of a party and, well, more of a . . . ritual. And that Erik was attempting to siphon the mummy’s former powers into himself.”

“So what happened at this twisted little soiree?” Dad said, eyes flicking in Charlie’s direction.

“Nothing.” said Lucas. “That’s to say, the party itself went off without much evidence that the ritual—if there had been a ritual—had worked. Everyone went home. Leaving Erik here alone. That night, though, the story goes that the mummy, which had been laid out and unwrapped in the dining room, well . . . supposedly, he rose from the dead.”

“Oh, nice,” I hissed, my throat suddenly tight, the food in my stomach churning.

“As retribution, the mummy was said to have placed a curse on Erik,” said Lucas. “One that killed his entire family the very night they returned home from their trip to England. Right before Christmas. No one knows how it happened or even what happened. The servants just awoke that day to find Erik and his mother and father and younger sister, Myriam, all dead. All sitting around the same dining room table that the mummy had been unwrapped on.”

“Quaint,” said Dad. “The realtor conveniently left out all of that. But I’m assuming now, since you know so much, that what you’ve been telling me is common knowledge?”

“The stories vary,” Lucas said, like he was offering some small consolation. I was glad, though, that Lucas had picked up enough on Dad’s personality to know that his irritation rested with the people who’d sold him the house and not the messenger. “Most people have heard about the mummy-unwrapping party. As far as the Order of the Mothmen, though . . . Well, I wouldn’t say those details are widely known.”

“Oh, well,” Dad muttered to himself. “The mummy is the least damaging part, isn’t it?”

Lucas cringed.

“What . . . happened after that?” I heard myself ask, picturing the gravestone in the backyard. The stone that listed Erik’s name.

“The day before the bodies were to be buried,” Lucas said, “one of them went missing.”

“Two guesses whose, right?” Dad laughed, his chair groaning as he sat back and folded his arms.

“They never found him?” I asked.

“There’s some thought that maybe there were body snatchers involved. It wasn’t uncommon back then. There were people known as Resurrection Men who dug up the bodies or stole them from morgues to sell to doctors and scientists. For someone as prominent as Erik to have been stolen, though, well, that would have been unusual.”

“There are other versions of the story, you said?” This from Dad.

“Well, yeah. Some speculate that it was the Order of the Mothmen who took Erik’s body and, in the practice of the ancient Egyptians, mummified him and entombed him in some unknown location. The thought is that they did so as a means of appeasing the spirit of the Egyptian priest they’d offended. Others say it was the mummy himself who took Erik’s body.”