I’d like to say right from the start that this story belongs to a good friend of mine named Ross Hepburn. I read his tale, The Haunting Of Rotten Robbie, on Dodefyvie.org, and it made me think that I could do something just a little different with it. Ross graciously allowed me to give it a shot, but much of the content remains unchanged from the original. He might disown it as utter garbage, but here it is.
=== Rotten Robbie ===
The boy named Robert Howard was, to those adults that don’t look too closely at such things, just an average boy in an average house in an average neighbourhood. To the kids at school though, he was Rotten Robbie.
The name came from the fact that just like a rotten apple, on the outside it looks delicious and sweet. But on the inside it’s sour, disgusting and, just occasionally, full of bugs.
Now boys and girls, Robbie never used to be rotten. He used to be a kind and well-behaved little boy. But after staying awake night after night, listening to his parents shout and scream at each other in a two-year process which resulted in Robert’s dad walking out on him and his mum, he went from being the perfect child to absolute terror.
With his seemingly-pleasant smile and polite manner (at least when adults were around), Robert was universally liked by grown ups wherever he went. When the grown ups weren’t watching, however, Robbie came out. He would pick on all his classmates, bully students younger than himself, steal the treats from other kid’s lunch boxes, and just generally terrorise anybody stupid enough to catch his eye in the playground. If a child went home crying after school, the others could tell they had spent some time with Rotten Robbie that day.
Because of this none of the other little babies (he always thought of them as little babies, no matter how old they were) liked him. But Robbie didn’t care, in his world he was getting away with murder. That was until one fateful day when Rotten Robbie’s world took a decided turn for the worse.
While on a school trip to the National Museum, Rotten Robbie and his classmates (though they wouldn’t say they were classmates with Robbie) visited the Ancient Egyptian gallery.
Following the tour group, Robbie looked inside an enormous decorated stone coffin which he had just learned was called a sarcophagus. The sarcophagus was open to reveal an old body, decorated in the finest jewellery. It was covered in bandages all over, except for it’s head.
Concealing the face was a great mask of what looked like gold, with a silver beetle on the forehead. A rather *large* silver beetle.
‘And here lies Prince Amal. Who was the youngest of the pharaohs five sons,’ intoned the curator of the museum, who talked as if he was the only one interested in what he had to say (which, to be fair enough, was usually the case).
‘After his untimely death brought on by the great plague, which began with a storm the likes of which had never before been seen and ended with a with an infestation of nasty little insects, his father insisted that his face be preserved for all time in this mask. This was so that his face could stay young and the Gods would take his beautiful boy to live with them.’
‘Has anyone seen what the face looked like underneath?’ asked Liam, the class genius. Robbie hated Liam. He was more liked than Robbie, he was smarter than Robbie. Plus his mum and dad were still together.
‘Hey, swot! Don’t make this day any more boring that it already is!’ shouted Robbie from the back of the group.
‘Well young man’ said the curator, ignoring Robbie’s comment, ‘Amal’s father placed a curse upon the mask which says that if anyone tries to steal it from him, a terrible fate will befall them. Because of this the mask has been untouched for thousands of years.’ The curator tried to stop himself from getting too over dramatic, but having a child actually talk to him about his exhibits was so rare these days. ‘As such, none of us have ever seen the face. Some say that it is still young, others say it’s withered away with age like the rest of him. Now children if you’d like to take a look over here…’
The curator lead the class around to the next part of the exhibit while Rotten Robbie plotted and schemed from the back. He hung away from the others at the sarcophagus, while playing with the red velvet rope separating him from the coffin. He looked around the room waiting for the area to be clear.
With his cocksure grin and devilish enthusiasm, Robbie lifted the rope over his head and walked underneath it. He climbed on top of the sarcophagus and made his way to the mask, tip-toeing along like a tightrope walker.
When he got to the top of the sarcophagus, Robbie smiled and reached down to grab the mask, slowly but surely, determined not to mess things up.
‘*HEY!*’ Robbie heard a quiet voice that startled him so badly he nearly fell into the sarcophagus. Looking up he saw Liam peering at him through his thick glasses. Robbie stared at him in momentary shock.
‘Oh, what do you want four-eyes?!’ said Robbie, clearly enraged with Liam for giving him such a fright.
‘*Get down from there!*’ Liam hissed, wishing his voice could be louder, but knowing that noise would attract attention.
‘No way, you little baby. What are you going to do? Tell on me?’ Robbie replied, his voice dripping with menace.
‘Maybe I will,’ said Liam, recoiling slightly in fear.
‘You aren’t brave enough, little baby.” Robbie said as he got back to trying to lever off the mask. He eventually managed to grab both sides of the mask, but when he tried to lift it off the face – *tug tug tug* – it just wouldn’t budge.
“Ha! You can’t even move it anyway!” Liam half-laughed at Robbie.
“ And you can barely hold a pencil, little baby. So how’s about you shut up before I come over there and teach you what happens to little cry-baby spy-babies?” Robbie’s threat put an end to Liam’s interference.
Robbie continued to tug and tug at the mask more and more until eventually it went ‘pop’ and it lifted off like the lid on a jam jar.
“Yes! Finally!” Robbie held the mask up above his head. He looked down at the body in the sarcophagus and stared at the face it was hiding.
“Is that it?” said Robbie, completely underwhelmed at the face which had been exposed. Liam, now shocked not only that Robbie had pulled the mask from the Egyptian prince but that he showed no emotion other than disappointment, then looked into the sarcophagus.
“*Oh my God!*” Liam breathed as he peered down to find a half-rotted skull covered in greenish-brown skin. There were no eyelids, no nose and no lips. Yet somehow the face still looked… alive.
“Right? I was expecting something cooler. Not something that looks like those dumb old movies,” said Robbie
“What did you do that for?” Liam asked, still stunned and staring at the ancient face.
“Isn’t it obvious, little baby? Halloween is in three days and I’m going to have the best costume ever! This is the coolest mask I’ve seen in ages, so now it’s mine.”
“It’s not a mask. It’s his face.”
“I don’t care. It’s mine now.”
Robbie climbed down from the sarcophagus and stuffed the mask into his rucksack.
“Didn’t you hear what the old guy said? Whoever takes the mask gets cursed.”
Robbie tried to put his rucksack on but the weight of the mask was so heavy that he struggled to get the strap over his shoulder and onto his back, but eventually got it on.
“That’s just a stupid story to stop people from touching it, little baby.”
Just as Liam and Robbie continue to argue over the mask, the curator of the museum walked back through with the rest of the class still following him.
“All right, children, that just about wraps everything up for today. If you could put on your coats and make your way-”
The curator stopped and took an enormous lungful of air in shock, then expelled it in a great burst. He had seen the naked face in the sarcophagus but had also seen that the mask that covered it was gone.
“Oh…Oh my word! This…this is not good!” The curator tried to get his breath back, but his breathing did not sound good.
“The mask…the face of the Prince…the artefact is gone!” huffed the curator, working himself into a greater and greater state of agitation.
The kids stood around the sarcophagus, all of them staring on to the face of the Prince, sharing the same shock of looking at a dead body, but similarly unable to look away, the sheer spectacle of Amal’s naked face drawing their eyes towards it.
The curator paced back and forth rubbing his head with his hands in stress. “Children, was there any amongst you who saw the person who took Amal’s mask?” he asked in the desperate hope that someone had the answer.
The pupils stood silent with faces of confusion, their fascination with Amal temporarily forgotten. They never saw anyone. None of them had. But then, from the other side of the room, a confident voice spoke out: “Yes, I saw who took it…It was Liam” said Robert.
The class and the curator turned to to find Robbie and Liam behind the other side of the sarcophagus.
“I saw him! And he told me not to tell or he’d get me. Get me good, he said,” Rotten Robbie was almost smiling as he said this.
“What?!…No! I didn’t take it, Robbie has the mask!” Liam spluttered out, in an attempt to defend himself.
The class saw through Robbie’s lying as if he had just said that the sun shone out of his left ear, but the curator who was so lost in a state of panic (and saw only Robert’s angelic face) immediately believed Robbie as soon as he heard his words.
“Is this true young man?” the curator asked.
“I saw it with my own two eyes, sir. Liam stood on the sad-coffin-guts and took the mask. Liam took the mask, yes he did sir. Then he hid it somewhere. He said it was somewhere nobody would ever find it.”
“No! He did it. Rotten Robbie stole the mask!” Liam screamed, trying to defend himself, but there were no grown ups listening.
“Don’t call me that! I hate that name!” Robbie shouted, his face contorting in rage for just a second. He pushed Liam so hard that he flew into the sarcophagus, knocking it over. It fell to the ground and the the embalmed corpse rolled out of the coffin to land at the feet of the assembled class.
The students screamed in shock and delighted horror. The curator passed out. Liam picked himself up from off the floor and looked over to find Robbie smiling in satisfaction at the chaos he had once again gotten away with.
Half an hour later, Robbie’s mum arrived and had a few words with the teacher in charge of the class and the curator. Although Robbie couldn’t hear *everything,* he picked up words like ‘single parent,’ ‘readjustment,’ and ‘settling down,’ words that he knew would always get him out of trouble, and he felt satisfied with his day’s work.
In the car on their way home, Robbie’s mum said “I wish you wouldn’t get into so much bother, Robert. Try and make friends with the others, make them stop trying to get you into trouble so much.”
“It wasn’t my fault. Liam was being annoying!” protested Robbie.
“I know, sweetheart. It’s just because they don’t know you.”
Robbie sat back in his seat, still not feeling guilty for what he had done.
“Well, I didn’t take the mask.”
“I’m sure you didn’t.” Robbie’s mum said with real conviction.
Night came and Robbie was in his bedroom wearing the mask and looking at himself in the mirror. He had draped an old blanket over his shoulders for a cape and held the mop he had borrowed from the kitchen as a staff.
“Oh, yeah. This is gonna get me more sweets than I can shake a stick at. Or even a mop!” Robbie said, looking at himself with pride and giggling a little.
“Time for bed, Robert!” His mother called from downstairs. He took off the mask and hid it beneath his pillow. Nobody would *ever* find it there.
As Robbie tucked himself into bed, he turned off the bedside lamp and began to fall asleep. The weather outside quickly got worse. The wind was blowing stronger and wilder than it ever had, whilst the rain struck his window in fat drops with the force of thrown pine cones. Thunder boomed so loud that it seemed as if the lightning had actually struck the house.
None of this worried Robbie, however. A tough guy like him wasn’t in the slightest bit bothered by a stormy night. And so, as he drifted off into a deep sleep, Rotten Robbie didn’t even notice the first of the beetles crawling from beneath his pillow . . . and on to his chest . . . and his arms . . . and his face . . .