Ejecta by William C. Dietz

mysterious parasite.
    But having begun the tour Devlin was determined to finish it. A quick check revealed that the filing cabinets were filled with research materials, endless iterations of tests that McCracken had concocted over the years, and the voluminous correspondence that the professor carried out with peers before the advent of email.
    The surface of the work bench was unremarkable. But as Devlin peered into the half-bath located next to it she noticed that the toilet seat was still in the raised position. A phenomena that she, as a woman used to living with men, was very familiar with.
    At that point the only area left to explore was what had once been the coal room. It was located against the north wall, adjacent to the driveway, where the coal had once been delivered via a chute. That was gone now, along with the huge furnace it served, having been replaced by a sleek no-nonsense unit that looked to be fairly new.
    That was interesting since the house was hers. But of greater interest to the parasitologist was the table set up at the center of the room, and the sheet-draped lump resting on top of it. The object was too shapeless to convey a sense of what it might be. But the setting was somehow reminiscent of the lab where the autopsy had taken place.
    Slowly, not being sure of what she would find, Devlin pulled one corner of the sheet up and away from the object underneath. Though not a trained archeologist or anthropologist Devlin knew a mummy when she saw one. A piece of ruled paper was pinned to it. Another note from McCracken? Yes, she thought so.
    Except that there was something strange about the lettering. It was as if McCracken hadn’t been in full control of his pen. Or had been battling his body the way that a person with Parkinson’s disease might.
    “Sara, this what you’RE looking for. Believe it or not I PUurchased it on e-bay! It had binn displayed in a private museum for the last SIXTY-years or so…. Although the mummy’s provenance is questionable, the seller believes it smuggled out of Egypt in 1931, and is probably more no than 3 or 4-hundred years old. How and WHY the poor woman came to bee preserved in this fashion is anyone’s guess. But, for our purposes, it hardly matters. Affectionately, Mac.
    Devlin felt as if McCracken was standing there beside her. She even turned to look over her shoulder. But the professor wasn’t there. Not in a form she could see anyway.
    So Devlin turned her attention back to the desiccated corpse. The woman’s body was so small that if Devlin hadn’t known better she would have assumed it was that of a teenager. And, judging from the way the mummy’s knees were drawn up into the fetal position, it looked as though the Egyptian had died of natural causes. Or been killed in an accident and buried for an extended period of time before being exhumed. A natural mummy in other words. Preserved by circumstances rather than intent. Not that the mechanism mattered much.
    So, what
did
matter Devlin wondered? A work light hung suspended over the table so the scientist turned it on. The additional illumination showed that the dead woman was laying on her right side and part of her fragile clothing had been cut away. And not delicately either. Because, judging from the shreds of brown cloth that still remained her clothing had been ripped open to expose the upper portion of her back.
    And there, running the length of her upper spinal column, was an ugly incision. Which, when Devlin went to part the woman’s parchment-like skin, revealed a fist-sized mass of tissue similar to the one that McCracken had on
his
back. Except this growth was smaller. As if it had been terminated at an earlier stage before being fossilized.
    The implications were obvious. To Devlin at least. Who understood what McCracken was trying to tell her. He wasn't the first person to be infected by whatever the thing was. There had been others.
    ***
    Devlin awoke feeling tired. Which wasn’t