Mummy

The Mummy is one of the many terrifying forms assumed by the ancient, shape-shifting entity known as It in Stephen King's novel. It first appears to Ben Hanscom in the winter of 1958, manifesting as a desiccated, bandage-swaddled figure on the frozen Canal, and later reappears in the 1985 confrontation, representing the specific childhood fear that It weaponizes against its victims.

First Encounter on the Canal

Ben Hanscom first saw the Mummy in January 1958, on his walk home from school after helping Mrs. Douglas count books. As he crossed the Canal bridge, he spotted a figure standing on the ice below, dressed in a white-silver clown suit with oversized orange shoes and pompom buttons. The figure held a bunch of balloons that, impossibly, floated toward Ben against the wind. When the five o'clock whistle blew, the figure looked up, and Ben saw its face: deeply lined, parchment-dry skin, a split forehead, dead lips grinning back from a maw of leaning teeth, and eyes like cold jewels in dark sockets. The Mummy reached up with a dry, twisted hand, its flesh like rustling pennons and bone like yellow ivory showing through. Ben fled in terror, hearing the creature climb from the Canal behind him, its ancient fingernails scraping across iron. He later told the Losers' Club that this Mummy was not like a movie monster; it looked the way a real mummy would, except for the silver suit with orange buttons.

The Mummy as a Form of It

The Mummy is one of the many guises of It, the shape-shifting entity that feeds on children's fears. It appears to each victim in a form tailored to their deepest terrors. For Ben, the Mummy represented a primal fear of the undead, a creature that was both ancient and intimately connected to the town of Derry. The Mummy's appearance on the Canal, with its balloons floating against the wind and its lack of a shadow, signaled that it was not a natural being but a supernatural manifestation of evil. The Mummy's form is also linked to the entity's other manifestations, such as the Leper and the Werewolf, all of which are variations on the same core horror.

The Mummy in the 1985 Confrontation

In 1985, when the adult members of the Losers' Club return to Derry to confront It once more, the Mummy reappears. During their reunion at the Jade of the Orient restaurant, the fortune cookies they open contain grotesque horrors: one bleeds, another contains a human eyeball, and a third holds teeth. This event, while not directly the Mummy, is part of the same pattern of terror that the Mummy represents. Later, in the library, Ben Hanscom sees the Mummy again, this time as a vampire with a mouthful of razor blades, screaming at him. This shows that the Mummy is not a fixed form but a fluid manifestation of It's power, adapting to the specific fears of its victims.

The Mummy's Thematic Significance

The Mummy, like all of It's forms, represents the return of the repressed and the power of childhood fears. It embodies the terror of the ancient, the undead, and the inescapable. The Mummy's appearance on the frozen Canal, a place of both beauty and danger, underscores the novel's theme that evil can lurk in the most familiar and seemingly safe places. The Mummy is also a symbol of the cyclical nature of It's attacks, as it has been present in Derry for centuries, appearing in various forms throughout the town's history. The Mummy's connection to the sewers and drains, where It makes its lair, further emphasizes the idea that the horror is not just external but also buried deep within the town itself.