23 - Return of the Mummy Read online

  “No way. I’ve already been down three times,” Sari boasted. “It’s really awesome.”

  “I just arrived yesterday,” I said. “So it’s my first time down in—”

  I stopped when I saw Nila’s expression change.

  Why was she staring at me like that?

  I glanced down and realized that she was staring at the amber pendant. Her mouth was open in shock.

  “No! I don’t believe this! I really don’t! This is so weird!” she exclaimed.

  8

  “Wh-what’s wrong?” I stammered.

  “We’re twins!” Nila declared. She reached under her suit jacket and pulled out a pendant she wore around her neck.

  An amber pendant, shaped exactly like mine.

  “How unusual!” Uncle Ben exclaimed.

  Nila grasped my pendant between her fingers and lowered her face to examine it. “You have a scarab inside yours,” she told me, turning the pendant around in her fingers.

  She dropped mine and held hers up for me to see. “Look, Gabe. Mine is empty.”

  I gazed into her pendant. It looked like clear orange glass. Nothing inside.

  “I think yours is prettier,” Sari told Nila. “I wouldn’t want to wear a dead bug around my neck.”

  “But it’s supposed to be good luck or something,” Nila replied. She tucked the pendant back under her white jacket. “I hope it isn’t bad luck to have an empty one!”

  “I hope so, too,” Uncle Ben commented dryly. He turned and led us into the pyramid opening.

  I’m not really sure how I got lost.

  Sari and I were walking together behind Uncle Ben and Nila. We were close behind them. I could hear my uncle explaining about how the tunnel walls were granite and limestone.

  Our helmet lights were on. The narrow beams of yellow light darted and crisscrossed over the dusty tunnel floor and walls as we made our way deeper and deeper into the pyramid.

  The ceiling hung low, and we all had to stoop as we walked. The tunnel kept curving, and there were several smaller tunnels that branched off. “False starts and dead ends,” Uncle Ben called them.

  It was hard to see in the flickering light from our helmets. I stumbled once and scraped my elbow against the rough tunnel wall. It was surprisingly cool down here, and I wished I had worn a sweatshirt or something.

  Up ahead, Uncle Ben was telling Nila about King Tut and Prince Khor-Ru. It sounded to me as if Uncle Ben was trying to impress her. I wondered if he had a crush on her or something.

  “This is so thrilling!” I heard Nila exclaim. “It was so nice of Dr. Fielding and you to let me see it.”

  “Who is Dr. Fielding?” I whispered to Sari.

  “My father’s partner,” Sari whispered back. “But Daddy doesn’t like him. You’ll probably meet him. He’s always around. I don’t like him much, either.”

  I stopped to examine a strange-looking marking on the tunnel wall. It was shaped like some kind of animal head. “Sari—look!” I whispered. “An ancient drawing.”

  Sari rolled her eyes. “It’s Bart Simpson,” she muttered. “One of Daddy’s workers must have drawn it there.”

  “I knew that!” I lied. “I was just testing you.”

  When was I going to stop making a fool of myself in front of my cousin?

  I turned back from the stupid drawing on the wall—and Sari had vanished.

  I could see the narrow beam of light from her hard hat up ahead. “Hey—wait up!” I called. But the light disappeared as the tunnel curved away.

  And then I stumbled again.

  My helmet hit the tunnel wall. And the light went out.

  “Hey—Sari? Uncle Ben?” I called to them. I leaned heavily against the wall, afraid to move in the total darkness.

  “Hey—! Can anybody hear me?” My voice echoed down the narrow tunnel.

  But no one replied.

  I pulled off the hard hat and fiddled with the light. I turned it, trying to tighten it. Then I shook the whole hat. But the light wouldn’t come back on.

  Sighing, I strapped the hat back onto my head.

  Now what? I thought, starting to feel a little afraid. My stomach began fluttering. My throat suddenly felt dry.

  “Hey—can anybody hear me?” I shouted. “I’m in the dark back here. I can’t walk!”

  No reply.

  Where were they? Didn’t they notice that I had disappeared?

  “Well, I’ll just wait right here for them,” I murmured to myself.

  I leaned my shoulder against the tunnel wall—

  —and fell right through the wall.

  No way to catch my balance. Nothing to grab on to.

  I was falling, falling down through total darkness.

  9

  My hands flailed wildly as I fell.

  I reached out frantically for something to grab on to.

  It all happened too fast to cry out.

  I landed hard on my back. Pain shot out through my arms and legs. The darkness swirled around me.

  My breath was knocked right out of me. I saw bright flashes of red, then everything went black again. I struggled to breathe, but couldn’t suck in any air.

  I had that horrible heavy feeling in my chest, like when a basketball hits you in the stomach.

  Finally, I sat up, struggling to see in the total darkness. I heard a soft, shuffling sound. Something scraping over the hard dirt floor.

  “Hey—can anyone hear me?” My voice came out a hoarse whisper.

  Now my back ached, but I was starting to breathe normally.

  “Hey—I’m down here!” I called, a little louder.

  No reply.

  Didn’t they miss me? Weren’t they looking for me?

  I was leaning back on my hands, starting to feel better. My right hand started to itch.

  I reached to scratch it and brushed something away.

  And realized my legs were itching, too. And felt something crawling on my left wrist.

  I shook my hand hard. “What’s going on here?” I whispered to myself.

  My entire body tingled. I felt soft pinpricks up my arms and legs.

  Shaking both arms, I jumped to my feet. And banged my helmet against a low ledge.

  The light flickered on.

  I gasped when I saw the crawling creatures in the narrow beam of light.

  Spiders. Hundreds of bulby, white spiders, thick on the chamber floor.

  They scuttled across the floor, climbing over each other. As I jerked my head up and the light swept up with it, I saw that the stone walls were covered with them, too. The white spiders made the wall appear to move, as if it were alive.

  Spiders hung on invisible threads from the chamber ceiling. They seemed to bob and float in midair.

  I shook one off the back of my hand.

  And with a gasp, realized why my legs itched. Spiders were crawling all over them. Up over my arms. Down my back.

  “Help—somebody! Please!” I managed to cry out.

  I felt a spider drop on to the top of my head.

  I brushed it away with a frantic slap. “Somebody—help me!” I screamed. “Can anyone hear me?”

  And then I saw something scarier. Much scarier. A snake slid down from above me, lowering itself rapidly toward my face.

  10

  I ducked and tried to cover my head as the snake silently dropped toward me.

  “Grab it!” I heard someone call. “Grab on to it!”

  With a startled cry, I raised my eyes. The light beam followed. And I saw that it was not a snake that stretched from above—but a rope.

  “Grab on to it, Gabe! Hurry!” Sari shouted urgently from high above.

  Brushing away spiders, kicking frantically to shake the spiders off my sneakers, I grasped the rope with both hands.

  And felt myself being tugged up, pulled up through the darkness to the tunnel floor above.

  A few seconds later, Uncle Ben reached down and grabbed me under the shoulders. As he hoisted me up, I coul
d see Sari and Nila pulling with all their might on the rope.

  I cheered happily as my feet touched solid ground. But I didn’t have long to celebrate. My entire body felt as if it were on fire!

  I went wild, kicking my legs, brushing spiders off my arms, scratching spiders off my back, stamping on the spiders as they scuttled off me.

  Glancing up, I saw that Sari was laughing at me. “Gabe, what do you call that dance?” she asked.

  Uncle Ben and Nila laughed, too. “How did you fall down there, Gabe?” my uncle demanded, peering down into the spider chamber.

  “The wall—it gave way,” I told him, frantically scratching my legs.

  “I thought you were still with me,” Sari explained. “When I turned around…” Her voice trailed off.

  The light on Uncle Ben’s helmet beamed down to the lower chamber. “That’s a long fall,” Uncle Ben said, turning back to me. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I guess. It knocked the wind out of me. And then the spiders—”

  “There must be hundreds of chambers like that,” my uncle commented, glancing at Nila. “The pyramid builders made a maze of tunnels and chambers—to fool tomb robbers and keep them from finding the real tomb.”

  “Yuck! Such fat spiders!” Sari groaned, stepping back.

  “There are millions of them down there,” I told her. “On the walls, hanging from the ceiling—everywhere.”

  “This is going to give me bad dreams,” Nila said softly, moving closer to Uncle Ben.

  “You sure you’re okay?” my uncle demanded again.

  I started to reply. Then I suddenly remembered something. The mummy hand. It was tucked in my back pocket.

  Had it been crushed when I landed on it?

  My heart skipped a beat. I didn’t want anything bad to happen to that little hand. It was my good luck charm.

  I reached into my jeans pocket and pulled it out. Holding it under the light from my hard hat, I examined it carefully.

  I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw that it was okay. It still felt cold. But it hadn’t been crushed.

  “What’s that?” Nila asked, leaning closer to see it better. She brushed her long hair away from her face. “Is that The Summoner?”

  “How did you know that?” I demanded, holding the hand up so she could see it better.

  Nila stared at it intently. “I know a lot about ancient Egypt,” she replied. “I’ve studied it my whole life.”

  “It might be an ancient relic,” Uncle Ben broke in.

  “Or it might just be a tacky souvenir,” Sari added.

  “It has real powers,” I insisted, brushing it off carefully. “I landed on it down there—” I pointed to the spider chamber—“and it didn’t get crushed.”

  “I guess it is a good luck charm,” Nila said, turning back to Uncle Ben.

  “Then why didn’t it keep Gabe from falling through that wall?” Sari cracked.

  Before I could answer, I saw the mummy hand move. The tiny fingers slowly curled. Out and then in.

  I cried out and nearly dropped it.

  “Gabe—now what?” Uncle Ben demanded sharply.

  “Uh… nothing,” I replied.

  They wouldn’t believe me anyway.

  “I think we’ve done enough exploring for now,” Uncle Ben said.

  As we made our way to the entrance, I held the mummy hand in front of me.

  I wasn’t seeing things. I knew that for sure. The fingers really had moved.

  But why?

  Was the hand trying to signal me? Was it trying to warn me about something?

  11

  Two days later, Uncle Ben’s workers reached the doorway to the burial chamber.

  Sari and I had spent the two days hanging around in the tent or exploring the area outside the pyramid. Since it was mostly sand, there wasn’t much to explore.

  We spent one long afternoon playing game after game of Scrabble. Playing Scrabble with Sari wasn’t much fun at all. She was a very defensive player and spent hours figuring out ways to clog the board and block me from getting any good words.

  Whenever I put down a really good word, Sari claimed it wasn’t a real word and couldn’t be allowed. And since we didn’t have a dictionary in the tent, she won most of the arguments.

  Uncle Ben, meanwhile, seemed really stressed out. I thought maybe he was nervous about finally opening the tomb.

  He barely spoke to Sari and me. Instead, he spent a lot of time meeting with people I didn’t recognize. He seemed very serious and businesslike. None of his usual backslapping and joking.

  Uncle Ben also spent a lot of time talking with Nila. At first, she’d said she wanted to write about his discovery in the pyramid. But now she’d decided to write an article about him. She wrote down nearly every word he said in a little pad she carried with her.

  Then, at breakfast, he finally smiled for the first time in two days. “Today’s the day,” he announced.

  Sari and I couldn’t hide our excitement. “Are you taking us with you?” I asked.

  Uncle Ben nodded. “I want you to be there,” he replied. “Perhaps we will make history today. Perhaps it will be a day you will want to remember for the rest of your lives.” He shrugged and added thoughtfully: “Perhaps.”

  A few minutes later, the three of us followed several workers across the sand toward the pyramid. It was a gray day. Heavy clouds hovered low in the sky, threatening rain. The pyramid rose up darkly to meet the clouds.

  As we approached the small opening in the back wall, Nila came running up, her camera bobbing in front of her. She wore a long-sleeved, blue denim work shirt over loose-fitting, faded jeans.

  Uncle Ben greeted her warmly. “But still no photographs,” he told her firmly. “Promise?”

  Nila smiled back at him. Her green eyes lit up excitedly. She raised a hand to her heart. “Promise.”

  We all took yellow hard hats from the equipment dump. Uncle Ben was carrying a large stone mallet. He lowered himself into the entrance, and we followed.

  My heart was racing as I hurried to keep up with Sari. The lights from our helmets darted over the narrow tunnel. Far up ahead, I could hear the voices of workers and the steady scrape of their digging tools.

  “This is really awesome!” I exclaimed breathlessly to Sari.

  “Maybe the tomb is filled with jewels,” Sari whispered as we made our way around a curve. “Sapphires and rubies and emeralds. Maybe I’ll get to try on a jeweled crown worn by an Egyptian princess.”

  “Do you think there’s a mummy in the tomb?” I asked. I wasn’t too interested in jewels. “Do you think the mummified body of Prince Khor-Ru is lying there, waiting to be discovered?”

  Sari made a disgusted face. “Is that all you can think about—mummies?”

  “Well, we are in an ancient Egyptian pyramid!” I shot back.

  “There could be millions of dollars’ worth of jewels and relics in that tomb,” Sari scolded. “And all you can think about is some moldy old body wrapped up in tar and gauze.” She shook her head. “You know, most kids get over their fascination with mummies by the time they’re eight or nine.”

  “Uncle Ben didn’t!” I replied.

  That shut her up.

  We followed Nila and Uncle Ben in silence. After a while, the narrow tunnel curved up sharply. The air grew warmer as we followed it up.

  I could see lights ahead. Two battery-powered spotlights were trained on the far wall. As we drew closer, I realized it wasn’t a wall. It was a door.

  Four workers—two men and two women—were on their knees, working with small shovels and picks. They were scraping the last chunks of dirt away from the door.

  “It looks beautiful!” Uncle Ben cried, running up to the workers. They turned to greet him. “It’s awesome in the true sense of the word!” he declared.

  Nila, Sari, and I stepped up behind him. Uncle Ben was right. The ancient door really was awesome!

  It wasn’t very tall.
I could see that Uncle Ben would have to stoop to step into it. But it looked like a door fit for a prince.

  The dark mahogany wood—now petrified—must have been brought from far away. I knew that kind of wood didn’t come from any trees that grew in Egypt.

  Strange hieroglyphics covered the door from top to bottom. I recognized birds, and cats, and other animals etched deeply into the dark wood.

  The most startling sight of all was the seal that locked the door—a snarling lion’s head, sculpted in gold. The light from the spotlights made the lion glow like the sun.

  “The gold is soft,” I heard one of the workers tell my uncle. “The seal will break away easily.”

  Uncle Ben lowered his heavy mallet to the ground. He stared for a long moment at the glowing lion’s head, then turned back to us. “They thought this lion would scare any intruders away from the tomb,” he explained. “I guess it worked. Till now.”

  “Dr. Hassad, I have to photograph the actual breaking of the seal,” Nila said, stepping up beside him. “You really must let me. We can’t let the moment go unrecorded.”

  He gazed at her thoughtfully. “Well… okay,” he agreed.

  A pleased smile crossed her face as she raised her camera. “Thanks, Ben.”

  The workers stepped back. One of them handed Uncle Ben a hammer and a delicate tool that looked like a doctor’s scalpel. “It’s all yours, Dr. Hassad,” she said.

  Uncle Ben raised the tools and stepped up to the seal. “Once I break this seal, we will open the door and step into a room that hasn’t been seen in four thousand years,” he announced.

  Nila steadied her camera over her eye, carefully adjusting the lens.

  Sari and I moved up beside the workers.

  The gold lion appeared to glow brighter as Uncle Ben raised the tool. A hush fell over the tunnel. I could feel the excitement, feel the tension in the air.

  Such suspense!

  I realized I had been holding my breath. I let it out in a long, silent whoosh and took another.

  I glanced at Sari. She was nervously chewing her lower lip. Her hands were pressed tightly at her sides.