Tongue Tied

Rating: T

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with the motion picture The Mummy. I wish I was, but sadly, I have no rights to anything. Please, please, please don't sue me. I also have no money.

AN: Thank you to my reviewers: ForgottenStars, vampiremistress2sexy, Mariella D'Angelo, Evanesce, and OceanFae. You guys rule! Thanks again! Enjoy!


Chapter 8: A Very Big Mistake

It was too damn bright.

How long ago the sun had risen, Madeline couldn't know, but it wasn't too high in the sky yet. Still, it was white hot, beating mercilessly down on their little campsite, its painful and blinding rays making it damn near impossible to open her eyes. The desert sun did not care that Madeline had a massive hangover. Judging from the unnecessarily loud banging and clanging of pans and kettles nearby, neither did Rick.

Madeline groaned, sitting up. Beside her, Evie was still fast asleep, and she could hear Jonathan snoring just a few feet away. She squinted at her brother, who was boiling water and cooking something else over their fire. He grinned at her, waving sarcastically. Madeline groaned again, sitting all the way up and shutting her eyes, resting her head on her knees. This was not fun. What the hell had possessed her to drink so much the night before?

"Morning, Maddie!" Rick exclaimed, twice as loud as was necessary.

"I hate you," she grumbled into her knees.

"Yeah, that's not what you said last night," he smirked. "Want some breakfast? I made drippy, gooey, undercooked eggs and I think we have creamed corn around here somewhere…"

Madeline dry-heaved, her hand going to her mouth. "Jackass," she hissed at him, snatching up her bag and stumbling to her feet. Rick openly laughed at her as she jogged unsteadily away from him and their sleeping companions, moving several feet away before disappearing behind the broken-down wall they'd designated as their outhouse area.

Hidden from view, Madeline dropped to her knees and dug another hole in the sand, much like the night before. She gagged again – she was definitely going to be sick – and seized her braid, pulling it away from her face. Then she hunched over the hole and let it all come out.

When she had finished retching, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and sat back on her heels. Her head was pounding, she was clearly dehydrated, and she still felt dizzy and nauseous. In summary, she wanted to kill herself. Cussing at her stupidity, she buried her mess and then dug her canteen out of her bag. She was rinsing out her mouth and trying to clean up a little when she was startled by footsteps, coming towards her from the direction of the American camp.

"Are you all right, Miss Madeline?" a heavy, American southern drawl asked from behind her.

Madeline groaned again. She knew without looking it was Henderson – he was the only one here who insisted on pronouncing her name wrong. "I'm fine!" she said, refusing to glance in his direction. "Just leave me alone!"

"Are you sick?"

Madeline groaned one more time, gathering up her bag and swallowing a large gulp of water. Then she stood up, and faced the cowboy. "I am fine," she insisted.

He was standing on the other side of the crumbling wall, blinking innocently at her with his baby blue eyes, his hair gleaming golden in the harsh sunlight and his brow slightly furrowed with what appeared to be genuine concern, so of course, somehow, Madeline felt the idiot take over. "But… uh… thank you… for asking…" she stuttered.

Henderson furrowed his brow harder, the concern fading to bemusement. Madeline couldn't blame him. One minute she was yelling at him, the next she was shy and mumbling. Well, he could just blame himself for that. What the hell was wrong with him that he had to appear every time something embarrassing was happening to her?

"Well, then, if you're sure you're all right…" he murmured, still looking confused.

"I'm great," Madeline replied with a big fake smile.

"All right, then," Henderson backed away from her. "I'll just leave you alone."

Madeline waved like an idiot, and Henderson raced away, back to the relative safety of his friends.

Goddamn it! Madeline had never been so irritated in her life. What was wrong with her? Did she really just scare a grown man away from her? He probably thought her strangeness was catching, or something. Madeline sighed, rolling her eyes at herself, and stumbled back over to her camp. Evelyn was awake now, sitting up beside Rick and helping him with the fire. For someone who'd been ass over teacups drunk the night before, Evie was looking bright-eyed and perfectly healthy - which was completely unfair.

Madeline ignored her brother's cheery wave upon her return, slumping down beside Jonathan, who was still asleep. "I hate you," she told him again, slouching forward and rubbing her aching temples.

He just smirked again, knowingly, and very irritatingly.

What had she said to Rick the night before? Madeline couldn't help but feel it had been something she hadn't wanted to tell him. A sudden sinking feeling seized hold of her. Oh, no, she realized. I told him how I got fired. I admitted I was irresponsible. Oh, hell.

Madeline could feel her eyes going wide and horrified. Rick and Evelyn weren't paying her any mind. Oh no, she thought again. She'd told him that he wasn't allowed to forget about her after he fell in love with Evie! Oh, crap! She'd let him see how insecure she was about this new romance developing between him and the Carnahan woman! She'd even forced him to promise that he'd let her sleep on the couch when he was happy, and she had finished fucking up her life beyond repair. Oh, this was just so not good.

She glanced at her brother out of the corner of her eye, embarrassed, but Rick was too busy being besotted with Evelyn to pay her any mind. He seemed in a perfectly normal mood, and in his usual fashion, also seemed determined not to bring up their conversation the night before, and continue on the way they'd always been. Well, even if she had divulged some embarrassing things about herself to her older brother, pretending it didn't happen was certainly one way to get over it. Madeline sure as hell wasn't going to rock the boat.

Suddenly, Jonathan groaned beside her and sat up slowly. "Oh, bloody hell, I think I died and went there!" he exclaimed, rubbing his head. "What kind of sick, twisted torture is this?"

"I feel your pain," Madeline grunted, her head still in her hands.

"How can something feel amazing one day, and then kick you in the arse the next?" Jonathan went on, his fingers fumbling for his canteen. "Oh, hell's teeth, I really think I'll just go ahead and die now, thank you very much."

"Take me with you," Madeline returned.

"We made a very big mistake last night, old girl," Jonathan said to her.

"The worst I've made in a long time," Madeline agreed.

"I don't see what the big deal is," Evelyn interjected. "I, for one, feel fine."

"Well, kudos to you," Madeline grumbled. "Did I tell you I hate you yet?"

"Same from me," Jonathan added.

"All right, enough," Rick announced.

"I'll say," Evelyn agreed. "We have a lot of work to be getting on with today, and we really need to start. If everyone is ready, I say we head down into the tomb."

Madeline and Jonathan weren't ready, but they hurried through something resembling breakfast, pulled their selves together enough to look presentable, and then followed Rick and Evie down into the tomb again anyway. The darkness and the cooler temperatures turned out to be a lot easier on Madeline's headache then the stifling heat and agonizing brightness above the earth, and she was glad she'd forced herself to head down underground.

Once they'd reached their dig site from the day before, Evelyn yanked the key out of Jonathan's pocket and used it to unlock the large stone sarcophagus. Inside, they found yet another coffin of blackened stone, carved to resemble a human body, with its face stern and its arms crossed over its chest, crowned with an ancient pharaoh's headdress. The second coffin was also locked.

"Another one?" Madeline asked. "What, did they think he was going to wake up?"

"Actually," Evelyn replied. "This was not unusual at all. It was customary."

"Oh," Madeline replied. Well, didn't she feel like a dumbass.

It wasn't much like yesterday, with Evie running about and reading the various hieroglyphs spanning the entirety of the chamber walls. This time, the scholar ignored the other charms their dark, cool, torch-lit excavation site had to offer, her focus solely on the huge, ornate sarcophagus in the center of the chamber. She ordered Rick and Jonathan to remove the second, smaller coffin from the first, and they complied – although, not without a lot of complaining, on Jonathan's end at least.

Madeline leaned against the wall and watched as Rick and Jonathan wrestled the second coffin out of the sarcophagus. Grunting and scraping filled the tomb as the two men dragged the heavy box across the stone rim of its container. They muscled it away from the sarcophagus, letting one end drop with a muffled thud into the sand. Madeline rolled her eyes as the two men struggled to drag the coffin away from the sarcophagus and finally managed to tilt it vertically against a wall. Really, Rick should have just asked her to help him, and forget about Jonathan.

"Oh!" Evelyn exclaimed, as though she could no longer contain her excitement, clasping her hands fervently to her chest. "I've been dreaming about this ever since I was a little girl!"

"You dream about dead guys?" Rick asked ironically.

"Look," Evie went on, fascinated by the object in front of her, and clearly not hearing Rick's remark. "His sacred spells have been chiseled off! This man must have been condemned not only in this life, but in the next."

"Tough break," Rick said.

Madeline wanted to ask what the hell Evie meant by sacred spells, but she thought better of it. She'd had quite enough of looking stupid for one day.

"Yeah, I'm all tears," Jonathan added sarcastically, taking his key back from Evie and using it to unlock the coffin. Grunting under the strain of turning the key in its lock, he announced, "Now, let's see who's inside, shall we?"

Madeline straightened up, pushing herself slightly off the wall as Evie took a precautionary step backwards from the coffin. They both watched, enthralled, as Rick and Jonathan struggled to lift off the lid. It seemed to take an unnecessary amount of time and Madeline was about to suggest she take Jonathan's place – which would have been the sensible thing to do from the beginning, since she was positive she was a hell of a lot stronger than Jonathan – but before she could offer this advice, the lid was off and on the floor.

An ancient mummy sprang forward, amid a loud hissing sound, and all four of them screamed in terror.

As soon as the dust had settled and it became clear that the mummy wasn't going to walk out of its coffin and start chasing them, Madeline let loose a loud sigh of aggravation. "What the hell was that?" she exclaimed.

"Oh my God, I hate it when these things do that," Evie agreed, walking back towards the mummy. Madeline eyed her disbelievingly – this was a common occurrence? Seriously? – and kept her distance.

"You hate it when these things do that?" she repeated incredulously. "I think I need to change my pants!"

"I know I do," Jonathan added.

Rick was staring at the mummy with a mixture of shock and curiosity. "Is he supposed to look like that?"

Mummies were hardly Madeline's area of expertise, but she supposed there was something strange about this one. The skeleton look very moist and gooey, as though it still had a ways to go before it rotted completely. It was blackened, maybe more a dark brown, its jaw hanging wide open and a visible crack in its skull. What little bandages remained clinging to the body were as brown and gooey as the rest of it, and molded into the ribcage.

"I've never seen a mummy look like this before," Evie admitted. "He's still… still…"

"Juicy," both Rick and Jonathan supplied at the same time.

"Yes," Evie agreed. "He must be more than three thousand years old, and yet he looks as if he's still… decomposing."

As far as Madeline was concerned, Evelyn was far too fascinated by the nasty looking mummy in front of her. She didn't care if it was unusual or not – it was disgusting, and Madeline wanted no part of it.

"Well, I'm going to go throw up," she announced. Rick gave her a ridiculing look that only a brother could give to his little sister.

"Just be quiet," he returned. Then he glanced at the lid of the coffin. The inside was lying face down, and whatever was on the back side must have been pretty interesting, because suddenly, Rick said, "Hey, take a look at that," and walked over to the heavy slab of stone.

Both he and Evie knelt beside it, directly next to one another. Glad to look at anything that wasn't rotting away, Madeline joined them, kneeling down beside Jonathan. "What do you make of this?" Rick asked.

"My God, these marks were made with… fingernails," Evie murmured, tracing the scratch marks on the interior with her own fingertips. She glanced back over at the mummy. "This man was buried alive."

She returned her gaze back to the interior of the coffin, tracing some deeply engraved symbols in the lid. "And he left a message," Evie continued, completely engrossed in the markings. Once again, Madeline had no clue what they meant, but Evie translated them without a problem. "Death is only the beginning."

A hush fell over the assembled party. Evie and Rick looked back up at the mummy, almost in awe. Madeline glanced at the mummy too, fleetingly and over her shoulder. Staring directly at it was uncomfortable – something about the grotesquely shaped skull, with its hanging, twisted jaw and empty black eyes made her skin crawl. Buried alive. The thought of being shut up in this stone lockbox and left to rot… Madeline grimaced and shifted her shoulders uneasily.

"So… now what?" she asked.

Evie tore her eyes away from the creepy, rotting mummy and brightened considerably at Madeline's question. "Well, I'd like to examine the contents of our friend's final resting place," she said. "Not to mention take a closer look at the body… though, at this stage, anything useful on that mummy might be difficult to find. Who wants to help?"

Jonathan mumbled something under his breath, averting his eyes and awkwardly scratching the back of his neck. Rick made a face at Evie and, in an uncertain, less than committed tone, he said, "Sure."

There was no way in hell Madeline wanted to poke at the mummy in all its decomposing nastiness, nor was she interested in his homicide crime scene/final resting place. Quickly, she got to her feet and dusted off her trousers.

"Well, I'm out of here," she announced, headed for the narrow corridor. "I know when I'm in the way."

She headed towards the chamber's exit, glad to put some distance between her and the mummy, although admittedly not relishing the long walk back through this creepy place all by her lonesome. To her surprise, Jonathan also stood up and practically ran after her. "I'll be with Maddie!" he called over his shoulder. "All right, Evie?"

Evie waved him off, obviously uncaring and distracted, calling some sort of unintelligible goodbye after him (or maybe some under-the-breath curses for leaving her to do all the work; either option seemed sound). Rick made a face at Madeline and gave her a short, displeased wave. No sooner had they reached the corridor, but Evie was already issuing demands, ordering Rick about her excavation site as she busted out her stolen toolkit.

Madeline and Jonathan walked away, into the dark, narrow corridor, ducking under the low ceiling, and leaving Rick and Evelyn to their own devices. Their boots kicked up sand as they hurried away from the scene. Creepy shadows danced against the cob-web covered stone walls, as they only had Madeline's hastily grabbed torch to light their way. "Hey, I have an idea," Jonathan announced, squinting in the torchlight. "Let's do a little poking around ourselves. What do you say?"

Madeline frowned. "Um… that depends," she replied hesitatingly. "Will I have to dig up any more corpses?"

"Well, if it all goes according to plan, no."

"All right then," Madeline shrugged. "I'm in. What are we looking for?"

Jonathan grinned greedily. "Treasure, old girl, and lots of it! Hamunaptra was not just known as The City of the Dead, you know. According to, uh, well… Evie… Hamunaptra was also where the earliest pharaohs hid the wealth of Egypt."

"Right, the wealth of Egypt," Madeline repeated. "I've heard the stories. So, you're thinking that would be… well, a lot of treasure, right?"

"Precisely."

"Shiny things rather than decomposing things," Madeline nodded. "Well, that's more like it."

"Exactly! Now, if you've heard the stories, then you should know that good old Seti the First was said to have stored all this shiny stuff in an underground treasure chamber somewhere within the city. All we have to do is figure out where this underground treasure chamber is, and then we'll be absolutely filthy stinking rich! Sound good, old girl?"

"Nothing to complain about, at least. Let's go find this thing!"

"Right!" Jonathan grinned, but then, moments later, his smile faded. He stopped short in the middle of the sandy corridor, squinting back the way they came, and then back in the direction they were walking. Madeline followed his eyes, her torch swinging in an arc as she hoisted it in one direction and then the other. The dark passage seemed to stretch infinitely in both directions, to speak nothing of the various maze-like turn-offs that appeared occasionally, with little rhyme or reason. "Now, the question remains," Jonathan mused. "Which way should we go?"

Madeline frowned at him. "Exactly how the hell would I know the answer to that?"

"It was a rhetorical question, Maddie; do try to keep up," Jonathan sighed and looked around them. He gestured at one of the branches that led away from the main passage. "Well, I think this is the direction the warden came from yesterday, when he had that fit and, well… kicked the bucket."

"Right," Madeline agreed. "Maybe we shouldn't go this way."

"No, no, I've got a good feeling about this," Jonathan waved away her concerns, pushing onward. Madeline rolled her eyes and followed him down the branch-off, peering uncertainly into every dark, dusty, cob-webby corner they passed. It seemed even colder down this new corridor, and she swore a breeze came up from somewhere, rustling through her clothes and slightly lifting her braid. The torch in her hand flickered. She shuddered.

"Well, I don't have a good feeling about this," Madeline replied. "But then again, what the hell do I know? Nothing, that's what I know."

"If you're done with the self-deprecation routine, can we please move on?" Jonathan retorted. He led her further down the passage, finally stopping when they hit a wall, carved with various symbols. There were new passages both to the left and to the right.

"Now," Jonathan said, crinkling up his eyes as he studied the symbols. "This relief on the wall looks like… uh…" he trailed off uncertainly.

Madeline sighed. "You don't know what that says," she said, shaking her head at him.

"Well, neither do you! And for your information, I do know what it says!"

"Really? Then what does it say?"

"Well, give me a minute! It's not like hieroglyphics are my native tongue, you know."

Madeline fell silent and let Jonathan concentrate on the relief. The frown on his face was rather amusing, but not exactly reassuring. "I've got it!" he exclaimed. "It says: 'Be warned all who enter here: should you come with greed in your heart, you may sink beneath its weight, never to rise again.'"

Madeline gave Jonathan an incredulous look. "Are you sure that's what it says?"

"Positive. I may not like my job, but I know how to do it. Sort of."

"Well, then what the hell does that mean?"

"Hold on, let me think it over." Jonathan frowned at the relief a little longer, and then suddenly brightened. "I think I've got it!" he announced. "Hamunaptra is supposed to be able to disappear under the sand at the will of the pharaoh. So, should thieves break in here to steal the treasure, they're warned that they might not be able to get back out." He grinned at Madeline. "See! I told you we were going the right way."

Suddenly, footsteps and what sounded like moaning could be heard coming from the hall they'd just exited. "What the hell was that?" Madeline asked.

"Uh… I don't know…" Jonathan murmured nervously. "Maybe you… maybe you should go… check that out."

"Oh, maybe I should go?" Madeline gave him a nasty look. "And where will you be while I'm down the hall risking my neck?"

"Um… I suppose 'in the underground treasure chamber' would be the wrong answer."

"Damn straight," Madeline retorted. "Come on."

Madeline thrust the torch into his hands and pulled her pistols from their holsters, holding them out, ready to fire, as the two of them edged around the corner and back into the hall from which they'd came. There was an entrance to another passageway on the left side of the hall, and the strange noises seemed to be coming from that direction. "I think it's in there," Madeline whispered, nodding towards the other passage.

"Right," Jonathan whispered. "You go first."

Madeline turned to look at him with indignation. "Why me?"

"Because you're the one with the guns!"

"Oh." Madeline thought about that for a moment. "Huh. I guess that does make sense."

Jonathan motioned frantically towards the passageway. The footsteps and the strange moaning noises were growing louder, meaning whatever was in there was getting closer. Madeline and her cowardly companion pressed themselves around the wall, moving closer to the entrance, listening intently.

As they leapt in front of the entrance, guns drawn, three figures leapt out of the passageway, yelling and waving their own guns. It was Henderson, Daniels, and Burns. Behind them stood the Egyptologist, clutching a large black book to his chest and looking terrified.

Madeline and Jonathan sighed with relief. "Oh," Madeline said, lowering her weapons. "It's just the Americans."

"What is the matter with you people?" Jonathan exclaimed.

"Us? Damn it, you two scared us shitless!" Daniels hollered back.

"You know," Henderson pointed out, looking at Madeline. "You're an American too. I don't know why you're always callin' us the Americans."

"Um…" Madeline started stuttering again. "Well, actually, I'm not an American… exactly… I mean, I was born in America… probably… but I've lived here a long time… most of my life, actually, so I guess you could say I'm an American-Egyptian? Yeah." She turned to Jonathan, a look of pain etched on her face. "Did I just say that?"

"I'm afraid so," he murmured.

"Fantastic," she whispered.

"Well, I hate to break up this highly intelligent chat you all are having," Chamberlain announced snidely, looking over his monocle and down his long nose at them. "But we have work to be getting on with. Gentlemen?"

"You all find anything so far?" Daniels asked Madeline and Jonathan.

"Why, yes, as a matter of fact we have," Jonathan announced, drawing himself up rather proudly. "We just uncovered a three thousand year old mummy, in excellent condition. Quite a rare find, quite a rare find indeed."

"You found a dead guy?" Daniels laughed uproariously, and both Henderson and Burns smirked. "Well, why don't you take a lookee here at what we found?"

Each man produced one of four beautiful, white limestone jars, inscribed with hieroglyphs and inset with gold. The lids were carved to resemble some ancient gods – one a man's head with a pharaoh's headdress, one a falcon, one a jackal, and one a baboon.

"Oh," Jonathan cried, sounding as though he was on the verge of orgasm.

Madeline's mouth dropped. Then, recovering herself, she managed to blurt, "Those jars are ugly."

"Really, you think so?" Daniels asked. "Well, I guess we'll just have to see what the bidders back home got to say about 'em, won't we?"

"Well… I guess we'll just have to see what my foot says when it's up your ass," Madeline returned, rather stupidly.

Daniels laughed, walking away with his companions. "All I hear is jealousy," he called back over his shoulder. "Good luck with that old corpse you found, Carnahan. Miss O'Connell."

Jonathan stared after them, his mouth wide open. Madeline glanced at him, then sighed and shook her head. "Are you drooling?" she asked, tapping his chin with her finger and closing his mouth.

"Huh… what?" Jonathan snapped back to reality, looking over at her. "Oh, um… a little bit."

Madeline sighed and shook her head again. "Jonathan, I swear, we have way too much in common." She glanced back the way the Americans had gone. "I can't believe they found those jars! And what was with that giant book thing?"

"I don't know," Jonathan murmured. "Those were canopic jars, usually used to hold the viscera of a mummified person, and if we didn't know our friend had been buried alive, I'd say they belonged to him. But the book… well, I know the Book of Amun-Ra is supposed to be buried in the statue of Anubis, but that book is rumored to be made of pure gold. I can't be certain on this – we'd need Evie to know for sure – but I think that was the Book of the Dead."

"What the hell is the Book of the Dead?" Madeline demanded.

"Well, according to..." Here, Jonathan trailed off.

"Evie?" Madeline supplied.

"Well... yes," Jonathan admitted. "According to Evie, the Book of the Dead contains ancient spells for protection of souls in the afterlife."

"Right," Madeline said, nodding. "Great then." She walked off in the direction the Americans had gone, motioning to Jonathan to follow. "The treasure can wait. Let's get the hell out of here."

"I'm right behind you, old girl," Jonathan called, running after her. Apparently he was in agreement with her; this whole place was creepy as hell, and enough was enough for one day.