Author's Note: I'm so sorry about the extreme lack of updates. :-) I seem to have a knack for neglecting my fics. But here is chapter 7, in all its eight pages of glory. I had a particularly good time writing this chapter, so I hope you all enjoy it. :-)
With one shaking hand I brushed off the surface of the sarcophagus, grayish dust collecting on my fingertips.
"Well, who is it?" Jonathan asked curiously.
I squinted, studying the hieroglyphics engraved into the stone.
"He that...shall not be named."
Oh my. This was getting interesting.
"This looks like some sort of lock," O'Connell said, blowing off a thick layer of dust to reveal a metal contraption shaped like a flaming sun.
It looked incredibly familiar....
"Well, whoever's in here sure wasn't getting out," Jonathan declared.
"No kidding," O'Connell agreed. "It'd take a month to crack into this thing without a key."
And suddenly, I remembered.
The man with the hook...
"A key!" I cried excitedly. "A key, a key! Now, that's what he was talking about!"
"Who was talking about what?"
"The man, the man on the barge," I continued quickly, grabbing Jonathan's knapsack and rummaging through it. "He was talking about a key!"
I triumphantly pulled the key from the bag.
"Hey, that's mine!" Jonathan said indignantly.
I pressed down on the same spot that my fingers had found before, and right on cue, it popped open.
Perfect. It matched the lock exactly.
I smiled triumphantly, wondering just what other clues could be found inside with our friend...
"Aaaaahhhhh!!!!!"
I jumped up at once at the sound of the agonized scream, leaning toward O'Connell.
"Aaaaahhhh!!!!"
It sounded a bit like the voice of the warden...
"Aaaahhhh!!!"
We all rushed at once out into the passageway, only to find the warden running and screaming like a madman, clutching at his head.
What on earth...?
"Aaaahhhh!!! Aaaaahhhh!!!"
And with a sickening crack, he ran head-on into the wall and dropped to the floor, dead before he hit it.
~*~
"What do you suppose killed him?" I asked Jonathan later that night. We sat around a campfire, its warm glow inviting as the desert fell colder.
"Did you ever see him eat?" Jonathan responded wanly.
O'Connell approached us. He sat down and announced, "Our friends got a little distortion of their own today."
What, I thought impatiently, Could be more important than a semi-sane if not disgusting man going completely and inexplicably mad and running head-on into a wall?
"...a few of their diggers were melted," finished O'Connell.
All right. That could be a bit strange as well.
"What?" I asked, aghast.
"How?" Jonathan demanded.
"Salt acid," O'Connell responded grimly. "Pressurized salt acid. Some kind of ancient booby trap."
"Maybe this place really is cursed," Jonathan said, sounding a bit miserable.
As if on cue, the wind wailed and caused the campfire to waver a bit, almost threatening to leave us in the darkness.
O'Connell and Jonathan exchanged a frightened glance.
"Oh, for goodness sake, you two!" I cried, exasperated.
"Don't believe in curses, huh?" O'Connell asked.
"No, I don't," I responded forcefully. "I believe if I can see it and I can touch it, then it's real. That's what I believe."
O'Connell smirked a bit and cocked his rifle.
"I believe in being prepared," he announced.
How typical.
"Let's see what our friend the warden believed in," Jonathan suggested, sticking his hand into the pouch of our newly deceased former companion. Tantalizingly slowly, he rummaged around in the sack, and I was tempted to tell him that he shouldn't. After all, the warden had suddenly gone mad! It certainly couldn't be wise to go through his things...
"OUCH!"
Jonathan yelled in pain.
"Oh my God, what is it?!" I demanded, my heart pounding at twice its normal rate.
"What?!" O'Connell asked, sounding equally panicked.
My brother stuck his finger briefly into his mouth before pulling out a chipped bottle of alcohol.
"It's a broken bottle," he announced. I relaxed at once, but glared at him. Honestly, it was just like him to frighten people over nothing.
"Seagrams," Jonathan continued, inspecting the bottle. "Ten years old. Well, he might have been a stinky fellow, but he had good taste."
I sighed in a mixture of relief and exasperation, but tensed up again as O'Connell's expression immediately grew alert. The sound of gunfire filled my ears. "Stay here," he ordered, tossing a huge gun at me before grabbing his and rushing away.
"Wait for me!" I cried out after him. "Wait!"
I scrambled up from the sand and bounded after him, lugging the huge gun along with me.
"Evy," Jonathan's voice called faintly from behind me, "Excuse me, but didn't the man just say STAY HERE?!?!"
Ignoring him, I ran after O'Connell and suddenly found myself caught in the midst of an all-out battle. Black-clad men riding whinnying horses sped across the campsite as hollers and screams filled the air. Bullets flew like horizontal rain, one zooming so close near me that I could feel it ruffle my hair.
Terror immediately engulfed me, and I felt myself freeze.
Evelyn, you are the most idiotic person in the history of the world! I thought, distraught. O'Connell told you to stay there, but did you listen? No, of course not! You had to attempt to prove that you're not a wimpy pathetic female, which you are, and now you've gone and killed yourself!
Death was heavy in the air as gunshots sent men tumbling from their horses, uttering last cries of pain. I glanced at O'Connell, who fired his guns with expert ease. I watched two, three, four men fall to the ground, writhing in agony, and he didn't even flinch.
He showed no remorse, no mercy as he robbed the men of their lives. He simply did it, with a sort of detached heartlessness in his eyes that scared me. How could someone so intelligent and funny and sweet (on rare occasions, anyway) be so utterly...cold?
Suddenly, the sound of a galloping horse filled my ears, and, overcome with dread, I turned around hopelessly to find one of the black-clad warriors riding toward me. His horse gained speed with each step, and terror pulsated through me as I stared up at him. Dark eyes sparkling with heartless malice, he rose his scimitar.
OhGodOhGodOhGodOhGod...
My own shrieks filled my ears, and I prayed desperately that they wouldn't be the last sounds I heard. This was simply too soon, too fast, too unexpected and utterly final. I couldn't die yet! I wanted to get married, have a family, see England again, find out who was in that sarcophagus, get O'Connell to really kiss me...
And before I knew what I was doing, I had hastily fired the elephant gun. It catapulted the man off his horse and he soared across the air before hitting the ground with a sickening thump. I flew backwards as well, the force of the shot sending me into a sand dune. All the air in my lungs seemed to escape that moment, and I laid, frozen, for a few seconds before taking a few shallow, uneven breaths.
I was alive...I was alive...
And the man, I realized as my heart sunk, was probably...dead.
Oh God, I'd probably killed him.
I was a murderer.
Vaguely in the back of my mind it registered that the chaos had stopped, but still I didn't attempt to stand up.
God, Evelyn, you're a murderer...
I wanted to cry, to scream, to disappear beneath the sand. Moments before, I had been begging God for my life, and now I'd taken someone else's in order to keep it.
It was almost too much to bear.
"Hey, are you all right?"
I looked up to see O'Connell staring down at me in concern. Gently, he freed the gun from my grasp and helped me up.
"Yes," I lied shakily. "I'm fine, thank you."
He studied me intensely, his blue-green eyes filled with a sort of worried tenderness. Lightly callused fingers brushed against my cheek, and for a split second, the guilt lifted. If only I could stay there in his arms, feeling so safe and warm and perfect...
"See! That proves it!"
Daniels' near hysterical voice suddenly brought the previously hazy world into frightening clarity, and I wanted nothing more than that indistinct blur to return, the blur where the only thing I saw was O'Connell's eyes...
"Old Seti's fortune's gotta be under this sand!" continued Daniels.
"For them to protect it like this, you just know there's gotta be treasure under there," agreed Henderson.
O'Connell didn't agree. "These men are a desert people - they value water, not gold."
The Americans continued to talk amongst themselves as I tried to stop myself from thinking of what had happened...
Evy, perhaps he's all right, perhaps he's fine.
Intrigued by this idea, I reluctantly pulled out of O'Connell's arms and headed toward the direction where I'd fired the gun. Perhaps I could find him, perhaps he would be all right...just a bit hurt, that's all.
"Evelyn, what are you doing?" O'Connell asked, sounding concerned as he followed after me.
"I'm looking," I informed him, my eyes searching desperately. Maybe, just maybe...
"Yeah, I got that," O'Connell said impatiently. "For what?"
"The man," I replied, feeling hysteria creeping over me. No, no, I wouldn't lose my calm. I simply had to stay level-headed. I could find him, I was sure of it. I...
And then I found him.
O'Connell's voice rang lightly in my ears - "Man? What are you talking about? What man? Evelyn, what are you talking about?" - but it didn't register in my mind.
Instead I stared in horror.
He was dead, bleeding and horribly mangled. One of his legs was bent grotesquely out of place - perhaps a horse had trampled him.
"Oh, God," I murmured, suddenly feeling very dizzy. "Oh my God..."
"Evelyn, what's wrong?" O'Connell asked, voice thick with worry. "What the hell is the matter with you??"
"O...O'Connell," I stammered, tears brimming in my eyes. "I...that man...I...he's dead."
O'Connell studied me in bewilderment for a moment before his eyes widened in understanding.
"Ohhhh...." he said softly, looking terrified as tears began to spill down my cheeks. I didn't want to be crying, and yet I couldn't stop - I'd killed him, I'd killed that man, and now he stared up at me with lifeless ebony eyes.
He hadn't even closed his eyes.
"Evelyn," O'Connell said, wrapping his arms around me and rocking me lightly back and forth. "Shh. It's all right...I...it's okay."
"No," I said, shaking my head and trying to choke back sobs. "No, it's not. I killed him, O'Connell."
"Shhhh," he said, still keeping one arm around my shoulders as he led me back to the camp.
"He was going to kill me," I ranted, the words flowing out of my mouth rapidly. "He was going to kill me, and I should have let him. I shouldn't have...shouldn't have..."
"Shhh," O'Connell continued, sinking down in front of the fire next to me. "Sweetheart, it's okay."
"No," I said, shaking my head again. "God, I'm...I..."
"Here," O'Connell offered me the bottle of wine that Jonathan had discovered earlier. "Here, have a drink."
"I don't drink," I sniffled.
"Just have one," he ordered gently. "It will calm you down."
"All right," I said, wiping the tears from my cheeks before accepting the bottle with shaking hands. "Just one..."
~*~
I was laughing.
Laughing for no reason, really, except that it felt so good to laugh. When was the last time I'd laughed like this? It certainly had been ages...perhaps I'd never laughed like this. Laughed so hard that tears ran down my cheeks, that my whole body ached from shaking in mirth.
Far, far in my mind, there was the softest, haziest memory of a twisted, disgustingly contorted corpse with open black eyes....
And suddenly, as I focused on it, the laughter died and the picture became clearer.
"I wanna 'nother drink, please," I said to O'Connell, who held the bottle of wine in his hands.
"Are you sure?" he asked, looking a bit worried. "I really think you've had enough..."
"O'Connell, give me that bottle right now!" I shouted at the top of my lungs. "Give it to me...give it to me, or I'll...I'll..."
I couldn't for the life of me think of anything, and instead burst into a fit of hysterical giggles.
"Fine," O'Connell said, looking a bit frightened. "Here you go."
He handed the bottle to me, and I took a huge swig. Immediately, the tart liquid filled my mouth and seemed to send a fuzzy warmth through my body as I swallowed.
"That is so good," I announced with a little moan of pleasure, wondering why my voice came out so much louder than I intended it to.
From their tent, one of the Americans shouted, "O'Connell, quit banging the girl and let us get some sleep, for the love of God!"
"I'm not-"
"Whatever, O'Connell!"
O'Connell's cheeks had flushed bright red, and I burst into laughter again.
"Oh my goodness," I cried, giggling madly. "He actually thinks that we're...we're-"
"Okay, Evy," O'Connell cut in hurriedly. "You don't drink much, do you?"
How had he known?? Perhaps he was psychic...
"No, I've never drank this much," I responded, shaking my head, which caused the world around me to spin a bit. "You know what else I've never done?"
"Do I want to know?" O'Connell asked cautiously.
"Fired a gun!" I finished.
He relaxed visibly.
"And you know, I'm absolutely hopeless at defending myself hand to hand too!" I proclaimed. "So, you know, it's lucky that you gave me that big huge gun...and I shot it...and..."
A strange, bad sort of feeling began to take over me, and I hurriedly took a few more swigs of wine.
"Well, I could show you some basic fist fighting techniques," O'Connell offered. "You know, in case you ever need them."
I gasped. Goodness, he was so sweet!
And quite handsome too....had I ever noticed quite how handsome he was?
He'd probably look amazing without a shirt on.
"That would be so wonderful of you!" I cooed, setting the wine into a sleeping Jonathan's arms. "You're so wonderful!"
"Er...thanks," O'Connell said uneasily.
I stood up, then promptly found myself on the ground again. Shaking his head and smiling at me, O'Connell helped me up from the ground. His arms were wrapped around me.
"Do you think you can stand on your own?" he asked.
"Sure," I slurred, wondering if he was going to kiss me.
But instead, he let go of me and walked away, standing around three feet across from me.
"What are you doing?" I asked, disappointed.
"I thought you wanted me to teach you how to fight," he said, looking utterly confused.
"Oh, yes, yes!" I said with a bright smile. "Yes, that's right!"
I had completely forgotten about that.
Hehehe.
How silly of me.
"Okay," O'Connell said. "Try a right hook..."
A hook? Where?
"Bob your fist," O'Connell instructed.
Bob?? Who was Bob?
I studied his own fist - he had very nice fists - and curled my own into a ball, mirroring his actions.
"Here we go," O'Connell said. "Mean it...hit it right here."
He gestured to his own hand.
"Mean it," I echoed, slurring, and attempting to slam my fist into his hand. The whole world seemed to spin around a bit, and I found myself falling forward into his arms. I immediately burst into hysterical laughter.
"Okay, it's time for another drink," announced O'Connell, grabbing the bottle out of Jonathan's arms.
Oh, no. I'd had quite enough, thank you very much.
"Unlike my brother, sir," I informed him loftily, accepting the bottle, "I know when to say no."
As I took a sip, he studied me, befuddled.
Strange, that man was. (But really, very attractive...)
"Uhhh huh," he said, nodding slowly. "And unlike your brother, Miss, you I just don't get."
"Ah," I said in understanding. "I know. You're wondering...what's a place like me doing in a girl like this?"
He studied me as though I'd just said something completely crazy.
(Honestly, I had to wonder about him sometimes.)
"Yeah, something like that."
"Egypt...is in my blood," I explained, steadying myself a bit. It really would be quite nice if the world would stop spinning around me like that. "You see, my father was a very, very famous explorer, and he loved Egypt so much that he married my mother, who was an Egyptian...and quite an adventurer herself."
"I get your father, and I get your mother," O'Connell said. "And I get him-" he nodded towards Jonathan, "-but what are you doing here?"
What was I doing here?!?!
Why, how dare he ask such a question??
I had never been more insulted!
"Oooh!" I cried in fury. "Look, I-I may not be an explorer or...or an adventurer or a treasure seeker or a gun fighter, Mr. O'Connell, but I am proud of what I am!"
I stood shakily and glared down at him.
"And what is that?" O'Connell asked, staring up at me. He looked so amused...why did he look amused? Didn't he realize that he'd made me angry?
He did look quite handsome when he was amused.
"I," I announced regally, "Am a librarian."
Ha! That would teach him!
He gave me a weak sort of smile, and I felt my heart melt. He was so handsome...and was he ever going to kiss me?
Well, I supposed I would just have to take matters into my own hands.
I sat down next to him and stared into his eyes...he had such pretty eyes, like the sea on a sunny day...
"And I am going to kiss you..." I informed him softly. "...Mr. O'Connell..."
"Call me Rick," he instructed gently.
Ohhh...
I smiled warmly.
"Rick..." I sighed.
My lips slowly neared his, and the world seemed to spin in a haze around me as I leaned closer and closer...
I closed my eyes, slowly...
And fell into black.