Author's Note: I've grown quite re-obsessed with this story, and so naturally, I had to update. As always, sorry for little inconsistencies that aren't loyal to the movie - I haven't seen it in quite sometime. Also, I think (I'm not quite sure, as I wrote this ages ago) that a bit of the dialogue in the beginning of the chapter was taken from one of the early drafts of the movie script, so that isn't mine either.
Enjoy. :-)
Never, in my entire life, had my head throbbed so violently. My stomach seemed to be doing somersaults, and I felt as though I could pass out at any moment.
Actually, unconsciousness would be quite welcome.
"I can't believe that I allowed the two of you to get me drunk," I groaned miserably as made our way through the passageway toward the room with the sarcophagus.
"Don't blame me," Jonathan said innocently, "I don't even remember being there."
"Well, neither do I, thank you," I responded with another groan as we entered the chamber.
"You don't?" O'Connell asked, an expression of extreme hurt on his face.
Oh. My. God.
What had I done??
"No...." I said, biting my lip in nervousness. "Why....should I?"
"Gee, yeah!" O'Connell said in mock delight, a huge grin on his face. "You told me it was the best time you ever had!"
Oh God. Oh, dear God.
I felt my cheeks heat up as I averted his gaze. Surely I hadn't...done anything with him, had I? I wouldn't have. No. Never. Not even when intoxicated would I participate in anything even the slightest bit sinful!
...would I?
I snuck a glance at O'Connell, and he winked at me in response.
Oh my God!
"Well, really, O'Connell, whatever I did was your fault entirely," I snapped. "You're the one who told me...ordered me is more like it, to have a drink!"
"A drink," O'Connell retorted, smirking. "As in one. Not the whole bottle."
"Well, you should have stopped me!" I cried. "I was out of control!"
"Were you ever," he agreed, wriggling his eyebrows.
Lord. He had better just be teasing. If he wasn't, I would be forced to die of embarrassment.
Both angry and humiliated, I made my way over to the sarcophagus, leaving my brother and O'Connell behind.
Ah, well, Evy, forget about it, I instructed myself. You couldn't have stopped it. You were completely drunk. Now, let's just concentrate on this.
Soon, we would have the sarcophagus open...we would find even more clues as to who this mysterious (and most likely unfortunate) fellow was.
"Oooh, I've dreamt about this since I was a little girl," I proclaimed excitedly as we reached the sarcophagus.
"You dream about dead guys?" O'Connell asked, sounding a bit disturbed.
"Look!" I cried, studying the sarcophagus. "All the sacred spells have been chiseled off...This man must have been condemned not only in his life, but in the next."
"Tough break," O'Connell said tonelessly.
"Yes, I'm all tears," Jonathan deadpanned impatiently. "Now let's see who's inside, shall we?"
Jonathan placed the key into the lock and twisted it slowly. Anticipation built with each second, and I watched intently. It was all so exciting!
The cover to the sarcophagus creaked, and it moved a tiny bit. Slowly...slowly....
"AAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!"
The screams of Jonathan, O'Connell, and myself all mingled in my ears as I stared in horror at the...the thing that had popped out of the sarcophagus. It was wet, sticky, as though it had been there for a much shorter time than three thousand years...its featureless face was somehow haunting, menacing, as its toothless mouth hung open.
"Oh, God!" I snapped, raising a hand to my racing heart. "I hate it when these things do that!"
O'Connell studied the mummy, disgusted. "Is he...supposed to look like that?"
"No," I responded, shaking my head. "I've never seen a mummy look like this before...he's still...still..."
"Juicy," O'Connell and Jonathan finished in disgusted unison.
"Well....yes," I agreed, wrinkling my nose. "He must be more than three thousand years old, and...well, it looks as though he's still...decomposing!"
"Hey, look at that," Jonathan said, studying the top of the sarcophagus.
"Whaddya make of these?" O'Connell asked, gesturing at the heavy scratches engraved into the stone.
"My God," I said softly, studying the marks in fascination. "These marks were made with...fingernails."
Hands trembling, I ran my fingers slowly down the marks.
"This man was buried alive," I declared gravely.
Squinting at the stone, I continued, "And he left a message..."
A shiver ran up and down my spine as I decoded the hieroglyphics.
"Death...is only the beginning."
~*~
I was hungry, and tired, and my head still throbbed horribly from the previous night's excessive drinking.
It was nothing a meal and a good ten hours of sleep couldn't cure, and I yearned for both with frightening intensity.
And still I couldn't drag myself away from the sarcophagus.
I tried not to look at the mummy - he'd been dead for thousands of years, and yet he still made me uneasy. Those empty eyes seemed to observe my every movement, to pierce into my soul.
What had happened to him?
Shivering, I stared past the creature into the darkness of the sarcophagus when my eyes caught sight of what looked to be a sort of bug. Mustering up my courage, I reached past the mummy (all the while possessing the childish suspicion that he would leap up at any time and frighten me to death) and pulled it out.
It was a scarab skeleton...I'd read about the bugs. They were flesh eaters, used by the ancient Egyptians to torture those who deserved to be eaten alive.
Shivering, I snatched a few more of the skeletons out of the coffin before picking up the torch that lit the room and walking throughout the many twisting passageways out to the camp. It was refreshing to breathe in the cool, fresh air after being surrounded by dust and decay for so long.
As I passed the American Egyptologist, I saw that he held in his arms a black book.
The black book.
The Book of the Dead.
I'd read about it, of course. It performed the counter-action to Book of Amun-Re, and was a dark ebony as opposed to the other book's sheer gold pages.
If this truly was the book, I had stumbled across a most fascinating discovery.
Well, perhaps I hadn't stumbled across it, but I was determined to see it, to make sure that it really was what I suspected.
Suddenly, my eyes fell upon a lock not unlike the one that we'd found on our friend's sarcophagus.
....Well, 'not unlike' wasn't exactly correct.
No, it was identical.
The Egyptologist let out a little grunt of frustration as he attempted with all his might to pull the book open, and realization dawned upon me.
Excitement immediately surged through me, but I tried to stifle it as I told him nonchalantly, "I believe you need a key to open that book."
A key that happened to be in my possession.
Leaving the Egyptologist to stare after me, bewildered, I approached where O'Connell, Jonathan, and some of the Americans sat around a campfire.
"Look what I found!" I exclaimed, holding out the scarabs.
"You're in her seat," O'Connell announced to Beni, who didn't show any sign of leaving.
"Now," O'Connell growled.
"Yup," Beni squeaked at once, moving away.
I took his place, excitedly showing my discovery to my companions. "Scarab skeletons! Flesh eaters! I found them inside our friend's coffin. They can stay alive for years, feasting on the flesh of the corpse." I paused, then continued a bit more somberly, "Unfortunately for our friend, he was still alive when they started eating him."
"So somebody threw these in with our guy and they slowly ate him alive?" O'Connell asked, looking disgusted at the idea.
"Veeery slowly," I responded, grinning.
"Well, he certainly wasn't a popular fellow, was he?" Jonathan said dryly.
"Probably got too frisky with the pharaoh's daughter," O'Connell said with a grin.
I smiled back at him before continuing.
"Well, according to our readings, our friend suffered the Homdai, the worst of all Egyptian curses. In all my research, I've never heard of it being used."
"That bad, huh?"
I nodded with widened eyes. "They never used it because they feared it so. It was written that if a victim of the Homdai should ever arise, he would bring with him the ten plagues of Egypt."
Jonathan shuddered. "Who the bloody hell would want a curse like that? The bloody bastards are cursing themselves!"
"Well, honestly, Jonathan," I replied logically, rolling my eyes. "Be reasonable. The victim would be dead, and therefore he couldn't exactly arise, now, could he?"
"I hate it when you go all factual like that," Jonathan muttered darkly.
I ignored him. "Besides, how could the ten plagues possibly be reawakened?" After a pause, I announced forcefully, "I don't believe any of it, not a single bit. Fairy tales and hokum - that's all it is."
O'Connell shook his head with a vague hint of a smile on his lips as he absently prodded at the fire with a stick.
"What is it?" I asked at once. "Honestly, O'Connell, you seem like a reasonably smart man. Why do you believe in these ludicrous things??"
He smirked at me. "You can't be too confident."
"And why not?" I asked, a bit annoyed.
"If there's one thing I've learned about confidence," O'Connell proclaimed, "It's that it never fails to turn around and bite you in the ass."
I narrowed my eyes at him in response to his foul language, but he didn't seem sorry - instead, he offered an infuriating grin.
"I wonder if Jonathan has any more alcoholic beverages," he said innocently.
"Mr. O'Connell, I will never take another sip of-"
"I like you drunk," he announced with a wicked smile before closing his eyes and feigning sleep.
"Oooh!" I muttered, furious. "O'Connell, if you so much as laid a finger on me while I was in a...vulnerable state, I'll find a way to awaken our little friend and will personally make sure that I send the ten plagues after you!"
My threat, however, seemed to go unnoticed.
As a matter of fact, he didn't show any sort of response...his breathing only grew more even.
Rolling my eyes in exasperation, I rose from the campsite. If I didn't get at least fifteen feet away from him within the next few minutes, there was no telling what I'd do.
And as I stomped across the site, still muttering darkly, I heard him chuckling to himself.
Make that twenty feet.
~*~
I supposed that Jonathan's gift for snatching things right out from under peoples' noses without their noticing had run in the family.
With every step I took, I grew more sure that the desert air, or perhaps the excess sand, was somehow harmfully affecting my brain. The pre-Hamunaptra Evelyn Carnahan certainly wouldn't have sneaked over to a sleeping man in the middle of the night and pulled a discovery that was rightfully his right out of his arms.
But I was holding what I suspected to be the Book of the Dead, and strangely enough, wasn't bombarded with guilt and self-loathing.
Really, I just wanted to take a peek at it...I would sneak it back into the Egyptologist's arms before he had ever known it was gone in the first place. Simply no harm could come from this. No harm at all.
Gulp.
Trying to stop my hands from shaking, I made my way back over to our campsite. The flickering orange fire provided light in the pitch-black night, and both Jonathan and O'Connell were sleeping soundly.
"That's called 'stealing', you know."
...Or at least, one of them was sleeping.
The other had now opened his eyes and was studying me wryly.
O'Connell never ceased to be an inconvenience.
"According to you and my brother, it's called 'borrowing'," I informed him, a bit annoyed at his awakening. Now I would either have to look at the book with him there or return it.
Well, I certainly didn't intend on the latter.
Not yet, anyway.
"I thought the Book of Amun-Re was made out of gold," O'Connell commented, standing up and walking over to examine the book.
"It is made out of gold," I replied with certainty. "This isn't the book of Amun-Re. This is something else...I think this may be the Book of the Dead."
O'Connell looked slightly perturbed at this piece of information.
"The Book of the Dead?" he repeated. "Are you sure you want to be playing around with this thing?"
A rush of excitement flooded through me as I slowly lowered the key into the lock and twisted it. The book immediately popped open.
"It's just a book," I said distractedly. "No harm ever came from reading a book."
As soon as the words left my lips, the wind let out a dreadful howl and threatened to muffle the campfire.
O'Connell paused for a moment before observing, "That happens a lot around here."
I tried to ignore him, tried to ignore the wind, and yet I couldn't. A strange sort of unease had crept over me...an unwelcome sense of foreboding.
Evelyn, get ahold of yourself! I thought sternly. You're just as bad as O'Connell and Jonathan! Honestly! Nothing is going to happen!
As though somehow defying my doubts, I flipped open the book and studied the first page.
"So, what's it say?" O'Connell asked, interested.
"It speaks of night and day," I responded, studying the hieroglyphics with intensity. This was amazing...to think that my fingers were the first to brush against these pages after three thousand years....
"Ah kum Ra. Ah kum Dei..."
I was so enraptured as my eyes raced across the page that I barely noticed the words were spilling aloud from my lips. The sound of my voice forming the foreign words was strange, yet thrilling. Shivering a bit with excitement, I read on, my tone gaining more force and intensity with each word.
"Ah kum Dei ah kum Dei ah kum Dei-"
"NO!!!"
I fell silent at once, suddenly feeling inexplicably fatigued. Bursts of adrenaline, sheer power had pulsated through me as I'd read those words, almost as though I'd been under some sort of enchantment....some sort of curse.
And now I was so completely tired, raw, and...fearful?
Yes, the fear was there, and yet I hadn't the slightest idea why.
It was just a book...just a book...what was there to fear?
And now the Egyptologist's voice rang through the formerly peaceful night, radiating horrified panic.
"You must not read from the book!"
As soon as his words ceased, another noise filled the endless desert - a high, piercing sort of shriek that started faint and grew more and more forceful with each second.
Filled with trepidation, I slowly moved my gaze from the book to the open, midnight blue sky. O'Connell did the same, and I could sense an aura of uneasy anxiousness from him.
He knew something was coming.
The entire camp seemed to feel it - camels grunted uncomfortably as those who formerly slept awoke with displeased mutters.
And suddenly, a swarm of humming black burst at us with the intensity of a thousand soldiers racing into battle. At first, dazed, I thought it to be a sudden shower of ebony rain, but realized with rapidly growing fear what it actually was.
Locusts - thousands, millions of locusts hurled at us with reckless abandon. A few of the Americans' diggers were completely covered while the rest of us stared for a moment in horror.
O'Connell took charge of the situation.
"RUN!!!" he shouted at once.
We all obeyed, making our way desperately through the hungry swarm and into the tombs.
Throughout the chaos, Jonathan had caught up to us, and he laced his fingers with mine as we sped throughout the twisting labyrinth of tunnels.
"Where the hell did they come from?" O'Connell demanded breathlessly.
Though we all suspected the answer (an answer which I feared was my fault), there wasn't time for a reply, as at that moment an explosion of shiny black insects burst from the sand.
"Scarabs!" I screeched, recognizing them at once.
"Go! Go!" O'Connell ordered, pulling out one of his guns and blasting a few select bugs to pieces with expert aim. "RUN!"
Humph. He needn't tell me to. I could have figured that out on my own.
We sped into one of the larger chambers, the squealing bugs gaining on us. I shivered in horror, wondering exactly what it would be like to feel one of them burrow their way into my skin and climb through my insides before finding a nice piece of flesh to feast upon...
Not pleasant, I was quite sure.
Screams echoed throughout the tomb and filled my ears as I watched Jonathan and O'Connell leap with ease from our pathway and onto a ledge. Panicked, I continued to race forward, and found myself with a wall on one side and a few thousand bugs on the other: completely cornered.
Oh dear...ohhhh dear...oh my goodness...OhGodOhGodOhGod....
Completely terrified out of my mind, I watched the bugs in horror as I slowly crept along the wall that had done part in trapping me.
And suddenly, I found the wall moving from behind me.
"Ohhh!" I screeched, moving right along with the wall.
Gone were O'Connell, Jonathan, and (thankfully) the scarabs.
I found myself in one of the tunnels, covered in cobwebs and thick with dust. Shivering, I let out a little miserable moan - here I was, trapped alone trying to outrun the ten plagues of Egypt.
Not a good situation in the least.
"Ohhh...ohhh..."
A helpless, pained groan immediately filled my ears, and the first thing that came to mind was that it was a ghost.
Oh, stop it, Evelyn! I lectured myself. You're turning into a child!
There were no ghosts, of course.
"Ohhh...."
Just some incredibly creepy ghostly wails, that was all.
My eyes flew wildly around the passageway, searching for the source of the noises, and I sighed with relief as soon as I fixed my gaze upon the back of one of the Americans.
"Ohhhh," I sighed, deciding I had never been quite so happy to see anyone in my entire life. "Oh, Mr. Burns, thank goodness. I was just starting to get scared, I lost everyone-"
He turned around, and a sickening wave of nausea ran through me. A piercing scream escaped my lips as I stared at him in horror, unable to look away though it was by far the most gruesome sight I'd ever seen.
"My eyes..." Burns wailed despondently. "My eyes!"
Where his eyes had gone, I had no idea.
But right now I was staring into the empty sockets where they should have been.