CHAPTER TWO – VAN HELSING VS. NEPHREN-KA

Van Helsing rides by a stone wall ripping off a wanted poster baring his name and image on a horse as he makes his way into the stormy Egyptian desert. Sitting behind him is an old Briton bobbing up and down. The old man shouts above the wind, "Can't we go a bit slower?? At this rate my back will become bent like a snake!"

"Do you want to save your daughter Herr Langwell?" Van Helsing shouts back.

"Quite right!" Langwell replies. And so Van Helsing and Langwell make their way across the sandblasted, dark desert as the storm above lights up the dunes before them. Before long, they begin nearing a vast Egyptian temple-tower with a narrow, towering pyramid in its midst looking as though it was being licked by the lightning of the storm. Eventually Langwell shouts, "Hamunaptra!!"

With that, Van Helsing drives the horse faster and within moments they enter a huge, arched gateway where Van Helsing begins to slow the horse down approaching the center pyramid. Inside, Van Helsing and Langwell begin to descend underground into the dank, menacing halls below. Here they both unsheathe their swords, light torches and make their way down one of the tunnels very slowly. Eventually Van Helsing asks, "You got the scroll?"

Langwell looks within his jacket and replies, "Yes."

"Okay," Van Helsing states, "you look for her down that way and I'll look for her down the other way."

Langwell stutters frightened, "Beh . . . . Van Helsing?? What about Nephren- Ka?"

"Just use the scroll!" Van Helsing replies.

After trying to swallow his fear, Langwell continues slowly down the hall. The darkness and chill of the terrible tunnel keeps some fear still stirring deep within his heart. At one point, he suddenly feels a ghastly gust of wind pass down the hall towards him and it causes him to spin about nearly putting out his torch. Taking a deep breath, he gathers himself back together and continues down the hall reciting, "Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name saying 'I am Christ' and shall deceive many. But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. And this gospel o . . . . "

The echo of an unearthly sound reverberates about the tunnel from the left and Langwell spins to his left with a halt thrusting his torch before him. The torch lightens up a large room with a sarcophagus in the middle. He slowly approaches it and then sees that it is lidless. Inside there is a nearly skeletal yet unpleasantly pulpous corpse with a few burial bandages still wrapped on its arms and torso and right away Langwell recognizes it as Nephren-Ka especially because of the royal yet self-styled garb it was dressed in.

"There's the damned Antichrist!" Langwell growls. He quickly pulls the scroll out of his jacket and begins reading. Only a few words into the recitation, Nephren-Ka sat up instantly and supernaturally sank the fingers of his right hand into the back of Langwell's neck. Langwell begins to slowly mummify alive as Nephren-Ka curses him in Egyptian. Van Helsing suddenly jumps into the room exclaiming, "Mein Gott!"

Van Helsing quickly whips out a huge, metallic cross and flings it at Nephren-Ka with all his strength. It pierces through the villain's chest and sends him flying right through the wall behind him along with Langwell half-mummified. Van Helsing runs through the large hole in the wall into the settling dust to see Nephren-Ka rise from the ground pulling out the cross very close to full regeneration, but appearing now as a corpse just beginning decomposition. A sickly yet boiling evil gleams in Nephren-Ka's eyes as Van Helsing pulls out two 'buzz stars' starting them up. Nephren-Ka then roars fiercely at him and then Van Helsing instantly begins slashing the buzz stars right at Nephren-Ka. The villain keeps dodging with unnatural speed and just as Van Helsing tries to swing in a kick towards his face Nephren-Ka turns into a cloud of ash that disappears into the ceiling.

Van Helsing comes to a halt and looks around on guard against Nephren-Ka. He sees that he is now in a giant sanctuary and then spots Langwell's daughter tied down to a stone table struggling to get free.

"Evelyn!" Van Helsing calls out. He runs up the stairs leading to her and uses one of the buzz stars to cut off the rope keeping her right arm down. Suddenly, Van Helsing is backhanded powerfully across the face and is sent sailing back into the midst of the ground below. He looks and watches as Nephren-Ka bellows out an incantation in Egyptian. Suddenly, skeletal arms wrapped in thick, dusty burial bandages punch up through the ground from underneath one after another and then ghastly mummies begin pulling themselves up out of the ground. Van Helsing jumps to his feet and right at that moment the mummies begin coming after him like savage beasts. Without any delay, Van Helsing pulls his sword back out and begins slashing it at the living dead with great speed and agility reducing them down to piles of twitching body parts.

But right as it seems Van Helsing has achieved the upper hand the legs of one mummy latch themselves on to Van Helsing's legs tripping him up. A mummy diagonally dismembered at the torso then grabs Van Helsing by the head with its left arm. Van Helsing is pinned down with his sword just out of reach. And so Nephren-Ka grabs Evelyn's flailing arm and begins to mount her as he forces a kiss on her. She responds to it with screaming.

But just when it began to look hopeless for Van Helsing, he spots a mummy's dismembered forearm dragging itself towards his sword. Once it grasps the sword's handle, Van Helsing grabs it by the stub and manages to slash the sword right through the neck of the mummy strangling him. The mummy's head spins right off causing the rest of it to fall back and then he manages to stab the sword right through the crotch of the mummy legs. Just as Nephren- Ka sits up mounted on top of Evelyn Van Helsing lifts the dismembered legs up into the air and sends them slamming right into Nephren-Ka. The villain falls back and lands on to the floor only to thrust himself back on to his feet. Van Helsing runs up the stairs, leaps right over Evelyn and begins slashing his sword at Nephren-Ka upon landing. After a few dodges, Nephren-Ka suddenly whips out a sword and wages a swordfight with Van Helsing.

As they fight, Van Helsing takes a few quick seconds to slash the ropes off Evelyn's legs and other arm and then shouts, "The scroll is in your father's jacket!!"

Evelyn takes off after her dead father as Nephren-Ka swears in his own tongue and then kicks Van Helsing in the stomach sending him to the bottom of the steps. When Evelyn drops to her knees next to her father and sees the terrible death he endured, she cries, "Agh! Father!"

Van Helsing blocks Nephren-Ka's attack as he shouts, "The scroll!!"

Evelyn then begins searching her father's jacket and during her search Nephren-Ka whacks Van Helsing's sword right out of his hands causing it to stick into the wall at the far side of the sanctuary. In the same second, Nephren-Ka deliberately stabs the sword through Van Helsing's shoulder, pulls it out causing him to stumble forward and then pierces his fingers into the back of Van Helsing's neck. Nephren-Ka growls something in Egyptian and then begins draining Van Helsing's life force. But suddenly, Evelyn found the scroll and immediately begins reading the entire Egyptian incantation. Nephren-Ka suddenly stops as if something grabbed his own soul.

Nephren-Ka begins trembling violently as both Van Helsing and Evelyn watch. Nephren-Ka then states something in his own language and a second after the last word an eldritch mist seems to deliberately travel back into Van Helsing from Nephren-Ka regenerating his life force. He then pulls himself away from Nephren-Ka letting the puncture wounds on the back of his neck heal and then the mist begins to twirl about Nephren-Ka increasing in mass. Then Nephren-Ka begins to implode back down into the form of a hideous mummy and finally he suddenly explodes into a dusty and bony mess. Van Helsing then slowly gets to his feet and then once up Evelyn translates, "Death is only the beginning."

Van Helsing and Evelyn look at each other for a while, but suddenly a mass of Egyptian warriors led by a superior with a very intelligent and powerful look about him enter the sanctuary through the hole and begin looking around. After the superior scans the room with his eyes and then rests them on Van Helsing with suspicion, he asks with a demanding voice, "Where is Langwell?"

"Abdul!" one of the warriors calls. Abdul struts over to the warrior and sees the half-mummified body of Langwell. He then glares at Van Helsing and scowls, "Infidel! Murderer! KILL HIM!!"

At that instant, Van Helsing takes for the actual doors of the sanctuary, but then he turns back, quickly yet passionately kisses Evelyn and then takes off again. He makes it out of the pyramid and races out of Hamunaptra. He never stops as he sets his destination for the Vatican of Rome.

-- All it really took was one good review! I can tell I will enjoy FanFiction.net. Obviously by now you may have noticed that this chapter not only changes Van Helsing's intro-monster from Mr. Hyde to the Mummy (one I gave the Lovecraftian name Nephren-Ka), but that I also used material from the modern version of The Mummy. The reason for this – if you don't know – the fine fellow that directed and wrote Van Helsing, Stephen Sommers, also wrote and directed The Mummy. So the 'monster change' was an easy one to make. Once I complete Andrew Harbin's Van Helsing 1 and 2, I shall move on to my own Evil Dead stories: The Evil Dead – Dead By Dawn, The Evil Dead – Army of Darkness, The Evil Dead – Apocalypse Hell, The Evil Dead – Beyond the Abyss, The Blackwood Horror and Ash vs. Pinhead. --