Chapter 11:

Mick

I woke with a start. I took a deep breath and looked around, making sure that that creepy figure was nowhere in sight. I let out a sigh of relief as I realized that I was still in Nina, Amber and Kara's room. I glanced up at the clock and saw that it was five in the morning. I groaned silently and rolled over. I didn't want to go back to sleep, how could I? That dream had spooked me right out. Everything about it was so accurate; from the detail of the rooms to the clothes everyone was wearing and the way their hair looked. The one scene, with Kara and the papyrus thing, I had left about three minutes before that happened, and I remembered exactly what Kara was wearing. That dream was dead accurate, which left me wondering, was it just a dream? Maybe... Or maybe that ghost spirit floaty figure thing was telling the truth and my housemates have been involved in some crazy mysteries. That burning sure felt real enough.

Oh, knock it off Campbell, I thought to myself. You're being ridiculous! There's no such thing as ghosts and you know it. It was just a dream from lack of sleep and too much junk food!

Although... I still couldn't shake the feeling that something weird was happening, and whether I liked it or not, I was now a part of it.

Kara

I woke up to the sound of Nina's alarm. God it was annoying... It sounded like a dying duck trying to laugh. I rolled over and looked down, seeing Mick with his face buried in his pillow.

"Hmmph hm hmmmph!" he shouted.

"What?" I asked, rubbing my eyes.

"Turn it off!" He said, bringing his face out of the pillow. I laughed as Nina hit the off button on that wretched piece of machinery.

"Ugh, why did we let Amber talk us into this? I'm dead tired." Patricia whined from across the room. The blonde was quick to defend herself.

"Hey! You didn't HAVE to come!"

"What was I supposed to do?! Sit around all by myself while everyone else was up here having the time of their lives?!"

"Ugh... Shut uuuup Yacker!" Eddie groaned, rolling over in his sleeping bag. Patricia rolled her eyes.

"Whatever," she said as she stood up. "I'm going to change out of this disgusting thing!" she signaled to the dress that she was still wearing due to Amber's dare. I guessed the Anubis house residents aren't so sweet in the morning. Even Mara looked like she could rip someone's head off. I giggled as everybody filed out of the room like a herd of parading zombies. I yawned and got out of bed, stretching my arms as I did so. I was suddenly very grateful that Amber had hosted her party in our room, being that that way I could sleep in my own bed rather than in a sleeping bag on the floor. I probably slept better than most of us, especially since I didn't have any nightmares, which was nice.

I wandered over to my wardrobe and opened it up, pulling out my uniform. I decided that today I would be a little different and wear dark red tights under my skirt with a pair of 3 inch black heels. I walked over to the mirror and examined my reflection.

"Rebellious yet responsible." I stated to myself. I started to do a 360 degree turn, but I stopped when I spotted someone in the doorway. "Jerome! Hey! What are you doing here?!" I asked catching my breath from the scare he gave me. He quirked an eyebrow at me and his eyes moved to my red tights. "I'm trying something new, okay?" I defended, crossing my arms while a blush slowly rose into my cheeks. "What do you want?" I asked again.

"I actually came in looking for Nina" he said. I tilted my head and gave him a confused look. He chuckled and put his hand over his right eye. "Sibuna stuff." he stated.

"Ooooh..." I breathed. "Wait, you're not part of Sibuna!" I accused. He just shrugged.

"Eh, it's on and off. Sometimes I am, sometimes I'm not. I choose not to involve myself with it too much. But I really do need to talk to Nina about something."

"What is it?" I asked. His face dropped from playful to serious.

"It's um... It's nothing, no big deal. But anyway, you should go grab some breakfast before meathead eats it all." He said, slipping out of the room causing me to roll my eyes. Sometimes, Jerome just weirded me out.

"Thanks." I muttered, following him out of the room.

Breakfast was nothing exciting, except for Amber's comments on my clothes (Omg! You look so good! And proper footwear this time!), and the walk to school was probably no more interesting than breakfast. I walked with Mick across the grounds on our five minute walk to the main building. We filed into the history room where we listened to Mr. Winkler ramble on about the legend of Cleopatra's tomb. Normally I would have been intensely fascinated, but being that I already knew all there was to know about it, and also due to the fact that I was pretty tired from last night, I mostly just leaned on Mick's shoulder and stared at the clock for the whole period. I did the same in my chemistry class with Mr. Sweet, my literature class with Miss Valentine, and Math with a substitute teacher whose name I didn't care to remember. Unfortunately, we had to do a cross country run in gym. Normally I'd be all for it, but as the day dragged on I just got more and more tired which made running sound very unappealing. Finally, it was drama, the last class of the day (praise the lord). We were working on our projects that Jason had assigned yesterday. I was in my group with Mick, Amber, Alfie, and Joy. We had split amongst ourselves, Mara and Joy studying the script, Alfie and Mick looking up themes on the internet, and Amber and I choosing which song to do for our performance. Unfortunately, we only had a couple days to complete the project, so we were working as quickly and conveniently as possible.

"Can we do this one?" Amber asked, flipping to the song 'Movie in my Mind' in our song book.

"I don't know," I replied, taking the book from her and examining the music. "The key's pretty high for a guy. Mick and Alfie would have trouble singing it."

"Okay," she said, flipping through some more pages. "How about this one? It's one of the ones you mentioned before." I looked at the book where she was pointing to 'Now that I've seen her'.

"That's a female solo, so it wouldn't really work." Amber huffed and turned back to the book again. I turned around to check on the rest of the group and ended up catching Mick staring at me. I smiled, causing him to blush from being caught.

"How's it coming?" I asked, moving over to sit beside him, looking down at the small tablet he was researching on.

"I don't know..." He sighed. "I don't want to plagiarize, but all I can come up with on my own is 'don't knock up a prostitute during a war or she'll kill herself' which, something tells me, is not what Mr. Winkler is looking for." I laughed.

"I'm sure you'll think of something."

"Hey Mick, Alfie," Joy said from our left. "I think I've found a quote in here that'll help with the theme."

"Great! Let me see!" He hopped up and ran over to Joy, so I made my way back over to Amber, who was still focusing on finding a good song in the book.

"Ugh, do you have any ideas?" She asked as I approached her.

"I think our best bet is gonna be either 'Heat is On in Saigon' or 'Sun and Moon'." Amber flipped to the first song and looked over it.

"I like it," she expressed slowly. "It looks like fun." She smiled at me as we set to work labeling notes and finding a karaoke track for us.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-...

"That was so fun! I love drama!" Amber said to me as we grabbed our books and headed towards the door. "I thought this whole Musical Theatre thing was gonna get really crappy really fast, but it's actually really great!"

"Kara!" Mr. Winkler called, causing me to stop and turn around. "Could you stay behind a minute? I'd like a word with you."

"Um... Okay..." I turned to see Amber hesitating by the doorway deciding if she should wait for me or not. "It's okay Ambs, you go ahead, I'll catch up." I said. She nodded and walked off while I walked up to our teacher. "Yes?"

"I was wondering," he started. "You see, next month our school is having a Halloween dance. None of the students know about it yet, but I wanted to ask you a favour."

"Sure, I'd be glad to help!" I responded. He smiled.

"Great! I was wondering, we need some sort of a live performance, but our dance prep crew doesn't have a very good track record for booking entertainment. You seem to know a thing or two about performing arts and thought that maybe you could help me." I smiled.

"For sure Mr. Winkler! I'll think about it and get back to you on that, yeah?" I asked.

"Thank you very much," he said gratefully, returning my grin.

"You're welcome!" I responded before leaving the room, heading back down the hallway on my way back to the house. As I rounded the corner on the outside of the school, I received a blow to the back of my head and flew forward, falling to the ground with a thump. Frantically, and clutching the back of my head in an attempt to ease the pain, I spun around to see a man standing about four feet in front of me.

"What the hell?" I mumbled, reminding myself not to panic. The man advanced towards me and instinct told me to run, but as I tried to stand up, the man had reached me and threw me back down again. I gave a startled yelp as I fell to the ground once more, this time hitting my head on the brick pathway. I didn't have time to try and get up again because the man was already on top of me, pinning me down by the throat. I don't know what it was, being choked, fear, or maybe both combined, but tears started to fall from my eyes. "Who are you?! What do you want?!" I coughed out. The man only choked me harder. I gasped in a desperate attempt for air.

"Who I am is none of your concern," he hissed into my ear. "But I will tell you this, I want the lost treasures of Osiris' tomb, and you're going to help me get them!" He sounded so menacing, so cruel and evil, like a demon out of a nightmare.

"I don't know what you're talking about!" I choked out, pawing at his hands with my own.

"You will Kara Smythe, second cousin of Sarah Frobisher-Smythe! You are the Beloved! Born into the history of ancient Egypt and all its wonders! And you will agree to do as I say, or I. Will. Kill. You." he snarled. Sarah Frobisher-Smythe? Who is she? Could she be the same Sarah that Nina was telling Amber about the other day?

Shut up Kara, this is no time to be figuring things out. Man trying to kill you, remember?

"L-Look, whoever you are, I-I can't help you. I j-just got here and I d-don't know much about a-all the weird s-stuff around h-here." I wheezed.

"Then maybe you should ask your little friends!" he snapped, pressing tighter. I gasped for air.

"W-whatever business you have with my f-friends-"

"SILENCE!" He roared. I cringed. "I am through messing with those pathetic teenagers! All they've done is get in my way! It could have been mine, it could have all been mine, the cup, the mask, eternal life, everything!" Suddenly, realization hit me and I remembered back to when Nina told me about all the mysteries.

"Y-you're Rufus Zeno. You're s-supposed to be-"

"Dead?" he finished. He laughed before continuing. "Not quite. I'm here and this time," he got off of me and yanked me up by my hair causing me to cry out in pain. "I'm not making the mistake of sparing you puny children." He raised a fist and was about to hit me when I suddenly remembered my self defense lessons and kicked him in the groin. He dropped me and I fell to the ground with a thud. I quickly hopped up, grabbed my bag and started running. I gingerly touched the back of my head and when i brought my hand back it was covered in blood. Now that I was aware that I was bleeding, I could feel the warm sticky liquid oozing down my neck. Shoving my injury to the back of my mind, I ran as fast as I could, but it still wasn't enough. Rufus recovered from my attack and caught me from behind. I screamed as loud as my tired lungs would let me as he dragged me back towards the trees. I flailed wildly, trying to get free, but it was no use. In one final attempt at protecting myself, I bit down hard on the arm around my neck, causing him to cry out. The last thing I remembered was his enraged yell and a sudden mind numbing pain in my back before everything went black.

Jerome

"Psst, Nina!" I called. I was hiding behind a tree on the outskirts of the forest near the path to Anubis house.

"Jerome?" Nina asked, somewhat surprised. "What do you want? And why are you behind a tree?" she stepped off the path and over to me.

"I needed to talk to you in private."

"So you hid behind a tree and waited for me to walk by?"

"Yes, now listen!" she quickly shut up, intent on what I had to say- probably curious as to why I was even talking to her. "This morning I was outside setting up for the most glorious prank-"

"Get on with it Jerome." she said. I huffed but continued.

"Anyways, I was outside and I felt like I was being watched. Don't ask, I can't explain it, I just did. So I turned around and I saw somebody observing me from behind the fence. And the reason I wanted to talk to you was because, well, I know that somebody. We all do." She looked at me, confusion present on her face. I sighed and ran my hand through my hair. "Rufus Nina, it was Rufus." her eyes widened and she gasped.

"No way! He went to hell! We saw it! He- he's, no way! You must have been imagining it!" she exclaimed.

"No Nina, I wasn't imagining it! My mind is not skilled enough to produce an image that real! He was there, alive and breathing!"

"No... No he can't be..."

Nina

No. This wasn't possible. Rufus was dead! We saw him plunge into hell with Senkhara! Did that mean she was back too?!

"Jerome. Are you one hundred percent sure it was Rufus?" I asked, hoping he would say no. He didn't.

"Yes! It was him Nina!" he assured me. I took a deep breath.

"Then I guess we'd better be extra careful. We don't want anything to happen to-" but I never got to finish as I was cut off by a bloodcurdling scream coming from the direction of the school. I looked at Jerome, horrified. I could identify that scream anywhere as it was the one that had scared me half to death in the common room only two days ago.

"Oh my god," I whispered. "Kara!"