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The next day, Evelyn followed Rick and Jonathan back into the chamber where they had found the sarcophagus, although her enthusiasm was considerably dampened from the day before. Not just from the death of the warden, not just from the attack on the camp or the way the Americans' diggers had been melted … but from the pounding in her head after consuming half a bottle of Scotch—and the nagging faint memory that she might have kissed Rick O'Connell the night before and hadn't been sober enough to enjoy it.
For his part, O'Connell kept looking at her. Sometimes with a smirk, as though he had found her drunkenness quite amusing, and sometimes with puzzlement, as though he couldn't quite understand her—and sometimes with a warmth in his eyes that suggested he might want to kiss her again.
Altogether, it was confusing and frustrating and a little bit exciting.
And then she was standing in front of the sarcophagus and remembering that this was the reason she was here, and they were about to be the first ones to open a coffin that had been sealed for thousands of years, and her spirits rose again. "Oh, I've been dreaming about this ever since I was a little girl!"
"You dream about dead guys?"
Evelyn ignored him, studying the sarcophagus as Jonathan removed the key from his pocket and opened it. "Oh, look. The sacred spells have been chiseled off. This man must have been condemned not only in this life but in the next."
"Tough break," O'Connell remarked.
Jonathan fit the key in the lock and turned it, putting some effort behind it. "Yeah, I'm all tears. Now, let's see who's inside, shall we?"
It took both his effort and O'Connell's to remove the lid of the sarcophagus, and when they did, a skeleton popped out, grinning widely into O'Connell's face. Evelyn screamed with the suddenness of it, putting her hands over her head and turning away. "God, I hate it when these things do that!" she snapped once she had recovered her self-possession.
"Is he supposed to look like that?" O'Connell asked.
"No, I've never seen a mummy look like that before," Evelyn said slowly, studying it. "He's still—still—"
"Juicy." Jonathan and O'Connell spoke at the same time.
"Yes. He must be more than three thousand years old, and, and, well, it looks as if he's still … decomposing."
O'Connell's attention had been caught by something in the lid of the sarcophagus, which had fallen unheeded to the floor. "Hey. Look at that. What do you make of this?"
He knelt next to the lid, pointing at scratches marked on it. Scratches that had been made by human hands.
"My God," Evelyn breathed, kneeling for a better look. "These marks were made with … fingernails. This man was buried alive." She traced a set with her own. How much agony must the man have been in to dig this deeply? How long must he have survived? Looking back at the lid, she saw that some of the marks weren't just scratches made in desperation. He'd retained the presence of mind to write his thoughts. "And he left a message: 'Death is only the beginning'."
As one, the three of them turned to look at the corpse. What kind of a man was he, to have been able to communicate across the centuries from inside a locked sarcophagus? Highly impressive, in Evelyn's view.
Later, once they had finished their exploration of the sarcophagus and its surroundings for the day, Evelyn walked through the camp with a handful of scarab fossils she had found inside with the skeleton. She passed the tent where the Egyptologist sat, pausing to watch him struggle with something in his hands. A book of some kind. A black book.
Evelyn's eyes widened. Could it be? Had those dreadful Americans and their pompous Egyptologist found the Book of the Dead? And he couldn't open it. She looked back, recognizing the by-now-familiar shape of the artifact that had started all of this. "I believe you need a key to open that book," she said mildly. And then she walked off, turning over in her mind all the ways she might get her hands on that book.
Rick was cleaning his rifle—after last night, you couldn't be too careful—when the Americans came to his fire.
Henderson shook a carved ivory jar at him. "Say, O'Connell, what do you think these babies'll fetch back home?"
Burns grinned, sitting down across from Rick. "We heard you boys found yourselves a nice gooey mummy. Well, congratulations."
His casual dismissal of Evelyn's part in the discovery infuriated Rick, but he held himself still and didn't let his reaction show.
"If you dry that fella out, you might be able to sell him for firewood." They all seemed to find Daniels' remark very funny. Rick gave them a fake laugh.
"Look what I found!" It was Evelyn's voice, approaching from the darkness of the rest of the camp.
"You're in her seat," Rick told Beni, who laughed as though he wasn't serious. So he snapped, "Now," just to prove that he was, and this time Beni moved.
"Scarab skeletons. Flesh eaters." Evelyn showed them the ones in her hands. "I found them inside our friend's coffin. They can stay alive for years feasting on the flesh of a corpse. Unfortunately for our friend, he was still alive when they started eating him."
Rick and Jonathan each reached for one of the scarabs. It felt like stone. "So somebody threw these in with our guy, and then they slowly ate him alive?"
"Very slowly."
"He certainly wasn't a popular fellow when they planted him, was he?"
Rick grinned. "He probably got a little too frisky with the pharaoh's daughter."
Evelyn laughed at that. "Well, according to my readings, our friend suffered the Hom-Dai, the worst of all ancient Egyptian curses, one reserved only for the most evil of blasphemers. In all of my research, I've never heard of this curse actually being performed."
"That bad, huh?" Rick noticed all the Americans hanging eagerly on the story.
"Yes, well, they never used it because they feared it so. It's written that if a victim of the Hom-Dai should ever arise, he would bring with him the ten plagues of Egypt."
"Well, that's a great story," Burns said, getting to his feet, "but we've got some treasure hunting to get to tomorrow."
The other Americans rose with him, saying similar things, but to Rick they seemed a little shaky, like maybe they believed in the story of the curse more than they let on. She was smiling, not taking this seriously at all, but Rick didn't like it. He wished he could scoop her up and get her the hell out of Hamunaptra.
Across the fire, his eyes met Beni's, and for once they were in complete agreement—getting out of here alive was more valuable than any treasure.