The Mummy (29 page)

Then the whirling funnel began to dissipate, and suddenly O’Connell couldn’t discern anything below, just a haze of floating sand.

“Go closer, Havlock!” O’Connell said. “I want a better look!”

“Righto!”

What O’Connell couldn’t see from that height was the sand slowing to a stop, like a carousel nearing the end of its ride; and he also did not see two riders on that slackening carousel getting tossed rudely out and onto the waiting pillow of a dune.

Evelyn and Beni picked themselves up slowly, shaking sand out of their hair.

“What . . . what happened?” Evelyn asked groggily, dusting sand off her black dress.

Beni dug some grains out of one ear. “I don’t remember . . . Sand began swirling around us . . .”

Evelyn pointed. “You mean like that?”

And just at the bottom of the dune, the swirling particles seemed to be condensing, shaping themselves, fashioning a statue of sand . . .

. . . a statue of Imhotep.

Beni clutched his various religious icons, gathered on a chain at his neck, and prayed in several languages. Evelyn, fascinated, watched as the sand seemed to transform, colors and textures appearing to shift and then hold, until finally He Who Shall Not Be Named stood before them: a dark, handsome man, shaved head gleaming, eyes gleaming, lordly in a black robe that left much of his hairless, muscular chest exposed.

“Oh my God,” Evelyn said, though she wasn’t referring to the admittedly impressive sight of Imhotep, as he walked up the slope of the dune toward her. She had just noticed the shape of a familiar landmark: the volcano that marked the entrance to the valley of the City of the Dead.

She looked at Beni. “We’re back.”

Beni shrugged. “The boss has plans for you, lady.”

That was when the biplane swooped in for a closer look, its throbbing engine announcing its presence.

Evelyn looked up and beamed at the battered plane, knowing it was Rick—it
had
to be Rick!

Beni knew it, too, but he was smirking, shaking his head, muttering, “Doesn’t that guy know when he’s had enough?”

But Imhotep was taking it far worse than his servant: He scowled at the sky, and the handsome face turned grotesque, jaw unhinging to allow the mummy’s mouth to again open wider than humanly possible, to emit a hideous shriek, a battle cry that rallied the sands themselves to his cause, a sheet of sand rising from the desert, millions of particles flying upward, into the path of the dipping biplane.

Evelyn ran toward Imhotep, who stood like a demented, self-satisfied genie, hands on hips, grinning up at his evil handiwork.

“No! You’ll kill them!” she called. “Stop it!”

The mummy didn’t acknowledge her with even a glance.

Then she said the same thing—in ancient Egyptian.

And now Imhotep cast his gaze upon her, as she stood just a few feet from him, chin defiantly high, wind whipping her dress, and her hair.

“That is the object of the lesson,” Imhotep told her, in the same tongue.

In the biplane, O’Connell—who had witnessed the fantastic sight of the desert virtually coming alive and rising up toward the biplane—was holding on for dear life. Havlock had thrown the throttle back, sending the plane into a steep dive, crying, “Hold on, men!”

Jonathan’s reply was nonverbal—a scream interrupted only by the occasional intake of breath, before continuing on.

Ardeth Bay was screaming, too, but he seemed to be forming words, which were either more prayers or Arabic obscenities.

The biplane seemed to be heading straight into the dead funnel of the Hamanaptra volcano; then Havlock began a climb just as steep as his dive had been, swooping down into the valley beyond, as the sands swept into and buried the enormous volcano.

“Havlock!” O’Connell cried. “You are one hell of a pilot! You just faked out a sandstorm!”

“That’s a first for me, lad!” Havlock yelled giddily.

But the wall of sand was arising, reshaping itself after its crash into the volcano, and chasing them; incredibly the sands seemed to be gathering into an image straight out of hell!

O’Connell was staring into a giant face formed in the cloud of sand—the face of Imhotep!

O’Connell, sitting in the gunner’s position after all, latched on to the Lewis machine gun, cocked the bracket, and blasted away at the looming visage, which seemed to laugh as the bullets passed harmlessly through, a wide laughing mouth which seemed about to envelope the plane, as if to gulp it down, a little snack for the huge orifice . . .

And then it did.

“Stop!” Evelyn screamed in English, seeing the plane swallowed into the cloud of sand. Then she repeated her appeal in ancient Egyptian.

But Imhotep seemed not to hear her, now; his eyes were almost closed, his brow tight as he gazed into the sand-obscured sky. He was lifting his arms, hands clenching and unclenching, as if the grains of sand were his orchestra and he their conductor.

Within the storm, the biplane was spiraling toward the earth, sucked downward in a whirlpool of sand, engine roar drowned out by the howling wind, over which the only thing that could be heard was the joint scream of terror from the men strapped onto the wings of the biplane. O’Connell, bracing himself for impact, thought he heard something else, from the pilot whose seat was back-to-back with his: laughter.

“Here I come, lads!” Havlock was yelling with maniacal glee. “Hold a place at the bar for Winston Havlock!”

Perhaps, O’Connell thought grimly, holding on to the sides of the plane, flying with a suicidal pilot had been less than an inspired idea . . .

Pacing the desert floor, Evelyn, chest choked with despair, watched the wall of sand in the sky, knowing her friends were caught within, drowning in that dry sea . . .

Whirling toward Imhotep, to curse him, she froze: The sight of him, standing there lost,
locked,
in concentration, told her what she must do.

She strode up to the handsome, unwrapped mummy and grabbed him by the arms and pulled him to her. She licked her lips and hooded her eyes and said, in ancient Egyptian, “I have been waiting for you, all these thousands of years, my love. What kept you?”

And she kissed him full on the lips.

Imhotep drew away, surprised; but as he gazed into Evelyn’s face, his eyes softened and surprise turned to lust as he kissed her, deeply, hungrily . . .

. . . unaware that the wall of sand was collapsing from the sky, falling like a sheet of arid rain. The biplane—still spinning—emerged into a clear sky, and dropped down over a towering dune, into the Hamanaptra valley.

A blast of sand blew into the air—not Imhotep’s work, but that of the biplane skidding to a stop. The sound of the crash landing alerted Imhotep to what had happened, woke him from his lustful reveries, told him that he had been tricked into breaking his concentration, and used by this twentieth-century wench, who—sneering at him—was pushing herself out of his arms, contemptuously, spitting disgustedly into the sand in rejection of his kiss.

Imhotep bellowed his rage as he backhanded her, knocking the woman to the sand; but she just sat up, sneering at him defiantly, wiping the blood from the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand.

Though the sand had slowed and softened the biplane’s landing, it had flipped over and, like a bug on its back, skidded up atop a dune, in which the plane’s nose burrowed.

O’Connell dropped out of the gunner’s seat, onto the sand, hauling down his gunnysack, and leaned against the upside-down plane, catching his wind.

“Would I be imposing, terribly,” a voice reasonably posed, “if I were to ask you to provide just a little help—
if it’s not too much bloody trouble!”

O’Connell glanced at Jonathan, looking at him with wide eyes from under the wing where he was still strapped on.

“A moment, Jonathan . . .”

“A moment!”

“I have to check Havlock . . . This plane is precariously perched—feels like it could slide down that dune, nose under the sand, and I have to get him out of that cockpit!”

But when he went to check, O’Connell found Havlock slumped at the stick with a foolish smile under the walrus mustache, his neck broken—snapped on impact, apparently.

The biplane, however, was moving, or rather the sands under the plane were—caused by nature, not Imhotep, but dangerous nonetheless—and O’Connell quickly untied Jonathan. Ardeth Bay had managed to get his hands onto his scimitar and was able to cut himself free. The warrior took it upon himself to unfasten the Lewis machine gun from its mount, throwing the cartridge belt over his shoulder and hauling his prize away. Helping Jonathan, whose head was still reeling, O’Connell followed Ardeth Bay toward an outcropping of rocks.

The sand beneath their feet was shifting again, sinking under their feet, and the plane was moving, sliding down the slope of the dune, nose first.

They made it to the rocks, the ground solid enough to risk pausing, and from this vantage point they could see the biplane sliding down the dune and into a vortex of sand that sucked the ship and its brave pilot into an unmarked grave.

O’Connell took a deep breath, threw Havlock a quick salute, and nodded toward the ruins that lay sprawled across the desert before them.

The City of Dead had already claimed Winston Havlock; now, as they trudged toward Hamanaptra, they knew all too well who its next three permanent residents were likely to be.

 
20
 

Too Many Mummies

U
nder the blistering morning sun, the ruins of Hamanaptra lay scattered like a child’s discarded building blocks. The lonely welcoming committee of stray, abandoned camels, subsisting on desert brush, still awaiting their dead masters, met O’Connell and his two companions at the periphery of the City of the Dead, the animals eyeing the newcomers hopefully.

No sign of the captive Evelyn, the monster Imhotep, or his sycophant Beni.

Somehow O’Connell knew that the mummy had beaten them here, that He Who Shall Not Be Named was already underground, preparing to raise his lover from the dead, at the expense of an innocent girl’s life.

It was as if they had left this site hours ago, not days—the ropes still dangled into the crevice near the open shrine with the half-buried statue of Anubis. From his gunnysack, O’Connell removed several torches, their nubs presoaked with kerosene, kept one, and passed the others to Jonathan and Ardeth Bay, who was lugging the heavy Lewis machine gun.

Before they descended into the darkness, however, O’Connell—using a compass—walked the ruins, according to the directions the late curator had given them:
“The statue of Horus should be located fifty kadams west of the Anubis statue.”
At the base of the Horus statue should be a secret compartment with the gold
Book of Amun Ra,
which could banish Imhotep and save Evelyn . . .

“All right,” O’Connell said, standing on a small sand dune, under which—presumably—was the statue they sought. “Now we know the direction we have to head in.”

And they dropped down into the embalming chamber—Jonathan’s “mummy factory”—and, with O’Connell leading the way, lighted torch in hand, watching his compass, they began their underground trek through tunnels and caverns and chambers, toward the statue of Horus.

“Can you read from this gold book,” O’Connell asked Jonathan, the group ducking low in a narrow passageway painted orange by their torches, “if we find it? Your sister may not be in any condition to.”

“I’ve had some training,” Jonathan said stiffly.

“Answer my question.”

“I can definitely . . . possibly . . . read it.”

“You can read ancient Egyptian.”

“Yes . . . Enough to order off the menu, anyway.”

O’Connell winced; the fate of the woman he loved depended on the skills of her simp of a brother. It was enough to make him long for another ride with Winston Havlock. Then again, maybe they’d all be meeting up with Winston soon enough . . .

Before long they were making their way down a winding narrow staircase, cut right into the face of the rock, heading into the dark depths of the underground city, a stairway that seemed endless, as if it might extend into hell itself.