The Phredde Collection (63 page)

Maybe I’d only boil Phredde in raspberry cordial…

PING! PING! PING! I looked down again. There was a notebook and a pen on the ground, and a plate with
two banana and cream-cheese muffins. I decided not to boil Phredde at all.

‘Hey, how about me?’ complained Bruce.

‘What do you mean?’ I mumbled, my teeth already around one of the muffins.

‘You don’t expect me to eat those do you?’ Bruce nodded at my muffins.

‘Dey’r goob.’

‘Huh,’ said Bruce. He sighed. ‘Maybe I’ll find some flies somewhere along the way. Or maybe a cockroach or a few caterpillars or some moths, you know, the crunchy brown sort.’

Well, all this talk of eating insects was putting me off my muffins, so I said, ‘Shut up, Bruce,’ and squished the second muffin into my pocket (a squashed muffin tastes just as good as an unsquashed one). I picked up the notebook and pen and shone the torch around again. ‘Which way should we go?’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Bruce.

‘Well, the sooner we get this place mapped, the sooner we can get out of here,’ I pointed out. ‘So which way? Left or right?’

‘Left,’ decided Bruce.

So off I went, torch in hand, with Bruce hopping just behind me.

You know something? Pyramids are boring. Well, most bits of them are anyway.

We walked along the corridor (well, I walked and Bruce hopped). It wasn’t what you’d call interesting.

The corridor went straight for a while, then it started to slope down…and then the slope got steeper and steeper, and slimier and slipperier. It was alright for Bruce
with his sticky feet, but I was afraid my feet were going to fly out from under me and I’d end up bum-down in 5000-year-old slime.

Down, down, down.

‘Hey, are you making notes?’ demanded Bruce.

‘What am I supposed to be writing?’ I retorted. ‘One corridor. Straight. Slopes down. I mean, who needs to make a note of…’

Suddenly the corridor shrank. One minute the ceiling was stretched way above our heads. The next, we were faced with a small, waist-high hole in a dirty black wall. (Well, waist-high for me—Bruce had to crane his neck to see in it.)

‘Hey, look, you can see ancient chisel marks in the stone!’ announced Bruce.

‘Well, whooppee,’ I said. ‘What do we do now? Go back the other way?’

Bruce shook his head. ‘I bet this hole is the mouth of a tunnel, and that the tunnel leads somewhere. I bet the builders were just trying to make it difficult for thieves. They used to put lots of treasure and stuff in pyramids. And mummies, of course.’

‘Mummies?’ I asked.

Bruce sighed. ‘Weren’t you listening to Mrs Olsen?’

‘Of course I was,’ I said. Then my conscience got the better of me. ‘Well, actually I wasn’t,’ I admitted. ‘But you weren’t listening either! You were catching flies!’

‘I can catch flies and listen,’ said Bruce loftily. ‘It’s a talent we frogs have. Anyway, as Mrs Olsen said, if you were listening, the mummies were the dead bodies of the pharaohs and queens of Egypt.’

‘Yuk,’ I said.

‘They took out the heart and liver and stuff like that and pulled the brain out through the nose with hooks—’

‘Hey, double yuk!’ Now, I was really glad I hadn’t listened.

‘And then they filled the bodies up with herbs and stuff to preserve them so that the bodies’d last forever, and then they wrapped them in bandages, and put them in great big coffin-type things with lots of treasure around them.’

‘Oh, great,’ I said. ‘I suppose they put booby traps in, too, like in that movie we saw, and any minute now, we’re going to fall into a pit of poisonous spiders or a skeleton holding a great long knife is going to fall from the ceiling onto us or…’ I tried to think what else had been in that movie.

‘I don’t think they used booby traps,’ said Bruce cautiously. ‘Anyway, Mrs Olsen didn’t say they did.’

‘Teachers always leave out the interesting bits,’ I said gloomily. ‘If we fall into a pit filled with poisonous spiders, it’ll be all her fault.’

‘I think it’ll be all Phredde’s fault,’ said Bruce.

‘You leave Phredde out of this,’ I said. ‘She’s my best friend.’ Actually, I sort of felt that it was Phredde’s fault too, but a whole pit filled with venomous spiders and girl-eating snakes couldn’t have made me say so to Bruce. ‘And anyway, you could have done your project with Amelia and Shirlee and be in the boring old library right now!’

Bruce ignored me. ‘Well, I’m going in,’ he said, and disappeared.

I hesitated. It was okay for him. It was a good-sized tunnel for a frog. But if you happened to be girl-size, like me…

I squatted down. The tunnel didn’t look so bad from that angle. I began to inch my way inside, still squatting. The ceiling loomed wet—and close—above me in the torchlight.

‘Hey, Pru!’ said Bruce. ‘Come and look at this!’

I duck-footed my way forward and suddenly the ceiling rose again. I stood up. ‘Hey, wow!’

We were in a room as big as our assembly hall at school, or even bigger. It was hard to see the walls in the torchlight, firstly because they were so far away, and secondly because they were all crammed with…

‘Treasure!’ breathed Bruce.

‘Oh, wow!’ I said. There were sheets of gold; gold chairs with legs made out of golden lions; couches with legs made to look like golden palm trees; tables with legs of golden leaves and, well, you get the general idea. And it was all heaped higgledy-piggledy, like someone had just shoved it all in and then fled.

‘Look!’ said Bruce softly, pointing with one moist foot-pad.

I followed his gaze. There was another passage, about as tall as I am, or maybe a bit taller, and not much wider then me either.

‘Let’s go!’ breathed Bruce.

‘Er…’ I said. But Bruce was already hopping across the room, so I followed him, picking my way through the golden furniture.

Bruce was waiting for me at the entrance. ‘Better shine the torch up first,’ he instructed.

‘In case there’s a poisonous spider pit?’

‘No, dummy. In case the ceiling gets lower and you hit your head.’

‘Oh right,’ I said. I shone the torch up the passageway. ‘It looks okay. All I can really see are stairs going upwards.’

‘Off we go then,’ declared Bruce, and he hopped inside.

I followed more slowly, trying to keep the torchlight steady. My hand was shaking a bit, to be honest. I mean, you try sneaking around a dark, slimy pyramid with just a frog for company—even with a frog like Bruce. It wasn’t all that easy.

Up the stairs: one…two…three…four…They were steeper and broader than the stairs in our castle at home—I could almost take two steps before I got to the next one.

Twenty-six…twenty-seven…twenty-eight—my legs began to ache—fifty-three…fifty-four…fifty-five…

‘Hurry up!’ yelled Bruce.

It was alright for him, I thought. Frogs can hop. Seventy-two…seventy-three…

I rested my back against the slimy wall and tried to catch my breath…eighty-one…eighty-two…‘Made it!’ I puffed. Then I held my breath.

We were in a small room, no bigger than my room at home. The walls were white and smooth, as though the room had been carved out of the centre of some pure-white jewel.

The floor was white as well, and bare, except for a tangle of tall, gold rods that looked like they’d once held up a canopy or tent, but now the fabric was rotted and hanging in threads from some of the rods. A gold plate and cup, a small gold basin and jug, and little golden boxes filled with who knows what sat on a small, gold table.

Whoever built that room had obviously never thought of nice, convenient plastic or fibreglass. I bet gold isn’t even microwave-proof or dishwasher-safe.

There was one other thing in that room too. It was taller than me, and much wider. It seemed to be made of gold as well, but when I shone the torch on it, I could see that the gold was just the trimming. It was really made of dark, rich wood, just like Mrs Olsen’s…

‘Coffin!’ I breathed.

‘I think it’s called a sarcophagus,’ whispered Bruce.

‘I don’t care what it’s called!’ I whispered back. ‘Let’s get out of here!’

‘Why?’ argued Bruce. ‘There’s nothing to be scared of. It’s five thousand years old! Nothing’s going to…’

The sarcophagus began to move. Slowly, the lid began to open…

Creak…

We stood there, frozen to the hard white floor.

Creak, creak…

You need to run, I told my feet. Come on! Run!

My feet refused to budge.

Creak, creak, creak…

There was something inside the sarcophagus. Something that was about the size of a grown-up, but it was all wrapped up, so it looked even bigger. It was white, just like the walls, but the walls were made of hard white stone. This looked softer, like…like…like…bandages.

The mummy took a shuffling step towards us and then another…

‘Run!’ I shrieked, and this time my feet did what they were told. In fact, they did even better than they
were told. In three great bounds, I was out of the room, with Bruce leaping close behind me.

Zooooommmm
went my feet down the stairs;
thud, thud, crash, bang, whoooosh,
across the great big room below.

‘Bruce, are you still there?’ I yelled.

‘Don’t worry!’ croaked Bruce. ‘I’m right behind you!’

This time, I didn’t bother squatting to go through the low passage—I went down on my stomach, wriggling like one of the poisonous snakes in the snake pit we hadn’t fallen into (yet, I told myself).

Wriggle, wriggle, wriggle, wriggle. I flopped out the end of the passage and fled down the corridor, with Bruce plip plopping at my heels…

The light wavered and bobbed in front of us as the torch shook in my hand. Faster, faster, faster…Suddenly, I stopped.

‘Bruce!’ I panted.

‘What?’

‘I don’t remember the corridor having a fork in it!’

‘Neither do I!’ croaked Bruce. ‘We must have missed it in the dark. Which way should we go?’

‘Left…er, right…er, maybe we should go back and retrace our steps.’

‘Do you really want to go back again?’

‘No!’I gasped. ‘Come on! Left!’

We went down the corridor, around a corner, and suddenly there was a fork—with another two passages.

‘Take the left one!’ I screamed. We panted on…

Thud, thud, thud went my feet; plop, plop, plop went Bruce’s footpads; huff, huff, huff went our breath.

‘I’m beat,’ I confessed. ‘Surely we’ve left it behind now!’

‘Shhh,’ said Bruce.

I shushed.

Silence, apart from the thump of my heartbeat. The pyramid walls disappeared into the darkness around us. Slime dripped slowly from the ceiling. Plop! Plop! Plop! A drop hit my nose, then dribbled down my chin.

‘Turn off the torch!’ Bruce whispered urgently.

‘But—’ I began.

‘Quickly! It might see the light!’ hissed Bruce.

I clicked the switch on the torch to off. Darkness swallowed us, thick and evil-smelling.

I stood there panting, frozen with terror.

‘Do you think it knows where we are?’ I asked, very quietly.

‘I don’t think so,’ whispered Bruce. ‘I think we outran it. Now all we have to do is—’

And then I heard it…

Clomp. Clomp. Clomp…

‘It knows where we are!’ I hissed.

‘Shhh,’ breathed Bruce. ‘Maybe it’ll turn down another passage!’

Clomp. Clomp. Clomp.

It was coming closer, closer, closer…

‘It’s nearly here!’ I squeaked.

‘Maybe, if we keep really still in the darkness, it’ll miss us,’ whispered Bruce hopefully.

Clomp, clomp, clomp.
It was nearer now. Much nearer.

‘I think we should keep running!’ I hissed.

‘But if we run it’ll hear us…’

Clomp, clomp, clomp.

Too late! Suddenly, a light flared. The mummy’s face leapt out of the shadows towards us, all dirty bandages and staring eyes.

‘Found you!’ it shrieked triumphantly.

It lifted up one heavily bandaged arm and said, ‘Excuse me for bothering you, but I don’t suppose either one of you has a Band-aid?’

‘Erp,’ I said. Bruce just sat there with his mouth open and his tongue hanging out, and there weren’t even any flies around for him to catch.

‘A Band-aid,’ repeated the mummy politely. ‘You know, one of those sticky things. They’re such a marvellous invention. If only we’d had them five thousand years ago, life would have been so much easier. Death too,’ it added, after a bit of thought.

‘Erp. Wait a second,’ I said, as my brain came back together again. ‘I’ll have a look.’ I rummaged in my pocket for a minute. Handkerchief (Mum always checks I have one), bus pass, ticket stub from the movie I saw last Saturday, something I think used to be a plastic-wrapped lollie…and a Band-aid.

I held it up triumphantly. ‘I knew I had one in there somewhere. I had a blister on my heel last weekend,’ I explained to Bruce. ‘Mum made me take a Band-aid—just in case.’

The bandaged arm descended and plucked the Band-aid out of my hand. ‘Wonderful!’ (I think it must have been at least 5000 years since that mummy cleaned its teeth. I mean, pong!) ‘Just what I need.’

The bandaged hands fumbled for a moment and then the mummy said politely, ‘Excuse me, I don’t suppose one of you could lend me a hand would you? Preferably two hands. These things are so hard to manage…’

I glanced at Bruce but he’d be no use. Frogs have pads not hands, and small round discs rather than nimble fingers.

‘I’d be glad to help,’ I said insincerely. (Mum would have been proud of my good manners. Not that she’s ever actually said ‘Always help a mummy in distress,’ mind you. But you get the general idea.)

The mummy handed the Band-aid back. ‘It’s this bit here,’ it said, pointing to a loose bandage. ‘You know how these things are. One bit comes loose, and the next thing you know, the whole lot’s around your ankles.’

‘Well, not really,’ I admitted. ‘I’m not really into bandages.’ I peeled the wrapping off the Band-aid and forced myself closer. I took a suspicious sniff, but there wasn’t any dead-person smell. It was more like spices and lavender and old dust, plus a bit of tooth decay…

The mummy considered. ‘I suppose not,’ it said at last. ‘You’re much too young to be interested in bandages yet.’