05 - The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb (2 page)

“Stop pounding the couch like that,” Mom said. She grabbed my arm and pulled
me to my feet.

“Does that mean you changed your mind? You’re coming with us?” Dad asked.

I thought about it. “No. I’ll stay here with Uncle Ben,” I decided.

“And you won’t fight with Sari?” Mom asked.

“She fights with me,” I said.

“Your mom and I have got to hurry,” Dad said.

They disappeared into the bedroom to pack. I turned on the TV and watched
some kind of game show in Arabic. The contestants kept laughing a lot. I
couldn’t figure out why. I hardly know a word of Arabic.

After a while, Mom and Dad came out again, dragging suitcases. “We’ll never get to the airport in time,” Dad said.

“I talked to Ben,” Mom told me, brushing her hair with her hand. “He’ll be
here in an hour, hour and a half. Gabe, you don’t mind staying alone here for
just an hour, do you?”

“Huh?”

Not much of an answer, I’ll admit. But her question caught me by surprise.

I mean, it never occurred to me that my own parents would leave me all alone
in a big hotel in a strange city where I didn’t even know the language. I mean,
how could they do that to me?

“No problem,” I said. “I’ll be fine. I’ll just watch TV till he comes.”

“Ben’s on his way already,” Mom said. “He and Sari will be here in no time.
And I phoned down to the hotel manager. He said he’d have someone look in on you
from time to time.”

“Where’s the bellhop?” Dad asked, nervously pacing to the door and back. “I
called down there ten minutes ago.”

“Just stay here and wait for Ben, okay?” Mom said to me, walking up behind
the couch, leaning over, and squeezing my ears. For some reason, she thinks I
like that. “Don’t go out or anything. Just wait right here for him.” She bent
down and kissed me on the forehead.

“I won’t move,” I promised. “I’ll stay right here on the couch. I won’t go to the bathroom or anything.”

“Can’t you ever be serious?” Mom asked, shaking her head.

There was a loud knock on the door. The bellhop, a bent-over old man who
didn’t look as if he could pick up a feather pillow, had arrived to take the
bags.

Mom and Dad, looking very worried, gave me hugs and more final instructions,
and told me once again to stay in the room. The door closed behind them, and it
was suddenly very quiet.

Very quiet.

I turned up the TV just to make it a little noisier. The game show had gone
off, and now a man in a white suit was reading the news in Arabic.

“I’m not scared,” I said aloud. But I had kind of a tight feeling in my
throat.

I walked to the window and looked out. The sun was nearly down. The shadow of
the skyscraper slanted over the street and onto the hotel.

I picked up my Coke glass and took a sip. It was watery and flat. My stomach
growled. I suddenly realized that I was hungry.

Room service, I thought.

Then I decided I’d better not. What if I called and they only spoke Arabic?

I glanced at the clock. Seven-twenty. I wished Uncle Ben would arrive.

I wasn’t scared. I just wished he’d arrive.

Okay. Maybe I was a little nervous.

I paced back and forth for a bit. I tried playing
Tetris
on the Game
Boy, but I couldn’t concentrate, and the light wasn’t very good.

Sari is probably a champ at
Tetris,
I thought bitterly. Where
were
they? What was taking so long?

I began to have horrible, frightening thoughts: What if they can’t find the
hotel? What if they get mixed up and go to the wrong hotel?

What if they’re in a terrible car crash and die? And I’m all by myself in
Cairo for days and days?

I know. They were dumb thoughts. But they’re the kind of thoughts you have
when you’re alone in a strange place, waiting for someone to come.

I glanced down and realized I had taken the mummy hand out of my jeans
pocket.

It was small, the size of a child’s hand. A little hand wrapped in papery
brown gauze. I had bought it at a garage sale a few years ago, and I always
carried it around as a good luck charm.

The kid who sold it to me called it a “Summoner.” He said it was used to
summon evil spirits, or something. I didn’t care about that. I just thought it
was an outstanding bargain for two dollars. I mean, what a great thing to find
at a garage sale! And maybe it was even real.

I tossed it from hand to hand as I paced the length of the living room. The
TV was starting to make me nervous, so I clicked it off.

But now the quiet was making me nervous.

I slapped the mummy hand against my palm and kept pacing.

Where were they? They should’ve been here by now.

I was beginning to think that I’d made the wrong choice. Maybe I should’ve
gone to Alexandria with Mom and Dad.

Then I heard a noise at the door. Footsteps.

Was it them?

I stopped in the middle of the living room and listened, staring past the
narrow front hallway to the door.

The light was dim in the hallway, but I saw the doorknob turn.

That’s strange, I thought. Uncle Ben would knock first—wouldn’t he?

The doorknob turned. The door started to creak open.

“Hey—” I called out, but the word choked in my throat.

Uncle Ben would knock. He wouldn’t just barge in.

Slowly, slowly, the door squeaked open as I stared, frozen in the middle of
the room, unable to call out.

Standing in the doorway was a tall, shadowy figure.

I gasped as the figure lurched into the room, and I saw it clearly. Even in the dim light, I could see what it was.

A mummy.

Glaring at me with round, dark eyes through holes in its ancient, thick
bandages.

A mummy.

Pushing itself off the wall and staggering stiffly toward me into the living
room, its arms outstretched as if to grab me.

I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came out.

I took a step back, and then another. Without realizing it, I’d raised my
little mummy hand in the air, as if trying to fend off the intruder with it.

As the mummy staggered into the light, I stared into its deep, dark eyes.

And recognized them.

“Uncle Ben!” I screamed.

Angrily, I heaved the mummy hand at him. It hit his bandaged chest and
bounced off.

He collapsed backwards against the wall, laughing that booming laugh of his.

And then I saw Sari poking her head in the doorway. She was laughing, too.

They both thought it was hilarious. But my heart was pounding so hard, I
thought it was going to pop out of my chest.

“That wasn’t funny!” I shouted angrily, balling my hands into fists at my
sides. I took a deep breath, then another, trying to get my breathing to return to normal.

“I told you he’d be scared,” Sari said, walking into the room, a big,
superior grin on her face.

Uncle Ben was laughing so hard, he had tears running down his bandaged face.
He was a big man, tall and broad, and his laughter shook the room. “You weren’t
that scared—were you, Gabe?”

“I knew it was you,” I said, my heart still pounding as if it were a windup
toy someone had wound up too tight. “I recognized you right away.”

“You sure
looked
scared,” Sari insisted.

“I didn’t want to spoil the joke,” I replied, wondering if they could see how
terrified I really was.

“You should’ve seen the look on your face!” Uncle Ben cried, and started
laughing all over again.

“I told Daddy he shouldn’t do it,” Sari said, dropping down onto the couch.
“I’m amazed the hotel people let him come up dressed like that.”

Uncle Ben bent down and picked up the mummy hand I had tossed at him. “You’re
used to me and my practical jokes, right, Gabe?”

“Yeah,” I said, avoiding his eyes.

Secretly, I scolded myself for falling for his stupid costume. I was always
falling for his dumb jokes. Always. And, now, there was Sari grinning at me from
the couch, knowing I was so scared that I’d practically had a cow.

Uncle Ben pulled some of the bandages away from his face. He stepped over and
handed the little mummy hand back to me. “Where’d you get that?” he asked.

“Garage sale,” I told him.

I started to ask him if it was real, but he surrounded me in a big bear hug.
The gauze felt rough against my cheek. “Good to see you, Gabe,” he said softly.
“You’ve grown taller.”

“Almost as tall as me,” Sari chimed in.

Uncle Ben motioned to her. “Get up and help me pull this stuff off.”

“I kind of like the way you look in it,” Sari said.

“Get over here,” Uncle Ben insisted.

Sari got up with a sigh, tossing her straight black hair behind her
shoulders. She walked over to her dad and started unraveling the bandages.

“I got a little carried away with this mummy thing, Gabe,” Uncle Ben
admitted, resting his arm on my shoulder as Sari continued working. “But it’s
just because I’m so excited about what’s going on at the pyramid.”

“What’s going on?” I asked eagerly.

“Daddy’s discovered a whole new burial chamber,” Sari broke in before her dad
had a chance to tell me himself. “He’s exploring parts of the pyramid that have
been undiscovered for thousands of years.”

“Really?” I cried. “That’s outstanding!”

Uncle Ben chuckled. “Wait till you see it.”

“See it?” I wasn’t sure what he meant. “You mean you’re going to take me into
the pyramid?”

My voice was so high that only dogs could hear it. But I didn’t care. I
couldn’t believe my good luck. I was actually going inside the Great Pyramid,
into a section that hadn’t been discovered until now.

“I have no choice,” Uncle Ben said dryly. “What else am I going to do with
you two?”

“Are there mummies in there?” I asked. “Will we see actual mummies?”

“Do you miss your mummy?” Sari said, her lame idea of a joke.

I ignored her. “Is there treasure down there, Uncle Ben? Egyptian relics? Are
there wall paintings?”

“Let’s talk about it at dinner,” he said, tugging off the last of the
bandages. He was wearing a plaid sportshirt and baggy chinos under all the
gauze. “Come on. I’m starving.”

“Race you downstairs,” Sari said, and shoved me out of the way to give
herself a good head start out of the room.

We ate downstairs in the hotel restaurant. There were palm trees painted on
the walls, and miniature palm trees planted in big pots all around the
restaurant. Large wooden ceiling fans whirled slowly overhead.

The three of us sat in a large booth, Sari and I across from Uncle Ben. We studied the long menus. They were printed in Arabic
and English.

“Listen to this, Gabe,” Sari said, a smug smile on her face. She began to
read the Arabic words aloud.

What a show-off.

The white-suited waiter brought a basket of flat pita bread and a bowl of
green stuff to dip the bread in. I ordered a club sandwich and French fries.
Sari ordered a hamburger.

Later, as we ate our dinner, Uncle Ben explained a little more about what he
had discovered at the pyramid. “As you probably know,” he started, tearing off a
chunk of the flat bread, “the pyramid was built some time around 2500 B.C.,
during the reign of the Pharaoh Khufu.”

“Gesundheit,”
Sari said. Another lame joke.

Her father chuckled. I made a face at her.

“It was the biggest structure of its time,” Uncle Ben said. “Do you know how
wide the base of the pyramid is?”

Sari shook her head. “No. How wide?” she asked with a mouthful of hamburger.

“I know,” I said, grinning. “It’s thirteen acres wide.”

“Hey—that’s right!” Uncle Ben exclaimed, obviously impressed.

Sari flashed me a surprised look.

That’s one for me! I thought happily, sticking my tongue out at her.

And one for my dad’s guidebooks.

“The pyramid was built as a royal burial place,” Uncle Ben continued, his
expression turning serious. “The Pharaoh made it really enormous so that the
burial chamber could be hidden. The Egyptians worried about tomb robbers. They
knew that people would try to break in and take all of the valuable jewels and
treasures that were buried alongside their owners. So they built dozens of
tunnels and chambers inside, a confusing maze to keep robbers from finding the
real burial room.”

“Pass the ketchup, please,” Sari interrupted. I passed her the ketchup.

“Sari’s heard all this before,” Uncle Ben said, dipping the pita bread into
the dark gravy on his plate. “Anyway, we archaeologists thought we’d uncovered
all of the tunnels and rooms inside this pyramid. But a few days ago, my workers
and I discovered a tunnel that isn’t on any of the charts. An unexplored,
undiscovered tunnel. And we think this tunnel may lead us to the actual burial
chamber of Khufu himself!”

“Outstanding!” I exclaimed. “And Sari and I will be there when you discover
it?”

Uncle Ben chuckled. “I don’t know about that, Gabe. It may take us years of
careful exploration. But I’ll take you down into the tunnel tomorrow. Then you
can tell your friends you were actually inside the ancient pyramid of Khufu.”

“I’ve already been in it,” Sari bragged. She turned her eyes to me. “It’s very dark. You might get scared.”

“No, I won’t,” I insisted. “No way.”

The three of us spent the night in my parents’ hotel room. It took me hours
to get to sleep. I guess I was excited about going into the pyramid. I kept
imagining that we found mummies and big chests of ancient jewels and treasure.

Uncle Ben woke us up early the next morning, and we drove out to the pyramid
outside al-Jizah. The air was already hot and sticky. The sun seemed to hang low
over the desert like an orange balloon.

“There it is!” Sari declared, pointing out the window. And I saw the Great
Pyramid rising up from the yellow sand like some kind of mirage.