To Be Shown the Way (a Mummy 1999 fanfiction)

Warden

Flushed with her success at leading them to this chamber below the statue, Evelyn studied the hieroglyphics on the walls and put Rick and Jonathan to picking away at the ceiling. Except that Jonathan just stood there with his pickaxe over his shoulder, looking up, while Rick did all the work. He was coming to accept that as normal.

"According to these hieroglyphics, we're underneath the statue. We should come up right between his legs!"

"And when those damned Yanks go to sleep—no offense," Jonathan added belatedly.

"None taken." Rick barely remembered America, and he felt no particular kinship with cowboy types like Burns and his fellows.

"We'll dig our way up and steal that book right out from under them," Jonathan finished.

Rick swapped out his longer pickaxe for Jonathan's shorter and more manageable one. "Are you sure we can find this secret compartment thing?"

"Oh, yes, if those beastly Americans haven't beaten us to it." Realizing what she'd said, Evelyn also added, belatedly, "No offense."

"None taken."

Jonathan looked back the way they had come. "Now, where'd our smelly little friend get to?"

They all looked at each other. None of them had seen the warden leave; he'd been behind them when they left the statue, but when he had taken another path, or which way he had gone, was a mystery.

Rick figured the warden was a grown man and could take care of himself. Also, the man had hanged him, so not a lot of love lost there. Rick's job was Evelyn Carnahan's safety, and maybe Jonathan's, too.

He took a break from the ceiling, waiting for nightfall and the Americans' party to withdraw to their camp, while Jonathan drifted off, using the longer pickaxe as some kind of golf club.

Finding himself standing next to Evelyn, keenly aware of the warmth of her, the faint exotic scent that came from her, the fact that she was probably the smartest woman he'd ever met, not to mention the most beautiful, Rick cast about for something to say. "So, let me get this straight. They ripped out your guts and stuffed them into jars?"

"And then they'd take out your heart, as well. Oh, and you know how they took out your brains?"

"Evie, I don't think we need to know this," Jonathan objected, teeing up a rock.

She kept going anyway. She did love her Egyptology. "They took a sharp, red-hot poker, stick it up your nose, scramble things about a bit, and then rip it all out through your nostrils."

Rick winced, touching his nose. "That's gotta hurt."

"Well, it's called mummification. You'll be dead when they do this."

"For the record, if I don't make it out of here, don't put me down for mummification."

"Likewise." Jonathan struck the rock with the pickaxe. It hit the ceiling, and then a whole big bunch of the ceiling came down.

As the dust settled, the three of them approached the debris. Only it wasn't debris. It was a single hunk of stone. A manmade hunk of stone. "Oh, my God," Evelyn breathed. "It's a ... It's a sarcophagus." She looked up at the ceiling. "Buried at the base of the Anubis." Bembridge Scholars had never mentioned that. Why would you bury someone there? Unless ... "He must have been someone of great importance." Or ... "Or he did something very naughty."

She and O'Connell looked at each other for a moment. Evelyn imagined she knew which of those possibilities he suspected, and she thought he was probably right. Buried here in a forgotten, hidden tomb, at the feet of the jackal-headed god? Almost certainly a punishment.

Carefully they whisked away the dust from the top of the sarcophagus, looking for any identifying marks.

"Well, who is it?" Jonathan demanded.

"He that ... Shall Not Be Named," she said, tracing the hieroglyphics with a brush from Mr. Burns' toolkit.

O'Connell bent and blew away some more dust, exposing an impression in the top of the sarcophagus, star-shaped and with a scarab inscribed in it. "This looks like some sort of a lock."

"Well, whoever's in here sure wasn't getting out."

"Yeah, no kidding. It'd take us a month to crack into this thing without a key."

The shape was nagging at Evelyn's mind. Where had she seen that before? When had someone mentioned— The man on the boat! "A key? A key! A key! Now, that's what he was talking about!"

"Who was talking about what?"

She bent and rummaged through Jonathan's bag to find the puzzle box. "The man, the man on the barge, the one with the hook. He was looking for a key."

As she opened it, Jonathan reached for it. "Hey, that's mine."

Evelyn ignored him, pressing the key into the lock. It fit perfectly. But before she could turn it, they heard screams from behind them. O'Connell had his pistols out immediately, hurrying for the door. They found the warden in the hallway, screaming and holding his head. He rushed past them, straight down the passage until he ran into the stone wall and fell over.

O'Connell approached, bending over him, touching his neck. "He's dead."

"What? How?" He'd been disgusting and terrible, but Evelyn hadn't wanted him to die.

"I don't know. No marks, no obvious wounds." O'Connell looked around them. "I think it might be a good idea to call it a day."

Evelyn stared at the body in horrified fascination. "What should we do with ... him?"

O'Connell looked down at the warden with surprising sympathy. "Well ... this is a tomb, after all. Probably we should bury him in it."

"Buried in Hamunaptra," Jonathan said softly. "There are people who would die just for that privilege. Not that he was one of them."

"He is now."

Together they dragged the warden into an antechamber, digging into the soft sand, and laid him to rest. Then they made their way to the surface.

The fresh air and the stars overhead helped, but Evelyn shivered in the chill, unable to get the warden's screams out of her head. O'Connell touched her shoulder. "You all right? 'Course you're not. Let's get you something to eat."

She followed him gratefully, feeling very fortunate to have someone so calm and competent at her side.