To Be Shown the Way (a Mummy 1999 fanfiction)

Creature

Evelyn found herself back inside the tomb, panicked. She leaned against the stone wall behind her, half hoping it would open up again and put her back on the ledge safely outside—where Rick was. But it held firm. She heard a moaning sound, and knelt on the floor, looking around the edge of the wall to see Mr. Burns standing alone in the middle of the chamber. He appeared to be the one moaning, but Evelyn disregarded that, so glad to see someone familiar.

"Oh," she said in relief, getting to her feet and approaching him. "Oh, Mr. Burns. Thank goodness. I was just starting to get scared. I— I've lost everyone. I—" She gasped in horror as he turned to her.

His eye sockets were empty, and she could barely understand him. "My eyes. My eyes!"

She screamed and backed way, even as Mr. Burns' hands reached out for her. And then, from behind her, came a roaring sound, and she turned to see the decomposing body from the sarcophagus—with Mr. Burns' eyes in its sockets.

Evelyn screamed. This must be a nightmare. It had to be a nightmare. This couldn't be real. She backed away again, only dimly aware of Mr. Burns collapsing on the ground, as the corpse followed her across the room. There was a wall behind her, nowhere else she could go. "Please help me," she said to Mr. Burns.

But Mr. Burns was trying to drag himself from the chamber. "My tongue!" he said in his garbled way. "He took my tongue!"

"Please don't leave me." Grotesque as the American had been left, he was better than the creature who stood before her.

And then the creature spoke. "Anck-su-namun?" Evelyn slid down the wall, her legs like rubber beneath her, praying she wouldn't collapse as Mr. Burns had. The decaying corpse before her reached out a hand and intoned, "Come with me, my Princess Anck-su-namun," in ancient Egyptian.

Some part of Evelyn's mind that still thought she must be having some kind of nightmare marveled at this, at hearing the language spoken so fluently with her own ears.

Then she heard an even more welcome sound—Rick O'Connell's voice. "There you are! Will you quit playing hide-and-seek?" He ran straight to her without a glance at anything else, grasping her arm. "Come on, let's get out of here!"

When Evelyn didn't look at him, Rick turned to follow the line of her gaze, and nearly jumped out of his skin. The dead guy had been disgusting enough motionless in his sarcophagus. Standing here in front of him, somehow come to life, he was horrifying. Rick took an instinctive step backward, hitting the wall next to Evelyn.

Jonathan was the next to join their little band, hurrying into the room calling "Evie!"

The monster turned at the sound of Jonathan's voice, and Jonathan skidded to a halt, dropping his torch. The two Americans behind him ran straight into him, and all of them stood frozen, staring at the living corpse in front of them.

The creature roared, the sound echoing in the chamber. Evelyn couldn't breathe, couldn't move, couldn't think. But somehow Rick managed to keep his self-possession. He roared back at the monster, and blasted it with his shotgun. As it fell, its insides splattering the floor, Rick took Evelyn's arm and hurried her toward the door. "Move!"

"Yeah, right. Did you see that?" Henderson shouted. Jonathan and the Americans were right behind them as they ran for their lives.

When they burst out of the ruins and into the night, a line of the black-robed Egyptians were waiting. As Rick and Evelyn and the others stopped in front of them, the men in black raised their rifles. The Egyptologist, clutching the Book of the Dead, knelt in front of the line of men.

One of the men lowered the cloth covering his face and stepped forward. "I told you to leave or die. You refused. Now you may have killed us all. For you have unleashed the creature we have feared for more than three thousand years."

"Relax. I got him."

The man didn't seem impressed by Rick's assurance. "No mortal weapon can kill this creature. He's not of this world." He stepped aside and two of his fellows led Mr. Burns toward the rest of them, releasing him into Mr. Henderson's arms.

"You bastards," Mr. Daniels said, staring at the black-robed men.

"What did you do to him?" Mr. Henderson demanded.

"We saved him. Saved him before the creature could finish his work. Leave, all of you, quickly, before he finishes you all." He called out to his men, who put their guns down and headed for their horses. "We must now go on the hunt and try and find a way to kill him."

Rick had never been someone who liked to be told what to do, especially not by some mysterious guy spouting doom and gloom. "I already told you, I got him."

The man stopped and turned to him. "Know this: This creature is the bringer of death. He will never eat, he will never sleep ... He will never stop." There was no lie on his face, in his voice, or in his eyes. He believed what he was saying.

Rick didn't want to believe, but it was hard not to when a man who had proven himself competent and knowledgeable was so certain. "Let's go," he said to Evelyn. "Right now."

"Right." She moved immediately, dragging Jonathan with her. Rick liked that about her, that she didn't stop to argue—she understood the situation and didn't need to be told twice.