The Adventurer & The Librarian

Chapter 13: The Book of the Dead

The next day, everyone got back to their digs.  The Carnahans and the adventurer were all.hung over but their spirits were higher than the day before.  They'd finally managed to unlock the sarcophagus, taking the entombed "He Who Must Not Be Named" out of it and leaning the Egyptian casket against a wall.

"Oh, I've dreamt about this since I was a little boy," William exclaimed excitedly as he began to examine the large, black artifact.

"You dream about dead guys?" Bonnie asked jokingly.

"Oh look, the sacred spells have been chiseled off," William observed as Jonathan opened the key box.  "This man must have been condemned not only in this life but the next."

"Tough break," Bonnie surmised.

"Yeah, I'm all tears," Johnathan said sarcastically, placing the key in and turning it.  "Now let's...ugh, see who's inside, shall we?"

Bonnie, Johnathan and William all started tanking on the top half to pull it off.  When they managed to remove it, a more than damp dead man practically popped out at them, startling them all.

"Aaah, I hate it when these things like that!" William shouted.

Bonnie arched a brow as the dust settled, staring at the broken jawed skeleton.  "Is he supposed to look like that?" she asked in confusion.

William blinked.  "No, I've never seen a mummy look like this before.  He's still...still..." he paused, at a loss for words.

"Juicy," Bonnie and Jonathan both said in awe and disgust.

"Yes.  He must be more than 3,000 years old, and, well," the librarian scoffed in confusion.  "It looks as if he's still...decomposing."

Bonnie noticed something on the inner part of the casket lid and pointed as William still scrutinized the mummy with his eagle like gaze.  "Hey, look at that," she said, walking to the lid and kneeling.  "What do you make of that?"

William and Jonathan came over.  "My god, these marks were made with..." he traced his fingertips along the embedded lines.  "...fingernails."  He gaped at the dead mummy.  "This man was buried alive.".
William glanced back.  "And he left message."  The librarian grazed the markings.  "Death is only the beginning."

The trip stared at the mummy, all three wondering just what sort of thing would cause a man to be buried alive under Anubis and without a true name.

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It was now night time and O'Connell was sitting with Beni as they were chatting away with Jonathan, and the other group started making their way over to the fire.  They were looking smug as ever as they approached with gold organ jars in their hands.

"Say O'Connell," Henderson said, being followed by Burns and Daniels.  "What do you think these babies'll fetch back home?"

They two man began to sit by the fire.  "We hear you boys found yourselves a nice, gooey mummy," Burns said confidently.

"Well, congratulations," Daniels chuckled.  "You know, if you dry that fella out, you might be able to sell him for firewood."

Bonnie pretended to laugh at the giggling men.  In all seriousness, she wanted to punch all their teeth in.

"Look what I found!" William exclaimed excitedly as he walked over with items on his palms.

Bonnie looked at Beni.  "You're in his seat," she snapped quietly.  Beni laughed but Bonnie barked with a "now!" and the man moved.  William immediately took his place.

"Scarab skeletons, flesh eaters," William said with a smile.  "I found them inside our friend's coffin.  They can stay alive for years feasting on the flesh of a corpse." Bonnie grabbed one and examined the dead insect.  "Unfortunately for our friend, he was still alive when they started eating him."

The look of pure delight on William's face was endearing to Bonnie.  "So somebody threw these in with our guy, and then they slowly ate him alive?"

"Very slowly."

Bonnie smirked as he looked around.  "Should I be worried about his fascination with such morbid things?" she thought to herself.

"Well, he certainly wasn't a popular fellow when they planted him, was he?' Jonathan asked.

Bonnie placed the scarab back in Will's hands. "Well, he probably got a little too frisky with the pharoah's daughter."

This made Will laugh.  "Well, according to my readings," he went on as the men listened to William.  "Our friend suffered the Hom-Dai, the worst of all ancient Egyptian curses, one only reserved for the most evil of blasphemers."  Bonnie stared at the man.  "In all my research, I've never heard of this curse having actually been performed."

'That bad, huh?"

"Well, yes.  They never used it because they fear it so.  It's written that if a victim of the Hom-Dai should ever arise, he would bring with him the 10 plagues of Egypt."

Everyone around the fire looked a little less at ease, except for William, of course.  Bonnie knew he didn't believe in stories such as this, and his innocence about the entire thing was...fascinating to her.  How could a grown man be that innocent and childlike?

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Later in the night, after everyone was asleep, William woke up tiptoed his way towards Dr. Chamberlain, who was resting peacefully with what William had recognized as the Book of the Dead.  He's seen it earlier when the man had tried to open the book but had failed to.  What William was intrigued about was the fact that the cover of the book had the same lock on it as did the mummy's sarcophagus. 

Easily, William slipped the book out of the doctor's arm and went scurrying back to where he'd been asleep previously, over by Bonnie.  She was seemingly asleep with a shotgun in her hands.  He wondered what kind of life she had to end up being so masculine.  William set the book down and walked over to Jonathan just as Bonnie began to speak.

"That's called stealing, you know," she remarked gruffly.

"According to you and my brother, it's called borrowing," William replied softly as he obtained the key and crawled over to the book. 

Bonnie examined the black book as she sat up.  "I thought the Book of Amun-Ra was made out of gold," she stated coolly as are came up to get a closer look.

"It is made out of gold. This isn't the Book of Amun-Ra," he said as he studied the hieroglyphics on the key.  "This is something else.  I think this may be the Book of the Dead."

The key clicked open and Bonnie blinked.  "The Book of the Dead?" she asked quietly.

"Mmhmm."

"Are you sure you want to be playing around with this thing?"

William put the key in the lock.  "It"s just a book," he chuckled as he turned the key to unlock the artifact.  "No harm ever came from reading a book."

As Will opened the cover, a strong breeze drifted through the camp.

"That happens a lot around here," Bonnie observed before leaning closer to William.  "So what's it say?"

William examined the hieroglyphs in the book.  "Amun-Ra, Amun-Dei," he sounded out.  "It speaks of the night and the day."

William began reciting in ancient Egyptian.  Bonnie studied the man as he stared at the book, his mouth moving.  Bonnie knew he was speaking, but the words were almost echoing across the wind.  She gazed at his wild brown hair, fascinated by it.  It truly spoke to how he was a gentleman but also had a wild side to him.

Bonnie really liked that.

"No!" Dr. Chamberlain shouted as he shot up from his sleep, distracting the two other explorers.  "You must not read from the book!"

The wind started picking up and there was a rumbling in the distance, the sound waking everyone up now.  Everybody stared off in the distance as a black, moving glob flew through the sky and went towards them.  Bonnie was shocked.  Were those...locusts?

As the insects got closer, Bonnie told everyone to run.  No one needed to be told twice.