Sammy Keyes and the Hollywood Mummy

by Wendelin Van Draanen

  “Sammy, where'd you go?”

  “Back here.”

  Marissa muscles apart some dresses and says, “Back where? God, Sammy, why? You've got the folder, let's just go!”

  But the light that came streaking through the little opening that Marissa had made flashed across something that I couldn't quite believe I had seen. “Do that again, Marissa.”

  “Do what?”

  “Well, come through so I can see. You're blocking the light.”

  So she stepped through. And when the light tunneled in behind her, we both let out a gasp.

  We weren't alone in Max's secret room.

  TWENTY-ONE

  We stood there for what felt like an hour, just staring. Finally Marissa croaked, “Maybe he just didn't have room for it out in the foyer. Maybe it's, you know, just in storage. Maybe it was too big and just didn't go anywhere.”

  One look at me and she knew I wasn't buying.

  “Sammy, he collects the stuff. If this thing's real, it's probably worth a small fortune. Maybe it's—”

  “Marissa. It's a sarcophagus.”

  “Exactly. And that's probably all it is.”

  Neither of us budged. We just stood there in the quiet hum of the secret room's fan, staring at the massive stone coffin lying on the heavy table in front of us. And the longer I stood there looking at the protruding feet, the chiseled face, and the mysterious hieroglyphics, the more certain I became that this was exactly what I wanted it not to be.

  I spotted a pack of matches sitting beside a large candle at the foot of the sarcophagus, so I picked it up and struck a match. This actually lit the room up quite a bit, and now I could see other candles on stone pedestals in the corners of the room, and a few more on a console table at the head of the sarcophagus. I went around and lit most of them, and pretty soon the room was glowing and flickering with long shadows. That's when I noticed incense sticks laid across small flat bowls between candles on the console table. I sniffed one, and sure enough, it had that same smell, woody and sweet.

  “Sammy, this is not a good idea. We've got no business—”

  “He wants to marry my mom, Marissa—think about it.”

  “C'mon, it's not that weird. I mean, think about all the other stuff he's got around his house. So maybe the guy owns a mummy. So what?”

  I just blinked at her, not knowing what to say.

  She pulls a face at me, like I'm the one not understanding something. “What? Don't look at me like that! There are weirder things in the world than owning a mummy, Sammy. And, unlike what we're doing at the moment, owning a mummy is probably not against the law.”

  “Marissa,” I whispered, “this is not just any mummy.”

  She shakes her head. “What are you talking about?”

  I stare at her a second, not believing she's not thinking what I'm thinking. Finally I ask her, “What does the tapestry hanging outside the door say?”

  “What does the … What does that matter?”

  “Whose dresses are those?”

  “Dresses?” She was blocked. Seriously blocked.

  I tap the stone coffin. “Whose body do you suppose is in here?”

  When she finally clicks into what I'm thinking, she lets out a wimpy little laugh and says, “No way.”

  I lean across the table toward her. “This ain't a storage locker, Marissa. Look! The candles, the incense … the visiting chair!”

  Her eyes quiver as she looks at mine. “It can't be!”

  “It is, Marissa.” I put my hands on the head of the sarcophagus and say, “Now, are you going to help me prove it or not?”

  “No! Are you crazy? I'm not going to open that thing up!”

  “Marissa, please. I have to know.”

  “Why? What good's that going to do you?”

  “Will you just take that end and lift?”

  “No!”

  “Okay, fine. I'll do it myself.”

  “Sammy!”

  The lid made a grinding sound as I slid it across the base, and once I had a lip to lift with, I pulled up to test the weight of it.

  “Sammy! What if you break it?”

  “It's not as heavy as it looks, but it's hung up down there. Lift it up, would you?”

  “I can't believe you're doing this. I really can't believe you're doing this. I am so not into this. Who wants to see a dead body? It's probably going to smell. It's probably going to give me nightmares for the rest of my life. Between this and Inga and her stupid pitchfork, I'm never going to sleep again. Ever. And if you think—”

  Now, while she's cranking out complaints, she's also lifting the foot end of the sarcophagus lid. And as we clear the base and set the lid on the floor, she interrupts herself to say, “Oh my god—it's … beautiful!”

  She wasn't saying this about a mummy, believe me. No, what was inside the stone coffin was a smaller coffin, this time made of wood. It was carved from head to toe in the shape of an Egyptian pharaoh, with large inky oval eyes and a serpent-wrapped headdress. The arms were crossed on the chest so that one hand lay peacefully over the other, and from the waist section down, there was a spiraling pattern of green, blue, and gold. Tons of gold. The whole thing was glowing with gold. And it wasn't just gold from a can, either. Nothing about this looked sprayed. The green was like liquid jade, the blue looked almost electric, and the gold was leafed. Heavily leafed.

  But it didn't look like it'd been pulled from the ruins of some ancient civilization. It wasn't cracked or chipped anywhere, the paint wasn't flaking—it just lay there, glowing up at us.

  And even though it looked Egyptian to me, there was something tying it to the here and now. Something that made me know that this wasn't just some valuable artifact stored here because it “didn't go” anywhere else. Besides the blue and green and gold, there was another color.

  Red.

  An oval, surrounded by a band of gold, sat at the base of the neck. And scooping around it was an arc of carved beads, also red. And the last bit of red was right up on top, on the ring finger of those peaceful hands, resting on the chest.

  I whisper to Marissa, “It's her, all right.”

  “You don't know that. How can you know that? It's probably empty. It's probably here because—”

  “Marissa! It's here because it's Claire, and this”—I motioned around the room—“is her tomb!”

  I thought Marissa was going to break down and cry. “It can't be! It's like against the law, isn't it?”

  “Oh, I'm sure it's against the law, but believe me— she's in there.” I point to the spots of red decorating the coffin and say, “You know what these are, right?”

  She whimpers, “The Honeymoon Jewels?”

  “That's right.”

  “But why?” She shakes her head and shivers. “I can't believe anyone would do that. I mean, don't they soak mummies in salt and take out their organs and stuff before they wrap them up? Do you think he did that? Do you think he did it himself ?”

  “Marissa, I don't know. I don't know how to make a mummy. All I know is that having the body of your dead wife stored in a secret room in your office is beyond weird—it's crazy.”

  “Well, maybe not. I mean, people have little urns of ashes on their mantels and nobody thinks anything of that….”

  I couldn't believe what I was hearing. “You pick the strangest times to be sensible, you know that?”

  “Well, you don't know. Maybe that's all this is. Maybe it's just ashes in there.”

  She was right about one thing—I didn't know. And I wouldn't know—not for sure, anyway—until I took the next step. “You think it's just ashes in there?” I put my hands around the headdress part of the coffin and said, “Okay. Lift.”

  She steps back. “No way I'm gonna do that.”

  “Why not? If it's just ashes, what are you afraid of ?”

  She shivers again and says, “I don't know. It's just not right. It's like digging up someone's grave.”

  “This isn't like diggi
ng up someone's grave!” I said, but even to me, the words sounded hollow. Like there was nothing behind them to support them.

  We looked at each other for a minute, and finally I whispered, “Marissa, I have to know. Don't you? I mean, maybe you're right. Maybe it's empty. Maybe all of this is my stupid imagination again. Or maybe there are just ashes inside. But if it is her mummy in there, don't you think that's something we should, you know, know?” She just stares at me, so I cut to the facts. “Marissa, the guy is having dinner with my mother as we speak. He wants to make her his second wife. I think that gives me license to look at what he did to his first one, don't you?”

  She holds her breath for a minute, then puts her hands on the foot of the coffin and closes her eyes. “Tell me what's in there, 'cause I'm not looking.”

  I get ahold of the headdress and say, “Got a grip?”

  She nods, but her eyes stay closed.

  “Okay… lift!”

  The lid came up and off, and when I saw what was really inside I just stood there, stock-still.

  Marissa's holding up the foot end of the coffin with her eyes clamped shut, and she's dancing. First just a twitch, then a wiggle, then a full-on side-to-side jiggle. “Sammy, what's in there?”

  I whisper, “It's Claire.”

  She freezes for a second, then asks, “In what form?”

  I inch around the table, getting the full weight of the lid so I can set it on the floor. “In mummy form.”

  She shivers and says, “Are you serious?”

  “Yeah. You can let go.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “I'm putting it down.”

  “On the floor?”

  “Just for a minute.”

  “Why?”

  “Marissa, you've got to see this.”

  She hesitates, then pops an eye open for a split second. And that's all it takes. She shrieks, “Aaaah!” then whispers, “Was that a mask?”

  “If you'd open your eyes, you'd see.”

  She says, “I don't want to see!” but a few seconds later her eyes are fluttering open and she's gaping at the contents of Claire's coffin.

  Except for the mask, it wasn't creepy. Not really. It was just a bunch of yellowed bandages, wrapped from head to toe. And all around the body were little knickknacks. Some of them were Egyptian-looking—like the little figurines with human bodies and strange animal heads, a copper-and-blue beetle, and a sandstone relief of a woman with wings for arms.

  But there were also normal things inside—like photographs and crystals, a little music box with Claire's name etched on a brass plate, a few necklaces and bracelets, and peacock feathers. A whole bouquet of peacock feathers.

  And if it had been just a mummy surrounded by little sentimental knickknacks, that would've been one thing. But the mask that was positioned over the head made the whole thing seem real. It was made of plaster of Paris, and you could tell—this was not a work of art. It had been cast from the original.

  From Claire's face.

  The eyes were black and brilliant green, but they were all that was painted. The rest of the mask was chalky white.

  And glued around the edges was hair.

  Real hair.

  It was the mask that made me shiver. It was the mask that drove home the fact that this was a coffin. I whispered, “Let's close it up. I've seen enough. More than enough!”

  We had the lids put back on and the candles blown out in no time. And as we're stepping through Claire's old wardrobe, Marissa says, “He's had her in there for twenty-five years. Twenty-five years—I can't even imagine. Talk about not letting go! What's going to happen to her when he dies? You think he wants to be buried together with her or something? And how can he even think about marrying your mom with his first wife still…around?”

  I wanted out of there. Fast. The whole thing was really starting to give me the creeps. I went over to the desk to grab my mother's file, and as I was reaching to switch off the lamp, I saw the yellow pages, still flipped open to PHYSICIANS.

  This weird kind of cold spot stabbed me right in the middle of my chest, and then panic—icy, breathless panic—came over me. And suddenly I'm light-headed, and I can't breathe. I mean, I'm gasping for air and shaking, and I've got to sit down. Just have to sit down.

  Marissa takes one look at me shivering on the bench and says, “Sammy? Sammy, what's wrong?”

  I pant and whimper, “Twenty-five years. She's been dead for twenty-five years….”

  “Yeah…so…?”

  “She died on Valentine's Day twenty-five years ago.”

  “Sammy, stop it! You're scaring me!”

  “Oh, Marissa!” Tears start running down my cheeks. Just pouring down my cheeks. “Marissa, my mother's driver's license …”

  Marissa takes me by the shoulders and shakes me. “Stop it! Sammy, you're freaking out! What are you talking about?”

  “He thinks she's her!”

  “Who's her?”

  “My mother! Oh, Marissa!” I look up at her and push out what I'm thinking in hard, painful gasps. “She was … she was born on February fourteenth. Twenty-five years ago!”

  “Who was?”

  “Dominique Windsor!”

  “So?”

  “He thinks she's her!”

  “How can she be her?”

  “Her soul came back, into the body of Dominique Windsor!”

  “Sammy, that's crazy!”

  Thoughts were shooting through my brain, exploding in my skull. “I kept asking myself, Why now? Well, he's dying, that's why now! And if he dies without her, he'll lose her again! He'll be reincarnated and she'll still be here, getting older and older. They're out of sync, and the only way they can be together is if they start over together. At the same time!”

  “But your mother's not twenty-five.”

  “He doesn't know that!”

  “So what's he going to do? Kill her?”

  I looked up at her and whispered, “He tried that. Last night.”

  Marissa put her hands in front of her mouth. “Oh… my…god…!”

  I grabbed the phone and said, “We've got to call the police!”

  And I'm in the middle of dialing 911 when Marissa says, “What are you going to tell them?”

  I looked at her, then back at the phone. She was right. It would take too long to explain it — too long to convince anyone I wasn't a teenage lunatic. We were way better off getting a ride from Hali.

  So we fly out of the tomb and through the tapestry, unlock Max's office door, and charge through it.

  Trouble is, there's a mummy with a pitchfork standing in our way.

  TWENTY-TWO

  “You criminals!” she cries. “You thankless, sinful criminals! What have you stolen? What is that?” Her pitchfork is positively shaking as she pins us back with it. It's like she's harnessed three bolts of rusty lightning that she can't quite contain. And I'm inching back, trying to decide how to explain to her just exactly what is going on, but really, there's no talking to a yellow-eyed mummy with a spastic pitchfork.

  So I pass my mother's files off to Marissa and say, “Run!” Then, before I can talk myself out of it, I whip my arm over the top of the pitchfork prongs, and this time I manage to grab the base of the handle and twist the fork down and away from my body. And I know she thinks I'm just an evil juvenile delinquent, and I know she's fighting for what she thinks is justice and honor and truth, because let me tell you, it is making her strong.

  Either that or digging up dandelions gives you a really good workout.

  Anyway, we're twisting and struggling with each other, and I'm saying, “Inga! Claire's body's in there …in a coffin…he made her into a mummy! He's crazy!” and she's fighting back, crying, “How dare you!” and, “You liar!” and, “You belong in jail!”

  Finally I manage to twist around so my back is toward the reception room doorway. I try one last time. “Go in there and look. Behind the tapestry there's a secret room. She's in there! Behind
the clothes.” Then I fling my end of the pitchfork to the side as hard as I can and run.

  I guess the Pitchfork Mummy didn't want to compare wrap jobs with her sister-in-law, because she comes flying after me, screaming, “Come back here! You! You come back here!”

  Like that's really something I'm going to do.

  No, I beat it out of Little Egypt, through the back door, down the path, and straight into Hali's cottage. And I'm checking all the rooms, rasping out, “Hali? Reena? Marissa?” only no Hali, no Reena, and no Marissa.

  And I'm in their kitchen area when I spot Inga, cupping her hand against the screen door, looking for me. And I can tell that she's not sure if I'm inside or not, because if she was sure, she'd be inside turning me into Sammy kabob.

  There's a door at the back end of the kitchen, and I don't know where it goes, but I'm taking it. I mean, maybe it's safer to stay inside, but I'm trying to do more than get away from the Pitchfork Mummy—I'm trying to save my mother's life.

  I squeeze out the back door and find myself in a narrow dirt corridor between the cottage and the garage. And when I close the kitchen door, I realize that I hear voices. Whispering voices.

  I sneak along the wall of the garage and peek around the corner, and there's Marissa, holding on to Hali's arm, talking a hundred miles an hour.

  I come out from behind the garage and nearly give them both a heart attack. Hali recovers first. She points to Marissa and asks me, “What is she babbling about?”

  “Hali, please—you've got to take us out to Venice, now!” I look over my shoulder. “Inga's after us with a pitchfork.”

  “With a pitchfork?”

  Just then I hear the back door to the cottage clap closed. I grab Hali and whisper, “Is your mom around?”

  “No.”

  “Then that's Inga, sniffing us down.”

  Hali's around the garage with the door pulled up in two seconds flat. Marissa takes the front while I dive past the driver's seat into the back, and Hali's got the Bug fired up before the car doors are done slamming.