As much as it irked them to have to pay admission to infiltrate the enemy encampment, that was the only way Pilot and Cheryl and Tweed were going to be able to find out what had really happened to their missing companion. They grudgingly handed over the fee and passed through the turnstiles into a carnival that was already in full swing.
Halfway down the midway, a barrel-chested man in a top hat and tacky red velvet vest stood at the entrance to the largest tent, yodelling on about how “The Straaaaaange! The Weeeeeeird! The Wooooondrous!” was all on display inside. Cheryl and Tweed and Pilot slipped inside the tent, making their way around the edges of the gathered crowd so they could see what was going on. Colonel Dudley himself was on the stage, dressed in a kind of outlandish, gold-braid-trimmed archaeologist outfit. He was gesturing grandly at the velvet curtain, drawn closed to hide the sarcophagus of the Egyptian mummy princess.
“The tragic story of this exotic young girl’s life and death is filled with curses and revenge.” The Colonel’s voice, nasally and crisp with a clipped English accent, drifted out over the breathlessly waiting crowd. “Denied her path to the throne when her scheming stepmother convinced her pharaoh father to make her son the heir to the kingdom, the ambitious young Zahara-Safiya turned to the temple priests, with their sorcery and magic, vowing revenge! She tricked the priests into granting her wicked powers—powers that even they were unable to control—but by the time they’d realized their fateful mistake, there was only one way to stop her from exacting her horrible vengeance on the Pharaoh.”
The crowd leaned in, mesmerized by the story.
“The temple priests gave Zahara an enchanted sleeping potion, wrapped the Princess in bandages, placed her in a sarcophagus and buried her alive, where she remained hidden deep beneath the desert sands for millennia, bound in eternal sleep inside her enchanted coffin … only to be discovered by Yours Very Truly”—he gestured at himself with one chunky thumb—”in an epic adventure, so that I could bring this tragic tale home to you good people for your wonder and amazement, right here in the town of Biggins!”
“Wiggins,” Cheryl muttered.
“Behold! The Mummy’s Tomb!”
He yanked on a tasselled rope and the curtain slid aside. A spotlight lit up the now-familiar (to Pilot and the twins) image of the Princess, and the gathered gawkers made ooh and aah sounds. The Colonel stalked dramatically back and forth in front of the painted casket, extolling his own bravery and resourcefulness, and detailing the dangers to body and soul if anyone should ever attempt to open the Princess’s casket.
“And that is why her sarcophagus here remains closed tight, sealed for all eternity. For if Zahara-Safiya were ever to awaken . well .” Colonel Dudley patted the side of the mummy casket with one big, meaty hand. He was chuckling darkly, as if telling ghost stories around a campfire, and he seemed not to have noticed that the thing wasn’t closed tight and sealed for all eternity. Not any more. In fact, the lid was ever so slightly ajar.
An answering thump-thump-thump seemed to come from inside the sarcophagus. Audience members gasped, and shuffled back a few steps at the sound. Over at the side of the tent, Pilot tugged on Cheryl’s and Tweed’s sleeves and pointed to the shadowy space behind the little stage, where a carny crouched behind the sarcophagus, pounding on it with his fist.
“Shameless,” murmured Cheryl.
“Charlatans,” hissed Tweed.
“Blimey!” bellowed the Colonel, rearing back, one hand held out in front of him as if warding off a charging bear. He reached into the neck of his jacket, under his cravat, and pulled out an ancient-looking pendant shaped like an eye that dangled from a big gold chain around his neck. He held it up in front of his face and started bellowing, “Back! Get back into the darkness of your oblivious sleep, Unquiet One! I compel you by this sacred amulet, the Eye of Osiris! Sleep! Leave these fair citizens of Higgins to their untroubled lives!”
“D’you think he’s ever gonna get the town name right?” Cheryl murmured.
“If he does, I’ll eat Pilot’s hat,” Tweed muttered back, her eyes narrowing as she glared at the Colonel. “He can’t even get his own shtick right. Remember Curse of the Blood Red Sands?” she asked, referring to the movie the drive-in had been showing the other night—which the girls had yet to see the end of. “That symbol is an Eye of Horus. Any Egyptologist worth his salt would know that.”
“It’s all right . everything is all right, good people!” Dudley turned back to the tense crowd, smiling broadly. “There’s nothing to worry about. Even if the Pharaoh’s daughter were to wake from her cursed sleep again .” He paused, as if waiting for something to happen. “I said, I said … even if she were to wake…” He slapped the side of the casket harder, his palm making a resounding thwack on the painted wood. “I can compel her with my charm.” The amulet swayed like a hypnotist’s pendulum. “And . heh heh heh . my charm.” The Colonel leaned out toward the crowd and bestowed an exaggerated, smarmy wink on the nearest lady in the tent, Hazel Polizzi’s mom, who giggled, while Mr. Polizzi glowered like a matinee villain and shook his fist at the Colonel in mock threat.
Cheryl and Tweed snorted in derision.
Pilot shushed them and pointed, again, toward the stage. Behind the Colonel, the lid of the coffin was slowly, slooowly creeping open. Dudley, seemingly oblivious, belly-laughed at one of his own jokes and, in the silence that followed his roaring guffaw, there was a dry, high-pitched creak.
“Gadzooks,” Cheryl whispered, hands pressed to her mouth.
An eerie, moaning sigh.
“Eep,” Tweed gulped, eyes wide and staring.
The crowd gasped and shrieked as the sarcophagus lid, painted with the image of the Princess, swung wide…
… revealing the casket to be …
…empty.
A hush fell on the crowd.
Then there was angry murmuring.
Colonel Dudley glanced around wildly, as if trying to see where his mummy had wandered off to. Some people shouted for their ticket money back. Barely missing a beat, the Colonel suddenly started to gesticulate wildly.
“The Curse of the Mummy is loose here in Diggins!” he bellowed. “Uh . The mummy walks! Er . Beware! Um . Run for your lives! Yes! That’s it! Run!”
He waved his arms around his head, hiding his face as he hissed instructions at the carny hidden behind the curtain, who hopped like a toad on hot asphalt as he activated a smoke machine and made the lights in the tent cycle wildly through a rainbow of spooky colours and effects.
The theatrics changed the mood of the crowd and they shrieked with good-natured laughter. So when a real, terrified shriek sounded from somewhere outside the tent, everyone just thought it was part of the act. But the good Colonel unsheathed the (strictly ornamental) sword from his waist and told the good people of Piggins (contrary to his earlier instructions of “Run! Run for your lives!”) that maybe the best course of action would be to stay put, enjoy the exhibits, purchase some souvenirs, perhaps.
Not to worry, he said, he’d track that mummy down, he would!
Then he leaped from the stage, waving his sword over his head, and stalked through the crowd, out into the night.
In the silence that followed, one of the carnival-goers was heard to remark, “Well! That certainly was a much more exciting show than we were expecting! Bravo, Dudley!” and another wondered aloud how the big finale would play out, speculating, “The Colonel will no doubt return triumphant, wayward ‘mummy princess’ in tow!” There was much elbowing and winking. The act was going over like gangbusters.
Cheryl and Tweed and Pilot weren’t so sure the whole thing was an act.
Through the blown-out tent flaps, they could see what looked like a vulture sitting perched atop a tent peak, eyeing the carnival-goers hungrily, and a shadowy river of large black beetles scuttled across the alley between two tents. Pilot and the twins seemed to be the only ones to notice—maybe because they were the only ones on the lookout for real evil.
<
br /> A ball of flame shot across the night sky, and this time it wasn’t the cannonball guy. But no one else seemed to care. Or, more likely, they all just thought it was part of Dudley’s show. Special effects. The townsfolk just laughed and pointed, joking as they drifted out of the Curiosities Exhibit in search of more excitement.
When the tent had emptied out completely, Pilot and the girls nervously approached the sarcophagus on the now-dark stage. It was totally empty, except for two things. In the very bottom corner, there was a crumpled length of dry, brittle old bandage wrapping .
And a ratty old red Keds sneaker.
“Artie.” Tweed’s grey eyes were wide with alarm. More than alarm. Fear.
“We’ve gotta tell someone!” Cheryl was aghast.
Another blood-curdling scream sounded in the distance, and the Wiggins folk jumped and laughed their startled, silly laughs. “They think the mummy curse is all just part of the show .”
“We have to warn them!” Tweed was stunned.
“We gotta sound the alarm!” Cheryl nodded.
“Like heck we do,” Pilot said grimly.
More than a bit shocked by the tone of his voice, the girls turned to where Pilot stood, arms crossed over his chest, a stormy, stubborn expression tightening the muscles of his jaw.
“But the town—”
“Isn’t gonna believe a thing we say!” Pilot’s eyes glittered fiercely, and he grabbed the brim of his baseball cap and yanked on it, turning it around backward on his head. A pair of his dad’s old pilot’s wings were pinned to the cap, and Pilot only ever wore it like that when he was dead serious about something or concentrating really hard. “Think about it,” he said. “Did they believe you when you told ‘em that something more than a plane accident made your families disappear? Did they believe me when I told ‘em my dad didn’t lose that plane? Well?
Did they?”
Pilot had a point. Back in the days following “The Incident,” he and the girls had tried desperately— and without one iota of success—to get someone in a position of authority to take them seriously. Instead, police and doctors and nurses alike had all smiled gently at the “clearly traumatized” tykes and patted them on the head, whispering words like “coping mechanisms” and “shock” when they put forth theories that sounded as though they were plucked from the scenes of a B movie.
Pops, for his part, hadn’t ever seemed as inclined to dismiss the girls’ claims out of hand. But when he’d suggested that they might be telling at least part of the real tale, the Sheriff had sternly reprimanded the drive-in theatre operator and uttered not-so-veiled threats that perhaps—if Pops, and his movies, proved to be a harmful influence on the impressionable minds of two little girls—alternate living arrangements might have to be found.
Cheryl and Tweed had shut their mouths right there and then and kept their theories to themselves. The movies didn’t lie. They’d known they were right. They believed they could see the things that adults had long ago forgotten to even look for. And now, when the whole carnival situation was starting to look as though it would travel down a similar road, Pilot was counselling them to keep their mouths shut once again and think twice about sounding the alarm.
“You and you and me,” Pilot said, pointing, “we know that an empty casket wasn’t supposed to be part of the show. That shyster Colonel was expecting something to be in there. Whatever it was .”—Pilot reached into the sarcophagus and snatched up the sneaker, brandishing it before the girls’ pale faces—”I’d bet my plane that it’s got something to do with Artie.”
Tweed blinked. “You’d bet your plane …?”
Pilot nodded.
“Whoa .”
Suddenly, there were gruff voices coming from outside, behind the tent, and someone seemed to be tugging at the ties on a flap there. The trio froze, listening.
“Blast it!” said the Colonel angrily. “Where the devil is my creature?!”
A hand tugged at the flap and the trio glanced around wildly for places to hide. Tweed squeezed herself into a supposedly haunted grandfather clock on display. Cheryl dove for a “magic carpet,” grabbed one end and rolled herself up in it. Peering out the end, she saw Pilot bolt for a medieval suit of armour, trying to hide his lanky frame behind it.
They all held their breath as the tent’s back-door flap flew wide and Colonel Dudley stalked in, his face tomato-red and his moustache quivering with rage. In his wake, the weedy-looking carny who had been behind the scenes was pale and clearly nervous. He had long, stringy hair and a long face with an even longer nose, and his eyes darted from side to side as he peered around the tent.
“I dunno, Boss—”
“Well, you’d better find out! And fast! That pathetic roll of bandages is our meal ticket, Delmer. I’ve made more money off her scrawny carcass than any other piece of terrible kitsch in this whole carnival! I want to know how that thing escaped!”
Cheryl squinted out of the rolled-up end of her carpet and could just barely make eye contact with her cousin, where she was crouched in the clock cabinet. “Escaped?” She mouthed the question silently. “Escaped” would seem to indicate that the mummy in question had a will of its own. That it was something more than just a scrawny carcass. Tweed was marginally more of an expert on mummies than Cheryl, and Cheryl could see by the answering look in Tweed’s eyes that Dudley’s phrasing was cause for grave—no pun intended—concern.
But then she lost sight of Tweed when Delmer the carny idly kicked at her rug with the toe of his workboot, half unrolling it, almost as if he expected to find the ancient remains of the Princess hiding there. Cheryl held her breath and squeezed her eyes shut, hoping he wouldn’t unroll the rug all the way.
“Maybe somebody stole it,” Delmer said, suddenly leaving the rug alone.
Dudley’s head snapped around and his eyes narrowed menacingly. “And whose fault would that be, now?”
“Uh … the thief’s?”
The Colonel rolled his eyes. “Or yours, you dingbat, for not keeping a better eye on things! First you let those town urchins run amok during set-up, and now this!”
“Sorry, Boss .”
The Colonel sighed heavily. “At least the worst that thing can do is shuffle and mumble,” he said. “That mummy is still under my control so long as . so long . so .”
Colonel Dudley’s face suddenly went from the hue of a boiled beet to the colour of a boiled egg as he peered closely at the sarcophagus. More precisely, as he peered closely at the scarab beetle jewel at the centre of the sarcophagus. The one Artie Bartleby had cracked with that killer pitch of his.
His nose only inches away from the scarab, the Colonel whispered something under his breath that might very well have been, “Oh no.”
From their various hiding spots, Cheryl, Tweed and Pilot strained forward.
“That’s done it .” Dudley said in a strained, dry, frightened-sounding voice. “The cat’s out of the bag.”
“No it ain’t.” Delmer held up what looked like a linen bag, shaped like a cat—with a cat’s face painted onto it and everything—that was part of the Egyptian exhibit. “It’s right here.”
“Put that thing down!” the Colonel snapped. “I mean Zahara-Safiya is not only on the loose—she’s awake! That crazy old desert rat I bought her from in Cairo, he warned me . he said that the curse that binds the Princess is locked in this jewel. And so long as it remained intact, I could control the creature”—he clutched at the charm around his neck—”with the Eye of Osiris!”
“Horus, “ Tweed muttered under her breath. The Colonel and the carny froze. Tweed squeezed her eyes shut, berating herself silently.
“I say . did you hear something?” Dudley asked in a whisper.
Just then, the Bob Ruth softball fell from the shadows and rolled to a stop at Delmer’s feet. He stooped and picked it up.
“Oh,” he said. “That’s all it was. I gotta fix the stand for this dumb thing. It keeps rolling off.”
“I
see …” Dudley eyed the softball suspiciously. When it remained inert for several long moments, the Colonel’s jaw unclenched a bit. But when he turned back to the casket with its broken jewel, it clenched right back up again. He raised one chunky finger to the scarab, but didn’t quite touch it.
“Listen, Delmer,” the Colonel said. “Right now, all we’ve got is a missing meal ticket on our hands. And that, in itself, is bloody inconvenient. This place is remote enough that none of the rumours of our past run-ins with the authorities—unfounded though they may have been—have come close to making the papers. Why, I was even thinking about setting up shop in this town for a while. Maybe take over that movie lot across the way once we’d run off all of their business. It wouldn’t have taken long. Did you see the triple bill they had up on the sign? Creature from the Black Lagoon?. That old chestnut? Blimey! Who on earth are the dunderheads who programmed that?”
Pilot held his breath and squeezed his eyes shut, hoping desperately that Cheryl and Tweed could keep hold of themselves and not leap from their hiding spots to run at the Colonel in twin fits of rage. As it was, Pilot was mighty indignant on their behalf and almost took it upon himself to do it. Who did that pompous old walrus think he was, talking like that about the Starlight? Before he could charge to his pals’ defence, however, the Colonel was talking again. And what he said made Pilot’s blood run suddenly cold.
How to Curse in Hieroglyphics Page 7