بازگشت مومیایی فصل 05

Return of the Mummy - Chapter 5

As I gasped in alarm, Uncle Ben’s words about the scarab rushed through my mind.

“To keep a scarab meant immortality. But the bite of a scarab meant instant death.” Instant death?

“Noooo!” I let out a howl and spun around.

And saw Sari hunched down on her knees. Grinning. Her hand outstretched.

And realized she had pinched my leg.

My heart still pounding, I grabbed the pendant and stared into the orange glassy stone. The scarab was still frozen inside, just as it had been for four thousand years.

“Aaaaaaaggh!” I let out a howl of rage. I was mostly furious at myself.

Was I going to fall for every dumb joke Uncle Ben and Sari played on me this trip? If so, it was going to be a very long summer.

I had always liked my cousin. Except for the times when she was being so competitive and so superior, we always got along really well.

But now I wanted to punch her. I wanted to say really nasty things to her.

But I couldn’t think of anything nasty enough.

“That was really mean, Sari,” I said glumly, tucking the pendant under my T-shirt.

“Yes, it was—wasn’t it!” she replied, very pleased with herself.

That night, I lay on my back on my narrow cot, staring up at the low tent roof, listening. Listening to the brush of the wind against the tent door, the soft creak of the tent poles, the flap of the canvas.

I don’t think I’d ever felt so alert.

Turning my head, I could see the pale glow of moonlight through a crack in the tent door. I could see blades of dried desert grass on the sand outside. I could see water stains on the tent wall over my bed.

I’ll never get to sleep, I thought unhappily.

I pushed and punched the flat pillow for the twentieth time, trying to fluff it up. The harsh wool blanket felt scratchy against my chin.

I’d slept away from home before. But I’d always slept in a room of some kind. Not in the middle of a vast, sandy desert in a tiny, flapping, creaking, canvas tent.

I wasn’t scared. My uncle lay snoring away in his cot a few feet across the tent.

I was just alert. Very, very alert.

So alert I could hear the swish of palm trees outside. And I could hear the low hum of car tires miles away on the narrow road.

And I heard the thudding of my heart when something wriggled on my chest.

I was so alert. I felt it instantly.

Just a tickle. A quick, light move.

It could only be one thing. The scarab moving inside the amber pendant.

No joke this time.

No joke. It moved.

I fumbled for the pendant in the dark, tossing down the blanket. I held it up to the moonlight. I could see the fat beetle in there, black in its orange prison.

“Did you move?” I whispered to it. “Did you wriggle your legs?”

I suddenly felt really stupid. Why was I whispering to a four-thousand-year-old insect? Why was I imagining that it was alive?

Annoyed with myself, I tucked the pendant back under my nightshirt.

I had no way of knowing how important that pendant would soon become to me.

I had no way of knowing that the pendant held a secret that would either save my life. Or kill me.