بازگشت مومیایی فصل 13

Return of the Mummy - Chapter 13

I let out a long sigh. Poor Uncle Ben. All that work for nothing. I felt so disappointed.

I glanced around the bare chamber. The spotlights made the thick cobwebs glow like silver. Our shadows stretched across the dirt floor like ghosts.

I turned to Uncle Ben, expecting him to be disappointed, too. But to my surprise, he had a smile on his face. “Move the lights,” he told one of the workers. “And bring the tools. We have another seal to remove.” He pointed across the empty room to the back wall. In the gray light, I could make out the outline of a door. Another sculpted lion sealed it shut.

“I knew this wasn’t the real burial chamber!” Sari cried, grinning at me.

“As I said, the Egyptians often did this,” Uncle Ben explained. “They built several false chambers to hide the real chamber from grave robbers.” He pulled off his hard hat and scratched his hair. “In fact,” he continued, “we may find several empty chambers before we find Prince Khor-Ru’s resting place.” Nila snapped a photo of Uncle Ben examining the newly discovered door. She smiled at me. “You should have seen the expression on your face, Gabe,” she said. “You looked so disappointed.” “I thought—” I started. But the scrape of Uncle Ben’s chisel against the seal made me stop.

We all turned to watch him work at the seal. Staring across the cobweb-filled chamber, I tried to imagine what waited for us on the other side of the door.

Another empty chamber? Or a four-thousand-year-old Egyptian prince, surrounded by all of his treasures and belongings?

Work on the door went slowly. We all broke for lunch and then returned. That afternoon Uncle Ben and his helpers worked for another couple of hours, carefully trying to remove the seal without damaging it.

As they worked, Sari and I sat on the floor and watched. The air was hot and kind of sour. I guess it was ancient air. Sari and I talked about last summer and the adventures we’d had in the Great Pyramid. Nila snapped our picture.

“Almost got it,” Uncle Ben announced.

We all started to get excited again. Sari and I climbed to our feet and crossed the room to get a better view.

The lion seal slid free from the door. Two of the workers placed it gently into a padded crate. Then Uncle Ben and the other two workers set to work pushing open the door.

This door proved even more difficult than the last. “It’s… really… stuck,” Uncle Ben groaned. He and the workers pulled out more tools and began prying and chipping away the hard crust that had formed on the doorway over the centuries.

An hour later, they got the door to slide an inch. Then another inch. Another.

When it had slid halfway open, Uncle Ben removed the light from his helmet and beamed it through the opening. He peered into the next chamber for the longest time without saying a word.

Sari and I moved closer. My heart began racing again.

What did he see? I wondered. What was he staring at so silently?

Finally, Uncle Ben lowered the light and turned back to us. “We’ve made a big mistake,” he said quietly.