Their eyes bulged and their mouths opened in alarm when they saw us.
“Hold it! Stop right there! Don’t move!” one of them shouted angrily.
“How did you kids get back here?” his partner cried.
They moved toward us quickly, hands out at their sides as if they expected a fight.
“Uh … we were at the mummy party,” I stammered. “We … couldn’t find the exit, and —”
Their boots thudded on the marble floor as they strode toward us.
“You’d better tell the truth,” one of them said. “You two are in a world of trouble.”
“Trespassing on city property is a serious crime,” his partner said.
I turned to my brother. His face was tight with fear. And then he let out a cry — and jammed the mummy mask down over his head.
A blinding flash of white light made me scream.
I shut my eyes tight, but the light didn’t fade. It grew brighter … brighter … until I felt my head was about to explode.
Then … solid darkness. Blacker than black.
Slowly, I opened my eyes. The museum room had vanished. I stared up at a cloudy sky.
It took me a long moment to realize I was stretched out on my back. I was lying on something flat and hard. Above me, the sky darkened. The clouds seemed to be coming closer and closer as if they were going to smother me.
“Peter?” My voice came out in a choked whisper.
I turned to see him close beside me. The mummy mask covered his face.
He was also on his back. I could see he was lying on some kind of wooden stretcher. “Where are we?” he murmured. “The mask …”
“The mask must have taken us here,” I said. “Every time we put on a mask, it — it —”
My words caught in my throat. I realized my hands were strapped down. I couldn’t get up from the wooden stretcher.
I couldn’t jump down.
I gazed straight ahead. Peter and I were lying between two rows of white-robed men. The two long lines of men seemed to stretch for miles.
The men were all shaved bald. Their dark heads glowed in the eerie light seeping through the clouds.
They were humming. Humming the same low note endlessly. It sounded more like a roar than music. They kept raising and bowing their heads as they hummed.
I squinted into the distance, where an orange stone building rose toward the sky. A giant sculpture of a cat stood beside the building. I could see a blue-green platform with tall flames rising behind it.
It’s an altar, I thought. They had one in a mummy movie Peter and I watched once.
I gazed down from the stretcher. We were on sand. I turned — and saw a familiar shape on the horizon. A pyramid?
“Peter, I think the mummy mask took us to Egypt,” I said. “Ancient Egypt.”
He tried to sit up. But his hands were strapped down, too. “I don’t like this, Monica. Why are these bald dudes humming like that?”
“I think they’re praying,” I said.
“We have to get out of here,” Peter said.
Well, duh.
Several white-robed bald men surrounded us. They all had deep, dark eyes. Their eyebrows had been shaved off.
Six men grabbed the sides of my stretcher and lifted it off the sand. Their arm muscles rippled. They didn’t look at us. They stared straight ahead at the huge cat sculpture.
The drone of voices grew louder. It sounded like a million buzzing bees.
The men hoisted our stretchers onto their shoulders and began carrying us between the endless lines of white-robed Egyptians.
“Let us down!” I cried. “Can you understand me? Let us down!” I tugged at the straps over my wrists.
They moved slowly, steadily, eyes straight ahead.
“Let us down!” I screamed again.
The sky grew even darker. I squinted through the dim light to the fiery altar in front of the wall. Two men in tall white hats stood together, waiting for us. Their robes were bright blue. They had huge red jewels hanging around their necks.
“Priests,” I muttered.
The hum of the deep note rang in my ears. I wanted to cover my ears. To shut out the frightening sound.
Face after face swept by.
Their eyes followed Peter and me as we bounced past them, strapped to the wooden stretchers.
I smelled something strong. I took a deep breath. Another. A sharp odor filled my nose.
It took me a few seconds to recognize it.
The drone of the deep voices made me want to scream. The faces rolled past, so solemn, the eyes so blank.
The two blue-robed priests stepped forward as Peter and I came near. Their cone-shaped hats pointed straight up to the sky.
The tar smell brought tears to my eyes.
I turned and spotted something at the side of the altar.
It was an enormous round cauldron. Like one of those big cooking pots that witches always have, only five times as big.
Inside it, I could see the tar bubbling. Yes. Steaming hot tar.
Peter and I were being carried to a cauldron of boiling tar.
“Oh, nooooo.” A moan escaped my throat. My whole body shuddered in terror.
Because suddenly, every horror movie … every mummy movie I’d ever seen … came back to me. And I knew why we were being carried through this ancient Egyptian temple.
We were about to be mummified … mummified alive.