“THE EVIL CURSE!”
Hoppy led the way into the dark and creepy tomb. It was so dark they could not see a pin drop. Howie’s eyesight, which normally was as sensitive as a finely tuned concert piano, failed him completely. No one had thought to bring a flashlight, since they had been in such a hurry to leave the twenty-first century, but a light bulb went off over the clever and brilliant wirehaired dachshund’s head. (Note: This is just an expression. If a light bulb had really gone off over Howie’s head, they would have been able to see. What the author means is that Howie had a brilliant and clever idea.)
“Perhaps the amber amulet will help us!” Howie said, taking the Amulet of Rah out of the pouch and holding it up.
Nothing.
“Say some magic words,” the almost as brilliant and clever Delilah suggested.
“Abracadabra! Open sesame! Please and thank you!” Howie intoned.
The Amulet of Rah quivered in his hand. And then it began to glow with an amber light that grew brighter and brighter until they could see where they were standing.
“Wow!” Delilah gasped.
“Hoppy is not happy,” Hoppy whimpered.
They were surrounded by golden treasures and statues and little mummy cases with names on them like “Fluffy” and “Mittens.”
“Let’s start looking for the cartouche,” Howie said, hoping that Delilah or Hoppy had a clue what a cartouche looked like. “Then we can go home and live forever, which will be nice as long as they don’t run out of dog food.”
“But where will we find it?” Delilah asked. “There’s so much stuff in here. And it might not even be here. Look, there are three tunnels. Hoppy, what do those signs next to them say?”
Hoppy hopped onto Howie’s head and read the signs by each of the tunnel entrances. “‘Men.’ ‘Women.’ ‘Screaming Mummies.’”
“I pick door number three,” said Howie.
Holding the Amulet of Rah in his mouth, he led the others through the tunnel marked “Screaming Mummies.”
The room they came to at the end was even darker than the first room. The amber amulet barely lit up its interior, but the light was enough to make out a row of skeletons tangled in cobwebs.
“Oooh, gross,” said Delilah.
“I thought the ancient Egyptians wrapped their dead and put them in mummy cases,” said Howie.
“They did, sir,” said Hoppy. “These are not the skeletons of the ancient Egyptians. These are the skeletons of those who came before us. It appears, sir, that they did not, sir, find the cartouche of eternal life, sir.”