Off the Wall (5 page)

“Why would a mummy do something as
stupid
as walking around this
stupid
place?” asked Daria.

“Why not?” Grace snapped. “It would be a lot more interesting than lying on the floor in a casket or whatever.”

Daria pushed her chair back to stand up. “You're all crazy. I'm moving to another table.”

Lucy's cheeks had turned red, and her eyes were bright with fury. She'd finally had enough of Daria's attitude. “You're just scared!” she accused.

Daria plunked herself back down into her seat. “I'm what?”

“It's all right, Lucy,” said Jane quietly. “Just forget about it.”

But Lucy was obviously too mad to stop. “I said, ‘You're just scared!' Too scared even to listen. I bet Jane is right. This museum has a lot of weird history. Why
shouldn't
a mummy be haunting it?”

“Because Jane is just making it up, that's why.” Daria's smooth, fake-grown-up voice was infuriating.

“I'm not making it up!” Jane said. “I swear I'm not!”

“Then prove it!” Daria shot back.

“I . . . I . . .” Jane faltered. “There's no way I can prove something like that. How could anyone—”

“Oh, giiiiiirls!” Katherine's voice suddenly trilled through the air. She was standing up by the buffet tables. “Dessert's ready! Or should I say,
lots
of desserts are ready? Come help yourselves! There are make-your-own sundaes and brownies and cupcakes and lemon squares and—”

The rest of her sentence was cut off as people jumped up and rushed toward the desserts. Megan, finally happy, was the first one in line.

But Daria didn't move from her place. Her eyes were still fixed on Jane and Lucy.

“You can prove it by coming on a midnight hunt for the mummy,” she said in a low voice. “We'll go after everyone's asleep.”

“But why should I?” asked Jane. “I didn't say I believed that there's a mummy, only that I heard a rumor.”

Daria didn't argue with her. She didn't say anything at all, or even blink, until finally she slowly mouthed the word
chicken
at Jane.

How did I get myself into this?
Jane thought, anguished.

She had just wanted to shut Daria up. Instead she had . . .
wound
her up!

“I dare you, chicken,” taunted Daria.

“You know what,
I'll
take you up on that dare,” Lucy suddenly said. “Only Jane, you really should come along too,” she added in her regular, not-mad voice. “It'll be fun.”

Fun? Fun walking around in a deserted museum after dark? Fun breaking the rules? Fun looking for a
mummy
?

But after all,
Jane reminded herself,
I was the one who started this
. And she didn't want to seem scared of her own shadow, like Megan.

“Of course I'll come,” she heard herself saying.

“Do you both promise?” asked Daria.

“We promise,” Jane and Lucy answered together.

“Good. I'll put my blankets near yours. As soon as everyone is sleeping, we'll set out.” Daria's voice was firm. Very firm.

“Come on, slowpokes,” called Willow. “The ice cream is melting!”

But Jane had totally lost her appetite. As she trailed along behind the others, she stared unseeingly at the fake portholes on the walls. She hoped against hope that Daria just fell asleep later and didn't make them follow through on the dare. After all, she didn't know which was worse: actually seeing a mummy, or Daria making fun of her mercilessly for bringing it up.

“And this is some of the treasure the explorers found,” explained Willow.

After dinner, the group had continued its tour of the museum. After going through the Hall of Mythology, they soon wandered into the Egyptian wing—an exhibit that the group leaders said would be fun to walk through before heading back to the Great Hall for bed. And it
was
fun, even though Jane wasn't exactly in the mood to think about ancient Egypt. Right now the girls were looking at a room filled with treasure. Daria didn't seem impressed, but Jane was sure she was faking it. How could anybody not be impressed? The room wasn't that big, but it was filled with actual heaps of gold—like a
hoard in a fairy tale. There were hammered bracelets, necklaces of gold and turquoise beads, gold chains, jeweled hair ornaments, gold sandals, even what must have been a solid-gold chair.

“There's lots more gold. But this is what the archaeologists found in the outer chamber when they unsealed the tomb in 1932,” said Katherine.

“Broke into the tomb and robbed it, you mean,” Jane heard Daria mutter.

There was no way Katherine could have heard Daria, who was all the way in the back with Jane, but as if by coincidence, Katherine went on to explain, “Today's archaeologists do believe that tomb robbers tried to steal this treasure—but centuries ago, not in 1932. Treasure wouldn't have been piled up this way by the ancient Egyptians. It would have been arranged neatly near the caskets of the people who were expected to use it in the next life. It
definitely
wouldn't have been left by the outer door. The thieves may have been startled by a noise. They dumped the gold, resealed the tomb, and ran off. And no one found the tomb again for almost three thousand years.”

Now Willow took up the story. “The tomb had been
carved out of a cliff. It had about thirty rooms, so we know it must have belonged to an important king. Let's go into the next gallery and find out more.”

“Sar-co-pha-gus,” Willow pronounced in a teacher-ish way a few seconds later. She gestured down at the vast alabaster form lying on the floor in front of them. A row of similar objects had been arranged down one wall of the room. “A sarcophagus is a stone case that holds a coffin, inside a coffin, that's sometimes inside
another
coffin. This sarcophagus belonged to Prince Amun, one of the pharaoh's seven sons.”

“Is the prince
in
there?” Megan asked her.

Willow chuckled. “Well, his mummy is. That's the whole point of a sarcophagus!”

Megan took a couple of steps backward.

“Why weren't ordinary coffins enough to hold the bodies?” asked Jane. “It's not as if the people inside them were going anywhere. The regular coffins didn't need to be put into
stone
coffins.”

“Ancient Egyptians believed bodies needed extra protection after death,” said Katherine. “Since they were going on a trip to the afterlife, they needed to be in good shape when they arrived.”

Jane couldn't help but wonder if one of the mummies in this room was getting ready to pop out of its sarcophagus.

She hoped against hope that all the layers of coffins would keep the mummy from getting up and walking around the museum that night.

“Do you think Prince What's-his-name is in good, uh, shape in there?” asked Jane.

Willow paused before answering. “I guess that depends on what you call ‘good shape,' ” she finally said. “Ancient Egypt was hot and dry. That would preserve a body pretty well on its own. And the meticulous mummification process definitely helped too. But I'm guessing that his body is probably . . . um, not quite . . . Let me put it this way. He's not going to get up and walk out of this room.”

Jane saw Lucy cringe ever so slightly at Willow's comment. She couldn't help glancing at Daria. But the other girl was staring down at Prince Amun's sarcophagus. Jane couldn't see her expression.

“Who's in these other sarcophaguses?” asked Grace.

“Sarcophagi,” Willow corrected her. “They all belong to different members of Egyptian royal families. Prince
Amun's wife is next to him, and the Prince's brother and
his
wife are next to them. Then there are a bunch of more distant relatives.”

Lucy, who had wandered a little way off, hadn't been paying attention to the last part. “What are these
little
sarcophaguses for? And why do they have animal heads?” She pointed at a glass case holding a row of heavy stone jars about a foot high.

“Sarcophagi,” Willow said again. “But they're not sarcophagi. They're canopic jars.”

“What are—”

“Why don't you just read the card?” Daria interrupted.

Lucy made a little face. But she turned to the placard on the wall and began to read aloud. “ ‘Canopic jars were used during mummification. They held the organs of . . . Oh, gross! These jars have
guts
in them!”

“They're probably empty now,” said Katherine. “But yes, each mummy needed four canopic jars to store the body's organs. Ancient Egyptians believed that people's bodies would need them when they arrived in the afterlife. The stomach, intestines, liver, and lungs each went into a different jar. The heart stayed in the body, though.”

“That makes me feel
so
much better,” said Cailyn sarcastically.

“And what are these eagle mummies doing here?” Lucy pointed at two small coffins hanging on the wall.

“Egyptians mummified all kinds of animals,” said Willow. “Both wild animals and pets. Even donkeys, sometimes, in case a person might need a ride in the afterlife.”

“Ancient Egyptians thought way too much about being dead,” said Jane.

“Okay, girls. Listen up,” Willow said, once they were settled back into the Great Hall. “We don't expect you to fall asleep right away. But try not to stay up too late, okay? We're going to keep the lights on for an hour.” She pointed to a huge clock on the wall above the east entrance. “And then, after we turn off the lights, you can
whisper
for another hour. But after that, we want you to go to sleep.”

Which was not what happened.

“And when they found her, she was missing her
head
!” Grace whispered two hours later.

Katherine and Willow, at least, had fallen asleep. The two of them lay hunched and quiet in their sleeping bags in the center of the Great Hall. But they were the only ones in the room who were sleeping.

The lights had been turned off more than an hour before. But the little lights marking the doorways were glowing dimly. They made the Great Hall look shadowy and strange—a good background for the scary stories Lucy and a cluster of other girls were telling. Jane hadn't contributed any, but she'd been listening, riveted, as the stories got wilder and wilder. Daria hadn't contributed either, but Jane had the feeling that she wasn't missing a word.

“I bet that's not true about the girl's head,” Cailyn said now. “A person's head can't fall off from terror.”

“It can too!” Grace said indignantly. “It happened to my cousin's friend's best
friend
!”

Cailyn yawned. “Yeah, right. People always say something happened to a friend of a friend of a third cousin or something. I'll believe it when you say it happened to
you
.”

“But then how could I say it? I wouldn't have a head,” Grace retorted. The other girls started to laugh.

“All right, it's Cailyn's turn to tell a story,” Lucy said once the giggles had died down. “Tell us something scary that happened to you!”

“Okay. But I need licorice first.” Jane passed her the pack, and Cailyn pried a strand loose. “Well,
muh
muh wuh—”

“Gross! Finish chewing first!” Lucy ordered.

“ 'Kay.” Cailyn swallowed and started over. “First of all, this was something that happened when I was six, before I knew any of you. At our old house. My parents were out late at a party, and they had hired a babysitter named Traci.

“I don't know where my parents found Traci,” Cailyn continued, “but she was a totally horrible babysitter. I mean
totally
. She told me it was time for bed when it was only six thirty. When I said that I knew how to tell time and that I didn't have to go to bed for another hour and a half, Traci said, ‘Well,
I'm
tired. I'm going to take a nap on the sofa. Just don't do anything bad while I'm sleeping.' ”