Mummy Read online

  “We were just kidding,” said Maris. “You take everything too seriously, Em.”

  Jack pulled his car keys out of his pocket. “Let’s roll then,” he said. He stretched his arms and beat a tattoo on his chest. “What do you mean—a lick of homework?”

  “My grandmother says that. A lick of housework, a lick of shopping.”

  “A lick of mummy-stealing,” said Maris. “Come on, everybody got everything? Let’s go.”

  They headed for the van.

  Maris and Jack sat in front.

  Lovell and Emlyn sat in the middle.

  Donovan stretched out in the rear.

  The mummy, thought Emlyn. We didn’t put the mummy back in the loft. We left Amaral on the metal table. So we’re coming back before Donovan’s grandparents show up. That means we have to get back here another school night. And not one person here but me can do that. Because every other person has practice or rehearsal or a job. And only Jack has transportation.

  So …

  Jack let the radio search, and little blips of rock and easy listening and talk scooted by as it hunted for good reception.

  “Did we get punchy, or what?” said Maris. “Tomorrow we meet and figure out when and how we take the mummy up to the bell tower.”

  “Right. Skip second period?” said Jack.

  “Deal,” said Donovan.

  “Done,” said Lovell.

  The return trip seemed to take forever. Nobody talked. Emlyn half slept.

  Jack dropped Donovan off first and trucked on to Lovell’s. Then he and Maris dropped Emlyn off. “Listen, Em,” said Jack, “don’t worry so much. We got carried away, but we’re really stand-up guys. We aren’t going to do anything but senior prank.”

  “It was the moonlight,” said Maris. “We know how seriously you feel about your mummy.”

  “Okay,” said Emlyn. “Thanks. And thanks for calming everybody down, Jack.”

  “Good night, then.”

  She walked into the lobby of her apartment building and turned to look back.

  To get to Maris’, Jack needed to turn right at the corner.

  But the van went straight.

  Jack, she thought, Jack. Why did you give me your sweatshirt? Why did you take my side? Why did you cool everybody down? So that you and Maris could go back by yourselves and keep all the gold?

  Or is this my usual nonsense, and you’re really deeply in love, and you’re going to park on some side street and make out, or go to some late-night restaurant and have a romantic meal by candlelight?

  Emlyn got into the elevator. “Hey! How are ya?” said the elevator guy.

  “Fine, thanks. How are you?”

  He told her. He was a nice enough person but far too willing to tell you how he was. He was never well. Emlyn waited for him to discuss his digestion and his prescriptions, and finally he opened the doors for her and she went into her apartment.

  Ten past midnight. The place was utterly quiet. They had left the light on over the piano, a soft, low light so she could see where to walk but wouldn’t startle people who were falling asleep.

  Her parents watched the eleven o’clock news sitting up in bed, and at eleven thirty they clicked it off, tipped over, and went to sleep. They were like windup dolls, hitting the end of the day. The boys were so energetic they couldn’t make it past nine, and they slept as soundly as Amaral.

  Still, she tiptoed as if somebody might appear.

  On the high, narrow table where they kept mail and to-do lists and permission slips for the boys lay the car keys in a little key pile.

  Emlyn slid into her room and changed into dark clothing. Then she took the car keys and ran down the seven flights of stairs to the ground floor, and one more flight to the silent garage below.

  Her parents’ Ford wagon had been pretty beat up when they bought it. Years in the city had given it dents and scratches and dulled the finish. It looked exactly like what it was: a tough old box with wheels.

  Emlyn started the car and drove in the scary half dark to the exit. When she clicked her visor control, high, thin steel rods slid back into the floor so she could drive out.

  She checked the gas gauge. Plenty.

  Emlyn rarely drove. They didn’t use the car that much, and when they did, her parents always insisted there was too much traffic for Emlyn to be at the wheel. Well, midnight on Monday, there was not too much traffic. There wasn’t even another car. She was glad to make it to the interstate where there was always traffic. Trucks whipped past like monsters, their drivers too high to be visible.

  Exit 65, she thought, and decided she could drive as fast as the trucks, so she did. Exit 65 came right up. The gas station was still open and the doughnut place, but not the other restaurants. She turned on the country road to go the eight miles to the lake.

  She was worried about finding the right cottage. There had been so many of them, all painted white, all with dark shutters and the same tiny docks out into the lake.

  She hadn’t been paying enough attention on either trip. The driver always knew more than the passenger. What had happened to the Emlyn who prided herself on being so observant that, if anybody ever needed a witness to testify, she would be the one who really knew what was going on? Perhaps there had never been such an Emlyn.

  Her fingers gripped the steering wheel too tightly. She couldn’t find anything on the radio she could bear to listen to.

  Finding the cottage was easier than she had expected.

  Jack’s van was parked in the little front yard.

  Sixteen

  IT WAS ONE THIRTY in the morning. The moon drifted in and out of purple clouds. The lake was alive with shifting shadow.

  Even the third week in October was too late in the year for most people to live in an unheated summer cottage. None of the tiny houses looked occupied. But even in summer, one thirty Monday morning was not an hour when people would be driving around. So any car slowly cruising down this road at this hour was going to be of interest to Jack and whoever was with him.

  Who was with him?

  Had Jack and Maris simply turned around after they deposited Emlyn and picked up Donovan and Lovell again? How much of a team were those four? Did they know one another well enough to pass hand or eye signals? Had they silently agreed to get rid of prissy Emlyn? Or had she been so absorbed by her thoughts that they had been able to whisper back and forth, coming to a decision without her knowledge?

  At this very moment, were the four of them sawing through the mummy?

  Emlyn drove past the cottage. The little road was so narrow that it felt one way, but it wasn’t. In the summer when there was traffic, cars must pull to the side in order to inch past one another. She would be afraid of scraping somebody’s door handle off. Now, in the leaping, changing shadows as the moon and the clouds argued in the sky, the trees and bushes leaned down into the space she needed for driving and tried to cut her off

  Would Jack have the nerve to come without Donovan? she wondered. Even though we saw how easy it is to get in, would Jack dare to go in without Donovan?

  She was being ridiculous; she had dared enter a huge public institution without permission. Why would Jack worry about entering one little cabin without permission?

  She passed a number of tiny houses and a lot of tall trees, and then she turned off her headlights so she and her car would vanish into the dark. The scattered moonlight showed enough road for her to keep going.

  What if Donovan was loping after her car right now? Reading the license plate? Ready to rip open her door?

  Emlyn hit the lock button and heard the satisfying clicks of a car closing around her.

  Stop this, she said to herself. You don’t even know if Donovan’s here, and even if he is, he isn’t a murderer. He’s just greedy. They’re all greedy.

  After about ten houses, the road looped inland, following the uneven shore of the little lake. Emlyn backed into a driveway so nobody could read her license plate, and she parked. In a normal neig
hborhood, ten houses would be quite a distance. Ten here were nothing; the houses were miniatures. She eased herself out of the wagon, shut the door as softly as she could, and locked it. Then she crossed the road and began to creep over the tiny yards toward the cottage.

  There were many pines whose heavy branches offered solid protection, so she made her way from pine to pine. She tripped over a little row of lake stones that seemed to outline a garden. Her sneakers sank in the soft soil and crushed little stems.

  Ahead of her sat the van, its darkened windows like holes in the night, blacker than the sky.

  She had no plan. Plans depended on things happening the way you expected them to. She had never expected this.

  Like a blindfold over her thoughts and eyes was the face of Amaral-Re, gold and gleaming and silent. Amaral-Re would not beg or plead. Even as she was torn to pieces, as if by a pack of mangy coyotes, she would make no protest when her dignity was literally ripped to shreds.

  It had seemed to Emlyn that Jack really had been on her side. He wanted to wait and think it through. But it could not be, for Jack was the one with the van. If the driver said, No, we’re not driving back to the cottage a second time, nobody could have done anything about it.

  So Jack was just as eager to unwrap the mummy as the others, he had simply taken a different approach in getting rid of Emlyn.

  She sank to her knees on grass as cold as the grass under the maples when she told them she had a master key. How she had loved that word master! But it turned out that when things went wrong, they went completely wrong, and if there was one thing that Emlyn was not, she was not master of this new situation.

  So now I know, thought Emlyn, that when a criminal is double-crossed, she can hardly complain to the authorities. She has to deal with it herself.

  She imagined putting cement shoes on Jack and Maris, Lovell and Donovan, and sinking them into the middle of the lake. But at the same time, she imagined what they would find when they carved Amaral-Re open.

  What had Amaral worn into death? What had her weeping parents put about her throat and fastened about her waist? What had they woven into her hair and hung from her ears? Would there be an amulet of the jackal god, Anubis? A crown of inlaid silver and a scarab of carnelian? Was it spectacularly magnificent jewelry? Ornate and intricate and staggeringly beautiful?

  Or were those bracelets just circles of copper—cheap then, cheap now?

  Emlyn though of the tired little card she had taken for a souvenir. Some souvenir. The others were getting a gold bracelet. Hammered into rosettes, perhaps, and set with turquoise. The others would have an actual belt of solid gold. Earrings pierced with precious stones, gleaming with ruby and sapphire and—

  Stop it, Emlyn told herself. Whatever it is, it must lie with Amaral-Re forever. It must not be torn from her.

  The front door of the cottage opened.

  Emlyn was beneath the heavy branches of an immense pine, encircled by its little pine sisters and brothers.

  Awkwardly, Jack held the door for Maris, and together they backed out of the door, easing their way down the two little steps. Between them, they held a large shiny black cylinder, like a very large, very heavy poster tube.

  Emlyn closed her eyes and thanked God. Which God? she thought. Mine? Or Amaral’s?

  Amaral would have worshipped many gods. Beautiful, strange, terrifying gods with beautiful, strange, terrifying habits.

  They were being very careful, considering what they planned to do with Amaral-Re in a little while. They handled her as if she were more precious than a new baby. They eased her onto the floor of the van like a wounded patient, tucking her carefully between the seats. Maris settled in the front passenger seat. Jack went back, locked the door, hung the key where it belonged, and then, oddly, he walked around the cottage and disappeared on the lake side.

  Emlyn ceased to breathe. Was he searching? Had he heard something?

  When Jack reappeared, he was carrying the pruning saw.

  She almost laughed. She should have guessed that. People in cities did not need such a saw, so Jack didn’t have one at home. He was taking Donovan’s.

  Emlyn could not safely conclude that Donovan and Lovell had no idea what was happening. It was entirely possible that they simply couldn’t stay out later.

  Emlyn had no idea what their parents would think, or how much checking there was, or how much worry. But she could safely conclude that the mummy had not been cut. They were taking the mummy and the saw to a better location. And what might that be?

  A location with no grandparents arriving soon.

  One Emlyn would not know about and could not interfere with.

  And where they could leave a mummy safely until they had time to use the saw.

  Every one of them had to be in school in the morning, and school began at five minutes before eight. It was going to be three A.M. before anybody could get home and climb into bed. Tomorrow Donovan worked, Maris had play practice, Lovell soccer, and so did Jack.

  Emlyn was sure, based on the party earlier that afternoon, that these four would not just grab any old ten minutes, split the mummy in half, and rip out what they wanted. They would make an event of it. They would want several hours, and they would want pleasures to accompany them: music, food, time to laugh, and time to celebrate.

  So she would bet that they were not, in fact, going to tear open this mummy until next weekend. And she would also bet that even if Donovan and Lovell did not at this instant know what Jack and Maris were doing, Jack and Maris would not leave them out. They were a team; they needed all their players; it wouldn’t be fun with only half the team there.

  But what fun it would be to outwit the outsider … Emlyn.

  I haven’t played the game very well, she thought. If I wanted to keep my team on my side, I should have shared with them, told them more, giggled with them, trembled with them, let them in on my adventure. I actually chose to be the outsider. I didn’t let any of them be anything except escort or driver.

  Saw in hand, Jack walked around the van to the driver’s door. He stood for a moment, looking up the road where Emlyn had driven her station wagon ten minutes earlier. Maris said something Emlyn could not hear. Illuminated by the ceiling light of the van, Maris looked incredibly beautiful. Her hair had fallen dramatically around her, and the light above shadowed her face. She, too, seemed immortal in her beauty.

  But Jack paid no attention to her. He leaned forward and set the saw between the two front seats. Then, leaving his door open, Jack walked down the lane toward where she had parked the Ford.

  Emlyn felt sick.

  All he’ll find is an old car, the kind old people drive, she told herself. He won’t know it’s my car. In the suburbs, kids probably know one another’s cars, and the cars everybody’s parents drive as well. But we don’t recognize one another’s cars because we don’t drive them enough. Nobody’s ever picked me up at school in this car. I don’t have the slightest idea what anybody’s father or mother drives. Or if they drive at all.

  So he can check the car out as much as he wants. It won’t tell him anything.

  But Jack walked slowly. He wasn’t sure what he was anxious about. He paused in front of the third house, but the road had not yet curved, and Emlyn’s car was out of sight.

  He shrugged visibly, came back to the van, got in, and drove away. Emlyn moved from pine to pine, watching his taillights. Much too quickly, the bright red pair of lights disappeared. Emlyn reconstructed the little road in her mind. Would he have reached the main road that fast?

  She frowned a little and then followed carefully, threading her way from pine to pine, unsure of her footing; unsure of her reasoning.

  Then she laughed silently. Yes. Jack had parked and turned off the lights and was waiting to see if anybody followed him out. So he had heard the car come down the road at the wrong time in the wrong season, and he had wondered.

  Who was he afraid of?

  She was sure he did not suspect tha
t she, Emlyn, was smart enough to have followed him. So was he worried about police? Neighbors? Donovan? The museum?

  Or was it just the general simmering sick worry when you knew you were wrong; you were terribly wrong; and you were deeply, horribly afraid that somebody else knew?

  She sat on the ground again. She had waited a long time in the museum, and she could wait here, too. She did not believe Jack could wait. It was not his personality. She placed a private bet that he would last five minutes.

  She lost. He didn’t last two minutes. He started up the van, drove off, and she even saw, through the yards and trees, his thoughtful turn signal as he headed onto the eight-mile stretch back to the interstate.

  She ran back to the Ford. She’d catch up and follow at a distance; find out what this place was where they believed they could safely stash Amaral-Re.

  Jack could not risk a speeding ticket, even at this hour. Maybe especially at this hour. Get stopped by the police in the middle of the night when you were not yet eighteen and it was entirely possible the police would ask him just what was that big plastic-wrapped object lying on the floor? She didn’t think they would have the right to search the van, but the police certainly knew about the missing mummy.

  If you’re weren’t thinking about mummies, a big long old trash bag would just be odd; but if you had been told to keep your eyes out for a missing mummy (what jokes must be going the rounds over this!), that bump at one end and the triangular rise at the other might well remind you of feet and head … and mummies.

  So Jack would set his cruise control just below the speed limit.

  Emlyn set hers just above it. Jack and Maris had a two-minute start.

  This time she felt like listening to music. She turned on her favorite station and sang along as she drove.

  When she saw the van she stayed back so that she was nothing but a pair of headlights in their rearview mirror. Assuming they were headed home, there was only one possible exit for them to use. She let a couple of semis get between herself and the van. She’d see just fine when they took the exit and would have plenty of time to take it herself.