Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by Stephen Sommers. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

THE DAMNED

Chapter Eight
Seeing Double

From his corner in the shadows, behind the crowd, he could only just see the two women in the centre of the room. It was impossible to tell which woman was which – both wearing the traditional dressing of sport and the hand-crafted Nubian gold masks to hide their faces – yet he knew that one was the princess, and other the concubine. The pharaoh, on his lavishly decorated throne, clapped and ordered the fight to commence and immediately the two women were upon each other. Bare feet swept across the golden floor like a dance rehearsed to perfection; their hair streaming and the hisses of metal on metal echoing about the chamber.

Then one was tripped to the floor, and she pushed her mask up to glare up at her opponent. She was beautiful, remarkably so; an embodiment of grace and royalty, such a contrast to the sharp allure of the concubine. They were fighting again, this time channelling every iota of rage and loathing into their frenzied attacks – it looked as though they were trying to kill each other, now with different weapons designed to murder…

“Dad!”

With a start, he swivelled around and blinked rapidly, the image of his wife disintegrating before his eyes as his son’s figure swam before him. Rubbing his eyes wearily, Rick suppressed the overwhelming need to shiver and focused on Alex’s stare. “What?”

Alex moved closer and pried something from Rick’s limp fingers – a bag. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Why?”

Alex used his free hand to push back his blond hair from his face. “Be-cause, dad, you just spent the last ten minutes staring at a wall, leaving me to do all the hard work packing.”

“Good,” Rick said. “Hard work builds character.”

“Gee, I love you too. What happened? Was it another vision?”

Rick hesitated before answering. “Yeah. But they’re not bad or anything. Just a bit weird.”

“Weird like…”

“Weird like all the men in ancient Egypt only wore strips of cloth to cover their penises.”

Alex snorted and turned away to start rolling up his tent. Rick watched his son for a few moments before moving to roll up his own tent. Slowly he started packing, keeping his mind focused on the task at hand. It wouldn’t do for him to slip into another creepy vision when he could barely figure the first ones out.

He’d seen his wife. His beautiful, intelligent Evelyn, as she was when she was Princess Nefertiri. And he’d been there, watching her silently from the corner of the room, admiring her skill and grace. Some part of him lightened with that knowledge – simply knowing that he was with her there, too, and that they’d found each other again, made him smile.

Menkaure…

Menkaure. That had been his name. Or what the other woman had called him, at any rate.

With that thought, his smile faded and glanced over his shoulder. Evelyn wasn’t there, off doing her last minute explorations, and he warily scanned the shadows to where he knew the twisting labyrinth of corridors led to that chamber. Where that woman had led him. Murmurs filled the open chamber and for the barest of moments, Rick stiffened, only relaxing when he realised that a bunch of French tourists had entered the ruins.

He knew he should have told Evelyn, but he hadn’t gone back for two weeks, nor did he see the woman. The chamber was important, that much he thought he knew, but why or how he knew this he cast aside. And there were only a few hours left before they would catch the train back to Cairo and take a reserved flight back to England.

Only a few hours.

And he hadn’t shown anyone.

Richard O’Connell did not consider himself an impulsive man. That particular trait belonged solely to his wife, with her habit of reading from strange books and opening chests without checking for curses, but he had always managed to balance her out with his caution, so it was with a great deal of surprise to himself when he asked Alex, after checking to make sure no-one was listening, “Alex, can I show you something?”

Alex didn’t look up from his packing. “Dad, I’m sure it’s perfectly normal and I wouldn’t start worrying about it unless it stays up for more than a few hours.”

Rick twitched a little. “You little –”

Alex snickered. “You walked straight into that one.”

“Watch your cheek, boy, or I’ll tell you the story of how you were conceived.” At seeing his son’s horrified face, Rick bit back an evil grin and ruthlessly continued. “Ever heard it? I think you’ll like it, and since you walked straight into this one, I might as well tell you. You’re old enough to know the truth now, aren’t you? Well, it all started when your mother and I travelled to France six months into our marriage –”

Alex let out a strangled cry and covered his ears, raising his voice to drown out Rick’s exposition. “No, stop! Please! I’m sorry, I’ll do anything! Have mercy!”

Rick smirked. “That’s what I thought.”

Alex let his hands fall to his side. “That was mean.”

“But effective.”

“You’re traumatising me!”

“You’ll get over it.”

Alex pouted and tied a knot on his bag. Sniffing, he said, “So, uh…what did you want to show me?”

Rick resisted the urge to bite his lip, which was not, he thought, a very Richard O’Connell or masculine thing to do. “I think I might have, uh, found something. Big.”

His son looked up, eyes gleaming in curiosity. “Really? Cool. What is it?”

“Not quite sure.”

“Does mum know?”

“Er, sort of. It didn’t look like anything important at the time.”

Alex dutifully pleaded Evelyn’s case. “She’d want to know. She likes this kind of stuff.”

“Last time we found something big she died,” was the blunt response.

“She got better.”

“That’s not funny,” Rick said sternly, and Alex had the grace to flush. “Anyway, I found it two weeks ago –”

“Two weeks ago and you haven’t said anything until today? We’re going home today, just in case it slipped your mind –”

“Will you stop interrupting?” Rick sighed. Casting another glance around the ruins, trying not to glare at the tourists, he lowered his voice. “Look, maybe it’d be better if I just showed you. Follow me, it won’t take long to get there.”

“What about mum?”

“She’s busy.”

Alex looked torn – Rick could see his son’s eyes jumping back and forth between him and his beloved collection of Wilkie Collins novels. Books or adventure, books or adventure. After a long moment of agonised silent, Alex nodded at his father, and Rick felt a rush of unexplainable relief.

He didn’t need to follow a vision this time. Even though he’d only ventured there twice, he just knew, turning corners and half-walking, half-jogging through the maze. He heard Alex puffing behind him, calling out for him to slow down a little, he wasn’t that fit, but Rick kept going, fuelled by this strange need to show the chamber to Alex, to release himself of the burden.

What?

The startling thought was driven from his mind, however, when he came to a stop before the darkened and dusty chamber, the only source of light being the flashlight that Alex had the sense to bring with them.

“Yeah, cool. Look, are we going to be able to get back, ‘cause –”

Rick ignored him and this time, instead of fighting the basic instinct, allowed it to overtake him. Like he’d seen the phantom woman do, he approached the unnoticeable crevice between the faded carvings and slipped his fingers into it, catching hold of some sort of lever that he pulled out, ever so slightly. And like he’d seen in his vision, a door-shaped portion of the wall to his left moved, opening slowly before his and his son’s amazed eyes with an ear-splitting grate.

Then silence. All that could be heard was Alex’s heavy breathing, his face flushed and his eyes wide with excitement.

“Okay,” he finally said, “that actually is pretty cool. Can we go in?”

“I guess,” Rick said. Alex moved closer to the once-sealed chamber, flashing his torch around cautiously. Rick stepped forwards, with an ever-growing sense of foreboding, and looked in. Ignoring the thick musty scent of a too-long sealed chamber, his eyes were drawn to the centre of this even smaller room. Dusty and faded, like its entrance, he had no doubt that this place was once as vibrant and beautiful as the rest of the place had been – not because of a feeling or some obscure notion, but because in the centre of the chamber was a tomb. Sarcophagus, his mind corrected.

Even with its faded colours and decorative carvings, it was still rather mind blowing. Like a man possessed, Rick drew closer to it and pressed his hands to the faded carvings. The glyphs were vague, but he easily recognised the images of the Gods, Seth in particular.

Alex’s presence behind him made him jump a little. His son shone the flashlight across the hieratic and hieroglyphs, mentally translating as he mouthed the ancient language. “Resting…place…” Alex muttered. “A – Amun? No, can’t be…Amunet, maybe? Uhh…Seth…Soldiers…”

But Rick’s attention, forever short, had shifted, and he gently pushed Alex’s hand which held the torch towards the left of the sarcophagus, letting its light fall on –

“Jesus Christ –!” Alex exclaimed, and nearly dropped his flashlight. “That’s the Book of the Dead! But, but –”

He swung the torch the other way, to the right of the sarcophagus, and gaped. “The Book of Amun-Ra? What – how – but, Ahm Shere –”

Rick’s hand closed around Alex’s bicep tightly. “It’s all right,” he breathed, not knowing who he was trying to calm down more – himself or his son. “It’s all right. It’s not them. They’re different ones.”

Alex’s stunned eyes met Rick’s. “How do you know that?”

He didn’t know how he knew that, but that wasn’t what he said. Instead, he pried the torch from Alex’s hand and shone it back at the Book of the Dead, tugging his son closer to the alter. “It’s not the same,” he said. With fine tremors making his hand shake, he brushed the lock of the ancient Book, blowing off a layer of dust, and exhaled in relief. “The lock,” he continued. “Look.”

Alex, too, traced the lock in wonder. “It’s an ankh,” he said, his eyes drinking in every precious detail of the ancient artefact. “That’s not it, but…”

But it looked almost identical to the other one – the one from Hamunaptra, the one that Evelyn had accidentally used to raise Imhotep eighteen years ago, it all of its blackened, intricate beauty. And yet, it was not.

Silence, again.

It felt like a vacuum, like something was slowly sucking the air, the life, out of the chamber. The sarcophagus, in all its ominous glory, seemed to be breathing, pulsing, despite the death it plagued the room with, whispering, murmuring –

“We should go,” Rick murmured. Alex nodded absently but didn’t move, so Rick grabbed his elbow and dragged him away, only stopping to find the crevice and push back the lever that he hoped would seal the chamber. It did so, with another ear-splitting grate, and together father and son left the tomb.

On their way out to the main entrance chamber, where their packing still waited for them only half done, Rick nearly staggered when a heavy weight that he hadn’t even realised he had been carrying lifted from his chest. Blinking rapidly, he caught sight of Alex’s guarded expression, beset by a frown that was deepening with every passing second.

They finished packing in silence, only breaking it to ask the other to pass something or help with whatever. Neither mentioned what they had just seen, and when Evelyn returned from her last-minute exploration, Alex’s frown and Rick’s confusion were replaced with equally large and very fake grins. It was just their luck that Evelyn was too giddy to notice it, and in no time at all the O’Connell family was ready to leave.

Rick and Alex didn’t mention the tomb again for the rest of the day.

* * *

Her presence was overlooked; the crowd’s attention focused on the two women in the centre of the room. It was impossible to tell which woman was which – both wearing the traditional dressing of sport and the hand-crafted Nubian gold masks to hide their faces. One a princess, the other a concubine. Her father, on his lavishly decorated throne, clapped and ordered the fight to commence and immediately the two women were upon each other. Bare feet swept across the golden floor like a dance rehearsed to perfection; their hair streaming and the hisses of metal on metal echoing about the chamber.

Then one was tripped to the floor, and she pushed her mask up to glare up at her opponent. Unperturbed at seeing her own face, such a contrast to the sharp allure of the concubine, she silently slipped towards the darkened corner of the room where her lover hid in the shadows. The thrill of the risk she was taking, as if daring to be caught, made her breathless. She barely cast a glance towards the women; they were fighting again, this time channelling every iota of rage and loathing into their frenzied attacks – it looked as though they were trying to kill each other, now with different weapons designed to murder.

Her hand touched her lover’s and he turned his face, a little startled but perhaps a little triumphant. Drawing back into the darkness, she pressed a light kiss to his shoulder as his hand, the calloused and firm hand of a Medjai, rested at the curve of her waist.

I suspected it was not you fighting, princess.

She grinned. But of course, she answered softly. I have not the skill with a blade as my sister does…

…Just as she has not your patience for commoners, he finished, and the two smiled at each other.

The crowd applauded when the princess, the one with her face, was thrown to the floor, pinned by the sharp end of the spear held by the concubine. The two clandestine lovers observed the pharaoh descending from his throne to embrace his daughter.

Who better to protect the bracelet of Anubis than my lovely daughter, Nefertiri…

The two lovers stifled their laughter. She pressed closer to him and let her eyes fall over his Gaulish features, his beautiful turquoise eyes that were seldom seen in Egypt. How is you are able to tell us apart when not even my own father can? She whispered.

He spared a fleeting look towards the princess, who was glaring at the concubine over the pharaoh’s shoulder, and brushed his thumb across her mouth. You have a kinder smile than Nefertari.

She sighed. Menkaure…

He silenced her by pressing a finger to her lips, halting her speech. Shh, he whispered, we can’t do this here, princess. His hand held her right shoulder firmly – reassuringly – as he searched her eyes with a lusty gaze. Anyone may see. We are –

“– almost home, Evy, time to wake up. C’mon.”

It was the same voice, same whispered tone, same hand on her shoulder, and yet so different. With the exotic ancient language melting into English, it was with a gasp of air that Evelyn’s eyes flew open and she sat up, but her movement was stopped by the firm hold on her shoulder. Blinking quickly to rid her eyes of sleep, she tried to reach forwards to find Menkaure –

“Whoa, didn’t mean to scare you. We’re in the taxi, remember?”

Rick. Richard O’Connell. Her husband. Egypt – plane – England – taxi – home. Of course. She shook her head and groaned, feeling a little groggy. “Rick?” she said. “What happened?”

Turquoise eyes swam into her vision and she was pummelled by a wave of unexplainable nostalgia. He chuckled a little. “Nothing happened,” he said in amusement. “You just feel asleep.”

“Oh.” Pause. “Are we almost home?”

“Almost. A few more minutes.”

She nodded sleepily and yawned, her mind sluggish. Resting her arm on the arm rest, she stared out of the window, not really registering the dusk-bathed houses of London flash past or her husband’s conversation with Alex in the front seat, something about a possible expedition in China after his schooling was over.

“Menkaure,” she said suddenly, and felt Rick stiffen beside her.

“Sorry?”

“Menkaure,” she repeated, looking back at him. “That was your name, wasn’t it?”

Rick’s face was expressionless as he nodded warily back. “Yeah,” he said. “Did you have another vision?”

Evelyn allowed a smile to brush her mouth. “Sounds like you’ve been having them as well.”

This time Rick smiled in response. “I guess I have.”

“What did you see?”

“You,” he said instantly. “You were fighting with Anck-Su-Namun. With those daggers, sais. It looked pretty cool.”

Although she leaned into his body and let the smile stay on her face, inside she was gasping for air. Had he not seen the other part, had he not seen himself hold her while watching the woman, the other princess, the other her, fight? His face betrayed no hidden thoughts, and her mind seemed to have frozen. Still she did not let her panic show – all she could think about was what she – she? – had said to Rick, or Menkaure, while watching herself fight –

I have not the skill with a blade as my sister does.

She said nothing, trying to make some sense of her confusion and stunned mind, only starting when the taxi pulled up before the majestic O’Connell mansion and her husband let out a strangled, outraged yell. His face pressed up against the cold glass of the taxi window, he stared at something with a slack jaw and horrified eyes.

“What the hell –?! My car! What happened to my car?”