Return of the Mummy Read Online Free PDF Page A

normally.
    “Hey — I’m down here!” I called, a little louder.
    No reply.
    Didn’t they miss me? Weren’t they looking for me?
    I was leaning back on my hands, starting to feel better. My right hand started to itch.
    I reached to scratch it and brushed something away.
    And realized my legs were itching, too. And felt something crawling on my left wrist.
    I shook my hand hard. “What’s going on here?” I whispered to myself.
    My entire body tingled. I felt soft pinpricks up my arms and legs.
    Shaking both arms, I jumped to my feet. And banged my helmet against a low ledge.
    The light flickered on.
    I gasped when I saw the crawling creatures in the narrow beam of light.
    Spiders. Hundreds of bulby white spiders, thick on the chamber floor.
    They scuttled across the floor, climbing over each other. As I jerked my head up and the light swept up with it, I saw that the stone walls were covered with them, too. The white spiders made the wall appear to move as if it were alive.
    Spiders hung on invisible threads from the chamber ceiling. They seemed to bob and float in midair.
    I shook one off the back of my hand. And with a gasp, realized why my legs itched. Spiders were crawling all over them. Up over my arms. Down my back.
    “Help — somebody! Please!” I managed to cry out.
    I felt a spider drop onto the back of my neck.
    I brushed it away with a frantic slap. “Somebody — help me!” I screamed. “Can anyone hear me?”
    And then I saw something scarier. Much scarier. A snake slid down from above me, lowering itself rapidly toward my face.

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    I ducked and tried to cover my face as the snake silently dropped toward me.
    “Grab it!” I heard someone call. “Grab on to it!”
    With a startled cry, I raised my eyes. The light beam followed. And I saw that it was not a snake that stretched from above — but a rope.
    “Grab on to it, Gabe! Hurry!” Sari shouted urgently from high above.
    Brushing away spiders, kicking frantically to shake the spiders off my sneakers, I grasped the rope with both hands.
    And felt myself being tugged up, pulled up through the darkness to the tunnel floor above.
    A few seconds later, Uncle Ben reached down and grabbed me under the arms. As he hoisted me up, I could see Sari and Nila pulling with all their might on the rope.
    I cheered happily as my feet touched solid ground. But I didn’t have long to celebrate. My entire body felt as if it were on fire!
    I went wild, kicking my legs, brushing spiders off my arms, scratching spiders off my back, stamping on the spiders as they scuttled off me.
    Glancing up, I saw that Sari was laughing at me. “Gabe, what do you call that dance?” she asked.
    Uncle Ben and Nila laughed, too. “How did you fall down there, Gabe?” my uncle demanded, peering down into the spider chamber.
    “The wall — it gave way,” I told him, frantically scratching my legs.
    “I thought you were still with me,” Sari explained. “When I turned around …” Her voice trailed off.
    The light on Uncle Ben’s helmet beamed down to the lower chamber. “That’s a long fall,” Uncle Ben said, turning back to me. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
    I nodded. “Yeah. I guess. It knocked the wind out of me. And then the spiders —”
    “There must be hundreds of chambers like that,” my uncle commented, glancing at Nila. “The pyramid builders made a maze of tunnels and chambers — to fool tomb robbers and keep them from finding the real tomb.”
    “Yuck! Such fat spiders!” Sari groaned, stepping back.
    “There are millions of them down there,” I told her. “On the walls, hanging from the ceiling — everywhere.”
    “This is going to give me bad dreams,” Nila said softly, moving closer to Uncle Ben.
    “You sure you’re okay?” my uncle demanded again.
    I started to reply. Then I suddenly remembered something. The mummy hand. It was tucked in my back pocket.
    Had it been crushed when I landed on it?
    My heart skipped a beat. I didn’t