“Let me… rest in peace!”
The sequel to The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb, Return of the Mummy is spooky improvement over its predecessor. In this one, Gabe returns to Egypt about a year later (this time flying solo) where he reconnects with his prankster archaeologist uncle Dr. Ben Hassad and his competitive cousin Sari. Sari goes to a boarding school in Chicago, she gets straight A’s, and is a champion skier and tennis player. We also learn that her mother died when she was five years old. Recently, Uncle Ben has been digging around in an unexplored pyramid where he has discovered an “ancient, sacred tomb” that is believed to be the burial chamber of King Tut’s cousin, Prince Khor-Ru. Now he plans to open the tomb with Gabe and Sari.
Along the way, we meet a few colorful characters like Dr. Omar Fielding, Uncle Ben’s archaeology partner who seems highly untrustworthy and does not believe they should be opening Prince Khor-Ru’s tomb due to superstitious concerns. There is also a guy named John who briefly appears in a jump-scare while filming a commercial. Another amusing character is a beautiful reporter named Nila who works for The Cairo Sun (she is named after the Nile River). She seemingly appears out of nowhere (you would be right to be suspicious) claiming she has been given permission to write a report on the opening of the tomb.
There are plenty of spooky, dusty, shadowy, echoing things hidden down in the tomb after it is opened. In one particularly memorable scene, Gabe leans on a wall that collapses inward and sends him tumbling down into a chamber filled with spiders and snakes. And as in the first book, once again Gabe brings along his “Summoner” monkey’s hand that played such a critical role the first time around. In fact, it serves as his good luck charm. There is also an interesting little trinket Gabe receives from his uncle: a three-thousand-year-old amber pendant with a scarab trapped inside. His uncle reiterates the ancient Egyptian legend about scarabs: (“To keep a scarab meant immortality… But the bite of a scarab meant instant death”).
At any rate, the trio finally discovers the tomb of Khor-Ru where they discover a mummy locked inside its sarcophagus:
“The prince lay on his back, his slender arms crossed over his chest. Black tar had seeped through the bandages. The gauze had worn away from the head, revealing the tar-covered skull… As I leaned over the case, my heart in my throat, the tar-blackened eyes seemed to stare helplessly up at me… There’s a real person inside there, I thought, feeling a chill run down my spine” (69).
There are some sacred words spoken, the mummy awakens, and Uncle Ben goes missing inside the tomb. Gabe and Sari frantically rush through the pyramid until they find Uncle Ben trapped inside the mummy’s sarcophagus. As the mummy slowly scrapes its feet on the ground and heads toward Gabe, Sari, and Uncle Ben, he lunges forward but just before the mummy can grab the kids, Nila suddenly emerges from the shadows having stolen Gabe’s “Summoner” monkey’s hand. She calls out to the mummy, calling to Prince Khor-Ru, her brother, and beckoning him to be with her. Instead, the mummy simply turns on her and grabs her by the throat and utters the words scrawled on his stone: “Let me… rest in peace!” (somehow this ancient Egyptian mummy knows how to speak English?) At any rate, Gabe somewhat accidentally grabs Nila’s pendant off her and it shatters, causing her to start screaming and shrinking. Apparently, the pendant was magic and had been allowing her to continue living for thousands of years as a scarab. She shrinks all the way down to the size of a scarab and she scuttles away into the dusty tomb, never to be seen again.
Later, with things returned to normal, in a trademark Goosebumps twist ending, Sari starts teasing Gabe that he might have to be wary of his cot later (they have been staying in tents while in Egypt) because he just might get a bite from a scarab. And that night, lo and behold, Gabe feels a bite and shouts “ouch!”
With vague echoes of Twilight Zone episodes like “Queen of the Nile,” Return of the Mummy is an entertaining little adventure, albeit less scary and very much predictable. Once again, the mummy only shows up for a brief moment before the book ends (unfortunately) but I liked the legend about scarab beetles as well as the ancient sacred words that when spoken will make the mummy rise from his sarcophagus (this reminded me a bit of Boris Karloff’s Universal monster movie The Mummy). Plus Nila is a much more compelling villain than Ahmed in the first book. But Return of the Mummy is still an odd sequel. All the wild supernatural events that took place in the first book are barely even addressed at all in this one, almost as if they never happened. And there are a few minor continuity errors that were later apparently corrected (for example: there is a claim that Gabe’s last Egyptian adventure took place over the summer when, in fact, it actually was over Christmas in the first book). Anyway, Return of the Mummy is a serviceable middle-of-the-road Goosebumps adventure story, a step up from its predecessor, but not one of the best in the series.
Stine, R.L. Return of the Mummy. Scholastic, Inc., New York, NY, 1994.