Alone

Disclaimer: - I don’t own any of the characters of The Mummy, I’m just borrowing them to play with.

Alone Chapter 14

Jonathan briefly wondered if this was what it felt like to drown. He felt so desperately tired his limbs too heavy to move, all of his muscles aching. Yet he struggled to push himself up, up out of the dark and murky depths he felt submerged in. He reached up towards the sparkling surface, reaching for the light and warmth and life that he knew awaited him there. But usually the exhaustion would overwhelm him before he broke through and he’d feel himself slowly sinking back down into the inky grasp of sleep or unconsciousness, he wasn’t sure which.

This time, however he had something to anchor him to the waking world. A hand, small and warm held his, and a thumb gently rubbed across the back of his hand. It’s steady rhythm was almost hypnotic and Jonathan found himself floating in a kind of twilight state neither fully asleep or fully awake, just letting himself feel that gentle pressure moving constantly across his skin. His sluggishly working brain even supplied him with a name and a face to go with the comforting hand – Evy.

He let his mind drift back to a time when that smaller hand had been a nearly permanent fixture held in his own hand. When they were children and Evy had followed him around with the dogged determination of a blood hound no matter how many times he tried to lose her. She would come trotting up to him and slip her tiny hand into his and he’d feel his annoyance waiver and his resolve to leave her behind melt away, and the two of them would set off together hand in hand on some grand adventure around the latest dig site which had intrigued their parents or in the streets around their Cairo home. Always with Evy’s voice lisping constant questions that Jonathan was proud to know all the answers to. Eventually though as she’d gotten older Evy’s curiosity had made her ask questions that he no longer knew the answers to and so she’d ceased to follow him so devotedly, and her hand no longer held his as she turned to their father to tell her all the things she wanted to know. Jonathan had left them to their dusty old dead pharaohs and their broken pieces of pottery pushing down the sharp pain he’d felt at her abandonment and had found other, less reputable, ways of amusing himself. He’d never really acknowledged to himself before how much he’d missed the way Evy had looked up to him then, the feel of her warm hand tucked in his, and he didn’t want to loose it now, he didn’t want anything to disturb this moment so he let himself drift.

At least he didn’t feel as hot as he had before when he’d been sure the very blood had been boiling in his veins. He could vaguely remember trying to get away from the heat but never being able to escape it. Of cool hands holding him and something cold and wet being brushed over his face, the contrast in temperature compared to his own all consuming internal fire shocking him, but also bringing with it a temporary relief. Slipping in and out of awareness that sweet relief of a cool cloth sliding over his over-heated skin had always been there. It had been a constant just as the voices had been. Voices that had told him he wasn’t alone. Voices that he could remember bringing him comfort even if he’d been unable to understand what they said, just the sound of them had soothed him when he’d felt as if he needed to find a way to escape his own flesh.

For the first time Jonathan began to wonder why he felt as he did. He must have been ill. There’d been a time when he was young and he’d had the measles and he’d been told when he was older that he’d nearly died. That had been a time of confusion and heat and lethargy just like now so that must be it, he’d been ill.

But something stirred in the back of his mind. Something black and putrid that made him shiver and want to run away from it as fast as he could. Something he didn’t want to confront twisted and writhed getting closer to him all the time. Turning from it Jonathan reached out to his anchor, to the small, warm hand and the constantly moving thumb that stroked so gently against his skin. Turning from it Jonathan felt himself struggling towards the surface, and although his limbs ached and his muscled seemed to burn from the effort he pushed up away from the darkness and the poisonous thing that lurked there. He felt himself squeeze the hand that held his to reassure himself that it was real, and with a gasp his eyes fluttered open for the first time in days.