"Under the Pyramids" aka "Imprisoned With the Pharoahs"

 

by H.P. Lovecraft

originally published  (as by Harry Houdini), Weird Tales May-June-July, 1924

Harry Houdini - yes, that Harry Houdini - is poking around Cairo and gets himself kidnapped, tied up, taken to some distant spot and tossed in a pit.  

Well, what else would you do with Houdini?

Houdini hallucinates for awhile, then comes to, gets out of the ropes (he is Houdini, after all), and makes his way around in the dark, looking for an exit.  He finds himself even further underground, in a cavern where he witnesses a bunch of mummies with animal heads having a hoedown with the ancient pharoahs Khephren and Nitokris and a giant tentacled whatsit poking through a hole in the wall.  Houdini runs for it when he realizes the whatsit is only the paw of an enormous whatsit.  Later he decides the whole thing is a dream.

A lot of HPL criticists have named this a fave, but personally I wasn't that enthralled.  The first 2/3 or so read like a travel guide and I could practically hear a Nathional Geo narrator reading it.  The last portion has plenty of atmosphere but hey, the story doesn't really go anywhere - Houdini gets captured, sees something weird - runs away.  HPL wrote a few too many like this in the early days.