The Tower at the End of the World (Action Packs)

by Brad Strickland

  Jim Marvin had made a lot of money in oil and steel after World War I, and he had bought an entire island, Ivarhaven, to build his dream house on. It was a shining white modernistic mansion, terraced and stacked in layers on the side of a hill. It had glass walls everywhere to give fantastic views of the lake. At the flattened-off top of the hill were a tennis court, a croquet court, and a tall flag-pole. Every clear morning at dawn, Lewis and Rose Rita trooped there to run up the American flag, and every evening at sunset they brought it down and folded it.

  Wednesday, the fifth day of their visit, began with a thin, cool rain. Despite the weather Grampa Galway said he was going to run over to Porcupine Bay, five miles away, in the sailboat. Lewis volunteered to go with him. He donned a yellow slicker and did such a good job of handling the sail that Grampa Galway pronounced him an able-bodied sailor as they tied up at the pier. Lewis swelled with pride.

  They visited the general store, where Mr. Galway bought bread, milk, and some other supplies. Lewis noticed that the old checker players weren’t around. Too rainy for them to come to the store, he supposed. In fact, except for a tall man with steel-gray hair who was also shopping, he and Grampa Galway had the store pretty much to themselves. They hauled their purchases to the counter. The clerk rang them up, then said, “Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. Some mail for you.” He rummaged around under the counter and came up with a handful of letters. “For Mr. Barnavelt,” he said, handing them over.

  Lewis took them. He and Grampa Galway started out, each carrying two brown paper bags of groceries. They stood for a moment on the porch of the little store, looking at the steady rain. Suddenly the door behind them opened, and the gray-haired man said, “There’s one more letter. May I give it to you?” He waved a manila envelope. It was about nine by twelve inches.

  “Uh, sure,” said Lewis, shifting his bags so he could take it from him. “Thanks.”

  “You’re entirely welcome.” The stranger smiled. He was taller than Grampa Galway and pretty thin. He wore dark trousers and a dark blue windbreaker, and his face looked weather-beaten. “Glad to have had the opportunity.” He went back inside the store.

  Lewis looked at the envelope curiously. In the corner someone had pasted half a dozen three-cent stamps. They were pale blue, and they pictured a long iron ore freighter ship, with a map of the five Great Lakes over it. “Soo Locks, Sault Sainte Marie,” the stamps read at the top, and at the bottom: “A Century of Great Lakes Transportation.” Lewis had never seen these stamps before.

  He glanced at the address. In spiky handwriting, someone had directed the envelope to “Lewis Barnavelt, General Delivery, Porcupine Bay, Mich.” Who would be writing him? Not his English pen pal, Bertie Woodring, who didn’t even know he was up here. Anyway, the handwriting was unfamiliar.

  He had no time to find out, because Grampa Galway was ready to go. Lewis stuffed the envelope down into one of the grocery bags to keep it dry, and the two hurried off the porch and ran down to the pier. The rain was worse, gray curtains of it lashing across the lake. They stowed the groceries in the boat’s cabin, cast off, and fought their way toward Ivarhaven Island. “Hang on, Lewis,” bellowed Grampa Galway. “These blows can get kind of rough!”

  It was almost like riding a roller coaster. The wind got up to a stiff gale, and they had to shorten the sail. Lewis held the tiller, steering the boat, while Grampa Galway hauled the sail partway down and then tied off the bottom part, securing it to the boom. “Keep us from blowing over on our beam ends,” he said when he came back. “Now, if my dead reckoning isn’t too far out, we should be seeing the island about any time now.”

  Lewis felt a little queasy, but suddenly the green bulk of Ivarhaven materialized out of the rain ahead. They brought the Sunfish into her slip, moored her bow and stern, and dropped the sail. Then they hurried into the mansion with their four dripping bags of groceries.

  “How was it?” asked Rose Rita as they squelched into the kitchen.

  Grampa Galway shook his head. “Not a fit day out for man nor beast. We probably should’ve waited, but we were all out of milk!”

  They unpacked the groceries and Lewis pulled out his envelope. “Somebody sent me a letter,” he told Rose Rita as the two of them walked into the study.

  “Who?” she asked.

  “Let’s find out,” returned Lewis. He plopped the envelope down on the desk and sat in the rolling chair. Then he peeled the flap of the envelope open. It was pretty damp, and the glue gave way easily. He reached inside and pulled out something. But it wasn’t a letter.

  It was a single folded page torn from some old book. A big book too, because when he unfolded it, the page was about ten inches wide and twelve inches long. Lewis flattened it on the study table and blinked in amazement at what he saw.

  One side of the page was thickly printed with a Latin text in Gothic lettering. The other side was taken up by a steel engraving, a scene rendered in densely cross-hatched lines of ink. On the right, a king sat on an ornate throne, a stern expression on his bearded face. His outstretched hand held a scepter. On the left side of the picture stood four soldiers. Between them cowered a mysterious figure in a hood and cape. You couldn’t tell whether it was a man or a woman. At the bottom of the engraving, in fancy lettering, was the title of the picture:

  Contradicto Salomonis cum demonio nocturno.

  “What in the world . . . ?” asked Rose Rita.

  “I don’t know,” admitted Lewis. “But the Latin means ‘Solomon’s Debate with a Demon of the Night.’ ” Then he noticed something that made him feel cold and brought goose bumps popping out on his arms. In the lower right corner of the illustration, the throne of King Solomon cast a deep black shadow. Only as he stared at it, Lewis realized it wasn’t a shadow at all, but some kind of creature. It hunkered beside the throne, its spidery limbs hugging itself. Its body seemed to be covered with matted, shaggy black hair. Just visible at its left shoulder was its right hand, nearly skeletal. Like Solomon, it was pointing its finger toward the cowled figure as if in accusation. But worst of all were the eyes, round saucers that seemed to glow at the viewer with an inner hatred.

  Lewis felt his stomach lurch. He had the uncanny certainty that the artist had not made up this monstrosity. It had been drawn from a living model.

  “What’s wrong?” demanded Rose Rita. “Hey, Lewis, what do you see?”

  “L-look at this thing,” said Lewis. He put a shaking finger on the freakish image.

  Rose Rita frowned. “There’s nothing to get upset about, Lewis. That’s just the shadow of the throne.”

  “No,” insisted Lewis. “See? Here’s its head, and here are its eyes—”

  Rose Rita took the paper from him. “I don’t think so. Those two white blobs aren’t eyes, they’re ornaments on the throne. See, here are two more. It’s just a shadow.”

  Lewis forced himself to look more closely. Oddly, when he concentrated on making out the hideous creature, it seemed to fade away. Now the picture looked as if Rose Rita were right. It was just a dark pool of shadow with some jagged edges. Still, Lewis found it hard to breathe. He knew that he was going to dream about that thing.

  The Latin text on the other side of the page didn’t help at all. It was a sort of list giving examples of evil acts of witchcraft:III. Animals sicken and die, their maladies caused by magic.

  IV. The evil eye brings misfortune.

  V. Deep secrets are known by the sorcerer, though no one speaks of them.

  Lewis translated that much for Rose Rita. The list went on like that. “It doesn’t say anything about Solomon at all,” finished Lewis.

  Rose Rita just shrugged. “I guess the picture may be King Solomon delivering judgment on the Witch of Endor or something. Crazy thing to send you. Is there a note?”

  Lewis shook the envelope. “No. I don’t think—” He broke off as a slip of paper fluttered from the envelope. It twirled through the air, and he made a grab for it, catching it before it hit the floor.

>   “So what is it?” asked Rose Rita, craning to see. “Some kind of weird advertisement or something?”

  Lewis’s hands were shaking. The slip was parchment, not paper, and it felt odd in his fingers, as if it were writhing with some life of its own. Marching across the slip in three rows were some very strange angular letters. They had been drawn in rusty-red ink, and they made no sense at all to Lewis. “Some kind of foreign language,” he told Rose Rita.

  She looked at the writing. “No,” she said slowly. “I don’t think so. These are runes. I can’t read them all, but this one is a T, and I think this one’s an E.”

  Lewis knew that runes were a kind of alphabet used by the ancient Norse and Germanic peoples to leave inscriptions carved in stones. Because of that, they were angular and odd-looking. But beyond that, he had no idea what the inscription might mean. He certainly couldn’t read a fifteen-hundred-year-old alphabet!

  “Maybe we’d better show this to Mrs. Zimmermann,” he said.

  “Good idea,” agreed Rose Rita.

  They found her right back where they had begun, in the kitchen. She was happily preparing lunch for everyone: homemade vegetable-noodle soup, thick chicken sandwiches on sourdough bread, and a blueberry pie for dessert. But she stopped her work the moment she saw the distressed expression on Lewis’s face.

  Lewis and Rose Rita quickly explained what had happened. Mrs. Zimmermann studied the book illustration for a long time, but then she shook her head. “I’m sorry, Lewis, but I can’t make out your monster. I think Rose Rita is right—it’s just an optical illusion caused by the light and shadow. However, let me take a look at the parchment. Hmm.”

  Mrs. Zimmermann scowled down at the rust-red runes scratched on the slip of parchment. Then she pushed her spectacles up into her wild nest of white hair and peered very closely at the lettering. “This is strange, indeed,” she muttered. “Well, these are not futhark runes, which are the standard type used by the Vikings and the Norsemen. They’re Celtic. I think they’re Manx runes, which originated on the Isle of Man, near Great Britain. I can’t read them all, but I can just about make out this part: You are granted forty-eight. To me that’s about as clear as a bowl of pea soup. Does it make any sense to you?”

  “No. Forty-eight what?” Lewis asked.

  “That I don’t know,” answered Mrs. Zimmermann in a thoughtful voice. “Forty-eight coconut cream pies? Forty-eight free issues of Boy’s Life magazine? A tour of the forty-eight states? I have no idea! As soon as we get back to New Zebedee, though, I’ll consult some textbooks on runes and ancient languages. Maybe with luck I can decipher the rest.”

  Lewis took a deep breath. “Don’t tell Uncle Jonathan about this, okay?”

  Mrs. Zimmermann popped her spectacles back into place. She stared at him with wide eyes. “Why not?”

  With a miserable shrug, Lewis said, “Well, he’s been happy the last few days, fishing and sailing. And we’re gonna be here for another three days. After all that business with the bump on his head, I’d like for him to have a good vacation and not worry.”

  Mrs. Zimmermann smiled and tapped her chin with her finger. “Very well, Lewis. But I’ll tell you what I do plan to do. I am going to make some telephone calls to some friends of mine who know about secret languages and mystical signs. If there’s something witchy about this piece of parchment, they’ll be sure to know. Meanwhile, keep it safe. I’d suggest putting it your wallet and treating it like a thousand-dollar bill. And try not to worry.”

  “Okay,” said Lewis.

  With a kindly smile, Mrs. Zimmermann patted his hand. “I know that’s easy advice to give and hard advice to take! But Rose Rita and I will help you solve this mystery if we can. Until we have something to go on, sit tight and don’t give in to worry and woe. All right, Lewis?”

  “All right,” Lewis told her. But that was much easier said than done.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Mrs. Zimmermann was as good as her word. She never mentioned the odd parchment to Jonathan. Still, Lewis found that his vacation was ruined. At night when he was trying to go to sleep, a vision of the horrible, shaggy, emaciated monster floated just behind his eyelids.

  He sat up in bed one evening trying to read a mystery novel. As usual he was munching something as he read. In this case it was a package of chocolate-covered peanuts. Lewis should have been comfortable. He had three big puffy pillows behind him. The novel was about a peculiar murder in which all the victim’s clothes were turned backward. But Lewis found it very hard to concentrate.

  He lost the thread of the story and turned back a page to reread it. Staring at the book, he popped a chocolate-covered peanut into his mouth. But when he bit into it, something was terribly wrong.

  It wasn’t crunchy, but squishy. And it moved in his mouth!

  Lewis sputtered and spat. The candy plopped onto the bed—and then it sprouted legs! It scuttled over the edge of the bed.

  Lewis’s stomach lurched. He looked down at the box in his left hand. Roaches were streaming out of it, dozens of them. Their oily brown wings glistened in the light from his bedside lamp. They were scrambling up his arms, heading for his face!

  Gagging and choking, Lewis jumped out of bed—

  The book crashed to the floor. The candy box fell beside it, and two or three chocolate-covered peanuts rolled out. Lewis stood with his back to the wall, frantically slapping at himself.

  The insects had vanished. Lewis blinked. It had been a dream, he realized. He had dozed off while reading the book and had dreamed the disgusting stream of roaches. He stumbled to the bathroom and brushed his teeth extra hard. Then he rinsed his mouth with cold water four times. Only then did he return to his bedroom and pick up the book and the box of candy. Lewis dumped the box into the trash. He didn’t think he’d ever want chocolate-covered peanuts again.

  After that, though, Lewis didn’t even try to read when he went to bed at night. He could no more concentrate on a book than he could go for a stroll across the deep waters of Lake Superior.

  He found it all doubly painful because he didn’t want to ruin everyone else’s vacation. In ordinary times he would have loved the whole trip. The house was fascinating, with balconies overlooking the lake, and a whole library of its own. True, the books were not something Lewis would read, volumes like A Mineralogical Field Guide to the Upper Midwest and Topographic Indicators of Oil-Bearing Strata, but they gave the room a cozy feel that any bookworm would welcome. And there was much to do besides reading.

  Jonathan loved to fish off the dock, and he caught some beauties: lake trout, steelhead, and coho. Lewis and Rose Rita joined him sometimes, though Lewis was squeamish about taking the fish off the hooks. They threw most of their catch back, but on one evening they had a big fish fry, with Jonathan smacking his lips over the tasty trout that he had caught himself.

  After the stormy trip into Porcupine Bay, Lewis didn’t go back aboard the Sunfish. Rose Rita and Grampa Galway went in on Friday and returned with some more mail. Nothing came for Lewis, to his relief, but Jonathan got the forwarded electric bill and a letter from his sister in Osee Five Hills. All in all Lewis should have enjoyed the break from routine, if only he could have gotten his mind off the vaguely threatening piece of parchment and the much more frightening steel engraving.

  Their week on Ivarhaven Island drew to a close. They planned to drive back to New Zebedee on Sunday. At Mrs. Zimmermann’s suggestion, they all agreed to go on a boating expedition on the last Saturday of their stay. “We’ll pack a picnic lunch,” said Mrs. Zimmermann cheerfully. “I’ll make my special potato salad and fry a big batch of chicken. We’ll have chocolate cake, fresh rolls, lemonade, and a great big thermos of iced tea. Then we’ll find a particularly interesting island to land on. Maybe even an unexplored one!”

  “One where the hand of man has never set foot,” put in Jonathan with a mischievous wink. “And we can claim it in the name of truth, justice, and the American way!”

  “Oh, that s
houldn’t be much of a problem. Around here there are islands aplenty,” said Grampa Galway, rubbing his hands together. “And the weather report for Saturday sounds just right. We can do some real sailing! Hoist up the sails and see how much speed we can get out of our trusty vessel!”

  And so it was all arranged. Saturday dawned beautifully bright and clear, with a steady wind from the north-west. Everyone was cheerful as they loaded up the boat—everyone, that is, except Lewis. He had to force himself to appear to enjoy the trip.

  By nine o’clock the Sunfish leaned into the dark waters, cutting a frothy white wake as she skimmed along. Rose Rita and Lewis took turns at the tiller as they sped across the calm water. Grampa Galway showed them how to tack, how to bring the boat about, and how to wear ship. Those were different ways of turning into or away from the wind, and ordinarily Lewis would have felt like a dashing naval hero or pirate king. Because of his worries and his lack of sleep, though, he just felt light-headed and groggy.