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

by Brad Strickland

  They began looking for a picnic island about eleven o’clock. Some small rocks loomed up to the right, but everyone agreed they appeared too damp and uncomfortable. One pine-covered island looked likely until they approached it and saw it was thickly posted with stern “No Trespassing” signs. They left that one behind. Suddenly Uncle Jonathan said, “Look over there, to port.”

  Lewis had to smile at that. His uncle had taken to boating the way a duckling takes to water. He was always coming up with words like “abaft” and “amidships.” Holding on to the tiller, Lewis leaned so that he could see under the boom and looked off to the left, the direction that sailors and his uncle Jonathan referred to as “port.”

  He wasn’t sure what he saw. It was a shimmering in the air, like heat waves dancing off a hot asphalt road. The effect was bizarre. It looked as if a big part of the lake were wriggling like blue-gray Jell-O, rising up into the air for a few feet, and then dissolving like smoke blowing away on a breeze. “What is that?” asked Lewis.

  Grampa Galway shaded his eyes with his hand. He shook his head doubtfully. “Strangest thing I’ve seen in these waters. Looks mighty like a Sahara mirage. Except the Sahara is about fifty million times drier than Lake Superior, and considerably hotter! Bear to port, Lewis. Let’s check it out.”

  Lewis gave Rose Rita a sick, pleading look. She seemed to understand that he was unusually anxious. “Want me to take the tiller?” she asked.

  He shook his head. Maybe it was silly, but he hated looking like a chicken in front of Rose Rita and his friends. He moved the tiller until the bow of the Sunfish pointed directly at the strange phenomenon.

  “It isn’t a waterspout,” mused Mrs. Zimmermann, clapping one hand to the crown of her purple sun hat to keep it from blowing right off her head. “And it can’t be gasoline fumes or reflections of the sun.”

  Jonathan held to a line and leaned far out. “It isn’t fog or mist either. Very peculiar! Maybe we’ve discovered a submarine volcano or a completely unknown atmospheric condition.”

  The Sunfish drew nearer and nearer to the shimmering curtain of air. Lewis tightened his grip on the tiller. Part of him wanted to yank it desperately, to turn away from whatever lay ahead, to flee. But what would everyone think of him? No one else was panicky. He had to force himself to be calm. Taking a deep breath, Lewis held his course.

  Seconds before the bow of the sailboat could penetrate the glimmering, wavering barrier, it vanished, and suddenly ahead of them was a green island. Lewis blinked. They were only a couple of hundred yards away, and it was as if the island had just materialized out of thin air.

  It was a domed islet, perhaps ten or twelve acres in area. To Lewis it appeared to be a hill that rose abruptly out of the water. Its fringes were heavily wooded with blue-green fir trees, but these stopped halfway up the hillside. The rounded summit looked grassy and smooth. Strangest of all, rising straight up from the shoulder of the hill was a stark black column. At first Lewis thought it was the trunk of a tall, dead tree. Then, as they drew closer, he realized it was a man-made structure of some sort. A dark tower, rising maybe a hundred feet into the air from its base.

  “This is peculiar,” grunted Grampa Galway.

  “Why?” asked Rose Rita.

  Her grandfather lifted his yachting cap and scratched his bald head. “Because no island should be here at all. I’ve sailed this way before, and I know this place is not marked on the chart! But we were hoping to make a discovery, so I say we find an anchorage.”

  The others agreed, and Lewis lacked the heart to be the only one who objected. Grampa Galway took the tiller from Lewis, and Lewis went forward. He stood in the bow and stared as the sailboat turned and started around the southwestern shore of the little island. The sight of it filled him with a strange sense of dread. He clenched his hands and hoped that they wouldn’t be able to find an anchorage. For some reason he didn’t want to set foot on the place.

  For a short while that looked like a pretty good bet. The steep, brushy sides of the island rose from the water, with no inlet or sheltered spot for the boat to anchor. But then, on the southernmost side of the island, Lewis saw a creek tumbling down a rocky bed. It spilled over smooth brown stones like scattered potatoes and foamed into Lake Superior, making a little inlet. Just within the inlet stood a solid-looking wood pier.

  “We’ll tie up there,” announced Grampa Galway. “Jonathan, get the sounding pole and make sure we’ve got enough water. No sense in running aground!”

  Jonathan stood in the bow with a long pole. He thrust this straight down in the water, testing the depth. “No bottom so far,” he stated as Rose Rita shortened sail. The Sunfish slowed until it was barely drifting, and Grampa Galway steered her toward the pier with expert attention. Just before the bow bumped the pier, Jonathan said, “We’ve got a good eight feet of water. Safe enough!”

  Then the boat very gently nudged up to the pier. Rose Rita and Uncle Jonathan jumped out and helped with the mooring lines, and a very unwilling Lewis finally climbed from the Sunfish. He was carrying the picnic basket. “Maybe this isn’t such a hot idea,” he mumbled. “Maybe this whole island belongs to somebody who wouldn’t like us tying up here.”

  Rose Rita shook her head. “Then why didn’t Mr. Whosis, the Master of Mystery Island, plant some ‘No Trespassing’ signs like the ones we saw earlier? This might be a state park or something, for all we know. Anyway, there’s no other boat here, and it’s first come, first served as far as I’m concerned.”

  “This is a curious place,” said Jonathan. “That’s for sure. But it seems solid and harmless enough. I don’t know what the shimmery-glimmery was that hid it, but maybe it was just some trick of the sun and mist over the water. Anyway, we’re here now.”

  From the pier a crooked, grassy path zigged and zagged this way and that through the dark firs, climbing the hillside. They followed it into a sudden grassy clearing. There they found a stone cottage, a little one-story house no more than twenty feet square. The steep roof was shingled with flat charcoal-colored slates. The cottage had only one door and a single shuttered window. No smoke rose from its stone chimney, and the place looked deserted and as lifeless as a skull.

  Lewis wiped his face. He was sweating, and not just from the effort of carrying their picnic lunch and climbing up the trail. He could not shake off a strange feeling of dread. Yet the island seemed completely normal. Grasshoppers zinged in the grass, and cardinals and jays chattered in the trees. Even so, their surroundings gave Lewis a case of the heebie-jeebies. He kept expecting something terrible to jump out at them any second. But everything looked very serene.

  “I’d say nobody’s home,” observed Mrs. Zimmermann as they walked toward the cottage. For a moment they stood in front of the closed door. Nothing inside the house stirred. “Of course, whoever lives here must have to get back and forth by boat, and we didn’t see any boat, so they must be out. Well, we’ll be extra-special neat when we have our picnic. I don’t think we’ll trouble anyone. Come on. Let’s climb the hill and see what we can see, like the bear that went over the mountain.”

  The trail continued through the trees on the other side of the clearing. Lewis began to tire of lugging the picnic hamper. Then, just as he was about to ask if he could set it down and rest for a moment, the group came out onto a second clearing, much stranger than the first.

  Before them reared the dark tower. It was made of curved blocks of some black stone shot through with tiny cobwebby streaks of gray. Lewis tilted his head back. The structure might have been a skinny lighthouse, except it looked like no lighthouse he had ever seen. For one thing, it did not seem to have a door, at least not at ground level.

  But leading up to the very top of the tower on one side was a precarious-looking set of steps, very narrow, and rising like a flying buttress supporting a cathedral wall. He had not seen them from the water. Probably the angle had been wrong and the tower itself had hidden them. Just looking at the steep steps made Lewis fee
l dizzy. They had no handrails, and each step was barely a foot wide. Only a fool or a very desperate person would attempt such a climb, he thought. One slip, and you’d break your neck.

  “Hmm,” said Mrs. Zimmermann, touching her chin thoughtfully. “Curiouser and curiouser, as Lewis Carroll wrote. This is a very steep lawn! And I wonder what on earth the tower is supposed to commemorate.”

  Slanting upward to the north from the base of the tower was the lawn Mrs. Zimmermann had mentioned. Someone obviously took good care of it. The grass was trimmed short, with no weeds sprouting anywhere, and curving walkways of crushed white gravel crisscrossed the space. Scattered about on the lawn were groups of grotesque metal sculptures. On the west side was a spray of six iron poles, each about ten feet long. They leaned from a round stone base like gigantic jonquils placed in a vase too large for them. At the end of each pole was the wrought-iron figure of a flying bat. A few steps away stood a circle of seven five-foot tall stone pillars, each one fluted like a Corinthian column. On the top of every column was a gleaming life-sized human skull made of transparent quartz crystal. Past that was a tiny graveyard, walled in by a black wrought-iron fence. Eight white marble tombstones marked the graves, but they were blank and smooth, with no names chiseled on them. Beyond were more groups of odd sculptures: five jagged lightning bolts, a standing human figure with upraised arms, three staring glass eyeballs, six things that looked like gallows complete with dangling nooses, and more. Lewis counted a dozen different clusters of sculpture in all.

  “I don’t like this place,” pronounced Mrs. Zimmermann firmly, hugging herself as if the day had turned cold. “Someone went to a lot of expense and trouble to put all these geegaws up, and from the looks of them, I’d say that the builder was constructing a park for the mentally deranged.”

  Jonathan stood beside her, staring at the graves. He nodded. “I agree with you, Florence. This is no place for a picnic, anyway. Let’s get away from here.”

  The group hurried back down the path faster than they had climbed. Rose Rita grabbed the handle of the picnic hamper and helped Lewis carry it. “Thanks,” he grunted, grateful for her aid.

  They passed the closed-up cottage and then clambered down toward the pier. The Sunfish waited for them there, and everyone except Lewis climbed aboard. He stayed on the pier to cast off the bowline. Just before he stepped onto the deck, he turned for a last look at the island.

  The grassy path twisted and turned into the shadows of the firs. The shade looked unnaturally deep, as if it were evening, not noon. Somehow the woods were a little too dark, a little too murky. Then Lewis saw something that almost made him shriek.

  One length of the grassy path lay in sunlight, except for a wavering patch of shadow. As Lewis stared so hard that he felt his eyes were about to bug out of his head, the shadowy patch moved. It shot out something that could have been a long, skinny, crooked arm. At the end of it a skeletal hand seemed to clutch the grass. The dark patch crept forward.

  And then it opened two yellow eyes and glared at him.

  Lewis jumped onto the Sunfish. “Let’s get out of here!” he screeched, his voice rising to a high pitch.

  Grampa Galway had cast off the stern line, and Jonathan was leaning on his sounding pole, pushing the bow away from the pier. Rose Rita pulled the line that raised the sail, and with a whump! it filled with air and pulled the boat away from shore.

  Lewis looked back. The dark patch was still there. Only now it was clearly nothing more than the shadow of a tree branch falling across the sunny spot.

  Had he seen what he thought he had seen? For one terrifying moment, he had been sure that the monster from “Solomon’s Debate” had found him. It had crept down the pathway, crawling like an inky cat slinking low to the ground with prey in sight. And it had fixed him with pale yellow eyes filled with hatred.

  Lewis stared at the shadow as the Sunfish left the island. It shrank with distance. Then suddenly, the island simply winked out of existence. It was gone as if it had never existed. Lewis could not even see the ghostly, shimmery waves that had marked it before.

  “Where did it go?” asked Rose Rita, standing beside him.

  Everyone looked back. Grampa Galway cleared his throat. “Guess we’re making better time than I thought,” he said, his voice sounding shaky. “Must be going fifteen knots.”

  “Sure,” agreed Jonathan. “Well, good riddance, I say! We’ll find some more pleasant place to stuff our faces with Florence’s fried chicken and potato salad than that playground for madmen.”

  Lewis knew his uncle very well. He caught the notes of doubt and uncertainty in Jonathan’s voice. And somehow he sensed that their troubles were only beginning.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  On the first night home from the trip, Lewis slept much better than he had in days. By Monday morning he was beginning to think that maybe the worst was over. Mrs. Zimmermann came over to fix breakfast, as she often did. She hated eating alone, and she knew very well that Jonathan Barnavelt could hardly boil water, let alone make a delicious breakfast of hash browns, scrambled eggs with cheese, and tasty sausage. The three of them enjoyed the meal, and Mrs. Zimmermann seemed extra kind as she talked to Lewis. He knew she would research the strange picture and the parchment covered in ancient runes. If something was truly wrong, she would find a way to put it right.

  For the first time in a long time, Lewis decided not to worry. He had read none of the books he had planned to read on vacation. He selected one of them, a detective story by a writer named Ellery Queen, and settled down under the chestnut tree in the front yard to read it. It was a real puzzler, and it occupied him for most of the day.

  Rose Rita came over after dinner that evening. Lewis and Jonathan were in the front parlor watching a western on TV when she arrived. “Hi,” she said. “I thought I’d go and see the Fourth of July fireworks at the athletic field. Want to come?”

  Uncle Jonathan smiled wearily. “I’m pooped after our vacation and driving halfway back home. But you and Lewis go if you want. Grab a couple of sparklers for Florence and me!”

  Lewis didn’t much feel like seeing the show, but Rose Rita obviously wanted company. He mumbled, “Sure, I’ll go with you. Want to ride our bikes over?”

  Rose Rita pulled a long face. “No can do. I banged over the curb just before we left and warped my front wheel. Dad still hasn’t gotten around to fixing it.”

  Lewis shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. We can walk.”

  Usually Lewis liked walking the streets of his home-town. New Zebedee was stuffed with interesting old houses. Some were like Victorian layer cakes with so much decoration that the houses seemed more like excuses for pilasters and fancy cornices and gingerbread than places for living. Others were built in different styles, from elegant stone Georgian to wood and plaster Tudor. One was even an imitation of a South Seas mansion. It had been built back in the 1800’s by a New Zebedee native who had been a representative of the United States to the Sandwich Islands.

  On that Monday evening, though, Lewis hardly noticed his surroundings. He was beginning to feel a little jumpy again, but he didn’t know why. Rose Rita respected his silence. They spoke very little as they joined a crowd that was strolling over to the athletic field on the edge of town. People covered the bleachers already, and the new-comers spread out blankets and towels on the grass. The town’s brass band was tootling away, led by the mayor, Mr. Hugo Davis. Lewis had to grin at the sight of the portly Mr. Davis stuffed into his red and white band-leader’s costume. His collar was so tight that his eyes were bugging out, and his scarlet face contrasted with his snowy white hair. But he was waving his baton with enthusiasm, directing the band as they played “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”

  Lewis and Rose Rita spoke to a few kids they knew from school. On the far side of the field Lewis recognized Tarby Corrigan, one of New Zebedee’s top athletes. Tarby and Lewis once had struck up a friendship, but that had ended when Tarby began to tease Lewis about being fat.
As Rose Rita and Lewis looked around for a place to sit, Lewis noticed Tarby looking at them. He didn’t wave, and Lewis knew that Tarby was pretending he did not exist, as usual.

  Rose Rita said, “I don’t want to go down onto the field. Let’s look over here.” They found a grassy spot on the hillside where they would have a good view, and listened as the band played and the sky grew darker. Finally, mop-ping his face with a red bandanna, Mr. Davis held up his hands and said, “And now the high point of the evening. Let the fireworks begin!”

  Far across the athletic field, in a roped-off area, the shadowy forms of five men hustled about. One of them stooped down, a glowing red stick in his hand. He touched a fuse, and with a whizz, a rocket shot up into the air, trailing a skirt of golden sparks. It whistled as it rose, then exploded into a sphere of brilliant yellow stars. A moment later the boom! rolled into the crowd as everyone said, “Ooh!”