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

by Brad Strickland

  More rockets and fireworks followed. Some were vivid green, some blue, some dazzling white, some red. Some were fired into the air from stubby mortars. Others zipped up under their own power, leaving straight or wavy trails of light. Catherine wheels spun and fizzed, and Roman candles shot globes of fire high into the air. At the big finish dozens of rockets went up at once, making Lewis’s ears throb with their bangs and blasts. The explosions dazzled him, and he joined in the applause at the end. Then everyone got up and started to drift out of the athletic field, all talking at once about what a good show it had been.

  Lewis and Rose Rita walked downtown with a crowd of other people, past the Farmers Seed and Feed on the corner of Main and Eagle. They crossed Main Street near the drugstore and walked toward the Pottinger house on Mansion Street. Suddenly they were alone. “I liked the starburst ones best,” said Rose Rita, continuing a discussion they had begun in front of Heemsoth’s Rexall Drug Store. “I’ll bet they were the kind of rocket that Francis Scott Key saw when he got the idea for ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’ ”

  “You mean the bombs bursting in air?” asked Lewis. “Or the rockets’ red glare? Because most of the starburst ones were gold, not red.”

  Rose Rita snorted. “Tell you what,” she said. “Let’s ask your uncle if he’ll conjure up the bombardment of Fort McHenry some time. I think it’d be kind of fun to see Francis Key on board the British ship Tonnant, looking to see if the American flag was flying.”

  Suddenly Lewis had a feeling as if a million ants were running up his spine. Military illusions were one of Uncle Jonathan’s magical specialties. He had showed them scenes of Napoleon, Lord Nelson, and General Ulysses S. Grant. Lewis had enjoyed watching the spectacle of the Spanish Armada and others, but now . . . He took a deep, shaky breath. “Maybe. Not right away, though. Somehow I think this summer is a bad time for magic, even if it is only illusions.”

  Mansion Street was quite dark, with yellow pools of light under the street lamps. Lewis could see Rose Rita only as a silhouette. She turned toward him and said, “You’re thinking about that oddball picture.”

  “Yes, I am,” Lewis said. “And the parchment. And that vanishing island. Something bad is getting ready to happen. I can feel it.”

  They came to Rose Rita’s house. “Well, count me in if you need help,” she said. “But if I were you, I’d let Mrs. Zimmermann handle it. She knows all about this stuff, remember. Want to play some flies and grounders tomorrow?”

  “I guess,” said Lewis. Rose Rita went inside, and Lewis plodded on, sticking his hands into his jeans pockets and walking fast, with his head down. Now that he was alone in the dark, he could imagine danger all around. Lewis felt he should whistle to ward off the danger, like someone whistling past a graveyard. But he was too timid. The sound might attract the attention of something bad. He wanted to be home again, safe in his own house.

  At the corner he thought he heard a soft rustling behind him. He turned and looked back, peering into the darkness and hearing the blood pound in his ears. But nothing seemed to be there.

  As he climbed the hill, Lewis saw someone standing beneath a streetlight halfway up the slope. It looked like a woman. At first he thought it might be Mrs. Zimmermann. But then he noticed that the figure wore a long black dress and a black veil. Lewis had never seen Mrs. Zimmermann in anything but her favorite color, purple. He slowed down, wondering who this stranger could be.

  She must have heard his footsteps, because she looked toward him and took a step back. Lewis breathed a sigh of relief. She looked as timid as he felt. He decided to hurry on past her.

  Just as he reached the circle of light beneath the street lamp, the woman spoke to him in a tentative, low voice: “Young man? May I ask you something?”

  Lewis edged away. He had always heard you weren’t supposed to talk to strangers, but it seemed impolite just to run past her. Besides, her voice sounded a little worried. Probably she just needed directions. “Y-yes?” he said.

  “Do you think I’m pretty?” asked the woman, and reaching up, she tore the veil away.

  Lewis felt rooted to the spot. The woman’s eyes were burning. But her mouth—her mouth! It was a red gash straight across her face, from ear to ear. It split open, revealing dozens of sharp, curving, yellow teeth. They grinned at Lewis in a horrible leer!

  Lewis bolted, running for his life. He heard the woman laugh, and he cast a terrified glance back over his shoulder. She had not moved. She stood beneath the streetlight, her terrible mouth gaping as she laughed and laughed. Then, somehow, she seemed to shimmer, the way the island had just before it vanished. Her figure shrank in on itself until there was nothing there but skin and bone. And the black dress became matted black hair. The creature from the engraving stood there for a second, then leaped forward, becoming part of the night!

  Lewis ran with more speed than he thought he had. He banged through the gate at 100 High Street, dashed across the porch, and slammed the front door behind him. He bolted it and leaned back, his chest heaving. “Uncle Jonathan!” he yelled. “Uncle Jonathan, come quick!”

  There was no answer. In the darkened foyer Lewis reached for the light switch. His hand hit something that swayed away from him and crashed to the floor with a muffled thud. Lewis found the switch. Weak yellow light flooded the little room. He blinked down at a fallen coat rack.

  His uncle didn’t have a coat rack. Lewis looked around wildly. The hat stand was gone. The ivory wallpaper with the faint green stripes had vanished. In its place was a deep maroon wallpaper with an intricate pattern of curving vines that wove around white shields. On each shield, in ornate letters, were the initials “II,” like the Roman numeral for 2.

  Lewis had seen that paper before. It had been on the walls when he first moved to his uncle’s house, but Jonathan Barnavelt had long since ripped it all down.

  The initials in the shields stood for “Isaac Izard,” the evil magician who had once owned the mansion.

  Lewis’s only thought was to run next door to Mrs. Zimmermann’s house. He needed help, and fast. He unbolted the door and threw it open.

  Facing him, its twisted body bent so that its wicked face was on a level with his own, was the nightmare from the engraving. It snarled, its yellow eyes blazing. With a wordless shriek, Lewis fled, running up the stairs. He heard a hiss of breath and a shuffle of claws on the wood floor behind him. At the top of the stairs he ran into his own bedroom.

  Only it wasn’t.

  His bed and other furniture were nowhere in sight. Instead there was an ancient mahogany table with legs carved to look like a lion’s. Piled all over it were books that were dusty and crumbling. An old-fashioned reading lamp was burning, casting feeble yellow light across the room.

  A tarnished brass telescope stood at one window, and an empty chair was in front of that. Lewis realized the thing behind him was probably halfway up the stairs. He would be trapped here!

  He dashed out into the darkened hall. The door that should have led to his uncle’s room was locked. Lewis thought he heard something behind him. He rushed to the south wing and the second staircase. He ran onto the landing and slammed the door behind him.

  This was different too. Halfway down the stairs was an oval window. Lewis knew it as an enchanted one, because his uncle had cast a spell on it to make it show different scenes. Now, though, it was just a clear window through which a little light leaked. Lewis could not find the light switch. He blundered up the stairs in the dark, with some notion of hiding up in the disused rooms.

  On the third floor he heard it.

  He could not for a moment trust his ears.

  The sound was quick and low, and he had heard it years before.

  It was the ominous ticking of a clock.

  Lewis sobbed. This wasn’t fair! He knew that sound. It was the ticking of the Doomsday Clock hidden in the very walls of 100 High Street by the devilish Isaac Izard. But Lewis had smashed the clock. He had thrown it to the floor seconds befor
e the ghost of Selenna Izard could get her hands on it!

  Another sound came, the hollow boom of the stairwell door being thrown open below. The monster was on the south stairs! Lewis knew it was hunting for him!

  He ran down the hall. Ahead of him, on his right, was a door into a room that Jonathan Barnavelt had locked a long time ago. It was the room beneath the tower of the mansion. Jonathan had said it was Isaac Izard’s observatory room. From here the old wizard had studied cloud formations and had plotted the coming of doomsday.

  That door burst open!

  Lewis stumbled to a stop, one hand on the wall to keep himself from collapsing. A bent old man leered at him. He stood with one hand high on the doorjamb, the other on the doorknob. “You’re too late!” cackled the man in a hateful, sneering voice. “I call time! Time’s run out! Time and punishment! Time and a grin! Time, time, time, in a sort of runic rhyme! Look at the clock! Where’s the big hand, the little hand, and the hand of fate? Too late, too late! Time to strike! Time to kill! The world will know the wrath of the Izards!” His voice rose to a terrible, high-pitched shriek that made water come to Lewis’s eyes. He could not understand half of what he heard, but the words seemed to swirl in his mind like a menacing whirlwind.

  The stairwell door behind Lewis banged open. Cold air washed over him, smelling horribly of decay and rot. Lewis wanted to run, but he had nowhere to go. He felt something hairy brush the back of his neck—

  The world spun around. Lewis screamed and passed out.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Lewis? Lewis, can you hear me?” The voice was thin and distant. It sounded as if Lewis were hearing it through cotton. He felt something cool on his forehead—the touch of the terrible hairy creature?

  His eyes flew open, and with a yelp of alarm he tried to spring to his feet. Hands on his shoulders held him down. “Easy! Easy!”

  Then the room swam into focus. His own room, with its tall mirror, four-poster bed, and familiar rug, black marble fireplace, and bookshelves. And he lay in his bed. Uncle Jonathan was bending over him, his hands on Lewis’s shoulders. Beside him stood Mrs. Zimmermann, an anxious look on her face.

  “Uncle Jonathan!” cried Lewis, throwing his arms around his uncle’s neck. “I thought—”

  Jonathan patted his back soothingly. “You’re all right, Lewis. But you gave us quite a scare. What happened to you up there?”

  Lewis lay back, putting a hand to his forehead. A cool wet washcloth had been placed across it. “Up . . . there?”

  Mrs. Zimmermann said, “Jonathan heard you scream from somewhere upstairs. He tore through the whole second floor, but you weren’t there. So he went to the third floor, and there you lay, right in front of the parlor that old Isaac Izard used as a cloud observatory.”

  Lewis gripped his coverlet. Now it came flooding back, the whole horrible evening. He stammered out the story, forgetting that Jonathan knew nothing of the Solomon engraving or of the parchment slip covered in runes.

  But Mrs. Zimmermann filled in those details. Jonathan sat at the foot of Lewis’s bed and ran a hand through his red hair, making it stand up like a frayed copper brush. “This sounds pretty serious. Something really put a whammy on you, Lewis. When you got home, you saw the house as it was back in, oh, 1940 or so.”

  “It wasn’t real?” asked Lewis with a gulp. “The old man, the monster, none of it?”

  Jonathan patted his leg. “Not real in the ordinary sense. The old man you described was Isaac Izard, all right—but you know what he looked like, because you once saw a picture of him. Remember?”

  Lewis nodded. “But, gosh, Uncle Jonathan, he seemed real. You don’t think h-he—that he—?”

  Mrs. Zimmermann seemed to understand. “That he rose from the grave? Not a chance of that! I’m pretty good at sensing the operation of magic, and there hasn’t been any in this house lately. Except for your uncle’s tomfoolery, of course, but that’s got a sort of warm, happy feel to it, not the cold, edgy feel of evil magic at work. Anyway, Lewis, Isaac Izard really wasn’t any great shakes as a magician. Oh, he created the Doomsday Clock, I’ll grant you, but he just followed an ancient formula for that. His own magic was mainly tied up in trying to prophesy the future from cloud formations. The real wizard in that family was his wife, the late unlamented Selenna.”

  Uncle Jonathan grimaced. “And both of them are dead and gone, Lewis. Oh, Selenna had enough oomph to have a weird sort of half life for a while, even after she was put in her tomb, but we took the wind out of her sails. No one returns twice from the other side. No, someone just wants us to think that old Isaac is up to his nefarious tricks again. Our problem is to find out who that someone is.”

  Mrs. Zimmermann was looking thoughtful, tapping a finger on her chin. “Hmm. You know, Lewis, that horrible-looking woman you described has a name. She’s called Kuchisake Onna.”

  “Huh?” asked Jonathan. “Hootchy-kootchy Anna?”

  “Kuchisake Onna, Brush Mush,” replied Mrs. Zimmermann tartly. “That’s Japanese, as it so happens. It means Big-Mouth Woman. She’s not exactly a ghost. More like an evil spirit, something like the Scottish banshee. Except Kuchisake Onna doesn’t warn people of doom. Instead, she’s supposed to bring misfortune when she appears. But I have never heard of her showing up anywhere except in Japan. That seems very curious to me. I wonder if—”

  The telephone rang from downstairs. “That might be your overseas call, Florence,” said Uncle Jonathan.

  “I’ll see if it is,” said Mrs. Zimmermann.

  “Can we go too?” Lewis asked in a small voice. “I’d feel better if all three of us were in the same room.”

  His uncle raised an eyebrow. “Do you feel up to it?”

  “I think so,” Lewis told him.

  They found Mrs. Zimmermann on the phone downstairs. She was speaking German, which Lewis could not understand. She talked for several minutes, then hung up.

  “Well, Frizzy Wig,” said Jonathan, “that’s going to cost me a fortune! A transatlantic call doesn’t go for peanuts, you know.”

  “It was worth every penny,” shot back Mrs. Zimmermann. “That was Professor Athanasius, Professor Emeritus of the Magical Arts from the University of Göttingen in Germany. Though he’s retired now, he still has contacts all over the world. I asked him to do some snooping. And he’s found out enough to make me think we may be up against one of the Izards, after all.”

  Jonathan looked troubled. “But Selenna can’t rise from the dead a second time, and her husband didn’t have the kind of power she commanded.”

  Mrs. Zimmermann raised a thin finger. “True enough. But they were not the only ones in their wicked family, as it turns out. Years and years ago, back around 1900, they had a son.”

  “I knew that,” said Jonathan. “But I thought he died when he was still an infant.”

  Mrs. Zimmermann sighed. “So did we all. But Professor Athanasius says that in 1922—the same year I got my doctorate in magic—a certain Ishmael Izard arrived in Austria from England. He was just a young fellow, between twenty and twenty-five years old. He had been studying magic in Cornwall with a minor wizard named Karswell or something like that. In Austria he became an apprentice to Hans Horbiger.”

  Jonathan let out a low, surprised whistle. “Could that young man have been Isaac’s son?”

  Mrs. Zimmermann shrugged. “Isaac and Selenna’s bouncing baby boy was christened Ishmael, and the one who turned up in Austria in 1922 was an American and exactly the right age. And you know what Hans Horbiger was like.”

  “What was he like?” asked Lewis, not sure he even wanted to know.

  Mrs. Zimmermann gave him a reassuring smile. “Horbiger was an astrologer who dabbled in magic and who had tons of nutty theories, including one that the whole universe was made of ice. But he had lots of connections among European sorcerers, and Ishmael Izard learned from many of them. Izard left Austria in 1930, and—get this, Jonathan—traveled to Japan, where he studied Asian magic under an Ainu
tutor for ten years.”

  “That would explain the Kuchisake Onna Lewis saw,” Jonathan said. “I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts, French fries to francs, and marshmallows to marks that she was an illusion whomped up just to terrify Lewis.”

  “I wouldn’t take that bet,” replied Mrs. Zimmermann, “because I’m about ninety-nine and forty-four-one-hundredths percent convinced that you’re right. Well, just before World War Two our fine-feathered fiend Ishmael disappeared from view. But Professor Athanasius thinks he’s been globe-trotting ever since. You see, all over the world little oddball communities of sorcerers have sprung up in the last twelve or thirteen years. Nobody knows much about them, but a lot of good magicians are concerned. There may be twenty-five or thirty of these communities, each one with forty or fifty members.”