"Wait!" she called. "Wait, please!"
Fergie and the professor turned. What was going to happen to them now?
The nurse took a step forward. "Are . . . are you Professor Childermass?" she asked in a frightened voice.
The professor nodded. "Yes," he said stiffly. "Why do you ask?"
"Because Johnny's awake, and he wants to talk to you."
The professor looked totally stunned. He smiled faintly and fiddled with his watch chain. "Hrmph! He . . . he does, eh? Well, I'll be glad to talk to him in a second, but . . ."
His voice trailed off. Turning away, the professor took two steps down the hall and then he stopped. Putting his hands to his face, he began to sob uncontrollably. It had been a very long day.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
On a lovely warm Sunday in late May, Johnny and his friends were riding on one of the swan boats in the Boston Public Garden. The swan boats are long, shallow barges with rows of park benches on them. At the back of each one is a large metal hollow swan, painted white, and inside each one sits a park employee who makes the boat go by pumping pedals. The boats go around a long duck pond that is divided into two parts by an old stone bridge. As the man pumped the pedals, Gramma and Grampa Dixon sat in the rear seat of one of the boats, munching popcorn and talking happily. In the row in front of them sat Professor Childermass, Professor Coote, Fergie, and Johnny. Johnny was pale, but color was beginning to come back into his cheeks. He had been out of the hospital for only a couple of weeks and he was still a bit unsteady on his legs, but he was in a cheerful mood. At the moment he was eating a hot dog and listening to Professor Coote, who was explaining—once again—why the church on the Windrow estate had fallen down.
"Okay, professor," said Johnny as he threw a piece of hot dog bun to one of the ducks that were swimming around the boat. "I think I've got it straight—some of it, anyway. The church fell down because the salt caves underneath collapsed, and they collapsed because water got in and dissolved the pillars of salt that held up the roof of the caves. But how did the water get into the caves?"
Professor Coote smiled placidly. "The water got in through a channel in the rock of the riverbank. The Hudson River had been eating away at a weak place in the rock for years, and finally river water began to seep into the caves. The whole shebang might have collapsed earlier this year, except for one thing: On the banks of the river, at the bottom of the hill that the Windrow estate was on, there was a different kind of cave. It was just a narrow slit in the limestone, and its entrance was hidden by some bushes, but a team of explorers discovered it about a year ago. They went slithering in on their bellies, and guess what they found. Their cave connected with the underground river channel. I've done a drawing for you that'll help explain the setup. Here—have a look."
Professor Coote reached into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper with a pencil drawing on it.
"The explorers made their way to the place where the channel entered the salt caves," Professor Coote went on, "and it didn't take them long to figure out that there'd be a disaster if they didn't find some way to keep the river water out. So they went and reported their terrible discovery to the people who owned the estate, and—"
"Wait a minute!" said Professor Childermass, interrupting. "Wait just a teeny little minute! There's a staircase leading down from the crypt of the church to the salt caves—or rather, there was a staircase before the church fell down. If people went down the stairs, wouldn't they have noticed that water was seeping into the caves?"
Professor Coote smiled wryly. "Roderick," he said, "I'm glad you brought that up. It may come as a shock to you, but the staircase and the marble doorway never existed! I was looking through the foundation's guidebook the other day, and it doesn't say anything about any staircase to the caves. Don't you think it would have mentioned a weird unlikely detail like that? I would guess that the ghost of Zebulon Windrow put that doorway and those stairs there so you two could have a peek at those evil, haunted caves. But I'll say more about old Zeb in a minute."
"Okay, okay," said Fergie impatiently. "So the cave explorers told the owners of the estate about the caves and the water seepin' in. Did they panic? What happened then?"
"What happened? Why, the owners paid the explorers to go back and plug up the end of the channel with a little wall of stones and mortar. It was a tedious job, but they managed to do it, and the wall was right here, where I've drawn this little arrow on the map. Do you see it?"
Johnny blinked and nodded. "Yeah, I understand. So did an earthquake knock down the wall? Is that what happened?"
"Earthquake, my eye!" said Professor Childermass scornfully. "That's the official version, but what really happened was this: Old Zebulon Windrow got up out of his grave and went down to smash the wall and let the water in. I know that sounds very unlikely, but I am convinced that that's what happened!"
Johnny's eyes grew wide. "Really?"
Professor Coote sighed. "Yes, I'm afraid so. You see, right after the church collapsed, the estate's owners sent the explorers down into the cave again, to see if they could figure out what had happened. Well, when the explorers had made their way to the place where they had built the wall, they found something rather unpleasant: A big hole had been knocked in their wall, and lying near the wall was a skeleton dressed in the rotting remains of an old-fashioned suit. After digging through some old dental records, the estate's owners were able to say that the skeleton was Zeb Windrow's." He smiled sourly. "Zeb had been buried in the Lady Chapel at the eastern end of the church, and everyone assumed that the body had plummeted down into the caves along with all the other rubble. But after hearing Roderick's tale, I would have to agree with his conclusion: The skeleton was down there before the church collapsed, and it had gotten there under its own power. Remember the evil wind that knocked Fergie and Roderick over when they were climbing back up from the caves? That was old Zeb on his way down."
Johnny gasped. On a bright sunny day in a crowded park, it was hard to believe in walking corpses. "Really?" he said again. "Are you sure, professor?"
"Reasonably," said Professor Coote, pursing up his lips and staring owlishly at Johnny. "Remember, old Zebulon was the head of a clan of witches and wizards, and he was the one who owned the Urim and the Thummim, the magic objects that gave the Windrow family their powers. When he died, he never really died completely. His spirit hung around, guarding the family treasure, and it had the power to make itself visible. Byron here saw Zebulon standing in the town square of Van Twiller one night, though he didn't realize that he was looking at a ghost. Later, when our two friends started poking around in the old church, old Zeb decided to make their search a tiny bit harder for them. He probably thought it'd be fun to have the church come down on their heads, just as they had found what they were looking for."
"Fun, fun!" said Professor Childermass bitterly. "If I had the old creep here, I'd show him what fun was—I'd wring his skeletal neck! But in spite of everything, we did solve his insane puzzle, and we got away with the wonderful and exciting prize! By the way, Charley, are you going to notify the museums and the other archeologists of your find? Are you going to get rich and famous and all that?"
Professor Coote laughed. "Not likely, Roderick, old boy! Not likely! You're forgetting how skeptical scholars are. If I take those stickpins to the archeologists at Harvard and try to tell them that they're looking at the Urim and the Thummim, they'll decide that good old Charley Coote has finally gotten a bit soft in the head. What proof do we have? None. Of course, I could go around trying to work magic with the stickpins, but magical objects are dangerous: They don't always do what people want them to do. So, my friend, we'll have to forget about fame and fortune and making miracles happen. We've got what we want, anyway, don't we?" He turned to Johnny and patted him on the shoulder.
The two professors beamed at Johnny, and he acted embarrassed, as he always did when people fussed over him. Silence fell, and the boat p
assed under the bridge and began to glide around the odd little stony island where the mallards build their nests in the spring.
"What are you guys gonna do with those ridiculous stickpins?" asked Fergie at last. "I mean, I'd really like to know."
"We'll stick them in you if you keep asking questions like that!" grumbled Professor Childermass good-naturedly. "Actually, to be serious, I think we ought to put them on a shelf somewhere and forget about them. Or I could try to get them to do something useful for me, like help me to give up smoking."
"It would take a major miracle for that to happen!" said Professor Coote, laughing. "You will probably be smoking your last cigarette as they lower you into your coffin."
"Are you trying to suggest that I don't have any willpower?" asked Professor Childermass, pointing an accusing finger at his friend. "Well, just you watch!" He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a black-and-gold cardboard box. Opening it, he showed everyone that there was only one cigarette left. Then, with a grand flourish, he flung the cigarette away. It landed on the island, and a squirrel that was crouching nearby scampered up to it, nosed it curiously, and then began to eat it.
There was a stunned silence.
"That's impossible!" Fergie exclaimed. "Squirrels don't eat cigarettes!"
"They eat candy cigarettes," said the professor calmly. Reaching into his other coat pocket, he took out another cigarette box, opened it, fished out a real cigarette, and lit it while everyone laughed.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1985 by John Bellairs
Cover design by Open Road Integrated Media
ISBN 978-1-4976-2538-9
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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Revenge of the Wizard's Ghost Page 10