Spell of the Sorcerer's Skull

by John Bellairs

  Grampa turned as he heard the porch boards creak behind him. "Oh, hi, Johnny!" he said with a little wave of his hand. "Nice mornin', huh?"

  "Uh huh," said Johnny, and he forced himself to smile. He stepped out onto the front stoop and stood next to Grampa. Putting his hands in his pockets, he tried to act casual. But he wasn't really nonchalant—he was terribly interested in seeing signs of life across the street. Straining his eyes, he tried to see through the dingy windows of the professor's garage door. But it was impossible for him to tell if the old beat-up Pontiac was in or out.

  "Has the professor left yet?" he asked in a tense voice.

  Grampa frowned and shook his head. "Nope. He might be sick t'day, er else maybe he finally got rid o' that Saturday class of his. Funny though... most o' the time he's up an' out by now."

  Again Johnny experienced that sick feeling rising inside him. He felt totally helpless. He wanted to drag Grampa across the street and make him search the professor's house. But what good would that do? Johnny felt uncontrollable tears welling up inside him. Abruptly he turned and ran inside, and Grampa watched him go with a wondering frown on his face.

  Somehow Johnny got through breakfast. Then an idea hit him. He would call up Fergie and get him to meet him. Skeptic or no skeptic, Fergie was his best friend. He was going to have to listen to his story.

  "Hello? Ferguson residence. Byron speaking." Fergie sounded grumpy, but then he always did in the morning. Johnny had been to Boy Scout camp with Fergie, and he knew he was the slowest waker-upper in the world.

  "Hi. It's me, John. Can I talk to you a minute?"

  "Yeah, I guess so. I was just on my way out the door. So what's up?"

  "I want you to meet me down at Peter's Sweet Shop right away. I've got something I have to talk to you about."

  Fergie snickered. "What is it? You gettin' married? You want my advice about your love life?"

  Now Johnny felt irritated. Fergie knew that he was shy with girls, and he liked to kid him about it. "No, it isn't that, lover boy. So can you meet me or not?"

  "Yeah, sure, I'll meet you," said Fergie amiably. "See ya later." And he hung up.

  Peter's Sweet Shop was an old-fashioned soda fountain with a marble counter and high stools and deep wooden booths with curly sides. There were colored glass lamps, and a jukebox, plus a display case up in front with boxes of candy in it. The kids of Duston Heights came to Peter's all the time after school and on weekends to eat hot fudge sundaes and slurp sodas and other gooey treats. As soon as he could get away from the house, Johnny headed straight down there. When he arrived, he found Fergie perched on a stool, drinking a cherry Coke.

  "Hi, Dixon!" he said, smiling sarcastically. "So what's the big deal? Government secrets? Are you a Commie, and you wanta confess to me?"

  Johnny frowned. He was not in a mood for kidding. "C'mon," he muttered, motioning toward the back of the store. "Let's get a booth, an' then I'll tell you the whole deal."

  Fergie followed Johnny to the back of the shop. They slid into one of the booths, and a waitress came over and asked for their order. Fergie ordered a dish of fudge ripple ice cream to go with his Coke, and Johnny asked for a chocolate frappe. The waitress went away, and Johnny eyed Fergie nervously. How was he going to manage to tell him this strange, unlikely tale?

  "Well?" said Fergie, grinning expectantly.

  Johnny squirmed in his seat. He folded and unfolded his hands and stared hard at the Formica tabletop. "Look," he began slowly, "you... you remember that jack-o'-lantern we were talkin' about?"

  Fergie groaned and covered his face with his hand. "Oh, no! Dixon, come off it! Not that jack-o'-lantern business again! Can't you just—"

  "No, I can't! This is serious business, Fergie, so just be quiet and listen, or else leave!" Color had flooded into Johnny's face, and he looked wild.

  Fergie was startled. Most of the time Johnny was a mild-mannered, timid kid. This outburst caught Fergie off guard—now he was the one who felt shy and nervous.

  "Okay, okay!" said Fergie softly. "Don't have a fit! Just tell me what it is you wanta tell me!"

  So Johnny told about seeing the jack-o'-lantern again and about what he had found when he entered the professor's dark, silent house. He didn't leave anything out, and as he plunged headlong through this tale, he kept thinking: I don't care if he thinks I'm crazy! I've GOTTA tell him! Finally he was done. He sat back, tense and expectant. What would Fergie say?

  At first Fergie was silent. Though he never would have admitted it, tales of the supernatural fascinated him. On the other hand he wasn't going to swallow every wild tale that his friend threw at him. He wanted some kind of proof before he accepted anything.

  Fergie folded his hands and cracked his knuckles. He gazed out the window and tried to act skeptical and calm.

  "Look, Dixon," he said quietly, "you don't wanta go flyin' off the handle. I mean, you might've seen some-thin', but on the other hand you might've got panicky and imagined that you saw somethin'. No offense meant, but I think that's possible."

  Johnny glared at Fergie. "I didn't imagine anything, and I saw what I saw! Now, are you gonna help me, or not?"

  Fergie threw Johnny a quick, frightened glance. He had never seen Johnny act quite so forceful and downright certain before. This helped to convince Fergie that Johnny's tale might possibly be true.

  "Oh, okay!" said Fergie, slamming his hand down hard on the table. "I feel like a dope, but I guess I hafta help you. Whaddaya think we oughta do?"

  This question took Johnny by surprise. He really didn't have a plan of any kind. "I dunno," he said sheepishly. "I thought you might have some kind of an idea."

  Fergie grinned. "Whaddaya think, I look like Sherlock Holmes er somethin'?" Seeing that Johnny was not amused, Fergie grew serious again. He drummed his fingers on the tabletop and stared hard at the melting ice cream in front of him. "Okay," he said wearily, "here's what I think: If the prof's really gone off into Dimension X or out to Mars, we aren't gonna get him back in a hurry. I mean, are we? "

  Johnny shook his head glumly. "Nope," he said.

  "But!" said Fergie, stabbing a forefinger at Johnny. "But still, and even if, he might be somewheres right on this earth, mightn't he?"

  Johnny nodded.

  "Right!" said Fergie. His eyes shone, and he acted agitated, as he always did when he was putting a logical train of thought together. "Okay then. We hafta find out where he is. And even if he's off with the mullygrubs on another planet, maybe we can figure out some way to bring him back. I mean, it's possible—anything's possible! But we need some clues. We hafta have something to go on! I think we oughta go back to his house an' snoop around. An' we better do it in a hurry. Pretty soon they're gonna know that the old guy really is missin'! I mean, your grampa and gramma and Mrs. Kovacs and the cops are gonna know, and they're all gonna be in the house pokin' around an' knockin' things over an' takin' things an' labelin' 'em Exhibit A an' so on. So we better get ourselves in gear an' hike on back to his place. Sound like a good idea to you?"

  Johnny agreed. He took a few more slurps of his frappe, and Fergie gobbled some ice cream quickly. Then they paid their bill and headed out the door. Just as they were turning onto Fillmore Street they saw a police car parked out in front of the professor's house. Apparently the professor had missed his morning class, and someone from the college had driven out to his place to check up on him. The front door of the gray stucco mansion was open, and a small crowd of people had gathered on the sidewalk that led to the front porch. Johnny recognized Gramma and Grampa and Mr. Swartout and a few of the other neighbors. A short burly policeman with bushy gray hair was asking questions and jotting things down on a notepad. Another one was standing in front of the house with his arms folded, as if he were guarding the place.

  Johnny's hand flew to his mouth, and his heart sank. "Oh, no!" he groaned. "How are we ever gonna get inside now?"

  Fergie was not upset, however. "Come on, Dixon!" he snapped. "Use you
r old bean! We can just double back an' go down the alley that runs behind the garages an' then zip in the back door an' have ourselves a look around. Simple, eh?"

  Johnny thought a second. He knew the alley, of course. He had used it many times to get to the other end of Fillmore Street without his grandmother seeing him. "Yeah, but wait a minute!" he said. "What if there's cops inside the house? What d'we do then?"

  Fergie smiled cynically. "We just say 'Oops, sorry!' an' then skedaddle! You an' the prof are old friends. You can just say you left one o' your schoolbooks in his house. It's not anything to get all that worked up about."

  So Johnny and Fergie turned around and went back through the narrow alley that ran behind the houses on Fillmore Street. The yard gate next to the professor's garage was open. When they tried the back door, they found that it was locked, but Johnny knew that the spare key was kept under a flowerpot on the ledge of the kitchen window. Soon they were inside.

  The kitchen was exactly as Johnny had seen it last night—nothing had been touched. Silently Fergie and Johnny crept through the big old house. Johnny led the way, telling Fergie that he wanted to check out the professor's study again. Last night he had been in such a panic that he hadn't really had a chance to observe much. And he was convinced that if the professor had left a farewell note or anything of that sort, it would be in the study.

  The study door creaked as Johnny pushed it open. Everything looked just as it had last night: there on the desk were the scattered exam books, the cup of coffee (now cold), and the half-smoked cigarette in the ashtray.

  "Wow! This place's a mess, isn't it?" whispered Fergie.

  "Yeah, it usually is!" Johnny whispered back. He looked around. Yes, the professor's study was in its usual slovenly condition. Books were stuck any-which-way into the sagging bricks-and-boards bookcases. A dune of papers and looseleaf notebooks was heaped against the front of the big kneehole desk. Rollers of dust moved across the bare wooden floor, stirred by the breeze from the open window.

  "Well, where should we look?" asked Fergie hoarsely. He was still whispering, and with good reason: The study was at the front of the house, and through the open window they could hear the policemen and the others talking down on the front walk.

  "How should I know?" Johnny shot back. "Why don't you check out that table by the door? There're some papers on it, and they might be important. I'll have a look at the desk."

  Cautiously, with many nervous glances toward the window, Johnny edged around behind the desk. He scanned the things on the desktop, and he noticed, with amusement, that the professor had written a crabby comment on the exam book that lay at the top of the heap. He had given the exam a grade of C minus, and he had scrawled a few words in red ink on the blue cover: If you could possibly learn to write decent English, you might be able to unscramble your mixed-up... But this was as far as the professor had gotten. His last word had ended with a sharp downstroke of the pen, and at the end of the stroke was a hole, as if the professor had jammed the pen down hard into the book. Near the book lay the professor's green Estabrook fountain pen. The pen point was badly bent.

  Johnny pondered this clue, wondering what it might mean. While he was thinking, his gaze wandered. Was there anything more that would help them in any way? Part of the desktop was covered by a green blotter, on which the professor had doodled his usual geometric patterns and flowers and funny faces. To the left of the blotter stood a small bronze bowl with rubber bands and paper clips and a large green rubber eraser in it. And there was a glass paperweight full of sand from the Great Desert of Maine, a rack of pipes, a gray Balkan Sobranie tobacco can, and a large, tasteless cigarette lighter shaped like a knight in armor. Johnny felt confused and disheartened. There weren't any big fat clues staring him in the face, were there? But then detective work was not supposed to be easy. He pursed his lips and glanced to his left. He noticed something that he hadn't noticed before.

  Over in the corner, behind the floor lamp, was a dictionary stand. It looked like a lectern, with a screw mechanism that allowed you to raise or lower it. Propped up on the slanted top was a lined yellow notepad, and the top sheet was entirely covered by a large drawing. It looked like this:

  Johnny stared at the drawing. It was done in pencil, and the drawing style was definitely the professor's. But what made the whole thing so odd was this: The professor never did huge drawings. His doodles were always small, like the ones on the desk blotter. So why had he done this sketch, which looked like a capital letter L wreathed about with a vine? Was he trying to say something? And if so, what?

  Fergie's voice cut in on Johnny's thoughts. "Hey, Dixon!" he hissed. "We better get outa here! I mean, those cops might decide to come back in and have another look around. Didja find anything?"

  Johnny sighed. "Nope. Not much. I'm gonna take this drawing back with us. It might be a clue. You're right, though—we better make ourselves scarce. C'mon!"

  CHAPTER FOUR

  That afternoon Fergie and Johnny got together down at the public library. They were supposed to be doing their homework, but they were actually there to compare notes about their visit to the professor's study. Naturally they couldn't sit in the main reading room and babble at each other. So they went to the upper level of the stacks, where they could stand behind the rows of iron bookshelves and talk in a fairly normal tone of voice. Unfortunately, they soon found that they really did not have a lot to discuss. Fergie had found absolutely nothing, and Johnny had only come up with two things that he thought were of any importance: the pen and the drawing. Fergie was not impressed by either of these "clues."

  "So what if he did mash up the point of his pen?" he asked in a bored tone. "Everybody knows he's got a rotten temper. You told me he throws dishes sometimes when he gets mad."

  "Yeah, but the dishes are from the ten-cent store," Johnny replied. "He never breaks anything that he really likes. And he was crazy about that pen. He used to keep it in a special case in his desk. It's wrecked now—didja see the way the point looked?" Johnny crossed the index finger and the middle finger of his right hand to show how the two parts of the gold-plated nib had gotten crossed. "He would never have done that on purpose!" Johnny added insistently.

  "So how do you think the pen got busted?" Fergie asked.

  Johnny shrugged. "I dunno."

  There was an awkward pause, and then Johnny spoke up again.

  "I think that drawing I showed you might be the only real clue we have. But I can't figure out what it means."

  Fergie shrugged. "Oh, what the heck, let's see it, Dixon. Didja bring it with you?"

  "Uh huh." Johnny took his Latin book out from under his arm. He opened it and pulled out a folded square of lined yellow paper. Unfolding it carefully, he handed the drawing to Fergie.

  Fergie examined the picture, humming all the while. Suddenly he snapped his fingers. "Hey! I bet I know what this is! It's a rebus! You know what a rebus is?"

  Johnny felt insulted. He was proud of all the obscure facts that he knew, and he knew about rebuses. A rebus was when you used objects and letters to represent somebody's name. Rebuses appeared in coats of arms, like the two gates (two-door) that were used as a symbol for the royal house of Tudor.

  "Yeah, I know about rebuses, an' I probably know more about 'em than you do!" said Johnny irritably. "So what does this represent? Huh?"

  Fergie smiled smugly. "Well, there's an L and there's a vine. Put 'em together and you get L-vine. Levine! Smart, eh?"

  Johnny thought about this for a bit. "Ye-ah, it might be... " he said slowly. "But where does that get us? I don't think I ever heard the professor mention anybody named Levine. I would've remembered it if he had."

  Fergie looked disappointed. But he persisted. "Okay, so you never heard of anybody he knew that was named Levine. So what does that prove? Maybe some guy outa his deep dark past, some gangster named Itchy Thumb Levine, came an' kidnapped him, because the prof owed him some dough. Makes sense, doesn't it?"

 
Johnny turned to Fergie wearily. The look on his face showed total despair. "You still don't believe I saw his face in that mirror, do you?" he asked. "You just can't admit that it could've been a ghost or a wizard that took the professor away. You've gotta have some kind of one hundred percent proof, or you won't believe anything!"

  Fergie stared at the floor. "I think we oughta go down an' finish our homework," he muttered. "We're not gettin' anywhere on this thing!"

  "No, I guess we're not," said Johnny gloomily. He was up against a stone wall, and he knew it. He felt angry at Fergie for being so skeptical. Johnny was utterly convinced that he had seen the professor's anguished face in that bedroom mirror. It hadn't been a panicky hallucination or the result of bad nerves or anything like that. But even if Fergie had accepted Johnny's version of the story, where would that leave them? Nowhere. Absolutely nowhere.

  Days passed. Weeks passed. The professor became a Missing Person. His picture was shown on TV and printed in the newspapers. His description was read aloud on the radio several times a day. Ponds and rivers were dragged, and forests were searched. But no leads turned up. He hadn't taken his car—it was still parked in his garage. Most of his clothes were still hanging in his bedroom closet. His suitcases gathered dust in his attic. Wherever he had gone to, he had taken the clothes on his back and not much more.

  As time went by Johnny began to miss the professor a lot. It was as if a big piece of his life had been swept away. He missed the professor's cranky comments on everything under the sun. He missed the chocolate cakes and the chess games and the long discussions about history and war and politics and life in general. He missed this strange, eccentric, good-hearted old man who had been such a wonderful friend to him. Every day as he walked home from school Johnny would stop and stare at the professor's house. It looked shut up, abandoned. The blinds were drawn, and already some kid in the neighborhood had taken good aim with a rock and had broken an attic window. Sometimes Johnny would stare up at the ridiculous, ramshackle radio aerial on the roof of the cupola. The professor had built it so he could pick up the Red Sox broadcasts better. Whenever he saw the aerial, tears sprang to Johnny's eyes. And then he felt angry and frustrated and wished he were able to wave a magic wand and summon the professor back from wherever he was. But he couldn't do that, and more and more, as the days passed, he began to feel that the old man was probably gone for good.