The Beast Under the Wizard's Bridge

by Brad Strickland

  * * *

  Monday night came, and Uncle Jonathan prepared to cast his illusion spell. He had cleared the telescope and the lawn furniture from the backyard. With Mrs. Zimmermann, Lewis, and Rose Rita waiting in a line behind him, Uncle Jonathan stood almost in the middle of the yard. He lifted his walking stick and waved it mysteriously. Instantly a swirling fog condensed right out of the air. For a second Lewis couldn’t see a thing. Then the mists billowed and faded, and salty spray drifted against Lewis’s face. He and the others stood at the railing of an old-fashioned sailing ship. Lewis could feel the deck beneath his feet rising and falling as the craft cut through the water. Here and there lights gleamed from other vessels, but no gunfire sounded. The battle had not yet begun.

  “We are aboard a ship in Nelson’s squadron on the night of August first, 1798,” Jonathan said solemnly. “Our warship is a frigate that Nelson has sent into Aboukir Bay in the Mediterranean, near the mouth of the Nile River. We are slipping in to attack a French fleet, and I want you to keep an eye on the French ship of the line L’Orient, because just at midnight it’s going to—”

  Just what the ship was going to do Lewis did not find out. The deck lurched, tilted, and plunged, and they all. staggered for balance. For a panic-stricken moment Lewis thought they had struck a rock.

  Suddenly a lurid red light bathed everything. Looking up, Lewis saw that the glare streamed from the comet—but not as he had seen it in the telescope. It hung straight overhead, and its fiery heart blazed as bright as the full moon, with its long tail streaming nearly halfway to the horizon.

  “Jonathan—” began Mrs. Zimmermann.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong!” shouted Jonathan, waving his cane. Nothing happened. “Florence, I need your help!”

  Lewis felt Rose Rita grab his arm. Their ship was not sailing in any bay. No other craft were about. A choppy, empty sea, the color of blood in the light from the comet, stretched out in all directions. Something was rising from the water ahead of them, just off the port bow of the ship.

  With a gasp, Lewis saw an enormous octopus or squid break the surface of the water. Its tentacles writhed. Probably its normal color was a sickly, mottled white, but in the light from the comet, it gleamed like fresh liver. Impossibly, the squirming beast rose even more, with bloodred streams pouring off it. Lewis heard himself shriek. He felt half crazed with terror.

  The squid-thing wasn’t an animal at all.

  It was the horrible head of a gigantic human form!

  And the monster, chest deep in the sea, was striding right toward them!

  CHAPTER NINE

  In a harsh voice Mrs. Zimmermann chanted a magic spell. For a moment, jagged, purple lightning bolts flickered all around the ship. Then, like water flowing down a drain, the lightning streamed into the monster’s body.

  Lewis could not tear his gaze away from the weird scene. The giant seemed to swell, looking stronger than ever. “It’s not working!” Lewis screamed.

  At the same moment the creature screeched. Lewis saw that the wriggling tentacles were like a hideous mustache, and beneath them the monstrosity’s mouth gaped ten feet wide. Its teeth were like a shark’s teeth, and its voice was a shrill, wavering roar.

  “Hang on,” yelled Mrs. Zimmermann. “I can’t fight it! My magic only makes it stronger! I’m going to try to counteract your spell, Jonathan. You know what it’s like when you try to mix different kinds of magic—so hold on to Lewis and Rose Rita!”

  Lewis felt his uncle’s hand on his shoulder, and he gripped Jonathan’s arm. He wanted to close his eyes, to shut out that terrible sight, but he was too afraid even to do that. The monstrous creature was reaching out for them with fish-scaled arms and grasping webbed claws. A nauseating reek of decaying fish washed over Lewis. He was only dimly aware of Mrs. Zimmermann gesturing and waving her arms—

  Then he felt as if he had been struck by lightning. A shocking jolt took his breath away. A sickening sensation of plummeting, tumbling, and then—oof!—he fell hard to the ground.

  The ground.

  Not the deck of a ship!

  Lewis lay facedown in short-clipped grass. He could smell it. Its blades tickled his palms and his cheeks. He sensed his uncle kneeling next to him. Lewis raised his head, blinked, and saw that the unnatural bloody light had gone. Crickets chirped nearby. They were once more in the Barnavelts’ backyard.

  “Is—is everyone okay?” asked Lewis’s uncle, his voice dazed and hoarse.

  “I am,” replied Rose Rita.

  “I—I guess so,” said Lewis at the same time.

  Mrs. Zimmermann stood unsteadily a few feet away. “Let’s get inside,” she said, her tone strained and low.

  They all stumbled into the kitchen. Mrs. Zimmermann’s appearance shocked Lewis as she slumped into a chair. Her hair, never especially neat, was tangled in strands around her face. She had turned very pale, her skin almost waxy, and dark circles smudged the flesh beneath her eyes. Uncle Jonathan brought her a glass of water, which she drank gratefully. “Are you all right, Florence?” he asked, his voice anxious.

  Heaving a sigh, she nodded. “I think so. I didn’t have my umbrella, so half my power was unavailable to begin with. And that—that creature gobbled up most of the rest of it! If I’d tried to hit it with another spell, I think the effort might have killed me.”

  Rose Rita asked, “What was it? Where were we?”

  Uncle Jonathan shook his head. “I have no earthly idea, Rose Rita. And for that matter, we may not have been on Earth! We may have been on some other planet—or in some other time. Something twisted my spell. It was supposed to be a simple illusion, and illusions can’t hurt you. But that monster was real.”

  “Real—and very strange,” put in Mrs. Zimmermann. “It isn’t merely immune to magic. It seems to absorb magic, to thrive on it. I’ve never heard of anything so outlandish.”

  “H-has anything like that ever happened before?” asked Lewis. “I m-mean, your illusion spell going wrong, Uncle Jonathan?”

  “Not to me,” Jonathan said. “Mrs. Zimmermann and I are going to have to figure this one out.” With a frown, he added, “Hmm. Seems to me that we should start with the books by H. P. Lovecraft. They’re supposed to be fiction, but if memory serves, he described just such creatures.”

  “I wish it had been fiction,” Rose Rita muttered. “I guess the Battle of the Nile is off for good.”

  “Well,” said Uncle Jonathan, “at least for the time being. Sorry for the disappointment, kids.”

  “It’s okay,” Lewis said. “Uh, maybe I should walk Rose Rita home.”

  “That would be a good idea,” agreed Jonathan. “Everything seems back to normal, so you should be safe. In the meantime, Mrs. Zimmermann and I will put our heads together about old Slimy. You two be careful.”

  Rose Rita gave him a sickly grin. “We will.”

  “I’m sorry,” repeated Jonathan.

  With a shrug, Rose Rita replied, “Well, you promised us fireworks!”

  It really wasn’t very far to Rose Rita’s house—just a few minutes’ walk. Lewis and she could hear the distant, muffled pops of skyrockets and firecrackers going off at the athletic field. That would be the New Zebedee Fourth of July show, sponsored by the chamber of commerce. To Lewis, the distant explosions sounded small and trivial. Especially compared to what he had seen.

  “Thanks for walking me home,” said Rose Rita. “That’s brave of you.”

  Lewis felt a little embarrassed. “Uncle Jonathan and Mrs. Zimmermann need to talk.” He shivered and looked around. The moon was almost full, though its pale light served mainly to make shadows darker and more mysterious than ever. Lewis confessed, “I don’t mind walking you to your front door. But to tell you the truth, I think I’ll run all the way home!”

  Rose Rita was hurrying as they turned onto Mansion Street beneath a yellow street lamp. Above them, white moths whirled around the bulb, like tiny planets madly orbiting a star. Beneath the light, Rose Ri
ta gave Lewis a glance. “You’d better come over tomorrow morning. We’re going to have to do some investigating.”

  “I know,” mumbled Lewis. It was not something he looked forward to doing, but he felt that he had to carry on. “I’ll be over early.”

  They didn’t say anything else. At her front walk, Rose Rita said, “See you tomorrow,” and then she hurried in.

  Lewis began to walk back to High Street, but all around him the night seemed alive. He thought of evil beings lurking just beyond his sight. He remembered the ghastly stench of the monstrous creature. In his mind Lewis could picture the slimy, bloodred water dripping from its squirming tentacles.

  He walked faster, then broke into a run. The street lamps made yellow islands of light on the face of a great darkness. Lewis ran from one to the next, as desperate as a swimmer trying to reach solid ground before drowning. His breath came harsh in his throat as he pounded up the hill. All his attention was fixed on his own house, perched at the summit.

  He did not notice the unfamiliar old black Buick parked just down the slope and across the street, at the edge of the Hanchett house’s front yard.

  Nor did he notice two pairs of eyes that glared at him with anger and hatred.

  * * *

  “Who’s the brat?” growled Mephisto Moote. “I thought Barnavelt was a bachelor.”

  “How should I know who he is, you old fool?” snarled his wife. “I don’t know a soul in this dreary town. We didn’t move here to socialize, you know!”

  “Shut up, shut up,” grumbled the man. “Well, this is where the magic happened. I sensed it at once. It caused a dimensional rift. One of the Great Old Ones stirred when it happened. That’s the influence of the Red Star. It will be visible to the naked eye next week, as the moon wanes.”

  Mrs. Moote nodded her agreement. “Most of the magic must have leaked into the other dimension. Still, some was bound to stay on this side. Maybe its power reached as far as the old bridge site. This could be just the thing to awaken our friend. I’ll drive us to the place.”

  “Yes. Magic is just the thing to bring him to full consciousness. Hurry,” urged her husband. “Hurry. I must see.”

  The woman let the old car roll silently down the hill until they were well past the Barnavelts’ house. Then she started the engine, which caught with a loud blat. They drove through town and turned south. Within a few minutes, she pulled the car off the road near the new bridge across Wilder Creek.

  Both of the old people climbed out of the car. Mephisto Moote leaned on his cane as he complained his way to the bank of the stream. Standing there, ten feet above the water, he took a deep sniff. “Ahh,” he said. “I was right! He comes! He comes!”

  The woman stood at his shoulder. Both of them stared down at the water. It was boiling with bubbles that shone faintly iridescent in the moonlight.

  “It’s too early,” said the woman. “Your calculations said he would not rise until the full of the moon. That won’t be until tomorrow night.”

  “Quiet!” rasped Moote. “Stupid woman, don’t you realize that magic tips the balance? If our friend is strong enough, he will come now—look! Look at that!”

  Something had risen in the water. It was roughly circular, a couple of feet across, pale gray and white and shot through with red and purple veins that throbbed as the two people stared down, fascinated. Whatever it was quivered like gelatin. It hardly seemed solid at all.

  Then a line a foot long appeared in its surface. It split, and suddenly an enormous yellow-green eye was staring up at them. Another appeared, and weirdly, between them, a blubbery mouth opened.

  In a thick voice, the creature in the water said, “I rise.”

  The eyes and mouth drifted horribly. More lumps and bubbles appeared in that bizarre flesh. An arm formed, but the hand on the end had ten writhing foot-long tentacles. The mass dragged itself to the shore and painfully pulled itself from the water.

  Mephisto Moote dropped to his bony knees. “My Lord!” he said, his voice exultant. “You have returned to us!”

  “W-weak,” sighed the heaving mass of flesh. It throbbed and lurched aimlessly beside the stream a few feet beneath Moote’s kneeling form.

  “You’ll be stronger,” said Mrs. Moote, putting her hand on her husband’s shoulder. “We’ll give you magic to eat!”

  “An-n-nd?” groaned the freakish creature. “An-n-n-d?”

  “And lives,” said Moote quickly. “Many of them.”

  “Souls,” cooed the woman. “You shall have souls to eat!”

  For a second the terrible thing was quiet. Then it said, “I hunger! I hunger!” It surged, and suddenly it took on the rough shape of a human. A human twelve feet tall, with stumpy legs that ended in round pads like pancakes, and two arms that were more like the tentacles of an octopus.

  And it began to climb up to the Mootes.

  All the time, its features changed and slipped. One eye was now high on its forehead, four inches across and green. The other eye was much smaller, red, and where its right ear should have been. Its mouth gaped, a hole into unimaginable darkness.

  “I hunger!” it reared as it towered above the Mootes, dripping and rippling in the moonlight. “I hunger!”

  And at the sound, everything else in the night fell silent.

  CHAPTER TEN

  On Wednesday night, the Capharnaum County Magicians Society again met at the Barnavelt house. This time, though, Lewis and Rose Rita had no opportunity to eavesdrop. Before they had a chance to hide in the secret passage, Mrs. Zimmermann took one group of magicians into the kitchen to tell them about the eerie creature that her magic had been unable to stop. The others were in the study, giving their reports to Uncle Jonathan.

  With both ends of the secret passage closed to them, Lewis and Rose Rita held their own council of war in the backyard. “Did you read the paper today?” asked Rose Rita.

  “Not yet,” said Lewis. “Why?”

  “There’s a story on page two about something that seems very familiar,” replied Rose Rita in a grim tone. “At some time during Monday night, a strip of grass along one side of Wilder Creek Road died and turned gray.”

  Lewis looked at her. They were sitting in lawn chairs, and though the evening was getting dark, a spill of warm yellow light from the kitchen windows illuminated Rose Rita’s face. “Like the Clabbernong farm,” whispered Lewis.

  “Just like that,” agreed Rose Rita. “The county agent says it’s probably a fungus, but we know better. And there’s something even worse. The track is leading toward town.”

  Lewis clamped his teeth tight to keep them from chattering. It was a warm, clear evening. Night insects trilled all around them. Everything seemed normal and safe. Lewis tried to force himself to relax. “I wonder what caused that.”

  “Whatever it was that—oh, my gosh!” Rose Rita was leaning back in her lawn chair, staring straight up.

  Lewis followed her gaze. His skin felt as if ants were crawling on it. Staring up into the sky, he could see the Red Star comet. It was much dimmer than in the telescope, with just a whisk of tail, but Lewis could see it clearly. “Time’s running out,” he said.

  “It sure is,” replied Rose Rita. “Look, do you remember what your uncle said about the writer H. P. Lovecraft? Well, I checked a couple of his books out of the library. I don’t know where he got his stuff, but he talks about Great Old Ones and unseen horrors and all sorts of strange things. And guess what? When I was signing my name on the library card, I noticed who had checked those books out just before me.”

  “Who?” Lewis asked, not sure he even wanted to know.

  “A certain Mrs. E. Moote,” said Rose Rita. “And I found out where she lives. On Field Street. That’s just outside of town to the south, a street that forks off from Wilder Creek Road.”

  “She must be tied into all this somehow,” said Lewis. “But what can we do?”

  Rose Rita sighed. “I just don’t know. Look, let’s go in. That red comet can’
t be healthy for us. Maybe it’s got atomic rays coming out of it.”

  “I don’t think comets have any kind of rays coming out of them,” said Lewis. “They don’t shine by themselves. They reflect sunlight.”

  Rose Rita sniffed. “I don’t care. This one’s bad for my health. I don’t feel well at all.”

  Lewis started to get up, and as he did, he had the strangest sensation. It was as if a light popped on in his brain, then went out again, like a flashbulb. “What did that paragraph in Elihu’s will say?” he asked slowly.

  “I’ve memorized it,” Rose Rita told him. “It says, and I quote, ‘Meanings may have other meanings. One thing I have learned is that the heart is the seat of the soul. The soul is the life. And the key to finding the life is, at the very bottom, a healthy heart.’ If you ask me, old Elihu had a couple of screws loose.”

  Desperately, Lewis closed his eyes. He felt so close—he almost had it—but then . . . the vague notion had fled.

  “I thought I could make sense of it,” he said. “Meanings and other meanings. Double meanings?”

  “What is it?” asked Rose Rita.

  Lewis shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m not sure now.”

  “Maybe it’ll come back to you,” said Rose Rita. “Tomorrow I want to go spy out the Moote house. Maybe the key is there.”

  “Let’s not take chances,” pleaded Lewis.

  “No fear of that,” promised Rose Rita. “We’re going to be very careful.”

  * * *

  Thursday morning was cloudy, with a threat of thunder hanging in the air, but the storm did not break loose. At nine Lewis and Rose Rita rode their bikes out of town again. This trip was not a very long one—only a mile from the center of town. A narrow street led off to the right. It didn’t have a street sign, but Rose Rita said that on the map it was called Field Street.

  The houses were all small and widely spaced—wood-frame buildings, cottages, and bungalows. Lewis thought they seemed like the sort of homes that retired people lived in. Most of them had vegetable gardens in the backyards. But one yard was choked with lush green weeds except for a dozen scattered gray patches, which looked just like the plants on the Clabbernong farm. Rose Rita didn’t even have to tell Lewis that this was the Moote house. An old black Buick was parked near a big cedar tree in the front yard. Rose Rita rode past the house, then turned down a grassy lane that led toward a narrow brook. The weeds on either side had grown taller than Lewis.