The Beast Under the Wizard's Bridge

by Brad Strickland

  Lewis jumped from a kneeling position straight to his bare feet. He forgot all about his throbbing headache and his bandaged knees. His eyes were wide. “Oh, my gosh!” he shouted.

  Because this time he knew he was right. Meanings could have other meanings. Words that meant almost the same thing as each other could also mean different things—if you looked at them the right way, that is.

  And Lewis had just done that. He felt his heart racing. Yes, he was sure.

  Lewis had solved the riddle that Elihu Clabbernong had left in his will.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Lewis scrambled to get dressed, then rushed downstairs, yelling, “Uncle Jonathan!” He knew before he even got to the bottom of the stairs that Jonathan wasn’t down there. The house had that funny echoing sound that houses get when nobody else is around. Jonathan’s black cane with the crystal knob was gone from the blue Willoware vase beside the front door. The cane was his magic wand, and if it was missing, then Jonathan had taken it for some purpose. Searching through the house, Lewis found a note on the kitchen table:

  Hi, Lewis—

  Mrs. Zimmermann and I have to run a couple of errands and check a few things out. If I’m not back until late, don’t worry. I’ll explain later. There’s some roast beef in the refrigerator that you can heat up for dinner with a can of vegetable soup.

  I hope your head is feeling better. If something very important had not come up, I’d never leave you alone like this. You can call Dr. Humphries if you’re feeling worse. His office and home telephone numbers are written on the inside back cover of the phone book. I hope to be back before midnight!

  Love,

  Uncle J.

  A glance next door told Lewis that Mrs. Zimmermann wasn’t at home—her house was dark, though her car, the purple 1950 Plymouth Cranbrook she called Bessie, was still in the driveway. Frantically, Lewis ran to the phone and dialed Rose Rita’s number. Mrs. Pottinger answered and called her daughter to the phone. Lewis almost hopped from one foot to another while he was waiting. A minute later he heard Rose Rita say, “Hello?”

  “I got it!” said Lewis, all in a rush. “I figured it out!”

  Rose Rita was quick on the uptake. “You solved Old Clabberhead’s riddle? I’ll be right over!”

  Lewis could hear Mrs. Pottinger object to that. Rose Rita must have put her hand over the receiver, because a muffled, quick argument followed. Finally, Rose Rita was back on the line: “I can’t come over until after dinner, and then only if the rain lets up.”

  “Listen,” said Lewis, “what did the Mootes say about Jebediah’s spell for separating the soul?”

  “They . . . didn’t seem to like it,” replied Rose Rita. She paused, and Lewis guessed her mother was standing nearby. Cautiously, Rose Rita added, “That’s all I know.” Lewis heard Rose Rita’s mother call her, and Rose Rita said hastily, “I’ll either come over or call you later. Don’t do anything without me!”

  As he hung up the phone, Lewis wondered what in the world he would do even with Rose Rita. If he was right—and he was sure he must be—someone else was going to have to help. Getting what Elihu had hidden all those years ago would not be a job for two kids. It would require—well, wizards and witches, probably. Someone a lot braver than he was, anyway.

  All that afternoon, Lewis was jumpy and restless. Sometimes he paced. Sometimes he tried to watch television. He couldn’t settle down, and every five minutes he looked at the clock as the hours crawled by.

  At a little past five that afternoon, Lewis went to the French doors in the study and looked out into the yard. The rain was passing, with a few breaks in the clouds here and there. The sun was getting low, and where the gray clouds parted, Lewis could see blue sky and heaps of orange-red clouds. The color reminded him of the comet, and that reminded him of the weird, pulsating creature he and Rose Rita had glimpsed—glimpsed? Poked with a stick!

  Shivering, he turned away from the French doors and began to look through the books in the study. His uncle had floor-to-ceiling shelves of old volumes on many different subjects. One particular corner held books on magic.

  Lewis looked through these until he found what he was looking for, van Schull’s Cyclopaedic Dictionary of Magic and the Magical Arts. It was a huge, heavy old book, the size and weight of an unabridged dictionary. The binding was some dark leather with a pattern of diamond-shaped scales—but if the skin had come from a snake, it must have been an enormous one. Lewis lugged the tome over to the desk and dropped it with a thump. He turned on the green-shaded lamp and opened the volume. Like all old books, it had its own peculiar smell, dusty and dry but with a spicy undertone that tickled his nose.

  Lewis turned the creamy, liver-spotted pages carefully. Under “soul,” he found a number of articles, but only one looked like what he was hunting: “Soul, Separable.”

  Lewis bent close to the book to read the fine print:

  Soul, Separable. Magicians in many lands have worked on spells to become invulnerable to harm and death by separating their souls from their living bodies. Once the spell is accomplished, the magician’s soul may be hidden away, perhaps in a tree, a stone, a well, or a jewel; or it may be placed in an unusual part of the magician’s body, so that he or she may continue to live even if the heart is pierced (see the stories of Achilles and his heel, Nisus and his royal hair, etc., under Souls, Oddly Placed).

  More commonly, the soul is concealed in an unusual vessel, such as a flower, a stone, or a ruby. This vessel is hidden in a safe place, and until it is found and destroyed, releasing the captured spirit, the owner of the soul cannot truly die. Even if the magician’s body is destroyed, it will slowly regenerate, as long as the soul is intact.

  An old Norse tale, The Heartless Giant, speaks of a sorcerous giant who hid his heart, which contained his soul, in an egg that was inside a duck that swam inside a hidden well that lay under a forgotten church located on a secret island in the center of an unknown lake. In order to slay the giant, the hero of the story had not only to break the egg but first had to go on a long, dangerous quest to locate it. In the Irish story of Cano, Cano’s soul was locked inside a stone, and until the stone was broken, Cano could not die.

  The spells for separating the soul from the body are infallibly evil ones and as such are unknown to good magicians. The Thaumaturgy of Livius the Younger records only the first line of an incantation. . . .

  There was more, but it told Lewis very little that was useful. He was more convinced than ever, though, that his guess had been right. He wished he knew where Uncle Jonathan and Mrs. Zimmermann had gone.

  Time seemed to crawl by. Lewis made a sandwich from the cold roast beef, but he ate it with little appetite. His injured knees felt stiff. At least the lump on his head was shrinking, though he had a spectacularly black left eye. He tossed nearly half of his sandwich in the garbage and paced the floor restlessly. The old house grew darker as the rain passed and the sun sank, and Lewis became more and more nervous. Every slap of a wet tree branch on a window made him jump. Each creak and groan of a floorboard under his feet startled him. He kept walking to the front door, opening it, and peering out into the street to see whether Rose Rita had arrived.

  On one of these trips, he noticed something odd. To the right of the front door was a coatrack with a mirror in it. For as long as Lewis had lived in the house, the mirror had been magical, sometimes showing his face but more often scenes from strange, distant lands. Now light was flashing out of it, angular spears of crimson that danced and shimmered on the opposite wall. Lewis swallowed hard and looked into the glass.

  It showed the comet, red as blood, against a dark night sky. The image rippled as if Lewis were peering at it through water. Sometimes it faded to a dull rusty color, and sometimes it blazed to a red so bright that it hurt to look at it. Lewis threw his hand up to shield his vision, and then he saw, just above the comet, two staring eyes—human eyes. They shifted rapidly, as if their owner were looking for someone. Suddenly, they loc
ked on to Lewis.

  Lewis could see the shriveled, grim face of Mephistopheles Moote. It hung there in the mirror, staring out balefully. The thin, wrinkled lips twitched into a snear. Words flowed into Lewis’s head, not spoken, but coming like a thought: “Well, well—‘Billy,’ the boy who was hurt! The snoop!”

  Lewis could not tear his gaze away.

  The voice in his head said, “How is your ‘sister,’ Lewis Barnavelt? Is her name really Pottinger? Do you think she and her wretched family are safe from my anger? And does your foolish uncle know that he has only until midnight to live? The Earth will be swept clean of puny humans—and only I will live on forever in another form! The Great Old Ones shall claim dominion again! The triumph of the Red Star will be complete!”

  Lewis thought he would lose his mind. An impression of high-pitched, hateful laughter filled his skull. He felt frozen. Then a sound, a real sound, jarred him: the harsh metallic jangle of the old mechanical doorbell to his left. He jerked his eyes toward the door, and in that instant the mirror went dark. The only vestige left was the angry howl of Mephistopheles Moote, fading like a mosquito’s hum in Lewis’s brain.

  Lewis threw himself at the door and wrenched it open. Rose Rita stood there, her hand still out to turn the key of the doorbell again. “Lewis! What happened? You look awful!”

  Lewis dragged her into the study, away from the mirror, and blurted out everything that had happened. “Midnight!” she said when he had finished. “It’s already nearly six!”

  “That’s not all,” Lewis told her.

  “I know,” she said. “You think you’ve solved the riddle in Elihu Clabbernong’s will.”

  “I don’t just think so—I know so!” said Lewis urgently.

  “Spill it!” exclaimed Rose Rita.

  Lewis’s words tumbled out as he explained what a “separable soul” was. Then he said, “So here’s what must have happened. Old Jebediah Clabbernong used a magic spell to take his soul out of his body and put it into something. Elihu knew that his uncle wasn’t really dead when he had his body cremated. Somehow he found whatever it was that held Jebediah’s soul. For some reason he couldn’t destroy it—”

  “Why not?” asked Rose Rita.

  Lewis gave her an irritated glance. “How should I know? Maybe because it would let that monster we saw break loose! Or maybe it was for some other magical reason. I don’t know! But instead of destroying the thing that holds Jebediah’s soul, Elihu hid it away. And I know where he put it!”

  Rose Rita scowled at him. “Don’t keep me on pins and needles, Lewis! Where?”

  Triumphantly, Lewis quoted the will: “‘The key to finding the life is, at the very bottom, a healthy heart.’” When Rose Rita just stared blankly at him, he added, “Meanings have other meanings, remember? Like ‘life’ could mean ‘soul.’ And if you’re healthy, you’re—?”

  Rose Rita shrugged. “In good shape?”

  Lewis shook his head impatiently. “Try again!”

  Rolling her eyes, Rose Rita said, “You’re strong. You’re doing fine. You’re well.”

  “Bingo!” said Lewis. “The key to finding the life—that would be old Jebediah’s soul—is at the bottom, a well heart. Well, Rose Rita.”

  Behind her round spectacles, Rose Rita’s eyes widened. “Well! Old Creepy’s soul is hidden in something that’s in the well at the Clabbernong place!”

  Lewis nodded. “And we have to get it out,” he said.

  For a moment the two friends stared at each other. Lewis didn’t know about Rose Rita, but the very thought of returning to that horrible place made him feel sick.

  But somehow, they had to do it.

  Otherwise, they—and the rest of the world—had barely six hours to live.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “We’ll never get out there and back on our bikes in time,” wailed Rose Rita. “What can we do?”

  “We have to try!” declared Lewis. He dashed down into the cellar and returned with a coil of rope and a long, heavy chrome-plated flashlight. He handed these to Rose Rita and ran up to his room for one final thing. Hurrying downstairs again, Lewis yelled, “Come on!”

  They started out the back way, and Rose Rita cried, “Look! Mrs. Zimmermann is at home!” Sure enough, the side parlor window of Mrs. Zimmermann’s house was yellow with light. Lewis and Rose Rita ran over and pounded on the door.

  To Lewis’s surprise, a kindly woman opened it. “Lewis!” she said. “Rose Rita!”

  “Mrs. Jaeger!” Rose Rita blurted out. “What are you doing here?”

  Mrs. Mildred Jaeger gave her a sad kind of smile. “Well, dear, you know my magic isn’t the most reliable. All the other magicians are gathering for something big tonight. Mrs. Zimmermann forgot an amulet she may need, and, well, I was the one they could most easily spare, so I volunteered.” She held up a small white box. “I hope it’s what Mrs. Zimmermann needs.”

  “We can help, Mrs. Jaeger,” said Lewis. “But you’ll have to drive us out into the country.”

  “What happened to your poor eye?” asked Mrs. Jaeger.

  “I had a bump on the head, but it’s not bad,” Lewis told her. “Mrs. Jaeger, you’ll have to help us out.” When she looked hesitant, he added, “It’s very important! We know all about the red comet and the Mootes.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Mrs. Jaeger. “Then I suppose I’d better drive you! My car’s at the curb.”

  The three of them piled into Mrs. Jaeger’s 1939 Chevrolet, and Rose Rita breathlessly gave her directions. By that time the last few clouds were breaking up over in the south. The sun was moving to the west. Lewis hoped that they could reach the Clabbernong place before it set. He didn’t want to be there after dark.

  Mrs. Jaeger was a very careful driver, and even when she was speeding to the rescue, she puttered along at about forty miles per hour. They drove across the new bridge, made the turn at the little crossroads store, and reached the blighted Clabbernong farm just before seven. The sun was a bloated red disk, low in the sky. As they climbed out of the car, Lewis’s head spun. It was not just the knock he had received earlier, but also the stench of the place.

  They trooped behind the house, past the caved-in storm cellar—Rose Rita gave it a very wide berth—and came to the brick well. Only then did Lewis fully realize what he had to do. Someone had to be lowered into the dark pit. He couldn’t ask Mrs. Jaeger to go. And Rose Rita was deathly afraid of dark, closed places.

  He had to do it.

  He stood with his hands grasping the bricks at the rim of the well. Rising up on tiptoe, he stared down into the darkness. The well shaft was about five feet in diameter. Shining the flashlight down, Lewis could see moss-covered bricks, and perhaps twenty feet down, the reflection of his light on the face of the dark water. Rose Rita touched his shoulder. “Can you do it?” she asked in a shaky voice.

  “I’ll have to,” replied Lewis, though he dreaded the thought of descending into the shaft. They tested the iron framework that held the windlass and bucket and found them strong, so Lewis tied one end of the rope to that. He looped the other end around his waist. Rose Rita unlaced one of her sneakers and threaded the lace through the ring at the base of the flashlight. She hung the light around Lewis’s neck. It felt heavy. “If I get in trouble down there, can you get me back up again?” he asked Rose Rita and Mrs. Jaeger.

  “We’ll manage somehow,” said Rose Rita with a sickly smile. “Be careful!”

  Lewis coiled the rope and then climbed over the edge of the well. He tried to brace his feet on the mossy bricks, but they were very slippery. The rope burned his hands as he let himself down inch by inch. The hanging flashlight showed him just enough of the well shaft to see that nothing otherworldly or monstrous clung to the bricks. Otherwise, it wasn’t much help.

  After what seemed like hours, Lewis reached the end of the rope. Dangling there and holding on to the line with his left hand, he shone the light downward. His toes swung about a yard above the water. It was still
as a mirror, black as pitch. He could not tell if it was only a few inches deep or if it went down to an unknown abyss. Twisting on the rope, Lewis looked all the way around the shaft. Nothing.

  And then—

  From the edges of what looked like a loose brick below him, he saw a faint glimmer of red light. Steadying himself, Lewis peered down. The brick must have been pried from the wall of the shaft, then replaced. It stuck out about an inch or so. The red glow leaked out all around it.

  But it was maddeningly out of reach.

  Grunting with effort, Lewis let go of the flashlight, letting it hang, and tugged at the knots. If he could lower himself another two feet, he might be able to—

  The knots gave way suddenly! Lewis’s injured left hand supported all his weight—and then the rope began to slip through it! Lewis made a desperate grab, missed, and plunged into cold water, shouting in alarm.

  The frigid water came to Lewis’s knees. He stood on slippery mud. The loose brick was now above him, but at least he could reach it.

  The trouble was that he couldn’t reach the rope. It dangled tantalizingly close, but his outstretched fingers could not quite brush it. Far overhead, he could see Rose Rita and Mrs. Jaeger looking down the shaft. He heard Rose Rita’s echoing voice: “What happened?”

  “I fell!” Lewis shouted. “I have to have more rope! Hurry!” They began to haul the rope up, and to keep from going completely insane, Lewis pried out the loose brick.

  When he saw what was behind it, he knew he had truly solved the riddle.

  Glowing with its own light was a jewel. It might have been a ruby, but a huge one—at least three inches across. It had been carved into the shape of a heart. Not a valentine heart, but a model of an actual human heart.

  And it beat with its own evil inner life. The glow pulsed regularly, like a real heartbeat. Lewis quickly grabbed the jewel and forced it into his jeans pocket. He was panting for breath, feeling as if he were freezing.