Wrath of the Grinning Ghost

by John Bellairs

  And then Madam Lumiere shrieked as Johnny toppled out of his chair and fell to the floor.

  And everything went dark.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Johnny heard someone saying, "Child! Child, wake up!" It was a kindly voice, a woman's voice. For a second he even thought it might be the voice of Gramma Dixon.

  He opened his eyes. For a dizzy minute he did not know where he was. Everything was dim and shadowy. A wrinkly-faced old woman was bending over him. She held his hand in hers, and he felt her leathery fingers patting the back of his hand. Then it all came back in a rush. Johnny sat up so fast that his head spun. "What happened?"

  Madam Lumiere helped him get to his feet. "Easy, easy. You fainted," she said. "You looked into my crystal, saw something, and you fainted dead away. What was it? What did you see?"

  Johnny shook his head, trying to clear the mist from his mind. The world seemed to be settling back into place once more. He could smell the dusty tent again, that dry canvas odor, and now he could hear the music and laughter from outside the tent. Whatever strange spell had been hanging over the tent seemed to have gone. "Didn't you see them?" he asked.

  "I saw vague, shimmering lights, no brighter than the glow of a five-day-old moon. I heard a humming, as the voice of many hundreds of bees," Madam Lumiere said. "That is all."

  Stammering, his words tumbling over one another, Johnny told her of the two things he had seen and heard, of the ghastly pale face and the dark hovering bird.

  Madam Lumiere listened gravely. When Johnny finished, she looked deeply concerned. "The first," she said slowly, "the first is a spirit of shadow and malevolence. It may mean you great harm. The second sounds as if it might be a guide, a helper. It could be on your side, offering advice and protection. I cannot tell you more. The rest I think you must learn for yourself. There is great power haunting you, child. You must take care. You must not allow the forces of the darkness to control you." She held up the quarter. "I could return this," she said. "But I will not. What has happened to you is in part my fault. I will keep this and wear it as a charm. Wait a moment."

  She reached into a pouch that dangled from her belt. From it she took a large old silver coin. "Take this," she said.

  Johnny felt her drop the piece of metal into his hand. It felt strangely heavy. It was only roughly round, and Johnny could see that the engraving on one side showed a cross with small figures inside the spaces between the crosspieces, and the other showed a coat of arms of some sort. Both sides were so very worn that the engraving was hard to make out. "What is it?" he asked.

  "A pirate coin," Madam Lumiere told him solemnly. "A peso de ocho reales. Marked with the sign of the cross. It has been blessed by a priest, and it has brought luck to men and women of good heart and good soul for more than two hundred years. Keep this with you. When you face danger, think of it. Touch it and think of me too. It may allow me to help you. Go now. Go into the sunlight, but be on guard against the shadows!"

  Johnny almost ran out of the tent. His head was spinning. He stepped into the afternoon sunshine and looked around wildly. The hot sun beat down, making his head ache and his eyes water. To Johnny the costumed, happy crowd now looked evil and threatening. The men dressed as pirates leered as if they were eager to feed him to the sharks. He felt like a mouse surrounded by cruel cats, all of them ready to tease him before they began to feast. He felt—

  He felt a hand clap down on his shoulder!

  "Easy, Johnny!" said his father from behind him, patting his shoulder in a reassuring way. "Calm down! You jumped a mile. I didn't mean to scare you."

  Johnny sighed in relief. "It's you," he said, turning. "Dad, let's go."

  "Go?" asked his father, blinking in surprise. "Right now? Don't you want to look around the carnival? You might find a ship model or—"

  "I don't feel so great," said Johnny. That much was true. His stomach was lurching, and he felt as if he were about to throw up. "Too much sun or something," he mumbled.

  "Okay," his father said, looking at him with some concern. "Come on. We'll hike over to the cabin."

  They were staying at a little place called Pirate's Cove. It was like a motor court, with a dozen cabins arranged around a semicircular walk. The road that led to it was sandy and littered with shells. It was soft and crunchy underfoot and would not be a good road to drive on, but that was all right, because Live Oak Key was such a small island that no cars at all were on it. Everyone walked or rode bikes to get around.

  After a ten-minute trek, Johnny and the major came to the tourist cabins. These stood on stilts six feet off the ground. They were made of weathered gray wood, with tin roofs that sounded like drums when it rained. Dusty green oak trees, their branches all gnarled from years of sea winds, shaded the tourist court. From the crooked limbs of the trees, long gray-green beards of Spanish moss hung down, swaying in every breeze. Though the cabins might have looked a hundred years old, they were modern enough to have air conditioners in the windows, and as soon as Johnny and his father had climbed up the front steps, unlocked the door, and walked in, Major Dixon turned their air conditioner on full blast. "You do look sort of green around the gills," he said to Johnny. "You're probably right. We overdid it out on the Gulf today. Tell you what, Johnny. You stretch out on the sofa, and I'll run over to the front office. They sell first-aid supplies there. Maybe they've got something for an upset stomach."

  Johnny lay down, grateful for the cool blast of air rushing over him. He closed his eyes, but as soon as he did, he imagined that ghastly, grinning face again, and his eyelids flew open like window shades that had been tugged too hard. He gulped in deep lungfuls of air. The cabin was a little place, barely twenty feet wide by twenty-five feet long, but now it seemed cavernous to Johnny. He and his dad had stayed here before, and ordinarily he liked the compact little house, with its beds that had drawers underneath them for storing clothing, and its strange little triangular closets. Now, though, the place seemed haunted. Through the archway that led from the living room to the cluttered kitchen-dinette, Johnny could see the shadowy form of the refrigerator. It was the old-fashioned kind with a round compressor on the top. To Johnny it looked like a ghost looming in the shadows. He told himself to get a grip, but it was no use. He felt oppressed, as if something were weighing him down.

  After a minute he heard footsteps coming up to the narrow porch, and then the door opened and Major Dixon stepped in. He was holding a small pink bottle of Pepto-Bismol. "This might help you," he said. "I'll get a spoon." He went through the archway and clicked on the kitchen light, and the ghost became just the noisy old refrigerator again.

  Johnny heard his dad rummaging in a drawer. Silverware tinkled, and his father came back looking faintly puzzled. "Here you are," he said. He gave Johnny a spoonful of the sweet, faintly minty medicine.

  Then Major Dixon went back to the kitchen. When he returned, he was carrying a slim, flat book. "I found this in the drawer under the spoons," he said. "Funny. I never noticed it before."

  "What is it?" asked Johnny.

  "A book that's handwritten in some kind of foreign language. Looks really old," replied Major Dixon. "I can't make head or tail out of it myself. I suppose someone who rented the cabin before us put it in the drawer and forgot about it. Well, finders keepers! You can take this as a souvenir. Maybe Professor Childermass will be interested in it. It looks ancient enough to be historical, anyway!"

  Johnny took the book from his father. It was bound in boards covered with marbled paper. Swoopy, swirly designs covered the binding, curlicues and splotches of yellow, red, and chocolate-brown. The spine and the corners of the covers were reinforced with dark brown leather that had aged to a crumbly grayish color. Johnny opened the book, releasing a sharp, dusty, spicy scent, the mysterious, delicious smell of old paper. It was the kind of aroma he usually loved. The shadowy shelves of the Duston Heights Public Library smelled just like that, and they had offered him many hours of excitement and adventure.

>   This time, though, the odor filled him with dread. It was, Johnny imagined, like the smell of a tomb full of dusty bones. Behind it he sensed centuries of weary time, years and years of hungry waiting. Waiting for what? Johnny could not say. He opened the book carefully. The pages inside were brittle and brownish yellow with age. The handwriting on them had faded to the color of pale rust.

  But it was no handwriting that Johnny could read. The letters, if they really were letters, were bizarre loops and whorls and jagged lines, making the words seem slashed right into the paper. The writing crammed page after page, a tightly packed, crabbed penmanship. Here and there in the book were hand-drawn pictures of bizarre flowers with human faces, nearly shapeless things that might have been animals slouching along on their hind legs, maps without directions or scale. Even the cover felt wrong under his fingers, oily and quivering with a hateful sort of life. Johnny wanted to throw the book away from him.

  But he remembered that Madam Lumiere had told him the dark birdlike shape was a protective spirit. That creature had told him to get in touch with "Professor Frizz-Face" as soon as possible, and now Major Dixon had suggested that Johnny take the book to Professor

  Childermass. "Professor Frizz-Face" had to be Johnny's neighbor, who wore a set of wildly sprouting white side-whiskers. That seemed too much like fate to Johnny. And there was something familiar about the voice too, something he could almost, but not quite, remember. He clenched his teeth and decided that the professor had to see this strange volume. He shut it and said, "Thanks, Dad."

  That night, Johnny climbed into bed sure that he would not be able to sleep a wink. His room was tiny, with barely enough space for his narrow bed, a dresser, and a coatrack. The window looked out through trees to the Gulf of Mexico beyond. If Johnny sat up in bed and looked out, he could see the gleam of moonlight on water. Lots of times he had done just that, imagining that he was living in the 1700's, when pirate ships menaced these waters. Sometimes he could almost see them, black silhouettes leaning with the wind, their sails billowing as they sought ships to loot. Often he had dreamed about them.

  Tonight, though, Johnny lay back in bed, his breath coming rapidly and shallowly. He mumbled all the prayers he could remember and thought of his friend Father Thomas Higgins in Duston Heights. He wished he had the priest's stern courage and faith right now.

  Because the cabin had only one air conditioner, the major and Johnny always slept with their bedroom doors open. Before long, Johnny heard his father's snoring. It might have bothered anyone else, but Johnny found the sound comforting. He closed his eyes and tried to relax.

  He had just drifted off to sleep when something awakened him. It was a sound. Not a loud sound or a sudden sound, but a soft, slithery one. Johnny sat straight up in bed. He was terrified of snakes, and he knew that in the South there were lots of poisonous serpents: copperheads and cottonmouths and the dreaded rattlers. Was one in his room?

  He reached out a shaking hand to click on his bedside lamp. Then he froze, a horrible thought hitting him. What if a snake were draped over the lamp? What if it were waiting there in the dark, its mouth open and its fangs dripping?

  Johnny began to shake with fear. He heard the sound again, and this time it was less like a hiss than like quiet laughter, as if someone or something were chuckling at him in a horrible whispery voice. He looked around frantically. The room was dark, but a rectangle of pale moonlight lay across his sheets. It spilled from the foot of the bed down onto the bare wooden floor. Johnny had dropped the strange flat book beside the bed when he had turned in. Now the moonlight touched the cover, not bright enough to show him any of the colors, but making the book look as if it were a dark opening into some other world.

  Johnny stared at the book so long that his eyes watered. Minutes crawled by. The path of moonlight grew longer as the moon slid down the sky outside, heading for the Gulf and for moonset. The sound of his own pulse hammered in Johnny's ears.

  Was the book changing in some way? Johnny squinted his aching eyes. Maybe it was a trick of the light, or of his watery vision, but the dark shape on the floor was wavering, dancing slowly, as if he were seeing it beneath clear but troubled water. From somewhere far away he heard a steady roaring sound. It was not like the gentle surf of the Gulf, a surge and a pause. It was more like the sound of a distant fire, hoarse and continuous.

  What was happening? Part of him wanted to jump out of bed and run shouting to his father. But Johnny held on. He knew that his dad would think he had just had a nightmare. Somehow, Johnny hated to act scared or childish when his father was around. He knew the major was a very brave man. He had even been shot down behind enemy lines once and had single-handedly fought through to freedom. Johnny wished he could be like that. Now he was ashamed to run screaming like a little baby. He told himself he could take it, whatever "it" might be.

  Then he saw it. A greenish shape rose slowly from the black rectangle on the floor, flowing out like vapor. It grew longer and longer, glowing with its own light. It began to curve across the floor, back and forth, as if it really were a snake. A snake made out of fog, not of flesh and blood.

  Johnny thought he was going to faint again. He struggled to breathe. What if that terrible thing crept up the bedpost? What if he saw it slithering over his sheets, heading right for his face? What would it do to him?

  He desperately wanted to look away, but he could not. He felt as if he were frozen. Now the serpentlike shape was ten feet long, writhing across the floor in loop after loop. It coiled, just like a rattlesnake getting ready to strike.

  Johnny forgot about looking silly in front of his father. He opened his mouth to scream. Nothing came out but a mousy "e-ee-ee-ee" that no one outside the room could possibly hear.

  The misty serpent reared, like a cobra ready to bite. The greenish head swayed back and forth. It was a head without a face, without features. Then it slowly turned. The creature flowed out the door in a long, sinuous stream. It vanished without a sound.

  Still Johnny could not stir. He heard his father's snoring suddenly stop—

  Johnny jumped out of bed, a scream just behind his teeth. He caught it before it escaped.

  Johnny listened hard. The air conditioner hummed and sighed. The old refrigerator clattered and groaned. Crickets and cicadas zinged and chirred out in the Florida darkness. Johnny heard all these, but he did not lie down until he was sure he heard his dad's regular snoring again.

  A dream, thought Johnny. I just had a dream. That's all. He reached out to turn on the lamp, hesitated, and then clicked it on. Yellowish light flooded the room. His wristwatch said it was nearly three in the morning. His shorts and shirt lay on the floor where he had tossed them, and beside them lay the book.

  Johnny got out of bed. He reached for the book, but then changed his mind. Biting his lip, he grabbed his shirt and shorts and dropped them down on top of the volume. It was a childish action, he knew, like hiding under the covers to escape from an imaginary goblin.

  Still, covering the book made him feel better. He turned his lamp off again, lay back, and soon was asleep.

  This time he didn't dream at all.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Something really odd happened the next morning. Johnny and his father got up, showered, ate the last of their cereal and milk for breakfast, and packed. Not once did Johnny think about the strange book. Not even to notice that it had somehow, mysteriously, disappeared. When he picked up the dirty clothes he had used to cover the puzzling book, it was nowhere to be seen. But he forgot all about it in their rush to get their suitcases packed.

  They took a little bright yellow speedboat to the sleepy Gulf town of Alachamokee, a scattering of filling stations, fishing supply shops, and general stores. In front of Art's Bait and Tackle, they caught a Greyhound bus to Tallahassee, where they boarded a train. Major Dixon had booked a sleeping compartment for them.

  Johnny always enjoyed traveling on a train at night, lying in his berth and looking out the window
at the dark countryside flashing past. He loved to imagine the stories taking place in the houses that he saw only as lighted windows. Sometimes they rattled through big cities too, splashes of neon lights roaring past like comets. Johnny didn't stay awake very long, though. The rumble of the train was somehow very soothing, easing him into sleep.

  They arrived at Duston Heights the next day, early in the afternoon. Professor Childermass met them at the station in his maroon Pontiac. He was a short, elderly man with a wild nest of white hair, gold-rimmed eyeglasses, and a red, pitted nose that always reminded Johnny of a strawberry that had turned a little too ripe. As Johnny and the major stepped off the train, Professor Childermass took out his pocket watch, made a big show of looking at it, shaking his head, and then he snapped it shut. "About time!" he snarled. "Two minutes and thirteen seconds late! In my day the engineer would have to answer for that!"

  Johnny couldn't help smiling. Professor Childermass had such a cranky temper that he terrified almost everyone in Duston Heights, and yet he and Johnny got along famously. The old man was, as he put it, out of uniform. He was wearing tan wash pants, a soft blue shirt, and bright red suspenders. "I don't have to dress up when I'm not teaching," he announced smugly. "I intend to spend the whole blessed summer being a slob!"

  The professor bustled Johnny and the major into his car, and then took them on a quick, careening trip through Duston Heights and across the Merrimack River. Never a very good driver, the professor talked a mile a minute, turned halfway around in his seat. He complained of the hot, dry spell that had ruined his nasturtiums, and then he demanded to know how they had enjoyed their trip. Sometimes Johnny closed his eyes as they came roaring up to an intersection, but the professor somehow managed not to hit any pedestrians, signposts, or other cars. At last he turned onto Fillmore Street and drove up the long hill to Johnny's house.