Wrath of the Grinning Ghost

by John Bellairs

  Johnny pulled the thunderbird amulet out of his shirt. It swung on its leather thong as if it were alive. "Take off this rope!" ordered Brewster's irritable voice. "Then I might be able to help!"

  The rawhide strip ran through a clip behind the thunderbird's head. Johnny untied the knot and pulled it through and, as soon as it was off the thong, the little carved wooden bird rose into the air and hovered above them. The professor said, "All right, you poor excuse for an antediluvian deity, where is this blasted book?"

  "How should I know, Whiskers?" shot back Brewster. "This is your world, not mine! By the way, how am I coming through?"

  "Loud an' clear," said Fergie. "Say, how come you weren't able to talk to us before?"

  "Dark forces are working against me!" said Brewster, making his voice sound mysterious. "Forces on my side as well as on the earthly side! Besides, it helps if there is a focus of power on the earth. If Fuzz-Face here hadn't sent my statuette back to ancient Egypt, it would be no sweat. As it is, I have to make do with this foreign carving!"

  Professor Childermass snorted. "Look, you frustrating fowl, I tried to get in touch with you through a replica of your figurine. Why didn't you cooperate then, eh?"

  The little carved thunderbird jittered in the air. In an agitated voice, Brewster said, "That was a fake, and you know it! It wasn't a real temple figure at all, just an—an unreasonable facsimile thereof! For the trick to work, somebody who believes in me had to create the figure! And the gumps who worked in that factory in Grover's Mill didn't believe in much of anything beyond a weekly pay envelope!"

  "Hang on, Feathers. Whoever carved this thunderbird pendant didn't believe in you either," said Fergie sarcastically. "They were Cheyenne or Sioux or something, not Egyptians. They never heard of Horus!"

  The thunderbird image spun to face him. "It was me, anyway!" Brewster declared. "I was the thunderbird, just as I was Horus! After all," he added, sounding temperamental, "when the Egyptians stopped believing in me, I still had to work, didn't I? So I got a job as the thunderbird to tide me over!"

  "Please," said Johnny, "let's not waste any more time.

  We have to find that book! Brewster, is it around here? Can you give us a clue?"

  "A clue?" asked Brewster. "You mean like saying, 'You're getting warmer'? Sorry. I'm on this side and you're on that side, and just as you can't see the spirit world, I really can't see your world. All I can tell you is that unless someone has moved it, the cursed thing is still in that house. Be careful! It's more like a live creature than a book, and it has soaked up a lot of evil. It may be tricky! Now go scatter and find it! And let me know when you have! Whoosh! I have to rest now!" The floating bird figure dropped to the floor as if someone had cut an invisible string. Johnny picked it up and tucked it into his shirt pocket.

  "You heard him," the professor said sternly. "Scatter! I'll take my bedroom. Byron, you search this room. John, look in your bedroom. Then we'll all tackle the kitchen, and if we don't find anything, we'll trade off rooms and look again! Go!"

  Johnny hurried to his bedroom. It had not changed much since the last time he had been in the cabin. The spread on the bed was now dark blue instead of dark green, but that was about it. He dragged a chair over to the closet door and stood on it to peek on the little triangular shelf above the clothes bar. Nothing but dust. He looked in all the drawers beneath the bed. Empty. Then he had a sudden inspiration and pulled the drawers themselves all the way out. But the book wasn't beneath the bed either, or under the mattress or jammed between the head of the bed and the wall. Nor was it propped up against the windowsill behind the curtains. And there just wasn't any other place to look.

  Johnny went back to the parlor and found that Fergie had cheerfully taken everything apart. The sofa cushions lay scattered over the floor. The radio, a big old wooden table model shaped like a Gothic arch, had been taken off its stand beside the sofa. The coffee table had been turned upside down. Fergie had even rolled up the throw rugs. "Any luck?" Fergie asked.

  Johnny shook his head. "It isn't in there," he said. "I guess you didn't find anything either, huh?"

  "Oh, yes I did!" retorted Fergie. "I found thirty-seven cents in loose change! Plus a Hershey bar that some kid dropped between the sofa cushions about thirty years ago! But no book."

  Professor Childermass came out of the other bedroom, his hair bristling, and shook his head. "The kitchen," he said. They all went in there, and they poked everywhere. Johnny remembered that his dad had first found the book in a drawer, so they pulled out and emptied every drawer. They looked in the oven and in the refrigerator. They opened the cabinet beneath the sink and surprised a mouse. But they did not find the book.

  They did succeed in making an incredible clutter. The professor sat down on the kitchen floor amid a pile of knives, forks, pots, pans, and dishes. "If Brewster hadn't all but sworn that fool book was here, I'd give up," he grumbled. "I don't see how it could be hidden anywhere we haven't looked, because we've looked everywhere."

  "The bathroom!" yelled Fergie.

  The professor shook his head. "I've searched the bathroom."

  "Maybe," Johnny said slowly, "it's under the house. After all, we're up on pilings."

  So the three of them trooped out and went under the house. The gray earth beneath was bare, with little funnel-shaped dimples in it where ant lions, predatory bugs that looked like a Martian's nightmare, had dug traps for ants. Overhead were the joists and supports that held up the floor of the cabin, but there was no book.

  "Well," began the professor, "I for one—"

  "I can help."

  The three had thought themselves all alone. At the sound of the voice, Johnny jumped like someone who'd received an electric shock. The professor started too, and gasped, "Holy H. Smoke!" as he spun around. Even Fergie's usually sleepy eyes popped wide open.

  A woman stood nearby. "I saw you when you passed my house," she said.

  "Madam Lumiere!" shouted Johnny, seeing the figure of the old woman beside the front steps of the house. He, Fergie, and the professor crept out, and Johnny introduced her to the others. Quickly he told her about the book and about his father's illness.

  "No," she said solemnly. "He is not sick. He has been taken."

  "Aw, no, lady," said Fergie. "He's in the hospital an' everything. The only place he got taken to was a private room in Duston Heights."

  "His spirit has been taken," replied the old woman firmly. "And if you cannot find some way to return it soon, the body will die."

  Madam Lumiere went inside the cabin with them. She stood in the living room, looking all around her as she turned in a slow circle. The professor cleared his throat. "Ahem. You will have to pardon the mess, my good woman. We have been rather busy."

  Madam Lumiere nodded, her face empty of expression. "I sense a strong force of magic here," she said. She glanced at Johnny. "Johnny, do you still have the lucky token I gave you?"

  "Yes," said Johnny, taking the peso de ocho reales from his pocket.

  From somewhere among the folds of her dress, Madam Lumiere produced a crystal ball, smaller than the one Johnny had seen in her tent, hardly larger than a baseball. It gleamed in the light from the windows. She held it out on her open palm, and Johnny could see reflections of the room weirdly distorted and upside down. "Hold the silver piece flat on your hand," directed Madam Lumiere. "Be sure the side with the cross is upward."

  Johnny was beginning to have a creepy feeling, as if something was about to happen that might be dangerous. But he held the coin out, making his hand as steady as he could.

  Closing her eyes, Madam Lumiere began to chant softly. Johnny, Fergie, and the professor leaned close to listen, but whatever language she was speaking was unknown to them. Johnny felt the silver piece on his palm grow warm. He looked at it in surprise as a ray of brilliant white light shot out from the center of the cross to the crystal ball, which glowed with its own light. Then the ray flashed back out of the crystal and straight up to the
ceiling.

  They all tilted their heads back as they looked up. The spot of white light on the ceiling began to make bigger and bigger circles, like ripples that spread out when you toss a pebble into a pond. Finally, when it had covered the whole ceiling, the round patch of light stopped just above the door to Johnny's bedroom. "In there," said Madam Lumiere with a groan. "Johnny, put the coin in my free hand." She held out her trembling palm, and Johnny carefully placed the silver piece in it. "Good. Now, you go! I must not move."

  Johnny, Fergie, and the professor dashed into the bedroom. The late afternoon sunshine streamed in through the window. The spot of light reappeared on the ceiling although Johnny was sure that no ordinary light—like the beam of a flashlight, for instance—could have reached from where the sorceress was standing to there.

  The spot of light slowed. It drifted to a dark corner of the ceiling, near the foot of Johnny's bed. Johnny narrowed his eyes, trying hard to see. The ceiling was made of plywood painted a flat white and supported by a couple of crisscrossing beams of dark wood. Was there something odd about that corner? He could make out a sort of irregularity—

  The professor snapped on the ceiling light. "Look at that, by Gadfrey!" he said. "Just like a chameleon!"

  Johnny felt the hairs on his neck prickling. The open book was there, with one cover pressed against the ceiling, the other against the pine-paneled wall. The part against the ceiling was the same flat white color, and the part against the panel was the same yellow as pine. It even had the streaks and whorls of wood grain in it, and one dark brown pine knot.

  "No wonder we couldn't find it," said Fergie. "It's hard for me to see it now, an' I know just where to look."

  The professor ran into the kitchen and came back carrying a straight chair. "I'll have it down in a jiffy," he proclaimed, placing the chair in the corner. He climbed up on it, but grunted in frustration. He was about two inches too short to reach the book. He jumped down and said, "Fergie, you have the build of a basketball player. Get up here and use those long arms of yours."

  Fergie hopped onto the chair and reached up. He would have no trouble, Johnny saw. But then—

  Yelping, Fergie jerked his hand back! The book had flopped over, flattening itself against the ceiling. For an instant they saw the brown, aged pages and the weird writing, but then the open book became a horrible gaping mouth, ringed with sharp, sharklike teeth! It made a vicious snap, missing Fergie's fingers by less than an inch!

  Fergie ducked down as the book opened again. Drool leaked out of the mouth, and it made a nasty coughing roar, like the sound a tiger makes before killing.

  "Leave this place, I command you!" The sharp sound of Madam Lumiere's voice made Johnny's head snap around. She stood swaying in the doorway. In her left hand, she held up the Spanish coin, pinched between finger and thumb so the cross showed. She pointed toward the book with her right hand. She had her pinkie and her index finger extended, and her middle and ring fingers folded down against her palm. "Depart this realm, evil spell!" she said, her voice as sharp as the crack of a whip.

  For a moment the air around the terrible mouth seemed to bend, making everything ripple and shimmer. Then, with a growl, the book snapped shut and dropped to the chair, where it lay closed. Its covers were just the way they had looked the first time Johnny had seen the book: marbled paper and leather reinforcements at the spine and corners.

  "Is it safe t' pick up now?" asked Fergie. "I don't want my friends t' hafta start callin' me 'Four-Fingers Ferguson.'"

  "The spell has been lifted," said Madam Lumiere, slumping against the doorjamb. "It is as safe as such magical creations ever are."

  "Allow me," said the professor, picking the book up gingerly. He opened it and scowled down at the pages. "Hmm. Just as John described. Bizarre, weird-looking flowers. Shapes that look as if they might be letters from an unknown alphabet. Well, now that we have possession of this booby prize, the next step seems to be learning what to do with it! Madam, have you any suggestions?"

  "I must rest," mumbled Madam Lumiere. They helped her into the parlor, where she sank gratefully into the armchair. She gave the coin back to Johnny and sighed. "I am no longer so young as once I was," she said. "The struggle between the light and the dark takes much out of me."

  "Thank you," said Professor Childermass sincerely. "Without your help, we would have accomplished nothing."

  For the first time since Johnny had met her, Madam Lumiere smiled weakly. "One does what one can," she said. She took a few deep breaths. "Johnny, you are fighting an evil spirit. Three hundred years ago, he walked the earth as a man. Have you ever heard of Captain Damon Boudron?"

  Fergie had collapsed onto the sofa. He bounded to his feet. "Bloody Boudron, the Scourge of the Spanish Main!" he said. He turned triumphantly to Johnny. "The pirate, remember? We read about him! Even his pirate buddies were scared of him. They said he fought with the devil standin' at his right shoulder! He was more interested in killin' his victims than in takin' gold from them!"

  "I remember," Johnny said. "They called him Demon Boudron."

  "Yes," agreed Madam Lumiere. "And the fact is, he was not human at all. He was in truth some spirit from the dark regions, disguised as a man. Who knows what his wicked purpose was? It was said that no man could kill him. He died on the seventh of June, 1692, but not by ordinary means."

  "The earthquake," said Johnny. "That was the day of the great Port Royal earthquake in Jamaica."

  "Yes," said Madam Lumiere. "And that was when the pirate Boudron was swept into the depths of the sea. But his evil did not end. Ever since then, his restless spirit has been trying to break through again—"

  "Excuse me," came the sound of Brewster's voice. "This is all very interesting, but you people might want to know that someone who means you no good is creeping up on this house right now. If I were you, I'd run for it!"

  CHAPTER NINE

  Madam Lumiere rose and said, "I can help you no more. Be strong! And follow the lead of your spirit guide." She hurried out into the growing twilight.

  The thunderbird carving flew up in front of Johnny's face and hung in the air, practically vibrating. "Shake a leg! Get a move on!" Brewster ordered. "If Nyarlat-Hotep gets wind of what you've done, all Hades will break loose!"

  "Nyarlat Whosis?" asked Fergie. "Just what are you talkin' about?"

  The little bird spun and jittered in an agitated way. "Nyarlat-Hotep! That's what Damon Boudron's name is in the spirit world! And he's not a nice creature from beyond the bounds of space and time. So don't just stand there with your face hanging out! Go!"

  The carving swooped back into Johnny's shirt pocket, and the professor snapped, "Pack your kits, gentlemen! We're breaking camp!"

  He took the book into his bedroom while Johnny ran to his room and tossed his clothes willy-nilly back into his cardboard suitcase. He could hear Fergie doing the same. Within minutes, Johnny, Fergie, and the professor were bustling out of the house. They started down the steps when a nasty voice said, "What's th' matter? Ain't my place nice enough for ya?"

  From the gathering darkness of evening, a man stepped forward. He was the owner of the motor court, the thin little fellow with the bald patch surrounded by bristly red hair. "Where ya off to?" he demanded.

  "We have business elsewhere," said the professor, stepping ahead of Johnny to confront the man. "Of course you can keep the money I paid you, but we have to leave at once. Something came up very unexpectedly."

  The man spat onto the sandy ground. "Yeah. I just bet it did. When I caught sight o' that ol' witch leavin' the place, I said to myself, 'Andy McDuff, you jist better make sure them three ain't stealin' you blind.' So I come over t' take a gander. You know what, fellas? I think you boys had jist better open them suitcases."

  "Nonsense!" roared the professor so loudly that the riot of night insects fell silent for a moment. "You don't happen to have a little thing called a search warrant, do you? It just so happens, my ungrammatical friend, that the U
nited States Constitution protects people against unreasonable searches! Now stuff that in your pipe and smoke it!"

  The little man grimaced unpleasantly. He stood in a yellow square of light that came from a front window of the cabin. Johnny saw that McDuff had very bad teeth, what was left of them, McDuff took a stride forward, putting one foot on the bottom step, just below the professor. He said, "Yeah? Constitution, huh? Well, it also just so happens that I'm an official sheriff's deputy. I'm the law here on Live Oak Key, mister. An' if I goes in there an' see you've messed up th' place, why, I can toss you in th' clink for vandalism an' malicious mischief. Then I'll get t' look through them suitcases anyhow. So how ya like that, huh?"

  The professor gritted his teeth. "Look here, the only thing we're taking that we didn't bring with us is a dusty old book that some former tenant forgot—"

  Andy McDuff's mean, cold eyes narrowed at once. "A book, huh? Well, that's my property! You jist han' that book over if y' know what's good for ya!"

  The professor's shoulders slumped. "That book is of no possible use to you," he said in a tired voice. "You cannot read it, and it's worthless as an antique. You can't make any money on it. The only one who might care about it at all is a scholar who specializes in old—"

  "Shut up, fatty," snarled McDuff. "If ya ain't gonna listen ta reason, I guess I'll jist hafta arrest th' three of ya. Ya like that, huh? Ya want these two kids ta have a jail record?"

  Slowly the professor turned to look behind him at Johnny and Fergie. "No," he said in a low voice. "I can't let that happen." To Johnny's surprise, the professor winked at him. The old man set his suitcase down and opened it. He rummaged inside and took out a book- shaped parcel wrapped in brown paper. "Here you are," he said, his voice defeated. "Although what good it will do you, I cannot say."

  "Good enough," sneered McDuff, taking the wrapped book. "Now git out o' here! An' don't ya ever come back."

  "No fear of that," said the professor. He was already lashing his suitcase to the rear fender of his bike. "Come, gentlemen. We don't have a moment to lose."