Wrath of the Grinning Ghost

by John Bellairs

  A second later all three were on their bikes, pumping away. Behind them, Andy McDuff stood in the middle of the road, clutching the book to his chest. Johnny pedaled so hard that soon he was gasping for air. The sun had been down for more than half an hour, leaving just a smear of twilight over the Gulf to the west. The road was hard to see. The unpaved track was a gray glimmer, and the trees on either side were solid walls of blackness from which a million insects screeched and chattered.

  But soon Johnny saw ahead the lights of the stores that clustered around the docks. A few moments later he leaned his bike against the side of the Sand Dollar Store, which was closed for the night. "If only the water taxi is still running," grunted the professor.

  They were out of luck. No one was in the booth. They looked at each other for a few seconds. Fergie slapped at his face. "Great," he said. "We're gonna be stuck here all night, an' these mosquitoes are gonna drain us of every drop of blood. They'll find our poor, shriveled bodies in th' morning—"

  "Oh, hush, Byron," said the professor. "You're just going to spook Johnny."

  "He doesn't need to," said Johnny miserably. "I'm spooked already." The professor patted his shoulder, and then Johnny heard a man whistling "Hearts of Oak," an old British Navy song. "What's th' matter, folks?" asked a man's voice from the land side of the pier. "Need a lift?"

  Johnny recognized the voice. It was Mr. Weatherall, from whom he and his dad had rented the Swordfish. "Hi, Mr. Weatherall," he said, stepping toward him. "We sure do! I'm Johnny Dixon. Remember me?"

  Mr. Weatherall stepped beneath a light that threw a round puddle of yellow illumination at the head of the pier. "Why, of course! You an' your dad gave me a couple of nice fish. What's the trouble, folks?"

  Professor Childermass said, "My good man, we were planning to spend a night on the island, but we got into a disagreement with the villain who runs Pirate's Cove. Now we need to get back to the mainland."

  Mr. Weatherall chuckled and shook his head. "Andy McDuff, huh? Well, he's no friend of mine! Too big for his britches, if you ask me. Loves to boss people around. I'm just about to head home to Alachamokee myself, so if you three will climb into that green dinghy yonder, I'll be pleased to run you across."

  The dinghy was small and rusty and smelled an awful lot like fish that had been out of the water too long, but Johnny was glad to crouch in the bow as Mr. Weatherall started the sputtering outboard motor. They zipped across the dark bay, winding between lighted buoys, and finished up at the same dock the water taxi had left from earlier that day. Professor Childermass tried to pay Mr. Weatherall, but the boat owner said, "Forget it. Anybody who don't get along with Andy McDuff is okay in my book. Y'all be careful, now, y' hear?"

  Johnny, Fergie, and the professor hurried back up the dark alley to the parking lot where they had left their rental car. They all piled in, the professor started the engine, and with a loud screech of tires, they roared off toward Tallahassee.

  "Suppose we can get an airplane tonight?" Fergie asked.

  "I have no idea, Byron," returned the professor. "However, I want to be far away from Live Oak Key as quickly as possible."

  "It's just too bad you had to give him the book," said Fergie.

  "That is exactly why we need to get away," said the professor with a sharp, short laugh.

  "What do you mean?" asked Johnny.

  The professor chuckled again. "John, my boy, I am afraid that Mr. McDuff is going to be sorely disappointed. When Madam Lumiere warned us that someone was coming, I prepared for an emergency. I wrapped the book up in brown paper. But just to be on the safe side, I also wrapped up the Gideon Bible that was in my bedroom. And on the steps, I pulled what is technically known as the old switcheroo. I kept the mystic manuscript that nearly took Byron's fingers off, and I handed the Good Book over to Mr. McDuff. I hope he reads it! He's just the sort who could use some moral instruction!"

  "Way to go, Prof!" crowed Fergie. "You know, you're gettin' sneaky in your old age!"

  "Hah!" retorted the professor. "To quote Mr. A1 Jolson, Byron, 'You ain't seen nothin' yet.' Why, back in World War One, when I was in Army Intelligence, I pulled off some snazzy tricks that left the enemy wondering what had hit them! I..."

  Johnny relaxed with a sigh. As the car sped north through the Florida night, he held on to a little spark of hope. He did not understand how, and he did not know why, but the magical book might be the key to saving his father's life. Johnny had been living on his nerves for days. He had been so high strung that he had slept very little, and he had eaten far less than he needed to keep going. Now he felt on the verge of collapse. Clutching tight to that one little gleam of hope, he fell asleep as the car rocked through the night and the professor's voice droned on.

  * * *

  A few hours after he had stopped the three at the foot of the steps, Mr. Andy McDuff unlocked the door of a fishing shack on the south tip of Live Oak Key. He carried a flashlight, which he used to locate a candle. Then he lit the candle, and used it to light another dozen.

  The thirteen candles were all black. They illuminated a strange room, which took up the whole interior of the square little house. It measured thirteen feet wide, thirteen feet long, and thirteen feet from floor to ceiling.

  The room had no windows. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all painted a flat black. It was the color of midnight in the middle of the most forsaken swamp on earth.

  On the floor was a circle drawn in a vivid blood red. The circle held a pentagram, a five-pointed star. Each point of the star had a different Hebrew letter inscribed in it, and words written in the unknown script used in the magic book filled the spaces between the points.

  McDuff looked at his wristwatch. It was one minute to midnight. He went to the center of the pentagram and knelt. He took the wrapped book from inside his jacket and laid it on the floor in front of him. By the wavering yellow light of the candles he watched the minute hand of his watch crawl closer and closer to the twelve.

  When the time was exactly midnight, McDuff raised his hands and held them straight out, palms up. "Nyarlat-Hotep!" he intoned, his voice deep and booming, very different from its normal speaking pitch. "Hear me, O spirit of Nyarlat-Hotep! Hear me, Ancient One! Attend me, Master Who Was and Will Be! Lo, thy servant has done thy bidding!"

  The candles did not go completely out, but the light in the room changed. Each flame burned blue and dim, and the darkness became almost thick enough to feel.

  A purring, inhuman voice said, "Hast thou spilled the blood of mine enemies? Hast thou put them to sword and flame?"

  "I found the book!" said McDuff in a frightened, whiny tone. "The one with a mind of its own! The one that could open the doorway! It got away from you, but I found it and brought it back! You can take it to your world, O Lurker on the Threshold! Then no one on earth can stand against you! You can make your sacrifice and gain your power over your world and over this one!"

  A darker shape gathered in the air before McDuff, as if a charcoal-gray fog were collecting. It had the vague shape of a skull, and it seemed to wear a demonic triumphant grin. From its dark sockets blazed two red eyes, glaring and filled with hate. "The Grimoire of Frascati!" thundered the voice. "Had I gained full strength when I entered the mind of the sleeping mortal Harrison Dixon, I would have used his body to destroy that gateway! Show me! Show me the book now!"

  "Here it is!" With hands shaking as if he had a terrible case of palsy, Andy McDuff unwrapped the brown paper. "I hope you'll reward me for this," he said. "I hadda fight three big tough men t'—"

  He broke off in confusion. He held in his hands a black book. On the cover in gilt script were the words "Holy Bible."

  The silence was deafening.

  McDuff dropped the book to the floor. He scrambled to his feet. "No," he said wildly, throwing up his arms to shield his head. "No! It wasn't my fault! It wasn't—"

  He exploded into a ball of fire.

  As dawn rose the next morning, two fishermen saw w
reaths of gray smoke drifting from the south end of Live Oak Key. They rowed ashore to investigate and found the ashes of an old fishing shack. It had burned completely. In the center of the ruin, they were horrified to see a blackened human skeleton. The intense heat had shriveled the bones and had reduced some of the ribs to gray powder. "Look at that," one of the men said. "Wonder who it coulda been."

  The other man shook his head. "Only way they'll be able t' tell is th' teeth," he said. "Prob'ly some drunk come in here t' sleep an' set himself on fire with a cigarette or sumpin'. Say, don't ol' Andy McDuff own this place?"

  "Yup," the first man said. "And won't he be mad when he finds out somebody burned it to th' ground! Joe, what's this here?"

  He stooped to pick up something from the ashes. "It's a Bible," Joe said, looking over his friend's shoulder. "Ain't it burned?"

  "Not even scorched," the first man said. "If this don't beat all."

  "Well, we better get on into the settlement," Joe said. "I expect ol' Andy will want to know about this as soon as possible."

  "Yeah," his friend agreed. "I guess we better not touch nothin'." He put the Bible carefully back on the ground, and the two left it with the gilt title gleaming in the morning sun.

  CHAPTER TEN

  At noon that day Johnny, Fergie, the professor, Dr. Coote, and Father Thomas Higgins met in the parsonage of St. Michael's Church. Father Higgins had returned from his conference the day before, and the others spent half an hour explaining to him what had happened. He frowned and nodded as he listened. He was a tough-looking priest, six feet tall with a square, grizzled jaw and bushy eyebrows set in a permanent scowl. Johnny knew he was a brave man. Father Higgins had served as an Army chaplain in the Philippines during World War II, and he had seen some heavy action. Despite his forbidding appearance, he had been a good friend to Johnny, and his kind heart occasionally showed through as a warm twinkle in his green eyes.

  When Professor Childermass finished his quick summary, the priest shook his head. "Incredible," he said. "Roderick, I know you too well to think that you're mistaken about any of this. But if anyone else had told me such a wild story, I'd wonder about his sanity. And what do you have to say, Dr. Coote? Can you tell us anything about this strange book?"

  Dr. Coote coughed. "Of course, I have not had time to examine it thoroughly," he said. "And I've had only a limited time to search for answers in my books. Roderick called me from Tallahassee last night, and I drove down to Boston to meet him at the airport at two in the morning. I spent all the rest of last night looking over this, um, odd artifact."

  "Confound it, Charley, the man asked you a question," grumbled Professor Childermass, who had not had much sleep either. "Can you tell us anything at all about this blasted book?"

  "Yes, yes, I'm getting to that," said Dr. Coote mildly. "Well, the book superficially resembles the Voynich Manuscript I told Roderick and Johnny about a few days ago. However, the lettering is very different, and the pictures are not the same. The paper is a good grade of vellum. From the type of vellum and the degree to which the inks have faded, I would guess that the manuscript dates from no later than the sixteenth century, and possibly from much earlier, depending on how well it has been kept. I know for certain that it was re-bound in 1883."

  "How do you know that?" asked the priest.

  Dr. Coote opened the book to the inside of the back cover. He pointed to a little pasted-in label, barely visible between the spine and the back flyleaf, that read "Southern Star Bindery, Jacksonville, Florida, 1883."

  "Something I overlooked," admitted the professor. "But that isn't the important thing, Higgy. The book is some kind of gateway between this world and the infernal world. Or if not to the haunts that Dante explored with the ghost of Virgil, at least to some spiritual realm. That's what Brewster told us."

  "And where is Brewster?" asked Father Higgins.

  Johnny pulled the thunderbird figure from his pocket. "He's not talking again," he said.

  "He kinda clams up sometimes," added Fergie.

  "Irritating fowl," groused the professor. "I don't know how to force him to squawk, unless maybe we try some kind of super-duper Ouija board."

  "Try it, Whiskers," said a faint, faraway voice. "Try it and see how far it gets you!"

  Father Higgins blinked. "Well, Roderick, since I haven't heard of you taking up ventriloquism, I presume that is a spirit's voice. Brewster, I take it?"

  "Brewster," said the professor. "And high time too!"

  "Extraordinary," remarked Dr. Coote. "This occurrence reminds me of Jeanne d'Arc, who heard voices—"

  "Can it, Charley," said the professor. "Brewster! We rescued this terrible tome from Florida, just as you advised us, and it took some doing. Now tell us about it, blast you! Let us know what we've got our mitts on!"

  "It is a gateway," came the irascible voice of Brewster. "Just like I told you. Look, my friends, I have to explain a few things and I have to be quick about it. First off, Father Higgins, my world is not Hades or Purgatory or even Limbo. It's a universe of spirits that is different from those other places. It has always existed, as far as we spirits know—anyhow, none of us can remember a time when it didn't exist. Our natural laws are different from those of your world. You'd call them magic. Some of your human sorcerers and magicians have had glimpses of this realm in trances or dreams. Occasionally, one of them would put these visions down in books of magic lore. Sometimes spirits from my side have even helped them out."

  "And sometimes," said Professor Childermass, "some of you have masqueraded as gods! Right, Horus?"

  "Aw, lay off me," said Brewster. "So I get lonesome and want some human company once in a millennium or thereabouts! So my friends and I used to spend some hours in Egyptian temples, passing the time of day with priests and worshipers. Ya gonna sue me for showing up and demonstrating a little magic power now and again, Whiskers?"

  "Please," said Father Higgins. "Look, ah, Brewster, we want to help Major Dixon. What can you tell me about him?"

  The thin voice became even softer. "He is here."

  "No," Fergie said in surprise. "He's in th' hospital."

  "Only his body," returned Brewster's voice. "The spirit side of him is a captive. The one we call Nyarlat-Hotep is trying to cast him into such despair that he will die, body and soul."

  "Why?" asked Johnny, his voice anguished. "What did Dad ever do to him?"

  "Understand," replied Brewster, "that we spirits can occasionally enter your world. Nyarlat-Hotep first walked among you as a man many thousands of your years ago. He delights in pain and fear. They make him stronger. When he first came to earth, he took human form. He was so powerful that soon he dominated a whole continent full of frightened people. And he cast that continent into the sea, just to feed on the grief, the terror, and the agony of a million dying souls!"

  "Lost Atlantis," whispered Dr. Coote. "Oh, merciful heavens!"

  "Yes, but didn't old Gnarly die in the same deluge?" asked the professor. "I mean, it stands to reason! How can you drown a whole continent and escape high and dry yourself?"

  "The body died," explained Brewster, "but the evil spirit lived on! It returned here! The Law is that when that happens, when a spirit returns to our world from earth, it must drink the Water of Forgetfulness—"

  "Lethe," suggested Dr. Coote. "Mythology speaks of a river called Lethe, whose water makes anyone who drinks of it forget his whole past."

  "Bingo," said Brewster. "But Nyarlat-Hotep broke the Law. He has never taken his drink from Lethe. Even worse, he keeps trying to force his way through to earth. Three hundred years ago, he took the body and appearance of the pirate Damon Boudron. We tried spells to bring him back, but he fought us. He sacrificed twelve humans in various gory ways so that he could remain on earth and repeat his coup. Except this time he wanted to wipe out the whole human race! Some of us on this side fouled up his plan at the last minute by causing an earthquake and drowning Boudron's body again—but Nyarlat-Hotep's spirit fle
d back here and hid itself. Even worse, it brought the skeleton of Boudron with it, so it is partly spirit and partly material. It does not belong completely either to our world or to yours, so it is hard to fight. Now it is trying to make that last sacrifice, unlucky number thirteen. If that happens, your world will be doomed, and ours will fall under Nyarlat-Hotep's cruel rule forever!"

  "Why Dad?" asked Johnny, his voice shaky. "Why couldn't he have picked on anybody else?"

  "Just anyone won't do," snapped Brewster. "The sacrifice has to be someone who is a brave warrior. His will to live must be utterly broken so he gives himself as a willing sacrifice. And he must be completely, eternally destroyed, both body and soul forever!"

  "That's blasphemous!" exclaimed Father Higgins. "We have to stop this now!"

  "But—" put in Dr. Coote in his mild, reedy voice, "but how, exactly, are we to do that? Can, ah, Brewster offer any advice?"

  The voice of Brewster was becoming fainter and fainter. "You will have to come through to this side," it said. "You must put the enchanted book in a holy place. Gather around it. Command it to open the way, and then pass through."

  "Hang it," thundered the professor. "Why are you so helpful? What is your concern in all this?"

  For a few seconds it seemed as if Brewster would not answer. Then, in a small voice, he said, "Nyarlat-Hotep and I are, well, like brothers. We were created at the same time, back in the days of ancient Egypt. I could have stopped him when he first turned evil, but I did nothing. Now I must make up for that. Hurry! Time is short! I will wait on the other side! I can't speak to you anymore now..." The sound faded until it was as soft as a mosquito's droning hum, and then it was gone.

  They all looked at each other. "A holy place," said Father Higgins slowly. "I suppose that means the church. I'll get some holy water, my breviary, and—"

  Professor Childermass held up his hand. "No, Higgy. I don't think you should."