The Doom of the Haunted Opera

by John Bellairs

  “Nope,” said Lewis with a grin. One of the things Lewis liked most about Mr. Galway was that in his younger days the old man had once attended a lecture on spiritualism by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and after the lecture he had shaken hands with the famous author. Lewis had shaken hands with Mr. Galway, so it was almost like he himself had touched the writer of the Sherlock Holmes tales.

  “Come in, come in, and don’t stand here freezing to death,” Mr. Galway said. They went into his living room, which was toasty, and Rose Rita’s glasses immediately fogged up. She took them off and polished them with a handkerchief from her coat pocket. The room was crowded but comfortable, with dozens of framed photographs on the wall, a large overstuffed armchair, a long sofa decorated with a Navajo blanket, a magazine rack full of Popular Mechanics and The Saturday Evening Post, and lots of knickknacks.

  Lewis sniffed. The warm air was heavy with delicious aromas of roast beef and cherry pie. Mr. Galway had been a cook in the Navy, and he still prepared all his own meals. “Sit down, you two,” said Mr. Galway. “Let me see about a couple of things in the kitchen and I’ll be right out.”

  As Lewis had anticipated, when Mr. Galway returned, he brought back what he called a little snack. It consisted of hot roast-beef sandwiches, tall glasses of milk, and a slice of fresh cherry pie for each of them. They all dug in as Rose Rita told her grandfather what she and Lewis were doing for their history project. She asked him to tell them about the old theater.

  “Hmm,” mused Mr. Galway. “I remember that, all right. Must have been back about 1900. It was after I worked on the Civil War Memorial, anyway. At first all that space over the Seed & Feed was just empty. It was supposed to be a warehouse or something, but it wasn’t well designed for that. Too much trouble to get farm supplies up and down stairs, for one thing. Well, anyway, the New Zebedee Eleemosynary and Cultural League decided there ought to be an auditorium somewhere in town, and they leased that space from old Mr. Pfeiffer, the father of the fellow who runs the store now. They hired me to design the theater, and so I did. Took about two years to build, and she opened in May of 1902. Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance, I remember. I took my wife—my first wife, Coral, rest her soul, not your grandmother, Rose Rita—to the performance.”

  “When did the theater close?” Rose Rita asked.

  Mr. Galway sniffed. “It was after the First World War. I suppose it was about 1919. I’m afraid it never was a big success. Oh, it had its moments. Caruso once gave a concert there, you know, and I remember a great evening when the magician and escape artist Harry Houdini did some amazing things. But most of the time the performances were pretty poorly attended. Then too there was a big influenza epidemic right after the war, and that may have had something to do with it. Of course, that isn’t what everyone in town will tell you. They’ll say it was because of old Immanuel Vanderhelm and his bad luck.”

  Lewis glanced at Rose Rita. Immanuel Vanderhelm was the name on the cover of the sheet music he had found inside the piano. “Uh, who was he?” Lewis asked.

  “Famous man in his time,” said Mr. Galway. “Or at least, that’s what I understand. They said he had sung in operas all over the world—Germany, Italy, England, everywhere. And he came to New Zebedee to settle down and retire, but you know how it is. He was like an old fire horse, I guess, always ready to run when he heard a bell.”

  “What do you mean?” Rose Rita asked as she finished the last bite of her pie.

  The old man smiled. “I mean he was always ready to sing or play music or get involved with opera again. Anyway, he wrote a show especially for the theater. Picked out people to be in it and all, rehearsed it, and was supposed to put it on. But then the bad luck started.”

  Rose Rita leaned forward. “What sort of bad luck do you mean?”

  “Well, various problems. His soprano broke her leg and had to be replaced. Then the building where they were making the sets caught fire and burned to the ground. Then the manager of the theater up and disappeared. On top of that, half the people in town were sick with the flu. Then the most mysterious thing of all happened. Opening night came, and Mr. Vanderhelm just didn’t show. Left them in the lurch, and I hear tell he might have taken all the box-office money with him too. Anyway, he never returned, and the people in town were so disgusted that they not only cancelled the show, they just locked the theater, even though the League had taken out a ninety-nine-year lease on the space.” Mr. Galway pushed himself out of his chair and collected all the dirty dishes on a tray. “Here, now that I think about it, I might be able to dig up something else about that old theater,” he said. “You swabs do these dishes for me, and I’ll see what I can find.”

  They went into the kitchen, where Rose Rita washed the dishes and Lewis dried and put them away. By the time they finished and returned to the living room, Mr. Galway had brought a worn, leather-bound family album from his bedroom. He sat on the sofa as he leafed through it, with Lewis on one side and Rose Rita on the other. There were hundreds of photos inside, most of them faded to a brownish tint. Many were of places he had visited while he was in the Navy: Singapore, London, Honolulu, and other exotic ports. Then he stopped and said, “Here it is. This was taken on the opening day of the theater, back in 1902.”

  Lewis looked. The photo showed about a dozen people standing in the vestibule of the theater, and in the picture everything looked fresh and new. A big poster on the wall behind the group showed a funny-looking man in a pirate costume, and the ornate letters of the caption read, GILBERT AND SULLIVAN’S THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE.

  Mr. Galway turned the page. “Got several of these, because I was so proud of the job I did with that theater. Here’s me and Harry Houdini. And here’s . . . well, I’ll be darned.”

  He had stopped at a picture that showed a younger Mr. Galway, with a full head of dark hair and a big moustache, standing in front of the stairs outside the Seed & Feed. The building looked about the same, except for a large sign over the stair doorway that proclaimed, THE NEW ZEBEDEE OPERA HOUSE. Mr. Galway stared at the picture and scratched his head. “Well, I’ll be. Guess my memory is playing tricks. I could have sworn that Immanuel Vanderhelm was in this picture with me, but I’m all by myself.” He flipped back to The Pirates of Penzance photo. “Anyway, here is my first wife, Coral,” he said.

  Lewis suddenly leaned forward. He put his finger on a man in the front row. “Who is this?” he asked.

  “That tall drink of water?” said Mr. Galway with a grin. “That’s old Mordecai Finster, the theater manager. He’s the one who skipped town later on, just before Vanderhelm’s show flopped.”

  Lewis felt sick. He did not think that Mordecai Finster had skipped town. Something worse had happened to him. The man in the photo was tall and thin, with deep-set eyes and bushy muttonchop whiskers. Lewis had seen that figure before.

  It was the ghost in the orchestra pit.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  On Tuesday afternoon Jonathan Barnavelt stood at the window of his room in Lucius Mickleberry’s house in St. Petersburg, Florida. He looked out on a gorgeous day. The Gulf of Mexico was calm and blue, and the white-sand beach he could glimpse between the trees was blinding in the warm sunshine. He had the telephone to his ear, and he was speaking to the long-distance operator. “New Zebedee,” he repeated. “The number is 865.”

  He waited while the connection went through, and then he heard the phone ringing. After a moment there was a click and Mrs. Holtz said, “Hello, Barnavelt residence.”

  “Hi, Hannah,” said Jonathan. “How is everything?”

  “Oh, hello. Fine, thank you, Jonathan. Did you attend your friend’s funeral?”

  “It was a memorial service,” Jonathan said. “Yes, it was very nice. I think Lucius would have liked it.”

  “We never know when it will be our time,” said Mrs. Holtz dolefully.

  Jonathan grinned. For a lively little woman, Mrs. Holtz took an uncommon interest in funerals. “Say, is Lewis there?” he ask
ed. “I thought I’d speak to him if he’s home from school.”

  “Yes, just a minute.”

  Jonathan hummed to himself. He saw Mrs. Zimmermann out on the lawn. She had changed from the black dress she had worn to the memorial service to a purple floral print, and she wore a white straw hat with a bright purple band. A balmy Gulf breeze blew, billowing her dress around her. She looked up, and Jonathan waved at her.

  “Hello?” It was Lewis, sounding winded.

  “Hi,” Jonathan said. “Everything all right on the home front?”

  There was a long pause, but then Lewis said, “Everything is fine. How is the weather?”

  “Beautiful,” Jonathan said. “It’s about seventy-five degrees and sunny. How about there?”

  “Cloudy, windy, and cold,” Lewis said. “Do you know when you’ll be back?”

  “Not yet. We are meeting with the lawyers for the reading of the will tomorrow, and then Florence and I will have to sort out and pack books and other material. That will take some time. And we need to have the wand-breaking.”

  “The what?” asked Lewis.

  “It’s a ceremony,” his uncle explained. “You see, when a wizard dies through the action of magic, his wand breaks automatically. When a wizard dies a natural death, though, as Lucius did, then his magical friends have a little farewell creremony. They remember him and wish him well and then snap his wand in two. If my plane crashed while I was coming back to New Zebedee—”

  “Gosh, Uncle Jonathan, don’t even say that!” Lewis sounded strained and fearful.

  Jonathan sighed. “Lewis, nothing like that is going to happen. I’m just using it as an example. Then my friends would break my walking cane. Florence’s would break her enchanted umbrella. It’s just a ceremony, that’s all.”

  “Well . . . be careful anyway.”

  Jonathan laughed. “I will. Say, is everything all right at school? Did you and Rose Rita find a history project?”

  “Uh, yes.”

  “Good, good. Well, I’ll go now, Lewis. Tell you what: I’ll shop around down here and see if I can find you a present. The pirate Gasparilla used to operate in these waters. Maybe I can find you a real doubloon or maybe a genuine pirate’s sword.”

  “That would be swell.”

  “Take care then.”

  “You too.”

  Jonathan hung up and went downstairs to talk to Mrs. Zimmermann. She had walked far out on the lawn, toward a gate that led out to the beach. As he stepped off the porch to follow her, Jonathan paused for a second. Something was troubling him. Lewis could be moody at times, but he had sounded subdued and depressed. Jonathan had the feeling that Lewis had never quite gotten over his parents’ sudden death in a car accident several years earlier. However, Mrs. Holtz had sounded well enough, and she would have mentioned any real problems. Jonathan put his momentary worry out of his mind and trotted after Mrs. Zimmermann, yelling, “Hey, Haggy, wait up!”

  * * *

  Back in New Zebedee, Lewis hung up the phone and bit his lip. He had almost told his uncle about exploring the old theater, about seeing the ghost, and about the concealed sheet music. Two concerns stopped him. First, Lewis had to admit that he might have been mistaken. His nerves sometimes got the better of him, and it could be that the ghost of Mr. Finster was just a figment of his overactive imagination. Still, Lewis could not explain the resemblance between the man in Mr. Galway’s picture album and what he thought he had seen in the orchestra pit. More important, though, was the fact that Lewis did not want to spoil Jonathan’s stay in Florida. He knew his uncle had a lot on his mind, and he did not want to add to his problems.

  When Mrs. Holtz had called him to the phone, Lewis had been sitting at the dining-room table, snacking on Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and a glass of milk. He went back there now and finished the candy, thinking over what had happened at school. Miss Fogarty had liked Rose Rita’s description of the project she and Lewis had chosen, so it looked as if he would be stuck with researching the old theater. And Miss White, the music teacher, had been very interested in the old music score. She had explained that Immanuel Vanderhelm was once a world-famous tenor, and she was excited to think that this might be a long-lost work by the eminent musician. In fact, she had even telephoned the editor of the New Zebedee Chronicle with the news. Lewis thought things were getting out of hand.

  The doorbell rang, and Lewis went to answer it. It was Rose Rita, her face red from the cold. “Look at this,” she said, holding up a folded newspaper.

  Lewis took it from her as she came in and closed the door. Right on the front page was a boxed story with a headline that read, NEW ZEBEDEE YOUTHS DISCOVER LOST OPERA. It told all about Lewis and Rose Rita and their finding the score to The Day of Doom in the old theater. It wound up by stating, “The opera is a parable of the modern world, showing how the new century meant the doom of all the old ways. According to Miss Ophelia White, the score seems to be complete and could even be performed now.”

  “We’re famous,” said Rose Rita with a grin. “Boy, I’ll bet Miss Fogarty will have to give us both an A on this report!”

  “Maybe,” Lewis said uncertainly. “I don’t like it, though.”

  They were still standing in the hall, next to the blue willowware vase that was crammed full of umbrellas and walking sticks. Rose Rita put her hands on her hips. “Humph! You just don’t like it because you got scared.”

  “No,” insisted Lewis. “It isn’t that . . . it’s just . . . oh, I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right to me, somehow. It’s as if that stupid music had been in hiding there all this time, waiting for me to come along and find it. I know that sounds dumb, but it bothers me.”

  “Hey, relax,” said Rose Rita. She was about half a head taller than Lewis, though he was going through what Jonathan called a growth spurt, and she looked down at him now. “You know, the music is even kind of pretty. Miss White played a few lines of the overture for me, and it doesn’t sound spooky or weird—”

  Rose Rita broke off, a funny look on her face. Lewis started to ask, “What is it?” Before he could get the words out, his voice died in his throat. He heard something. It was coming from outside, and it was high-pitched and wavery. It sounded like music being played on a fife, although he could not make out the tune. He shivered. “You hear that?” he whispered.

  Rose Rita nodded, her eyes wide behind her glasses. “It’s coming from the yard,” she said. “You don’t suppose it could be the, I mean, the ghost you . . .”

  Suddenly Lewis relaxed and laughed. He had recognized the tune. It was “Goodnight, Ladies,” and every sixth or seventh note was horribly flat. He went to the door, paused with his hand on the knob, and said, “Rose Rita, meet the Phantom of the New Zebedee Opera!” Then he threw the door wide.

  A black-and-white striped cat came strolling in from the cold. He looked up at Rose Rita, meowed, and sat down to wash himself. “I don’t get it,” said Rose Rita.

  “Didn’t I tell you about Jailbird?” asked Lewis. “Gee, I thought I had. Last spring Uncle Jonathan and I were out in the yard when this cat showed up. We later found out he belongs to Miss Geer, the librarian, but we didn’t know it then. Uncle Jonathan cast a magic spell on him, just for fun, and the cat started to whistle.”

  Rose Rita gave him a hard stare. “You’re kidding.”

  “No,” said Lewis. “It’s the truth.”

  As if to demonstrate, Jailbird suddenly puckered his little cat lips and began to whistle “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen.”

  Rose Rita winced. “He’s awful,” she said.

  Lewis shrugged. “Well, cats don’t have much of a sense of pitch, Uncle Jonathan says. Anyhow, Jailbird seemed to like his new talent so much that Uncle Jonathan said he wouldn’t take the spell off unless he started to do birdcalls. Last summer, while you were gone to Pennsylvania and Uncle Jonathan and I were off in Europe, Miss Geer took him to the radio studio talent contest, but they disqualified him because they said nobod
y at home would believe it was really a cat whistling, and anyway he wasn’t very good.”

  The cat began a terrible off-key rendition of “On Top of Old Smoky.”

  “Can’t you make him stop?” asked Rose Rita with a grimace.

  “Sure. He just wants a snack.” Lewis led them into the kitchen, where he opened a can of sardines. Jailbird gobbled them down and went to the heating vent, where he curled up contentedly. Lewis washed the special saucer that Jonathan used for giving handouts to neighborhood pets, and the cat purred as if pleased that Lewis was doing all the work. Then he softly whistled a few bars of Brahms’s “Lullabye” before going to sleep. “I guess it will wear off sooner or later,” Lewis said. “Most of Uncle Jonathan’s spells do. You know the Fuse-Box Dwarf is gone. It gradually faded away, and then one day it just wasn’t there anymore.”

  Rose Rita rolled her eyes. The Fuse-Box Dwarf had been another of Jonathan’s spells. It was an illusion of a little man who lived behind the paint cans in the cellar, and when anyone went down there, he would rush out yelling, “Dreeb! Dreeb! I am the Fuse-Box Dwarf!” and then go hide again. “Your uncle doesn’t do very useful magic,” said Rose Rita.

  “At least it’s all harmless,” returned Lewis. He really didn’t feel like an argument. His head ached a little, and he was still nervous about the theater and the music he had found there. But Rose Rita seemed to understand. The two did their homework together, and when Rose Rita went home, Jailbird left as well. Lewis and Mrs. Holtz had dinner together, and then Lewis listened to some radio shows. He went to bed about nine o’clock, wishing that his uncle would return.

  That night he tossed restlessly, unable to get to sleep for a long time. When at last he did fall asleep, he had a strange dream. He and Rose Rita were walking up the stairs to the theater again, but this time the lights were all on and a crowd was jostling them. The men wore black tailcoats and white ties, and they all carried top hats. The women wore long white gowns, beautiful necklaces of diamonds and pearls, and fur stoles around their shoulders.