The Doom of the Haunted Opera

by John Bellairs

  “No,” said Rose Rita and Lewis together.

  “Hmm. Then I suppose I’ll have to find a bowl for this one. And I’ll need a good fishy name. Dear me, so much to think about!”

  “Uh, Mrs. Jaeger?” asked Lewis hesitantly. “Will you be in any danger? I mean, Henry Vanderhelm has done something to all the other magicians in New Zebedee. Will he come after you now?”

  “Bless you, dear, I don’t think so,” replied Mrs. Jaeger. “My magic hardly disturbs the flow, you see, so he probably won’t feel it. And whatever spell he worked to put all the others out of commission must have been done all at once. My guess is that he got hold of a list of the Capharnaum County Magicians Society, and he cast a spell over everyone whose name appeared in it. I think your uncle and Florence Zimmermann were probably out of range in Florida. Anyway, if he tried to add me to the list now, he’d probably find that something would go wrong. One of the hardest things in the world is to change a spell that has already started. So I believe I am safe. After all, I’m not much of a threat, am I?”

  Lewis had to agree that she was not. He and Rose Rita said good-bye, and they pedaled back to Mansion Street in the gathering dusk. Lewis waited until Rose Rita had gone inside, and then he started home, wishing that he had a bike light that worked. Clouds had gathered as the sun went down, and now it was getting dark fast. He was huffing and puffing up the hill when he heard something behind him.

  Fearfully, Lewis glanced back over his shoulder. He saw a light behind him, faint and indistinct. He swerved toward the curb, thinking that a car was closing in on him and wanting to pass. Then he heard a dismal wailing howl, so startling that he jerked the front wheel of his bike against the curb.

  Crash! The bike banged to the pavement, and Lewis went flying through the air, turning somersaults. He hardly had time to be scared. Thud! He hit the sidewalk flat on his back, chuffing the breath out of him. With the concrete cold and hard beneath him, he lay there trying to breathe, but his lungs would not work. He felt a rising panic. Finally, after what seemed like an hour, he managed a wheezy gasp, and air rushed into his burning chest. He was dizzy and nauseated, but he tried to get up. Rolling to his stomach, he pushed himself up on his hands and knees.

  The light was closer now, but it was no car. Lewis squinted. A wavery, pale white glow spread across the whole street, and it was silently coming closer and closer. It seemed to bob up and down. What in the world could it be? He did not want to stay around to find out. He scrambled to his bike, pulled it upright, swung up onto the seat, and pushed himself off.

  The bike wobbled because he was trying to pedal it uphill, but it did not fall over. Lewis forced the pedals down, but he could not gain much speed. The wheels barely moved.

  And the glow caught up with him. A sickly wave of cold air washed over Lewis, making his teeth chatter. He blinked. He found himself in the middle of a row of human figures, gaunt and hollow-eyed and skeletal. They reached for him with long, bony fingers, and their bony jaws dropped open in yawning grins of welcome, and their bony legs trailed behind, their feet not even touching the ground. He was in a cloud of ghosts!

  “Beware!” one of them breathed, its skull face inches away. The teeth snapped at Lewis, making him wince. He turned the bike, desperately plunging down the hill. Icy fingers caressed his face and plucked at his coat as the bike picked up speed. One of the ghosts was holding onto Lewis’s right arm, trying to jerk it and make Lewis hit the curb again. Lewis could feel the tugs like sudden gusts of wind, but they were not strong enough to pull him off balance.

  “Get away!” shrieked Lewis. He had left most of the ghostly figures behind, but at least two clung to him, the one on his arm and the one whose grip he could feel on the collar and back of his coat.

  “Join us,” hissed an evil voice right in his ear. “Sleep the long sleep!”

  “Be his,” whispered the phantom holding onto Lewis’s arm. “It is useless to resist him.”

  “It’s dark in the grave,” the other said, its voice dry and raspy like a rush of dead leaves on a Halloween-night wind. “Dark and tight and silent!”

  “Give up, give up,” the phantom chanted. “Be his servant!”

  Lewis thought he really was about to die. He hurtled down the hill faster than he had ever dared ride even in the daytime. He did not stop or slow down, because he had the horrible feeling that these ghostly creatures would seize him and hold him until their friends came—and then what? Would they carry him away? Pull him down into a tomb? Make him one of them?

  Main Street flashed by, and Lewis almost fell as his bike racketed over the railroad tracks. “No!” howled one of the ghosts. Its hands tried to tear at his face in fury, but the hooked claws slipped over his skin like drops of icy water. The bike plunged into the unearthly fog.

  “We’re fading!” screeched one of the voices. “Fading into the fog. . . .” The voice became higher and higher, until its dying wail hung on like the whine of a pesky mosquito, and then even that died away.

  Lewis was crying. He stopped his bike and stood on his right leg, his chest heaving and his heart hammering. He had lost the terrible creatures by blundering into the fog that surrounded the town—but had he also lost himself?

  He gathered all his courage, dismounted from his bike, and rolled it forward. The fog clung to him with cold, clammy tendrils. Everything was a horrible gray-black, as if Lewis were floating in a vast nothingness. What if he could not find the way back? Would he be doomed to wander this foggy netherworld until he died? What if something awful, like the ghastly living statue, were stalking him in the murk?

  Just then he saw a smear of red light ahead. He rolled his bike across the railroad tracks, and right ahead was a stoplight, uselessly changing from red to green. Lewis almost screamed with relief. The town slept. He saw no ghosts.

  Still, he took the long way home, frantically pedaling to the summit of High Street. He let his bike crash to the ground as soon as he was inside the wrought-iron gate, and he ran stumbling up the front steps. Lewis charged through the front door and slammed it behind him. He stood with his back against the door, holding it shut, trying to keep out the ghosts.

  “Lewis?” It was Mrs. Holtz. She came frowning into the foyer. “What on earth?”

  “He really is staying out too late,” came a silky voice from behind her. “Hannah, I imagine his uncle would approve if you kept the boy inside.”

  Lewis almost passed out. The horrible Mr. Henry Vanderhelm was right here, inside his uncle’s house! He came up behind Mrs. Holtz and stood smiling at Lewis, but there was nothing friendly in that smile.

  “Yes-s-s,” said Mrs. Holtz thoughtfully. “I believe you are right. Lewis, I am sorry, but since you never seem to let me know where you are going, you will simply have to stay here in the house until your uncle returns home.”

  “Oh, let’s not be too hard,” purred Vanderhelm. “Let’s say that Lewis will be permitted to see the performance. I think that is only fitting.”

  “But Mr. Barnavelt will be home by then,” protested Mrs. Holtz.

  “Perhaps,” said Vanderhelm. “Perhaps not. At any rate, I can promise our young friend that it will be something to see! Lewis, my boy, I have no doubt you soon will be one of us—an opera lover—forever.”

  Lewis could take the strain no longer. He did not scream. He did not even try to run.

  He fainted dead away.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Lewis woke up in his own room. Everything was quiet and dark. He jerked to a sitting position and clicked on the bedside lamp. Everything seemed normal. The Westclox ticked away showing the time as 1:15. Then Lewis caught sight of himself in the tall mirror near the fireplace. His blond hair was disheveled like a crazy mop, and his round face stared back pale and frightened. He had been lying on the covers with a blanket thrown over him. Someone—was it the horrible Mr. Vanderhelm?—had carried Lewis into the room and had placed him on the bed, fully clothed except for his shoes. Lewis got up and l
ocked his bedroom door. He went to the window and looked out. He could see the Hanchett house, shadowy and asleep across the street, and the dim form of the water tower at the top of the hill. Only the street lights made little splashes of weak yellow light here and there.

  Lewis undressed and crept back into bed. He lay cowering beneath the covers for a long time, shivering and whispering prayers he had learned as an altar boy. He had the disturbing feeling that he would never sleep again, but somehow he finally fell into an exhausted slumber. In baleful dreams he ran again and again from those eerie, clinging, clammy ghosts, but he did not wake until daylight streamed in through his window. As he climbed wearily out of bed, he heard something rustle beneath his pillow. Frowning, he fumbled for it and pulled out a folded sheet of thick, heavy paper. He opened it and read a message written in a slashing handwriting in black letters that looked as if they had been cut into the page:

  Boy,

  Cease your foolish struggle against me. My servants are everywhere. If you go out again before the great night, you will pay the most horrible penalty. You have been warned.

  Lewis began to shake. He was marked for a grisly fate, and he knew no way of avoiding it. To someone with Lewis’s imagination, a vague phrase like “the most horrible penalty” conjured up all sorts of anguish and suffering. He dressed and slipped downstairs on trembling legs. Every shadow and every sound made him jump, even though he was in his own house. A sense of shame almost crushed him. Lewis was sure he was the worst coward alive. Oh, sure, he had summoned up false bravado at times, like when he pretended he was Sherlock Holmes or when he was with someone really brave like Rose Rita or his English pen pal, Bertie Goodring. When the chips were down, though, and when he had to face the unknown alone, he was a quivering wreck.

  Mrs. Holtz had already left, so Lewis got his own breakfast of Cheerios and toast. The cereal stuck in a thick lump in his throat, and he had to struggle to swallow. What was he to do? The sun was shining brightly outside, but Lewis was too terrified to go into the front yard. He was afraid even to pick up the phone. If he called Rose Rita, would Vanderhelm’s servants discover the call and come for him?

  Lewis thought back to the bad time when the house was under the spell of Isaac Izard. Uncle Jonathan, Mrs. Zimmermann, and Lewis had finally discovered the hiding place of the Doomsday Clock in a wacky way when Lewis made up a crazy magic spell. He wondered if he could do it again. True, Jonathan and Mrs. Zimmermann were not here, so he could not call on their magic. Still, Mrs. Zimmermann had said that New Zebedee had lots of magic flowing through it. Lewis gritted his teeth and decided he had to try. He went into the study, pulled out a pad and pencil, and spent some time working up the craziest ritual he could devise. Whatever happened, it might give them a clue to defeating Vanderhelm.

  When the ratchety old mechanical doorbell growled at twenty minutes to twelve, Lewis was still seated at his uncle’s desk. The sound nearly made him jump out of his skin. He grabbed a couple of books and covered the notes he had been making, then pushed the chair back from the desk and hurried to the front hall. The bell rang again. As Lewis was getting up the nerve to ask, “Who’s there?” a familiar voice called out, “Hey, Lewis! Are you at home?”

  It was Rose Rita. With a relieved sigh, Lewis opened the door. Rose Rita stood there, dressed in her P.F. Flyers tennis shoes, long black socks, a red-and-green plaid wool skirt, and her father’s old University of Michigan letter jacket. She wore a knitted green cap on her head, which she clapped down with one hand. Behind Rose Rita was Mrs. Jaeger, bundled into a heavy long gray coat and a furry hat. The day was bright, with a blustery wind. “About time,” grumped Rose Rita. “We almost blew away out here.” She pushed past Lewis, and he stood aside to let Mrs. Jaeger in. Then he closed the door and locked it.

  “Hey,” he said. “With wind blowing like that, maybe the fog—”

  “No such luck,” said Rose Rita, shucking off her jacket. “I checked. It’s hanging there as calm as curtains, even with all that wind.”

  “It’s magical, I expect,” said Mrs. Jaeger as Lewis helped her out of her coat. “This wind just blows right through it without disturbing it in the least.”

  Rose Rita started to hang her jacket and hat on the coat rack. “Yeah,” she said. “I don’t know if—hey! Why didn’t you tell me about this?” She pointed at the mirror.

  Lewis gasped. The mirror showed Uncle Jonathan’s face. He was brushing his teeth. “Hey!” Lewis shouted, waving his arms wildly. “Uncle Jonathan!”

  Too late. Uncle Jonathan spat into an unseen sink and turned away. The vision shimmered and faded and the mirror was just a mirror again.

  “Oh, my,” said Mrs. Jaeger. “I believe my magic spell worked, after all. That was a vision of your uncle, sure enough.”

  “I don’t know,” said Lewis. “I saw an image of Uncle Jonathan and Mrs. Zimmermann there once before.”

  Mrs. Jaeger looked thoughtful. “Hmm. Since this mirror apparently knows how to show us Jonathan, it might be useful, with a little help.”

  “What kind of help?” asked Rose Rita.

  “I believe Jonathan must have been facing a mirror on his end of the image. You usually do look in the mirror when you brush your teeth.” Mrs. Jaeger pursed her lips in thought. “Next time, we could be ready. If we could work the right spell, whenever Jonathan is looking into a mirror, he would see anyone looking into this mirror at the same time. That is, if the person on this end concentrates hard and wills him to see. I’ll try a little enchantment. Lewis, you will have to keep a close watch on this mirror.”

  “I will,” replied Lewis in a miserable voice. “I can’t believe we missed him by a second.”

  “It happens,” sighed Mrs. Jaeger. “Magic is tricky and unpredictable. Believe me, I know. The goldfish is doing very well, by the way.” She thought for another minute, chanted an incantation, and waved her spoon. “Maybe that will do it.”

  “Whether it does or not,” Lewis said, “I’m glad you’re here.” Briefly he explained what he wanted to try. Mrs. Jaeger nodded and looked as if she were carefully thinking over what he told her. “So,” he finished, “if this works, maybe we can get a better idea of what might break Vanderhelm’s spell.”

  “Sounds screwy to me,” said Rose Rita. When Lewis looked crestfallen, she grinned. “Hey, that doesn’t matter. The whole business is screwy, anyway, so maybe it will work all the better. Let’s try it.”

  Lewis went into the study and brought back his notes. Mrs. Jaeger read them, a smile flickering on her lips. Then she passed them to Rose Rita, who giggled aloud. “Boy,” she said, “are we ever going to look like idiots! But let’s try it. Is it okay if we stay here, so we can keep an eye on the mirror?”

  “Sure,” replied Lewis. “In fact, maybe all the spell will do is contact Uncle Jonathan. I won’t know until we try it, anyway.” He ran off to get the materials.

  In a few minutes they were ready. Lewis set up the folding card table and brought in three chairs. They could hardly look at each other without laughing. Lewis had used poster paint to color his face half green and half yellow. Over his regular clothes he wore one of his uncle’s nightshirts, a bright orange tent that billowed around him. Rose Rita had tied her hair up in two ponytails that stuck up from her head like antennae. She had turned her father’s jacket inside out and wore her hat on her left foot and her left shoe on her left hand. Mrs. Jaeger had dusted her face with flour and had given herself a bright red clown nose with her lipstick. She had tied her magic spoon to a black string and wore it like a necklace. They all sat at the table holding hands.

  “Now what?” asked Mrs. Jaeger. “Do we commune with the spirits, or go trick-or-treating?”

  “No,” answered Lewis. “Now we sing the mystical song until we get a sign that will help us.”

  “And what’s the song?” asked Rose Rita.

  “‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat,’” Lewis told her. “Except we have to sing it as a round, and when you finish
it forwards, you have to sing it again backwards!”

  It took them a number of tries to get it right, but finally each one was able to sing the words both ways. Rose Rita was a passable soprano, Mrs. Jaeger sang a slightly off-key alto, and Lewis tried to deliver a baritone. The third time they went through the round without a mistake, something happened. Lewis had just finished his backward run with “Stream the down gently boat your row, row, row,” when all the clocks in the house struck thirteen at once.

  It made quite a clamor. Uncle Jonathan no longer owned as many clocks as he once had, back when he was trying to drown out the ticking of the Doomsday Clock, but there were still a dozen clocks in the house, from the big old grandfather’s clock down to Lewis’s bedside Westclox. Every clock made noise, even the ones that did not normally chime. When the last one had rung, the mirror on the hat stand flashed to life.

  For a moment it flickered and blazed in different colors, pale blue, white, rosy pink. Then it shimmered into a black-and-white image, just like a TV picture. A serious-looking man sat at a desk reading from a sheet of paper. He wore a tall peaked wizard’s hat with flashing moons and stars and planets on it, and he had a long white beard. “Hello out there in magic land,” this man said in a deep voice. “It’s time for the World Magic News. Dateline, New Zebedee, Michigan: Tomorrow evening Henry Vanderhelm will attempt to become King of the Dead by having his magic spell sung by the townspeople who have come under his spell. This disaster can be averted, but only by someone who knows the score. Henry Vanderhelm can be shown up for what he is—but it will be a dangerous chance! Please reflect on that, viewers.” The mirror went dark.

  The three friends sat looking at each other. “Well, that helped about as much as a tuna-fish sandwich helps a broken leg,” grumbled Rose Rita.