The Doom of the Haunted Opera

by John Bellairs

  Rose Rita strained to see if it was doing anything. With the darkness, the fog, and the menacing shapes that loomed up on all sides of her, it was hard to see anything. No, there it was: The little white ball was barely visible. Was it growing brighter? Rose Rita thought it might be, and she was just about to ask Mrs. Jaeger if she thought so, when—

  Whoosh! With a sound like bursting flame, the amulet threw off a brilliant white illumination. The fog shrank back all around them. Rose Rita had to squint against the fierce light. She half turned her head. Mrs. Jaeger, who had thrown her arm up to shield her eyes, was all white highlights and black shadows, like an ink sketch of herself. Even looking away from the amulet, Rose Rita’s eyes streamed tears. The magic charm was working! She could see the street below her feet, and a few yards of the rusty-red railroad track behind her. But was the amulet bright enough to penetrate to the other side of the fog? If it wasn’t, they were lost.

  “Listen!” said Mrs. Jaeger.

  With her heart trying to climb into her mouth, Rose Rita listened. Something was approaching. A crunchy, crackling sound came from in front of them, as if something very large were drawing near. Something like a hungry dinosaur, perhaps, or a stalking tiger, or a stealthy grizzly bear, or—

  “A car!” shouted Mrs. Jaeger. “I see the headlights.”

  “Bessie!” Rose Rita yelled at the same moment. The dim headlights, small as two dimes, crept closer and closer. Rose Rita took a slow step back, and then another, across the railroad tracks. She edged out of the fog, and the headlights still followed the unearthly gleam of the amulet. At last the purple nose of Mrs. Zimmermann’s beloved Bessie broke through the clinging fog, and a second later Mrs. Zimmermann and Jonathan Barnavelt spilled out of the two front doors of the car. Its work done, the amulet faded as Rose Rita rushed into Mrs. Zimmermann’s arms. “Lewis,” gasped Rose Rita. “We have to save him.”

  “That’s why we’re here,” growled Jonathan. “Mildred, you really came through with the goods this time! Now pile into the car everyone. We’ve got to get to the opera house.”

  Mrs. Zimmermann waited until they were all inside, and then she put Bessie in gear. They sped through the deserted streets, turned onto Main, and pulled up in front of the opera house. As Jonathan opened his door, a faint sound of music and singing filtered into the car. He gave Mrs. Zimmermann a worried glance. “Sounds like the fun’s already started, Florence,” he said in a low voice.

  “Then we have to finish it,” Mrs. Zimmermann returned. “Everybody out! Mildred, do you remember the Words of Banishing Evil?”

  “Of course, Florence,” said Mrs. Jaeger. “But I’m so awfully bad at saying them—”

  “You won’t be saying them alone,” said Mrs. Zimmermann. “Jonathan and I will be repeating them too. And one of us has to finish the spell, no matter what happens to the others. Just remember that!” She grasped her umbrella firmly and opened her door. “Rose Rita, I suppose it’s no use telling you to stay in the car, so you can come along. But don’t get too close. A wizard’s duel can be a dangerous affair, and the farther you are from us old fogies, the better off you’ll be. Now come along!”

  Jonathan was already rattling the handle of the theater door. “Locked,” he muttered. “I should have suspected that. Well, let me see if I can kick—”

  “Oh, move aside, Brush Mush,” said Mrs. Zimmermann in a brisk voice. She murmured something, and a sizzling purple ray shot out from the crystal orb that was held in place by a bronze griffin’s talon on her umbrella. As the light grazed it, the whole doorknob glowed for a moment with purple light. “Try it now,” she said.

  Jonathan tugged, and the door opened. “Good going, Prunella,” he said. “Now, let’s—”

  He broke off as something rushed out. It grabbed him and clung to him. “Oh!” shrieked Mrs. Zimmermann, and Mrs. Jaeger cried out in alarm.

  But Rose Rita was laughing with relief.

  The form that had hurtled out of the dark doorway was Lewis. He was alive, and he was all right.

  It took him just a few moments to pant out the shocking story of his imprisonment. Jonathan snarled with anger when Lewis had finished. “That’s it,” he said. “By George, I may be a second-rate magician, but nobody is going to push my nephew around like that. Ready, troops? Let’s show that infernal scarecrow that we mean business!”

  Lewis dropped to the rear of the procession, beside Rose Rita. “Did you really talk to a ghost?” she whispered as they climbed the stairs.

  “Yeah,” Lewis said. “And he scared me at first, but then he tried to help me. And I got out of that gruesome little tomb by using one of his bones.”

  Lewis felt the claustrophobic Rose Rita shudder. “I would have gone out of my mind,” she whispered.

  They got to the top of the stairway. Like a general directing his army, Jonathan waved Mrs. Zimmermann over to the left archway. He whispered to Mrs. Jaeger, “Count to fifteen after I go in, and then follow me. But keep your distance.” To Lewis and Rose Rita, he said, “You kids had better stay out here, or at least at the back of the theater. Don’t believe anything you see. Whatever that fiend summons up might hurt a magician, but to anyone else it will all be moonshine and magic, and if you don’t believe in it, it won’t hurt you.”

  “This way,” whispered Rose Rita. She grabbed Lewis’s hand and tugged him toward the left archway, where Mrs. Zimmermann had vanished. Lewis gulped, but he followed her, step after reluctant step.

  When they stood in the archway, he blinked. Mrs. Zimmermann stood transformed. Instead of her purple cloth coat and plain black umbrella, she wore billowing robes of purple, with red flames blazing in their folds, and she carried before her a tall ebony staff crowned with a blinding purple star. She was halfway down the aisle toward the stage, and she stalked forward, an imposing and fiery figure.

  Vanderhelm stood at center stage, directing the large cast that surrounded him. His eyes flashed when he saw Mrs. Zimmermann, and his gestures quickened. The hapless actors began to sing faster, faster, breathing hard between the lines. Mrs. Zimmermann started to chant something, but the singing grew louder. A black winged form, an enormous bat, dropped down from the ceiling above. Its hideous mouth curled back from inch-long, needle-sharp fangs, and its slitted eyes glowed red as burning coals. Mrs. Zimmermann saw the plummeting monster and pointed her staff. The grimacing bat silently exploded in a purple blaze a yard above Mrs. Zimmermann’s head, but she staggered, and Vanderhelm’s eyes flashed in victory.

  Then Jonathan Barnavelt’s deep voice boomed out in the same chant. The singers faltered and their voices weakened. For a moment Lewis dared hope that his uncle was winning.

  But then Vanderhelm began to sing, in a cruel, commanding baritone. Behind Jonathan a theater seat ripped itself loose and began to walk on its four cast-iron legs. It swelled and changed shape as it came up behind Jonathan, until it was a four-legged monstrosity with its arms ending in wicked, sharp claws. The seat grew long and suddenly split into a gaping, drooling mouth, all pointed teeth and lashing forked tongue. Jonathan sensed it as it crouched to spring on him. He whirled, pointed his cane, and yelled one word, sharp and cold as steel. The monster flew backward as if struck by a car, and when it landed halfway up the aisle, it was just a seat again. But Vanderhelm had succeeded in breaking Jonathan’s spell, and one more competing voice was stilled. Lewis saw his uncle reach for his throat as he stumbled backward, croaking hoarse, horrible sounds.

  “This is the last aria!” Rose Rita cried. “When he finishes it, the dead will rise!”

  Mrs. Jaeger had moved to the middle of the back row. She timidly began to chant, waving her wooden spoon in rhythm to the words, but with a single gesture Vanderhelm froze the words in her throat. She almost fell backward into one of the theater seats.

  His voice rising, swelling, Vanderhelm sang still louder, leering in hideous triumph. Mrs. Zimmermann was waving her wand, but her other hand clutched at her throat. Lewis wanted to turn and run
away.

  Instead he shouted to Rose Rita, “We know the score! We’re the ones who can stop him! It’s what the magician in the mirror told us!” He ran toward the sage, and Rose Rita ran beside him. They passed Mrs. Zimmermann, one on each side, in a bread-and-butter split, and they were abreast again. “Call this opera?” bellowed Lewis at the top of his lungs. “Boy, you stink!”

  Vanderhelm blinked at him, but he continued to sing, a hateful snarl writhing on his lips. “Lewis!” screamed Rose Rita. “What are you doing?”

  “No wonder old Vanderflop started the show without an audience,” Lewis screamed back at her. “’Cause he knew they’d boo him. What a ham!”

  Rose Rita caught on. “You’re flat!” she screeched. “You’re so far off-key, you couldn’t find it with both hands! You couldn’t carry a tune in a milk bucket! P.U., you stink! Where’d you learn to sing—in a monkey house?”

  “Yah, yah, yah!” roared Lewis. “You sound like a moose with a bellyache!”

  “And the tune is awful,” put in Rose Rita. “My grandpa could write better music, and he’s tone-deaf!”

  “What is it—‘Concerto for Goofballs?’” heckled Lewis. “You can’t write for sour apples, Vanderstupid!”

  “How dare you!” Vanderhelm did not sing the words. He bellowed them at the top of his lungs, and the confused orchestra blatted to a ragged pause. “How dare you mock the greatest creation of—”

  “Now!” yelled Jonathan, and all three magicians—he, Mrs. Jaeger, and Mrs. Zimmermann—chanted out something hot and angry and powerful. Their booming voices swelled and filled the auditorium. Lewis sensed the mounting power, like a huge wave about to break on a rocky shore.

  Vanderhelm gasped and tried to sing again, but a mighty wind rose outside the theater, sounding as if it would rip the roof off. Blam! Blam! The doorway outside blasted open with a thunderclap, nearly torn off its hinges. Crash! The wind rushed into the auditorium, jangling the crystal of the great chandelier overhead. Flap! The curtains billowed, the sets teetered! With frightened yelps, the cast rushed offstage as the painted backdrops danced a crazy gavotte in the screeching wind.

  “No!” screamed Vanderhelm. His eyes blazed at the musicians in the pit, and he shook his fist at them. “Play, curse you, play!”

  But the magicians had scrambled up out of the orchestra pit and dashed out past Lewis and Rose Rita. The wind dipped down into the pit, fingering the strings of the violins, drawing shivery cat-screeches from the viola, puffing oompahs into the tuba, even thumping a funeral-march beat on the bass drum. And from the pit rose a cyclone of loose music sheets. They descended on a swaying Vanderhelm, whose faltering voice was trying vainly to hit a few final notes.

  With a riffle like a giant deck of cards being shuffled, the figure of Vanderhelm dissolved into paper and ink, merging with the sheets of music flying through the air. Then, like an enormous snake the music-gorged wind swept in a sinuous curve out over everyone’s heads, through the archway, down the stairs, and out into the night. A backdrop collapsed with a slap. Down in the orchestra pit a last, lingering breeze tinkled the triangle.

  Lewis had a vision in his mind. Somehow he knew that the dead who lay in their graves in Oakridge Cemetery had been nearly stirred to life and to slavery, but all had just now lain back with sighs of relief. Somewhere a hideous stone statue had just now shattered. And in the brick pit beneath the stage, a pile of old bones, clattered to animation by the doomsday music, had now sunk wearily and gratefully to its rest.

  A moment later heads peeked around the edges of the proscenium. Actors came shuffling back onto the stage amid the ruined set. They looked at each other with wide eyes, as if they had all just awakened from a sleep as deep as a woodchuck’s winter hibernation. “Land sakes,” said Mrs. Feeney, pointing at Mr. McGillis. “Mike, you’re a sight!”

  “What in thunder are we doing up here?” someone asked.

  “I don’t remember a thing,” said someone else.

  “Rose Rita? Rose Rita, is that you?” asked Mrs. Pottinger, shading her eyes. She was wearing a beaded gown and a high silver wig, and she didn’t look anything like herself. But when Rose Rita rushed into her arms, her laugh was her old familiar laugh. “My stars!” she said. “I don’t know what’s going on, but whatever it is, I feel like a fool!”

  “It’s broken,” Jonathan said, his hand on Lewis’s shoulder. “The evil that started all those years ago. We did it, all of us. We’ve finally seen the last of old Vanderhelm.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The following Saturday afternoon, Rose Rita, Mrs. Jaeger, and Mrs. Zimmermann all came to visit Jonathan and Lewis in the mansion on High Street. They had milk and some of Mrs. Zimmermann’s wonderful walnut-fudge cookies, and they sat on lawn furniture in the backyard, because the weather had turned sunny and warm. The grass was beginning to show hints of green, and fresh buds had popped out on all the trees. The air held a wonderful scent of growing things. Spring had arrived at last.

  “Well,” said Jonathan as he finished his milk, “I suppose I had better start. First, you will be happy to hear that the Capharnaum County Magicians Society has all returned from Goony-Goony Land, or wherever it was that Vanderhelm sent them. I’ve talked to everyone in the society, and the story is always the same. Each one was trapped in his or her house by that horrible fog, just the way New Zebedee was trapped.”

  “But they’re all magicians. Couldn’t any of them use a spell to escape?” asked Rose Rita.

  “No,” answered Mrs. Zimmermann. “Because years ago old Vanderhelm worked out a particularly potent enchantment. You see, sometimes a magician can counter a spell that another magician has cast, but that requires both power and knowledge. One thing you have to know to fight a spell is just who cast it. And everyone in the society believed that Vanderhelm had died years ago, so they never even thought of him as the one responsible.”

  Lewis, who felt recovered from his series of frights, said, “I thought Vanderhelm had died a long time ago. I thought he perished in a magical duel with Lucius Mickleberry.”

  Jonathan made a wry face. “That’s what we all believed, Lewis. Unfortunately, it was only partly true. As it turns out, Vanderhelm locked something of himself—namely, his insane wish to be King of the Dead—in a spell that brought to life a phantom duplicate of himself. A duplicate made up of the music that carried the spell. That creature was what you were up against.”

  Mrs. Zimmermann smiled at Lewis. “And in case you were wondering if you were responsible for bringing the monster to life, Lewis, the answer is a big, fat no. You see, when a wizard expires, all his active spells are broken. Lucius Mickleberry must have placed some kind of spell on Vanderhelm, maybe even after the wizard’s duel was over. Perhaps he suspected that old Yowl-and-Howl had left behind some nasty little surprise. If the spell placed on the sheet music had been complete when the real Vanderhelm died, you see, it could not have been broken. But Lucius’s protective spell would have kept the duplicate from coming to life, at least until Lucius himself passed away.”

  “Well,” sighed Mrs. Jaeger, “at least all this uproar is over. Even though people from the outside world are laughing at New Zebedee for getting lost in a spring fog, everything turned out all right.”

  “Not everyone is laughing,” Rose Rita said. “Ever since my uncle drove him back into town, Grandpa Galway has been pretty suspicious of what’s been going on. He swears there’s more to the story than anyone will tell him. It’s funny how no one remembers anything about the opera.”

  “Not so funny at all, Rose Rita,” answered Jonathan. “Magic has a way of doing that. The main thing is that no one associated with that ridiculous opera can remember a single line of the music. That means Vanderhelm’s spell is broken forever. To tell you the truth, I think all the actors and musicians feel foolish about the whole thing. Miss White at the school is putting it all down to some bizarre form of spring fever. It’s best to let the good folks of New Zebedee think they just
went a little goofy after a long, hard winter, so we’ll leave it at that.”

  Mrs. Jaeger nodded and said, “I suppose the old theater will be sealed up.”

  “Nonsense,” said Mrs. Zimmermann in her brisk voice. “The curse is lifted, just as the fog around the town has lifted. And with the bones of poor Mordecai Finster decently laid to rest in Oakridge Cemetery, no ghost will haunt the opera house from now on. The theater will be absolutely harmless. In fact, I am going to suggest at the next meeting of the board of education that the auditorium be turned over to the school. They have needed a place for pageants and plays for years, and it would fit the bill perfectly.”

  Lewis sighed. “I was petrified of Mr. Finster’s ghost,” he admitted. “But he only wanted to help me. I hope his spirit is at rest now.”

  “I think so, Lewis,” said his uncle. “A ghost can rest when its purpose has been fulfilled on earth. And just to make sure that nothing like that will ever happen again, some friends of mine and I went over and filled poor Mordecai’s cell with cement.”

  “At any rate,” said Mrs. Jaeger, “it is all finished. I’m happy I could help in a small way.”

  Jonathan’s deep laughter boomed through the yard. “‘Small way?’ Well, I’ll admit that Lewis and Rose Rita made Vanderhelm’s defeat possible when they became music critics. Hitting that nasty creature right in his vanity worked like a charm and let us counteract his magic. Still, Mildred, you were the hero of the hour! Shall we tell her, Frizzy Wig?”

  Mrs. Zimmermann’s eyes sparkled with mischief. “I suppose so, Fuzzy Mug. After all, the meeting is tonight.”

  With a broad smile Jonathan said, “Mildred, to be elected to membership in the Caphamaum County Magicians Society, you have to prove yourself by working out a real magic spell all by yourself. I got in by eclipsing the moon, and Pruny Face here by—well, that’s another story. Anyway, your success with the mirror and light spells demonstrates that you qualify. I’ve talked to all the other magicians, and they’ve agreed. Congratulations. You are the newest member of the Caphamaum County Magicians Society.”