Curse of the Midions

by Brad Strickland

  “Sammy Crippen, you’ve had a pint too much!” Mrs. Macauley scolded. “Along home with you now, and don’t worry this poor boy any longer with your silly superstitions!”

  Sammy’s face clenched in a grim, disapproving expression, and he headed for the door. He paused for a moment, looked back at Jarvey, pointed a bony finger, and said, “Soul cold as death!” Then he was outside, walking away briskly.

  “What’s . . . what’s wrong with him?” Jarvey asked in a shaky voice.

  “Just a drop too much of good brown ale,” Mrs. Macauley muttered. “Look, though, I might as well tell you the way of it. This part of London is named Hag’s Court because of one of your ancestors, Agnes Midion. Back in the days of old Oliver Cromwell, they took Agnes prisoner and executed her as a witch—hanged her on the green just behind this very house, so they say. Her father, Septimus, pleaded with them to spare his daughter’s life, but those old Puritans were sure she was a witch and so, well, they killed her. They do say that after she died, not a blade of grass ever grew again on what came to be called the hag’s ground. Over time, this part of town began to be known as Hag’s Court, in her memory, like. Oh, I know it sounds crazy, but, well, people here have long memories. Are you hungry, then?”

  Jarvey was, though his stomach had a strange feeling in it, crawly and wriggly, as if he’d swallowed a handful of squirming live bugs and they weren’t happy about the experience. “I could eat something.”

  “Fish and chips? Local treat!”

  Jarvey’s mouth watered. “Sounds good.”

  “Hang about, and I’ll have you a tray ready. You can take it back up to your room if you’d like your privacy. Oh, what to drink? Lemonade? It’s fizzy here, you know. Yanks always are surprised by that. Or how about a Coke?”

  “Coke’s fine.”

  A straight chair, like the one in his room, stood tucked into a little niche. Jarvey sat on that and leafed through a bewildering English newspaper for a few minutes while Mrs. Macauley disappeared through a pair of double doors into the pub. Jarvey tried to make sense out of a column on cricket, wondering what “bowling a googly” meant.

  “Here we are, then.”

  Jarvey glanced up. Mrs. Macauley was back at the counter, holding a shallow wooden tray holding a plate with crisp-looking golden fish and—french fries! Maybe they were out of chips. “Thanks,” Jarvey said. He carried the tray up the stairs and settled down in his room with the tray across his knees. He took a sip of Coke. It was warm. Didn’t they know about ice in London? Maybe they had lost the recipe.

  The fish was very tasty and the “chips” were good too, better than the fast-food french fries back home. Jarvey wolfed the food down, finished off the tepid soda, and let out a satisfying burp.

  After washing the grease from his hands in the little bathroom, Jarvey went into his parents’ room to watch TV. The small set could get only five channels, and one of them seemed to be in French. He sat on the edge of the bed and watched a comedy for a while—at least the sound track had a laughing audience on it—but the accents of the actors were hard to understand.

  Eight o’clock passed, with no sign of his parents. “They’re going to owe me big for this,” Jarvey said aloud. He was beginning to feel nervous.

  Someone rapped twice, sharply, on the door, and Jarvey jumped right off the bed. His throat felt as if he’d swallowed a rubber ball. “Who is it?” he said, trying to make his voice deep.

  The doorknob creaked, then turned, and the door opened, swinging slowly outward. In the growing opening, Jarvey glimpsed a hunched-over, skinny, shadowy figure. Light from the room fell on lank gray hair, and under that a wizened, ratty face, the face of a gaunt man whose burning dark blue eyes bored right into Jarvey’s.

  “Who are you?” Jarvey squeaked.

  The man didn’t answer for a second. Then, in a raspy, hoarse voice, he growled, “You’re a Midion, all right. Hair like rusty gold. Eyes midnight blue. I’ve come to warn you, boy, you and your father and your mother. Heed me! You’re all in danger. Beware the book!” His hand, a pale, crooked claw, scrabbled at the door for a moment and then swung it shut with a bang. He was gone, leaving Jarvey feeling dazed, his heart pounding.

  Jarvey came out of his stunned trance as if he had just felt an electric shock. “Wait!” Jarvey was at the door in two steps, and he had it open at once. He stood frozen in the doorway, staring out into the empty corridor.

  It was impossible. The man couldn’t have vanished that fast.

  But vanished he had, as if he had dissolved into the dark, musty air in the hallway.

  CHAPTER 2

  Message by Night

  Jarvey closed the door and leaned against the wall, feeling his heart thudding hard inside his chest, as though he had just completed a hard sprint. He told himself to be cool, but then a shrill warbling sound made him jump as if he had just touched a live electric wire. With a gasp of relief, he realized the noise was just the telephone beside his parents’ bed.

  Jarvey got to it as it rang a second time. For a moment he paused with his hand on the receiver. To calm himself, he took a deep, deliberate breath, swallowed his apprehension, and answered the phone with a somewhat shaky “H-hello?”

  “Son!”

  Jarvey breathed out a lungful of air, sudden relief at the sound of the familiar voice making his muscles go limp. “Dad! Where are you? Are you okay? Why—”

  “Calm down, now. We’re quite well, thank you very much. However, we want you to see this fantastic place,” his father’s voice said. “You’ll love it. Now, I know it’s a little late. You needn’t worry about it. We’ll move back to the hotel tomorrow, after the will business is taken care of, but you really have to see this wonderful Midion mansion. Get ready—your great-uncle and his driver are already on the way to pick you up.”

  “But Dad—”

  “I need you to pack some clothing for tomorrow and your night things. Your great-uncle Siyamon will—”

  “What? Simon?”

  “Siyamon! He does not like to be called Simon, so be careful, please. It’s an old-fashioned name, to be sure, but then, such names rather run in our family, I daresay.” Then, with a click, the line went dead, and Jarvey was left with a strange metallic taste in his mouth and a creeping suspicion in his mind. The voice was his father’s, but Dr. Midion never used phrases like “to be sure” or “I daresay.” He had sounded so strange, not like himself at all—

  The TV sound suddenly blared so loud, it made him jump. He scrambled to the set and turned it down, switched it off. The volume knob had been turned all the way, though he hadn’t touched it.

  Jarvey took long, deep breaths, telling himself there are no such things as magic or wizards—or even Spriggans. Calm down. Someone’s coming to take you to your parents.

  Jarvey didn’t have to do much to get ready, just throw a change of clothes, his toothbrush, and his pajamas into his suitcase. That took about five minutes. For the next half hour he sat tensely on the edge of his parents’ bed, waiting.

  And then a knock sounded, a light triple knock at the door, tap-tap-tap, so soft that it was hard to tell whether he had heard it or imagined it. Jarvey raced to the door and opened it.

  He found himself standing face-to-face with a shriveled old man. As a younger fellow, the stranger might have stood over six feet tall, but it was hard to tell because now his shoulders stooped badly, and his long neck stretched out like a tortoise’s. Shadowed hollows lay in his lean face, darkest beneath his sharp cheekbones. His deep-set blue eyes peered from under craggy, shaggy white eyebrows, and long white hair curled down around his ears and onto his shoulders.

  The newcomer leaned on a silver-headed cane, and his thin, wrinkled lips wore a sharp, dangerous smile. “Ah,” the man purred. “My great-grand-nephew Jarvis. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Siyamon Midion. My driver is waiting. Come along, my good young lad. We are in rather a hurry.” As he spoke, his head swayed gently back and forth on his long, crease
d neck.

  “Where are Mom and Dad?” Jarvey asked.

  “Why, resting very comfortably, I daresay, at my home, Bywater House.” The man’s silky voice sounded like the rumble of a contented cat. He chuckled, a low, liquid sound. “We name our houses on this side of the Atlantic, you know. Bywater House belonged to my great-great grandfather many years ago, and now it belongs to me. Is that your bag? Bring it along.” He held out his hand, his bony finger pointing to Jarvey’s small suitcase.

  “I, uh, don’t have the key to lock the door—”

  “Not to worry,” Siyamon said. “All is in order.” He flicked his hand, and as if he had done a magic trick, a brass key gleamed in his thin fingers. “Your father gave me this and asked me to lock up.”

  Jarvey relaxed a little. Siyamon could have gotten the key only from his dad, so he must be all right. He picked up his suitcase and stepped out into the gloomy hall, and Siyamon closed and locked the door, the bolt clicking home with a final, surprisingly loud sound.

  Neither of them spoke as they made their way through the narrow corridor. The little tulip-shaped bulbs did not flicker as they passed. Siyamon led the way down the stair. In the little nook of a lobby, Siyamon reached to seize Jarvey’s left arm above the elbow and hurried him out, with the suitcase banging painfully against the boy’s right knee.

  Outside, a long black car sat parked beneath a streetlamp. In the deepening gloom of twilight, Jarvey stared at the car, a limousine, a midnight-colored Rolls-Royce with a protruding hood and a long, curved trunk. Its engine murmured softly, sending a thin gray plume of exhaust vapor curling out into the evening air. Beside the car stood a uniformed driver. He took Jarvey’s suitcase and opened the back door.

  “Quickly now, lad, get in, get in,” Siyamon urged.

  Jarvey climbed in, then sank into the deep backseat. The interior of the car held a scent of mildly sweet spices, like cinnamon and nutmeg combined. The driver put the car in gear and with a lurch it leaped out onto the street and turned hard right. Jarvey fumbled for seat belts, but the big car didn’t have them. He looked out the window and realized that it was so heavily tinted that he could see only the passing pale blurs of streetlamps. Although he could tell they took a good many curves at a pretty high speed, Jarvey had no sense of where they were heading.

  “Soon we shall be there,” Siyamon said softly. “It is not so very far. We will arrive before you know it, Jarvis.” He held his cane in the middle and stared at the silver handle. “I find your parents quite charming, dear boy. They feel you will enjoy a tour of my home, perhaps tomorrow, as they and I are attending the reading of the will. I shall have my driver and man of all work, Mr. Rupert Henge, show you about.”

  Jarvey gave a neutral grunt that conveyed neither agreement nor disagreement. Siyamon Midion hummed a monotonous, repetitive little tune and continued to hold his cane out in front of him, slowly rotating it so the silver handle made a complete circle about once every minute. Jarvey stared dully at it. It caught reflections from the faint light coming through the windshield, and the gleams blurred in his vision, becoming random sparkles of white light against the blackness of night. Jarvey’s breath slowed, his eyelids drooped, and in spite of his long sleep earlier that day, he began to nod off.

  “What?” he asked suddenly. It seemed to him that Siyamon had just asked him something very strange.

  “Do you have the art?” the old man repeated softly.

  “I—I don’t know about art,” he said. “Maybe my dad—he teaches history—”

  “He has no art, however,” Siyamon purred. “His grandmother ran away from home, you see, when his father was only an infant. She ran to America, it appears, and with her child, she hid there from her husband and his family. And your grandfather was raised without knowing of his heritage. He raised his own son that way, and he his son, as ordinary people. The art develops only if it appears early and the possessor then trains. Pity not to know the Midion art. Why, a Midion without art might just as well not exist at all.” The cane glittered in deep darkness, and Jarvey dozed again.

  Then, somehow, Jarvey found himself outside the car and standing in a doorway. He had no memory of getting out of the limousine. A weight, as light as a landing sparrow, touched his right shoulder, and he realized that old Siyamon had placed his bony hand there. “I have a comfortable room prepared for you,” he said in his whispery, rustley voice. “First, though, I know you would like to visit my library. Your parents couldn’t tear themselves away from what I have there. Yes, they found themselves literally enchanted in the library.”

  Jarvey was too tired to reply, and with a light pressure of his hand on the boy’s shoulder, Siyamon steered Jarvey down a dark, walnut-paneled corridor with a high, curved ceiling. They passed half a dozen closed doors. Jarvey couldn’t hear a sound apart from their footfalls on what seemed to be a bare wood floor. An open stone archway at the end of the hall led into a high-ceilinged room illuminated by four tall floor lamps, each with a heavy parchment shade. Each one gave about as much light as a birthday candle. Jarvey’s head felt floaty and strange. He vaguely grasped that the room was huge, the walls stretching up for twelve or fifteen feet, all lined with row after row of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, every shelf crammed with ancient volumes. The dusty, spicy scent of old books filled his nostrils.

  “Here we are. Very good, my lad. Just walk straight ahead,” suggested Siyamon. “Please take just a moment to examine the book on the stand. It is a family heirloom. You want to open it, don’t you?”

  Jarvey couldn’t answer, though he did feel a growing desire to do as Siyamon suggested. His feet dragged him forward, to an oak book stand that bore a single volume, a tall, narrow book. Its cover was a pebbled leather the color of old dried blood, with gleaming brass hinges on the spine and a brass catch holding the book closed.

  Standing on an intensely dark blue carpet, Jarvey’s very toes tingled. A circle, seemingly drawn in liquid moonlight, shimmered around the book stand. Within its perimeter glimmered the silvery letters of some unknown alphabet, forming words that spun slowly counterclockwise within the circle. Jarvey hesitated at the edge of this boundary.

  “Don’t be alarmed,” Siyamon said behind him, his voice strange and sharp. “A Midion should not fear the circle. It keeps out only unwanted intruders, not members of our own family. Go ahead, my boy. Open the book and read. We have held its dark secrets for more than five hundred years, the Grimoire of the Midions. It is time to claim your birthright, my fine young fellow.”

  Grimoire? The word echoed nonsensically in Jarvey’s mind, fading to tinny whispers. He felt chilled, shivering uncontrollably. He dragged his feet over the edge of the circle, feeling as he had in his dream, as though his legs had turned to lead.

  His hands floated at an impossible distance from him, bloodless spiders at the end of mere wisps of arms. The orange glow of the lamp flooded over them as they touched the cover of that strange book. The light gave his hands no color. As if they knew by themselves what they needed to do, Jarvey’s fingers found the latch that released the clasp. It felt burning cold, and Jarvey winced as he touched it, but with an effort he flicked the complicated release back and then flipped open the clasp.

  Beware the book.

  Where had that come from?

  Siyamon was circling him, prowling the edge of the glowing circle. “The last chapter. Open to the final page, my good nephew. The final page.”

  Beware the book.

  Where did the warning come from? Jarvey told himself he had to be dreaming, that this was another nightmare, and he tried to force himself to wake up. He saw his pale and distant hands, the left one gripping the edge of the book stand, the right poised to open the Grimoire.

  With every ounce of his will, Jarvey drew his hands back, gasping for breath. “No,” he groaned, his voice thin and weak. “No, I don’t want to.”

  The four dim lamps flared into momentary, blinding light, as if touched by lightning, then faded
again.

  Siyamon’s breath hissed. “No art? You do have a touch of it then, eh? But wild art, untamed, and you don’t know how to use it. Fool of a boy!” The old man had circled all the way around and now stood across from Jarvey, his toes at the very edge of the shimmering circle. He rapped his cane on the floor, the deep carpet muffling its sound.

  Jarvey felt a rumble, a lurching, rolling heave, and thought wildly that he was experiencing an earthquake. He tried to back away from the book.

  Old Siyamon’s lips writhed, and his face became a mask of anger. “If you will not open the book, I shall open it for you!” He pointed his cane across the circle and roared, “Abrire ultimas!”

  The book’s cover slammed back, and the pages fluttered as though a hurricane wind were ripping at them. Jarvey saw page after page flash by, all thickly covered with handwriting in bloodred ink. The handwriting changed as the pages flipped past, now looping and heavy, now spiked and thin, as though many hands had taken turns at writing the book over the years. Faraway screeches, screams, groans burst from the flying pages, and Jarvey fought against the weird sensation that the book was pulling him forward, like a powerful magnet.

  His stomach heaved as Jarvey felt his body dissolving, flowing, being pulled toward the book, swirling like water gurgling down a drain. He opened his mouth to shout and felt the air being drawn from his lungs—

  A third person burst into the room, over to Jarvey’s left. “The book! I warned you! It is drawing you in! Turn away, grab something, quickly!”

  Siyamon Midion spun toward the figure, snarling a curse, and Jarvey’s mind cleared momentarily.

  Reaching out, Jarvey seized the book with both hands, stopping its pages from turning. He held on, one hand clutching the front cover and about half the pages, the other holding the back cover and the other pages. Beneath his hands the book actually moved, writhing like an angry animal.

  Lightning crackled outside the circle, red and blue. The air sizzled, reeking of sulfur and burning cloth. The book grew harder to handle, bucking and heaving in Jarvey’s hands, trying to break free of his grip. Jarvey held it in a death grip as he recognized the gray-haired, rat-faced man who had told him to beware the book—the book! And now—