The Dark Secret of Weatherend

by John Bellairs

  "Okay," said Anthony, and he went on talking with Miss Eells for some time. But he was in a state of shock. How, after what she had done, had she gotten herself back in? Well, he'd just have to be patient and wait for the answers to come.

  Three days passed, and the weather turned cold again. Lake Hoosac had thawed after the storm, but three days of zero weather froze it right back up again. On the designated day Anthony arrived at Lake Hoosac with his skates slung over his back. Everyone was there, racing and whirring on steel skate blades. Near the snack bar stood Miss Eells and Emerson. Miss Eells was wearing her usual padded blue jacket and an old aviator's helmet with flaps that tied down under the chin. Emerson was clad in an immaculate powder-blue Alpine hooded jacket, perfectly creased gray trousers, and an enormously long scarf of blue and orange striped wool that was wrapped several times around his neck, the ends hanging almost to the ground. He wore no hat, but there were fuzzy blue earmuffs over his ears. The two of them had their skates on, and they were red-faced and sweating. Both were drinking cocoa from chipped china mugs, and they were looking very cheerful and relaxed.

  "Hi, Anthony!" called Miss Eells, and she waved happily. "I've been skating for half an hour, and I only fell down three times. How about that, eh?"

  Emerson stumbled forward on his skates and gave Anthony a hearty handshake. He looked a little tired around the eyes, but he had regained that bouncy, slightly arrogant air.

  "Greetings, Anthony!" he said. "Myra's been telling me how you helped her, and I must say I always knew you were a tough, tenacious character. I'm proud of you."

  Anthony hung his head shyly. "It's good to see you too, Mr. Eells," he mumbled, staring hard at the snowy ground.

  Miss Eells tottered forward and kissed Anthony on the cheek, slopping the cocoa she had in her hand. "Oh, darn it all anyway!" she grumbled, looking down at the chocolaty hole that had been burned in the snow. "I ought to know better than to get emotional when I've got hot liquid in my hand. Anthony, we've got a thousand and one things to tell you. Why don't you wait here till Emerson and I get out of these skates, and then we'll all go sit on that old sleigh over there."

  Anthony said that sounded fine and he waited for them. Then they all walked over to the dusty old antique sleigh that had been brought down to the lake to serve as a wintertime decoration. Miss Eells and Anthony got into the back, and Emerson climbed into the front seat.

  "Well!" said Emerson, turning halfway round and peering owlishly at Anthony over his shoulder. "How does it feel to be a savior of the world? Eh?"

  Anthony stared. Savior of the world? What on earth was Emerson talking about? "I didn't do anything to stop the storm. It just... sorta happened."

  Emerson shook his head slowly. "No, my fine young friend, it did not just sorta happen! When you touched that place where the missing finger bone had been on J. K. Borkman's hand, Anders was summoned to the tomb chamber. He had to come—and when he did, he was destroyed."

  Emerson smiled in a smug, infuriating, know-it-all way. "I can understand your being confused," he said. "I was confused myself at first. But I've done a little research in the last three days, and I think I understand it all now. In the first place Borkman knew you were going up to the cemetery. He was telepathic, and he could read other people's minds from far away. So he knew you were going up there to try to stop the storm. Naturally, he didn't want you to mess up his plans. So he sent the fake Emerson up there to track you down and dump you in the wilderness to die. Not that he was really terribly worried about you—he felt that he was invulnerable. And in many ways he was. If you had shot bullets at him or attacked him with a meat cleaver, he would have been totally unharmed."

  Anthony gaped. "Really?"

  "Yes, really. You see, Anders Borkman wasn't human. He was a creature who had been created by old J. K. Borkman's sorceries. I know you'll find this hard to believe, but Anders was made from the old man's finger bone! He was supposed to finish the job that his creator had started. So he set up the four stones and began the magic rituals. He didn't think he had anything in this world to fear—but he was wrong. He had forgotten about the Blood of Hailes."

  Miss Eells threw Anthony a sidelong glance, and she grinned. "Don't tell me you don't know what the Blood of Hailes is," she said sarcastically. "I thought everybody knew about that!"

  "Well, everybody should know!" said Emerson, folding his arms and looking superior. "If children spent more time learning obscure facts and less time watching television, the world would be a better place. But I'm getting off the subject. The Blood of Hailes was a relic. It was owned by the Abbey of Hailes, in Gloucestershire, England. As I told you before, in the old days people venerated relics. Abbeys and churches actually owned things like the skull of Saint John the Evangelist or a bone from Saint Luke's forearm. But the Abbey of Hailes had a very special relic that had been given to it by the Duke of Cornwall in the year 1270. It was a small glass vial that contained some of the blood of Jesus."

  Emerson paused dramatically and stared at Anthony, who was utterly flabbergasted. "Really?" he said again.

  Emerson shrugged. "Who knows? It was an object with very great magical powers—of that I am certain. And I am also fairly sure that J. K. Borkman thought the relic was authentic. I found his account of it in a collection of his private papers at the University of Minnesota. It seems that he bought it from a crooked antique dealer in a town not far from the ruins of Hailes Abbey. The Blood of Hailes was supposed to have disappeared when Henry VIII broke up the abbeys and monasteries back in the 1540's. Whatever the thing was, it's gone for good now. When Anders Borkman touched it, it was like what happens when you put hydrogen and oxygen in an electrolysis chamber—blooey! It's a shame, really, that the Blood of Hailes didn't survive. I'd have loved to hold it in my hands."

  "Think you'd have been safe from it?" asked Miss Eells, in a needling tone. "Sure you wouldn't have gotten zapped, like old Uglypuss?"

  Emerson snickered. "My strength is as the strength of ten, because my heart is pure," he said. "Never fear, sister mine. I would not have gotten pulverized. Nor would you have. Even Mrs. Oxenstern, as unpleasant as she is, would have been safe. The Blood of Hailes—like most talismans—would only spring to life when it came in contact with a thoroughly evil force. In this case the evil force was so utterly, totally demonic that the two destroyed each other."

  Anthony stirred in his seat and wrinkled up his forehead. As far as he was concerned, there was still a lot in this business that didn't make sense. "Mr. Eells," he said hesitantly, "how come old Borkman left the tube behind? I mean, if he really wanted his plan to succeed, wouldn't he have smashed it with a hammer or something? He even left clues about how to find the tube. Why would he do a thing like that?"

  Emerson lit a cigar and blew smoke out into the frosty air. "Interesting question," he said as he smoked. "The human mind is an odd, contradictory thing, Anthony, and people are capable of holding two opposite views at the same time. With one half of his mind old Borkman must've wanted his miserable scheme to work. But there must've been a part of him—the nicer, more human part—that didn't want the plan to be set in motion. So that part of his mind made sure that a counterspell would be left behind, together with clues leading to its discovery."

  "I'm glad," said Miss Eells soberly, "that I'll be going back to a thoroughly normal world of overdue books and kids yelling and throwing spit wads in the East Reading Room. Even Charley Petersen and his windup teeth will be a treat after Anders Borkman!"

  With a shock it came back to Anthony that Miss Eells was not going to be fired after all.

  "I'll bet you're wondering what sort of double-dealing and skullduggery we pulled to get Myra back in at the library, aren't you?" said Emerson, his eyes twinkling with suppressed amusement. "Well, friend, as strange as it may seem, the whole thing was perfectly legal. You see, after Myra did her little dance act up in the Genealogy Room that day, she assumed—indeed, everyone assumed—that there must be a clause
in her contract that would allow the Library Board to fire her. But Myra's contract was drawn up years and years ago by old Mrs. Lesh, the former head librarian. Mrs. Lesh adored Myra, and she also knew that Myra was stubborn, cranky, and independent. So when she gave Myra her long-term contract, she put in a clause that said that she could not be fired for any reason. Myra hadn't read her contract carefully for years, so she had forgotten about that cute little clause. Anyway, if Myra wants to put on a pink leotard and go dance on the roof of the library, she can do it. Her job is secure until the day she retires, or until she dies."

  Anthony was amazed, and he was delighted too. "Gee, Miss Eells, that's great!" he said, grinning from ear to ear. "I'm so glad! Is it true?"

  Miss Eells smiled placidly. "Of course, I will have to put up with some unpleasant stares and hateful, backbiting remarks when I go back to work, but at my age I couldn't care less what the dowagers on the Library Board think. And I have to admit that the whole thing has its funny side. I mean, I would never, ever have done anything disgraceful like that if I hadn't been under a spell, but be that as it may... Well, I keep thinking of the way Mrs. Oxenstern looked when I dumped punch all over her. It was really a pretty rare scene."

  "Rare indeed," sniffed Emerson. He looked discontentedly around, and then he shivered violently. "Brrrh!" he said, hunching up his shoulders and hugging himself. "It really is cold out here. Why don't we all go back to Myra's place for a game of Scrabble and some hot buttered rum?"

  Anthony and Miss Eells agreed happily, and the three of them climbed down from the sleigh and began crunching across the snow toward Miss Eells's car. Emerson had bought her a brand-new Cadillac to replace the Dodge. As they walked it suddenly occurred to Anthony that one last thread had been left hanging. He still didn't know what pam meant.

  When he asked about it, Emerson chuckled. "Funny you should mention it," he said, "just as we are going off to embroil ourselves in a nice cutthroat game of Scrabble. It seems that there is an old eighteenth-century card game called loo. And in this game there's a trump card called pam. It happens to be the jack of clubs. Does that make everything clear?"

  "You're becoming an expert on everything in your old age," said Miss Eells as they reached the car.

  Emerson bent over and began unlocking one of the doors. "Now, I hope you're not criticizing, Myra," he said. "I could add a word or two about you. People tend to think of librarians as fussy, meticulous types, but after seeing your housekeeping and listening to some of the things you say, I have often wondered how you managed to get a job like—aaah!"

  Emerson straightened up suddenly and grabbed at the back of his neck. During his little speech he had had his back to the other two, and so he had not noticed Miss Eells sneaking up on him with a lump of snow. With a sudden, swift motion she had stuffed the snow down the back of his neck. With a vengeful roar Emerson whirled and stooped. Hurriedly he made a snowball, and as his sister retreated toward the trees he let it fly. Miss Eells ducked, and the snowball flew over her head. There was a loud whap as the snowball hit someone who had just rounded a curve in the walk that led from the lake to the street. Miss Eells and Anthony and Emerson stared for a second, and then they broke up in uproarious laughter. It was Mrs. Oxenstern, of course.