The Figure in the Shadows

by John Bellairs

  "Come on, Woody. Say you give up!"

  Woody glared defiantly up at Lewis. "No."

  Lewis raised his fist, but then he hesitated. He had always been told that it was bad to hit someone who was down. Maybe he could just sit on Woody till Woody gave in. But as he was thinking this, some other power seized Lewis's hand and brought it down hard on Woody's nose. Blood gushed from Woody's nostrils. It ran down over his mouth and chin.

  Lewis jerked his hand back and clutched it to his chest, as if he was afraid of what it might do if he let it loose again. When he looked down, he saw that Woody was staring up at him, his eyes wide with fear.

  "I... I give up," Woody stammered.

  Lewis got up and backed away. The boys who had been watching the fight looked from one to another in disbelief. No one knew what to say. They had all figured that Woody would wipe up the earth with Lewis.

  Woody got up slowly. He was crying and wiping his bloody nose with his sleeve. One boy ran into the school to get a cold cloth to hold to Woody's nose, while others were advising him to hold his head back and press the bridge of his nose with two fingers. For the time being, Lewis was a hero. Dave Shellenberger slapped him on the back and said, "Way to go, baby!" Another boy asked him if he'd been doing exercises. Finally, when Woody's nose had been taken care of, the boys asked Lewis if he'd like to play football with them some more. Dave said that he could be fullback if he wanted to. But Lewis said, "Gee, no thanks, fellas. I just remembered something I was supposed to do. I'll see you all later." He waved and walked away.

  Lewis didn't really have anything that he had to do. He just wanted to be alone with his thoughts. So he wandered off to a quiet part of the playground and started pacing. And as he paced, he thought.

  He had figured that he would feel great after his victory, but he didn't. Strangely enough, he felt sorry for Woody, who had been showed up in front of all those kids. Woody had had a reputation as a tough guy. Now everybody would start picking on him. And something else was bothering Lewis. He hadn't intended to punch Woody in the nose. It was as if someone had grabbed his arm and brought it smashing down. Lewis knew that the amulet had done it, but all the same, he didn't like it. He didn't like the idea of being jerked around like a puppet on a string. He had wanted magic help, but he had wanted the help to stay under his control.

  After he had paced a little more, Lewis pulled out his watch and looked at it. Lunch period was almost over. Maybe he would feel better if he told Rose Rita about what he had done—leaving out the part about the amulet, of course. Sure. That was a good idea. He would tell her all about his big fight with Woody, and she would be proud of him. And that would make him feel better about the whole business.

  Lewis knew where he would find Rose Rita. She would be pitching in the girls' softball game. It was the wrong season for softball, but the girls weren't allowed to scrimmage around and get their skirts dirty in games like football, so they played softball all through the autumn until snow flew.

  Lewis arrived at the girls' softball diamond just as Rose Rita was firing the ball up to the plate. The batter, a girl with yellow braids, swung like somebody chopping wood. She missed.

  That was the end of the inning, and anyway the bell was ringing for the kids to come back to school. As Rose Rita walked off the field, Lewis noticed that she had a disgusted look on her face. But as soon as she saw him, she brightened up.

  "Hi, Lewis!" she called, waving. She stopped in front of him, made a hideous face, and put her finger up to her forehead like a gun that was going to blow her brains out. "Yaah!" she said.

  "What's wrong?" asked Lewis.

  "Oh nothing. It's just that Lois Carver is such a rotten batter. I strike her out every time she comes up to bat. This last time I pitched to her with my eyes shut, just to see what would happen. But she struck out anyway."

  "She did?" Lewis was only half listening to what Rose Rita was saying. He wanted to tell her all about the big fight. "I got in a fight with Woody Mingo," he said.

  Rose Rita looked surprised. "You did. Is that where you got that thick ear?"

  "Yeah, but I gave him something worse. Pow! Right in the kisser!" Lewis tried to imitate the punch he had used.

  Rose Rita glanced at him skeptically. "Oh, come on, Lewis! Stop telling stories! You don't have to lie to me. I won't make fun of you because you got beat up."

  Suddenly Lewis became very angry. He turned on Rose Rita and yelled at the top of his voice, "Okay, if that's the way you feel, I'll get somebody else to be my best friend!" He turned on his heel and stalked away, adding, over his shoulder, "See ya round!"

  Lewis marched off toward the school building. He walked fast and didn't look back. By the time he got to the door, he found that he was crying.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  As soon as Lewis got home from school that day, he called up Rose Rita, but her mother answered and said that she wasn't back yet. Later that evening, Lewis tried again, and got her. Both of them tried to apologize at once. Rose Rita had heard from several people about Lewis's fight with Woody, and she said that she was sorry for having doubted him. Lewis said he was sorry he had lost his temper. By the time the conversation was over with, everything seemed to be all right again. At least, for the time being.

  A few days after his fight with Woody Mingo, Lewis began to get the feeling that company was coming. He didn't know why he had this feeling, but he did have it.

  It started when he was setting the table. He dropped a knife, and then he remembered the old saying: If you drop a knife, then company is coming. Normally Lewis didn't believe in old sayings and superstitions. But the feeling he got was so strong that he began to wonder if there wasn't something in the old proverb after all.

  That night, Lewis sat on his cushioned window seat and watched the snow come down. It was the first snowfall of the winter. Lewis was always very impatient for the first snow, and if it didn't stay on the ground, he got angry. But tonight's snow looked as if it was going to stay. It swirled past his window and drifted into dreamy shapes under the tall chestnut tree. It sparkled in the cold light of the street lamp across from Lewis's house. It piled up on window ledges and doorsteps.

  Lewis sat there thinking about all the things he would do when there was a lot of snow on the ground. Like sledding down Murray's Hill with Rose Rita. Like walking home from church at night with Jonathan and Mrs. Zimmermann. Like wandering the snowy streets alone by moonlight and imagining that the snow-wall between the sidewalk and the street was the wall of a castle, and that he was pacing the ramparts, planning how to hurl back an enemy assault.

  Lewis closed his eyes. He felt very happy. Then a picture appeared before his closed eyes. A very strange picture.

  Lewis often saw pictures in the dark, just before he went to sleep at night. Sometimes he would see, quite clearly, the streets of Constantinople or London. He had never been to these cities, so he really didn't know what they looked like, but he imagined that he was looking at Constantinople or London. He saw domes and minarets and steeples and streets and avenues. They appeared in the darkness behind his eyelids.

  The picture that came to Lewis now was the picture of a man walking up the Homer Road toward New Zebedee. The Homer Road was a winding country road that ran between New Zebedee and the very small town of Homer. Lewis had been over the Homer Road quite a few times this last summer, going to and from Mrs. Zimmermann's cottage on Lyon Lake. As Lewis watched, the picture moved. The man was walking straight up the center of the road, leaving footprints in the snow behind him. Since the only light in the picture was moonlight, Lewis could not see too much of the man. In fact, he could not see enough to tell whether the figure was a man or a woman—but somehow he felt sure it was a man. The man had a long coat on—it flapped around his ankles as he walked. And he was walking fast.

  Now the man was passing the gas station at Eldridge Corners. He paused to look at the old rusty signpost, and then he took the fork that led past the humming, brightly lit
power house. Now he was crossing the railroad tracks just outside the city limits.

  Lewis opened his eyes and looked out into the snowy yard. He shook his head. He wasn't at all sure he liked the picture that had come before his eyes. He couldn't say why the dark figure frightened him, but it did. He hoped that it was not the company that was supposed to be coming.

  One afternoon, not long after Lewis had had this strange nighttime vision, something else happened. Lewis was on his way home from Rose Rita's house. He was just walking along, staring at his shadow, when he noticed a piece of paper lying on the sidewalk in front of him. For some reason, he stopped and picked it up.

  It was just a sheet of blue-ruled notebook paper that some kid had been practicing his handwriting on. At the top of the page was one of these double rainbows you had to make when you were warming up during handwriting class. And below that was a neat row of small v's, and another row, this one of capital V's. The capital V's all looked just like the V in Venio, the word that had appeared on the postcard.

  Lewis could feel his heart beating. He glanced quickly down the page and saw the word he dreaded. It was written on the bottom line of the sheet.

  Lewis felt sick and shivery. The word on the paper squirmed before his eyes. As Lewis stood there trembling, a sudden gust of wind snatched the paper from his hand and blew it across the street. He started to go after it, but the wind was blowing so hard that by the time he had run across to get it, the paper was gone. Gone like the postcard.

  Lewis felt that sick chill again. His heart continued to beat in thick heavy beats under his winter coat. "Venio means 'I come,' " Lewis repeated to himself. "Venio means 'I come.' " But who was coming? The man Lewis had seen in his daydream? The dark figure on the Homer Road? Whoever it was, Lewis didn't want to meet him.

  As he walked home, Lewis began to argue with himself. He always did this when he was trying to fight his fears down. He dreamed up "logical explanations" for the things he was afraid of, and sometimes these explanations made the fears go away—for a while, at any rate. By the time he got to his house, Lewis had persuaded himself that the midnight postcard was just something he had dreamed about. You couldn't always tell when you were sleeping and when you were awake, after all. He had just dreamed that he had gone downstairs and found a postcard with Venio written on it. But what about the paper he had just found on the street? Well (Lewis argued) that was just some show-offy grade-school kid who had learned to write Latin. That was all it was. It was just a coincidence that the kid had used the same word that appeared on the postcard. Or maybe Lewis had just imagined that he saw the word Venio on the piece of paper. It could have been Veronica, or some name like that...

  As he hung up his coat and went in to have supper, Lewis went on arguing inside his head. He wasn't really convinced by his clever explanations, but they made him feel better. They helped him to fight off the black shapeless fear that was forming in his mind.

  That evening Lewis decided to do his homework down at the public library. The library was a pleasant place to work, with its old scarred tables and green-shaded lamps. Lewis went there a lot, to browse or to look things up. He packed his books into his briefcase and stomped off toward the library through the snow, whistling cheerfully.

  Lewis worked at the library till closing time, which was nine. Then he packed up his books again and got ready to leave. Nine was a little late for him to be walking the streets of New Zebedee alone, but he wasn't worried. Nothing bad ever happened in New Zebedee. And besides, he had his amulet with him.

  Lewis was about three blocks from the library when he saw someone standing under the street lamp on the corner. At first he was scared. The dark figure on the Homer Road flashed before his eyes. But then he laughed. Why was he so silly? It was probably just old Joe DiMaggio.

  There was a bum in New Zebedee who called himself Joe DiMaggio. He wore a New York Yankees baseball cap and handed out pens shaped like baseball bats. The pens were all inscribed "Joe DiMaggio." Sometimes Joe helped the police check the doors of the shops on Main Street. And sometimes he waited under street lamps to jump out at kids and yell "Boo!" at them. That was probably who it was standing there under the light. Good old Joe.

  "Hi, there, Joe!" Lewis called, waving at the still figure.

  The figure walked forward out of the circle of lamplight. Now it was standing before Lewis. Lewis smelled something. He smelled cold ashes. Cold wet ashes.

  The tall muffled figure stood there, silent, towering over Lewis. Lewis felt queasy inside. Joe was just a short little guy. It couldn't be him standing there. Frantically, Lewis fumbled with the zipper on his coat. His hand closed over the part of his shirt where the amulet was, bunching up the cloth so that the hard little object was inside his fist. And at that the figure took one sudden gliding step forward and spread its arms wide.

  Lewis let go of the amulet with a shriek. He turned and ran, ran for his life, stumbling over snowbanks and in and out of slush puddles and over slippery smooth patches of ice till he reached the stone steps of the library. Then he scrambled up the steps and banged violently with his hands on the glass doors. He banged till the palms of his hands stung. Nobody came.

  At last he saw a light come on in the foyer of the library. Miss Geer was still there. Thank God.

  Lewis stood there with his face and hands pressed against the glass. He was half out of his mind with fear. At any second he expected to feel hands clawing at his back, to be spun around and pressed into the face of—he didn't dare think what.

  Finally Miss Geer came. She was an old lady and had arthritis, so she walked slowly. Now she was fumbling with the lock. Now the door swung inward.

  "My goodness, Lewis, if I was to tell your uncle that you were pounding away to beat the band like that—" Miss Geer stopped her scolding when Lewis threw his arms around her and shook her frail old body with his frightened sobs.

  "There, there, Lewis. It's all right, it's all right, what in the world..." Miss Geer was not a mean old lady by any means. She liked children, and she especially liked Lewis.

  "For heaven's sake, Lewis, whatever has happened to make you—"

  "Please, Miss Geer, call my uncle," Lewis sobbed. "Call him and tell him to come down and get me. There's somebody out there, and I'm scared!"

  Miss Geer looked at him, and then she smiled kindly. She knew about children and their wild imaginations. "There, there, Lewis. Everything's all right. Just sit down here on the step and I'll go call your uncle. It'll only take a minute."

  "No, don't go away, Miss Geer. Please don't. I... I want to come with you."

  So Lewis followed Miss Geer into her office and stood shifting nervously from one foot to the other as she asked the operator to give her the Barnavelt residence. It seemed to Lewis that Jonathan was taking forever to get to the phone, but finally he answered. Then he and Miss Geer talked for a little while. Lewis couldn't tell much from the noises Miss Geer made, but it seemed obvious that Jonathan was puzzled. As well he might be.

  A few minutes later, Jonathan's big black car pulled up in front of the library. Lewis and Miss Geer were waiting on the front steps. As soon as Lewis was in the car, Jonathan turned to him and said, "What happened?"

  "It was... it was something pretty awful, Uncle Jonathan. It was a ghost or a monster or something, and it... it tried to get me." Lewis put his face in his hands and started to cry.

  Jonathan put his arm around Lewis and tried to comfort him. "There, there, Lewis... don't cry. Everything's all right. It was probably just somebody trying to scare you. Halloween is over with, but there's always someone who doesn't get the word. Don't worry. You're all right now."

  That night Lewis lay wide awake in his bed, listening to his heart beat. His closet door was open, and he could see the clothes hanging in a shadowy row. Were they moving? Was something there, behind them?

  Lewis thrashed up into a sitting position and frantically fumbled for the switch on his bedside lamp. He felt all over the la
mp before he found it, but finally the light came on. There was nothing there. There were no dark shapes waiting to jump at him. None that he could see, at any rate. It was a long time before he could bring himself to get out of bed and look in the closet. Finally, though, he did. There was nothing behind the clothes. Nothing but plaster and wood and dust and his old shoes. Lewis went back to bed. He thought that maybe he would try to sleep with the light on, tonight.

  Lewis tossed and turned. He rolled over to one side and then to the other. It was no good. He wasn't going to sleep. Well, if he wasn't going to sleep, he might as well think. He didn't have to think very hard. Lewis knew very well what was behind all the weird things that had been happening to him lately. The amulet. All his logical explanations had evaporated, and he was left with one thought: the amulet was haunted. It was haunted, and he had better get rid of it. So what if it had helped him beat up on Woody Mingo? So what if it did give him that wonderful pirate-movie feeling? Lewis thought about how he had felt when his hand closed around the amulet and the dark figure leaped at him. He shuddered. He just had to get rid of it.

  Lewis raised his hands to his neck. But when they were a few inches away from the chain, they stopped. He grunted and pushed, but he couldn't force them to go any farther. His hands trembled. They shook like the hands of an old man who has the palsy. But they just would not close around the chain so that Lewis could take the amulet off.

  Lewis sat up, panting. His pajama top was soaked with sweat. He looked at his hands. Didn't they belong to him any more? Lewis was scared. Thoroughly scared. And he felt helpless. What would he do if he couldn't take it off? He imagined the amulet and chain growing into his body as he got older and older until there was just a looped line and a bump on his skin to show where they were. Lewis's fear was close to panic now. He jumped out of bed and started pacing up and down the room. He would have to calm down before he could decide what to do.