The Curse of the Blue Figurine

by John Bellairs

  The professor scrambled to his feet. He began to pace back and forth while Johnny watched him, bleary-eyed and astounded. The professor's thoughts had run up against a blank wall. As he well knew, there are times when logic will not do you the least little tiny bit of good. So he let his mind ramble. It began to leap from one absurd thought to the next. He found that he was humming "Angels From the Realms of Glory," an old Christmas carol. How did it go?

  Angels, from the realms of glo-ry, Wing your flight o'er all the earth; Ye who sang cre-a-tion's sto-ry, Rum te-e dum and diddle durf...

  It went something like that, anyway. From there, the Professor's mind leapt to the sign he had seen on the trail:

  TO THE ANGEL SCENIC VIEW

  What was this angel, anyway? High above their heads was the formation known as the Hag. But hags are not angels—that was a well-known fact. So the sign probably referred to some other rock formation. Hmm. Hmmm.

  Now the professor found himself thinking about the note that had been found on Father Baart's desk the day he had disappeared, the note that had been a quotation from Sir Thomas Browne's Urne-Buriall:

  The man of God lives longer without a Tomb than any by one, invisibly interred by Angels; and adjudged to obscurity, though not without some marks directing human discovery.

  Again the professor returned to the fire. He crouched down and fed more wood in. There were only a few twigs left, and the fire would use them up in no time. He looked out through the shimmering waves of heat and the orange flames, but he could see nothing. Nothing but darkness and falling rain. Angels... angels... interred by angels... What on God's green earth did that have to do with Father Baart? The quotation referred to Moses, whose body had been carried away by angels. That was what the Bible said, anyway. Moses had been buried in some secret place. Well, now: What about Father Baart? His body had never been found. Interred by angels... interred by angels... What if...

  Suddenly the professor was down on his knees, scrabbling madly at the hard dirt floor of the cave. He had no tools, only his fingers, and this made digging difficult. Johnny, watching groggily, decided that the professor must have gone completely out of his mind.

  "Hey, Professor!" he called. "Whatcha doin'?"

  "I'm digging!" the professor yelled over his shoulder. "And you should dig too! Dig over there? Use your hands! Use anything! But hurry! We haven't got much time!"

  Johnny didn't understand why he was supposed to dig, but he did as he was told. He grabbed a broken piece of wood and began gouging at the floor of the cave. Dirt flew, and dust rose in a choking cloud. It was a strange scene, the two of them scraping away like dogs looking for bones. Gouge, gouge, scrape, scrape! Johnny wielded the stick like a trowel, and before long he had dug a pretty good-sized trough in the hard-packed dirt floor. But he had to stop because his glasses were covered with steam and powdery dirt. He laid down the stick and pulled out his handkerchief. Then he took off his glasses and wiped them and put them back on. Johnny looked down. He did a double take and looked again. At the bottom of the trough he had made, he could see stone. Rough, flat stone, part of a slab maybe. And imbedded in the stone was something that glimmered faintly in the firelight. A coin. A gold coin, it looked like.

  "Hey, Professor!" Johnny yelled. "Come over here! Come over here quick!"

  The professor looked up. His fingers were bleeding and sore, and his eyes were wild. "What? What? What is it?"

  "I dunno, only... only I think you better come over here quick!"

  The professor stumbled to his feet. He hurried over to where Johnny was kneeling and dropped to his knees beside him. The professor's mouth fell open. "It's a coin," he said wonderingly. Then he looked closer. He brushed dirt away with his fingers and winced as he did this, because his fingertips were rubbed raw from the digging. Now he pulled out his Nimrod lighter again and snapped it open. He held the flame down close to the coin, and then he let out a loud, joyous whoop. The professor knew a lot about old coins, and he knew that this was an Elizabethan gold coin called an angel. On the side that was up, there was a picture of an angel. He had wings and a halo and a spear in his hand, and he was killing a dragon with the spear.

  "An angel, by God!" roared the professor. He turned to Johnny and grabbed the stick from his hand. Madly he jabbed at the earth with the stick. "We've got to get this stone up!" he muttered feverishly. "We've got to, we've got to!!"

  Meanwhile behind them the fire burned low. It had collapsed into a heap of red coals. And beyond the fire, at the mouth of the cave, a fearful shape hovered. Johnny turned and looked, and he went rigid with terror. He opened and closed his mouth and tried to speak to the professor, but nothing came out. The professor went on flailing with the stick. At last he had uncovered the ragged edges of the flat stone. He forced his sore, bleeding fingers down into the dirt and pried with them. "Oh, God, oh, God!" he breathed, and he gasped and winced because of the pain in his fingers. But he got a grip on the stone and forced it up. Underneath was a dark hollow space. The professor plunged his hands down into the hole. He came up with a small wooden box. He handed it to Johnny, and then, suddenly, he seemed to become aware of something.

  There was very little light in the cave now. The fire was down to a few smoky red embers, and there was no wood left.

  "Johnny! Pick up the lighter! Quick!" The professor's voice was feverish.

  Johnny set the box down on the ground. He looked around frantically. "I can't see it! Where is it?"

  "There! There! God's teeth, man, can't you see it? It's right down by my knee! Hurry! Hurry!"

  Johnny scrabbled around in the dirt, and his hand closed over a small cold metal object. He had seen the professor use the lighter many times, so he knew how it worked. He tugged at the ends of the cylinder, and there was a snap and a tiny white spark, but nothing else happened. He tried again and again and again. But the lighter was out of fuel. And behind them the last red coal of the fire winked out. Now Johnny felt his flesh go goose-pimply all over. And he smelled a horrid, sickening odor, the odor of corruption. Johnny and the professor turned. At the mouth of the cave they saw a face. An ugly, cruel, grinning face. It was lit by an unearthly light, and it hovered in the thick darkness.

  The professor sprang to his feet. "Go away!" he yelled. "Go away, you rotten thing, you filthy, evil—"

  But the professor never finished his sentence. A shadowy hand stretched out toward him, and as Johnny watched in horror the professor disintegrated. His body turned to dust, and his empty clothes fell in a heap and lay there on the cavern floor.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Johnny was stunned. He was numb with horror. What had happened was so awful that he could hardly believe it. The professor was gone. There was not even a body left. Just a heap of clothes. And now the nightmarish face of Father Baart floated closer.

  "It is your turn now," said the croaking voice. "You must die so that I may return to the sweet land of the living. Stand and face me! I command you to obey!"

  Johnny hesitated. He was frightened half out of his mind, but he was angry too. Ferociously angry. Tears sprang to his eyes. He wanted to throw something—a rock or a boulder— at the horrid mask that floated before his eyes. With a sudden lunge he reached out and grabbed the small wooden box. He leaped to his feet and threw it. The wood of the box was rotten, and it disintegrated as the box flew through the air. And suddenly the air was full of dust. The grinning mask crumpled like a paper lantern thrust into a fire. And then there was a blinding flash of red light and a deep boom that seemed to come from far, far down in the bowels of the mountain. The floor of the cave began to shake and tremble and jump crazily about. Clots of dirt and pebbles fell from the ceiling of the cave. Johnny looked around, panic-stricken. What could he do? Suddenly the floor of the cave heaved, and Johnny was sent sprawling. He fell across something soft, something that cried out with a loud crabby voice.

  "For the love of God, would you stop kicking me? What do you think I am, anyway?"


  Johnny could not believe his ears. The voice was the professor's voice! He was there, alive, lying under Johnny!

  With a loud triumphant yell Johnny scrambled to his feet. He was so excited and overjoyed that he hardly knew what he was doing. "Professor? Is that really you?"

  The familiar raspy voice responded. "Of course it's me! Who else would it be up here in this disgusting, dank, smelly cave? I came all the way up here to rescue you, and the least you could do is—"

  The professor's speech was cut off by a sickening jolt. Once again the cave floor heaved, and more rocks and pebbles came raining down. Now the professor was on his feet. "Outside!" he yelled, and grabbing Johnny's arm, he hauled him out through the mouth of the cave. The mountain went on shaking and shivering. It was very dark outside, and it was still raining, but from somewhere far above them Johnny and the professor heard a drumming, thundering roar that grew louder and louder by the second. In terror they clutched each other and waited. It was a rockslide, another rockslide. Down the side of the mountain, boulders came crashing, thundering, and rolling. The din was terrific. Johnny and the professor put their hands over their ears and closed their eyes. Any second now they would be killed, crushed by tons of rock—or so they thought. But then the din died away. From far below they heard splashes and more rumbling. Then came silence.

  Johnny opened his eyes and took his hands away from his ears. He was soaked with rain, and it was still black as pitch outside, but he knew that the avalanche had passed them by. He turned to the professor excitedly. "Hey, Professor!" he yelled. "Hey, we're safe! We're safe! The ghost is gone! Hey, you were great, you really were! I thought you were dead, but you're alive! It's wonderful! Whee! Whee!" He waved his arms and started dancing around on the grass.

  The professor stood stock still. He smiled faintly. "Oh, I assure you, it was nothing!" he said with a modest wave of his hand.

  And then he fainted dead away.

  When the professor woke up, he found Johnny kneeling over him. He looked very anxious. It was getting light out. The sky was blue again, and the sun was rising from a reddish haze over on the other side of a wide valley. Birds were twittering in a crooked little juniper tree that grew near the mouth of the cave.

  "Are you all right, Professor?" Johnny asked.

  The professor sat up. He harrumphed and looked at Johnny, and then he quickly looked away. Plainly he was embarrassed. Fainting was not the sort of thing he usually did. "I'm perfectly all right," he snapped, brushing dirt off his sleeves. "And by the way, what is all that nincompoopery about me being dead? Do I look dead to you? Eh? Do I?"

  Johnny explained to the professor as well as he could what he had seen—or rather, what he thought he had seen—inside the cave.

  "Well, well, well!" said the professor. He cocked his head to one side and looked thoughtful. "It must have been an illusion. Old Shagnasty must've known that we had him in a corner. We were within an inch of victory when we found the box that had his ashes in it. He wanted you to despair and give up. I'm so glad you didn't!"

  "So'm I," said Johnny. Once again there were tears in his eyes, and he shuddered as he realized how narrow their escape had been.

  The professor got to his feet. Fussily he brushed off the seat of his pants and his trouser legs. He glanced this way and that. "By the way," he said, "what was all that godawful noise? When I woke up from... from whatever happened to me, it seemed like the whole bloody mountain was coming down around our ears."

  Johnny pointed off to the right. It was not hard to see the path that the rockslide had made. A great raw gash ran down the rugged face of the mountain. The falling stones and boulders had wiped out what was left of the trail. Johnny and the professor would have to be rescued by somebody, somehow.

  "Heavenly days, McGee!" exclaimed the professor in wonder. He walked to the edge of the drop-off and looked down. The path of the rockslide continued down the steep side of the mountain. Far down, near the bottom, you could see where trees had been mowed down by the rolling boulders. The professor squinted and strained to see, but his eyes were not good for distances. "Tell me, John," he said, beckoning for Johnny to come closer, "are those boulders in the lake way down there?"

  Johnny walked to the edge and looked. "Yeah... yeah, I guess so," he said uncertainly. He turned and pointed up. "They came from up there."

  The professor looked where Johnny was pointing, and then, in a flash, it hit him. He knew what had happened. The Hag had come down. The jutting, shelving boulders that formed the face of the Hag had been dislodged by the earthquake, and now they were down in Hag Lake, thousands of feet below. The professor started to laugh. He couldn't help it—it all seemed terribly funny. He thought about all the things that had been named for the Hag. He thought about Hag View Cottages and Hag Kumfy Kabins and pieces of pine-scented soap shaped like the Hag and most of all of Hagtooth Harry's trained bears. It was just a stitch, it really was.

  When the professor's laughing fit had died down, Johnny asked timidly, "Did... did the ghost make the earthquake happen?"

  The professor was startled by this question. Now all the things that had happened last night came flooding back into his mind, and he grew serious again. "Yes," he said, nodding, "or rather, his passing caused the earth to shake. But he's gone now, gone for good. At least, I hope—" The professor paused. He had been gazing vaguely around while he talked. Now he found that he was looking at a funny-shaped outcropping of rock that rose above the entrance to the cave. The morning sun was shining on the eastern flank of the mountain, and it touched the ragged finger of rock with golden fire. The rock looked like an angel. It had wings and a head and even something that looked a bit like an outstretched hand.

  "Interred by angels..." muttered the professor, nodding. "One was up there, and the other was a coin. Clever, clev-er! But I wonder who planted him up here? Who did the burying, I mean?"

  Johnny had not understood anything that the professor said. Not that it mattered much to him at the moment. He was just happy to be alive. He still did not understand how he managed to travel from his bed at the motel to this wild, lonely place in the mountains. But he knew it all had something to do with the ghost of Father Baart— who had turned out to be real, after all. And he also knew—or hoped—that the professor would explain everything to him in good time.

  Right now, however, there were other problems. "How're we gonna get down, Professor?" Johnny asked.

  The professor made a puckery face. "Oh, I suspect that we will have company shortly," he said dryly. "Earthquakes are not common up here in the White Mountains, and when the local yokels see what has happened to their chief tourist attraction, there'll be lots of people swarming all over the mountain, taking pictures and saying tsk-tsk and standing around with their mouths hanging open. So don't worry. In the meantime, however, we will have to wait. It'll be boring, I know, but it beats plunging thousands of feet to our death. Don't you agree?"

  Johnny agreed. So he sat down on the dewy grass with the professor, and they talked about this and that as the sun rose higher and higher. In the middle of their conversation the professor got up and went into the cave. He came back with the slab of stone that had the gold coin embedded in it. He remarked sadly to Johnny that Elizabethan gold angels were much prized by coin collectors. Then he added that the coin had lain for years over the grave of a wicked sorcerer. And after that the professor took the slab to the edge of the precipice and heaved it over, coin and all. Then he went back and sat down next to Johnny on the grass and talked some more. Presently they began to hear a whap-whap sound in the air and the whirring of motors. They looked up and saw a helicopter. It was coming down over the top of Hellbent Mountain.

  Johnny and the Professor sprang to their feet and began yelling and waving frantically. The helicopter hovered briefly near the top of the mountain, and then, slowly, it moved closer. It floated down onto the grassy patch while its whirling propeller stirred up a mighty wind. The engine sounds died, and the propel
ler spun to a halt. A door in the cabin of the copter opened, and a state trooper climbed out. He was a man about sixty years old, with a leathery, seamed, sunburnt face and a gray crew cut. He wore the green uniform of the New Hampshire State Police, and when he opened his mouth, he talked with a heavy New Hampshire accent.

  "Hi, there!" he said, waving. "I bet you guys was wonderin' how you was gonna get down, wasn't you?" He turned and peered down over the edge of the chasm. Then he let out a long, low whistle and shook his head gravely. "Gonna be hard on the tourist business," he said mournfully. "What in heck you think people'll come up here to see now?"

  The professor thought of the towering, rugged mountains, and how they looked in autumn, when their sides were alight with colors, yellow and orange and red. He thought of the mountain streams and steep gorges and the layers of brown needles covering the forest floor. He thought of the mountains in moonlight, and lonely night drives along the Kankamagus Highway.

  "Oh, I imagine there'll be something to look at," he said sarcastically. "There's always Hagtooth Harry's trained bears, after all."

  The policeman sighed and shook his head. "Kids'll be awful disappointed," he said. Then he added, as an afterthought, "You folks like a ride back, would you?"

  The professor and Johnny climbed into the helicopter with the trooper and rode back with him to the motel. Johnny enjoyed the ride tremendously. He had only been in an airplane once before in his life, and he had never ridden in a helicopter. The professor closed his eyes and spent his time trying to remember the kings and queens of England and which one came after which. After an amazingly short ride the copter set them down on the front lawn of the Hag View Cottages. But as soon as they stepped out onto solid ground again, Johnny and the professor ran into more trouble. A State Police cruiser was pulled up in front of the cottage they were staying in. The owner, a bald, red-faced man with a big overhanging beer belly, was talking excitedly with two policemen. When he saw the two missing persons walking toward him, he nearly had a conniption fit.