“Yes, the Voile de la Vierge can stir the faith of those seeking protection. Some have said it can even calm tempers and bring the peace the Virgin experienced to those who touch it. I’m sure they’re right.” Aunt Lucille opened her hands and reached for the box as Will stared at the silk. “I can take it from here.” She retrieved both the veil and her gloves from Will. “Better run along and start polishing or you’ll miss your brother’s competition.” She gave him a peck on the cheek. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning for sight training upstairs.” In seconds, she disappeared behind the door marked PRIVATE.
Will found himself alone in Bethel Hall, the grand entryway to Peniel. Dying sunlight cast a pink glow through the stained-glass Gothic windows. Will dodged the display cases spread throughout the room and headed to the corridor that led to the Egyptian Gallery. What he saw on the far edge of the red jasper and marble floor made his blood run cold.
The passage leading to the Egyptian Gallery was choked in silky black feathers, a few of which had tumbled out onto the floor of Bethel Hall.
AH-CHOO! AH-CHOO!
This could be a problem, Will thought. He stood before the mouth of the entryway, unmoving—too fascinated to turn away and too frightened to press on.
“Those cases ain’t going to clean themselves,” a familiar low voice echoed in the hall behind Will. “The abbot told me he’s making ya—”
Will spun around, worry covering his face.
“What’s wrong, son?” Bartimaeus Johnson, a black man with tinted glasses, balanced on a pair of wooden crutches. He shambled toward Will as quickly as the crutches could carry him.
“The floor. There’re black feathers all over the floor,” Will sputtered.
“Easy, Will. It’s okay.” Bartimaeus squinted, throwing his unresponsive right leg forward as he shuffled closer. He calmly spread his hand wide. “Oh yeah, I can feel the Darkness.” He scanned the floor of the passageway before him. “I know my sight ain’t what it used to be, but I don’t see no feathers, Will. Look.”
When Will turned back to the entryway, the feathers were exactly where they had been moments earlier—clogging the hallway and spilling into Bethel Hall.
“They’re right there, Mr. Bart. They’re everywhere.” Will bent down to pick one up.
“Don’t do that!” Bartimaeus said. “I wouldn’t touch ’em. Tell me what they look like first.” Bartimaeus slowly reached inside his tweed jacket.
“They’re black feathers. They’re dark and shiny. Can’t you see them?” Will asked, squatting low to the ground.
Bartimaeus held a small clear bottle in his hand. “Step aside there and tell me what happens to the feathers when I do this.” He flung droplets of water from the vial.
Will’s eyes widened as the moistened feathers crumpled in on themselves and dissolved into a smoky mist. “They’re evaporating. I mean the ones you hit with the water are evaporating.” AH-CHOO!
“Somethin’ isn’t right. I been gettin’ bad sensations all day,” Bartimaeus said, almost to himself. The old man was a Sensitive, one who could intuit events before their arrival and feel the vibrations of the supernatural. Years of working alongside Jacob Wilder to evaluate and “clear” dangerous locations and decades as Lucille’s assistant had sharpened his skills. He bit his lower lip. “Will, look real close at those feathers. Your great-granddaddy used to say he could see a glow around paranormal things—particularly the dark ones. So what color do ya see around the feathers?”
Will got down on all fours and studied the plumes, which he now realized were hovering just above the surface of the floor. “There’s a dark outline, like a shimmery purple cloud around the feather’s edges,” Will said.
“Definitely don’t touch them. Better step back here.” Bartimaeus liberally splashed the water up and down the hallway. Will watched as nearly all the feathers vanished from sight. A rotten smell, like year-old Cheez Whiz, suddenly permeated the hall, followed by a blast of icy air.
“Do you feel that?” Will asked with a shiver.
“Felt it my whole life. First time I’ve ever felt it—or smelled it—in Peniel, though.” Bartimaeus slipped the holy water vial inside his breast pocket. He scratched the side of his gray head. “This is hallowed ground. A demon couldn’t enter here without assistance. But somethin’ is definitely among us and it sure ain’t friendly.”
“A demon? You think it’s a demon?” Will asked, wiping his nose with the back of his hand.
“Well, it’s not Santa and his elves. It’s some kind of dark force.” Bartimaeus’s milky eyes darted from side to side. “Could be someone oppressed or possessed by a demon. I don’t know for sure. But the vibrations of Darkness are unmistakable.”
Will’s chest tightened. Visions of Leviathan flooded his mind—the horrible demon with seven heads and deadly tentacles that he and Aunt Lucille had battled in its lair only a few months before. The demon wreaked havoc on Perilous Falls, drowning boats and yanking souls beneath the rising river waters. After it snatched the relic from Will, it released a series of monsters that nearly devoured him, his family, his friends….
Not again. I can’t do this again. I can’t see another one.
“Will, you all right?” Bartimaeus asked the clearly agitated boy. “Let me walk ya down to the Egyptian Gallery. I’ll go talk to the abbot and Lucille about this once I get ya settled. We’ll figure it out.” He squeezed Will’s arm. “Don’t be afraid. If we all hang together, we got this covered.”
“What does it mean? The feathers? The shadows around them?” Will fanned himself with his pith helmet.
“No telling. It’s clearly some kind of sign. But darned if I can understand it.” Bartimaeus propelled himself into the Egyptian Gallery and Will followed.
Will always felt he was walking inside a pharaoh’s tomb when he entered the room. Dimly lit yellowed stone blocks lined the walls. Huge clay jugs, a pair of skinny black dog statues, and a bronze serpent on a pole populated the edges of the gallery. At the center of the room was a pair of large display cases.
Valens, a twenty-seven-year-old British protégée of Aunt Lucille, bent over the first case. He wore square goggles and a surgical mask over his mouth. In one hand he held a brush. The other wielded the pointed nozzle of a special museum-issue vacuum. At Bartimaeus and Will’s approach, he killed the vacuum’s motor. “You caught me giving Tuthy his yearly dusting,” Valens laughed, laying aside his instruments.
“Tuthy?” Will asked. The dry mummy in the case could have been made of coal. Its withered crossed arms riveted Will’s attention.
“Tuthmosis the Second was an important pharaoh,” Valens said in his High English accent, indicating the mummy whose loose gossamer linens barely held it captive. “His wife Hatshepsut was the real power behind the throne. You know what they say: behind every great pharaoh…is a great pharaoh.” He guffawed at his joke, exposing a set of perfect white teeth. “The wife controlled everything, eventually naming herself pharaoh and expanding worship of the great Egyptian god Amon.” Valens removed the magnifying goggles and surgical mask, pinching his chiseled chin. “What I could never figure is why your great-grandfather kept Tuthmosis’s mummy here. Do you know why, Bart?”
“Beats me.” Bartimaeus shrugged. “Been here long before Jacob brought me over from New Orleans.”
“Now there’s something for you to investigate, Will. Let me know if you find any answers.” Valens closed the glass lid on the mummy, turning the locks with a key. He collected his equipment, placed it onto a rolling cart, and tucked his neon orange tie into a linen vest. “What brings you down here, Will?”
“Abbot chores,” the boy droned. “I have to clean the cases.”
“You’re in luck.” Valens reached for the lowest shelf of his cart, producing a soft gray towel and a spray bottle. “Peniel-approved glass cleaner,” he said, extending the articles with a blue-eyed wink.
Will accepted them with something less than excitement.
Barti
maeus hobbled over to a pair of panels on the wall near the entrance to the gallery. “I was going to put the alarm back on, but with you rubbing on the cases, I’d better turn them both off.” He punched some numbers into the keypads, disabling the alarms on both displays in the center of the gallery.
“Aaah, the Peniel brain trust,” Baldwin announced, filling a doorway of an adjoining gallery. Given the vicar’s sudden appearance, Will figured he must have traveled by sarcophagus—several of which were in the next room. Baldwin turned his hawkish nose in Valens’s direction. “Aren’t you done? I didn’t expect you’d still be here with the chapter meeting under way.”
Valens, also a member of the community, lowered his head slightly, his usual jauntiness dissipating. “I was just cleaning up, Vicar. Heading to the meeting immediately.” He gave Will and Bartimaeus a sheepish smile and quickly pushed his cart out of the gallery.
“Without duty and order, a community crumbles,” Baldwin said evenly to justify his intrusion. He then looked Will up and down as if mystified by him. “I assume you will look after Mr. Wilder, Bartimaeus. Industry does not seem to be his strong suit.”
“I was kind of thinkin’ he could look after me.” Bartimaeus chuckled. “But whatever you say, Baldwin. Whatever you say.”
“Keep a close eye on him.” The vicar continued staring at Will for several awkward moments until he folded his massive hands, inspected a few cases, and ever so slowly crossed the gallery toward Bethel Hall.
“That was weird,” Will said.
“It’s looking like a day for weird. I’m going to go lock up the museum. Why don’t ya get to scrubbing those cases?” Bartimaeus hobbled toward the same hallway Baldwin had just passed through. “When you’re finished in here, Will, make sure to put those alarms on. You know the code—don’t share it with anybody. I’ve got to get myself to the archabbey. Scoot out the front door when you’re done and we’ll see ya tomorrow.”
“Sure thing,” Will said, and Bartimaeus left him to his work.
It was nearly five-thirty, the time Leo’s peewee karate tournament was set to start a few blocks away. Will hastily sprayed blue liquid atop the mummy case, smearing the soft rag over the surface. He then made his way to the next case, the one holding the Staff of Moses.
He was about to spray the cleaner onto the rectangular glass, but with no one around, Will couldn’t help but stare at the object glinting in the spotlight: the gold, jewel-encrusted rod with a slight curvature near the top. Aunt Lucille had explained to him that the gold exterior was an ornamental sleeve that held the true Staff of Moses. A few inches of the staff’s knobby sapphire head were visible above the edge of the gold container.
Will absently ran the cloth over the display case as he read the brass plaque inside:
ACCORDING TO THE HEBREW BIBLE, GOD TOLD MOSES TO “TAKE THIS ROD IN THY HAND, WHEREWITH THOU SHALT DO THE SIGNS.” MOSES RETURNED TO EGYPT CARRYING THE ROD OF GOD IN HIS HANDS.
Will started to clean the sides of the glass case, but his attention now drifted to the slanted plastic information cards surrounding the display.
They were titled THE TEN PLAGUES OF EGYPT. The first panel showed a picture of a bearded Moses standing beside another man who held the sapphire staff over a blood-filled river. A few panels down showed an angry Moses clutching the rod, calling down “fiery hail.” Others held images of frogs and dead cattle, locusts, and dark clouds moving over the land of Egypt.
Will tried to force himself to resume cleaning the other side of the case, but after a few rubs, he was distracted by the display labeled OTHER MIRACLES OF THE STAFFS. These depicted Moses pulling the rod from his father-in-law’s garden, parting the Red Sea, and striking his staff against a rock to produce a gush of water.
One particular illustration captivated Will. It showed Moses standing behind a man reaching for the tail of an enormous snake. Fleeing the giant viper was a terrified pharaoh and some black-robed men with tiny snakes at their feet. Will put down his rag to read the museum’s description:
The Staff of Aaron
Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did as the Lord had commanded; Aaron threw down his staff before Pharaoh and his officials, and it became a snake. Then Pharaoh summoned the wise men and the sorcerers; and they also, the magicians of Egypt, did the same by their secret arts. Each one threw down his staff, and they became snakes; but Aaron’s staff swallowed up theirs.
—Exodus 7:10–12
*The staff in this exhibit is not the staff of Aaron, but the staff of Moses, which also turned into a serpent.
The reading elicited a raised eyebrow from Will. He took up the cleaning towel again and began to polish the smudged display glass. When he saw that it was nearly six o’clock on his watch, he raced around the room, wiping the towel along the fronts of all the cases as he passed.
“Got every one,” he proudly announced to himself after circling the gallery. They were clean enough.
He hid the spray bottle and towel behind an engraved column of hieroglyphics and made for Bethel Hall. Like crooked fingers, the shadows of the trees outside touched the hall’s marbled floor. He ran through them into the outer library, past the delicate brass grate protecting hundreds of books, and out the front door. Will checked that it locked behind him. It did.
Outside Peniel’s main gate, he crossed High Street and dashed into Azal Alley. It was a narrow passageway that Will knew well, a quiet lane that allowed him to run behind the shops of Main Street as far as city hall. He pounded the cobblestones, dodging stray cats and puddles of stagnant water. Every so often, movie and show posters appeared on the dingy brick walls of the alley. One poster seemed to be everywhere that day. It was so common, Will couldn’t help but notice it.
A man with hypnotic eyes that seemed to be lined with charcoal stared out from the posters. His trimmed mustache and beard reminded Will of a magician he had once seen at the old Genesius Theatre downtown. The tanned man in the poster wore a silk ascot at his throat and extended an open palm to the viewer. Above his face, the blue lettering read:
The Karnak Center for Regeneration and Creative Therapy
Grand Opening Celebration
All Are Welcome to See and Hear
POTHINUS SAB, Founder
At the Perilous Falls Bandstand, Saturday, August 13, 10:30 a.m.
Will rolled his eyes before resuming his gallop to the Karate Kove, the storefront martial arts studio where his eight-year-old brother, Leo, studied. It was packed with parents, their backs to the big front windows. Behind the fighting dragons stenciled on the glass, Will could see his mom and dad flanking Leo. They were up against the wall on the right side of the studio, near a broom closet. His brother wore a white uniform that accentuated the red pools of color on his cheeks. Will could hear his parents over the din as he entered the studio.
“Forget what the kid said, son,” Dan Wilder instructed Leo, running a hand through his thick salt-and-pepper mane. “He’s trying to upset you. Just…just ignore him.”
“Shake it off, baby,” Deborah Wilder added, giving Leo a little hug. “He’s a bully and he is being very, VERY RUDE.” She raised her voice at the end so that the offending party and his parents could hear.
“Every tournament, every practice he calls me four eyes,” Leo protested, on the verge of tears. “I’m sick of it, Mom. I want to leave. I don’t want to compete. Let’s go home.”
“You can…you could leave…I suppose.” Dan removed his tortoiseshell glasses, which was a sure indication that he felt conflicted or under pressure. These were feelings he always sought to avoid. “Maybe it’s best if we just leave. I…I could take us all out for some ice cream and—”
“ICE CREAM?” Deb Wilder exploded. “That bigmouthed bully attacks your son and you want to go out for dessert? If Leo walks out, Ricci wins. Oh no, Dan.” Deborah deployed the booming anchor voice that her TV audience knew all too well. “No, that’s what that bully boy wants. He wants you to walk out in tears. But you can beat hi
m. That’s why he’s trash-talking you, Leo. He doesn’t want to face you in the ring.”
As Will got closer, a bear of a man cut him off, hastily moving through the crowd toward his mom and dad.
“Keep your voice down,” Dan hissed to his wife, the sides of his square jaw pulsing. “If he wants to leave, why should we force him to—”
“I am not going to let him give in,” Deborah said, pursing her full lips. “Ricci is a nasty little brat and he shouldn’t be bullying our son.”
“Okay, so Ricci’s a nasty little brat,” Dan argued, “but that is no reason for us—”
The bear of the man standing behind Dan shoved him hard. “You callin’ my son a nasty brat, Wilder?”
“I…I…I…we were trying to defuse the altercation between your son…and mine,” Dan stammered.
Deborah cut him off, facing the man with forearms like hairy tree trunks. “Your son is acting like a bully and he’s not going to call my son names and get away with it. He should be disqualified from the tournament.”
Ricci’s father rubbed a fat finger across his nose, smiling. “Look, your kid needs to toughen up. He can’t be scared of words. Ricci’s just having fun.” He poked Dan in the shoulder. “But you’re an adult, Wilder. Don’t be badmouthing my kid.”
Behind the huge man, Ricci, a sloppy boy with ketchup stains on his uniform, cut his bulging eyes at Leo. He repeatedly punched his fists in Leo’s direction, never breaking eye contact.
A bell sounded and a paunchy man in a white karate uniform holding a clipboard came to the center of the studio floor. “Okay, we’re going to start the first round of our tournament. The winners of tonight’s regional match will compete in the state finals.” He flipped a page on his clipboard. “First up is Leo Wilder and Ricci Severino.”
Deborah used her sunglasses to push back her brown bangs. She lowered herself to Leo’s level. He was still angry, his eyes wet with emotion behind the wire-frame glasses. “Go out there and face this bully. You won your division last year. Whether you win or lose right now is unimportant. I just don’t want you to give up. Are you ready?”
Will Wilder #2 Page 3
