The Tower at the End of the World (Action Packs)
Page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
BY BRAD STRICKLAND (based on John Bellairs’s characters)
The Tower at the End of the World
The Beast under the Wizard’s Bridge
The Wrath of the Grinning Ghost
The Specter From the Magician’s Museum
The Bell, the Book, and the Spellbinder
The Hand of the Necromancer
BOOKS BY JOHN BELLAIRS
COMPLETED BY BRAD STRICKLAND
The Doom of the Haunted Opera
The Drum, the Doll, and the Zombie
The Vengeance of the Witch-Finder
The Ghost in the Mirror
BOOKS BY JOHN BELLAIRS
The Mansion in the Mist
The Secret of the Underground Room
The Chessmen of Doom
The Trolley to Yesterday
The Lamp from the Warlock’s Tomb
The Eyes of the Killer Robot
The Revenge of the Wizard’s Ghost
The Spell of the Sorcerer’s Skull
The Dark Secret of Weatherend
The Mummy, the Will, and the Crypt
The Curse of the Blue Figurine
The Treasure of Alpheus Winterborn
The Letter, the Witch, and the Ring
The Figure in the Shadows
The House with a Clock in Its Walls
Published by Dial Books for Young Readers
A division of Penguin Putnam Inc.
345 Hudson Street
New York, New York 10014
Copyright © 2001 by The Estate of John Bellairs Frontispiece copyright © 2001 by S. D. Schindler
All rights reserved
Text set in Janson
.S.A. on acid-free paper
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Strickland, Brad.
The tower at the end of the world / by Brad Strickland ;
frontispiece by S. D. Schindler.
p. cm.
Summary: Lewis and Rose Rita battle Ishmael Izard,
the son of the evil magician who tried to destroy the world
with the Doomsday Clock.
eISBN : 978-1-440-61831-4
[1. Magic—Fiction. 2. Supernatural—Fiction.
3. Wizards—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.S916703 To 2001
[Fic]—dc21 00-065889
http://us.penguingroup.com
In memory of three
who will be forever missed,
John Bellairs
Frank Bellairs
Edward Gorey
CHAPTER ONE
Lewis Barnavelt closed his book with a snap. He popped the last of his chocolate-covered peppermints into his mouth. He didn’t chew it, but let the sweet chocolate melt on his tongue, releasing the cool mint taste. Then he sat in the lawn chair under the old chestnut tree in front of 100 High Street with his chin in his hand. He wasn’t smiling. In fact, he looked decidedly gloomy.
There was no obvious reason. It was a warm, breezy June day in the 1950’s. School had recently ended, and Lewis had a whole summer of freedom ahead, days when he could do just about anything you could do in the town of New Zebedee, Michigan. And he looked forward to nights when he and his uncle, Jonathan Barnavelt, could haul out their telescope and stargaze in the backyard.
But none of that helped much at the moment. All Lewis could feel then was grumpy, grouchy, and irritable. It didn’t even help when he heard his friend Rose Rita Pottinger call out to him from the street: “Hi, Lewis! What have you got on? Your mind?”
Lewis made a face. He got enough ridicule at school, he thought, and he didn’t need Rose Rita’s ribbing, even if it was good-humored.
Lewis was a heavyset boy of about thirteen, with a round moon face and hair that he slicked back with oil and parted in the center. He was anything but athletic. When the kids played baseball or softball, Lewis was always the last one chosen, if he was chosen at all. He had always been timid about getting hurt, and he didn’t dare try to join in the rough-and-tumble football games the other kids played in the fall. And though he could usually take gentle teasing from Rose Rita or from his uncle or Mrs. Zimmermann, their next-door neighbor, today his mood was just too dismal. So he stood up with a dramatic sigh and said, “I was about to go take a nap.”
Rose Rita pushed open the wrought-iron gate in front of Lewis’s house, which was a three-story stone mansion. She grinned and said, “Well, I think you’ll change your tune when you hear my news.”
“I doubt it,” said Lewis.
Rose Rita tilted her head to one side. She was somewhat taller than Lewis, and she was skinny, with long, straight dark hair. She wore big round glasses and looked sort of gawky and clumsy, though she could run like the wind and could outpitch almost any boy in a game of baseball. “Come on, don’t be a Gloomy Gus. What’s the matter with you?”
Lewis sniffed. “Nothing.” He shrugged. “Just bored, I guess.” That wasn’t the whole truth. In fact, Lewis, who loved to read, had just finished the very last novel about Dr. Fu-Manchu. He was a Chinese master criminal, whom the author Sax Rohmer described as having a forehead like Shakespeare’s and a face like Satan’s. In every book the evil Fu-Manchu’s plots failed at the last minute because the criminal was beaten by his nemesis, a stalwart British detective named Nayland Smith. Now that Lewis had finished reading The Shadow of Fu-Manchu, he realized he had no more of the adventures to discover, and that made him feel cranky.
Rose Rita stared at him for a minute. Everything was silent except for the rustling of the chestnut leaves in the breeze. Then she asked, “Where’s your uncle?”
“Out back,” said Lewis. “He decided to do some flower gardening.”
Rose Rita’s eyebrows shot up. Jonathan Barnavelt had attended an agricultural college when he was young, but then he had inherited a pot of money from his grandfather. Every year he planted a vegetable patch in the rear of the backyard, but usually he was too lazy to plant any flowers. “Let’s go see him,” said Rose Rita. “This involves him too.”
Lewis was interested despite himself. In a way, he still wanted to brood about not having any more Sax Rohmer books to read. But something about Rose Rita’s manner made him curious. He dropped his book on the lawn chair, but he kept his tone gruff. “Okay, I’ll go with you.”
They walked around back. Jonathan Barnavelt knelt beside a flower bed. He was wearing tan wash pants, a blue work shirt, and his red vest. He also wore brown cotton work gloves, and he was wielding a rusty trowel as he set out the last of some colorful petunias.
“Hello, you two!” he boomed with a big smile as Rose Rita and Lewis came around the corner of the house. He got to his feet, dusted off the knees of his trousers, and peeled off the gloves. Then he stood with his hands on his hips, admiring his handiwork. “There! Every year Florence kids me about not growing anything but sweet corn and tomatoes in my yard. I guess this will show her! I mean to have some prize petunias this year.” He wiped sweat from his forehead with a big red bandanna, leaving a brownish smudge of soil. “That’s hot work. I’m thirsty for some nice cold lemonade
. Care to join me?”
Lewis had to fight hard to hold on to his grumpy mood. Ever since his parents had died in a tragic auto accident, Lewis had lived with his uncle in the big house on High Street. Though there were still times when he felt lonesome for his mom and dad, he liked the arrangement a great deal. Jonathan Barnavelt was a big man with a pot belly and a bushy red beard. He loved to laugh, he loved to eat, and best of all, he loved magic. He was a sorcerer who could create marvelous magical illusions out of thin air. Because of that and his great sense of humor, living with him was never dull. However, Lewis was determined not to be jollied along, and so he just grunted and shrugged.
Jonathan didn’t seem to notice. He led the way back to the house and into the kitchen, where he opened the refrigerator and took out a frosty pitcher of lemonade. He poured three tall glasses and handed them around.
“A toast,” he said. “To warm weather, plenty of rain, and a good growing season!” He clinked glasses with Rose Rita, but Lewis didn’t join in. After a long sip of lemonade Jonathan said, “I guess Lewis is in a sour mood today, so this drink should just about suit him.”
Lewis frowned. “I just don’t feel much like talking. I don’t know why everybody’s picking on me today.”
“Nobody’s picking on you,” replied Rose Rita. “In fact, I came over with a terrific invitation for you. And for your uncle and Mrs. Zimmermann too. Could we call her over?”
Jonathan shook his head. “We could if she were home, but Florence is out of town until this afternoon. She had some legal business to settle over in Homer.”
Lewis felt a twinge of concern. Their neighbor Mrs. Florence Zimmermann was a fabulous cook, a sympathetic and helpful friend, and a witch. Not an evil witch, but a friendly, cheerful, wrinkly-faced good witch whose magic, as Uncle Jonathan always admitted, was much stronger than his own. “What’s wrong, Uncle Jonathan?” asked Lewis. “Is somebody suing Mrs. Zimmermann?”
Looking astonished at the very idea, Jonathan said, “Suing Haggy Face? Of course not! You know how she’s always crabbed about the old fishing dock next to her property on Lyon Lake, the one that she says is a public menace because the owner never repairs it. Well, she’s said for years that she was going to buy the ramshackle old thing from the owner and have it torn down, and now she’s finally done it. She’s signing the deed today, that’s all. So, Rose Rita, if you want us all together for your invitation, you’ll just have to wait.”
Rose Rita was almost bouncing in her chair. “But I can’t wait! It’s too exciting. I’ll tell you and Lewis, but you’ll have to promise not to talk to Mrs. Zimmermann before I get a chance.”
Now Lewis was certainly intrigued. He knew all about the close friendship between Rose Rita and Mrs. Zimmermann. It was almost as if they were sisters, if one sister could be in her teens and the other about seventy. “Okay, I promise,” said Lewis, and Jonathan added his promise as well.
Behind the lenses of her spectacles, Rose Rita’s eyes were dancing. “You know my grampa Galway.”
Jonathan Barnavelt looked perplexed. “Of course I know Albert. What about him?”
Albert Galway, Rose Rita’s grandfather, was a tall, bald old man who was something of a character in New Zebedee. Though Mr. Galway always told people he was almost ninety, Lewis had recently learned from Rose Rita that he really was only eighty-one. Still, that was a long life, and in that long life Mr. Galway had done lots of things. He had run away from home at the age of sixteen and had joined the Navy for four years. Then he had returned to New Zebedee, finished his schooling, and had become a construction worker, a pretty good photographer and artist, and then an architect. He had rejoined the Navy twice, once for two years during World War I and then another four-year hitch in the Depression, and had traveled all over the world. He still loved to roam around, and he had a passionate interest in gadgets and gizmos. “What about your grampa?” repeated Lewis.
“He’s going to be up at a place near Porcupine Bay all summer,” Rose Rita told him. “An old Navy buddy of his is off in Australia racing a yacht, and he’s asked my grampa to house-sit at his mansion. It’s on an island in Lake Superior, with a sailboat. And Grampa Galway says we can all come up and visit him!”
Lewis’s heart thumped. A sailboat! Now, that was interesting. But then he gulped. Lewis was a real worrywart, always imagining the worst, and he thought about all the possible dangers. Porcupine Bay was on the wild Upper Peninsula of Michigan, a curving finger of land that bent out to the east between Lake Superior to the north and Lake Michigan to the south. Lewis had been there once or twice, and sometimes he read stories in the newspapers about marauding bears, dangerous lightning storms, and forest fires in the wilderness. What would happen if they were all out on a sailboat and a bad storm blew up? He could picture them falling into the cold waters, floundering and splashing, screaming for help as one by one they drowned.
But Jonathan Barnavelt looked delighted. “That sounds great! I know Albert’s had lots of experience at the helm of a sailing boat, and he’s always entertaining to talk to. I’m ready to go right now! How about you, Lewis?”
His uncle’s enthusiasm forced a smile onto Lewis’s face. He swallowed the cold, sour lump of fear that had risen in his throat. “It sounds pretty good,” he admitted. “I guess it would be fun.”
Rose Rita gave him an exasperated glance. “Of course it’ll be fun! We’ll get to explore, and we can pretend that we’re the crew of Sir Francis Drake’s Golden Hind, bound on a voyage around the world! We can have picnics and go swimming and fishing. Maybe we can even camp out overnight on one of the islands up there. That’ll be better than sitting around with our noses stuck in books all summer!”
“Hey!” objected Lewis.
Jonathan patted Lewis on the shoulder. “There’s nothing wrong with loving to read. Lewis, I’ve got a suggestion. We’ll swing by my favorite used-book store over in Ann Arbor before we go, and you can stock up on adventure stories. And I’ll even spring for a whole case of peppermint patties!”
Lewis nodded, and the smile that he had been fighting off curved itself across his face. “That sounds great.” He loved to eat candy while he read, and most of his books had chocolate-colored fingerprints on the corners of the pages. “Okay, I’m in. When do we tell Mrs. Zimmermann?”
“We don’t,” Rose Rita shot back. “I do that all by myself. I want it to be my surprise!”
Rose Rita stayed for lunch, and after a round of hot roast-beef sandwiches and some potato salad, she helped Lewis clean up. Not long after that, Mrs. Zimmermann came rattling along High Street in Bessie, her purple Plymouth, and Rose Rita and Lewis ran over to her house to give her the news. She laughed at Rose Rita’s excitement as they sat on the purple sofa in her living room, under the oil painting of a purple dragon done for Mrs. Zimmermann years and years earlier by the great French painter Odilon Redon. Mrs. Zimmermann’s favorite color was purple, and she made no bones about surrounding herself with it. She wore baggy purple dresses, and even the toilet paper in her bathrooms was purple.
“My heavens!” she exclaimed when Rose Rita had finished. She adjusted her gold-rimmed spectacles on her nose, her eyes gleaming with good humor. “Here I was thinking this was going to be a quiet stay-at-home kind of summer, and now this. Rose Rita, I would be delighted to accept your invitation. Thank Albert for me, and let me know when we’re going. Now, who’s for some chocolate-chip cookies?”
Lewis licked his lips. His uncle was a rotten cook who could just about manage to turn out an edible sandwich or a hamburger, but Mrs. Zimmermann could dish up delicious meals and scrumptious treats. For half an hour they sat at her kitchen table, gobbling fresh crunchy cookies and slurping tall glasses of milk. When they had finished, Mrs. Zimmermann said, “Why not take Weird Beard a dozen cookies? If he’s going to be sailing and fishing and hiking, he’ll need to keep his strength up!” She packed the cookies in a paper lunch bag, and Lewis and Rose Rita headed over to Lewis’s house.
“Uncle Jonathan?” called Lewis. When no answer came, he gave Rose Rita an uneasy glance. “I wonder where he is.”
Rose Rita knew how Lewis could work himself up over nothing. “Probably he’s gone upstairs,” she suggested in a reasonable tone. “Maybe he needed a shower after all his work on the flower beds.”
But Jonathan wasn’t on the second floor or even on the unused third floor of the house. The two friends came back downstairs with Lewis feeling more and more tense. It wasn’t like his uncle to walk out of a room and leave the TV set or the radio playing. They went toward the kitchen, and Lewis noticed that the door to the cellar was ajar. Then he remembered that Uncle Jonathan stored his fishing tackle down there, in a kind of cupboard built into the wall near the furnace. “I’ll bet he’s getting out his rods and reels,” he said with relief in his voice. “Come on.”
Lewis stepped onto the cellar stairs and looked down into darkness. Surely his uncle would have turned on the light. He fumbled for the switch and clicked it. Nothing happened. “Uncle Jonathan?” Lewis called down into the darkness. “Are you there?”