“I opened the front door,” Zane said in a low voice, eyes wide. “Now that we’re inside, you can do the honors.”
James gulped and stepped forward. The casket was cold to the touch. Slowly, he curled his fingers around the metal handle of the casket’s lid and began to lift it. It creaked loudly as it opened, and James wondered for a moment if Balpine Bludgeny had been in here as well, hexing the hinges of the casket so that they made the proper deep groan when opened in the dead of night. James leaned aside and peered into the narrow opening he’d created. A wash of relief flooded over him.
“It’s empty,” he breathed. “Just darkness. It must be a dummy grave, set up as a hiding place for the—”
James interrupted himself with a little shriek as Zane stepped forward, bringing his lit wand with him. The casket wasn’t empty after all; the interior had merely been obscured by shadow. A mouldering skeleton lay inside, dressed in an old-fashioned suit with a string tie and a desiccated carnation lying flat in the buttonhole. The skeletal hands were crossed neatly over the thin chest. A gold tooth glimmered in the skull’s leering grin.
“Ugh!” James said, nearly dropping the casket’s lid. “Urk!”
Zane shook his head impatiently. “It’s just a dead body, James. Sheesh. I thought you saw one of these come to life once in the cave of Merlin’s cache?”
James gulped again. “That was different, somehow. He was just out there in the open, like. You don’t think this one’s going to… you know…?”
“Get lively on us?” Zane asked, grinning. “Nah. Not unless you make him really mad, anyway. Let’s get on with it. Like Magnussen said, the Nexus Curtain lies within the eyes of Roebitz. Let’s take a look, already.”
James pushed the casket lid the rest of the way open and Zane leaned over the top of it, bringing his wand low. The skull grinned up at the light. A shock of grey hair was still matted onto the skull, combed neatly back from the temples.
“Nothing in the eye sockets,” Zane said, leaning close. “Just dust and a few cobwebs. Maybe somebody did beat us to it.”
“The riddle said that the Nexus Curtain was within the eyes of Rowbitz,” James mused. “Maybe it means that it’s somewhere where the skeleton could see it?”
Zane shrugged. “Skeletons can’t see anything, technically.”
James ignored Zane and peered at the padded silk of the inside of the casket’s lid. He touched it tentatively, feeling around for any hidden shapes.
“Hey!” Zane announced suddenly, leaning low over the casket again. James gasped and bent over the skeleton, following his friend’s intent gaze. Zane pointed at the skeleton’s left hand.
“He graduated in eighteen ten! Look! It’s right there on his class ring. He was in Aphrodite Heights. Wow, I wouldn’t have guessed him for a Pixie.”
James sighed and straightened again. “Great. Well, this looks like another dead end.”
“Hah hah,” Zane grinned, nudging James with his elbow.
“Let’s go. I’m freezing,” James said, lowering the casket’s lid with another long creak. “Maybe there isn’t anything to all of this after all. Maybe Magnussen was just playing with Franklyn, giving him meaningless hints.”
Zane shrugged and extinguished his wand. Both boys turned and crept back out into the night.
“Ralph?” Zane rasped loudly, glancing around.
“Where is he?” James asked, peering around as well. “I thought he was going to be sitting here under this—” He stopped, noticing a dark shape lying flattened on the frosty ground beneath the elm tree. It was Ralph’s cloak. Zane saw it too and glanced up at James, his eyes widening.
“Ralph?” James whispered, peering around at the shadowy gravestones. Suddenly, the graveyard seemed to be packed full of hiding places and dark recesses, where any number of awful things might be watching, preparing to pounce. Nervously, James rasped, “This isn’t funny, Ralph!”
A noise came from behind the nearby elm tree: a heavy thump. Both boys jumped and grabbed at one another.
“Ralph?” Zane asked, his voice quavering.
Another thump sounded, closer this time. James and Zane began to back away, peering around for the source of the strange noises. The graveyard sat perfectly still, as if watching them. An owl hooted suddenly, sounding very loud and horribly mournful. James looked about wildly, his hair prickling.
“Ralph?” Zane whispered once more, still gripping James’ elbow. “Is that you?”
Suddenly, both boys backed into a large, solid object. They stopped, eyes bulging. Slowly, terrified, they turned around, and looked up.
A very tall, vaguely human shape loomed over them. The skin of its face was papery, partly rotted away, revealing the mottled skull beneath. Two large bony hands raised slowly into the air, hooked into claws, and a deep rattling voice emanated from the thing’s throat.
“Get… out… of… my… yaaard!” it said menacingly.
James and Zane nearly collapsed in terror, scrambling away from the awful figure. Just then, however, another voice spoke up some distance away.
“That’s what he told me at first too,” the voice said, speaking as if through a mouthful of biscuit. James tore his gaze from the figure that loomed over him, seeking the source of the second voice. Ralph stood in the open doorway of another mausoleum, happily munching a large pink sugar cookie. He shrugged. “He’s really just a big softie. Name’s Straidthwait. Says he used to be president of your house, Zane.”
“Charles Straidthwait,” the zombie introduced himself once the three boys were seated inside his mausoleum. Despite his morbid appearance, the figure’s speech had a disarming Southern lilt that Zane later claimed was a Charleston, South Carolina accent. “Former President of Hermes House, Arithmatics professor, retired, at your service. You’ll have to excuse me for all that creeping and thumping and grumpiness. Comes with the territory, I’m afraid.”
“He’s the one I told you guys about,” Zane enthused happily, accepting a cup of hot coffee from the shambling figure. “He’s the Zombie House President that traveled to the darkest jungles and got himself turned into the real thing!”
“A word of advice,” Straidthwait nodded, easing himself into a chair, “never accept any smoking ‘peace potions’ from a witch doctor whose hut you’ve accidentally burned to the ground. Long story. Suffice it to say, here I am, dead and loving it.”
“I’ve seen your mausoleum loads of times,” Zane said, grinning, “but the door was always closed and everything was quiet. We all just assumed that you spent all your time sort of sleeping or something. Like being a real-life zombie was just a big long Rip Van Winkle nap, like!”
“If only that were so,” the undead teacher lamented. “I’ve had trouble sleeping for the last decade or so. I don’t have any trouble getting to sleep, mind, but I wake up early, usually after only three or four months. Age takes its toll. Er, I do apologize,” Straidthwait said, leaning forward and plucking something from the edge of Zane’s saucer. “Pinky finger,” he said apologetically, holding the digit up. “Keeps coming off lately. Maybe you boys would be kind enough to bring me some plumber’s putty and tape if you decided to come by again?”
Ralph nodded. “Nice place you have here, I gotta say. I’m surprised.”
“No reason you should be,” Straidthwait replied, looking around at the cramped space. It was, indeed, rather nicely laid out, with four upholstered (if slightly moldy) chairs, a small ornate coffee table, and two kerosene lamps, all arranged upon a threadbare oriental rug. Straidthwait’s coffin lay open on its shelf, neatly made like a bed. In the corner nearest the door sat a tiny potbelly stove, supporting a kettle and a small tin percolator. It was almost unbearably hot inside the stone mausoleum, but none of the boys minded.
“I dictated exactly how I wished to be interred,” Straidthwait went on proudly. “Including an afterlifetime supply of iced cookies, coffee, tea, and condensed milk. Stuff goes straight through me these days, but I don’t mi
nd. Hard to experience indigestion if one no longer sports a stomach. Good riddance, I say. So who, may I ask, are the three of you, and what brings you out to my neck of the woods at such an hour?”
Over the next few minutes, the boys introduced themselves and explained their mission to the patiently decrepit corpse of Professor Straidthwait, describing the attack on the Hall of Archives, Petra’s alleged involvement, and their attempts to find the real culprits. Once James had finished relating the Disrecorded visions of Professor Magnussen and his two riddles, Straidthwait nodded to himself meaningfully.
“I remember it well, actually,” he said, peering up at the ceiling with his one remaining eye. “I was still a student when the Magnussen ruckus occurred. My friends and I, as well as most of the school, were completely maddened by it. It was one thing to break the code of secrecy and torture people. But to kill a defenseless Muggle woman, and one as young as Fredericka Staples…” Straidthwait shook his head slowly. “Abominable. Unforgivable.”
James asked, “Did you know her?”
“No, no,” Straidthwait admitted. “Not until after it was over, when her name appeared in all of the newspapers of both the magical and Muggle varieties. After Magnussen’s escape, there was a lengthy investigation by the Magical Integration Bureau, months and months of very ticklish interactions between the Muggle and wizarding powers that be. By the end of it, none of us would ever forget the poor woman’s name or that of her murderer, that horrible psychopath, Ignatius Magnussen.”
Zane sat forward in his chair. “So what about this whole Roebitz riddle business? Do you think there’s anything to it?”
Straidthwait let out a rattly sigh and tapped his coffee cup with one bony index finger. “I barely knew Professor Magnussen as anything more than a rather feared professor, and then as a famous escaped murderer, but I don’t think he’d leave meaningless clues. He was too arrogant for that. Still, I’d have a difficult time believing that poor old Leo Roebitz had anything to do with it. He hadn’t even died yet when Magnussen disappeared. No, I’m afraid you boys are chasing the proverbial feral waterfowl.”
James released a disappointed sigh. “Now we’ll never find out where the Nexus Curtain is,” he muttered.
Straidthwait perked up a little at that. “Did you actually think,” he said, peering at James, “that the Nexus Curtain would be found inside the casket of a dead wizard literature teacher?”
James bristled a little. “Well, it’s magic, isn’t it? It could be anywhere. We were just following the clues.”
“Yes,” Straidthwait chuckled drily. “I suppose that is one way to go about it. Following clues. Of course, if it were me, I’d follow Magnussen himself, instead.”
“How are we going to do that?” Zane asked, tilting his head. “He’s only been vanished for a hundred and fifty years or so.”
“Yeah,” Ralph added. “And nobody saw where he went anyway. They were all too busy watching his house burn down.”
“It wasn’t his house,” Straidthwait replied pedantically, raising a skeletal finger. “It was the house of John Danforth Roberts, one of the three founders of this school, God rest his soul. And I wouldn’t be quite so hasty about who saw what on that particular night.”
James narrowed his eyes at the mouldering professor. “What do you mean?”
“I’d imagine it was quite obvious at this point,” Straidthwait said, making a rather ghastly smile. “I witnessed Magnussen’s escape.”
“But,” Ralph began, squinting thoughtfully. “But, Franklyn said, in the Disrecorder vision, that nobody saw Magnussen escape. He said they were all too distracted by the fire.”
“Alas, I had my own reasons for keeping my observations a secret,” Straidthwait admitted, leaning back in his chair. “Not that they’d have done anyone any good, I suspect.”
Zane asked, “Is there a story that goes with that?”
“Not much of a one, I’m afraid,” Straidthwait sighed. “You see, I had recently become enamored with a fetching young lady by the name of Charlotte. She lived in Erebus Mansion and had a delightfully wicked mind. She occupied me for many hours during that autumn—hours that would have been far more responsibly spent on my studies. As a result, I was failing Mageography quite disastrously. My teacher, Professor Howard Styrnwether, had confronted me about my failing grades, demanding that I not throw my future away for some ‘made-up strumpet’, as he called her.
“He was right, of course, but I was livid. In fury, I abandoned the Mageography essay I had barely begun and instead wrote an entirely new essay consisting of precisely five words, which glowed green on the parchment and read as follows: ‘Dearest Professor Styrnwether—Get Stuffed’.”
Zane hooted with laughter. “That’s excellent! I see why you were President of Zombie House.”
Straidthwait nodded, smiling despite himself. “Yes, well, I might never have achieved such a position if it had not been for the events that followed. You see, I handed the essay in after a night of affronted anger, emboldened by Charlotte herself and not a few Dragonmeades in the Kite and Key. Almost instantly, however, I regretted the act. If Styrnwether failed me in Mageography, the chances were that I would never get accepted to the graduate school, and if I didn’t get accepted to the graduate school, I’d never receive my doctorate in Advanced Arithmatics, which meant I could never become a teacher and grow to be the distinguished and revered undead professor you see before you now.
“Thus, I pined for a means to retrieve the essay before it was too late. Unfortunately, Professor Styrnwether had already begun grading the essays. I hovered near his office door, peeking in, looking for any opportunity to sneak in and steal back the insulting essay. Styrnwether, unfortunately, did not pause for so much as a bathroom break, and I began to fear the worst.
“Shortly, however, I overheard the brouhaha stewing in the lawn outside. I looked out a nearby window and saw the crowd gathering, saw the flames beginning to lick from the lower windows of Magnussen’s residence. I had heard about the travesty of Magnussen’s crimes, of course, and knew that tensions had been mounting, ever since the decision had been made to allow him to maintain his post during the investigation.
“I immediately ran out to join the mob, as much out of curiosity as malice, although, I admit, there was some malice in my own thoughts as well. As the night drew in and the flames grew brighter and hotter, enveloping the unfortunate home of the former John Roberts, I spied, in the milling crowd, the humorless features of Professor Styrnwether. He was watching from a distance, his arms folded disapprovingly.
“Perhaps it is a testament to my own sense of self-preservation, but I found myself immediately inspired. At once, I darted away from the flames, into the nearby faculty offices. The halls were completely deserted, of course, and I breathed a great sigh of relief as I retrieved my essay, ungraded, from the stack on Professor Styrnwether’s desk.
“I immediately produced my wand and obliterated the damning parchment. Finding a new parchment in the professor’s desk, I quickly scribbled an apology for the fact that my essay would be a day late and promised to accept with good grace whatever penalty he deemed such tardiness deserved. I slipped this back into the stack of essays and, feeling a hundred pounds lighter, made my way back out into the darkening evening.
“It was then, as I was skirting the buildings, some distance from the conflagration, that I saw him. Professor Magnussen was an unmistakable figure, tall and solid, with stony features and a crown of very short grey hair. I feared for a moment that he had seen me and ducked into the bushes next to the guest house. The professor strode on, however, his gait full of purpose, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I feared him, you see, on that night more than any other. I considered bravery, but only for a moment. I was only a student, of course, and Magnussen was a much feared wizard, even before he was known to be a torturer and a murderer. Thus, I watched.”
James was spellbound. “Where did he go? Did you see him open the Nexus Curtai
n?”
Straidthwait shook his head. “I did not. The truth is, if indeed Magnussen did escape through the Nexus Curtain, then he did not do so immediately. He left the campus first. I watched him, even heard him, for my hiding place was quite near the Warping Willow. That is where he went. When he was under its branches, he spoke only one word. A moment later, he vanished. As far as I know, no witch or wizard ever saw him again.”
There was a moment of tense silence as the boys thought about this. Finally, James said, “What was the one word?”
“The word was ‘Abitus’,” Straidthwait answered somberly. “It is a simple spell which conjures an exit to the currently relevant date and time—the now. Magnussen left the campus that night and escaped into Muggle Philadelphia. I know not where he was going, but if all the suspicions about him are true, I have my ideas.”
“You think he was going to the Nexus Curtain?” James asked, wideeyed. “You think maybe it wasn’t on campus at all?”
“Perhaps,” Straidthwait shrugged slowly, and then leaned forward. In a rasping whisper, he added, “Or perhaps… he was going to get the key.”
“The key…,” Ralph repeated slowly. “Like, maybe whatever it was, it was too dangerous for him to keep on campus?”
“Because whatever it was,” Zane went on, realization dawning on him, “it would be way too magical to leave in his offices! People would sense something that powerful, especially if it came from another dimension!”
Straidthwait leaned back again, using his index finger to tap the side of where his nose used to be. “My thoughts precisely,” he concurred. “Because there is one thing that is for certain: whatever this alleged pan-dimensional key may have been, Magnussen was not carrying it on his person that night. If so, he’d never have been able to escape unnoticed. He may well have been on his way to the Nexus Curtain, if such a thing truly exists, but if he was… then he was going to retrieve the key first.”
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