Mrs. Zimmermann didn’t even look up from the book. “I know you’re just trying to be funny because you’re afraid, but that’s really quite distracting, so please be quiet for a moment. Let’s see . . . yes, in 1611, d’Anjou went along on a voyage of exploration with a party of French adventurers, and the young Kemp was d’Anjou’s servant. Voyage over, blah, blah, blah, let’s get to the good stuff.” Mrs. Zimmermann turned over several pages, her eyes just scanning them. “Aha! Also, Oho! and other expressions of wonderment. Here we are. The group was traveling overland, trading with the native people they encountered. The spelling is outlandish, but I think Kemp is talking about the Ojibway and the Potawatomi. Anyway, listen to this: ‘My master kept us all safe, for he had in his possession a silver tube that called a spirit the people of the forest much feared.’ ”
“Bingo,” said Jonathan. “All right, what else?”
“Don’t worry your beard white,” returned Mrs. Zimmermann. “Uh-oh. According to Kemp, after a time d’Anjou refused to use the whistle, because ‘he had twice used it, and to call upon the spirit a third time would cause it to take his life, or the lives of his nearest friends.’ ”
“Sounds bad,” admitted Jonathan. “Let me guess: He used it a third time.”
Mrs. Zimmermann was turning pages again. Her face was pale. “Father d’Anjou proposed setting up a mission in what surely must be Michigan today. The French traders with him tricked some of the Potawatomi, and then attacked them. They killed several, but some got away. They returned with a war party and soon eleven of the thirty-two Frenchmen were dead, and the others were about to be overwhelmed. Father d’Anjou blew the whistle, and something dreadful happened.”
Rose Rita squirmed impatiently. “What?”
Mrs. Zimmermann looked up, her eyes sick. “Kemp isn’t willing to say. But the attacking Potawatomi warriors were all killed, to the last man. And over the next days, every one of the French explorers died, one after the other. Listen: ‘Now it had shape and substance. Now it prowled the forest, beyond my master’s control. When but the two of us were left, my master took me to a place where a stone lay in the manner of a tomb. Here we would end it, if anywhere.’ Kemp says they drew a magic circle, and ‘with holy water, with the holy crucifix, and with other amulets of power, we prepared. And then it came from the forest, in the guise of a creature half serpent, half beautiful woman.’ Hmm. Some kind of magical battle. Kemp was almost lost, ‘but my master pulled me back within the circle at the last moment.’ He took away the creature’s body, somehow, and ‘like a living shadow, the monster was forced into the holy circle and beneath the stone, where may it lie forever.’ ”
“Except it didn’t,” said Jonathan, feeling a wave of nausea. “What about the blasted whistle?”
“Kemp says only that d’Anjou hid it.” Mrs. Zimmermann read on. “D’Anjou had made some unholy pact with the servant of the whistle. When its influence was no longer in his life, he began to age unnaturally fast. ‘At least a year for every week that passed,’ Kemp says. The two of them struggled back to Quebec, which was a new colony at the time. D’Anjou died the day before they arrived there. Kemp says he buried the body on the shore of a river, and then goes on to talk about how he returned to France. He finally finished his education in Wittenberg, and ‘never again do I wish to see the deadly shores of New France.’ ”
“Well, Pruny Face,” said Jonathan, “can you whomp up a magic spell as powerful as that of old d’Anjou?”
“I can make a good guess at what he did,” replied Mrs. Zimmermann thoughtfully. “The trick will be to make the lamia come out of hiding. For that we need Lewis. I think what must have happened was that the spirit gained control of the blasted whistle somehow or other. D’Anjou was too smart to let that happen while he was alive, but by hook or crook, the lamia arranged to have the whistle found, and used some dire magic to make it appear and disappear just when Lewis was most likely to blow the thing. What we have to do at all costs is to keep him from using it three times.”
“Let’s get him up,” said Jonathan. “Wait for us here, Rose Rita.” He held Mrs. Zimmermann’s chair as she got up, and the two of them climbed the back stairs of the Barnavelt house. Jonathan tapped lightly on Lewis’s door. “Lewis? Time to get up!” He opened the door.
The figure in bed did not move. “Lewis,” called Mrs. Zimmermann softly, “we have some news.”
“Come on, come on,” boomed Jonathan, taking three wide steps into the room. He threw back the blanket that covered Lewis’s bed.
Lewis was not under it. His top sheet was gone, and on the mattress lay the crumpled bottom sheet.
“Oh, my Lord!” Mrs. Zimmermann covered her mouth and with her free hand pointed at the blanket, which Jonathan had flung to the floor.
Jonathan gasped in alarm.
The blanket had settled into the shape of a sleeping Lewis, but when Jonathan whipped it away, nothing was beneath it.
The shape under the blanket was some trick of the lamia, some trick to delay them.
And it had worked only too well.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Jonathan Barnavelt threw open the front door of his house—and ran head-on into a startled-looking Father Foley. “What’s happened?” demanded the priest, staggering back a step or two.
Jonathan looked at him, his eyes wild. “Father Foley! I—you’ve caught me at a bad time, and I can’t talk just now. I was just headed out—”
The old priest frowned. “So I see. And your two guests are heading out with you?”
Stammering, Jonathan introduced Mrs. Zimmermann and Rose Rita. “We, uh, have some important business to take care of,” he said, his face flushing. “So if you will excuse us—”
Heavily, in a troubled voice, Father Foley muttered, “You will at least tell me if this business of yours involves a whistle? A silver whistle, with a magic spell on it?”
Jonathan could only stare, his mouth opening and closing. From beside him, Mrs. Zimmermann said tartly, “Oh, stop giving your impression of a flounder out of water. Father Foley, I’m not Catholic, but I’ll confess to you this minute that I know a bit about magic and about spells. Yes, you’re right about the whistle. But the question is—how did you know? And the bigger question is what do you know?”
The priest glanced over his shoulder, but as far as Jonathan could see, High Street was as peaceful as it ever was at eleven on a sunny morning. Father Foley coughed self-consciously. “May we go inside? I know what you are up against. I know of”—he dropped his voice—“the lamia, and of her limitations. For a few hours she is powerless against those who are not already under her spell. Nothing will happen until tomorrow morning.”
Mrs. Zimmermann gave Jonathan a short nod, and the four of them trooped back into the study. The priest sighed as he caught sight of the enormous book on the desk. “Ah,” he said. “Now there is something I recognize.”
Mrs. Zimmermann touched the jeweled cover. “You have read this?”
With a tired smile, the priest said, “More. I wrote it, dear lady.”
Jonathan felt as if someone had hit him with a baseball bat. “You wrote it?” he shouted. “How could that be? Unless you’re over three hundred years old, and your name is really Kemp?”
“I am over four hundred years old,” said the priest wearily. “And may God pity me, my name is really d’Anjou.”
“The book says he died,” objected Rose Rita.
Sinking into a chair, Father Foley pressed a hand to his eyes. “Young Kemp died,” he murmured. “I buried him and took his name. At that time, I wanted nothing more to do with the name of d’Anjou or with his foolish magical experiments. It seemed no great harm to take Kemp’s name, for he had no family. And I expected to die soon anyway. I had expected my great age to fall upon me with the passing of the lamia, just as the book says. But that did not happen, for my spell was not completely successful. The lamia did not perish and was not banished, but survived. And until the lamia is finall
y defeated, I cannot die. I can only continue to exist.”
“I think some explanations are in order,” said Jonathan, slipping into his chair behind the desk.
“I agree,” said the priest.
“Are there any more lies in the book?” demanded Rose Rita bluntly.
The priest shook his head. “I wanted to leave some record once I realized I would not die. I lacked the courage to face the lamia again myself, but I thought that some more powerful magician might succeed where I feared to try, and so, yes, I wrote the book.” He drew a deep breath. “The first part of the book is completely true. I did gain control of the lamia—never mind how— and I did use an ancient whistle to summon it. Somehow my life force became tied to that thing, which is only half of this world and half of the spirit realm. I fooled myself, thinking that since I was a priest, my belief and my faith would give me power over the monstrous creature. But alas, neither was strong enough! In the crisis, I could only force the thing beneath a great stone and subdue it into a kind of hibernation. I always knew that one day it would stir again. In the years since, I have gone on, aging very slowly, and always tormented with the knowledge that I did not banish the monster. It cannot be banished, not until . . .” He swallowed hard, and then whispered, “Until I am willing to die.”
Mrs. Zimmermann asked softly, “And what have you been up to since 1611?”
The priest spread his wrinkled hands. “I have been a wanderer. Months ago, I felt the stirring of the creature. It troubled my dreams, and I knew that it was trying to come from beneath the stone. At that time I was in a monastery in Ireland. As you might expect, in three hundred and forty-odd years, I have had many names and have learned many languages. But I have always followed my vocation as a priest.”
“Why did you come back?” asked Rose Rita.
Looking sick, the old man said, “Because I had to. In the last few years, more and more I became aware that the evil spirit was stirring, trying to reach out and draw a victim to free it. An old hand like me knows how to pull a few strings. It was not difficult to have myself assigned to New Zebedee to become pastor of your church.”
Uncle Jonathan said, “I didn’t think you were really Irish. But I never could place your accent. Look, if the lamia is so dangerous, why didn’t you stick around the whole time to guard its resting place?”
Father Foley grimaced. “I lacked the courage! I knew that is what I should have done. But except for forty years in the last century, when I lived in Boston for a time, I had not been back to this country, and certainly not to this part of it. Now, when I needed to find the stone, everything had changed. I had no way of locating the grave. And so I settled in to watch and to wait. My first clue was when your nephew asked me about the Latin verb sibila. At first I thought he’d just found it in a book. It means—”
“‘Hiss’ or ‘whistle,’ depending,” supplied Mrs. Zimmermann.
“Yes,” agreed the priest. “And it was engraved on the whistle that I had used to control the lamia. I could not believe that the boy had actually found the whistle, for the lamia seeks out people who are wise in the ways of magic. Surely the boy isn’t—”
“No,” said Mrs. Zimmermann grimly. “But his friends are.”
“Ah,” replied Father Foley. “Then you are the creature’s real target. It wants to be part of our world, you see. It wants to have a true body, not just a shape formed of whatever is at hand. To do that, it needs a constant supply of blood. And if the blood is that of a wizard, then the creature takes on the wizard’s magic. You cannot dream of, you cannot imagine, the evil the thing could do if it has the guise of a human and the power of magic. The poor boy—his blood might keep the thing going. But it would never satisfy its appalling hungers, not really, and in the end, I suspect the lamia would—would do something especially terrible to Lewis. Well, whatever doubts I had about the creature’s intervening in Lewis’s life ended when Mr. Barnavelt came to me and asked for holy water. I knew then that he meant to combat something evil, and I wondered if he knew what he was up against. It has taken me this long to work up the courage to come to see him. I am dreadfully afraid.”
“I know well enough what we’re up against. How do we stop it?” demanded Jonathan impatiently.
With misery in his voice, the old priest said, “God help us, I am not sure we can!”
Lewis Barnavelt did not know where he was or even clearly who he was. He had vague memories. He had climbed into the back of a farmer’s pickup truck and had hidden there while the farmer drove miles into the country. He had slipped out and cut across fields and through spinneys of woods, half walking and half floating, or so he felt.
The woman was there, ahead of him, a gray shape urging him on. He sobbed with weariness, and yet he could not rest. He felt as if his brain were on fire. The whistle had reappeared in his pocket. Now it hung on its chain around his neck, and it weighed a ton, dragging him down toward the earth. Yet he plodded on, putting one foot in front of the other.
A pale dawn had just begun to break when Lewis found himself staggering into the rocky clearing of the grave. The ghostly woman urged him forward with glances and gestures, and he found himself clambering atop the three-foot-thick stone. It was cold under his bare hands, cold and clammy.
You will rest, commanded the harsh voice in his head. You must live. You must be here for them to seek.
He could not form words in his mind. He couldn’t reply or even think of anything to say. He sank onto the stone and lay there on his back, with his arms crossed on his chest. He had the sense that the spirit hovered somewhere beyond his feet, but he could not be sure. His hands lay on the whistle, and its silver tube felt cold and hard under his palms. His heart thudded slowly in his ears. He fell into a trance—not into sleep, exactly, but into a vague half-awareness. The cold stone pressed against his back. A sun that seemed drained of heat rose and climbed high. A fitful wind gusted, rattling the trees, but he could not feel or hear it.
As the hours dragged by, Lewis sensed that he somehow was regaining a little strength. Not enough to move or even to speak, but at least he could think again. “What will happen?” he asked himself.
As if it could hear his thought—and no doubt it could—the voice within him replied, I will triumph. The boy whose blood I took is coming to us. When he arrives, I will drain him, and that will give me the body I need to face the magicians.
Lewis whimpered. Stan, he thought. Stanley Peters was going to die. And the magicians had to be—
Your foolish uncle. And the cunning witch. She is the stronger of the two. She shall be the last to perish. Their magic will make me strong, will let me live, truly live!
It was an agony to force his eyelids apart, but with a tremendous struggle, Lewis did it. Even with his eyes open, Lewis could see almost nothing. It was as if he were lost in a luminous, silvery fog.
“Don’t kill them,” he thought desperately. “Take me instead.”
You! The voice in his mind was mocking. You do not even know what you are to me. You are only the doorway. My mistake has ever been to deal with those skilled in magic! The answer was so simple . . . to wait, to bide my time, over hundreds of years until a boy came along, a boy who had no power himself but who lived among those who did. Your friends shall perish, and you are the reason for their perishing. But that is well. You hate them.
If Lewis could have screamed, he would have done so at the top of his lungs. “No! I don’t! I don’t!”
As if hearing an echo, Lewis recognized his earlier thoughts, recited in a hateful singsong tone by that interior voice: If they like me so much, why don’t they help me? And if the whistle is so bad, why is it the only thing that could help me when the chips are down and somebody wants to beat me to a pulp?
“I didn’t mean it!”
Don’t hide your anger, boy. Taste it. It is sweet, like dark, dark honey. Your revenge will come. Rest now! Rest, I command it!
Lewis lay paralyzed and all but blind. At
some time, after lying there for hours or for days, as far as he could tell, another thought finally formed itself, a despairing, hopeless thought: This is what death is like.
And the voiceless response to that from the thing that had led him here came instantly, lullingly: Death? You do not have to worry about death. Not you. The others will perish, but not you. You will live eternally. You will live until the end of time.
Lewis groaned. The soft, relentless words came to him with no trace of humanity in them: Poor child! You will wish you were dead. But I cannot venture into the world if there is not a spirit to take my place here.
“I don’t understand.”
No, for you are no magician. Magic demands balance. If I become part of your world, then something must take my place here, in the bodiless realm of the spirits. We shall be linked, you and I, for all eternity. I will live! I will truly live in the world. And as for you, well, you will wish you were dead, indeed. Often and often! Forever and always you will wish you were dead as you lie there . . . beneath the stone!
CHAPTER TWELVE
It was past two o’clock. Mrs. Zimmermann sat in Jonathan Barnavelt’s chair in his study, bending forward over a crystal ball she had brought over from her house.
Impatiently, Jonathan demanded, “Do you see anything?”
“I’m trying,” responded Mrs. Zimmermann. “It’s very difficult for some reason.”
Father Foley was pacing back and forth behind Jonathan. “That is the lamia,” he said in a thin voice. “She is strong enough to interfere with your magic.”
“Mrs. Zimmermann is the best there is,” said Rose Rita. She was sitting in the armchair in the corner, her arms crossed and a stubborn look on her face. “She can do it!”
Mrs. Zimmermann glanced up with a tired smile. “Thanks for your high opinion, Rose Rita, but so far, so bad. But I have an idea. I may not be able to zoom in on Lewis, but I’ll bet my purple nightie I can spot Stanley Peters. And he’s in on this too!” She bent forward again, peering into the depths of the crystal. It shimmered a pale purple, as if it had trapped a little bit of summer heat lightning.
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