Mummy, the Will, and the Crypt

by John Bellairs

  Johnny laughed. He felt like Hansel and Gretel at the old witch's cottage. The lodge was like that, a weird fairy-tale house that an old witch might live in. What if he opened the door and found Mrs. Woodley standing there, grinning evilly at him? Johnny shuddered. He really did not like thoughts like that.

  After a quick nervous look around, Johnny set the crowbar down next to the doorway. He played the flashlight beam along the row of carved stone ballflowers that ran along the lintel over the door. Which one had it been? Ah . . . that one, with the hole in it! Standing on tiptoe, Johnny reached in and pulled out the small, old-fashioned key, fit it into the lock, and heaved open the door. Then he picked up the crowbar and stepped inside.

  The room was as musty and dismal and empty as it had been before. Mr. Glomus leered down at him from his frame over the mantel, and for the thousandth time Johnny thought about what a very strange old coot he must have been. However, he had not come here to think about Mr. Glomus. He was here on business.

  Johnny examined the front of the fireplace. The smiling children with their cereal bowls gazed blandly down at him. One of those heads was the knob. One, two, three . . . the third one up from the right looked slightly worn. Cautiously Johnny reached up and tried to twist the head. It moved. To his great delight Johnny heard the grumbling of machinery, of hidden chains and counterweights. Slowly, inch by inch, the massive stone slab at the back of the hearth rose up. But then, quite suddenly, the noise stopped. The slab was stuck! By the light of the flashlight Johnny could see a dark opening that was only about a foot high.

  Johnny sighed. He knelt down and shuffled on his knees into the mouth of the fireplace to inspect the narrow opening. Could he fit through it? Well, he would have to. First he slid the all-important crowbar into the opening as far as it would go. Then, with his flashlight in his hand, he flattened himself on the floor, wriggled forward over the sooty hearthstone, and squeezed himself through.

  On the other side Johnny pulled himself to his feet. For a moment he thought about searching for the lever that would make the slab go back down. But it occurred to him that he might want to come back this way, and if he closed the door, he might—for all he knew—be closing it for good. So Johnny brushed the soot off the front of his parka and picked up the crowbar once more. With the flashlight beam playing before him, he advanced into the dank, foul-smelling tunnel.

  Johnny moved forward through the dark. Suddenly, for no reason at all, he remembered his matchbox. He felt in his pockets. Oh, no! It was gone! He had probably left it back at the inn. No time to go back now, though. He pressed on. And now the fear of the Guardian began to creep over him. Inside his head he heard Chad Glomus's horrible screams and remembered what he had said: "The Guardian might be anything: It might be a pool of moonlight on the floor, or a chair, or smoke drifting in the air. It will come for you if you get too close to the will. . . ."

  Johnny tried to laugh his fear off. He tried to believe what Fergie believed, and he told himself stubbornly that Chad's disappearance had been faked. He was rich and screwy, and right now he was probably drinking a gin and tonic in a bar in Bermuda. Anything was possible if you were rich, Johnny told himself. But then he thought of the things he had seen and heard when he was crouching under Mrs. Woodley's window, and the fear crept back, chilling him to the bone.

  Johnny kept walking. He went up two broad shallow steps to the second level of the tunnel, till he finally saw, far ahead, the stout nail-studded door that led to the crypt beneath the chapel. He stopped, listening for sounds. Nothing. The silence was complete and absolute. Nervously he flashed the light to one side, and he jumped a foot. It had picked out a carved skeleton on the wall. A streak of ice ran down over the carving, blocking out one of the figure's hollow eyes. Quickly Johnny jerked the light away. He moved up to the door. The key hung from a nail, and Johnny had to use both hands to turn it in the keyhole. Finally the lock clicked. Johnny shoved at the door. It moved in a few inches, and then it stuck—it had hit something. He stuck his head in through the crack and played the flashlight beam down.

  And then Johnny's blood froze. His eyes opened wide, and he felt fingers of fear clutching at his throat. Beyond the door lay a body, the body of a man in a yellow raincoat. His head was partly covered by a black rubber rain hat, and what Johnny saw made him very grateful that he could not see more. One of the man's arms was folded under him. The other was stretched out, and his hand was splayed flat on the floor. It was brown and withered, like the hand of a mummy.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Johnny closed his eyes. A wave of sick terror swept over him. He was afraid that he would faint, or die. But his resolve was strong, and he summoned up all the courage that was in him.

  When he opened his eyes, the horrible shape was still there, sprawled on the cold stones. In the midst of his panic Johnny felt terribly sorry for Chad. He had been peculiar, but he had tried to be nice to Johnny and Fergie. He hadn't been particularly likable, but he hadn't been evil. Johnny swallowed hard, and another sick, convulsive shudder ran through his body. This cleared his head, somehow. He had no time to get upset, not now. He had to press on, and if the Guardian caught up with him . . . well, at least he would go down fighting. Johnny got a good tight grip on the crowbar and the flashlight. Then, turning his eyes away, he edged around the slumped body and flashed his light this way and that. The crypt was a low, gloomy chamber, a sort of basement under the chapel. Rows of stone arches stretched away into the distance. Was there a door that led upstairs? There had to be. Johnny crept forward cautiously, past heavy round pillars. Ahead, at the top of a low flight of stone steps, he saw what he was looking for. Up the steps he went. The door opened easily, and he found that he was peering into a narrow stairwell. More steps corkscrewed upward. He followed them, and at the top was yet another door. He opened it and found that he was in the chapel.

  Because it was dark, Johnny had only a dim idea of what the place looked like. He played the flashlight beam about and saw high wooden pews, a stone altar with a bronze crucifix on it, and a series of gothic arches that marched down the side aisles. Johnny loved strange old buildings, and at another time he might have stopped to explore. But he was in a hurry. So, putting on a look of the grimmest determination, he tramped purposefully down the aisle. At the back of the chapel, under the organ loft, was a big, pointed wooden door with two leaves that were held together by a bolt in the middle. There were spring bolts at the top and the bottom. Johnny slid them back. He pulled the handle and the door swung outward. Cold air rushed in, and snowflakes stung Johnny's face. He was out in the open air again at last.

  Johnny felt grateful and extremely relieved. He just stood there a moment, eyes closed, and let the tiny frigid white dots hit his face. He had not been cooped up in the tunnel and the crypt for very long, but it had seemed like ages. Greedily he gulped cold air into his lungs. Johnny wanted to stand there forever, but he knew he couldn't. Doggedly he dragged his mind back to the job that was at hand.

  Johnny picked his way down the short flight of steps that led to the open space in front of the chapel. He turned and glanced to his right. Beyond the swirling snow he could just barely see the vast black shadow of the mansion. Before him rose the chapel's tower, a stubby structure with battlements on top. Although the church was gothic, the doorway was classical. It was flanked by fluted pillars with scrolled capitals, and there was a fancy stone cornice over the door. Above the cornice was a triangular stone slab called a pediment. Set in its center was a square tablet made of white marble, and on the tablet was the inscription that had excited Johnny so much when he'd read it for the second time in the book he had found in the library. He had copied the inscription out of the book and had pored over it on the train ride up to New Hampshire. In the dark Johnny could not make out the inscription. Nevertheless he could have recited it by heart:

  In the yeare 1653 when all

  thinges Sacred were throughout ye nation

  Either demolisht
or profaned

  Sir Robert Shirley, Barronet,

  Founded this church;

  Whose singular praise it is,

  to haue done the best things in ye worst times,

  and

  hoped them in the most callamitous.

  The righteous shall be had

  in everlasting remembrance.

  Johnny loved the inscription. It sounded grand and thrilling, even though he didn't know anything about Sir Robert Shirley or the calamitous times that he had lived in. He was also filled with smug self-satisfaction, because he had figured out that the ye in ye olde tea shoppe referred to the two ye's in the inscription. He even knew, thanks to the professor, that ye in the old days was sometimes just a funny way of writing the. But Johnny didn't have time to pat himself on the back. He had to find some way of getting up to the place where the inscription was so he could examine it more closely.

  With a sinking heart Johnny realized that this was not a part of the treasure hunt that he had planned very carefully. Were there any ladders around? He hadn't seen any, and ladders were not the kinds of things that people left lying about on a deserted estate in the wintertime. Then suddenly Johnny grinned. He had been staring at the solution all the time. A mass of ivy vines grew up one side of the carved doorway, twisting about the columns till they spread their hundreds of spidery tendrils across the inscribed stone tablet at the top. And there was even a little ledge under the tablet. If he ever got up that high, Johnny was sure he could stand on it.

  Johnny took off his gloves and put them into a pocket of his parka. Then he reached out, took hold of the vines, and started to climb. It turned out to be surprisingly easy. The vines were spread out all across the face of the doorway, and Johnny found handholds and footholds everywhere. And so, before long, Johnny was stepping out onto the narrow ledge that stood atop the doorway. He was still clinging to the vines for dear life, terribly afraid he might slip. But when he finally had a firm footing on the ledge, he let go. Now he was standing over the doorway of the church. It was not a terribly long way down, but even so, if he had taken a step backward, he would have had a pretty nasty fall. Johnny tried not to think about that. Instead he slowly lowered himself to his knees until the inscription was at eye level. From the left-hand pocket of his parka he took out the flashlight. He examined the first ye, but there was nothing odd about it. The letters were no more deeply cut than the others around them. Johnny tried the other ye, and this time his heart jumped. Around the word was a faint ragged line—a crack in the stonework. It looked as if the crack had been smeared over with plaster at one time, but wind and weather had eaten most of the plaster away. Johnny dug his hand into the pocket on the right side of his parka and pulled out the screwdriver. Holding the flashlight steady with his left hand, he poked at the crack. Immediately more plaster flaked away. The crack got wider, the tip of the screwdriver sank in deeper, and Johnny wiggled it around to widen the crack. All around the wandering circle he went, poking and prying and loosening. Tiny gray flakes fluttered down onto the ledge. Excitedly Johnny pulled back his right hand, and he stabbed as hard as he could. The tip of the screwdriver sank in an inch or more. Johnny pried, and the slab started to move. But the work would take two hands, and so he laid down the flashlight. Now he heaved with all his strength, and the thick slab of stone fell out onto the ledge with a chunk. Excited, Johnny snatched up his flashlight and peered into the ragged hole. He expected to see a legal-looking bundle tied with red ribbon, or a metal strongbox with a padlock on it.

  But what he saw was neither of these. It was a small square can. The label said Herb-Ox Bouillon Cubes.

  Johnny could have cried. Was this it then? Was this what he had come up here for, in the snow, in the dark, in the cold? One last flickering hope remained. Maybe the can contained microfilm, and the will was printed on it. Impatiently Johnny pried the lid off. Inside were little cubes wrapped in gold-colored foil. He unwrapped the first one. And the second and the third and all the rest. Chicken bouillon cubes.

  With a violent heave, Johnny hurled the can off the ledge and listened as it clattered on the pavement below. He felt like the biggest fool who ever walked on two legs. By now the professor and his grandparents would be frantic with worry. The police were probably out beating the bushes around Duston Heights. Police dogs were sniffing for him in the woods outside town. And when he came back to them, what could he bring? Bouillon cubes.

  Johnny knelt there, facing the wall. He wanted to cry, but the tears would not come. His mind was racing through all the possibilities. If Mrs. Woodley really was a witch, maybe she had changed the will into a can of Herb-Ox Bouillon Cubes. It was an idiotic thought, but right now the idea seemed about as reasonable as anything else that he could come up with. He shook his head and heaved a deep, shuddering sigh. The game was over. He would just have to go home. Glumly Johnny picked up the flashlight, stuffed the screwdriver into his pocket, and carefully pulled himself to his feet. Edging to the right, he reached out in the dark and felt for handholds and footholds among the tangled vines. Now he was making his way down, and he found, strangely enough, that he was thinking of hot cereal. He wanted to be in a nice warm room, in his pajamas and bathrobe, eating a steaming bowl of Gramma's oatmeal, with maple syrup and brown sugar and cream.

  But when his foot touched the ground Johnny turned around. It seemed to be snowing harder. He wanted to get away, far from this awful place as quickly as he could. With a sinking heart, he realized that he would probably have to go back down through the crypt. There was a high, spike-topped iron fence around the estate, and he didn't feel up to scaling it. But as he turned back toward the dark doorway of the chapel, he saw something. Someone was coming down the steps toward him with arms outstretched. A figure in a yellow raincoat. A figure with hollow mummy eyes and a withered mummy face and clawlike mummy hands. Moving with an awful, tottering, unsteady gait, it came toward him.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Johnny screamed. He dropped the flashlight and ran blindly into the night as the snow swirled around him. Now he saw the vast shadow of the old mansion looming up before him. He could make out its blank, forbidding wall of stone towering up into the night. Madly Johnny raced along the wall, looking for a door. He wished he could see where he was going! It was pitch black out, and if a pit suddenly opened up before his feet, he would fall right in. Now the wall was turning. Johnny turned too. He had seen a couple of tall windows in heavy stone frames. But no doors, none at all. . . .

  Then he saw it. A low door, half-sunk in the ground. He could hide till morning, and maybe the awful thing would go away. Johnny was filled with terror. He didn't want to die. He didn't want to end up like Chad. No, not like that. . . .

  He was at the door. He shook the knob, but it held tight. Johnny shut his eyes and screeched: "Let me in! LET ME IN!" He pounded on the door. Horribly he felt something clawing weakly at his back. Was Chad trying to stop him from entering the building? Was he trying to help him? The thought raced madly through Johnny's brain. Oh, God, oh, God, please . . . Johnny gasped, and then, incredibly, the door opened. He did not stop to wonder why but plunged in and slammed it shut behind him.

  He had escaped. But what had he escaped into? There had been a little light outside, but there was none at all here. Groping like a blind man, Johnny found a stair railing. Up he went, shuffling, one step at a time. At the top he found another door and opened it. A musty, shut-up smell rushed out to meet him. While Johnny was wondering what kind of room he was in, thunder rumbled overhead, and lightning flashed. For a brief instant he saw a huge kitchen with a long counter running down the middle, and copper kettles hanging from a rack overhead. At the far end of the kitchen was another door. He felt like a rat caught in a maze, or the pinball in a pinball machine. Lightning flashed again, and this time Johnny made a dash for it.

  The heavy door boomed behind him. Now he was in the dark again. But as he felt his way along, his hand rubbed the top of something smooth—a t
able, probably. Again there was a sudden flash of lightning in the three tall windows, and Johnny had a brief glimpse of an enormous paneled dining room. A table as long as a bowling alley ran down the middle, and rows of high-backed chairs flanked it. He was standing by a low side table, and on the table were . . . candles! Just what he needed! Now, if only he could find some matches! Blindly he groped across the dusty surface of the table. He heard things fall, and something rolled off the table and smashed on the floor. Then his hand closed over a small box. He pushed at the end, and it slid in. A matchbox! Johnny's fumbling fingers found small stick matches. He felt the side of the box and br-rr-rip! went the match. A pinpoint of sulfurous light flared, and with a trembling hand Johnny lit the candle. Ah, blessed light! Johnny tottered forward across the dusty floor. The candlelight glimmered in a row of tall mirrors to his right. His shadowy reflection made Johnny jump. He stumbled this way and that, holding the candle up and straining his eyes till his head ached. There had to be a way out—a main entrance, or another side entrance . . . something, anything! Johnny gritted his teeth. He would get out if it killed him. Ghosts or no ghosts, mummies or no...

  A silvery voice began to sing, high-pitched and mocking:

  A tisket, a tasket,

  A will in a wicker basket!

  and then:

  I found it, I found it,

  I green and yellow found it!

  The voice died away. Then Johnny glanced at his candle. The name was burning blue! The Guardian was here! For a second he went numb with terror, but he summoned up all his willpower and forced himself to stumble ahead across the dusty floor. He pushed open a set of tall French doors and crossed another room. He paused and looked this way and that in utter bewilderment. And then the walls of the room began to shake. A cobwebbed chandelier trembled overhead, and its thousands of glass pendants set up a loud, alarmed clattering. Panicked, Johnny rushed off to the right. He had seen another set of French doors there. The walls and the floor continued to pitch and heave, like the deck of a ship in a storm. Johnny slipped to his knees. The flame of the candle wavered but did not go out. Staggering to his feet, he made it to the doors, shoved them open, and stepped out onto a curved stone balcony. In the distance, beyond the chapel and the iron fence, he saw headlights. A car! But whose car, and what were they doing? Then he turned and looked up. A row of ornamental stone doodads ran along the top of the mansion—vases, balls, obelisks with carved swags and lions' heads on them. And they were all lit with a ghostly green fire that flickered and made haloes in the air.