The Sign of the Sinister Sorcerer

by Brad Strickland

  Lewis pushed back from the table as all the dishes rose into the air in a swirl, then sailed over to the sink and washed themselves. A towel flew up over the sink, and as each cup, glass, or plate rinsed itself and went tumbling through the air, the towel caught it and dried it. Then everything found its own place in the cupboards, clinking and tinkling. It was all over in less than a minute.

  “There,” said Mrs. Zimmermann, tucking an errant strand of hair back into its place. “I think that covers everything.”

  “Mrs. Zimmermann?” asked Lewis in a small voice.

  “Yes?”

  “When is the Curse of Three not nonsense?”

  “Oh, my stars.” Mrs. Zimmermann gazed at him. “Well, if I didn’t tell you, you’d just poke around in Brush Mush’s books until you scared yourself silly. Very well, Lewis. When a wizard or a maga wishes to cause ongoing harm to a victim, they often cast an evil spell so that it operates according to the Curse of Three. However, the three calamities that happen to the victim aren’t just random accidents, like being hit by a ball or tripping on the stair. Somehow the evil magician has to tip off the victim first, just as the voodoo priest has to let his victim know that he has been cursed. And when someone really believes that one accident is a sign of worse to come, why, then the things that happen do seem to grow worse.”

  “Like being hit with a ball, then being accidentally shot, and then falling down the stairs and dying?” asked Lewis.

  Uncle Jonathan looked astonished. “Good heavens, Lewis! Where did you get such an outlandish idea? You’re not going to die because you fell down the stairs, and you’re certainly not going to be shot!”

  “No, not me.” Lewis told them about the book he had read and about Captain Lewis Nevins’s unfortunate experiences.

  “Hmm,” murmured Mrs. Zimmermann. “You say the British captain was fighting in Spain during the Napoleonic Wars? Well, there were sorcerers at work in Spain back during the 1800s. In Spanish, the witches are brujas and the wizards are called hechiceros, and I suppose it is possible that one or the other of them cast an evil spell on this Captain Nevins. If he had been told that had happened, I can see why he would insist to his friends that he was bound to suffer three terrible accidents. But there’s no proof of that. The captain might just have been a superstitious man. Lots of people are. Once they think three bad things will happen to them, they simply keep count until they can say three bad things have happened to them!”

  “Maybe,” said Lewis, and he turned to face his uncle. “But here’s something else. The book didn’t have anything about the Golden Circle. I know you looked it up in another one of your books, though. You started to tell me about it, but you never finished.”

  Uncle Jonathan looked embarrassed. “Well, there’s not much left to tell. It’s just that the Golden Circle crew enjoyed dressing up in those maroon monks’ robes and drawing magic circles and dancing around them in the light of the moon, that’s all. And their clubs were set up so that in each one there were always nine members. Three groups of three.”

  “So they could keep an eye on each other,” explained Mrs. Zimmermann. “You’d have a master and two apprentices in each group.”

  “And you said your magic teacher had been a member of the order,” said Lewis.

  Uncle Jonathan sighed and glanced at Mrs. Zimmermann. “It isn’t exactly a thrilling wonder story, Lewis. Back in college, I spent every Tuesday and Thursday night with a master magician who just happened to be on the faculty.”

  “Indeed!” said Mrs. Zimmermann tartly. “You know, I had no idea that the Michigan Agricultural College had sorcerers on the staff!”

  Uncle Jonathan stuck his tongue out at her. “They didn’t,” he said to Lewis, “as Witchy Poo here knows very well. My teacher was a math professor by calling. But he also dabbled in magic and numerology, and over the four years of my college life he taught me what I know. He had learned his magic thirty years earlier as a member of the Golden Circle, and, well, teachers teach the way they were taught. Don’t worry about the Order of the Golden Circle, because they don’t exist anymore. They were pretty hot stuff in Great Britain in the 1800s, and they even had a group or two—”

  “Or three,” said Mrs. Zimmermann.

  “Yes, or three,” said Uncle Jonathan sarcastically, “operating in the good old U.S. of A. But, oh, right around twenty years or so ago, they had a big blowup, with members accusing other members of all sorts of shenanigans. Like most magical groups, they were a mixed bunch. Some of them were good people, some were just curious about magic, and some of them had the evil desire to use magic to gain riches and power. The good went after the bad, the bad went after the good, the just-curious ones dropped out, and when the dust had settled, not one of them could stand any of the others, and the organization just fell apart, that’s all. What interested me about them really was just that they wore those goofy robes when they were doing their magical stuff.”

  “Quite a few of the people are still around, of course,” said Mrs. Zimmermann. “But most of them are elderly and settled now, and I’m pretty sure that very few of them actively practice magic. The big quarrel that broke up their society seems to have made most of them allergic to anything sorcerous.”

  “Thank heaven for that,” said Uncle Jonathan. “Some of them were really beyond the pale.” He patted Lewis’s shoulder. “Well, as it happens, you can rest easy now. I still say it’s all coincidence, but even if it’s not, you’re off the hook. Your head got bonked, your allowance got lost, and your ankle got a nasty twist. That’s three! From here on in, it’s all smooth sailing.”

  Lewis nodded, hoping his uncle was right. But, as it soon turned out, the worst was yet to come.

  CHAPTER 6

  BY WEDNESDAY, LEWIS WAS used to hobbling around with his crutch. His bandaged ankle still felt weak, and he couldn’t put much weight on it, but he could at least get up and down the stairs if he took them slowly. After dinner, Uncle Jonathan washed and dried the dishes and then said, “Well, Lewis, are you willing to stay by yourself for a couple of hours? If not, I’ll be glad to pass up the meeting tonight.”

  Lewis realized his uncle was talking about the monthly meeting of the Capharnaum County Magicians Society, a little get-together where generally the couple of dozen practicing magicians in the area just swapped gossip, nibbled hors d’oeuvres, and played pinochle or bridge. “I’ll be fine,” he said. “How long will you be gone?”

  Uncle Jonathan looked at the clock over the refrigerator. “It’s not quite seven now, and I don’t think we have any pressing business to consider at the meeting. I should be back no later than nine thirty. Are you sure you’ll be okay?”

  Lewis nodded. “I’ve got the number of the G.A.R. Hall,” he said. The Grand Army of the Republic Hall, dedicated to New Zebedee’s citizens who had served as soldiers on the Union side during the Civil War, was at the east end of Main Street, not really very far from their house. “I’ll call if I need you.”

  “Fine,” said his uncle. He bustled out, while Lewis hobbled to the parlor and turned on the TV, a nifty Zenith Stratocaster model that had a black-and-white picture tube with a perfectly round window, like a porthole. A Detroit Tigers baseball game was on, and he settled down to watch it, stretching the cord of the phone from the hall so he could call Rose Rita. Though she had become a White Sox fan, like Mrs. Zimmermann, she also liked the Tigers and would be sure to be watching the game with her dad. Lewis was just dialing her number when his uncle called, “Lewis! Have you moved my cane?”

  Lewis got up from the sofa and without even bothering with his crutch hobbled to the front hall. Uncle Jonathan stood there scratching his red head. Beside the coat stand a tall blue Willoware vase stood, and from it protruded the handles of several tattered umbrellas and three canes. None of them, however, was the right cane, the one with a crystal sphere in the handle. That one was magical. That one was Uncle Jonathan’s wand.

  “I haven’t touched it,” said Le
wis, feeling apprehensive. “Oh, gosh, Uncle Jonathan! What if someone broke in and stole it?”

  “If someone did, it wouldn’t be a bit of good to them,” replied his uncle decisively. “A magician’s wand is attuned to its owner alone, Lewis. No one else can use it worth a darn. The only reason anyone could possibly want to steal a magician’s wand is that it would make the thief immune to the wand owner’s spell, and—”

  “What if an enemy stole your wand?”

  “That didn’t happen,” replied Uncle Jonathan, “for the very simple reason that I don’t have an enemy. Anyway, I could still punch him a good swift one right in the bread basket! But I don’t know of anybody around who’d be nasty enough to cane-nap my wand. I simply can’t remember what I did with it last. Oh, well, no matter. It will turn up, and the society doesn’t have any plans to cast a spell tonight. Sorry I bothered you!”

  And he went out, heading next door to ride down to the meeting with Mrs. Zimmermann in her purple Plymouth Cranbrook car. Lewis felt odd, his skin prickly. He stared at the mirror in the stand, but it just reflected his anxious face. He made his way back into the parlor. Wondering if maybe Uncle Jonathan had absentmindedly put the cane in the big closet where they stored their telescope, Lewis opened the door and flicked the light switch. Nothing happened—the closet bulb had burned out. In the dark closet the telescope loomed under its covering, an old sheet, looking like a still, silent ghost. Lewis took their astronomy flashlight from a shelf—it had a red lens, because red light does not interfere with night vision—but in its dim glow he saw no sign of the cane. Clutching the flashlight, he closed the door, got the phone, returned with it to the couch, and called Rose Rita.

  “Hi,” she said. “You watching the game? Tigers are ahead by two in the bottom of the fifth!”

  “Listen,” said Lewis urgently, and he told Rose Rita about the missing cane.

  She was silent for a moment, but then she said, “He’s mislaid it before, hasn’t he?”

  “Well, yes. Once he left it out in the backyard after we had a picnic, and once it was in the trunk of the car for a couple of weeks before he finally remembered where he’d put it.”

  “So he just forgot again.”

  “I guess,” agreed Lewis unwillingly.

  “How’s the ankle?”

  “Better. I’m still using the crutch, but I can get around pretty well without it.”

  “Your black eyes?”

  Lewis made a face, though of course Rose Rita couldn’t see it. “Yellow,” he said. “Sort of a disgusting greeny yellowy, like those yucky little caterpillars that—”

  He heard Rose Rita’s dad saying something, and then she cut in: “I have to hang up, Lewis. Dad’s expecting a call. See you!”

  A second later he heard the click of the phone, and then silence. He hung up and stared at the TV without really noticing much about the ball game. He had not bothered to turn on the parlor light, and as evening came on, the room grew dark. Only the flickering gray light from the TV gave any illumination at all.

  Until something caught the corner of Lewis’s eye. A reddish light, not very bright, glimmered out in the front hall. Had he left the flashlight there? No, he saw that right where he’d left it, on the shelf above the TV, next to a ceramic souvenir in the shape of a baseball. A little terrified, Lewis got up, switched on the lamp beside the sofa, and limped out into the hallway. He immediately saw that the red light was flashing and flaring out of the mirror on the coat stand. Biting his lip, Lewis looked into the mirror. It showed a dark, flat land, with rings of tall, standing stones jutting up here and there, something like the pictures he had seen of Stonehenge in England.

  But glowing balefully in the darkness was a gigantic numeral of fire, like the one he had seen the hooded figure draw once before.

  Again, even larger than before, Lewis saw the blazing number floating and wavering in midair:

  Lewis lurched back into the parlor, turned on the lights, grabbed the phone from where he had set it on the floor next to the couch, and frantically dialed the number of the G.A.R. Hall. He heard the phone on the other end ring three times, four times. “Come on, come on,” he said between his teeth.

  Then someone answered: “Hello?”

  Lewis recognized the voice of kindly, vague Mrs. Jaeger, probably the very worst magician in the society. “Hi, this is Lewis Barnavelt, is my uncle there please?” he said in a rush.

  “What? What? Lewis? I think Jonathan has already left. I’ll check, dear. Just a moment!”

  Lewis glanced back toward the hall, but the red light had faded to nothing. The front doorknob rattled, and he jumped a mile. A moment later, the door opened, and with relief, Lewis saw his uncle step in. At the same time, Mrs. Jaeger said, “I’m afraid you’ve missed him—”

  “That’s all right, he’s here now. Thanks, Mrs. Jaeger!” Lewis hung up and said, “Uncle Jonathan! Look in the mirror!”

  With a surprised expression, Jonathan turned to stare into the glass. “Do I have crumbs in my beard? Florence took one of her coffee cakes—”

  “Is it still there?”

  “My beard?”

  “No, the number! Look in the mirror!”

  Uncle Jonathan did so. “Nothing here but us Barnavelts at the moment. What did you see, Lewis?”

  Breathlessly, Lewis explained about seeing the three. “I think it’s a sign,” he said. “I think it’s saying the first bad thing has happened to you—you lost your cane! There must be two more to go!”

  Uncle Jonathan shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m going to call in Florence on this thing, just in case. I really think it’s just this fool mirror playing its tricks again.” Instead of using the phone, Uncle Jonathan stepped across to Mrs. Zimmermann’s next door, and a few minutes later, they all three stood in the hall, looking at the now normal mirror.

  “I wondered why you didn’t have your cane,” said Mrs. Zimmermann when she had heard the story. “All right, let me use my abilities to see if I can locate it for you. Come with me, you two!”

  She led them to the kitchen, where she got a tall tumbler out of the cupboard. She filled this with water, then put one small drop of olive oil in. It floated gently, and at some whispered words from Mrs. Zimmermann, the drop of oil drifted to the exact center of the water’s surface. “Lots of people think you need a fancy crystal or a scrying glass to pull off this stunt,” said Mrs. Zimmermann quietly. “But the talent isn’t in the crystal! A plain old glass of water will do just fine in a pinch.”

  “I thought magicians didn’t use magic just any old time,” said Lewis weakly.

  “We do when we’re looking for missing magical implements,” returned Mrs. Zimmermann. She winked. “And sometimes when we’re too lazy to wash up dishes, of course!” She stared into the glass of water for a few minutes and then said, “Now—show me where Jonathan Barnavelt’s cane is at this moment, I conjure you!”

  Lewis looked on curiously. He hardly ever got a chance to see Mrs. Zimmermann do magic, because she rarely did so. Most of the time, as she had once explained, her and Jonathan’s job—and that of all the members of the magicians society, for that matter—was to prevent evil magic from occurring, not to practice good magic herself.

  As Lewis stared at the glass, he began to see a faint glimmering glow in the water, a delicate violet color. It shot out thin beams here and there, and Mrs. Zimmermann’s face, locked in concentration, showed flickers of the purple hues. She stared hard for five minutes, and then shook her head. “This is odd,” she announced. “Jonathan, your cane is nowhere to be found! It isn’t in the house, or anywhere in the yard, or as far as I can tell anywhere for fifty miles around in southern Michigan!”

  “It can’t have just vanished,” said Uncle Jonathan.

  “Why not?” snapped Mrs. Zimmermann testily. “It’s a magic wand!”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Mrs. Zimmermann nodded. “Yes, I do, and I’m sorry for sounding angry. I’m not, reall
y—just puzzled. Your wand has a very strong morphic vibration. I should be able to pick up some faint signal anywhere within a hundred miles! Unless . . .” She did not finish the sentence.

  But Uncle Jonathan did: “Unless someone is using some kind of evil magic to hide it from you?”

  “Jonathan!” Mrs. Zimmermann twitched her head in Lewis’s direction.

  “Lewis is old enough to hear something like that,” said Uncle Jonathan firmly. “And frankly I’m not sure now that he shouldn’t hear a little more. Wait here, you two.” He left them, and Lewis heard his steps on the stairway.

  “What’s he going to get?” asked Lewis.

  Mrs. Zimmermann sighed and shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe a Captain Midnight Secret Decoder Ring. Maybe an enchanted pogo stick. With a big overgrown kid like Jonathan Barnavelt, there is simply no telling!”

  A few minutes later, Jonathan clumped back downstairs and into the kitchen. He plopped a big, thick book down on the table with a dusty thump. Curiously Lewis peered at it: Its binding was black crinkly leather, with a golden rectangle stamped into it and beneath that a golden circle. The rectangle read THE WOLVERINE, and the circle showed small pictures that included an open text and a plow. Around the edges of the circle ran the words MICHIGAN AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE and the date 1882, the year the college was founded. “My old college yearbook from my senior year,” said Uncle Jonathan. “Lord, more than twenty-five years ago! How time flies.” He opened the Wolverine toward the back. The first thing that Lewis glimpsed was an advertisement for Gier Tuarc Steel Wheels, praising their beauty, utility, and economy. Uncle Jonathan flipped the pages, saying, “It’s somewhere back in here. Ah, yes, here we are!” He pointed to a photograph of three figures, two standing and the one in the middle seated. They all wore graduation gowns, but instead of the flat mortarboard hat the other two wore, the seated man was wearing a fez shaped like an upside-down flower pot.