“Oh, sure,” replied Mr. Hardwick, leading them to a doorway. “They’re in the basement. Has your friend turned up yet, Lewis?”
“No,” Lewis said mournfully.
“I’m sorry.” Mr. Hardwick opened the door and reached inside to flick on a light. “Come on, and watch your step. The stairs are pretty steep. Well, I’m sure Rose Rita will show up. She probably ran away from home. Lots of young people do that, and most of them return again safe and sound.” As he talked, Mr. Hardwick led them down into a brick-walled cellar. It was lined with dozens of file cabinets, each drawer labeled. Mr. Hardwick waved at them. “This is my collection of letters and manuscripts,” he explained. “There are also playbills and advertisements for magic shows. Photographs of famous magicians, many of them autographed. Scrapbooks and handwritten instructions about how to perform tricks. And this one, of course. This cabinet is full of rubbings.”
He pulled open a file drawer and rummaged inside, finally producing a thick green file folder. “Is that it?” asked Jonathan urgently.
“Yes,” replied Mr. Hardwick. “The folder is labeled right here: Rubbing of the Belle Frisson tomb, done June 1, 1938.” He opened the file and took out a big sheet of thin paper. Lewis stared as his uncle took one end of it and unfolded it. The sheet was actually several sheets taped together, and it had been smeared with charcoal.
Lewis realized that it was a tombstone rubbing—Mr. Hardwick had placed the paper against the shaft of Belle Frisson’s monument and had rubbed a piece of charcoal back and forth over it. The result was a replica in charcoal of all the markings. Mrs. Zimmermann was already tracing her finger over the lines of marks. “That’s one!” she said.
There were many more folded sheets of paper in the file folder, one for each side of the shaft. Mrs. Zimmermann found another partial word, then another and another. In five minutes, she had found them all. “Thank you!” she said to a puzzled-looking Mr. Hardwick. “Now we have to go!”
Mr. Hardwick gave her a curious smile. “Can’t you even tell me why this was so urgent?” he asked.
Jonathan Barnavelt clapped him on the shoulder. “Later, Bob. Right now, all I can say is God bless you for being such a fanatical collector—and for being so fantastically well organized! Lewis, come on!”
Lewis followed him up the stairs. He realized two things. First, it was terribly late—the sun was ready to set.
Second, Mrs. Zimmermann now had the complete spell. They had to go back to the deserted cemetery. They had to use that spell to try to save Rose Rita.
And what would happen? What would they face in that terrifying graveyard? A Death Spider? A sorceress returned from beyond the tomb?
Or something even worse—something so horrible that Lewis could not even imagine it?
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Jonathan Barnavelt drove like a madman. Lewis hung on as the old car lurched around curves, its tires screeching. Farmhouses and fields flashed past. The sun was setting as they turned into the long lane that led to the cemetery, and by the time Jonathan had slammed on the brakes and brought his auto to a halt, it had vanished.
“We don’t have much time,” said Mrs. Zimmermann, climbing out of the car. “Here, Jonathan. Put this around your neck. Here’s yours, Lewis, and here’s one for me.” From her collection of amulets Mrs. Zimmermann had selected three. One was a scarab, an ancient Egyptian symbol of life. Another was a tiny gold cross that had been blessed by a very holy monk in the fifteenth century. The third amulet—the one she gave to Lewis—was a purple gemstone that glowed with a spark of her own magic.
She strode toward the monument carrying a plain black umbrella. It was folded, and its handle was a bronze griffin’s talon gripping a crystal sphere. Jonathan and Lewis joined her as she carefully placed the umbrella on the ground. “Hold my hands,” she said in a low voice. “Whatever happens, we are in this together.”
“All for one,” said Lewis in a timid voice. He tried to sound brave, but the attempt was as complete a failure as his magic act had been.
“And one for all,” boomed Jonathan Barnavelt. “Florence, do your best. And let any wandering bogies, beasties, and creepy-crawling spiders look out!” He squeezed Lewis’s hand, then took Mrs. Zimmermann’s right hand in his. Lewis held her left hand.
In a clear, high voice Mrs. Zimmermann began to pronounce the words of the spell. Some were in English, some in Latin, some in Greek, and some in Coptic, a language spoken in Egypt. Lewis felt the earth beneath his feet shift as the words rang out. He heard a strange groaning, the sound that stone might make if it came to life and tried to stir. And as Mrs. Zimmermann pronounced the final syllables of the chant, he saw the sphere atop Belle Frisson’s monument shake. It split into fragments with a great crack! and an explosion of dust. Lewis shouted in alarm. The pillar teetered and fell, and the cube of granite slowly pivoted to one side.
It revealed a dark opening leading down into the earth.
Mrs. Zimmermann cleared her throat. “So far so good,” she said. “Let’s go—and watch out for surprises. I’m sure Elizabeth Proctor would have some nasty watchdogs guarding her privacy! Lewis, if we should run into that huge spider, remember it’s hardly real at all. It is made up of a pinch of ashes and one drop of living blood. It’s just a specter.”
“Th-then it can’t hurt us?” asked Lewis.
Mrs. Zimmermann’s expression was grave. “It can hurt us, all right,” she said. “As a specter, it grows on bad emotions—hatred, fear, and anger. But it must have your belief to exist at all. If you don’t believe, you take away its evil power. Remember that . . . . Everyone okay? Let’s go.” She picked up her umbrella, looking ready for action.
Jonathan Barnavelt led the way, his flashlight sending its strong beam down the tunnel, over the split and decaying rile walls, where green slime had grown. Over the horrible floor of rubbery toadstools. Over the whitened bones of small animals.
Lewis followed him, and Mrs. Zimmermann brought up the rear. The stench was appalling, and Lewis felt nauseated. He kept gulping air through his mouth. They followed the twisting tunnel for a long time, and then Jonathan halted. “Here’s her watchdog, all right,” he whispered. “Florence, see what you think!”
Lewis looked around from behind his uncle. What he saw froze the blood in his veins. The end of the tunnel was completely closed off by a billowing white spiderweb, and resting in the exact center of it was a huge spider. It was not the one they had glimpsed at Rose Rita’s house, because that one had been hairy and gray. This one was shiny black, and it had a red hourglass marking on its belly. It was a black widow, the deadliest spider in America.
And it was the size of a dinner plate. Its long legs stirred, and it began to creep down the web.
Mrs. Zimmermann stepped forward and held her umbrella in front of her. Suddenly the umbrella became a dark, long staff, crowned with a blinding sphere of purple light. Mrs. Zimmermann changed too—she wore flowing purple robes, with flames in the folds, and she stood tall and terrible. The spider seemed to sense that something was happening. It leaped forward, its legs stretched wide—
Power crackled from Mrs. Zimmermann. A bolt of purple energy shot from her hand and struck the hideous creature in midair. It tumbled away from them, bursting into flame, and it hit the web. With a whoosh! the web caught fire and sizzled away. The spider’s body fell to the floor, a sputtering cinder.
Mrs. Zimmermann lowered the staff, and it was just an umbrella again. “She knows we’re coming now,” she said. “Let’s not disappoint her!”
They stepped into a large round room. They could not see the far side because of a marble platform in the center. Slowly they edged around it. Then Mrs. Zimmermann stopped with a despairing cry. Lewis stared.
Rose Rita sat on a golden throne. Her body had been wrapped up like a mummy. Her eyes, behind the black-rimmed spectacles, were wide with horror.
The gray spider, far larger than it had been earlier, crouched above her. Its forelegs rest
ed on her shoulders. Its dripping fangs were only inches from her neck. It clung to the wall, its abdomen pulsing slowly.
A figure stepped around the platform. “Fools,” it said in a scornful, breathy voice. Lewis could not believe his eyes. The figure was like the dried corpse of a woman. The flesh was dead white and clung to the bones of the face. The eyes looked hollow, and the mouth was simply a dark slit. It moved as the creature said, “You are too late.”
“No,” proclaimed Jonathan. “I don’t believe we are. Rose Rita, we’re here! We’ve come to take you home!”
“You ignorant fat man!” exclaimed the walking corpse. “You three will join my guest here—join her for all eternity!”
“Let Rose Rita go,” Mrs. Zimmermann said, stepping forward. “You don’t want her. Take me instead.”
“Why should I do that?” asked the creature.
“Because I am what you always desired to be,” replied Mrs. Zimmermann. “I am a witch.”
Light seemed to flare in the empty eye sockets of the thing that had once been Belle Frisson. “I shall have you and the girl,” she said. “There is no bargain!”
Lewis saw Rose Rita start to squirm. She twisted, just under the fangs of the spider. Fiercely, she cried out, “You let Mrs. Zimmermann alone! I take back all my bad wishes! I take back that drop of blood! I won’t let you hurt my friends!”
The walking corpse whirled, hissing. Mrs. Zimmermann said, “So Rose Rita reclaims her drop of blood! Now I can deal with you, my friend!” She raised her umbrella, and from it a spark of intense purple fire leaped out. It struck across the room like a crackling bolt of purple lightning, and it hit the spider above Rose Rita squarely in the back.
Lewis screamed. The creature sprang from the wall, its legs thrashing madly. It scrambled toward them.
Mrs. Zimmermann was shouting a spell. Jonathan rushed around the spider and charged to help Rose Rita. The spider reared high over Mrs. Zimmermann, who thrust her hand out. Her fingers pierced the spider’s skin. Then she jerked her hand away. The tip of one finger was red. “In Rose Rita’s name, I reclaim her blood!” she shouted. “You have no power here!”
The mummy of Belle Frisson shrieked from somewhere in the darkness. The spider swayed for an instant, and then its skin crackled into a thousand zigzag lines. The creature collapsed in a dark cloud. In an instant it had vanished.
Jonathan had picked up Rose Rita. The cobwebs that had bound her were vanishing too, crumbling into powder. Jonathan yelled, “Look out, Florence!”
Too late! The mummified Belle Frisson had surged forward. Bony hands closed around the umbrella. With superhuman strength the shambling creature wrested it away from Mrs. Zimmermann. She wailed and fell to her hands and knees.
Laughing insanely, the undead Belle Frisson raised the umbrella over her head. “A magician’s staff breaks when she dies!” the creature screeched. “And sometimes it works the other way! If I smash this globe, you are dead!”
“Wait!” Lewis cried, stepping forward. His knees were knocking. He felt as if he were about to faint. But he knew he had to keep Belle Frisson from shattering the umbrella. He held up his empty hands. “Wait!” he said again. “I have a gift for you!”
“What?” The red eye sockets seemed to bore into him. “What would you have?”
“A talisman!” Lewis shouted, his voice breaking. “See, it’s here! It’s in my hand!”
“There is nothing in your hand!”
“That’s because it’s invisible!” Lewis screamed. “I am the Mystifying Mysto! Now you don’t see it”—he flicked his hand, doing a movement he had practiced over and over for the magic show—“and now you do! Take that!” The powerful amulet swung out from his jacket. He grabbed it, lunged forward, and thrust it against the shambling creature’s face!
The purple star flared to brilliant life. The living corpse howled as the crystal burned into it, creating a sizzling hole right between her eye sockets. She dropped the umbrella, which Lewis barely managed to catch.
“Get back!” yelled Mrs. Zimmermann, pulling Lewis away.
The creature staggered. Purple beams of light shone from her eyes, from her gaping mouth. Her skin billowed, crisped, burned away. Then she collapsed to a pile of bone; and in a silent, purple explosion, she flew into whirling dust.
The ground began to shake. Mrs. Zimmermann took her umbrella from Lewis, and the globe gave off its strong purple glow. “Rose Rita, are you all right?”
“I am now!” said Rose Rita.
“Let’s get out of here,” bellowed Uncle Jonathan. “This place is caving in!”
They raced for the tunnel. Lewis did not look back. From behind him came awful sounds of collapse and ruin, and he did not wish to see what was producing them.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Is she really gone?” asked Rose Rita. Two weeks had passed since the underground struggle with the animated corpse of Belle Frisson, and she was still having nightmares.
“Yes!” replied Mrs. Zimmermann decisively. “We snapped her thread, you might say. She had connected her spirit to the land of the living with a magic spell, like a spider’s web. When Lewis did his magic trick, he burned right through that magical web. Her spirit was banished to the domains of the dead, and that’s why everything fell apart.”
“Don’t tell anyone around here that, though,” said Jonathan Barnavelt with a laugh. “They all think it was a mighty unusual earthquake that toppled her monument!”
“We got out just in time,” said Lewis.
It was an unseasonably warm Saturday in November. The four friends were sitting in the backyard of 100 High Street, enjoying the balmy Indian-summer day. Mrs. Zimmermann had baked a big plate of delicious double-fudge walnut brownies, and they were all munching happily and drinking tall glasses of milk. Rose Rita’s sudden return had astonished everyone in New Zebedee, but she had risen to the occasion. She concocted a story of tumbling off her bike and getting amnesia. For several days, she told everyone, she had wandered around not knowing who she was. She said she had slept in barns.
Jonathan told the police that he, Mrs. Zimmermann, and Lewis had found Rose Rita when they had driven over the route that Mrs. Seidler had talked about. Rose Rita, who had been without food and water for several days, had to spend that Friday night in the hospital, but she made a rapid recovery. Even the tiny moon-shaped mark where she had cut her finger faded and vanished. Now everything at her house was more or less back to normal, except that Mrs. Pottinger would not allow Rose Rita to ride her bike for the rest of the fall and winter. Rose Rita said that was a small price to pay.
“Did you replace the scroll?” Mrs. Zimmermann asked.
“When I took the book back to Mr. Hardwick, I slipped the scroll into its box,” Rose Rita admitted. “Do you really think it’s safe now?”
“Yes. All its magic power is gone,” Mrs. Zimmermann said. “Without that, the scroll is just a curiosity. And now that the tomb has been destroyed in the cave-in, it can’t cause any more mischief.”
Jonathan looked at Lewis. “You’re very quiet,” he said. “What are you thinking?”
Lewis grinned. “I’m thinking that I did pretty good for an amateur magician,” he said. “I fooled Belle Frisson into letting me get close, and then I used the chicken trick to hit her with that amulet.”
“That was fast thinking,” Rose Rita said. “How did you know it would work?”
Lewis shrugged. “I didn’t know—not really,” he confessed. “Only it seemed to me that Mrs. Zimmermann’s magic is good, and that it would destroy evil. So I took a chance. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“Your instincts were right on the money,” said Mrs. Zimmermann. “I’m glad you didn’t let her smash my umbrella. Ugh! It might not have killed me, but such a blow wouldn’t have left me the same.”
Rose Rita kept glancing around the yard nervously. Jonathan tilted his head and asked, “What’s wrong, Rose Rita?”
She scowled. “I don’t kno
w. I keep having the creepy feeling that I’m being watched, but I guess that’s impossible. Old Belle Frisson is long gone, and I hope her spiders have gone with her!”
“I’m sure they have,” said Mrs. Zimmermann. She looked thoughtful. “Hmm. Now that you mention it, I think I have a sense of being watched too. Weird Beard, do you want to have a stab at finding out why?”
Grinning, Jonathan Barnavelt made a couple of magic passes. In the air in front of him a golden arrow appeared, floating with no support. It looked like an old-fashioned weathervane. It spun around and around, and it wound up pointing toward the corner of the house. Jonathan got up and winked as the arrow disappeared. He tiptoed over to the house. Then he pounced, and Lewis heard a squeak.
Jonathan reappeared, chuckling. “Come along,” he said. Chad Britton came around the corner, wearing his trench coat and looking embarrassed. “Cheer up,” said Jonathan to the others. “It’s only our neighborhood detective!”
“Chad, were you spying on us?” asked Lewis.
“No, not really,” Chad said. “I just—well, I—I thought—”
Mrs. Zimmermann reached for the tray of brownies. “You thought you detected the smell of fudge,” she said kindly.
“Yeah!” said Chad, beaming.
“Have one,” Mrs. Zimmermann told him. “And next time just come up and ask.”
Chad bit into a brownie and rolled his eyes. “This is great,” he said. “Thanks, Mrs. Zimmermann!”
“You’re welcome,” replied Mrs. Zimmermann.
Lewis reached for a brownie too. “Well,” he said, “maybe Chad and I are both on the right track. He detected these brownies, so he’d be a good detective. And I’m a great magician. Watch me make this brownie disappear!”
Chad laughed, and Rose Rita and the others joined in. The pleasant sound topped off a wonderful day.
JOHN BELLAIRS
The late John Bellairs was one of the foremost writers of Gothic mysteries for young readers.
The Specter from the Magician's Museum Page 11
