The Specter from the Magician's Museum Read online

  The curse begins . . . .

  “What’s this?” Rose Rita had found a little pocket in the doth wrapper. She pulled out a yellowed packet made of paper. Tucking the scroll beneath her arm, she began to unfold the packet as Lewis looked on with a strange dread.

  “What is it?” he asked, his voice a dry croak.

  “Some kind of gray powder,” Rose Rita said. There’s only a teaspoonful of it—Ouch!” She jerked her hand, dropping the packet. It landed flat without spilling much of the powder.

  “What’s wrong?” Lewis asked, so frightened he almost dropped his books.

  “Paper cut.” Rose Rita shook her finger, making a face. She reached down to pick up the packet, and a single bright red drop of blood fell from her finger right into the gray substance. Lewis gasped. The powder began to boil. It hissed and bubbled. A dull brown vapor rose from it, drifting in strange, stringy wisps, like strands of cobwebs. The whole mass sizzled, then it shrank into a dark little ball about the size of a pea. Rose Rita paused. “What is that?” she asked. “It looks like a small black pearl.” She reached down for it—

  And yanked her hand away with a startled shriek! The black ball sprouted spindly legs and scuttled under one of the bookshelves. Lewis uttered one strangled shout. Somehow, with Rose Rita’s drop of blood, the powder had become a living spider . . . .

  “[Will] put readers on the edges of their seats.”

  —Booklist

  “Great imagination . . . young students will greatly enjoy the creepy plot, for there is just enough fright, adventure, and spooky things.”

  —VOYA

  Discover the Terrifying World of

  John Bellairs!

  Johnny Dixon Mysteries

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  The Chessmen of Doom

  The Curse of the Blue Figurine

  The Drum, the Doll, and the Zombie

  The Eyes of the Killer Robot

  The Hand of the Necromancer

  The Mummy, the Will, and the Crypt

  The Revenge of the Wizard’s Ghost

  The Secret of the Underground Room

  The Spell of the Sorcerer’s Skull

  The Trolley to Yesterday

  The Wrath of the Grinning Ghost

  Lewis Barnavelt Mysteries

  The Beast Under the Wizard’s Bridge

  The Doom of the Haunted Opera

  The Figure in the Shadows

  The Ghost in the Mirror

  The House With a Clock in Its Walls

  The Letter, the Witch, and the Ring

  The Specter from the Magician’s Museum

  The Tower at the End of the World

  The Vengeance of the Witch-Finder

  The Whistle, the Grave, and the Ghost

  Anthony Monday Mysteries

  The Dark Secret of Weatherend

  The Lamp from the Warlock’s Tomb

  The Mansion in the Mist

  The Treasure of Alpheus Winterborn

  The Specter from the

  Magician’s Museum

  AJOHN BELLAIRS MYSTERY

  BY BRAD STRICKLAND

  Frontispiece by Edward Gorey

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group Young Readers

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

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  A Penguin Random House Company

  First published in the United States of America by Dial Books for Young Readers, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc., 1998

  Published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, 2001

  Reissued by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2004

  Text copyright © 1998 by The Estate of John Bellairs

  Frontispiece copyright © 1998 by Edward Gorey

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  The Library of Congress has catalogued the Dial edition as follows:

  Strickland, Brad

  The specter from the magician’s museum / by Brad Strickland; frontispiece by Edward Gorey

  p. cm.

  Summary: When the evil sorceress Belle Frisson ensnares Rose Rita Pottinger in a magic web in order to steal her life force, Lewis Barnavelt must risk his own life to save a friend.

  [1. Witches—Fiction. 2. Magic—Fiction. 3. Supernatural—Fiction.] I. Bellairs, John. II. Title. III. Title: Specter from the magician’s museum.

  PZ7.S9166Jo 1998 [Fic]—dc21 97-47167 CIP AC

  ISBN: 978-1-101-65975-5

  For Bob and Elaine Lund, whose museum shows that the secret of magic is people

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  About the Author

  CHAPTER ONE

  Lewis Barnavelt had been frightened before in his life, but this time he was terrified.

  It was a sunny, warm fall day in the 1950s. Lewis stood just outside the junior high school in the small town of New Zebedee, Michigan, and felt his stomach fluttering with a million butterflies. “What am I going to do?” he muttered.

  Lewis was a chunky blond boy of about thirteen. He had a round, anxious face and a timid way of looking at the world. Now he was waiting for his friend. Rose Rita Pottinger. They were both in the same grade and in the same boat, and Lewis hoped that talking to her would make him feel better.

  Lewis stood with his back against the wall, and when Dave Shellenberger and Tom Lutz came running out of the school, he pressed against the black stones as if he wanted to sink into them and disappear. Dave and Tom had been big wheels all through elementary school, and now they were two of the most popular kids in junior high. Both were great at sports, good-looking, and snappy dressers. By contrast Lewis was clumsy and heavy. Instead of nylon shirts and jeans, he wore flannel shirts and corduroy trousers that went whip-whip when he walked. He was not popular either. Sometimes he thought the only people in the world who liked him were his uncle Jonathan Barnavelt, their next-door neighbor Mrs. Zimmermann, and his English pen pal, Bertie Goodring. Plus Rose Rita, of course.

  At last Lewis saw her coming out of the school. Rose Rita was sort of like Lewis—another odd duck. She was tall for her age, and skinny, with long, straight, black hair and big, round, black-rimmed spectacles. Lewis knew that Rose Rita regarded herself as an ugly duckling. People thought she was a tomboy too, and she hated the blouses and plaid skirts her mom insisted she wear to school. She felt much more comfortable in sweatshirts, jeans, and sneakers. Rose Rita paused outside the school door, clutching her books to her chest. Then she saw Lewis and gave him a dismal smile. As she came down the steps, she muttered, “It’s awful.”

  Lewis no
dded glumly. “What are we going to do?”

  Rose Rita rolled her eyes. “I know what I’d like to do. I’d like to sail away on a slow boat to China. Or get sick with a disease that would last exactly four weeks!”

  “Sure,” said Lewis sarcastically. “Or run off and join the circus, or find a formula to make you the Invisible Girl. Only we can’t do any of those things.” The two trudged away from the school, heading for Rose Rita’s house. Normally Lewis liked to walk down the streets of New Zebedee, at least when no bullies like Woody Mingo were around. New Zebedee was a small town. Its downtown stretched only three blocks long, but the buildings all looked as if they had stories hidden inside them. The old brick shops had high false fronts, and the houses were elaborate Victorian structures with towers, cupolas, and wide, rambling porches. At the west end of Main Street stood a wonderful fountain that spumed a crystal willow tree of water from inside a circle of marble columns. At the east end were the G.A.R. Hall and the Civil War Monument and East End Park. In between were dozens of places chat promised excitement and plenty to do.

  Except today none of it appealed to Lewis. Because in just four weeks he had to face—

  Lewis swallowed. “I don’t want to be in any stupid talent show.” he complained.

  “I’m not thrilled about it myself,” snapped Rose Rita. They walked in silence past Heemsoth’s Rexall Drug Store, its windows still full of back-to-school items. Lewis and Rose Rita turned off Main Street and plodded up Mansion Street, past the Masonic temple. Rose Rita lived with her dad and mom at 30 Mansion Street, and Lewis waited in the living room while she changed out of her school clothes. After a few minutes she came out again, wearing a ratty old Notre Dame sweatshirt, jeans, and black P.F. Flyers sneakers. The two of them walked toward High Street in a miserable silence.

  Lewis lived at 100 High Street with his uncle Jonathan. Both of Lewis’s parents had died in a terrible auto wreck when Lewis was not quite ten. He had moved to New Zebedee soon afterward, and now Uncle Jonathan was his legal guardian. Jonathan Barnavelt was a friendly man with red hair, a bushy red beard streaked here and there with white, and a potbelly. He smiled a lot, laughed easily and loudly, and was rich because he had inherited a pile of money from his grandfather.

  Even better, Jonathan Barnavelt was a sorcerer. He could create wonderful illusions, not by trickery, but by real, honest-to-goodness magic. The previous June, to celebrate the end of school, Jonathan had re-created the Battle of Lepanto, the great naval fight between the Christians and the Turks in 1571. The battle had proved a terrific sight, as galleys clashed and a thousand cannon roared. It had delighted both Lewis and Rose Rita, who knew the names of all the different kinds of cannon, from carronades to long nines. In fact. Rose Rita had pointed out that the carronades really didn’t belong, because they had not been invented until the eighteenth century.

  Remembering the excitement, Lewis grumbled, “Too bad Uncle Jonathan can’t help us.”

  “Maybe he will,” said a thoughtful Rose Rita.

  Lewis shook his head. “He says I have to do what the school tells me. It’s no fair using magic. That’s the same as cheating.”

  “Even in an emergency?” asked Rose Rita. “This is practically a matter of life and death.”

  They were trudging up the hill toward the summit and Lewis’s house. “I should have known this would happen,” groaned Lewis. “Every year the elementary-school kids get to see the junior-high talent show. I just never thought about how they got all those junior-high kids to go onstage and make fools of themselves.”

  “Now you know,” said Rose Rita. “They force them.”

  They reached Lewis’s house, a tall old mansion with a tower in front. Fastened to a black wrought-iron fence was the number 100 in red reflecting numerals. Lewis and Rose Rita passed through the gate, across the yard, and up the steps, both still steeped in gloom.

  They found Lewis’s uncle in the parlor, fiddling with something he had recently bought for the house—a Zenith Stratosphere television. The boxy walnut cabinet looked pretty snazzy. When you opened the front doors of the cabinet, you revealed the television screen, a radio, and a phonograph. The TV screen was perfectly circular, like a porthole. With the spidery antenna that Uncle Jonathan had attached to one of the chimneys, the TV could pick up three channels. The pictures were black and white and so filled with static and snow that sometimes it was hard to tell if you were watching a western adventure or a quiz show.

  Uncle Jonathan looked up cheerfully as Lewis and Rose Rita came in. “Hi,” he said, thumping the top of the set. As usual, he was wearing tan work pants, a blue shirt, and his red vest. He stepped back from the TV, stuck his thumbs in the bottom pockets of his vest, tilted his head to one side, and asked, “How’s that?”

  Rose Rita squinted at the dim picture. “It’s hard to say. What’s it supposed to be?”

  With a snort, Jonathan replied, “That’s just the trouble—I can’t tell!”

  “Then it doesn’t matter,” said Rose Rita promptly.

  Uncle Jonathan threw his head back and laughed. “Good point, Rose Rita!” He switched off the TV, and the picture shrank to a tiny white dot in the center of the blank screen before disappearing.

  Lewis asked, “May we have a snack, Uncle Jonathan?”

  His uncle pulled out his pocket watch. “Hmm. I suppose so. Just one glass of milk and a couple of cookies apiece. Florence has promised to make dinner for us tonight, and I don’t want her thinking we don’t appreciate her cooking.”

  “Great,” said Lewis, perking up. Florence Zimmermann, their next-door neighbor, was a fantastic cook. She also happened to be a witch. Not an evil witch, but a friendly, twinkly-eyed, wrinkly-faced good witch whose magical abilities were even greater than Uncle Jonathan’s. “Can Rose Rita have dinner with us?”

  “Sure,” said Uncle Jonathan. “Just call your folks and get permission, Rose Rita. Frizzy Wig and I will cook an extra portion.”

  Rose Rita called, and her mother cheerfully said Rose Rita could stay. Later that afternoon Rose Rita and Lewis lay on their stomachs in the parlor, watching the TV and wondering what they could possibly do for the school talent show. Uncle Jonathan and Mrs. Zimmermann were bustling around in the kitchen, rattling pots and pans and producing wonderful aromas. Lewis wasn’t really paying much attention to the TV. He and Rose Rita were watching a kids’ show, with ancient black-and-white cartoons. Cats chased mice, and pigs sang, and kangaroos boxed. All the animals were drawn as collections of circles, and it was hard to tell the cartoon pigs from cartoon elks or spiny echidnas.

  “Maybe you could dance,” said Lewis. “You like to dance.”

  “Huh!” snorted Rose Rita. “There’s a big difference between dancing with other people and dancing alone onstage. No thanks.”

  Lewis sighed and fell silent. The cartoon ended. A clown, dressed in a baggy white outfit, his face covered with white makeup, appeared on the screen. His nose might have been round and red, but it looked like a black bubble on the black-and-white TV. He had painted-on, high, arched eyebrows and a wide smiling mouth. He wore a ruffled collar and a funny hat, shaped like a milk bottle complete with a flat paper lid. “Kids!” said the announcer, who always sounded as if he were on the verge of a heart attack. “Here’s your friend and mine, the amazing Creamy the Magical Clown!”

  “Thank you,” Creamy said in a rumbly voice. The camera pulled back to show that Creamy was standing beside a little girl about seven or eight years old. “I have a helper today!”

  Rose Rita said, “She looks scared to death.”

  Creamy held a microphone down to the little girl and asked her name.

  “Edith Arabella Elizabeth Bonny McPeters,” she said shyly.

  “My goodness!” exclaimed Creamy. “Your parents just didn’t know when to stop, did they?”

  Edith shook her head and smiled. Lewis saw that she was missing two front teeth.

  “Well, Edith Arabella Elizabeth Bonny,” said Cre
amy, “do you like flowers?”

  The little girl nodded.

  “Good!” said Creamy. Someone handed him a sheet of newspaper. He held it up and turned it so the camera could see both sides. Music began to play—“Saber Dance,” a fast number. Creamy shook out the sheet of paper, rolled it up, shaped it into a cone, and gave it to Edith. “Hold this,” instructed the clown. The music paused. Creamy turned to the camera. “Now boys and girls, say the magic words!”

  The kids in the studio audience all bellowed out, “Twin Oaks milk is the milk for me!”

  “Oh!” said Edith, blinking. A bouquet of daisies had sprung up out of the cone of newspapers. The band played a hearty Tah-dah!

  “You keep those pretty flowers,” Creamy rumbled, laughing. The little girl nodded and clutched the bouquet to her chest. Creamy patted her on the head and then looked at the camera. “And now let’s hear from our good friends at Twin Oaks Dairy!”

  Lewis sprang up and switched off the set. “That’s it!” he said with a triumphant grin. “That’s the answer to our problem!”

  “Twin Oaks milk?” asked Rose Rita, raising her eyebrows. “I don’t get it.”

  “Not milk—magic,” replied Lewis. He swept his arms wide and bowed to an imaginary audience. “We’ll do a magic act!”

  Rose Rita shook her head. “Your uncle would never let you get away with it.”

  “Not real magic,” said Lewis impatiently. “Stage magic, like Creamy the Clown does. Tricks with ropes and rings and stuff. What do you call it—conjuring! I can be the magician, and you can be my beautiful assistant!”

  “Hmm.” Rose Rita sat up and adjusted her glasses. Her expression became grudgingly thoughtful. “I don’t know—maybe. Do you know any magic tricks?”

  Lewis sat again, collapsing to the floor like a punctured balloon. “No,” he admitted. “Not really.”

  “We can ask your uncle,” suggested Rose Rita. “He entertains at the PTA, and everyone thinks his tricks are just conjuring.”