Wrath of the Grinning Ghost Read online

  "You sawed-off smart aleck," snapped the professor. "Anywhere you can go, I can go faster! Want to race? Want to put your money where your beak is?"

  "Come on, Grandpa," responded Brewster, hopping down into the bog with a curious birdlike motion. "See if you can keep up!"

  The professor had not been boasting. He had kept himself in good shape, exercising and going for long, long walks. He had even given up smoking not long before, and now he was grateful for his increased lung power. Here, though, with lardy clots of slick mud underfoot, he stumbled and staggered for what felt like hours. At last the ground rose, becoming gray and rubbery, but dry. An exhausted Professor Childermass stumbled on, following a silent Brewster.

  Something ahead. The professor was so tired that at first he muttered, "Machine-gun nest? Pillbox? Got to get word back to headquarters." Then, with a shock, he snapped out of it as he saw Fergie and Johnny standing beneath an odd-looking tree. With a shout of pure joy he dashed past Brewster, ran to the two boys, and threw his arms around both of them. "I'm so glad to see you safe!" he roared, ruffling their hair.

  "Quiet," cautioned Brewster, hurrying up. "Quiet, or they won't be safe for long!" He looked around nervously. "Now everyone settle down," he said. "You have to know a thing or three before you try to tackle Nyarlat-Hotep. And I don't know how long we've got before he sends his minions."

  "Minions?" asked Johnny anxiously.

  "You don't want to know," Brewster said fervently. "Believe me, you don't want to know."

  And then he told them anyway.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  "Have you ever heard of Pythagoras?" asked Brewster, who kept glancing around.

  Fergie scratched his head. "Sure," he said. "The square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sums of the squares of the other two sides. That's the Pythagorean theorem."

  The professor, who had been trying to scrape some of the mud from his shoes and his legs, straightened with a grunt. "True enough, Byron, but I believe our friend here is referring to another idea of that ancient Greek gentleman. If memory serves, Pythagoras also spoke of the transmigration of souls."

  Fergie looked baffled. "The trans-whatzis? Is that like a subway system?"

  "Not exactly," said the professor. "It's the notion that when a person dies, his soul doesn't fly to glory or sink down to eternal punishment, but is reborn."

  "Like reincarnation," Johnny said. "Lots of ancient people believed in that."

  "Yes," said Professor Childermass, wagging a finger, "but this is not the kind of reincarnation where a person dies in, say India, and immediately comes to life again as a baby in Peru. No, indeedy! Pythagoras thought that one's soul would either go up or down the scale of existence, according to one's deeds in life. If you had been a good little boy and always ate every bit of your spinach and never, ever told a lie, you might be reborn as a prince. But if you had been naughty, you could come back as some nasty animal—or even an earthworm or a dung beetle."

  "Yuck," said Fergie, making a face.

  "Yes," said Brewster quickly. "Well, we spirits are subject to that Law. If—and I say if—we get ourselves somehow born into your world, with a material body, then when that body dies, we're supposed to be reborn in a better or worse one. But Nyarlat-Hotep is disobeying that Law. He's still using the body of Damon Boudron."

  "But he died over two hundred and sixty years ago!" Johnny said.

  Brewster's expressive beak gave an impression of disgust. "I didn't say it was attractive!" he announced.

  "I don't get it," said Fergie. "If this Nasty-Hotbox guy is breakin' so many of your rules, why don't you throw him in th' hoosegow? That big fellow I saw in the ocean should be able to do it."

  Brewster looked ashamed. "Some of us are too scared to try," he muttered. "And some others are even on his side. Those are his minions, terrible creatures who, unlike the rest of us, do not take their forms from earthly ideas. They've never really liked the earth. Every generation, some wizard or sorceress tries to latch on to a spirit or two and enslave us to do their will. It never works out, frankly, but the magicians keep trying. Some of us have been grumbling that it would be better just to let everyone on earth perish and be done with it once and for all. That's one reason the other spirits have not made war on Nyarlat-Hotep." He hung his head. "But most of all," he said in a quiet whisper, "we can't do anything about his body. It comes from your world. Only somebody from your world can destroy it."

  "So how do we do that?" asked the professor, angrily rattling his sword in its scabbard. "If you'd warned me, I would've tried to round up a couple of grenades or a flamethrower. As it is, we are woefully under-equipped!"

  "I don't know how to deal with him," said Brewster. "If I did, I wouldn't have asked you guys here. But as I see it, you can do this only one way. The key is to get Nyarlot-Hotep to swallow some of the water of Lethe. Even one tiny drop will make him forget all his plans. He won't even know who he is. Then if you can knock his block off—I mean literally bop his bean right off his shoulders—then the Law of our world will crash down on him. All his evil deeds will slam him to another form. You might have to deal with him as the other form too. If you can destroy that, he'll come back as something else. When he gets weak enough, we can deal with him."

  "Okay," said Fergie. "Take a little off the top, huh? And he's more'n two hundred an' fifty years old? That shouldn't be too hard."

  "He has powers at his bidding," said Brewster sadly. "He is the master of fears and darkness! He will send your worst nightmares against you! And if he overpowers you here, he will destroy your bodies. Your enslaved souls will become part of his wretched army forever."

  "World without end, amen," finished the professor. "Stow it, Birdy. We'll take our chances and stand up against that moldering mountebank. How about it, gentlemen? One for all, and all for one?"

  "You said it, Prof," answered Fergie.

  "I'm in," said Johnny. "Anything to save Dad."

  "All right," said the professor. "Now for the sixty-four thousand dollar question: Where do we find this creature?"

  Brewster shivered. "We are on the outskirts of his kingdom," he said. "I can take the form of a falcon and fly ahead. If you will follow me, you will soon be within sight of his Palace of Dreadful Night."

  "How far is it?" asked Fergie.

  Brewster shook his head. "I can't tell you that, exactly. Nyarlat-Hotep's domain is past your boundaries of time and space. It may seem hundreds of miles to you, or you may find it with your next step. It may seem to take you a hundred years or a heartbeat."

  "Wha-a-at?" asked the professor, sounding like a cranky old rooster.

  "It's true!" exclaimed Brewster. "By your standards, time may not even run the same way. You may be living backward, or, or—"

  "Or inside out and upside down and sideways and six ways to Sunday," grumped the professor. "All right, all right! If we're to get nothing but metaphysical mystification from you, include me out of the conversation. Less talk, more walk! Show us the way, and we will follow."

  "First," said Brewster, "the waters of Lethe. This way."

  So began the weirdest journey Johnny had ever taken. The springy, rubbery ground seemed to shift and flow underfoot with some horrible life of its own. At one point they saw a group of people coming toward them, three exhausted-looking, staggering figures. "Don't look at them," warned Brewster, spiraling down from the air. Johnny and the others averted their eyes as they passed the limping trio. A year later—or was it only a moment?—he, Fergie, and the professor stood on the bank of a sluggish, winding stream, perhaps ten feet across. The water was the midnight color of India ink, but its surface sent back no reflection.

  "This is it?" asked Professor Childermass in a weary voice.

  Brewster, who had been soaring ahead of them, descended in a graceful circle. He was a falcon when in the air, but the second his toes touched ground, he became a three-foot tall man with the head of a falcon again. "This is it," he sai
d. "Careful! You don't want to swallow even a drop of this stuff, or everything you know about who you are will fly out of your head like a bee out of a hive!"

  "I didn't bring my canteen," said the professor sarcastically. "How do you propose we carry this water?"

  Brewster reached into his belt and produced three odd-shaped little vials. One was blue, one red, and one yellow. They were tiny bottles, large enough to hold only half an ounce or so apiece. The blue one was diamond shaped, the red one oval, and the yellow one a perfect little cube. "Careful," warned Brewster again. "Try not to get any on you."

  Fergie took the blue bottle and went first. Gripping it between finger and thumb, he dipped the neck below the surface. He lifted it and they all saw that it was half full of the water. Brewster supplied a long, thin cork, and Fergie popped it into the bottle. Then, as if curious, he licked his finger.

  "Fergie!" shouted Johnny, alarmed.

  Fergie staggered. Professor Childermass grabbed him. "Byron! Are you all right?"

  "Huh?" Fergie blinked his eyes. "Fergie? Byron? I know not these names. I am—I am—who am I?" He blinked twice. "I don't remember a thing."

  "Fergie!" wailed Johnny. "Why did you do that?"

  "Fergie?" asked Fergie, looking completely flummoxed. "I know of no Fergie. And who are you strange people?" He pointed at Horus. "Is that Daffy Du—"

  "Watch it, kid!" snapped Brewster.

  The professor, sounding desperate, asked, "Brewster, there must be an antidote for—"

  "There is none," answered the little creature sadly.

  Fergie's face showed absolute bewilderment. "Who am I? Who could I be? I have to think."

  Johnny's heart leaped as recognition dawned in Fergie's clouded eyes. "Do you remember?" he asked eagerly.

  Beaming, Fergie nodded. A beatific smile spread over his face. "Of course! I remember now! I'm the King of the May!" He threw back his head and brayed with laughter. "Man, you should see your faces! Didn't you guys notice that I held the bottle in my right hand, but I put the finger of my left hand in my mouth? "

  The professor snorted in disgust. "Stop fooling around!" he growled. "John, give me your bottle. I am not about to risk another scare like that one!" Carefully the old man half filled the remaining two bottles. He looked at the outside of each before corking it. "Remarkable," he said. "Not a drop clings to the glass. Most unusual water."

  "What did you expect?" asked Brewster in his raspy, grouchy way. "Now come on. We must journey to the Pass of Shadows. And I hope it is still open. No one knows what Nyarlat-Hotep has been up to in these deserted lands."

  So began yet another leg of the strange pilgrimage. Johnny felt as if he were dreaming. There was that same quality of unreality he had experienced in nightmares, where at one moment he would be in one place, and in seemingly the very next moment another place completely different. Not long after they left the river, they saw three figures staggering toward them. Brewster descended and shouted, "Don't look!" Johnny and the others averted their eyes—

  "Oh, my gosh!" exclaimed Fergie. "We just passed us! That was us, on the way toward the river!"

  "Space and time have no meaning here," said Brewster, rising again.

  Johnny's teeth chattered. How could he be in two places at the same time? When he tried to think about it, he felt as if he were on the edge of madness. He shoved the thought far down in his mind.

  As if in a hallucination Johnny noticed outlandish scenes and otherworldly plants. He saw vast mountains that rose abruptly from level plains, their steep sides as smooth as glass, making them regular cones. Later he gawked at daisies the size of trees, their enormous petals shimmering and flowing with all colors of the spectrum. Even the sky was strange. Sometimes boiling clouds hung only inches above their heads, reaching down snaky, greasy tendrils as if trying to grab them. Other times the sky was a tremendous bloodred dome in which no star sparkled, no sun shone, no moon rose. And at all times they walked in uncanny, unnerving stillness.

  Finally, after a minute or a week, they were in a forbidding countryside of jagged black rocks that looked like obsidian, or volcanic glass. The path narrowed until it rose to a pass where they would have to go through single file.

  "That is the doorway to Nyarlat-Hotep's domain," said Brewster, sounding worried.

  "Then," returned the professor, "let us venture forth." He grasped the hilt of his Knights of Columbus sword and led the way on the upward climb.

  "HALT!"

  The hollow, booming voice made Johnny jump in surprise and alarm. He saw that a figure stood on either side of the narrow pass, like guards. They were immense. Each was at least ten feet tall. Their bodies were vaguely human. They bulged with muscles. The hands and feet were webbed, with cruel red claws. The heads were the most frightening detail. They were those of crocodiles, with long, yellow, grinning teeth bared. Worst of all, their eyes had been sewn shut with zigzags of heavy red cord. From the mutilated eyelids, rivulets of dried blood ran down.

  The head of the left guardian swung slowly toward them. "DOOM," it thundered. "DOOM AWAITS HE WHO ENTERS HERE. NONE SHALL PASS!"

  The other creature gaped its jaws, its fangs dripping. "NONE SHALL PASS," it echoed.

  For a moment the group stood trembling before the two guardians. Then, as if with a sudden inspiration, the professor stepped forward. "I," he said in a high- pitched voice quite unlike his normal tones, "I am Sister Teresa Genevieve."

  There was a long, puzzled silence. Then the guardian on the left said, "I BEG YOUR PARDON?"

  "I am Sister Teresa Genevieve," repeated the professor. "I am a nun, and you said, 'Nuns shall pass.'"

  "DID WE, ALARIC?" asked the guardian on the right.

  "THAT'S WHAT WE SAID, ALL RIGHT. SHE'S GOT US, LEO," responded the other one. "RIGHT. ER, IN YOU GO, THEN."

  Professor Childermass winked at the others and strode past the unmoving monsters. Fergie whispered, "I'm not even Catholic!"

  "Make something up," Johnny whispered back. He said, "I am Sister Mary Frances," in a high, piping voice.

  "UH, RIGHT, YOU MAY PASS," said the figure on the left.

  Johnny walked through and turned to grin at Fergie.

  Fergie made a face at him and in high, mincing tones, he said, "And I am Sister Francine Hildegarde Ursula John Cameron Swayze."

  "UH, GO ON IN, THEN," replied the monster.

  As Fergie joined them, Brewster soared high over the pass and landed on the path in front of him. He gestured, and the three friends began to climb down the steep path. Behind them, Johnny heard one of the creatures say, "LOT OF NUNS AROUND LATELY. SUPPOSE THERE'S A CONVENTION OR SOMETHING?"

  He did not hear the response.

  They rounded a sharp curve, and Johnny took a deep breath. Not far ahead, the pathway leveled out. It led across a dismal flat expanse of bare black rock. And in the distance lay a castle straight out of a fever dream. It seemed close, but that was only because of its immensity. Spires rose and sent out shoots that became turrets, towers, and parapets. Walls ascended at crazy angles and lost themselves in a wilderness of obelisks, caryatids, and columns. It looked like the kind of structure that, on earth, a million groaning slaves would have to work on for six hundred years. Its walls were a deep, dusky brown, but not a window looked out of that terrible structure.

  "My dad is in there?" asked Johnny, feeling like bawling. "How will we ever find him?"

  "You will find him," Brewster assured him in a somber voice. "That won't be the problem. You have to be prepared to—" Suddenly his head snapped around. "Fly!" he screeched, sounding terrified. "Fly! The minions of Nyarlat-Hotep are upon you!"

  And rising from unseen hiding places all across the plain, dozens of nightmares sprang up howling.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  To Roderick Childermass, the oncoming army was a body of German soldiers from World War I, gripping their rifles and lowering their heads with their spiked helmets gleaming as they ran. He retreated, trying to find some cover.
The sharp cough of a machine gun rattled away to one side. The screams of incoming artillery shells wailed overhead. He scrambled to find shelter.

  Then he heard a woman's voice call, "Roderick! Help me, please!"

  He gasped and turned, his eyes wide in disbelief. The German soldiers had formed a line. They had raised their rifles. They were pointing them at a slim, beautiful woman who stood in front of a pitted, bullet-riddled wall. "Yvette?" asked the professor. "You're dead!"

  "You let them kill me," the woman said in French. "You are a coward! You were always a coward!"

  The professor covered his face with trembling hands. He began to sob. "You betrayed me!" he said, his voice muffled. "I thought you were working for our side, and I fell in love with you. You tried to turn me over to the Germans!"

  "You ran away!" the woman screamed. "You left me to die in your place! You coward! You despicable coward!"

  Professor Childermass gave one wrenching, deep sob. Then he dropped his hands, his eyes streaming tears. "You are not real! You were a German spy, and you died nearly forty years ago!" He drew his Knights of Columbus sword. "Coward, am I? Charge!"

  And swinging the sword in a wild arc, he ran right for the astonished line of German soldiers. They jerked their rifles toward him, but too late! He was among them, the sword whistling and screeching as if it had a life of its own! Left and right, he slashed and hacked—

  But the sword touched no flesh. The soldiers melted away, becoming mist. Mocking, booming laughter filled the air. Panting, the professor turned to face the woman. She stood straight and tall before the bullet-pocked wall. "Old fool!" she screamed. "Welcome to the Palace of Dreadful Night! You are the captive of Nyarlat-Hotep, the Goat with a Thousand Young!"

  "I'll settle your hash, you—you infernal illusion," growled Professor Childermass, rushing toward the figure in white.

  Before he got to her, she changed, her features flowing and reforming. Now she was a skeleton, with bones barely concealed by a horrible tight covering of yellow, parchmentlike dried skin. It grinned at him, a taunting red light in the depths of its eye sockets. "Idiot!" it said. "Weakling! You are nothing against me!"