Drum, the Doll, and the Zombie Read online

  His eyes wild, Lamort thumped the drum in a broken rhythm. "I summon thee, Lord of the Dead!" he cried. "Come and help thy servant!"

  Johnny blinked as the air in front of Lamort grew dark and solid. A terrible figure shimmered there. A figure with a skull face and a top hat and a shabby, torn frock coat. Baron Samedi himself had come to answer the drumbeat!

  But something was dreadfully wrong. Slowly, the immense form turned to face the man who held the black drum. Slowly, he reached out a skeletal hand for Lamort. The young man screamed in terror as the bony fingers entered his chest. Johnny groaned, but he could not tear his eyes away from the grisly scene. He saw no wound, no blood—the ghostly fingers of the Baron had passed right through Lamort's body as if it were made of mist or water! Then Lamort reeled as the living skeleton's hand came out again, clenched into a fist. Something glowing golden-yellow, something like a huge frantic moth, struggled and fluttered in that clenched cage of bone—and then the fingers crunched shut, and the light died. Lamort dropped the drum and fell in a heap, babbling senselessly. The enormous skeleton reared to its full height and slowly vanished, fading into the darkness of the night.

  "What—what happened?" gasped Fergie.

  Dr. Coote came slowly up, leaning on his cane. "He was not an initiated priest," murmured the old man, looking down at Lamort with a strange sort of pity. "The Lord of the Dead turned against him and plucked his soul right out of his body. This miserable wretch will be what he tried to make of you: a mindless, helpless, soulless zombie!"

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  "Gee, Doc, what were you gonna do if Dixon hadn't been such a good shot with a snowball?" asked Fergie.

  It was New Year's Eve, and once again Professor Childermass was having a little party. Father Higgins, Dr. Coote, Fergie, and Johnny were his guests, and Fergie was full of questions. The day after they had returned to Duston Heights from New Hampshire, Fergie's parents had taken him to Ohio to spend Christmas with his grandmother. He had returned only this afternoon, and he wanted to know all about what had happened in his absence.

  "Well," murmured Dr. Coote, carefully sipping his brandy, "Roderick and I had a few tricks up our sleeves.

  I had memorized some protective magic spells that might work against evil magic, and Roderick had—well, to be blunt, he had a weapon. You see, Fergie, we suspected the zombie would show up, and like you and Johnny, we knew how to deal with it. So Roderick packed a gun."

  "That's right," said the professor with a fierce grin. "As a matter of fact, I suggested that cemetery precisely because I wanted to fire my weapon in the place where it would do the most good. Too bad I didn't have a chance to discharge it. It was a nifty little Flash Gordon squirt pistol loaded with salt water! I intended to spritz that undead monstrosity right in the mush, but John Michael beat me to it!"

  They all laughed. It was past ten o'clock. Fergie's mom and dad and Johnny's grandparents thought the celebration was just to see the New Year in, but the friends had other matters to discuss as well. On the hearth was the black drum, and they had to decide what to do with it.

  "What happened to Mama Sinestra?" asked Fergie.

  "Ah," said Dr. Coote. "Well, Roderick arranged to meet Lamort and the, ah, lady, in the same part of the cemetery where Mr. Dupont had been buried before they turned him into a zombie. When Johnny broke the spell and the zombie regained his memory, he sank back into the earth and returned to his grave. I am afraid he took Mrs. LeGrande along. You see, a zombie who recovered his human understanding would not feel very kindly toward those who had created the evil enchantment."

  "Remember how we could suddenly talk again?" Johnny asked Fergie. "That was when the zombie pulled her down into the grave."

  Fergie shuddered. "So what about the super-duper magical whammy pincushion doll?"

  Father Higgins nodded toward a brown paper bag that lay on the hearth before the fire. "Take a look for yourself," he said. "Johnny says that when he looked inside his jacket, where Lamort had put the doll, that was all he could find."

  Curiously, Fergie emptied the bag. It held nothing but some pinkish cloth, some white cloth, some dirty-yellow cotton batting, and a few white hairs. "I get it," Fergie said. "When ol' Mama S. croaked, all her spells went bye-bye."

  "Speaking of going bye-bye," said Professor Childermass, "you might be interested in a few more tidbits of news. First, the man who called himself Todd Lamort was really Etienne LeGrande, the youngest son of General LeGrande, the former dictator of St. Ives."

  "Former dictator?" asked Johnny.

  The professor nodded solemnly. "According to The New York Times, his oppressive government fell the very night that we defeated Mama Sinestra. He is imprisoned on the island now, waiting trial under the new democracy that the rebels are setting up. As for his son—well, we arranged for him to be checked into a charity mental hospital as 'John Doe,' an unknown. He is totally helpless. He cannot talk sense, feed himself, or understand what anyone says. He is a zombie—only no spirit lives in his empty mind. I am afraid he will remain like that for the rest of his wretched life."

  Johnny knew that he himself had barely escaped Lamort's horrible fate. "Now we have one thing left to do," he told Fergie. "We have to destroy the drum."

  Dr. Coote grimaced. "I hate to do it, in a way," he admitted. "It is a rare, even a unique object, and there may be nothing like that drumhead in the world. You see, St. Ives is a volcanic island, and when settlers first came to it, they reported some odd creatures they called 'devil birds' that nested in the caldera of the old volcano. They were supposed to be like huge birds, but hairless, with wings like those of bats. The settlers gradually killed them all, but the drumhead is made of the skin that was stretched tight over the wings of such a creature."

  Johnny blinked. "Hairless birds with wings like those of bats? That sounds like a pterodactyl," he said.

  "Wow!" said Fergie. "The Lost World! Modern-day dinosaurs living in a Caribbean hideaway! D'you hafta destroy it, Doc?"

  "We've talked it over," said Father Higgins. "We all agree that it must be done."

  So late that night everyone trooped out into the professor's backyard, where he built a fire in the incinerator. As it was beginning to crackle, Fergie coughed and said, "Dixon, there's one more thing I gotta know. You were supposed t' tell your dad if you wanted t' move away or stay here. What did you decide?"

  Johnny hesitated. "Well," he said at last, "I know how much Dad loves the Air Force. And I know that I'd miss Father Higgins, and Dr. Coote, and Gramma and Grampa, and the professor. Still, he's my dad, and I was going to tell him I wanted to move away and live with him."

  Fergie took a deep breath. In a strained voice he muttered, "Aw, Dixon. I guess I understand—"

  "Hang on," said Johnny. "I just said I was going to tell him that I'd live with him. But then I started wondering who'd be around to save you from the next monster, Fergie, so I told him I'd decided to stay with Gramma and Grampa."

  Fergie whooped and gave Johnny a playful sock on the arm. The two pushed each other around, laughing like loons, until Professor Childermass coughed and said, "Now, gentlemen, contain yourselves—though I have to admit that I myself am pleased that John will stick around here in dull, boring old Duston Heights, where nothing exciting ever happens!"

  Then the fire roared up, and Dr. Coote muttered, "Here goes nothing." He gingerly tossed the drum onto the blaze as Father Higgins pronounced a solemn prayer of blessing. Orange flames licked the black sides of the drum. The hideous image of Baron Samedi charred and blackened. The thongs snapped, the bones crackled, and the leather drumhead shriveled in the heat. Then the wood burst into fire, glowing a brilliant yellow. Suddenly, with a great whoosh, a ball of reddish-orange flame shot straight up, like a rocket. Everyone gasped and stepped back. Johnny blinked. Was it his imagination, or did the ball of flame take on a shape? It seemed to him that great bat wings spread out, and a dragonlike head writhed at the end of a long, snaky neck. Then the wings
beat once, twice, three times, and the flame creature sped away to the south, fading as it flew.

  Just then all the bells in Duston Heights began to ring out. "Great heavens!" said the professor, clapping his mittened hands over his ears. "Now we've done it! Did everyone in town see that monster flying through the sky?"

  Fergie laughed. "Aw, Prof," he said, "we're not as important as all that! It's just midnight, that's all. Happy New Year!"

  They all laughed and wished each other a happy New Year. Johnny looked up at the midnight sky. The fiery flying thing had vanished, and a million twinkling stars glittered against the black-velvet heavens like so many brilliant diamonds. Johnny took a deep breath of the sweet, cold air of Duston Heights and felt himself at home and at peace with the world.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1994 by The Estate of John Bellairs

  Cover design by Open Road Integrated Media

  ISBN 978-1-4976-1448-2

  This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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