The Curse of the Blue Figurine Read online

  The professor grinned. He could see that he had Johnny's attention. And then, without any further ado, he launched into his tale.

  "Now then," he said, rubbing his hands, "it all began when... oh, by the way, Henry, I feel like some sort of cheap guzzler drinking this whiskey all by itself. Do you have anything to go with it? How about some of your wife's fudge? I think she makes wonderful fudge! Could I have some?"

  Once again Johnny was amazed by the professor's crust. And, as before, Grampa didn't seem to mind. He went out to the kitchen and came back with a blue Willoware plate that held several thick squares of dark chocolaty fudge. Everybody took one, and as he munched the professor went on with his story.

  "Father Remigius Baart," he began, "was the rector of St. Michael's Church way back in the 1880s. He was the one who had the church built—the church that's there now. And he hired a wandering artist—a mysterious character who showed up in Duston Heights one day— he hired him, as I say, to do the altarpiece in the church." The professor paused and stared thoughtfully out the window. "I often wonder about that man—the artist, I mean. He claimed that his name was Nemo, but nemo is Latin for 'no one.' Well, whatever his name really was, he was a talented wood-carver. All those saints and angels and prophets on the altar screen! I've never seen anything quite like it. But it seems that the wood-carver was more than just a wood-carver. The story is that he had dealings with the devil, that he diddled around with the black arts. The truth, I suppose, will never be known. After he finished the altar screen and got paid, this Nemo character left town and was never seen again. But people claim that before he left, he gave Father Baart something."

  Johnny by this time was totally fascinated. He was sitting way forward on the edge of his seat. "What was it?" he asked. "What did this Nemo guy give to the priest?"

  The professor stared at Johnny strangely. "Nobody knows. He may not have given him anything, but a lot of the older people in this town—your grandmother, for instance—will swear up and down that the artist gave Father Baart a talisman, or a book, or some sort of evil object that allowed him to do all kinds of nasty things, and may—in the end—have caused his own destruction."

  The professor paused and grabbed another piece of fudge. He stuffed it in his mouth and chewed it slowly, savoring every chocolaty smidgin of it. The professor loved dramatic pauses. He felt that they added to his stories. Johnny squirmed impatiently in his seat. He wanted to hear more.

  "Mmmm! Dee-li-cious fudge!" said the professor, smacking his lips. "Absolutely scrumptious! By the way, where was I? Ah, yes. Now, at this point you have to know what sort of man Father Baart was. He was not popular. He had a sharp tongue, and he used it often, and he had made quite a few enemies in the town of Duston Heights. If the people in the church had had their way, they would have got rid of him. They would have found a new rector. But only the bishop could fire him, and he didn't feel like it, so Father Baart stayed and made enemies. Well! A little while after the mysterious artist left town, funny things started to happen. Mr. Herman—he was a rich farmer in the area, and there was no love lost between him and Father Baart—Mr. Herman, I say, was standing looking up at the tower of the church one day—they were still building it at the time—and a carved stone, a big, heavy pinnacle that had just been put in place on top of the tower, fell off and hit Mr. Herman—killed him outright!"

  Johnny wanted to say something, but the look on the professor's face told him he wasn't finished talking. So he waited.

  The professor took another little sip of whiskey and another little nibble of fudge, and then he went on. "So Mr. Herman was dead. There were no workmen on the

  tower at the time, so nobody could be blamed. The coroner's verdict was 'accidental death.' Nothing to argue about—the stone was probably loose for some reason. But a few days later somebody else got eliminated. This time it was Mrs. Mumaw. She was another one of Father Baart's enemies. She had disagreed with him publicly, at parish meetings, and she had told him his qualities in no uncertain terms. And what happened to her? She got run down by a horse pulling a wagonload of barrels. One minute the horse was standing quietly in front of a store on Main Street; the next minute it was charging wild-eyed at Mrs. Mumaw, dragging the wagon, hell-bent for election, behind. Well, that was the end of her!" The professor paused and peered at Johnny over the tops of his glasses. "Now, then, my fine feathered friend," he said, "does anything occur to you? Hmmm? Does it?"

  Johnny looked thoughtful. He saw what the professor was getting at. "It sounds kinda like... like Father Baart made those accidents happen. Like maybe he murdered those two people some way."

  "You catch on fast," said the professor dryly. "Many of the people who were living in this town back then thought that Father Baart had murdered Mr. Herman and Mrs. Mumaw. But there was no way they could prove it. No way at all." The professor paused and sipped at his drink. "However," he went on, "however, and be that as it may, Father Baart got his comeuppance. He got it in spades!"

  Johnny's eyes were wide. "What happened to him? Did the ghosts of the people he killed come back and get him?" Johnny had read some stories where things like that had happened.

  The professor smiled mysteriously. "Nobody knows what happened to Father Baart," he said somberly. "One morning he didn't show up to say Mass in the church, and people got worried. His housekeeper and some other people went to the rectory and searched all the rooms, but he was gone. His clothes were still in the bedroom closet, and everything else was in its usual apple-pie order. But Baart was gone. The only clue left behind— if you want to call it a clue—was a note, found under a paperweight on his desk. The note was not written in Baart's handwriting—nobody knows who wrote it. To tell the truth, the note was not terribly helpful. It was simply a quotation from Urne-Buriall, which is an essay that was written long, long ago by an Englishman named Sir Thomas Browne. I like the essay—I like it a lot. And I've memorized parts of it. Let me see... I think I can quote for you the passage that was in the note."

  The professor paused and closed his eyes. Then he smiled and nodded and opened his eyes again. "Ah. Ah, yes. I have it. This is the way it goes: 'The man of God lives longer without a Tomb than any by one, invisibly interred by Angels; and adjudged to obscurity, though not without some marks directing human discovery.' "

  The professor paused again. He looked at Johnny. "There! Did you understand any of that?"

  Johnny shook his head.

  The professor sighed. "Well, it's a bit obscure, I must admit. The passage refers to Moses. According to the Bible, when Moses died, his body was carried away by angels and was buried secretly somewhere. Now, what that has to do with Father Baart's disappearance I don't know. But that was the message that was found on his desk after he vanished. He was never seen again... not alive, anyway."

  Johnny looked puzzled. "Do you mean... did they find his body somewhere?"

  The professor shook his head and smiled tantalizingly. "No. I didn't mean that. They never found his body. But he has been seen in St. Michael's Church, several times. Every now and then late on a winter night somebody will be sitting in the back of the church saying the rosary or praying. And then this person will feel a sudden chill and hear a funny noise. And they'll turn around, and there he'll be, big as life!"

  Johnny's mouth dropped open. "Father Baart?"

  The professor nodded. "The same. He was quite a striking-looking person—you'd never mistake him for anybody else. He was short and wore a black cloak, and he had a big head and a jutting chin and lots of grayish hair that he wore long. And an overhanging forehead, and a hawkish nose, and deep-set, burning eyes. So if you're ever in the church late at night, well..."

  "Oh, for pity's sake!" said Grampa, cutting in. "Don't scare the poor kid to death! I'll never get him to go to church with his gramma on Wednesday nights if you carry on like that! By the way, I think it's a shame that a man like that, a priest and all, should have gone over to the devil. Servin' the powers of evil and dark
ness. Can you imagine?"

  The professor twisted his mouth into a wry smile. "It's happened before," he said. "If you read your history, you'll find that some of the great medieval sorcerers were priests. Like Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus. Of course, they stayed on the white magic side... most of the time. But if you fool around with magic, there must be a terrible temptation to call upon the powers of hell. After all, white magic can only do so much. It can't get revenge for you. It can't help you to wipe out an enemy. Only the bad guys can help you with that."

  Silence fell. The story was over, and neither Johnny nor Grampa felt like asking any more questions. The professor gobbled the last piece of fudge, and then he announced that he had to go. It was getting late, and he had papers to correct before he went to bed. Johnny had homework to do, so he went out to the dining room table, turned on the light, and sat down to struggle with the square-root problems he had been given. The front door opened and closed. The professor was gone. Grampa went back to the parlor to get the plates and glasses. On his way to the kitchen he stopped by the table where Johnny was working.

  "Some story, eh?" he said, chuckling. "That old so-and-so sure knows how to scare you, don't he?"

  Johnny looked up. "You mean you don't think it's the truth, Grampa?"

  Grampa looked thoughtful. "Well, I wouldn't go so far as to say that the old boy was feedin' you a line of bull, but... like I say, he loves good stories, and he sure knows how to tell 'em!"

  Johnny felt disappointed. He was not nearly as skeptical as he thought he was. When he heard a good story, he always wanted to believe that it was true. "It... it might be true," he said weakly.

  "Oh, sure," said Grampa with a humorous shrug of his shoulders. "It might be!" He chuckled and went on out to the kitchen with the dishes.

  Johnny struggled a bit with his homework, but he found that his eyes kept closing. Oh, well. He could get up early tomorrow and do it before breakfast. Johnny closed his book and turned off the light. He went to the front door and rattled it, as he always did, and then he started up the steps. Halfway up he paused. There was a tiny square window there, and he liked to peer out of it. He watched the snow fall for a while. He imagined it falling on the cemetery, far away, where his mother lay buried. Sadness welled up in Johnny's heart. Tears sprang to his eyes. He wiped the tears away with his sleeve. Then he turned and climbed on up the stairs to bed.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Days passed. Weeks passed. Nothing very exciting happened to Johnny. He had the usual things to do, like snow shoveling, dish drying, and homework. Johnny went to St. Michael's School, a Catholic grade school in the town of Duston Heights. It was a two-story brick building with a slate roof and a pointed stone arch on the front. At St. Michael's, Johnny was taught by the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. They wore navy-blue robes with black scapulars and black veils. The seventh-grade teacher was Sister Electa. She was nice, most of the time, but she really piled the homework on. Not that Johnny had a lot of trouble with homework. He was a real brain, and everybody at St. Michael's School knew it. Most of the other kids didn't mind that Johnny was smart. They thought it was odd, but they didn't hold it against him. But there was one kid who was really jealous of Johnny. The kid was named Eddie Tompke.

  Eddie was a seventh grader, like Johnny. He lived on a farm outside of town, and as everyone knows, farm work builds up your muscles. Eddie was strong, and he was good-looking. He thought that he owned the world, and he was ready to fight any kid who got in his way. Eddie had problems, though: He was not doing very well in school. His last report card had been all C's and D's, and as a result he had gotten a royal chewing-out from his father. So Eddie was mad a lot of the time now. He was mad at the world in general, but he was particularly mad at Johnny Dixon. Lately Johnny had begun to notice the way Eddie felt about him. Standing in line during lunch hour one day, he had happened to turn around, and he saw Eddie scowling at him. And later Johnny had been standing around on the playground, talking to another kid, and Eddie had walked by and kicked him in the shins for no reason at all. And now, whenever Johnny passed Eddie, Eddie would glower and say things like "I wish I was a brain!" or "It must be great to be a brown nose. Is that how you get those good grades, kid? Because you're the biggest brown nose in the school? Is that how you do it?"

  All this had Johnny worried. He was short and he wore glasses and he was not very strong. Also he was in a new school, and he had not yet made any close friends.

  And he had a very great fear of getting beat up. It was one of his really big fears, like his fear that someday he would step on a nail, get an infected puncture wound, and die of lockjaw. Johnny was always reading things in the paper about people who had gotten "beaten to a pulp" or "beaten beyond recognition," which meant that they had gotten smashed up so badly that no one could tell who they were. Stories like this hit Johnny right in the pit of his stomach. And he wondered, often, whether someday Eddie Tompke might get it into his head to beat him up.

  One cold dark February day Johnny was standing under the big stone arch out in front of St. Michael's School. The school day was over. Everyone else had gone. As usual he was the last kid out of the building. He fiddled with his scarf and adjusted his stocking cap on his head. Johnny was a fussy kid—everything always had to be just so, or it was no good. Finally he was ready to go. Johnny peered out to his right. Oh, no. There was Eddie! He was standing on the corner, talking to some other kid. His back was to Johnny—he hadn't seen him yet. But he would when Johnny came that way, and he had to go that way to get home. Johnny peered quickly around the corner. A narrow alley ran between St. Michael's Church (which stood on the corner) and the school. If he moved fast, Johnny could zip down the alley and get out onto the street in any of three different ways. But for some reason Johnny decided that he would duck into the church. He could say a prayer for his mother and hang around till Eddie went away.

  St. Michael's Church was a tall brick building with a brick steeple on the northeast corner. There were three big, pointed wooden doors at the front of the church. A flight of worn stone steps led up to each one. Johnny headed for the nearest door. It was a short dash, and he made it easily. Now he was tugging at the heavy iron ring. The door swung open. Johnny slipped inside, and the door closed behind him, Clump! Johnny heaved a sigh of relief. He had made it.

  Johnny was standing in the vestibule, which is what the front hall of a church is called. He dipped his fingers in the holy water font, made the sign of the cross, and shoved open one of the inner doors. He was in the main body of the church now. Rows of wooden pews stretched away before him. Overhead arched the high vaulted ceiling. It was painted midnight blue and was powdered with little gold stars. At the far end of the nave was the Communion rail, and beyond it was the altar and the massive carved altarpiece. Johnny liked the old church. It was vast and gloomy and smelled of incense and candle wax. He loved the flickering red sanctuary lamp and the strange pictures on the stained-glass windows. The church was a place where he often went just to sit and get away from the world.

  Johnny walked down the main aisle. His footsteps, though soft, seemed to echo from the high ceiling. When he got to the broad polished steps that led up to the Communion rail, Johnny stopped. With his arms folded over his chest he gazed up admiringly at the altarpiece that the mysterious Mr. Nemo had carved. It was quite a production. Over the altar table rose a three-decker wooden screen with lots of pointed niches in it. Each niche had an elaborately carved hood, and in the niches were wooden statues. The statues were painted all different colors, and gold paint had been used lavishly. The statues in the lower two levels were of saints. There were Saint Peter and Saint Paul and Saint Catherine and Saint Ursula and some nameless saints with swords and palms in their hands. At the top of the screen there were only three statues. These three were angels. One held a trumpet; one held a sword and shield; and one held a golden censer on a chain.

  Johnny went on staring at the altar screen for a while. T
hen he went over to the iron vigil-light rack that stood near the confessional. He lit a candle for his mother, and then he walked down the side aisle and out into the vestibule again. Cautiously Johnny pushed the main door of the church open. He didn't open it far, just a crack. Darn! Eddie was still there!

  Johnny let the door fall softly shut. Now what was he going to do? Gramma would be expecting him—he couldn't stay here forever. There was a back way out, but you had to go up into the sanctuary and out through the sacristy to get to it. And only Father Higgins and the altar boys and the sisters were allowed to go out that way. If Father Higgins caught him going through the sacristy, he would have a fit. Johnny stood, pondering, in the dark vestibule. He felt frustrated; he felt trapped. Then suddenly he had a very strange and interesting idea. He would go have a quick look in the basement.

  Johnny grinned. He was a well-behaved kid most of the time, but he wasn't all that well behaved. Like most kids he enjoyed poking around in places that were forbidden. And he knew he was alone—there wasn't anybody in the church but him. Now was the time!

  Quickly Johnny walked down to the far end of the vestibule. Now he was standing under the belfry. Overhead was a wooden ceiling with holes in it: the bell ropes hung through the holes. There was the dark, varnished wooden staircase that led up to the choir loft. And under the staircase, set in a paneled wall, was a narrow door with a black china knob. It led down to the basement. Johnny paused. He was thinking about the ghost of Father Baart. What if he appeared now? Or what if he suddenly materialized in the dark basement? Johnny shrugged and forced himself to smile. Hadn't Grampa told him that the professor's story was really a lot of hooey? Sure. There was nothing to worry about.

  Johnny put his hand on the knob. He twisted, and the door opened easily. Mr. Famagusta, the janitor, was supposed to keep this door locked. But, as Johnny well knew, Mr. Famagusta was a rather careless man. Johnny put his foot on the first step, and then he pulled it back. He needed something... ah! There it was! The flash-light! Johnny had heard Mr. Famagusta say that there was no electric light in the church basement. And, sure enough, on a little dusty ledge near the door was a small and rather battered flashlight. Johnny picked it up, snapped it on, and started down.