The Doom of the Haunted Opera Page 6

  “I want you to back up to the main road,” Rose Rita said, her voice shaky. “Don’t take your eyes off me until you get there. And when I tell you, look straight at the gate. Tell me if she’s gone.”

  “B-but there she is on the tombstone!” chattered Lewis.

  “There may be more than one.”

  Lewis backed away, step after terrified step. He could not fight off the feeling that a hideous stone hand would close on his shoulder at any moment. But somehow he made it to the dirt road. “I’m here,” he called, his voice shrill with dread.

  “Look at the gate.”

  Lewis had to wrench his gaze downhill. His heart leaped. “She’s not there!”

  “Keep your eyes on the gate,” Rose Rita yelled. “I’m coming toward you.” Lewis heard her blundering, and in a moment she bumped into him. “I can still see her,” said Rose Rita in a dismal voice. “But when we move downhill, I’ll lose sight of her. You keep your eyes on the gate. I’ll look back this way. If she can’t let us see her move, we should be all right.”

  They inched downhill so slowly that Lewis thought they were hardly moving at all. He did not dare to blink. His feet scuffed the damp dirt. His eyes ached and watered. Closer and closer they came, until they were actually under the arch. “Get on your bike!” Rose Rita yelled. She leaped for hers too.

  Lewis clambered on and found the pedals. They started away from the cemetery. From behind them grew a horrible, vicious snarl, like the frustrated cry of a hungry wolf whose prey had been just a little too fast. They flew down through the park and over the brook, and at last Rose Rita stopped and turned. “I think we’re safe now. I don’t think it can come out of the graveyard.”

  Lewis looked up the hill. He could not be sure, but he thought he saw a crouching shadow just inside the archway. “Why is it there?” he asked, his teeth clicking as if he were freezing.

  “It’s to keep us from getting in, I guess,” said Rose Rita. “Or maybe,” she swallowed hard, “maybe to keep the dead from getting out.”

  “What are we gonna do?” asked Lewis in agony.

  “We need help,” replied Rose Rita. “But who? I could tell my parents, but you know how they are.”

  Lewis nodded. George Pottinger was a nice man at heart, but he tended to be grumpy and skeptical. And Louise Pottinger was a kindly, absentminded woman who did not believe half the things Rose Rita told her anyway.

  “How about your grandpa?” asked Lewis. “He might believe us.”

  Rose Rita shook her head. “He went to stay at my uncle’s farm for the weekend. With this incredible fog, he couldn’t have gotten back.” She bit her lip. “I think old Vanderhelm has cast some kind of goofy spell over the grown-ups in town too. Half of them won’t believe us, and the other half are probably under Vanderhelm’s power.”

  Lewis had been thinking. “I know some grown-ups who’ll listen. The Capharnaum County Magicians Society!”

  “That’s right!” said Rose Rita. “Why didn’t I think of that? Do you know who they are?”

  Lewis smiled. “My uncle is the treasurer, and he has the club ledger in his desk. It has a list of everyone who’s paid dues and who hasn’t, and all the names and addresses are right there in the front.”

  “Well, let’s go!”

  Their bikes fairly flew on the way back to 100 High Street. They pulled up in front of the old stone mansion and went pounding up the steps. The front door was locked, which meant Mrs. Holtz was probably out shopping. But Lewis had his own key. He and Rose Rita hurried to the study, and Lewis rummaged in the desk drawer until he pulled out a tall, skinny book, bound in green cloth, its corners reinforced with triangles of brown leather. He plopped it down on the desk and opened it, running his finger down a list of names. “Here!” he said. “Mrs. Zenobia Weatherly. She’s the president of the society, and she lives over on West River Avenue.”

  “Call her,” said Rose Rita. “Her number’s 707.”

  Lewis tried, but the operator told him that the number had been disconnected. He hung up with a sinking heart. He and Rose Rita wrote down Mrs. Weatherly’s address, and the names and addresses of the society vice president and secretary. Then they went outside, climbed on their bikes, and rode over to West River Avenue.

  They pulled up short at the place where Mrs. Weatherly was supposed to live. The house at 796 was a green clapboard cottage; the one at 800 was a neat white bungalow with a frisky fox terrier romping in front as two boys tossed a ball for him to fetch. Between them, where number 798 should have been, was a weed-choked vacant lot. From the knee-high yellow grass and dried stalks of lady’s slipper, burdock, and other wild plants that grew, it would appear that no house had ever been built there.

  Rose Rita and Lewis paused outside the picket fence where the kids were playing with the dog. They must have been twins, about eight years old, with identical blond crew cuts and tough faces. “Hey,” called Rose Rita pleasantly, “can you tell us about Mrs. Weatherly?”

  “Huh?” one of the boys asked. He came over and clung to the picket fence, looking over the points at Rose Rita and Lewis. “Mrs. Whosis?” he said.

  “Mrs. Zenobia Weatherly,” explained Rose Rita. “She’s supposed to live next door at 798. Did she move or something?”

  “You’re crazy,” the kid said. “Nobody lives next door. Nobody’s ever lived next door. Just that old stinky lot there.” He swung off the fence and grabbed the ball. “C’mon, Tommy,” he said. “We’ll go an’ play in the backyard, away from these crazy people.” He ran around the side of the house.

  The other boy, who did not appear as tough as his brother, lingered a moment. He looked at Lewis and Rose Rita with round, frightened blue eyes. “I thought somebody lived there,” he whispered. “An ol’ lady with gray hair. An’ her house was a big brick place with a tower. But everybody says I just dreamed that.” Then he ran after his brother.

  Lewis and Rose Rita stared at each other. In a grave voice Rose Rita asked, “Who’s next on the list?”

  They checked the addresses where the vice president and the secretary were supposed to live, but the outcome was the same. Instead of houses, they found weedy vacant lots and the neighbors insisted that no houses had ever been there, although one old man looked troubled and uncertain even as he was shooing Lewis and Rose Rita away. The two rode their bikes over to St. George’s Church, where Lewis attended Mass. They rested in the side yard of the church, sitting on a cool stone bench beneath a maple tree. “He’s outfoxed us,” admitted Rose Rita. “Old Vanderhelm didn’t miss a trick. Somehow or other, he’s done away with all the members of the Capharnaum County Magicians Society who might have helped us.”

  “Done away with them?” squeaked Lewis. “You don’t mean—”

  Rose Rita pushed her glasses into place on her nose and shrugged. “I don’t think he’s killed them, if that’s what you’re worried about. But he’s sealed them off, somehow, just like he’s sealed off the town. They’re probably in their houses right now, wondering why it’s foggy all around their yards and why they can’t get to the store to buy a pound of butter.”

  “I hope so,” said Lewis. He could hardly bear to think of what else might have happened to them. What if the spell had turned them into frogs or mice? What if they and their houses had been sent off to some bizarre planet, where the population was all made up of Mud Men and Bird Men and Tree Men, like in the Flash Gordon movie serials the Bijou sometimes showed on Saturday mornings? What if they found themselves in a world of horrible, living, changing stone statues? Or—Lewis tried to swallow the painful lump in his throat—or what if the spell had somehow just erased them, removed them from the world as if they had never existed?

  “Well,” said Rose Rita, breaking his gloomy train of thought, “I guess there’s only one thing to do. I’ll have to tell my mother about this. Would you come with me?”

  “S-sure,” Lewis said. “You know I will.”

  Rose Rita sighed. “Thanks. Mom is all right, b
ut she thinks everything I tell her is a lie.” After a moment she added in a small voice, “I guess I tell her too many stories.”

  Lewis realized that Rose Rita was on the verge of tears, and that shook him up more than anything else. Rose Rita was a very brave person. Unlike her, when Lewis thought danger was around, he dithered and worried and expected terrible things to happen before anything really began. He cleared his throat and said, “Hey, that’s all right, Rose Rita. I like your stories.”

  “I’ll remember that when I’m a famous writer,” she mumbled. “Well, let’s go. No use putting it off anymore.”

  They rode over to Mansion Street. “Mom!” Rose Rita yelled as they went inside. “Hey, Mom!”

  There was no answer. The house had that deserted feeling that houses get when no one is around. They went into the kitchen. There on the counter beside the refrigerator was a cookie jar in the shape of a fat, laughing clown, and under the cookie jar was a sheet of blue-lined notebook paper. Rose Rita pulled it out and read it. “Oh, no,” she groaned. “Now what are we gonna do?”

  Lewis took the note from her and read it:

  Dear Rosie,

  I may not be back until late, so please have your father’s dinner heated up for him. The leftover meat loaf is in the refrigerator, and you can open a can of something. That wonderful Mr. Vanderhelm called me today. Someone told him that I sing in the church choir, and he says he has just the role for me in his grandfather’s opera. I agreed to come and try out, and I may be gone for awhile. Imagine me right up there on stage! Of course he may not like my voice after he hears me, but it’s thrilling just to be asked. Wish me luck, dear.

  The note was signed, “Love, Mother.” Lewis let the paper fall from his numb fingers. “He knows about us,” he told Rose Rita, fighting down the urge to scream. “That’s why he called your mom, because we’ve been out looking for help. He’s making sure we can’t do anything to stop him!”

  For a moment the two looked helplessly at each other. Then they both burst into frightened tears.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Here they are,” said Lewis. He pulled a half-dozen large volumes from the special shelf where Jonathan Barnavelt kept his collection of magical books. Lewis had given his word that he would not disturb them, but this was an emergency, and anyway, the ones Lewis was taking weren’t really about magic. They were tall, thick, clothbound books, made up of typewritten pages held together by inch-long brads that fastened the pages to the green covers. On the front of each book was a round gilt emblem with an Aladdin’s lamp in the center. Stamped below it were the words TRANSACTIONS OF THE CAPHARNAUM COUNTY MAGICIANS SOCIETY. Beneath was a pair of dates. The first volume covered 1859-1880, the second one 1881-1900, and so on.

  Lewis opened the volume dated 1918-1927. His uncle had showed him a couple of entries in these books before. They were mostly just records of the meetings. Lewis had seen an entry from 1932 that recorded Jonathan Barnavelt’s admission to the society after he had successfully eclipsed the moon. Jonathan had also shown him one from 1922 that announced Mrs. Zimmermann’s return from Europe with her husband, Honus. Now Lewis and Rose Rita were looking for something that might be a clue to what they were fighting.

  Their earlier crying spell had not lasted long. Standing in her kitchen, Rose Rita got angry. “I am not going to let old Vanderhelm win,” she vowed. “Magic music and magic statues, and no matter what else he has on his side, we’re going to fight him. Now let’s think up something we can do.”

  They stood side by side staring at the yellowing pages of the Magicians Society records. “This is hard,” complained Rose Rita. “It’s just a carbon copy, and it’s old and smudged and I can barely read it.”

  Lewis switched on the desk lamp. The ancient print had faded to a pale gray, so it was like trying to read through foggy glass. “Let’s just look for any mention of Vanderhelm,” he said. He turned the fragile pages and the two friends read.

  Most of what they found was ordinary stuff about elections and charity work. But then they came to May 1919, and the name “Vanderhelm” seemed to jump off the page at them. They both leaned down and bumped heads so hard that Lewis saw stars. “Ow!” he yelped. “Hey, cut it out. This is my uncle’s book. You sit down and I’ll read it to you.”

  Rubbing her forehead and scowling, Rose Rita seated herself in a comfortable green armchair. Lewis settled into his uncle’s desk chair and read silently through several pages, ignoring Rose Rita’s repeated pleas of “Come on! What’s it say?”

  Finally he whistled and looked up with frightened eyes. “This is awful,” he said in an unsteady voice.

  “What is it?” Rose Rita said. “Lewis Barnavelt, if you don’t tell me this second, I’ll never be your friend again as long as I live!”

  “Okay,” said Lewis. “Well, Immanuel Vanderhelm came to New Zebedee back in the winter of 1918, but nobody paid much attention to him. He was quiet, and also the whole town was down with a flu epidemic, just like your grandfather told us, and I guess most people were too miserable to care. But in April or May of 1919, he announced that he had written this opera and wanted to direct it. So the townspeople began to try out for it, just like they’re doing now. Then the theater manager, Mr. Finster, came to see Mr. Mickleberry. This part was written by Mr. Mickleberry himself. Here, I’ll read it out loud.”

  Lewis flipped back a couple of leaves and then began:

  Mr. Finster knew that my stage magic was not all illusion, and he came to me for advice. He told me that he had a “feeling” that Immanuel Vanderhelm was not what he seemed. I agreed to meet the man and see what I thought.

  We met for lunch at Schuyler’s Restaurant. I shall never forget the shock of seeing that sinister man. I tried St. Aloysius’ Sigil of Revelation, but he countered with some diabolical spell of concealment, and I could learn nothing. However, our meeting proved to me that Vanderhelm was a powerful and evil wizard.

  Later, by ways too tedious to detail here, I determined that Vanderhelm had gathered the necessary materials to create a simulacrum of the living, though I cannot understand why he would do such a thing. However, the worst came when Mr. Finster showed me some pages of the opera. It was clearly a magical incantation, and one so complex that it would require many voices to complete. Then I knew that the performance was a sham. Vanderhelm had recovered the ghastly necromantic spell that John Dee mentions as “The Incantation of Unbinding the Dead.” He meant to trick the people of New Zebedee into singing this diabolical magical spell, and then he would become King of the Dead. Soon after I learned this, Mr. Finster disappeared (and I dread to think what has been done to him).

  Lewis looked up. Rose Rita was frowning. “‘King of the Dead,’” she repeated slowly. “Wasn’t that what the ghost said?”

  Lewis nodded. “I won’t read it all, but the magicians got together and surrounded the theater when Immanuel Vanderhelm was there alone. Mr. Mickleberry went in to see him. There was some kind of wizard’s duel between them. This doesn’t go into any details, but at the end everyone thought Vanderhelm was dead. To be safe, the society persuaded the town to close the theater. Some things aren’t explained. For instance, nobody ever found Mr. Finster or learned what had happened to him.”

  “Does it give the spell the good magicians used?” asked Rose Rita.

  “No,” replied Lewis. “And what good would it do? We’re not magicians. And this time Henry Vanderhelm has taken care of all the good magicians in town first.”

  Rose Rita’s glare was teary behind her spectacles. “You think rotten old Vanderhelm has us licked, don’t you? Well, I don’t! I don’t know how, but I’m going to save Mom from his clutches, and keep him from conducting his creepy old opera, and ch-chase him out of town—” She broke off and began to cry.

  Lewis had a helpless, wretched sensation of dread. “Maybe we can do something,” he muttered. “There has to be some way.”

  Rose Rita blew her nose. “What time is it?” she mumbled.
>
  Lewis looked at his watch. “Five after three.”

  “I have to go home,” Rose Rita said. “Mom asked me to make Dad’s dinner, and he’ll be home at four. You want to ride over with me?” When Lewis hesitated, Rose Rita almost pleaded: “After what happened in the cemetery, I’m scared. Please.”

  “Okay,” said Lewis, but his heart was in his shoes. If Rose Rita was afraid, where did that leave him? Rose Rita was the brave one. He was just a worrywart. He got on his bike and rode beside Rose Rita down to Mansion Street.

  When he returned, Mrs. Holtz still wasn’t home, which was unusual. Normally she would not spend more than an hour or so shopping. Lewis tried the radio again, but just as he expected, he could only pick up WNZB.

  He sat in the green armchair and tried hard to think of something to do. The study was warm and drowsy, and before he knew it, Lewis drifted into an exhausted sleep. He woke with a start hours later and saw that night had fallen. Edgy and afraid, he left the study and went looking for Mrs. Holtz. She still was not home, and by now she should have been cooking dinner.

  Lewis called Rose Rita and told her that he was all alone. “Dad’s home,” she said, “but Mom’s still at the stupid audition. You want to come over here?”

  “Okay,” Lewis said. Anything was better than sitting in the huge old Barnavelt house all by himself, jumping at every creak of wood or whisper of wind. He got his coat and went out front. Just as he was wheeling his bike down to the street, he heard a woman laughing.

  Lewis squinted into the darkness. There was a streetlight between his house and Mrs. Zimmermann’s next door, and the next light was a couple of houses away, each one casting a little yellowish island of illumination under it, leaving everything else dark. Two people walked into the cone of light down the street, and Lewis gasped as he recognized them. One was Mrs. Holtz, and the other was Henry Vanderhelm.