Drum, the Doll, and the Zombie Page 9

  Professor Childermass felt cold sweat creeping over his face. His heart was thudding like mad, and his mind shrieked for him to run away from this stretched-out monstrosity. Yet he forced himself to smile. "No, no," he said softly. "You are held in check by magic stronger than you are. You can't get to me—but, my friend, I am going to settle your hash right now!"

  He pulled from his pocket a brown knotted cord, stiff with beeswax. The creature hissed again when it saw what he held. It clawed at the air as if it wished to attack him. "Now, then," said Professor Childermass grimly, "here we go. And may I say first that you deserve this for having the audacity to take on the twisted likeness of my poor friend." Then the professor chanted something in French, which he spoke fluently, and the monster's eyes blazed its defiant malice. "As you are tied to the soul of Dr. Charles Coote," finished the professor, "this cord binds your evil power to you. In the names of all the holy saints, of the blessed Virgin Mary, and of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, I conjure you to release your hold on this man's soul. Behold, I undo the power that gives you shape and form and strength!" He untied one of the twenty-one knots of his cord, holding it so the creature could see.

  It moaned softly and staggered. The spell was working! With grim satisfaction, the professor said the last part of his spell again and then untied another knot, and then another one. Each time, the creature reeled as if in pain, and before he untied each knot, the professor repeated his conjuration. He tried to sound bold and confident, but he grew more and more alarmed. He knew that each knot he untied hurt the creature more. If he could torment it to the point of releasing its hold on Charles Coote's soul, the cord and the vévé would have no more power to hold the monster, and it would be free to attack him. On the other hand, if it stubbornly refused to yield its grip on Dr. Coote until the professor undid the last knot, then the evil creature would die. It would die— and take Dr. Coote's soul with it, leaving him bedridden for the rest of his life. Professor Childermass was fighting a savage war of wills, and gambling that he could force the monster to give in before he had to untie that very last knot.

  Fifteen knots remained, then twelve, then seven. Now Professor Childermass' hands were shaking with strain. His eyes stung as sweat rolled into them, and his voice kept piping high with dread. But he continued relentlessly. The beastly creature had dropped to crouch on all fours, its hate-filled eyes glaring at the professor as it gasped for air and hissed its anger. The seventh knot was undone! With a sinking heart, Professor Childermass repeated his command, and began to untie the sixth—

  And the creature collapsed! The candles burned a sickly blue for a moment, then went out. Curls of smoke rose from the extinguished wicks. The professor groaned, horrified. Had he killed his friend? Had he—

  "Roderick?" asked a weak voice. "My God, is it Roderick?"

  Professor Childermass shouted in joy. Dr. Coote was sitting up in bed, trembling, his voice weak, his eyes wide and wild, but he was awake. Then another sound, a horrible mindless growl, stopped the professor's rejoicing and brought his heart into his mouth. The pillow thing had risen into a crouch again, and its mad, empty eyes blazed. Now that it no longer possessed a human soul, it was free to ignore all the professor's magical restraints. With a savage roar it leaped—and before the professor could reach for the holy-water sprinkler, it slammed into his chest, knocking him back. His head banged painfully against the wall, and his glasses flew off. The horrible creature's talons closed on the professor's throat, and the mouth split open to reveal hundreds of needle-sharp teeth.

  The professor ducked just in time, and the teeth clicked on air. "Help!" shouted the professor as he sank to the floor. The monster weighed very little, but it had the writhing, squeezing strength of a python. Its legs clenched the professor, and its long, taloned fingers pressed hard, cutting off his air. He feebly tried to beat the brute away, but his hands flopped weakly on its horrible cold slimy sides, and it took no notice of his blows. He tried to grab its wrists, but its skin was as slick as the surface of a slug, and he could get no grip on the thing's arms. "Charley," gasped the professor desperately. "The holy water—"

  The creature cut off his wind, and everything began to go dark. The professor rolled on the floor, knocking over the candlesticks, and came to rest with the monster perched on his chest, bending low, opening its grinning mouth to rip out his throat. The professor could see only dimly, through a billowing black fog. He could not get his breath, or even scream. Then he felt moisture, like a shower of rain—and the monster howled!

  Dr. Coote crouched on the foot of his bed like the White Rock girl on her stone. He clutched the holy-water container, and he sprinkled for dear life while he recited the Lord's Prayer in English. The creature let go its hold on the professor's throat and lurched away, trying to shield itself from the deadly spray of water. "Attaboy, Charley!" croaked the professor, crawling away from the monster. "Give it to him! Three cheers and a tiger for the good guys!"

  More holy water hit the thing, and with a bawl it suddenly exploded. Feathers flew everywhere, a blizzard of pillow stuffing. The professor staggered up, retrieved his glasses, and whooped. A trembling and exhausted Dr. Coote sat back on the bed, his face white. Only then did both men hear the pounding on the door. Professor Childermass had taken the precaution of locking it, and now the nurses were clamoring to get in. The professor rose, brushed stray feathers off himself, and strode to the door. He threw it open to find two wide-eyed nurses staring in. "Yes?" he demanded. "What is the idea of all this noise? This is a hospital, you know, ladies. There are sick people present!"

  The nurses gawked at his attire. One red bandanna hung rakishly on his head. More bandannas encircled his stomach. White feathers had settled behind his ears, on top of his head, and on his shoulders. More floated in the air and drifted in heaps across the floor. Behind the professor Dr. Coote was sitting up in bed, trying to figure out how to take the feeding tube out of his nose.

  "What—what—what is going on here?" the older nurse finally stammered.

  Professor Childermass drew himself up. "What does it look like?" he retorted in a crabby voice. "I came to cure my good friend, Dr. Coote, and I have done so. Where your so-called modern medicine failed, I have succeeded. I knew just what he needed all along!"

  "What was that?" squawked the dumbfounded nurse.

  "A good, old-fashioned, rousing pillow fight!" roared the professor. He reached out and slammed the door right in her face.

  Between Dr. Coote's remarkable recovery and Professor Childermass' bellowing insistence, the hospital happily released the patient within the hour. Professor Childermass helped Dr. Coote into the professor's bedraggled old tweed topcoat, because except for his striped pajamas and slippers, Dr. Coote had no clothes of his own at the hospital. The professor helped his old friend downstairs. Dr. Coote was very unsteady on his feet and very lightheaded, though for the first time in many weeks he felt his old self. Then the professor drove his Pontiac up to the hospital door and eased Dr. Coote into the passenger seat.

  As they roared off for Durham, the professor hastily filled Dr. Coote in on what had been happening. "So," he finished, "we are not out of the woods yet. That hag still has a devil doll in your likeness. My ritual will protect you temporarily, but unless we can find and destroy the doll, she will be able to make you helpless again."

  "There is an alternative," said Dr. Coote grimly. "You know, a magician's spells are all broken when he or she dies."

  For a moment somber silence filled the car, and then the professor sighed. "It's too bad that neither one of us is a murderer," he said.

  Dr. Coote grunted his agreement.

  In a few minutes the professor turned the Pontiac in at Dr. Coote's driveway. He got out and went around to help his friend into the house. "That's funny," said Professor Childermass. "Young Lamort should have arrived here by now with the boys, but the house seems to be empty."

  "Who?" asked Dr. Coote.

  "Todd La
mort," replied the professor tartly. "You remember your own graduate students, don't you?" He put the key in the lock.

  "Roderick, I have never had a graduate student named Todd Lamort in my life," said Dr. Coote in a querulous voice.

  "You are out of your head," answered the professor. "He is the nicest young man I have met in many a moon—Oh, my God!"

  He had opened the door, and both he and Dr. Coote stood transfixed. All the furniture had been taken out of Dr. Coote's living room. Ugly idols and hideous masks hung all over the walls. And on the floor they saw a sinister tracing of red, white, and black lines, making an image like this:

  "I know what that is," croaked Dr. Coote in a terrified voice.

  "So do I," responded the professor. "It's a voudon symbol. Someone has turned your house into a temple of evil!"

  Dr. Coote's voice trembled with fear and outrage as he asked, "What fiend would do such a thing?"

  Slowly, Professor Childermass put both his hands over his face. "Oh, God forgive me," he moaned. "Charley, I think I have turned Johnny and Byron over to the forces of darkness!" And he began to cry helplessly, uncontrollably, like a man overcome with terrible grief and guilt.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  "For heaven's sake, Roderick," said Dr. Coote anxiously as the two men stood in the empty, echoing room. "Get a grip on yourself, please! I don't feel very strong, and I've never been good at facing danger, and I have weak legs—"

  "D-don't you understand?" wailed Professor Childermass, still weeping wretchedly. "I have g-given those t-two boys to a m-monster! Who knows wh-what he m-may—" He began to sob again.

  Dr. Coote grabbed the professor by both shoulders and shook him feebly. It did no good. "Very well," Dr. Coote said at last, his voice dripping with scorn. "Be a big crybaby. I am going to help the boys. You can stay here and snivel—you pompous, swaggering old windbag!"

  Professor Childermass' face flamed red at once as outrage boiled in his eyes. "How dare you insult me, Charley!" he demanded. "If this is the thanks I get for stuffing your shabby soul back into your miserable Episcopalian carcass, then I wish I'd just let old Slimy Scales take the fool thing. I have never been addressed that way in my entire life!" He raised his fists and began to dance around the bare floor like Jack Dempsey, the great heavyweight boxer. "I'll fight you now or later! I'll flatten you like a pin pricking a soap bubble! Get ready to taste canvas, you palooka, you!"

  "Good," snorted Dr. Coote, turning his back and hobbling away toward the stairs. "If you are angry, you are at least in the mood to do something. Right now you can help me upstairs so I can get some decent clothes on. Next we'll see about rescuing those boys, and when we've finished that, you can floor me with your haymaker, if you think you can, you old potbellied buzzard!"

  Professor Childermass was so angry, he could not speak. He glared at the evil voudon design on the floor, and then he began to do a furious tap dance on it, kicking puffs and swathes of colored meal this way and that. He began to rage: "Take that! And that! You miserable, misbegotten magical markings, I'll snuff you out, one by one!" Then he went tearing around the room, ripping the idols and masks off the walls. He leaped on each one, splintering it to fragments. At last he stood amid the wreckage, panting and grinning ferociously.

  Dr. Coote had paused halfway up the stairs and was sitting there, trying to gather strength to go up. He looked on the carnage with wry interest. "Feel better now?" he asked.

  "I feel great!" roared the professor. "Charley, thanks for shaking me up. I needed that! We may be two old geezers, but by God, we are two tough old geezers! Remember the Alamo! Remember the Maine!"

  "Remember my clothes," said Dr. Coote forlornly. "I am freezing my tail feathers."

  Professor Childermass helped Dr. Coote totter upstairs. In a few minutes Dr. Coote was warmly bundled into thick gray flannel trousers, a soft blue flannel shirt, a bulky cable-knit black sweater, and his comfortable old brogans. Then he was hungry, so the professor helped him down to the kitchen. Professor Childermass hesitated for a moment or two before he went to the basement to light the furnace. He remembered too well the horrible zombie that had lurked there. But he gathered his nerve, went downstairs and got the furnace going, and took the time to investigate all the nooks and crannies. There was no zombie.

  He returned to the kitchen and rummaged through the larder and refrigerator. He decided that even Todd Lamort, whom he now regarded as a devil incarnate, could not do anything terribly evil to a sealed can of soup. So he heated two cans of Campbell's vegetable beef soup and got two squat brown bottles of Drewry's, Dr. Coote's favorite beer, from the refrigerator. Dr. Coote perked up as he ate, and the professor felt much better after the meal too. "What do we do now?" Dr. Coote asked as he pushed the bowl away from him. "Where will that awful Lamort have taken the boys?"

  "Ask me something easy," growled Professor Childermass.

  Dr. Coote shook his head. "Really, Roderick, I don't want to be critical, but you should have known better. After all, with a name like Todd Lamort—"

  The professor clapped his hand to his head. "Oh, by the hopeful hoplites of Hammurabi!" he bellowed. "Tod means 'death' in German, and la mort is 'death' in French! How blind a bat can one old fool be? That—that fiend of a graduate student snookered me. If I had him here, I'd—I'd grind his bones to make my bread! I'd—" The professor broke off, his angry expression becoming thoughtful. "Wait a minute!" he shouted. He dragged his wallet out and frantically dug through it, scattering things left and right: A color photograph of his eccentric brother Humphrey, two ticket stubs from a movie he and Johnny had seen a year ago, a 1927 Vermont fishing license— and then he found it. He triumphantly waved a business card. "The biter has been bit! Lamort gave me his telephone number!"

  Armed with that information, the professor flew into action. He picked up Dr. Coote's phone and dialed the operator. After some bullying and a good deal of coaxing, he scribbled something on a piece of paper. He slammed the receiver down and exulted, "He gave us his phone number, and now the phone company has given us his address!"

  "Let's see," said Dr. Coote, holding out his thin hand. He frowned at the writing. "Hmpf. Peculiar—very peculiar. I know roughly where this is, but I can't think of any house on that road. It's near the old ruined Colonial cemetery—oh, of course! There is a deserted farmhouse there. It's little more than a tarpaper shack."

  "That has to be it," replied the professor. "Mama Sinestra would want to be close to a boneyard to gather her evil forces." He pushed himself away from the table. "Let's go, Charley. Time's a-wastin'."

  Dr. Coote wearily shook his head. "Not so fast, Roderick. Settle down, and let's consider this rationally."

  "But the boys—"

  "The boys," said Dr. Coote in a firm voice, "will be all right as long as we have something that Mama Sinestra and Todd Lamort want. And we do. The drum, in case you have forgotten."

  Professor Childermass sank back into his chair. "Heavenly days, McGee! I had forgotten the cursed thing."

  "Yes," said Dr. Coote. "And if you can manage to listen for a minute, you may learn a thing or two. To begin with, before I fell ill, I discovered some interesting bits of information about voudon and especially about the Priests of the Midnight Blood."

  "Then tell me," said the professor. "And don't make me draw it out of you inch by inch, Charley."

  Dr. Coote sipped his beer straight from the bottle and told a remarkable and sinister story. The Priests of the Midnight Blood, he said, were a group of voudon sorcerers led by none other than Corinne LeGrande, better known as Mama Sinestra. Their symbol was a red drop of blood in a circle, with a white teardrop-shaped highlight in the blood drop. The two superimposed shapes resembled the hands of a clock pointing straight up—a reference to the name of the group, the Midnight Blood priesthood.

  These people had gained their wicked reputation on the island of St. Ives and their diabolic name by sacrificing one human life a day, for a whole year, to the powers of da
rkness. Three hundred sixty-five times they had slit the throats of their poor victims. Midnight after midnight they had spilled the innocent blood of men, women, and children to attract and gain control over demonic forces. And they had used their dark magic for many years to keep the LeGrande family on the throne. Because the Priests of the Midnight Blood dealt with deadly forces, they were the leaders of the Cult of the Baron. Baron Samedi, the Lord of the Dead, could be summoned by the beating of drums, and he granted the abominable wishes of the priesthood. Under his rule zombies walked by night, snuffing out the lives of all who opposed the harsh rule of General LeGrande.

  However, a small resistance movement had begun after World War II, and Dr. Coote said that the young man who had given him the drum was no doubt a member of that resistance. "The very morning I fell so dreadfully ill," Dr. Coote explained, "I had a phone call from the New Orleans police. They had discovered the body of a man who fit the description of the unfortunate young fellow who passed the drum along to me. He had a program from the academic conference in his pocket and he had circled my name. The police say his body was— well, he had been savagely killed. And they discovered his name was Francois Devereaux, and he was, until recently, the valet to General Hippolyte LeGrande, of St. Ives."