Spell of the Sorcerer's Skull (6 page)

Fergie's voice cut in on Johnny's thoughts. "Hey, Dixon!" he hissed. "We better get outa here! I mean, those cops might decide to come back in and have another look around. Didja find anything?"

Johnny sighed. "Nope. Not much. I'm gonna take this drawing back with us. It might be a clue. You're right, though—we better make ourselves scarce. C'mon!"

 

 

 

CHAPTER FOUR

 

 

That afternoon Fergie and Johnny got together down at the public library. They were supposed to be doing their homework, but they were actually there to compare notes about their visit to the professor's study. Naturally they couldn't sit in the main reading room and babble at each other. So they went to the upper level of the stacks, where they could stand behind the rows of iron bookshelves and talk in a fairly normal tone of voice. Unfortunately, they soon found that they really did not have a lot to discuss. Fergie had found absolutely nothing, and Johnny had only come up with two things that he thought were of any importance: the pen and the drawing. Fergie was not impressed by either of these "clues."

"So what if he did mash up the point of his pen?" he asked in a bored tone. "Everybody knows he's got a rotten temper. You told me he throws dishes sometimes when he gets mad."

"Yeah, but the dishes are from the ten-cent store," Johnny replied. "He never breaks anything that he really likes. And he was crazy about that pen. He used to keep it in a special case in his desk. It's wrecked now—didja see the way the point looked?" Johnny crossed the index finger and the middle finger of his right hand to show how the two parts of the gold-plated nib had gotten crossed. "He would
never
have done that on purpose!" Johnny added insistently.

"So how do you think the pen got busted?" Fergie asked.

Johnny shrugged. "I dunno."

There was an awkward pause, and then Johnny spoke up again.

"I think that drawing I showed you might be the only real clue we have. But I can't figure out what it means."

Fergie shrugged. "Oh, what the heck, let's see it, Dixon. Didja bring it with you?"

"Uh huh." Johnny took his Latin book out from under his arm. He opened it and pulled out a folded square of lined yellow paper. Unfolding it carefully, he handed the drawing to Fergie.

Fergie examined the picture, humming all the while. Suddenly he snapped his fingers. "Hey! I bet I know what this is! It's a
rebus!
You know what a rebus is?"

Johnny felt insulted. He was proud of all the obscure facts that he knew, and he knew about rebuses. A rebus was when you used objects and letters to represent somebody's name. Rebuses appeared in coats of arms, like the two gates (two-door) that were used as a symbol for the royal house of Tudor.

"Yeah, I know about rebuses, an' I probably know more about 'em than you do!" said Johnny irritably. "So what does this represent? Huh?"

Fergie smiled smugly. "Well, there's an
L
and there's a vine. Put 'em together and you get L-vine.
Levine!
Smart, eh?"

Johnny thought about this for a bit. "Ye-ah, it
might
be... " he said slowly. "But where does that get us? I don't think I ever heard the professor mention anybody named Levine. I would've remembered it if he had."

Fergie looked disappointed. But he persisted. "Okay, so you never heard of anybody he knew that was named Levine. So what does that prove? Maybe some guy outa his deep dark past, some gangster named Itchy Thumb Levine, came an' kidnapped him, because the prof owed him some dough. Makes sense, doesn't it?"

Johnny turned to Fergie wearily. The look on his face showed total despair. "You still don't believe I saw his face in that mirror, do you?" he asked. "You just can't admit that it could've been a ghost or a wizard that took the professor away. You've gotta have some kind of one hundred percent proof, or you won't believe
anything!"

Fergie stared at the floor. "I think we oughta go down an' finish our homework," he muttered. "We're not gettin' anywhere on this thing!"

"No, I guess we're not," said Johnny gloomily. He was up against a stone wall, and he knew it. He felt angry at Fergie for being so skeptical. Johnny was utterly convinced that he had seen the professor's anguished face in that bedroom mirror. It hadn't been a panicky hallucination or the result of bad nerves or anything like that. But even if Fergie had accepted Johnny's version of the story, where would that leave them? Nowhere. Absolutely nowhere.

 

Days passed. Weeks passed. The professor became a Missing Person. His picture was shown on TV and printed in the newspapers. His description was read aloud on the radio several times a day. Ponds and rivers were dragged, and forests were searched. But no leads turned up. He hadn't taken his car—it was still parked in his garage. Most of his clothes were still hanging in his bedroom closet. His suitcases gathered dust in his attic. Wherever he had gone to, he had taken the clothes on his back and not much more.

As time went by Johnny began to miss the professor a lot. It was as if a big piece of his life had been swept away. He missed the professor's cranky comments on everything under the sun. He missed the chocolate cakes and the chess games and the long discussions about history and war and politics and life in general. He missed this strange, eccentric, good-hearted old man who had been such a wonderful friend to him. Every day as he walked home from school Johnny would stop and stare at the professor's house. It looked shut up, abandoned. The blinds were drawn, and already some kid in the neighborhood had taken good aim with a rock and had broken an attic window. Sometimes Johnny would stare up at the ridiculous, ramshackle radio aerial on the roof of the cupola. The professor had built it so he could pick up the Red Sox broadcasts better. Whenever he saw the aerial, tears sprang to Johnny's eyes. And then he felt angry and frustrated and wished he were able to wave a magic wand and summon the professor back from wherever he was. But he couldn't do that, and more and more, as the days passed, he began to feel that the old man was probably gone for good.

 

One Tuesday early in May Johnny was called out of school to help serve at a funeral. Johnny went to a Catholic school, and for him, going to church was very much a part of school life. The church stood right next to the school, and Johnny had been trained as an altar boy. Altar boys help the priest when he says Mass: they light candles and bring him books and cruets of water and wine. To serve at an ordinary daily Mass only two boys are needed. But at a funeral Mass you need at least five: two to carry candles, one to carry the tall gilded cross that is mounted on a pole, and two to carry the censer and the incense bowl as the priest walks around the coffin and offers incense smoke to it. After the service one of the boys rides out to the cemetery with the priest and hands him the holy water sprinkler and the prayer book when the priest says the final prayers at the edge of the grave.

On this particular day Johnny rode out to the cemetery in a big black Cadillac that belonged to the Digby and Coughlan Funeral Home. The driver was a solemn-looking young man in a black suit. Johnny sat in back with Father Higgins, the pastor of St. Michael's church, who was a tall, glowering man with grizzled gray hair and a squarish jaw. He was an old friend of the professor's—Johnny had seen them playing pinochle and arguing many, many times. During the Second World War, Father Higgins had been an army chaplain, and he had been wounded in a battle on the small Pacific island of Guam, which he always pronounced
Goo-
ahm.
The war had given Father Higgins a permanent case of bad nerves and a violent temper, and half the kids at St. Michael's school were scared to death of him. Johnny had always gotten along with him, however; partly it was because he was mild-mannered and never gave Father Higgins a hard time. And partly it was because Johnny really knew his Latin and could rattle it off at a furious pace during the church services, without stopping or stumbling over words. As he sat next to the priest in the car an odd notion came floating into Johnny's mind: Maybe he could get Father Higgins to help him find the professor.

At first this thought seemed so ridiculous to Johnny that he almost laughed out loud. But the more he thought, the more logical the idea seemed: after all, priests were involved in magic. The rituals they performed in church were sort of like magic rituals, and they recited long incantations in Latin that were almost like spells. And Johnny knew that Father Higgins believed in ghosts, witches, vampires, and things of that sort—he was always telling stories about weird and uncanny things that had happened to friends or relatives of his. Unlike Fergie, he would not insist on having everything proved beyond a shadow of a doubt. Anyway, it was worth a try—
anything
was worth a try at this stage of the game. So later, as they were driving back to the church, he decided to take the plunge.

"Uh... Father?" he said hesitantly.

Father Higgins was reading his breviary, which is a small black book full of prayers. He looked up, startled. "Hm? Oh! Yes, John? What is it?"

Johnny screwed his face up into several funny expressions. He was just too afraid to tackle this question head-on. Instead he approached it in a roundabout way.

"Father? Er... what would you do if you had lost something really valuable and you wanted to get it back?"

Father Higgins closed his book and smiled thoughtfully. "Well," he said, "I know it's just a superstition, but I would pray to Saint Anthony. I lost my keys in the rectory one day, and I prayed to Saint Anthony, and I found 'em right away. You're not
really
supposed to believe in stuff like that, but all the same... well, I'd give it a try if I were you. I really would."

Johnny was startled. He really hadn't expected a suggestion of this kind. Of course, he knew about Saint Anthony: He was the patron saint of lost objects. Johnny's grandma was always praying to the saint to help her find pins, needles, and lost money. But could Saint Anthony help you find a lost
person?

There was silence in the car for a while. Father Higgins laid the book down on the seat and dug his hand into the pocket of his black overcoat. He pulled out a stubby briar pipe with a silver band on the stem. With an odd smile on his face, he turned the pipe over in his hands. Then he glanced suddenly at Johnny—it was a keen, piercing, unnerving glance.

"Of course," he said in an insinuating tone, "if you're looking for lost
people
—lost professors, for instance— there is a ritual that folks use. It's full of hocus-pocus and it's totally unreliable, but it might just be worth a try."

Johnny looked at the priest and blushed. Father Higgins had read his thoughts. The priest was laughing, and Johnny did too. It was a relief to laugh—he had been pretty tense about this whole business.

"I ought to've known that I couldn't put one over on you, Father," said Johnny shyly.

"Darned right you can't," said the priest, still chuckling. "And anyway, the professor is my friend too. I miss him a lot." He paused and added sadly, "I think he was probably one of the few real friends I had in the whole wide world."

Johnny was only half-listening to what Father Higgins was saying. He was all worked up about the "ritual" that Father Higgins had mentioned, and he wanted to quiz him about it. "Father?" he said hesitantly. "What about... I mean, you mentioned a ritual of some kind. I wondered if maybe—"

"Ah, yes!" said the priest, cheering up suddenly. He began to study the bowl of his pipe as if there were dark secrets hidden there. "I did mention something of that sort, didn't I? Well, I know I'm going to sound like a superstitious old Irishman, but I think I would leave a petition under the base of the statue of Saint Anthony in our church. You know the statue I mean, don't you?"

Johnny nodded. He knew it well. It was a large painted plaster figure that stood on a pedestal in front of one of the pillars in St. Michael's church.

"Well, then," the priest went on in a conspiratorial tone, "how about if you arid I meet in the church this coming Wednesday night, after the service? This was something that I was going to try myself, but I kept thinking that it was an idiotic notion. However, now that you've put the flea in my ear, I'm a bit more eager to try. I have a few little extra—hrrumph!—things to throw in, just to make the ritual more, uh,
effective.
Not that I think we'll get any results worth writing home about, but—as they say—it can't hurt."

Johnny believed in superstitious practices and magic more than the average kid did. And it seemed logical to him to think that maybe the professor could be located and saved by a magical rite. After all, his disappearance had been surrounded by strange supernatural omens and signs. If magic had snatched him away, maybe magic could bring him back.

 

And so, when Wednesday evening came around, Johnny went off to St. Michael's church. Every Wednesday night during the month of May special services were held in the church in honor of Mary, the mother of Christ. Normally Johnny did not go to these services, so Gramma and Grampa Dixon were quite surprised when he told them he was attending. Gramma would have gone with him, but she had a cold, and she was afraid the night air would make it worse. Johnny was immensely relieved that she wasn't going: he felt nervous and embarrassed about what he was doing, and he wanted as few spectators as possible when he and Father Higgins did their mumbo jumbo. All through the service his mind was elsewhere. He kept thinking,
Will it work?
Well, he'd know fairly soon.

The service ended, and the people filed out of the church. When Johnny was sure that he was alone, he got up and walked to the front of the church and stood before the statue of Saint Anthony. It was about six feet high, and since it stood on a tall pedestal, it towered over him. The statue showed Saint Anthony as a monk in a brown robe. He was holding a book in one hand; the other hand was raised in a blessing. There was a gilt halo behind his head, and on his face was a blank, wide-eyed stare. Before the statue stood an iron rack with flickering candles in it. People had lit them in honor of the saint, so that he would answer their petitions.