The Beast Under the Wizard's Bridge (14 page)

Rose Rita came pedaling up next to him. “Hey, are you all right? That was a bad fall.”

“I think I'm okay,” said Lewis, panting. The pain was making tears well out of both his eyes. He felt them cool on his cheeks as the wind blew in his face. “We have to tell Uncle Jonathan about this.”

“How about writing another note?” asked Rose Rita. “You go tell your uncle that you fell off your bike. Don't let him know how it happened. Just say it was an accident. I'll bet you anything he takes you to the doctor. While he does, I'll go home and get the pad and write the letter. I'll tell him not to use any magic, and I'll tell him that the Mootes are somehow behind all this.”

“Okay,” replied Lewis, whose head was pounding. He
had a goose-egg lump on the front of his skull, in the hair above his left eyebrow. At least he wasn't seeing double. But he did feel nauseated, and he was glad when at last they reached 100 High Street.

Rose Rita ran inside and emerged a moment later with Uncle Jonathan in tow. Lewis had just stood his bike up when Jonathan hurried over and took one look at him. “Into the car, Lewis. I think we'd better go visit Dr. Humphries. Thanks, Rose Rita. You'd better get home. This storm's going to cut loose any second.”

Jonathan and Lewis drove over to Dr. Humphries's clinic, and just as they walked in, the rain began to pour. The nurse at the front desk took Lewis straight back to an examining room, with Uncle Jonathan at his heels. A moment later the doctor came in, his expression concerned.

Lewis liked Dr. Humphries, a big, comfortable-looking man with a voice like a bass viol. The doctor had him sit on the green examining table and took a look first at the bump on his head. “Hmm,” he said. “Must've been quite a crack. I'll wager that put a dent in the pavement! I'm going to shine a light in your eyes, Lewis. It's going to bother you a little but keep your eyes open. Look straight ahead.” The penlight he held stabbed Lewis's eyes, making them water, but he didn't complain. Then Dr. Humphries held up two fingers and asked Lewis how many he saw. Finally, Dr. Humphries laughed. “They must grow 'em hardheaded in Wisconsin,” he rumbled. “No concussion, which is the best
news you've heard since Christmas. Now let's look at those scrapes and abrasions.”

A few minutes later, patched up and bandaged, Lewis left the clinic with his uncle. The rain had settled in to a steady, dreary downpour, and as they drove through it, Uncle Jonathan said, “How on earth did you fall?”

Lewis said, “We were hurrying home because we heard thunder. I looked over my shoulder to see where Rose Rita was, and I almost hit a car. I swerved in time to miss it, but I fell off.”

“Lewis, you have to be more careful,” said Jonathan, shaking his head.

Though Lewis had been right on the edge of blurting out everything, that made him bite his tongue. What if his uncle became even more disappointed in him? And what would he say if he learned Lewis and Rose Rita had been snooping around, poking their noses into things that they should have left alone?

As soon as they had hurried into the house, Uncle Jonathan saw Rose Rita's new message. She had folded it and dropped it through the mail slot. It was on the same kind of yellow paper as the first note, written in the same blocky letters. Lewis was close enough to read what it said:

Uncle Jonathan quickly folded the letter, said, “Hrmpf!” and then turned to Lewis. “How are you feeling?”

“Not so hot,” Lewis confessed. “I've got an awful headache.”

Jonathan felt his forehead. “No fever. Take a couple of aspirin for the pain. I think you'd better go to your room for a little while. You've been pretty badly banged up, and you're going to be sore as a boil tomorrow. Want an ice bag for your head?”

“No, I'll be all right,” said Lewis.

Jonathan raised his eyebrows. “Sure? All right, then, go lie down for a while, until your head feels better. Meanwhile, I need to make some phone calls.”

Lewis did not protest. He went to his bedroom and changed from his torn jeans into pajamas. Then, instead of lying down, he put a pillow on the floor and knelt on it looking out the window. The day was dark, though the time was only a quarter to one. Sheets and sheets of pewter-colored rain whipped down High Street. The trees lost twigs and leaves to the blustery wind. All down the hill, yellow lights shone in the windows of the
houses. For some reason, they made Lewis feel lonely. He imagined himself as a homeless orphan, staring at the warm, safe houses of more fortunate kids.

Lewis wondered where Rose Rita was, and what she was up to. She was a good friend, but she could be so exasperating sometimes. Still, Lewis knew, Rose Rita was pretty sensible. She wasn't the kind of person who would take chances for no reason at all. Then Lewis thought about Mr. and Mrs. Moote, who acted so concerned when he had fallen. Mrs. Moote had wanted him to go to their house. Lewis felt cold just thinking of that. If he had, would he ever have gotten out alive? What was the hideous thing in the water, and what did the Mootes have to do with it? Lewis had the queasy feeling that he had not seen the last of them—or of their “pet,” the horrible creature in the water.

Watching the steady rain, Lewis let his mind drift. His scrapes, bruises, and bumps ached. In a funny way the pressure of the pillow on his skinned knees helped. At least he didn't feel the ache as much. Lewis idly wondered how long it would take them to heal. “Heal,” he murmured dreamily. He said the word over and over until it seemed to lose its meaning. Then he started on words that meant the same thing. “Health. Healthy. Well.” When he said that, it was as if something suddenly clicked in his brain. It was almost like a jolt of electricity. The same thing had happened once before, but this time the light in his mind did not go off.

Lewis jumped from a kneeling position straight to his
bare feet. He forgot all about his throbbing headache and his bandaged knees. His eyes were wide. “Oh, my gosh!” he shouted.

Because this time he knew he was right. Meanings could have other meanings. Words that meant almost the same thing as each other could also mean different things—if you looked at them the right way, that is.

And Lewis had just done that. He felt his heart racing. Yes, he was sure.

Lewis had solved the riddle that Elihu Clabbernong had left in his will.

Lewis scrambled to get dressed, then rushed downstairs, yelling, “Uncle Jonathan!” He knew before he even got to the bottom of the stairs that Jonathan wasn't down there. The house had that funny echoing sound that houses get when nobody else is around. Jonathan's black cane with the crystal knob was gone from the blue Willoware vase beside the front door. The cane was his magic wand, and if it was missing, then Jonathan had taken it for some purpose. Searching through the house, Lewis found a note on the kitchen table:

A glance next door told Lewis that Mrs. Zimmermann wasn't at home—her house was dark, though her car, the purple 1950 Plymouth Cranbrook she called Bessie, was still in the driveway. Frantically, Lewis ran to the phone and dialed Rose Rita's number. Mrs. Pottinger answered and called her daughter to the phone. Lewis almost hopped from one foot to another while he was waiting. A minute later he heard Rose Rita say, “Hello?”

“I got it!” said Lewis, all in a rush. “I figured it out!”

Rose Rita was quick on the uptake. “You solved Old Clabberhead's riddle? I'll be right over!”

Lewis could hear Mrs. Pottinger object to that. Rose Rita must have put her hand over the receiver, because a muffled, quick argument followed. Finally, Rose Rita was back on the line: “I can't come over until after dinner, and then only if the rain lets up.”

“Listen,” said Lewis, “what did the Mootes say about Jebediah's spell for separating the soul?”

“They . . . didn't seem to like it,” replied Rose Rita.
She paused, and Lewis guessed her mother was standing nearby. Cautiously, Rose Rita added, “That's all I know.” Lewis heard Rose Rita's mother call her, and Rose Rita said hastily, “I'll either come over or call you later. Don't do anything without me!”

As he hung up the phone, Lewis wondered what in the world he would do even
with
Rose Rita. If he was right—and he was sure he must be—someone else was going to have to help. Getting what Elihu had hidden all those years ago would not be a job for two kids. It would require—well, wizards and witches, probably. Someone a lot braver than he was, anyway.

All that afternoon, Lewis was jumpy and restless. Sometimes he paced. Sometimes he tried to watch television. He couldn't settle down, and every five minutes he looked at the clock as the hours crawled by.

At a little past five that afternoon, Lewis went to the French doors in the study and looked out into the yard. The rain was passing, with a few breaks in the clouds here and there. The sun was getting low, and where the gray clouds parted, Lewis could see blue sky and heaps of orange-red clouds. The color reminded him of the comet, and that reminded him of the weird, pulsating creature he and Rose Rita had glimpsed—glimpsed? Poked with a stick!

Shivering, he turned away from the French doors and began to look through the books in the study. His uncle had floor-to-ceiling shelves of old volumes on many different subjects. One particular corner held books on magic.

Lewis looked through these until he found what he was looking for, van Schull's
Cyclopaedic Dictionary of Magic and the Magical Arts.
It was a huge, heavy old book, the size and weight of an unabridged dictionary. The binding was some dark leather with a pattern of diamond-shaped scales—but if the skin had come from a snake, it must have been an enormous one. Lewis lugged the tome over to the desk and dropped it with a thump. He turned on the green-shaded lamp and opened the volume. Like all old books, it had its own peculiar smell, dusty and dry but with a spicy undertone that tickled his nose.

Lewis turned the creamy, liver-spotted pages carefully. Under “soul,” he found a number of articles, but only one looked like what he was hunting: “Soul, Separable.”

Lewis bent close to the book to read the fine print: