The Beast Under the Wizard's Bridge (9 page)

Rose Rita folded the note and put it inside the book. “We leave the box on your doorstep and make ourselves scarce. Your uncle said he'd be away from home until about three. It's not even two yet. We'll drop off the box, come back to town, and not go back to your house until about four o'clock. Your uncle will assume we're just getting back from our bike ride. He won't have any idea who left the package.”

After all their exertion, their legs were aching. They rode to the base of the hill. They were too tired to pedal up, so they walked their bikes to 100 High Street.

Rose Rita waited on the sidewalk. Feeling like a
burglar, Lewis went to the front door and tried the mail slot. The wooden box just barely fit through. He heard the box clonk to the floor, and then he hurried back to join Rose Rita. They went over to Spruce Street Park, near the town waterworks, and rested in the shade for over an hour. For a while they didn't talk very much. Rose Rita's experience in the old storm cellar had really shaken her. Finally, she stretched and looked around. “I wonder if that hole in the ground might have been old Creepy Clabbernong's secret magical workshop.”

“What did it look like?” asked Lewis.

Rose Rita made a face. “Like the inside of a burial vault. The walls were brick and the floor was dirt. One wall had a shelf built into it, and the box was on that.”

“Did you see any magical stuff?” asked Lewis. “Like black candles and swords and such?”

Rose Rita shook her head. She hugged herself, as if the memory still tormented her. “All I saw was just the little room under the ground.”

“Then,” said Lewis, “I think it was just a storm cellar.” Tornadoes weren't common in Capharnaum County, but every so often one hit. Most of the farmers in the area had dug out storm cellars where their families could ride out a really bad twister. “You know,” continued Lewis, “I'll bet you that old Jebediah didn't trust his grandnephew. Mrs. Zimmermann told us that Elihu burned all his granduncle's papers. But I'll bet that he didn't even know about that journal, or about where Jebediah hid it. It could be that Jebediah didn't—what was it that he
wrote? Didn't bend and twist Elihu to his will, after all.”

Rose Rita grimaced. “If that was so, I'd think Elihu would have done a better job of getting rid of Jebediah and all his works.”

“He tried his best,” Lewis pointed out. “He built that bridge. And he put meteor stuff in the iron. He—”

Rose Rita gave him a sharp glance. “What's the matter? You look like a goose just walked over your grave.”

Lewis forced himself to speak. His voice sounded odd and strangled even to himself: “Rose Rita,” he whispered. “What if something came to Earth inside that meteorite? What if the meteorite was kind of like an egg?”

Rose Rita stared at him. “What if one of the Great Old Ones hatched out of it, you mean?”

Lewis murmured, “The journal said that some of them went to outer space. What if one of them came
back
? And what if the meteorite was made of the only stuff in the universe that could contain it?”

Slowly, Rose Rita said, “Then that might be why Elihu melted the meteorite into the iron. He wasn't trying to keep the ghost of his uncle from getting him at all. He was trying to keep something else from crossing the creek.”

“And now,” faltered Lewis, “it will be able to cross anytime it wants to!”

*  *  *

Miles away, Uncle Jonathan and Mrs. Zimmermann stood on the hill overlooking Wilder Creek and its new
bridge. The workmen below were busily preparing to remove one of the old iron bridge pilings. A crane towered high in the air, with a steel cable attached to the head of the piling. Everyone had retreated. A workman hooked some wires to a plunger and then signaled. The foreman waved his arm, and the workman pushed the handle of the plunger down. It set off dynamite under the water. A fountain of bright white spray shot up, and a moment later the sharp explosion sounded. The piling swayed.

The creek boiled with scummy yellow bubbles. Even at this distance, Jonathan and Mrs. Zimmermann could hear cries of disgust from the workmen. A moment later the breeze brought a sickening stench to their nostrils too.

“Florence,” Uncle Jonathan whispered, “I'm very, very worried.”

Mrs. Zimmermann put her hand on his arm. She did not say anything. But she shook her head slowly, as if she were just as concerned as her friend.

When Lewis returned to 100 High Street, he found that Uncle Jonathan was back home too. His uncle said nothing about finding the wooden box with its mysterious journal. Rose Rita came over for dinner, and she kept a sharp eye on Mrs. Zimmermann. Neither of the two adults gave the least clue that they had found the journal.

Later, Rose Rita and Lewis had a hasty, whispered conversation before Rose Rita left for home. “Keep an eye on them,” urged Rose Rita. “I want to be sure they got the book.”

“It didn't walk off,” responded Lewis. “Uncle Jonathan must've picked it up with the rest of the mail.”

“Watch anyway,” said Rose Rita, and she left.

Though he felt like a spy in his own home, Lewis did settle in to watch his uncle and Mrs. Zimmermann.

Nothing happened until the following Wednesday. At lunchtime, Uncle Jonathan said, “Lewis, why don't you and Rose Rita go to the movies this evening? There's a dandy new Gene Autry western on.”

“I don't like singing cowboys too much,” hedged Lewis.

His uncle smiled. “Well, I'm having some people over, and I'm afraid you'd be bored out of your mind here. At least it will be cool in the theater.” When Lewis still looked doubtful, his uncle added, “Tell you what. You go to the movies, and one day soon we'll have Rose Rita over and I'll put on a private show about the Battle of the Nile, or maybe Trafalgar.” Lewis knew that Jonathan meant he would cast one of his wonderful illusion spells. They were just like Technicolor movies, except they were three-dimensional and you could actually take part in them.

Reluctantly, Lewis agreed to go to the movies. But when he called Rose Rita, she said, “This is it. I'd bet a dollar to a moldy doughnut that the Capharnaum County Magicians Society is meeting at your house this evening. We have to find out for sure if your uncle found the book. Think of a way.”

Immediately, Lewis thought of one possibility. The house at 100 High Street had an extra-special feature: a secret passageway. It wasn't very long, and it wasn't even very practical. The secret passage led from behind a cupboard in the kitchen to a space behind a bookcase in the study. No one knew why it had been built in the first
place, but it was an ideal spot for two snooping kids to hide. The trick would be getting into the passage without being caught.

That afternoon Jonathan gave Lewis five dollars. “You can get a hamburger and soda and still have enough left for the movie,” he said. “Since you'll be coming back after dark, wear something light colored and be sure to walk facing the traffic.”

It seemed to Lewis that his uncle was being especially fussy. Usually he trusted Lewis to remember things like that, for Jonathan knew his nephew had a lot of common sense. Rose Rita came over at five o'clock. Mrs. Zimmermann and Uncle Jonathan were puttering around in the kitchen, making hors d'oeuvres for the guests. Lewis called, “We're going now!”

“Be careful, you two!” his uncle shouted back. “Have a good time.”

But instead of leaving the house, Lewis and Rose Rita ducked into the study. The one tricky thing about the secret passage was that, on the study end, the latch was on the outside, not the inside. Lewis released the catch and swung a large section of the built-in bookcase open. It moved silently on unseen hinges, and Lewis and Rose Rita walked into the passageway.

It was cramped and dark inside. As Lewis pulled the bookcase section back into place, he heard Rose Rita begin to gasp for air. He remembered how she was afraid of closed-in spaces. “Are you okay?” he asked.

Rose Rita took several deep breaths. “I will be. This
isn't so bad. It's more like a little room than—than anything else. And I can see light around the edges of the door.”

For a few minutes they stood shoulder to shoulder. Gradually Rose Rita's breathing calmed down. Now and then she looked through a small peephole into the study. “Tell me when they show up,” said Lewis.

“Are you sure they'll meet in there?” asked Rose Rita.

“That's where the Magicians Society always meets when they come over,” said Lewis. “Are you all right now?”

Rose Rita shivered beside him. “I guess so. I still have the crazy feeling the walls are closing in, but it's okay as long as I'm not alone. It's not like being in a cave or a hole in the ground. Let's just settle down and not talk about it, okay?”

With nothing to do but wait, Lewis and Rose Rita sat on the floor, their backs against opposite walls of the passageway. “I wish we'd eaten first,” whispered Lewis. “I'm going to be starving by the time everyone gets here.”

Rose Rita moved in the darkness. “Hold out your hand.”

Lewis did, and felt her put something into his open palm. “What's this?”

“It's a Welch's Fudge Bar,” replied Rose Rita. “I figured we'd get hungry.”

That was one of Lewis's favorite candy bars. He ate it. He and Rose Rita sat in the dark for what felt like
hours. They heard scrapes and thuds as Uncle Jonathan dragged chairs into the study. At last they heard the sound of people talking. Rose Rita got up and surveyed the study through the peephole. “About two dozen people,” she reported. “I see Mrs. Jaeger, and there's Mr. Plum. Looks like the meeting's about to start.”

Lewis stood beside her, his ear close to the secret door. He heard his uncle say, “Thanks for coming, everybody. Before we start, Howard's asked me to remind you to pay your dues if you haven't already. Well, you know why we're all here. I wonder if any of you know who delivered this package last Saturday.”

Voices murmured various versions of “No” and “What is it?”

“It seems to be a kind of sorcerous diary kept by Jebediah Clabbernong,” said Uncle Jonathan. “Someone dropped it off here while I was out. There was a note, but it was signed only ‘A Friend.'”

“What's in the book, Jonathan?” asked someone.

Jonathan said, “Florence and I have read through it a couple of times. We agreed you all should hear some of it. After the meeting, we'll ask a few of you to study this volume further. Florence, will you do the honors?”

Lewis heard Mrs. Zimmermann clear her throat and then begin to read sections from the journal. When she finished, she said, “That's it. Does anyone know anything about this red star that he keeps mentioning?”

A man said, “It's a comet, Florence. It only visits the Earth once every thirteen or fourteen thousand years.
It's supposed to be a source of energy for evil magicians. There's a passage in Flavius about it, and some hints in the Kabbala. I read in a magazine that astronomers recently spotted it deep in space.”

“What about this business of the Great Old Ones?” asked Jonathan. “The only source of knowledge about them that I've ever heard of is the
Necronomicon
, and you all know how rare that dreadful book is. We'd never get our hands on a copy. Anything else?”

“The Comte D'Erlette has some writings about them,” returned a woman's deep voice. “And there's that German book called
Unnameable Cults
or some such. They're supposed to be demonic creatures from another dimension, as far as I can tell.”

“Of course,” agreed Jonathan. “But what did old Jebediah have to do with them? And how does the meteorite figure in? Come to that, Walter, what have you found out about Jebediah's death back in 1885?”

A man answered, “Not very much. In 1885, Jebediah was a fairly elderly man. No one seems to know just how old he was, but he was at least seventy-five. He'd been in poor health for six months or so. He died on December twenty-first, the night the meteor hit. Coroner said he died of ‘catalepsy,' which means some kind of paralysis. Stroke, I guess. His only heir was Elihu, who had the body cremated—which was hard to do back then, because it wasn't the custom. No one knows what happened to the old man's ashes.”