The Disappearing Dwarf (36 page)

Squire Myrkle awoke just then and sat up, shaking the bleariness out of his eyes. He squinted up at the flowerladen ceiling above him – a ceiling that was rapidly dropping toward them as fresh buds bloomed – and he clapped his hands in astonished wonder. He pointed aloft, then turned to Jonathan. ‘Vegetation. Very curious vegetation.’ He nodded sagely, pursing his lips.

The Professor sprang across, and he himself began throwing levers and such in an effort to stem the flow of buds. The first of the blooms withered even as he did so, and the air was suddenly alive with dark little deflated worms, the remnants of the helium flowers. The flow of fresh buds ceased, either because of the Professor’s efforts or because the device had run out. The last of the buds popped open as the sky continued to rain withered bits of debris, perplexing the Squire no end.

Selznak hadn’t been idle. Before him on his table bubbled a small pot into which he dropped odds and ends: a handful’ of tiny toads, scraps of his hair that he’d retrieved from the floor, and no end of various bird beaks. The mixture spluttered and boiled and splashed, and just as Miles fought his way clear of the last hovering buds – his ivory head sparking and his robes whirling as if caught up in some mystical cosmic wind – Selznak flung both arms over his head and let out a terrifying shriek. The bubbling stuff in the pot arced out and upward, spraying the balcony on which Miles stood. There was the sound of splitting rock, and the floor beneath them heaved as if tossed by an earthquake.

Jonathan sat down hard on the stones and rolled into the Squire. Zippo’s fish toppled over onto Gump, who was knocked sprawling into the Professor. Above the shout and clatter came the sound of cracking stone. Miles’ balcony, still wreathed in helium blossoms, cracked, then split asunder, and Miles fell shouting through a tumble of debris and floating flowers onto the cages of animals below.

Ahab, barking, dashed across toward the odious Selznak, who whirled to meet him, spraying the room with his little flaming balls. Ahab yipped and danced back out of the way while Selznak lifted the cauldron of bubbling cataplasm from the tabletop and carried it toward the door. The Professor sprang up and went for him, but Selznak menaced him with the stuff, still boiling and popping and bubbling up over the side.

Gump moaned a bit about then, having been caught, finally, by the tumbling fish. He pushed at the thing as it lay there atop his legs. Professor Wurzle stepped back alongside Jonathan to let Selznak pass, and the Dwarf inched out of the room, threatening them all with the muck in the pot. Once through the door he turned, laughed aloud, and drank several big gulps of the bubbling mixture, thereafter pitching the rest onto the floor and running off down the hall. Squire Myrkle poked at the sorry-looking frogs and bird beaks that had been part of the brew.

‘The Squire would like some of this soup,’ he said, lifting a frog up by a rear leg and peering at it. ‘Frog gumbo, I believe it is. Is that correct?’ When he didn’t get an answer from the thing he tossed it back onto the floor and lumbered across to pull the fish from atop Gump.

Professor Wurzle bent over the fallen Miles. ‘He’s alive,’ he said, listening at his chest.

It struck Jonathan just then that the Professor was far more capable than he when it came to administering first-aid, and that Selznak, after all of Miles’ effort, had made off with the globe – the globe that would enable him to loose all his horrors onto the High Valley. So Jonathan without a word grabbed up his club and rushed out into the hallway. By then, of course, there was no sign of the fleeing Selznak; there was only the slamming of a distant door somewhere off down the hall. Jonathan raced along toward it.

Jonathan didn’t bother with the first three doors he passed. The slam he’d heard had sounded from farther off. After the hall took a perpendicular turning, however, it ended some twenty-five feet farther along at one last door, a door that proved to be unlocked. He didn’t just throw it open and pop in. Instead he peeked in at the keyhole first to see if he could make out anything. But nothing was visible. It was almost dark aside from a reddish sort of glow – just a strip of it against the floor across the room – as if light were shining beneath another door. Very slowly he turned the knob, listening to it creak around against the iron plate. The noise sounded to him like the screeching of a parrot, but it probably wasn’t that loud – no louder, quite likely, than the drumming of his heart. He heard a faint click as the latch scraped off the striker and the door edged inward, almost as if it were anxious to open and let him in. He crept into the room, hunched over, stepping slowly and softly as if he were walking on new grass. Just when he turned and began to shove the door shut behind him, he felt a cold, wet thing press against his leg.

He leaped forward, flailing with his arms, thinking of snakes and of great, dark fish and of creeping blue squids at the bottom of pits. He very nearly shouted aloud, but didn’t. Then he raised his cudgel and whirled around wildly to find himself face to face with old Ahab, who had, it seemed, followed him along the corridor. Ahab stood blinking at him, head cocked to one side and one eye winking as if he were wondering what sort of caper Jonathan was cutting this time.

‘
Shh!
’ Jonathan whispered, putting his finger to his lips. But of course Ahab hadn’t said anything. Jonathan found that he was very glad to see him, not only because he welcomed the company, but because Ahab had a nose for danger as well as a sharp ear. If he could locate the Professor and deliver the key to the cells to him, then it was quite likely that he could find Selznak too. Jonathan wondered at himself for not having asked Ahab along in the first place, and decided that he’d better slow down a bit and think things through.

There wasn’t much time to think right then, though, since Selznak probably wasn’t standing about, but was hurrying along on some mission of deviltry. So Jonathan shut the door behind him, plunging the empty room into darkness. He stretched his eyes wide just from instinct, as if by yanking his lids back he’d be able to see in the dark. In a moment he could, for although the dim light shining in under the far door illuminated the room only very faintly, there was enough of it so that he hadn’t any fear of running into a chair or stepping off into a pit.

The second door was also unlocked. He opened it just a crack and peered through. There was a sizeable room beyond, lit fairly thoroughly. The shadows and lights in the room weren’t still, but jumped a bit and danced and traded places as if their source was a dozen or so candles sitting in a draft.

It was entirely possible that Selznak himself was in the room; Jonathan couldn’t say. So he threw caution out the window and pushed the door entirely open. Ahab slid past him, sniffing, the fur along his back standing up in a little line. The light was indeed thrown by candles – candles thrust into three candelabras that sat on a heavy bare table along one wall. The base of each, incredibly, was a stuffed goat’s head. One had wide, staring eyes as if it had seen something so terrible that it had died frozen in mortal horror. The second’s eyes were closed, but not peacefully so – heavy stitches had been sewn through its lids and down into its cheeks. The third goat had no eyes at all; just gaping black sockets. Jonathan could feel their presence in the room, a thick, dusky evil as if the room were a tomb. Why the candles were lit in an otherwise empty room he had no idea, nor did he have any desire to find out. He was halfway across to the far door when he noticed that a pentagram, a copy of the one tattooed on Selznak’s palm, was painted on the floor in some dark liquid. His imagination leaped immediately to the conclusion that it was painted in blood, and he suddenly felt weak and sick. He rushed across and threw open the next door, heedless of what lay beyond.

As it happened, nothing did. Just another dark room – a room so utterly dark that he at first considered going back after one of the candles. But the idea of reentering the room with the goat heads was in itself so odious to him that he knew he couldn’t. He latched onto Ahab’s collar and followed him across the floor, groping along until they encountered the far wall and what felt very much like the wooden panels of yet another door.

It seemed to him that he and Ahab weren’t alone in the darkness there – that something else waited in the room, watching him; something that could see him clearly, that could reach out and latch onto his arm with long stiff fingers and stare into his face with little red eyes; some abomination that could only exist in utter darkness. He felt a cold draft on the back of his neck – a clammy cold like the breath of a ghoul – and he heard the sound of rustling off in the corner, the soft
swish-swish-swish
of something stirring, dragging itself, perhaps, across the smooth stone floor.

Jonathan dropped his club and grabbed Ahab’s collar with his left hand. With his right he searched for a knob, sliding his fingers up and down the door, pushing at it, compelled by the urge to pound at it, but knowing that whatever lay on the other side would hardly be hospitable enough to let him in. He realized that Ahab was growling, twisting about, looking behind him; then he heard what sounded like the scrape of steel against stone, or perhaps the scratching of long, bent talons. He turned toward the noise, toward the
swish-scrape
that came from the far corner, and saw two glints of light – a pair of glowing eyes watching him. They shut and opened again – small and close together like the eyes of a pig – and a soft slobbering and sucking noise took the place of the scraping.

Grabbing up his club, Jonathan pounded on the door. He’d much rather discuss pleasantries with Selznak himself than face whatever thing it was that crouched there swishing and slobbering in the corner. He whacked on the door with his club, smashed against it, and each blow echoed out,
boom-boom-boom
, like goblin drums in the deep wood.

Suddenly the door was thrown open. Beyond the doorway, hunched and dusty in the dim light, grinning vacantly at him through sightless eyes, stood the old witch, dressed in her gray lace and ancient black robes. She gestured at him, curling her finger, inviting him into the room just as she had invited him onto her porch at the shanty in the swamp weeks before. And still there was a swishing and slobbering behind him, closer now – something dragging toward him, painfully slowly, but with an evil and insatiable determination. He needed time to think, but his mind was a muddle of terror and indecision.

Ahab’s, however, wasn’t. He leaped ahead toward the old woman, teeth bared, snarling; he was a dog that had come to the end of his rope – would brook no more nonsense. Instantly, in the blink of an eye, the old woman was gone. Ahab rushed right through the spot where she’d been, sliding to a stop. The sound of cackling laughter filled the room behind Jonathan, and he whirled with an upraised club, ready to pound something into jelly. There, heaped on the stones in the middle of the room, just barely visible in the dim light that shone through the door, lay the ragged, decayed remnant of a human being. Tatters of black cloth and lace partially covered it. One bony arm thrust out and scrabbled at the floor, long, broken nails making the scratching sound Jonathan had heard in the dark. A face, little more than a skull, stared up at him, and its mouth worked and slobbered as if it were trying to speak, to implore his aid, to whisper a secret.

Jonathan couldn’t tear his eyes from the detestable thing. He watched as it wavered and shimmered for a moment, as had the goblin jewels in the treasure chests. As he watched it metamorphosed into the girl from the house in the woods, curled up as if asleep on the floor. Then, after the space of half a minute, it shimmered and faded and was gone altogether. Nothing was left but the echoing ring of dry laughter that hung in the air like dust.

Ahab looked up at Jonathan as if expecting an explanation. Jonathan didn’t have one. Once again he’d gone out on the hunt and found that it was himself who was pursued. The idea of chasing Selznak appeared suddenly ludicrous to him, and he made up his mind to retrace his steps and find the Professor and the rest. Then they’d search for Escargot, if he hadn’t already been released, and together they’d find the Dwarf and deal with him. The idea was appealing. He’d storm back through the room with the pentagram and reduce the goats heads to powder. He was determined. He stepped across, his club over his shoulder, and found the door had been locked. He twisted and kicked it but nothing happened. He had no choice, finally, but to goon.

In the room where the witch had stood was a row of long windows with a view of the dark forest beyond. Dusty, cobwebby furniture sat about as if it had been waiting for a hundred years or so for someone to come along and make use of it. One wall was ornately paneled with old, wormy, dark wood. At the far end an enormous stuffed chair stood beside a bookcase filled with dark, ancient books. One lay open on a low table beneath a gas lamp. Jonathan felt the base of the lamp and jerked his hand back in surprise at the heat. It must have been burning even while he and Ahab searched in the dark room for a door.

There didn’t seem to be any time for hesitation. The Dwarf might well just be slinking away, perhaps having looked up some grim, arcane bit of evil magic. Jonathan pulled the door open and found another hallway, a short corridor that ended at a window twenty feet or so farther on. Two iron-studded doors fronted it on the left. It had to have been through one of these doors that the Dwarf had fled. The latch on the first door turned easily, and Jonathan pushed into a room that at first seemed entirely bare. But as light from the corridor filtered in and chased off some of the gloom, he could see that although the room was indeed bare of furniture, it wasn’t bare in any other sense. The stone walls, windowless on all sides, were intricately carved. Strange runes and symbols covered the walls: peculiar twisted faces, sweeping oak trees out of which sailed great flights of bats and which half hid a thousand grinning goblins, numberless indistinguishable carvings muted in shadow.