The Figure In the Shadows (12 page)

Jonathan had begun a very hemmy and hawy explanation, when Rose Rita butted in. “It’s all very simple, Mr. Feasel. What really happened was, Lewis was out walking by the city limits when this man he’d never seen before stopped in his car and asked him if he’d like to drive out to Homer and back, just to look at the snow. Well, Lewis does dumb things some of the time, and he said sure, and jumped in. But when they were halfway to Homer, the guy turned out to be one of these crazy people you read about in the papers, so Lewis jumped out of the car and hid in the woods. That was where we found him.”

Jute puffed on his cigar and nodded. “Lewis get a good look at this guy?”

“No. It was dark. And he didn’t get his license number, either. It’s too bad. They’ll probably never catch him.”

“Yeah.” Jute rode the rest of the way in silence. He did wonder how Jonathan and the others happened to know where to go to find Lewis. There weren’t any telephones in that grove of pine trees. But Jute had heard that Jonathan was a magician, and maybe magicians had ways of communicating with people in their families. With brain waves or stuff like that. At any rate, Jute didn’t ask any more questions, and Rose Rita rode the rest of the way home with a self-satisfied smile on her face.

Lewis woke up the next morning in a whitewashed room full of light. New Zebedee’s hospital was in an enormous mansion that had once been owned by a rich old lady. Lewis’s room was in the attic. The ceiling at the foot of his bed sloped down almost to the floor, and next to his elbow was a white plaster tunnel running out to a curtained dormer window at the end. Icicles hung outside, but it was warm in the room.

There were other patients in the long room, and nurses came and went all morning. Near noon, Dr. Humphries came to look Lewis over. He was the Barnavelts’ family doctor, and Lewis liked him a lot. He had a voice like a bass viol, and he cracked jokes a lot to put people at their
ease. And he always carried a black leather bag full of rattling square pill bottles. Dr. Humphries put a wooden stick in Lewis’s mouth and flashed a light down his throat. He looked in his ears and eyes. Then he patted Lewis on the shoulder, snapped up his bag, and told him that a couple of days rest at home was all he needed. They shook hands, and Dr. Humphries left.

A few minutes later, Jonathan came to get Lewis, and they went home. Lewis was ordered to bed by Mrs. Zimmermann, and that evening, when she brought his supper up to him, she told him that she had a surprise: she and Jonathan and Rose Rita had arranged a special pre-Christmas Christmas party for him. He could put on his slippers and bathrobe and come down to the study as soon as he liked.

At first Lewis was frightened, because he had seen pictures in the paper of children who were dying of some incurable disease, like leukemia. They were always given early Christmas parties. But after Mrs. Zimmermann had reassured him several times that he wasn’t on the brink of death, he felt better. In fact, he could hardly wait for the party to begin.

Lewis was sitting by the Christmas tree. He was looking at the red plaid Sherlock Holmes hat that Jonathan had bought to replace the one Woody had stolen. In one hand Lewis held a glass of Jonathan’s special Christmas punch. In the other he held a chocolate-chip cookie.
This time he didn’t have to squint to make the Christmas tree lights turn into stars. He was blinded by tears of happiness.

Rose Rita was sitting crosslegged on the floor near Lewis’s armchair. She was playing with another of his presents, an electric pinball machine. “Mrs. Zimmermann?” she said.

“Yes, Rose Rita? What is it?” Mrs. Zimmermann was over by the library table, adding more Benedictine to her punch. Every year she claimed Jonathan went light on the Benedictine, and every year she doctored her drinks to suit herself. “Yes, my dear? What do you want?”

“When are you going to tell us how you figured out where to go? I mean, how you knew where Lewis was?”

Mrs. Zimmermann turned and smiled. She dipped her index finger in the punch, stirred, and put her finger in her mouth. “Mmm! Good! How did I know? Well, that’s a good question. I thought over what you had told me about Lewis’s experiences with the magic coin, and one detail kept ringing a bell in my mind. It was a detail that you probably didn’t think was very important.”

“Which one was that?” asked Lewis.

“The way the ghost smelled. Rose Rita said that you had told her the ghost smelled of wet ashes. It smelled like a fire that has just been put out. Well now, I put this fact together with a couple of others that I knew.” Mrs.
Zimmermann held up a finger. “One: on the night of April 30, 1859, a farmer named Eliphaz Moss was burned to death in his farmhouse out near the Homer Road. My grandfather had a farm near there, and he was part of the bucket brigade that tried to put out the fire. When I was a child, I remember him telling me how awful it was to suddenly see old Eliphaz come tearing out of that house. He was all on fire. Then with a hideous screech (so my grandfather said) he threw himself into—”

“The well?” Lewis asked. His face had turned very pale.

“The well,” said Mrs. Zimmermann, nodding grimly. “The well put the poor man’s fire out, and it drowned him too. It’s a very deep well, and they never recovered the body. Later, after the fire, somebody made a big, granite cover for the well, and the cover became Eliphaz’s tombstone. That, by the way, is what your uncle is out doing now—helping Jute get the lid back on the well.”

The front door slammed. It was Jonathan. When he came into the library, he was red-faced from the cold, but rather gloomy-acting. As soon as he had poured himself a cup of punch, he seemed more cheerful, so Mrs. Zimmermann went on with her story.

“Of course, that’s only part of the tale,” she said, pouring herself another cup of punch. “The second part concerns Walter Finzer, the man Grampa Barnavelt won
the three-cent piece from. He was Eliphaz Moss’s hired man, and everyone always believed that he had set the fire that killed old Eliphaz Moss.”

“Why did they think that?” asked Rose Rita.

“Because Walter was a foul-tempered, nasty, cruel, lazy lout, that’s why!” growled Jonathan. “Of course, you may have gathered that from the way he behaved when Grampa won his lucky piece.”

“Do
you
think Walter Finzer set the fire, Mrs. Zimmermann?” It was Lewis this time asking the question.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Zimmermann, nodding. “I didn’t used to think so, but I do now. It’s hard to piece things together from such little scraps and bits of evidence, but I’d say that Walter killed Eliphaz by knocking him unconscious and then setting fire to the house. By the time Eliphaz woke up, the house was on fire and he was, too.”

“Why did Walter want to kill old Elly . . . whosis?” asked Rose Rita.

“To keep Eliphaz from getting back at him. You see, I think Walter stumbled into the house while Eliphaz was performing a magic ritual. Do you remember the date of the fire? April 30, 1859. Anybody remember anything special about April 30? You keep quiet, Jonathan. I know you know the answer.”

Lewis thought a bit. “Hey!” he said. “That was the date on the newspaper that I saw just before the ghost came to get me. And 1859 was the date on the coin, too.”

“That just makes me more certain than ever that my
theory is right,” said Mrs. Zimmermann, smiling. “You see, April 30 is Walpurgis Night. It’s sort of like Halloween—a night that is dear to the hearts of those who dabble in the black arts. Eliphaz dabbled in witchcraft, or at least, most of the farmers in the area thought he did. My grandfather thought so, for one.” Mrs. Zimmermann stopped and stared into her glass. “You know,” she said slowly, “it must have been awfully lonely on farms in those days. No TV, no radio, no car to take you into town for a movie. No movies at all. Farmers just kind of holed up for the winter. Some of them read the Bible, and some of them read—other books.”

“You read those other books, too, don’t you, Mrs. Zimmermann?” said Rose Rita in a small frightened voice.

Mrs. Zimmermann gave her a sour look. “Yes, I do, but I read them so I’ll know what to do when something awful happens. And as you saw out there, sometimes it isn’t enough to know about all these terrible books. Not when the other side’s got more muscle.”

“You’re getting off the subject, Florence,” said Jonathan. “So old Eliphaz was a wizard. Do you mean he was making the magic amulet when Walter burst in on him?”

“Yes. Walter probably came in for a plug of chewing tobacco or a drink of whiskey after a hard day’s work. And there was Eliphaz doing some strange mumbo-jumbo over a little tiny silver coin. A three-cent piece. Well, everybody dreams about having a magic doohickey
that will solve all their problems. The two men were alone out there, and Walter was probably by far the stronger. So Walter hit Eliphaz on the head, set fire to the house, and lit out—with the amulet. Then Walter must have decided that it would not be good for him to hang around New Zebedee. So he enlisted in the Army. Then the Civil War came along, Walter ran into Grampa Barnavelt—and you know the rest.”

Lewis looked puzzled. “How come the ghost of old Eli . . . whatever-his-name-is was after me? Did he think I stole his amulet?”

“Not exactly,” said Mrs. Zimmermann. “You see, the amulet was supposed to have the power to summon up a spirit from the depths. A spirit that would do Eliphaz Moss’s bidding. But when you’re fooling around with evil spirits, you’ve got to be careful, and the way I figure it, Eliphaz was interrupted before he had finished enchanting the coin. So things came out kind of screwy, as they would if you put the wrong ingredients in a cake you were making. And Eliphaz’s spirit—his ghost, his soul, call it what you like—his spirit was the one called up when Lewis said the prayer from my book over the coin.”

Lewis shuddered. “You mean I called him up? The ghost that smelled like ashes?”

Mrs. Zimmermann nodded. “You most certainly did. The prayer you said is what we professional wizards call a prayer of waking and possession. First, you woke
up the spirit that had been asleep, the spirit that haunted the amulet—Eliphaz’s spirit. The amulet couldn’t do a thing to anybody until you recited that prayer. That is why Walter could never do anything with it, and was finally willing—albeit grudgingly—to toss it into the pot in a poker game. And that is also why Grampa Barnavelt could wear the coin on his belly for forty years and not be affected at all.”

“But wait a minute,” said Rose Rita. “I handled the coin after Lewis woke it up. How come nothing happened to me?”

“If you’ll let me finish, I’ll tell you why,” said Mrs. Zimmermann patiently. “I said the prayer was a prayer of waking and
possession.
Lewis not only woke the amulet up, he made it his. His, and his alone. No one else could wield it. Of course, the amulet could be taken from him by force—as it was—but no one else could do anything with it. It was his until it was destroyed. I don’t know whether you realize it, Rose Rita, but you wiped out the enchantment that had been laid on the coin when you dropped it into the well. Water is the cleansing element, the element of rebirth. It wipes out all curses. Running water is best, but good old stagnant well water is okay, too. That’s why the dark shape vanished when it did. The enchantment was over.”

“I still don’t see why old what-sis-name was after me,” said Lewis.

Mrs. Zimmermann sighed. “Well, there again, we can
only guess. Eliphaz was trying to make an amulet of power. Amulets of power can be used to call up spirits—usually evil ones—and they can give the owner of the amulet wonderful powers. Simon Magus owned an amulet of power, and it is said that he could fly through the air and make himself invisible.”

“Do they help you win fights?” asked Lewis in a weak little voice.

Mrs. Zimmermann chuckled. “Yes, they do. Eliphaz’s ghost helped you win that fight with Woody. Eliphaz had been trapped into being the spirit of his own amulet—sort of like a genie in a jug, if you see what I mean. Well, he had to obey the rules. You summoned him, and he gave you power. But then, as time passed, Eliphaz’s spirit began to take shape in this world. At first he only sent you messages to let you know he was coming—postcards and the like. Finally, he took on the form you saw under the street lamp, and in the shadows under the arch of the Masonic Temple. Well now, Lewis, if you had been a wizard, there would have been no problem. You would have tamed the spirit. You would have made Eliphaz carry out your commands. But you were just a little boy who didn’t know what he was doing, so Eliphaz decided to turn the tables and carry you off to his . . . his home.” Mrs. Zimmermann shuddered and stopped talking. She stared hard at the fire. She was thinking about the well and what was in it.

Everyone sat silent, and for a few minutes it looked as if it was going to be a very gloomy Christmas party. But then Jonathan cleared his throat loudly and announced that, seeing as how it was Christmas for Lewis, it might as well be Christmas for everybody.

“You mean we all get to open our presents?” said Rose Rita. She sounded very excited.

Jonathan nodded. “That is exactly what I mean. Come on, everybody. Dive in!”

Before long the floor of the study was awash in a sea of colored paper. Mrs. Zimmermann got a new umbrella to replace the one that had been destroyed in her duel with Eliphaz Moss’s ghost. This new umbrella was not magic, but she said she would get to work on it soon. Jonathan got his usual seven or eight pounds of tobacco, and a meerschaum pipe carved in the shape of a dragon. The smoke was supposed to come out through the dragon’s nose and mouth. Rose Rita got a fielder’s mitt and a season ticket for four to the Detroit Tigers’ home games in the coming season. Jonathan and Mrs. Zimmermann were both baseball fans, and they were always arguing, since Jonathan liked the Tigers and Mrs. Zimmermann liked the White Sox. Jonathan grinned with delight when he thought of how many times the four people in this room would be going to baseball games in the coming year. And Rose Rita would get to take them all, since it was her ticket.