The Figure In the Shadows (7 page)

That night Lewis lay wide awake in his bed, listening to his heart beat. His closet door was open, and he could see the clothes hanging in a shadowy row. Were they moving? Was something there, behind them?

Lewis thrashed up into a sitting position and frantically fumbled for the switch on his bedside lamp. He felt all over the lamp before he found it, but finally the light came on. There was nothing there. There were no dark shapes waiting to jump at him. None that he could see, at any rate. It was a long time before he could bring himself to get out of bed and look in the closet. Finally, though, he did. There was nothing behind the clothes. Nothing but plaster and wood and dust and his old shoes. Lewis went back to bed. He thought that maybe he would try to sleep with the light on, tonight.

Lewis tossed and turned. He rolled over to one side and then to the other. It was no good. He wasn’t going to sleep. Well, if he wasn’t going to sleep, he might as well think. He didn’t have to think very hard. Lewis knew very well what was behind all the weird things that had been happening to him lately. The amulet. All his logical explanations had evaporated, and he was left with one thought: the amulet was haunted. It was haunted, and
he had better get rid of it. So what if it had helped him beat up on Woody Mingo? So what if it did give him that wonderful pirate-movie feeling? Lewis thought about how he had felt when his hand closed around the amulet and the dark figure leaped at him. He shuddered. He just had to get rid of it.

Lewis raised his hands to his neck. But when they were a few inches away from the chain, they stopped. He grunted and pushed, but he couldn’t force them to go any farther. His hands trembled. They shook like the hands of an old man who has the palsy. But they just would not close around the chain so that Lewis could take the amulet off.

Lewis sat up, panting. His pajama top was soaked with sweat. He looked at his hands. Didn’t they belong to him any more? Lewis was scared. Thoroughly scared. And he felt helpless. What would he do if he couldn’t take it off? He imagined the amulet and chain growing into his body as he got older and older until there was just a looped line and a bump on his skin to show where they were. Lewis’s fear was close to panic now. He jumped out of bed and started pacing up and down the room. He would have to calm down before he could decide what to do.

He looked toward the fireplace, and he smiled. Every room in this enormous old mansion had a fireplace in it. Lewis’s own personal fireplace was made of black marble,
and there was a fire laid in it, though it was not lit. Little dry twigs underneath and bigger sticks above, on the andirons. There was a box of matches on the mantel. Lewis took them and knelt down to light the fire.

In a few minutes, he had a good blaze going. Lewis put up the screen and sat there on the rug, staring at the fire. Should he tell Uncle Jonathan about the amulet? Jonathan was a wizard. He would know what to do. Or Mrs. Zimmermann? She was a witch, and even more powerful than Jonathan. But Lewis was afraid of what they would think when they found out that he had been messing around with magic again. He should have turned Mrs. Zimmermann’s book over to her the minute he found it. When she found out what he had done, she would probably be furious. And what would Jonathan do? Would he decide that one year was a long enough time to be Lewis’s legal guardian? Would he send him off to live with Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Helen? Aunt Helen had a personality like a leaky inner tube. She sat in an easy chair and whined about her asthma all day. Lewis thought about what life with Aunt Helen would be like. No, he did not want to tell Jonathan and Mrs. Zimmermann about the amulet.

Then who could he tell? Rose Rita. Lewis grinned. Sure. He would call her up in the morning and they could get together to decide what to do. If he couldn’t take the amulet off himself, then Rose Rita could do it for him.

The fire crackled cheerfully. Lewis felt better. He also felt very sleepy. After making sure that the fire screen was in place, Lewis stumbled off to the bed and threw himself down. If he had any dreams that night, he didn’t remember them.

When he woke up the next morning, Lewis found his room filled with bright winter sunlight. The dark figure that had waited for him under the street lamp seemed like something he had read about or dreamed about. As he dressed, the pirate-movie feeling flowed back into him. He felt like a million dollars. Should he tell Rose Rita, after all? Lewis hesitated. Yes, maybe he ought to, just to get it off his chest. He could call her up before breakfast to catch her before she left the house. But when he got to the phone, Lewis’s resolve melted. He stood there with the receiver in his hand while the operator said, “Number please? Number please?” and then he hung up. Oh well. He could talk to her at school.

Lewis saw Rose Rita several times that day at school. But each time, as he was working himself up to say something about the amulet, something tightened up inside him, and he wound up talking about the Notre Dame football team, or the galley they were building, or Miss Haggerty, or anything but the amulet. When he went home from school that day, Lewis still had not managed to tell Rose Rita what he wanted to tell her. But as he walked home in the winter dusk, Lewis saw that the street lights were on. He stopped. Beads of sweat were breaking out on his forehead. The horror of the figure under the lamp swept over him like an icy wave. Lewis pulled himself together. He clenched his teeth and doubled his fists. He was going to have to tell Rose Rita about the amulet, and he was going to tell her tonight.

That evening in the middle of dinner, Lewis laid down his fork, swallowed several times, and said in a dry husky voice, “Uncle Jonathan, can I invite Rose Rita over to stay tonight?”

Jonathan did a double take. “Hmph! Well, Lewis, this is rather short notice, but I’ll see what I can do. I’ll have to ask her mother’s permission first.”

After dinner, Jonathan phoned up Mrs. Pottinger, and got her permission for Rose Rita to spend the night over at the Barnavelts’ house. Quite by accident, Jonathan discovered that Lewis had not yet asked Rose Rita if she wanted to come over. So he dragged Lewis to the phone and got him to make a formal invitation. Then everything
was settled. Lewis and Jonathan went upstairs to one of the many spare bedrooms and made the bed, and laid out the guest towels. Lewis was excited. He was looking forward to a long evening of card games and stories and conversation. Maybe he could even get in a word about his amulet.

When Rose Rita got to Lewis’s house, the dining room table was all laid out for poker. There were the blue and gold cards with
CAPHARNAUM COUNTY MAGICIANS SOCIETY
stamped on them; there were the foreign coins that Jonathan used as poker chips. On a plate with a bright purple border was a big pile of chocolate-chip cookies, and there was a pitcher of milk. Mrs. Zimmermann was there, and she promised not to pull any funny business with the cards. Everything was ready.

They played for a long time. Then, just as Jonathan was about to announce that it was bedtime, Lewis asked if he could have a few words with Rose Rita, alone in the library. As he asked this, Lewis felt that tightness in his chest again. And he felt a sharp pain right where the amulet was.

Jonathan chuckled and knocked his pipe out into the potted plant behind his chair. “Sure,” he said. “Sure, go right ahead. State secrets, eh?”

“Yeah, kinda,” said Lewis, blushing.

Lewis and Rose Rita went into the library and slid the heavy paneled doors shut. Now Lewis felt like somebody who is trying to breathe under water. But he
dragged the words out, one by one.

“Rose Rita?”

“Yeah? What’s wrong with you, Lewis? You look all pale.”

“Rose Rita, remember when we said the . . . the magic words over the coin?” Lewis stopped and winced. He felt a sharp pain in his chest.

Rose Rita looked puzzled. “Yeah, I remember. What about it?”

Lewis felt as if someone was sticking red-hot needles into his chest. “Well, I . . . I kind of lied about it.” Sweat was pouring down his face now, but he felt triumphant, because he was winning over whatever was trying to keep him from telling the truth.

Rose Rita’s eyes opened wide. “You lied? You mean the coin was really . . .”

“Yeah.” Lewis reached inside his shirt and brought the thing out for her to see. He expected it to be red-hot. But it felt cool to his touch, and it looked just the way it had always looked.

Now that he had gotten out the important part, Lewis found that he could talk more freely. He told Rose Rita about how he had punched Woody without meaning to; he told her about the postcard and the paper on the street, and the figure under the street lamp. Now it was like running downhill. He talked faster and faster until he had nothing more to say.

Rose Rita sat there, nodding and listening, through his
whole speech. When he was through, she said, “Gee, Lewis, don’t you think we ought to tell your uncle and Mrs. Zimmermann? They know all about stuff like this.”

Lewis looked terrified. “Please don’t, Rose Rita! Please, please, don’t! My uncle would get mad and bawl me out and . . . and I don’t know what he and Mrs. Zimmermann would think! They told me never to mess around with magic again! Please don’t say anything to them!”

Rose Rita had not known Lewis long, but she did know that he spent a great deal of time worrying about being bawled out. He worried about it even when he wasn’t doing anything bad. And she didn’t really know how Jonathan would react. Maybe he
would
lose his temper. So she shrugged and said, “Oh, okay! We won’t tell them then. But I think you ought to give the darned thing to me so I can throw it down the sewer for you.”

Lewis looked hesitant. He bit his lip. “Could we just maybe . . . kind of put it away for a while? You never know. When I grow up, it might be that I could do something with it.”

Rose Rita looked at him over the tops of her glasses. “Like fly to the moon? Come on, Lewis! Stop kidding around. You just want to hang onto it. Give it here.” She held out her hand.

Lewis’s face suddenly grew hard. He stuffed the coin back in under his shirt. “No.”

Rose Rita looked at him for a moment. Then she took off her glasses, folded them up, and put them in the
holder in her shirt pocket. She jumped at him, and at the first lunge, got her hands around the chain that the coin was attached to.

Lewis got his hands on the chain too, and he struggled to keep it down around his neck. He fought hard, and Rose Rita was amazed at his strength. She had Indian-wrestled with him once, and she had won easily. But now it was different. They staggered back and forth across the floor of the library. Rose Rita’s face got red; so did Lewis’s. Neither of them said a word.

Finally Rose Rita gave one sharp yank and tore the chain through Lewis’s sore fingers. And at that Lewis gave a wild yell and leaped at her. His hand raked down the side of her face. Blood flowed.

Rose Rita stood in the middle of the room, panting. In one hand she held the chain with the coin on it. With the other she gently touched the wetness on her cheek. Now that the coin was gone, Lewis felt as if he had just been shaken rudely out of a dream. He blinked and stared at Rose Rita and he felt ashamed. Tears came to his eyes.

“Gee, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to,” was all he could say.

The study doors rolled back, and there was Jonathan. “Good lord, what’s going on here? I heard this scream, and I thought someone was being killed!”

Rose Rita hastily stuffed the coin and chain into the pocket of her jeans. “Oh, it wasn’t anything, Mr. Barnavelt.
Lewis borrowed my Captain Midnight Secret Decoder Ring, and I said that he had kept it long enough, and we had a fight about it.”

When she turned to face him, Jonathan saw Rose Rita’s bloody cheek. “Wasn’t anything? Wasn’t anything? Did Lewis do that to you?” Jonathan turned to Lewis, and was on the point of giving him an angry lecture, when Rose Rita interrupted.

“It wasn’t what you think, Mr. Barnavelt. I . . . I was scratching my face with the hook end of my glasses. You know, the part that fits down over your ear? Well, it must’ve gotten sharp somehow because it really gave me a scratch!” Rose Rita was very good at explanations on short notice. Lewis was grateful.

Jonathan looked from Lewis to Rose Rita. There was something fishy about all this, but he couldn’t quite tell what. He thought about all the fights he had had with his best friend in grade school, and he smiled. “Oh well. As long as everything’s all right.”

Late that night, after everyone else was asleep, Rose Rita tiptoed downstairs and opened the front door. She was wearing only her slippers, pajamas, and bathrobe, but she went out anyway, down the shoveled walk and out the front gate. She walked to the corner and stopped by the iron grate of the storm sewer. Water from the melting snow was running down into it with a hollow chuckling sound. Rose Rita took the amulet out of her bathrobe pocket. She dangled it over the grate, swinging it on its chain. All she had to do was let go, and it would be good-bye amulet.

But she didn’t let go. A suggestion that seemed to come from outside told her that she shouldn’t throw the thing away. Rose Rita stood there a minute, staring at the strange little object that had given Lewis so much trouble. She scooped the coin back into her hand and put it into her bathrobe pocket. As she turned back toward the house, she thought, “Maybe Lewis is right after all. We’ll put it away for a while and see what happens. I’ll tell him that I’ve thrown it away, so he won’t be pestering me all the time about it. Maybe he can use it when he’s older. He might be a great magician or something then. I’ll guard it for him.” She reached into her pocket to see if the coin was still there. Yes, it was still there. Halfway back to the house she stopped to check again. Then she laughed at herself for being such a fussbudget. She tromped up the creaky steps and went in to bed.