The Figure In the Shadows (8 page)

It was December now, and everyone in New Zebedee was getting ready for Christmas. Big tinsel-covered bells were strung across Main Street in several places, and the fountain at the traffic circle was turned into a Nativity scene. Jonathan lugged the Seagram’s and Oxydol boxes down from the attic and began unsnarling the Christmas tree lights. They had been put away in neat little bundles, but they had somehow gotten all knotted up while lying quiet in their boxes. It happened that way every year. Jonathan and Mrs. Zimmermann began their usual argument about which was better, a tall skinny tree or a short squat one. Lewis unpacked the dirty cotton batting and arranged it around the circular mirror that was
supposed to be the ice pond. He set up the little cardboard village with the cellophane windows and put the celluloid deer out on the ice. Then, when the tree was all decorated and the lights were turned on, Lewis would sit on the couch and squint. He did this to make the tree lights into stars. Red and blue and green and white and orange stars, each with four long rays. Lewis liked the effect, and he would sit there squinting for long periods of time.

Every night as he undressed for bed, Lewis would look at the green streak on his neck. It had been left there by the tarnished chain that held the magic three-cent piece. The magic amulet that was gone forever. He knew it was gone; Rose Rita had told him so. She had told him that she had dropped it down the sewer, and he had believed her. Now he was trying hard to feel good about not having the amulet. He was trying hard, but it was no use.

Lewis felt the way people feel when they give up something they like. Something that is bad for them, like Mounds bars or eating between meals. He felt a big empty space in his life, a hollow place cut out of his insides. Sometimes he woke up in the middle of the night scrabbling frantically for the amulet. And when he found it wasn’t there, he burst into tears. But Lewis went about his everyday life as well as he could. He was distracted from his troubles by the Christmas preparations, and the fun he had playing with Rose Rita. He was happy a
good deal of the time, and he might have eventually forgotten all about the amulet if something bad hadn’t happened to him.

It was a dark December afternoon. Lewis and the other sixth-grade students were trying very hard to finish their math assignments, so they could be let out early. Miss Haggerty walked up and down the aisles, looking at papers and offering comments. When she was on the other side of the room, Woody Mingo started pinching Lewis.

“Ow!” Lewis hissed. “Cut it out, Woody!”

“Cut out what?”

“You know what I mean. Stop pinchin’ me!”

“I ain’t pinchin’ you. It must be a sweat bee. Take a bath, and they won’t sting you. Sweat Bee Barney-smell, Sweat Bee Barney-smell.” Pinch, pinch.

Lewis felt deep despair. It was as if Woody had begun to realize that the amulet was gone. For a long time after their big fight, Woody had let Lewis alone. But in the last few days he had started in again. It was worse than before.

Lewis wanted to slug Woody, but he knew he’d get caught if he tried anything. Besides, he wasn’t sure he could hurt Woody at all without his amulet.
Why did he ever agree to give it away?
It was one of the dumbest things he had ever done in his life.

Miss Haggerty walked to the front of the room and picked up her watch.

“Class,” she said.

Everyone stopped working and looked up.

“Since you all seem to be doing quite well, I will keep my promise and let you out early. Some of you are not quite finished, but you may complete your work at home. Now, as soon as you have your desks all cleared off, and the room is quiet, you may go.”

Desk tops slammed all over the room as the students began stuffing their pencils, paper, and books into their desks. Lewis put all his books away, and then he started stuffing his pens and pencils down the hole that the ink bottle sat in.

The students in Lewis’s school didn’t get to use ballpoint pens. Not in school, at any rate. Ballpoint pens were supposed to be bad for your handwriting. So everybody had to write either with fountain pens, or with wooden pens, the kind that have metal points on the end. The ink the students used was kept in glass bottles which sat in round holes that had been cut in the upper-right-hand corner of each desk top. The holes went right through to the inside of the desk, so if you took the bottle out, you could put things into your desk through the hole. Of course, it would really have been easier just to lift the hinged wooden lid of the desk, but you couldn’t have told Lewis that.

Lewis had about four pencils and a pen crammed into the hole. They were stuck against some books that were inside his desk, and they wouldn’t go in. With his left
hand he jiggled them around, trying to force them in. In his right hand he held the ink bottle. It dangled out over the aisle. Suddenly something hit Lewis’s arm. Right on the funny bone. His arm went numb, his hand went limp, and the ink bottle shattered on the floor. Black ink spattered everywhere.

Lewis turned angrily in his seat. Woody was just pulling himself hastily back behind his raised desk top. And now Miss Haggerty was standing next to Lewis’s desk.

“What seems to be the matter here?”

“Woody knocked the ink out of my hand,” said Lewis, pointing.

Miss Haggerty did not seem to be interested in Woody. She kept on staring at Lewis. “And what, may I ask, was the ink bottle doing in your hand, Mr. Barnavelt?”

Lewis blushed. “I was just puttin’ my pencils down into the hole,” he mumbled.

The room was quiet. Dead quiet. Everyone, including Rose Rita, was looking at Lewis.

Miss Haggerty turned to the class and said, in a loud clear voice, “Class, do we
ever
take our ink bottles out of our desks?”

The class answered in long drawn-out unison. “
NO-O, MISS HAG-GER-TY
!”

Lewis’s face burned. He felt angry and helpless. Now he heard Miss Haggerty telling him that he would have to stay after school and sand some of the ink off the floor. She didn’t say how long it would take.

An hour after everyone else had gone, Miss Haggerty let Lewis go. His fingertips were sore from sandpapering, and he was so mad he could hardly see straight. As he stomped along the sidewalk toward home, he felt mad at everybody and everything, but especially at Rose Rita. It didn’t matter that she had come over to his desk when the class was let out, just to say that she was sorry he had to stay after and to tell him that she hadn’t chanted “No, Miss Haggerty” along with the rest of the class. That didn’t matter. He was mad at her, and he felt that he had a very good reason.

If he had had the amulet with him in school that day, Lewis figured, it would have protected him. Woody would have been afraid to pick on him. The ink bottle would never have gotten broken, and he would never have been forced to stay after school. And who had told him to get rid of the amulet? Rose Rita. As Lewis saw it, everything that had happened to him that day was Rose Rita’s fault.

The more Lewis walked, the madder he got. Why did Rose Rita have to butt in on everything, anyway? If only he could get the amulet back! But how could he? It was gone forever, down the storm sewer. By now it had been washed out into Wilder Creek and maybe even into Lake Michigan. It was no use . . .

Lewis stopped dead in the middle of the street. He happened to be crossing a busy intersection at the time, so cars honked at him and drivers put on their brakes in a
hurry to avoid hitting him. Lewis heard the brakes screeching and the horns honking, and he broke out of his trance long enough to get safely across the street. But when he was on the other side, he went right on thinking the thought that had made him stop.

What if Rose Rita still had the amulet?
What if she had been lying when she said she dropped it down the sewer?

The longer Lewis thought about it, the more certain he was that his wild guess was right. After all, he hadn’t actually
seen
her drop the amulet down the drain. Maybe he had better try to get some information out of her.

On Friday of that week, a boiler burst in the basement of Lewis’s school. Everybody got out early. Lewis and Rose Rita decided that they would spend the afternoon working on the Roman galley. It was nearly finished, but it needed a few final touches.

The galley stood in the middle of Rose Rita’s desk up in her room. Around it were balsa wood shavings, bits of cardboard, and globs of dried model airplane glue. Lewis sat at Rose Rita’s desk, hacking at a strip of balsa wood with his Boy Scout knife. He was trying to make a fancy battering ram to go on the prow of the ship.

“Gosh darn!” Lewis threw the jacknife down and glared at it.

Rose Rita looked up from the book she was leafing through. “What’s wrong?”

“Oh, it’s just this darned old knife. It wouldn’t cut butter.”

Rose Rita thought a minute. “Hey!” she said, “why don’t we get out my Exacto knives? I forgot all about them. They’re in my bureau drawer.”

“Great! Which drawer are they in? I’ll get them out.” Lewis pushed his chair back and got up. He went to the dresser and started opening drawers and looking into them.

Rose Rita jumped up and ran to stop him. “Come on, Lewis! Hands off! That’s my bureau, and my own private stuff is in there! And besides,” she added, grinning, “you couldn’t get into the right drawer anyway. It’s locked, and I’ve got the only key to it, and I’m
not
going to tell you where it is. Now, go out and stand in the hall and close the door behind you. It’ll only take a minute.”

“Oh, okay!” Lewis grumbled. He stomped out into the hall and slammed the door behind him. As he stood there staring at the wallpaper, he thought, “Own private stuff, huh? I’ll bet that’s where you’ve got my amulet, right in there with your own private stuff. But don’t worry, I’ll get it back!”

A few minutes later, Rose Rita let Lewis come back into the room. The bureau drawers were all closed as before, but the Exacto knives were laid out on the desk. Lewis looked the tall black bureau up and down. Which drawer was it? It had to be one of the two up at the top, because they were the only ones that had locks. But how was he going to get in without a key?

Rose Rita saw how Lewis was eyeing the bureau, and she began to get worried. “Come on, Lewis,” she said, taking him by the arm. “There’s nothing in there but my own stuff. Some of it I won’t even let my mom look at, so don’t feel too left out. Hey, let’s get to work on the galley. Here, this is how the blades fit on the holders. . . .”

Late that night, Lewis lay awake, tossing and turning. He heard the grandfather clock in the study downstairs thud one o’clock, and then two, and then three. Lewis was trying to put together a plan for getting a look in the locked drawers of Rose Rita’s bureau. But it was no use. Everything depended on his having the key, and he didn’t have the faintest idea of where to look for it. He thought of ransacking her room some time when she was out, but he didn’t see how he could do that without attracting her mother’s attention. And he didn’t want to make a mess. Everything would have to be done carefully and secretly, so Rose Rita would not realize what was going on. Lewis was hoping that the amulet would be tucked away in some dark corner of one of those two drawers, some place that Rose Rita didn’t look at very often. Lewis grimaced. Maybe Rose Rita checked the bureau every day, just to see if the amulet was there. Maybe he could have a fake one made . . . no, that sounded impossible. If he got the amulet away from her,
and she found out about it, it would just be too darned bad.

But how was he going to get it? Lewis thought about skeleton keys and midnight break-ins with rope ladders and black masks and tool bags and the works. Then he thought, “Gee, what if it’s not in her bureau at all? What if she really did throw it away?” In any case, he wasn’t going to find out anything without the key to the drawer. And he didn’t even know where to look for it.

Lewis got that hopeless feeling. As the clock struck four, he drifted off to sleep. That night, Lewis dreamed about keys. He was wandering through the many rooms of an old junk shop, and every room was full to the ceiling with keys. Keys of all sizes and shapes. Some of them were hooked together on rings, but most were just piled loose on the floor. He searched and searched, but he couldn’t find the one he wanted.