Wrath of the Grinning Ghost (7 page)

The professor haggled with an auto-rental clerk, then he and Johnny climbed into a new-smelling Ford for the long drive. Johnny had never seen the Rocky Mountains before, but he was so worried that the high, snow-covered peaks meant nothing to him. The professor hunched over the steering wheel, occasionally swearing under his breath at a hairpin curve or another motorist. "John," he said at last, "maybe you had better get out the map and help me navigate. I've stapled the directions to the hospital to the map. Look sharp! We don't want to miss this forsaken little town!"

Johnny unfolded the road map of Colorado that Professor Childermass had bought before they left Massachusetts. They were driving to a small town named Talus, where Major Dixon was in the hospital. The Air Force doctors didn't know how to treat him, so they had moved him to a civilian hospital. "Just as well," the professor had said when he first heard that news. "The base where your father works is a top-secret site, so we probably couldn't have visited him there."

Leaning over the map, tracing their route with his finger, Johnny said, "We're still about fifteen miles away. We'll cross a river, and then we have to turn left."

Grimly clutching the wheel, the professor nodded.

"Very well. Are you hungry, John? If you are, we can stop and grab a bite in town. I'm sure these westerners at least know how to fry a hamburger!"

Johnny sighed. The fear he had felt when he saw the terrible vision of his father in the rain of blood still lingered. "No, thanks, Professor. I don't really feel like eating right now."

"I understand," said Professor Childermass gently. For a few minutes he drove without speaking. Then he whistled and said, "Whoops! When you said we'd cross a bridge, you weren't kidding! Look up ahead."

Johnny lifted his gaze from the map. The bridge was a long, green metal suspension structure. It was no different from many other bridges Johnny had seen. But it spanned an enormously deep chasm.

The Ford rumbled onto the bridge, and Johnny looked out the side window. He and the professor were in bright sunlight, but the gorge beneath them lay in deep, purplish shadow. Far down—so far that it looked at least a mile away—a pale silvery-blue river snaked in great loops among red and orange rocks. Johnny swallowed hard. Flying didn't really bother him. At least, flying in an
airplane
didn't. However, the thought of the professor at the wheel and the view of how far the drop would be if the car careened off the bridge combined to make Johnny's stomach feel a little fluttery.

But they got across without any problem, and before long they rolled into Talus, which Johnny thought looked like a town in a western movie. A broad, dusty main street ran between blocks of wood, stone, and brick buildings. Many of them had high false fronts, and some had arches like the ones Johnny had seen in pictures of the Alamo. Lots of the men on the sidewalks wore jeans, boots, and cowboy hats. Johnny noticed them, but he was feeling more and more nervous and worried, so he paid little attention to his surroundings. "The hospital should be right ahead," he told the professor. "According to these directions, it's supposed to be on the main street."

"And there it is, just to our right," related Professor Childermass. He slowed in front of a three-story brick building with a big black-and-white sign reading "St. Catherine's Hospital" on its lawn. He parked the car, and after he got out, he put a gentle hand on Johnny's shoulder. "Now, don't worry. I'm sure your father's condition probably sounded worse than it actually is. Doctors love to make people's flesh creep!"

But when they got to see Major Dixon, his condition was very, very bad. He lay unconscious, with an IV bottle dripping a yellowish fluid into a needle stuck into his arm. Johnny thought his father looked withered and gray, with dark circles under the major's closed eyes. His breathing was alarmingly slow.

The doctor, a heavyset, gray-haired man with thick glasses and a soft voice, said, "We simply don't understand what has happened to him. His vital signs are not that bad. And the major is in good physical shape. We know that he hasn't had a heart attack or a stroke, and X rays don't show any tumor or other problem. He simply did not wake up yesterday morning, and the Air Force doctors were as baffled as we are."

Johnny held his dad's hand. It lay limp in his grasp. Tears stung Johnny's eyes. He had lost his mother years before, and now he was terrified that he might lose his father too. He felt hopelessly fearful of what the future might bring.

The professor asked, "Could Major Dixon be moved to Massachusetts? That's where his family is."

"I don't see why not," said the doctor. "We can't really do anything for him here, and possibly specialists from Boston might think of something we haven't. Of course, moving him could be very expensive, but perhaps the Air Force would help out. I'd have to insist that he be flown there. I wouldn't want an unconscious patient making a long trip by ambulance. And in order to move him, you would have to have the Air Force's permission."

"Don't worry about all that," said the professor decisively. "I can take care of the expense, if necessary. As for the Air Force, well, I'm an old military man myself. I'm sure I can persuade the powers that be to allow Major Dixon to recuperate at home."

The doctor smiled. "I am sure you can, sir," he said. "You strike me as a very forceful personality."

The professor solemnly shook hands with the doctor. "You are a rare specimen indeed, Doctor," he said. "A physician who recognizes that not all intelligent people have 'M.D.' tacked on after their names!"

During the two days that Johnny and the professor stayed in Colorado, the major's condition did not improve. Professor Childermass persuaded the Air Force to fly Major Dixon to Boston, where an ambulance would transfer him to the Duston Heights hospital. Other than that, nothing happened to ease Johnny's worries or his deep sense of gloom.

The professor and Johnny were staying at a hotel in Talus. It had small rooms with tiny, cramped bathrooms. Professor Childermass stayed in room 221, and Johnny was right across the hall in 222. The beds were comfortable enough, but the rooms certainly were not fancy. The hotel did have a few good points, though. All the windows looked out on incredible mountain views, with bare peaks marching off into the distance. The clear air made them all sharp and vivid, purple, gray, and black rock and glistening white snowcaps. If Johnny had felt better, he would have enjoyed the experience.

The hotel also had a restaurant and gift shop. As they sat down to breakfast in the restaurant on their last morning in Colorado, the professor looked at Johnny over the rims of his spectacles and said, "Well, John Michael, neither of us has mentioned it. But we have both been thinking it, so we might as well drag everything into the open. Your father isn't really ill, not as the doctors understand illness. He must be under some sort of horrible curse."

Johnny nodded. "That's what I think," he confessed. "And, Professor, it's even worse. It's my fault."

The professor blinked in surprise. "What? How can you possibly believe that? "

Johnny began to sob. He wasn't exactly crying, but his chest heaved and made it hard for him to get his words out. "B-because I-I w-went into the t-tent and Madam Lumiere r-raised that ghost! That's where it all s-started!"

"Easy, easy," said Professor Childermass in a comforting tone. "Why, John, you didn't cause anything. Sometimes events just happen. But rest assured, my friend, we will not leave your father in the lurch. The first thing to do is to get him safely home, so that Henry and Kate don't worry themselves sick over not being able to see him. And just as soon as we do that, you and I—and Byron too, because we may need his brains and muscles—will return to Florida and find this mystical medium. If anyone can help us to understand how all this ties in with the ghostly figure you saw and the strange book you found, she's the one." The professor stopped speaking as a waiter came to take their orders.

When the waiter had left them, Johnny said, "I don't know if she can help us. She seemed kind of thrown when her crystal ball went haywire."

"She can give us knowledge," pronounced the professor decisively. "And knowledge is power."

As soon as the two of them had been served, he dug into his breakfast, a big western omelet oozing with tomatoes, peppers, cheese, and onions. "Never say die, John!" he declared as he munched. "We have been in dire straits before this, and we've come through with flying colors! Now, eat your buckwheat pancakes, or I may reach over to your side of the table and devour them. This mountain air gives me the appetite of a starving cougar!"

Johnny nodded and poured syrup over his pancakes, though he still didn't feel very hungry. The two of them ate silently until they finished their breakfast. The professor paid, and they started over to the elevator, planning to go to their rooms and pick up their bags. Johnny paused in front of the gift shop. He pointed at something in the window. It was a tiny bird, carved from some kind of black wood and hanging as a pendant on a rawhide thong. "Could I buy that?" he asked.

"What on earth for?" asked the professor. "It's only a tourist trinket. Probably made in Japan!"

Johnny took the silver coin from his pocket. "I was thinking that I could put this on the cord and hang it around Dad's neck," he explained. He gave the professor a weak smile. "It's supposed to be good luck, after all."

The professor nodded. "Very well, John," he said. "But if it costs more than fifty cents, I think it would be smarter just to find a leather shop and buy a plain old shoelace. They cost only a dime!"

They bought the small carving. The bird it represented, the professor said, was probably a thunderbird. "That was an imaginary creature that was so huge, its wings blotted out the sky," he declared. "The thunderbird is part of the mythology belonging to many of the original native peoples of the West, from the Great Plains to the Pacific Northwest. This is a pretty handsome piece of carving for a gimcrack touristy bangle. After you take it off the rawhide, hang on to it."

As it turned out, though, Johnny didn't take the carved thunderbird off the thong. He couldn't figure out any way of hanging the silver coin without putting a hole through it, and he didn't want to do that. So in the end, he decided that he would wait until they were back in Duston Heights to solve the problem. He would hold on to the peso de ocho reales until then, and he would hang the thunderbird pendant around his own neck in the meantime.

They returned to the hospital, where Johnny sat in the waiting room while Professor Childermass worked out the details of moving Major Dixon. The room was sunny and warm, and Johnny nodded off to sleep. Before long, he began to dream.

It seemed that he got up and went to his father's room. A doctor was bending over the major's bed. The man wore the white uniform of a hospital doctor, and he appeared to be checking Major Dixon's heartbeat. "Is Dad going to be all right?" asked Johnny.

The doctor slowly straightened up, his back to Johnny. He was tall. Impossibly tall. His head brushed the ceiling. Slowly, the figure turned. Johnny felt paralyzed. He could not run or even scream.

The doctor wore a surgical cap and a mask that showed only a slit of his features. He reached up and whisked the mask away. Johnny saw a horrible face, the face of the spectral serpent. It flowed and changed and became the bug-eyed image that he had seen in the rain of blood! The monstrous mouth gaped at him, its sharklike teeth clashing, and reddish spittle drooled out. Then the face changed again and became a human skull leering at him. A hoarse voice burst from the skull: "He will be mine! I will devour his soul and become strong! And then the world will die!"

Johnny screamed as everything went black. He opened his eyes again and found he was still sitting in the waiting room. It had all been a nightmare. Or had it? Somehow, a sick feeling grew in the pit of Johnny's stomach. Maybe it had not been just a dream. Perhaps he had glimpsed some terrifying apparition that had evil plans for his father and for him!

He ran to Professor Childermass, who listened calmly to his story. The old man patted his shoulder. "It's only a dream, John," he said. "I have them myself when I'm under stress. Don't worry. We'll do all we can for your father, just as soon as I show these hospital people who is the boss!"

Everything was arranged at last. An Air Force ambulance took Major Dixon to the base so that he could be flown to Massachusetts. Johnny and the professor drove back to Denver, where they returned the rental car and boarded an airliner for the long flight back. By the time the plane took off, night was beginning to fall. The professor sat in a bright pool of light from the overhead panel. His white hair gleamed, and the light glistened on the rims of his glasses as he sat reading a magazine. Once they were airborne, Johnny peered out the oval window. He could see the airplane's wings with their huge engines, blinking lights, and whirling propellers. As the plane rose higher and higher, it climbed from twilight into sunlight. All around them the sky was a pure, clear blue. It reminded Johnny of that last day in Florida, when he had felt so happy aboard the fishing boat. He silently said a prayer for his father, remembering the Psalm that begins:

Deus noster refugium et virtus adiutor in tribulationibus quae invenerunt nos nimis.

The Latin words meant, "Our God is our refuge and strength: a helper in troubles, which have found us exceedingly." Johnny felt that his troubles had found him more than exceedingly. In fact, he felt surrounded by them.

And then Johnny heard someone say, "Pssst!"

Johnny looked around. "What?" he asked.

Professor Childermass glanced up from his magazine, his eyebrows rising. "I beg your pardon, John?"

"I thought you said something," Johnny told him.

"Not me," answered the professor.

"Psst!" It was louder this time.

Professor Childermass looked flummoxed. "I heard it that time," he said. "If it wasn't you, I hope the airplane hasn't developed a slow leak!"