The Curse of the Blue Figurine (9 page)

Johnny gazed at the man wonderingly. He couldn't figure out why this total stranger was giving him an old family ring. But it felt good in his hand somehow. He liked it. "Thanks," he said, and he slipped it on to the third finger of his left hand. Johnny did not have a ring of his own at present. He had worn a silver Boy Scout ring for several years, but it had irritated the skin of his finger, and he had had to take it off. Now it felt good to have a ring again.

Johnny got up. Again he thanked the strange little man. Smiling blandly, the man waved good-bye and wished Johnny luck with the little game. Down the aisle Johnny walked, and through the two sets of doors. At the bottom of the stone steps he paused. There was a 
streetlamp nearby, and by its light he could see the ring. Way down in its depths the yellow stone was doing odd things. Johnny saw little flashes of iridescent blue and bloody red. He turned the ring back and forth and watched the way the light played over it. It was funny. He had come to the church feeling terribly guilty about Eddie's broken arm. Now he did not feel guilty at all. And he had made a new friend. Smiling in a satisfied way, Johnny walked away into the night.

The next day after school Johnny went to the Public Library and consulted the unabridged dictionary. The unabridged was fun to use. It was a very thick and floppy book, and it stood on a swiveling wooden stand in a corner of the reference room. A lot of its definitions were strange and interesting, and the book was full of pictures of weird objects, like arbalests and brassards and undershot waterwheels. Johnny flipped straight to the T's, because he had seen a picture of an Egyptian god there—at least he thought that he had. Ah. He was right. Here it was, a picture of the god Thoth. Thoth was a funny-looking thing. He had the body of a man and the head of an ibis, which is a hook-beaked bird that looks sort of like a heron. Thoth held in his hands a bunch of 
Egyptian hieroglyphs. The dictionary said that Thoth was the god of magic and mathematics. He would be a good one to use in the game Johnny was going to play with the blue figurine. Johnny copied the name of Thoth down on a note pad he had brought with him. Then, idly, he flipped a couple of pages and found himself staring at the picture of another Egyptian god. This one was even more weird-looking. Her name was Toueris, and she had the body of a pregnant woman. Her head was the head of a hippopotamus. Toueris—according to the dictionary—was the goddess of childbirth, and of revenge. The revenge part was what interested Johnny. He copied Toueris's name down, closed the book, and went home.

That evening at dinner Grampa asked Johnny about his ring. He had noticed it the first time Johnny had showed up with it on, but he had not said anything then.

"That's really some ring, Johnny," said Grampa amiably as he sprinkled salt on his mashed potatoes. "Where'd you get it?"

Johnny's hand had been resting on the table. Now for some reason he jerked it away and hid it under the tablecloth. He felt shy about the ring. In school kids had noticed it, and at first they had made fun of it, claiming that it looked like a woman's engagement ring. To stop the kidding, Johnny had come up with a pretty snappy explanation. He had claimed that the ring was a Captain Midnight death ray ring. He said he had gotten it by 
sending in Ovaltine labels. But he did not think that an explanation like this would work on Grampa.

"I, uh, the professor... he gave it to me," said Johnny, glancing away evasively.

Grampa stared wonderingly at Johnny for a minute. He could not understand why Johnny was so nervous about the ring. Could Johnny have stolen it? No, Grampa told himself, that didn't seem very likely. Johnny was not the thieving kind. Grampa was curious, but he was not the sort of person who would give you the third degree. So he just dropped the subject and started talking about baseball.

That night Johnny dreamed a lot. At first he dreamed that he was a moth, fluttering about on a summer night. He kept hovering outside a lighted window, and through the window he could see Mr. Beard, the little man he had met in the church. The man was sitting at a table, reading. But no matter how much Johnny the moth beat at the window with his wings, the man never looked up. Then the dream shifted, and Johnny was outside R. Baart's antique store again. He went in as before, and there was the horrible old lady in the green eyeshade. But this time, instead of trying to drag him down into the grave behind the counter, she chased him around and around the shop, up steep rickety staircases, down long dark hallways lined with dusty bureaus and bookcases and looming dark bedsteads. Johnny awoke around three in the morning, and he 
felt exhausted. Exhausted, and strangely nervous. He got up, put on his slippers and bathrobe, and padded down the stairs. He tried the front door, but it was locked tight, as always. Then Johnny stood in the front hall listening. It was a still night. The apple tree outside the hall window hung perfectly motionless. But for some reason the house was making noise. All old houses make noises at night, creaks and cracks and pops. But this was different. It was a rustling noise, a strange ghostly whispering. As Johnny listened the noise died away, and the house was silent again. Eyes wide with wonder and fear, Johnny turned toward the stairs and slowly began to climb.

Johnny did not get much sleep that night. He kept waking up and glancing anxiously around, straining to hear strange sounds. The next morning he stood at his bureau in his rumpled pajamas. The face that stared back at him from the bureau mirror was red-eyed and woozy. On the clean white runner lay the ring Mr. Beard had given him. Johnny picked the ring up and turned it over in his hands. After the dreams he had had and the sounds he had heard in the night, he was beginning to wonder about the little game that Mr. Beard wanted him to play. Mr. Beard was a nice man—that was certainly true—and he was only trying to help Johnny. But what if the figurine really
was
magic? What if Eddie's broken arm hadn't been just a coincidence? Johnny fussed and fumed and thought some more, and as he thought he slipped the ring on his finger.

He looked at himself in the mirror and blinked. Things were suddenly clearer. How silly all his doubts and fears were! He ought to go ahead with the "magic" game. If he played the game, it would make him feel stronger and braver, and then he would
be
stronger and braver, just like Mr. Beard had said.

Johnny went to the closet and opened the door. He knelt down and took the blankets and magazines and sweat shirts off the black book. He opened the lid and took the figurine out. Holding it in his hands, he said the "prayer" that he had made up:

Thoth attend me! Toueris be my avenger! Let those who oppose me beware, for I will make them rue the day when they raised their hands against me! By the name of Amon-Ra I swear it!

Johnny paused. If he was expecting magical fireworks, he was disappointed. The blue figurine smiled up at him as always, but it looked and felt exactly the way it always had. No voices spoke to him out of the air. No thunder rolled. No dark clouds came rushing in to hide the morning sun.

Johnny felt slightly silly. He was glad there wasn't anyone in the room watching him. "This is a dumb idea," he muttered to himself. "It isn't gonna make me any braver or anything." He got up and started peeling off his pajama top. It would be time to go to school soon.

When Johnny walked into the church that morning, he suddenly remembered that it was the first day of May.

On the altar were fresh flowers, and the six tall candles were lit. May meant processions, with kids marching solemnly around the church, and hymns and incense and organ music. That was all right with Johnny. He loved parades and processions. Later, after Mass, Johnny was up in the seventh-grade classroom, sitting at his desk. Sister Electa had not called the class to order yet. In fact she was not even in the room. So everybody was just talking and goofing off. With his finger Johnny idly drew circles in the layer of polish on the top of his desk. For no reason at all his prayer book popped into his head. Johnny was very proud of his prayer book. His dad had given it to him as a going-away present, before he had sent Johnny off to live with Gramma and Grampa in Duston Heights. Johnny used the prayer book every day. It had a black cover of genuine leather, with a gold cross stamped on the spine. The pages were made of onionskin paper, thin and whispery, and the top edge of each page was gilded, so when the book was closed, a glimmering gold bar shone out at you. There were illustrations all through the book, and fancy capital letters, and there were two bookmark ribbons, one purple, the other red. The prayer book was one of Johnny's prized possessions. It felt good just to hold the book in his hand.

Smiling he reached down to the briefcase that stood on the floor next to his desk. The prayer book was in there with his other books. But Johnny's smile faded when he saw that the clasp on his briefcase was undone.

Johnny was very fussy about the clasp. He always did it up after he had taken something out of the briefcase. So it seemed pretty likely that somebody had been fooling around with his stuff. Alarmed, Johnny reached down and lifted the briefcase up into his lap. He opened the flap and peered inside. He could hardly believe it. His prayer book was gone!

Angry tears sprang to Johnny's eyes. Who could have done such a dirty, rotten thing? His mind began to race. Had the briefcase been out of his sight this morning? Johnny thought hard. He had had it with him in the pew this morning, and then he had brought it over to the school, and since then he had been sitting here at his desk, except for one brief trip to the pencil sharpener. So who...

And then it came to him. Phil. Phil Absen, the kid behind him.

Phil Absen was a weird kid. There was something wrong with his head, and so he did strange things and said strange things. Gramma had often said (grumblingly) that Phil was proof of the fact that Catholic schools would take
anybody.
Johnny didn't like Phil much, but he didn't dislike him much either. And up until now he hadn't figured that Phil was a thief.

Johnny turned and looked at Phil. He was pretending to be very busy, leafing madly through his geometry book. When Phil saw Johnny giving him the fisheye, he got even busier. It seemed pretty plain to Johnny that Phil was the guilty one. Who else could it be?

Johnny felt his face getting flushed. Anger was building up inside him. He wanted to grab Phil by the collar and shake the truth out of him.

"Hey, Phil!" he began loudly. "Did you—"

But then Sister Electa's voice cut in. She was summoning them all to attention. She was asking them all to stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Johnny bit his lip. He turned and got up. He would settle with Phil later.

All through the first two morning classes Johnny steamed about his missing prayer book. He kept hoping that Sister Electa would leave the room so he could turn around and give Phil holy hell. Johnny was scared of kids like Eddie Tompke, but he was not scared of Phil. Phil was a real wimp, and even Johnny could terrorize him if he set his mind to it. And if Sister Electa ever left the room, Johnny
would
terrorize him. He would turn around and grab Phil's arm and squeeze it and make him give the prayer book back. It would be as simple as that— at least Johnny hoped it would be.

But the first two class periods passed, and Sister Electa never left the room. Then eleven o'clock came. It was time for religion class—but Sister had a surprise for everyone. Instead of holding the regular class, she announced, they and all the other students were going to go over to the church and start rehearsing for the May procession. Some kids groaned, and Sister Electa glared sternly at them. Then she walked quickly to her desk and dinged the little hand bell. Everybody stood up, and 
then, beginning with the row nearest the door, they began to file out of the room, just the way they did during a fire drill.

A little later Johnny was with the other kids, marching slowly around, two by two, inside the vast, dark, echoing church. Nuns were rushing here and there, making sure that the lines were straight and bawling out kids who were fooling around. Mrs. Hoxter was playing the electric organ up in the choir loft, and the kids were singing:

Bring flowers of the fairest 

Bring flowers of the rarest

From garden and woodland and hillside and vale....

As Johnny shuffled moodily along he began to wonder why he had thought that processions were fun. This one was about as interesting as watching grass grow. Of course it was only a rehearsal. They hadn't even chosen the girl who would crown the Blessed Virgin's statue yet. Johnny wondered who they would choose. Probably Mary Jo Potter. The sisters were the ones who got to choose the girl, and Mary Jo was so holy and pious and religious and sweet that it was sickening....

The procession came to a sudden, lurching, bumping stop. Something had gone wrong up in front, though Johnny couldn't tell what. Now that the marching had stopped, he turned and began looking around in a vague, aimless way. Suddenly he stopped. He had seen some
thing that made him boiling mad. Halfway back along the line stood Phil Absen. And he was holding Johnny's prayer book in his hands.

Johnny had trouble controlling himself. He was a pretty mild-mannered kid most of the time, but when he lost his temper, he lost it. He knew that Phil was a little weak in the head, but all the same, this was too much. Just a little teeny bit
too much!
Johnny clenched his fists and gritted his teeth. He wanted to jump out of line and tear back there and snatch the book out of Phil's hands. But, as angry as he was, he knew better than to do that. Sister Electa—or some other nun—would climb all over him if he started a fight in the church. So Johnny controlled his anger. There would be time to settle with good old Phil later.