Wrath of the Grinning Ghost (15 page)

He had become part of that wall. His anguished face showed, and one of his arms. Part of one leg and one foot. His face was cheek by jowl beside a bare skull. Slimy slugs crept over his forehead and his bare arm. His face was seamed with marks of suffering.

"Johnny," he said with a groan. "Go away! Go home!"

Johnny ran forward. He swatted at the loathsome creeping things. "We've come to save you, Dad!" he said.

Evil laughter echoed. The professor and Fergie clustered close to Johnny. They looked all around. Then the professor said, "There you are, you fiend!" He drew his sword and charged.

Johnny whirled. He saw the skeletal form of Damon Boudron standing at the edge of the red light. The professor took a terrific swashing blow with his Knights of Columbus sword. The ghost held up a bony hand and struck at the swishing blade. With a crack and a clang, the sword broke to pieces.

Professor Childermass staggered, staring at the hilt and its four inches of remaining blade. "Drat!" he said. "That is the second one of these things I have broken!"

The grinning ghost stepped closer, and the old man fell back. "I will reduce you to madness," purred the spook. "I will strike you blind and deaf! I will cause all the indignities and weaknesses of old age to descend on you in one second! And then your body shall die, and your soul shall become my servant!"

Johnny felt electricity in the air. His hair moved as if it were floating. Blue sparks crackled all around him. The ghost was raising its arms, as if about to cast some dire spell.

Then Johnny noticed that Fergie had dropped to all fours. Like a scuttling crab, he hustled to a position behind the walking skeleton. Johnny realized what Fergie was doing. It was an ancient school yard trick!

The professor realized it too. He cowered back, shielding his face with his hands. "No! No! Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?" he screeched. "Take the children! Oh, I am so frightened!"

The grisly creature paused, as if puzzled. Its hands, with sparks boiling off them like flashes from a Roman candle, hesitated. "I do not feel your fear," the monster said.

"Feel this!" bellowed the professor, and he gave the walking skeleton a huge shove right in the center of its chest.

With an outraged scream of surprise, the monster stumbled back—and tripped over the crouching Fergie! It clattered to the floor, then leaped up with surprising speed.

"Rolling block, Dixon!" hollered Fergie.

Johnny threw himself to the floor and did a barrel roll into the skeletal legs. For a second time the horrible specter staggered back, snarling. But this time it was at the head of the huge stair. It fell down into darkness.

"Pursue him!" called the voice of Brewster.

He did not need to encourage the three. Yelling like maniacs, they clattered down the stairway, just in time to see the skeleton crash to the floor. In a flash of blue light, the skull rolled off.

"We did it!" shouted Fergie. "We knocked his block off!"

"Look out!" Johnny screamed.

The skeleton had somehow re-formed itself. Except this time it was not a skeleton at all. It was a snarling tiger, crouching to spring!

"Transmigration!" the voice of Brewster screeched. "He must drink the water of Lethe!"

The professor fumbled in his pocket, and Johnny reached for his own corked vial. But the tiger was springing! It struck the professor and bore him down on the stairway, its great jaws open to clamp on the old man's neck!

"No!" cried Johnny. Then he saw the professor's hands jerk convulsively. A flame leaped forward. The old man had pulled not the bottle of water, but his lighter, from his pocket.

The tiger howled as the jet of fire struck its open mouth. It turned its head from the searing heat. With a stench of burning hair, its fur began to blaze, and it leaped away from the professor, clawing at its face.

Fergie danced around the creature, holding his bottle of water. The tiger's fur seemed to catch fire like tinder. Leaping, billowing flames enveloped it. Fergie darted forward, but a sudden vicious swipe of a burning paw hit him, sending him sprawling. His bottle of water shattered off into the darkness.

The tiger threw its head back and howled. Then it collapsed, with a surge of fire and black smoke!

"Not yet!" said Brewster. "It isn't dead! It's changing form!"

The charred body of the tiger burst apart, and from it crawled a horror. Johnny's mind whirled. He felt faint.

A scorpion scuttled toward him—a scorpion at least two feet long, its curved, deadly tail glistening in the light from the still-burning remains of the tiger. A drop of poison hung on the tip of that sting. With fatal purpose, the monstrous creature headed straight for Johnny. Its lobsterlike pincers snapped furiously. Johnny backed away, tripped, and fell on his back. He felt the legs of the scorpion gripping his jeans, felt the weight of the thing clambering up his chest, saw the quivering sting rise to strike—

Slash! The professor swung the sword hilt, with its few remaining inches of blade! The steel snicked through the tail, and the poisonous sting spun away, cut clean off! Johnny cried out in disgust as the bleeding stump of the tail stabbed with impotent fury against his cheek and throat.

Fergie had crawled to help. He stuck his hand beneath the nasty body and flipped it off Johnny's chest. "You're nothin' but a bug now!" he bellowed. "An' Byron Q. Ferguson steps on bugs!"

The scorpion's thrashing body landed—splat!—on the stone, and true to his word, Fergie staggered up, leaped, and landed with both feet right in the center of the thing's back. With a sickening crack and splurt, the enormous arachnid body burst apart.

"The water!" screeched Brewster from somewhere in the darkness. "You must use the water!"

"On what?" asked Fergie, looking at the runny, burst ruin of the scorpion.

"There!" yelled Professor Childermass. "I see something dark—it's scuttling away!"

A black shape swooped down from the air, a beak stabbed downward, and suddenly the form of Brewster stood before them, clutching something in the tip of his beak. "The water!" he bawled.

A high, insectlike voice shrieked, "You dare not! You cannot! I command you! I, Nyarlat-Hotep, call my minions!"

With shaking hands Johnny pulled his own vial of Lethe water from his pocket. He popped out the cork. In the darkness all around, he heard snarls, growls, and howls. Awful creatures were coming! He could smell their foul breath, could hear the scrape of misshapen hooves and claws on the stone—

"For Dad!" he shouted. "The water of Lethe!"

Brewster took a birdlike hop toward him and held out his beak. "Here! Hold it still!"

The insect voice screamed, "No!
Nooooo!"

Brewster opened his beak, and something small dropped into the bottle. "Cork!"

Johnny jammed the cork in. Pandemonium howled all around.

Fergie grabbed the vial. "Shake well!" he said, and he shook the vial so vigorously that Johnny couldn't even see it. It was just a blur.

The sounds grew to an unbearable pitch. The professor sank to his knees, his hands pressed over his ears. Johnny ground his teeth together. Fergie staggered—

Then an awful hush fell.

And the world began to melt.

"Dad!" shouted Johnny.

"He's not here!" Brewster said. "Follow me!"

Light ahead. They ran, crawled, stumbled toward it! And then somehow they were on the gray plain, and they had the impression of vast forms fleeing on all sides, sinking into the ground, soaring into the heavens, their wails fading, fading.

The Palace of Dreadful Night flowed, twisted, shrieked as it collapsed. As its great form toppled toward them, Johnny began to scream out an Our Father. He was sure he would die in the next second.

But then the falling mass faded to vapor. The vapor trailed away.

"And leave not a wrack behind," said the professor, his voice shaky. "Did the water work?"

"Pour it out," suggested Brewster.

Fergie uncorked the vial and emptied the water on the ground. A small black shape lay curled in a ball for a moment. Then it straightened and painfully crawled away.

"An ant?" asked Fergie.

"Just an ant," said Brewster. "An ant with no memory of having been Damon Boudron or a grinning ghost or Nyarlat-Hotep. An ant that starts now to work its way back up to something that might one day, in a million years or so, have a dim kind of thought in its head." After a moment Brewster coughed. "I'll try to watch over him from now on and keep him out of mischief. He
is
my brother."

"Where's Dad?" asked Johnny.

Brewster bowed his head. "His spirit was released at the same time you heard the others go," he said. "It has returned to earth, to his body. But it is not whole. The things Nyarlat-Hotep did to him here will have broken your father's mind. Unless help comes, he will be insane for the rest of his life."

Johnny began to cry. He could not help it.

"I'm sorry," said Brewster. "I am so sorry."

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Dr. Coote and Father Higgins were frantic. Their friends had vanished, along with the book that was their gateway to the strange world of the spirits. How could they get them back?

Biting his lip, Dr. Coote said, "Father Higgins, you say the most powerful prayers you know. I will recite an ancient magic ritual that is supposed to call spirits from the vasty deep."

"But will they come when you do call them?" asked Father Higgins with a grimace. "Very well. I have no idea of anything else that might help, so let's try it."

For fifteen minutes, they did. And then something happened: The air shimmered with a lovely, pearly radiance. A fog formed. And when it dissolved, there stood Johnny, Fergie, and the professor, looking much the worse for wear. They were exhausted, muddy, weeping, scratched, and bruised, but they were all alive.

"We have to get to the hospital!" said Professor Childermass. "And on the double!"

They all piled into Father Higgins's big Oldsmobile, and he drove them to the hospital, running every stoplight along the way. Father Higgins pulled the car up on the sidewalk right in front of the doors, and they climbed out and rushed inside.

Johnny skidded to a halt. He saw his grandfather ahead of him, and he looked terrible, his face a mask of anguish. "Grampa!" yelled Johnny. "Grampa, is Dad—"

His grandfather hugged him. "Oh, Johnny, it's awful! He came to, but he's screamin' and screamin' like a crazy person! He doesn't recognize us, an' he thinks horrible monsters are after him!"

The professor and the others looked at each other with helpless frustration. "Can I see him?" asked Johnny.

His grandfather burst into tears. "No, Johnny, he wouldn't want you to see him like this. It's better if y' don't. The doctors gave Kate a shot to calm her down, an' they're tryin' to get some sedatives into Harrison too, but—"

Professor Childermass put his hand on Grampa's shoulder. "Henry," he said, "let's at least go up to the waiting room."

They did. Praying, comforting each other, or just sitting quietly, they waited for hours. From the room down the hall, they could hear horrible sounds, the sounds of Major Dixon's shrieks and screams and pleas for mercy. At last the professor went down the hall, peeked in the room, and then walked into a stairwell. He put his hand to his face. "Brewster," he said. "Brewster, are you there?"

"Here," came the raspy voice.

"For God's sake, do something," pleaded the professor. "We saved your world. You can at least help us now."

"I can't," said Brewster, sounding as if he too were on the verge of tears. "I would if I could, but I simply cannot. What you ask is beyond human help, and beyond mine. I am so sorry."

The professor stood there, feeling angrier and angrier. It wasn't fair! Johnny had risked his life—had risked more than his life. It just wasn't fair at all!

He heard slow footsteps climbing toward him. With his blood pressure and his anger rising, he drew himself up. He would tell off whoever this was, but good! It might not help, but it would make him feel better.

But then an old woman climbed into view. The professor's jaw dropped. "Madam Lumiere?" he asked.

She gave him a weak, tired smile. "We have all been busy," she said. She came to his level and stood a few steps away from him. "One drop," she said. "One drop in a thousand drops. And then one drop of that. To forget is to heal. To heal is to forget."

"Wh-what?" asked the professor.

"One drop of one drop in a thousand drops," whispered the old woman. And then she began to glow.

The professor almost dropped to his knees in astonishment. The old woman stood straight. Pure light streamed out of her. The years fell away, and she became an unearthly creature, womanlike, but not like any living woman. She had a proud, disdainful face, a face that was ageless. She was cold and bright and beautiful. And her beauty was terrible. She gave him a smile—and he could not tell whether it was a smile of cruelty or of compassion. She seemed far beyond such human feelings.

Trembling in every limb, the professor watched the form of light drift upward, to the ceiling,
through
the ceiling. And the light faded, and he stood alone. "What the devil?" he asked himself. And then he shook his head. "No," he said aloud. "I should not have mentioned the devil. Hmm. A thousand drops. One drop. I wonder—"

He took out his vial of Lethe water. He went back into the hospital and into a patient's room. The patient, a young man, was fast asleep. The professor picked up a water glass, filled it to the brim from a pitcher of ice water, and then, very carefully, allowed one tiny drop of the Lethe water to fall into it.

Then he found an eyedropper and used it first to stir the water and then to take one drop from the glass. "If this doesn't work," he muttered, dumping the rest of the water down the drain, "I am going to swallow the drops of Lethe water in that vial myself! I'd rather know nothing at all than spend the rest of my life knowing I'd failed my friends!"

He pushed into the major's room. The doctors had strapped Major Dixon to the bed, but he still strained and jerked at his bindings. A physician looked up. "You can't come in here," he said. "The sedatives haven't worked, and—"