Wrath of the Grinning Ghost (2 page)

Johnny slipped on his boat shoes. They were white canvas with rubber soles, and he wore them without socks. He took off his life jacket and stored it in the big wooden bin beside the marina office. Then he slowly walked down the wharf toward the tents. Lots of people were in costume as pirates, with colorful scarves tied over their hair, big golden hoop earrings, red-and-white striped T-shirts, and even plastic swords at their sides. He saw some carnival games—ringtoss, where you tried to throw wooden rings over the masts of model ships, a dartboard, a shooting gallery where the guns were miniature cannon and the targets were cutouts of pirate ships, and others. Outside one tent, a woman in pirate garb was selling "tattoos." She was just painting them on, but a placard beside her chair showed that they looked like real pirate tattoos: hearts with daggers through them, black Jolly Roger flags with spooky white skulls, mermaids, and lots of other piratey pictures.

Johnny saw a little girl ahead of him lose her grip on a helium balloon. It sailed straight up into the sky. Leaning back to watch it, Johnny thought that now he understood how that strange bird had just vanished. It had probably not been a bird at all. The shape had just been one of these helium balloons that had soared up over the lighthouse and then popped! That was a relief—

"You look like a young man who has many questions."

Johnny almost yelped. He jerked his gaze down from the balloon. A woman stood in front of him. She was very short, no taller than Johnny himself. Her face was wrinkled and as brown as saddle leather. She wore a white turban and a sky-blue dress decorated with embroidered pictures of stars and planets done in silver and gold thread. A brown buckskin belt cinched the dress tight at her waist, and from the belt dangled leather pouches in all colors of the rainbow. The woman's voice had been pleasant, but her face held no expression.

"Uh—hi," said Johnny weakly. "I didn't see you."

The old woman gazed at him. "I sense you have had much to do with the spirits," she said. "I perceive that you are still troubled with many questions. Shall I answer them for you? Twenty-five cents."

Johnny put his hands into the pockets of his cutoff jeans. "I don't have any—" he broke off, feeling something in his right pocket. He pulled it out. It was a shiny silver quarter.

"This way," the woman said, holding open the flap of a white tent. "Don't be afraid. I am not on the side of the shadows."

Holding the quarter, Johnny realized he had no excuse. Despite the woman's reassurances, he couldn't help feeling anxious. With his heart pounding in his throat, Johnny stepped into the tent. When the woman let the flap fall back into place, something odd happened.

All the noise from outside, the music, the laughter, simply faded. It was as if the tent were soundproofed.

A dry, dusty odor filled Johnny's nostrils. His eyes blinked as they adjusted to the dimness. In the center of the tent stood a round table covered with a white silk cloth. A crystal ball the size of a bowling ball was in the very middle of the table. Two straight chairs stood on opposite sides of the ball.

The woman sat in one and held out her hand. "Cross my palm with the silver," she said.

Johnny held out the quarter. He used it to draw an imaginary X in the woman's palm, and then he dropped it into her hand. She closed her fingers on it.

"I am Madam Lumiere," she told him. "The Lady of Light. Be seated, my child."

Johnny sat down on the edge of the other chair. His chest felt squeezed. It was hard to breathe.

Madam Lumiere closed her eyes. "You are not from here," she said. "You come from the north. You were born in one place, but you live in another."

Johnny nodded. That was true. He had been born in upstate New York, but now he lived in Massachusetts.

The old woman frowned slightly. "You do not live with your parents," she said. "Your mother is not with you. She has passed over. Your father, ah, your father has duties that take him far away. You live with older people. An aunt? An uncle? No. You stay with a grandfather and a grandmother, no?"

"That's right," said Johnny.

Madam Lumiere's head drooped forward. "I see many strange things in your past," she murmured. "You have done and seen things most people would not believe in. You have an open mind and a brave heart, though you do not know how brave." She opened her eyes. "Something is trying to happen now," she said. "I do not know what. This is very—"

The crystal ball began to glimmer with a peculiar flickering light. It was mostly a pearly white, but there were tinges and flashes of blue. Johnny stared at it, fascinated.

The old woman ran her fingers over the smooth surface of the ball. "Something is coming through, my child," she muttered. "Something very strong, from the other side."

The crystal ball flared with light, like a silent explosion. Johnny saw the light flicker, until a small shape hung in the heart of the crystal. It was a pale white. "What's that?" he asked, his mouth dry.

"I do not know," said Madam Lumiere, her voice sounding troubled. "It is a powerful force—"

Flash! Johnny gasped. The shape had shot out of the crystal ball and hovered above it! It was a face. A dead-white face of a thin man. Long white hair trailed at the sides. The eyes were wide and black. They were the worst of all. The eyes had no whites, no pupils, but were pools as dark and glistening as puddles of oil. Johnny could see no lips on the face, just a gash of a mouth. The creature's mouth opened in a terrible grin.

"Free!" said a dead, rustling voice. "Free! I shall take my final sacrifice from the world of the living! And the universe shall be mine!"

The monstrous face quivered in the air, and then it vanished. In its place hung something black, the shape of a bird. To Johnny it looked like an eagle or a falcon. It was not flying. The wings were folded, and the figure resembled a statuette of a falcon more than it did a living bird. "Johnny Dixon! Can you hear me?"

The downturned falcon's beak did not move. It couldn't really be speaking, not with any normal voice, but in his head, Johnny heard a raspy voice that was somehow familiar: "Now you've done it! I tried to appear and warn you about what was going to happen, but no! I can't fight this evil thing alone! Get help! Get to Professor Frizz-Face as soon as you can! Or else the world is doomed!"

And then Madam Lumiere shrieked as Johnny toppled out of his chair and fell to the floor.

And everything went dark.

CHAPTER TWO

Johnny heard someone saying, "Child! Child, wake up!" It was a kindly voice, a woman's voice. For a second he even thought it might be the voice of Gramma Dixon.

He opened his eyes. For a dizzy minute he did not know where he was. Everything was dim and shadowy. A wrinkly-faced old woman was bending over him. She held his hand in hers, and he felt her leathery fingers patting the back of his hand. Then it all came back in a rush. Johnny sat up so fast that his head spun. "What happened?"

Madam Lumiere helped him get to his feet. "Easy, easy. You fainted," she said. "You looked into my crystal, saw something, and you fainted dead away. What was it? What did you see?"

Johnny shook his head, trying to clear the mist from his mind. The world seemed to be settling back into place once more. He could smell the dusty tent again, that dry canvas odor, and now he could hear the music and laughter from outside the tent. Whatever strange spell had been hanging over the tent seemed to have gone. "Didn't you see them?" he asked.

"I saw vague, shimmering lights, no brighter than the glow of a five-day-old moon. I heard a humming, as the voice of many hundreds of bees," Madam Lumiere said. "That is all."

Stammering, his words tumbling over one another, Johnny told her of the two things he had seen and heard, of the ghastly pale face and the dark hovering bird.

Madam Lumiere listened gravely. When Johnny finished, she looked deeply concerned. "The first," she said slowly, "the first is a spirit of shadow and malevolence. It may mean you great harm. The second sounds as if it might be a guide, a helper. It could be on your side, offering advice and protection. I cannot tell you more. The rest I think you must learn for yourself. There is great power haunting you, child. You must take care. You must not allow the forces of the darkness to control you." She held up the quarter. "I could return this," she said. "But I will not. What has happened to you is in part my fault. I will keep this and wear it as a charm. Wait a moment."

She reached into a pouch that dangled from her belt. From it she took a large old silver coin. "Take this," she said.

Johnny felt her drop the piece of metal into his hand. It felt strangely heavy. It was only roughly round, and Johnny could see that the engraving on one side showed a cross with small figures inside the spaces between the crosspieces, and the other showed a coat of arms of some sort. Both sides were so very worn that the engraving was hard to make out. "What is it?" he asked.

"A pirate coin," Madam Lumiere told him solemnly. "A
peso de ocho reales.
Marked with the sign of the cross. It has been blessed by a priest, and it has brought luck to men and women of good heart and good soul for more than two hundred years. Keep this with you. When you face danger, think of it. Touch it and think of me too. It may allow me to help you. Go now. Go into the sunlight, but be on guard against the shadows!"

Johnny almost ran out of the tent. His head was spinning. He stepped into the afternoon sunshine and looked around wildly. The hot sun beat down, making his head ache and his eyes water. To Johnny the costumed, happy crowd now looked evil and threatening. The men dressed as pirates leered as if they were eager to feed him to the sharks. He felt like a mouse surrounded by cruel cats, all of them ready to tease him before they began to feast. He felt—

He felt a hand clap down on his shoulder!

"Easy, Johnny!" said his father from behind him, patting his shoulder in a reassuring way. "Calm down!
You
jumped a mile. I didn't mean to scare you."

Johnny sighed in relief. "It's you," he said, turning. "Dad, let's go."

"Go?" asked his father, blinking in surprise. "Right now? Don't you want to look around the carnival? You might find a ship model or—"

"I don't feel so great," said Johnny. That much was true. His stomach was lurching, and he felt as if he were about to throw up. "Too much sun or something," he mumbled.

"Okay," his father said, looking at him with some concern. "Come on. We'll hike over to the cabin."

They were staying at a little place called Pirate's Cove. It was like a motor court, with a dozen cabins arranged around a semicircular walk. The road that led to it was sandy and littered with shells. It was soft and crunchy underfoot and would not be a good road to drive on, but that was all right, because Live Oak Key was such a small island that no cars at all were on it. Everyone walked or rode bikes to get around.

After a ten-minute trek, Johnny and the major came to the tourist cabins. These stood on stilts six feet off the ground. They were made of weathered gray wood, with tin roofs that sounded like drums when it rained. Dusty green oak trees, their branches all gnarled from years of sea winds, shaded the tourist court. From the crooked limbs of the trees, long gray-green beards of Spanish moss hung down, swaying in every breeze. Though the cabins might have looked a hundred years old, they were modern enough to have air conditioners in the windows, and as soon as Johnny and his father had climbed up the front steps, unlocked the door, and walked in, Major Dixon turned their air conditioner on full blast. "You do look sort of green around the gills," he said to Johnny. "You're probably right. We overdid it out on the Gulf today. Tell you what, Johnny. You stretch out on the sofa, and I'll run over to the front office. They sell first-aid supplies there. Maybe they've got something for an upset stomach."

Johnny lay down, grateful for the cool blast of air rushing over him. He closed his eyes, but as soon as he did, he imagined that ghastly, grinning face again, and his eyelids flew open like window shades that had been tugged too hard. He gulped in deep lungfuls of air. The cabin was a little place, barely twenty feet wide by twenty-five feet long, but now it seemed cavernous to Johnny. He and his dad had stayed here before, and ordinarily he liked the compact little house, with its beds that had drawers underneath them for storing clothing, and its strange little triangular closets. Now, though, the place seemed haunted. Through the archway that led from the living room to the cluttered kitchen-dinette, Johnny could see the shadowy form of the refrigerator. It was the old-fashioned kind with a round compressor on the top. To Johnny it looked like a ghost looming in the shadows. He told himself to get a grip, but it was no use. He felt oppressed, as if something were weighing him down.

After a minute he heard footsteps coming up to the narrow porch, and then the door opened and Major Dixon stepped in. He was holding a small pink bottle of Pepto-Bismol. "This might help you," he said. "I'll get a spoon." He went through the archway and clicked on the kitchen light, and the ghost became just the noisy old refrigerator again.

Johnny heard his dad rummaging in a drawer. Silverware tinkled, and his father came back looking faintly puzzled. "Here you are," he said. He gave Johnny a spoonful of the sweet, faintly minty medicine.

Then Major Dixon went back to the kitchen. When he returned, he was carrying a slim, flat book. "I found this in the drawer under the spoons," he said. "Funny. I never noticed it before."

"What is it?" asked Johnny.

"A book that's handwritten in some kind of foreign language. Looks really old," replied Major Dixon. "I can't make head or tail out of it myself. I suppose someone who rented the cabin before us put it in the drawer and forgot about it. Well, finders keepers! You can take this as a souvenir. Maybe Professor Childermass will be interested in it. It looks ancient enough to be historical, anyway!"

Johnny took the book from his father. It was bound in boards covered with marbled paper. Swoopy, swirly designs covered the binding, curlicues and splotches of yellow, red, and chocolate-brown. The spine and the corners of the covers were reinforced with dark brown leather that had aged to a crumbly grayish color. Johnny opened the book, releasing a sharp, dusty, spicy scent, the mysterious, delicious smell of old paper. It was the kind of aroma he usually loved. The shadowy shelves of the Duston Heights Public Library smelled just like that, and they had offered him many hours of excitement and adventure.