Black and Blue Magic (16 page)

At last Harry said, “Maybe I ought to ... That is, there’s something I should tell you.”

But Lee held up his hand. “Excuse me for interrupting you, Harry, but before we change the subject, there’s one more thing I want to say. Olive and I are much happier than we’ve been in years, and I have a feeling that you will understand when I tell you that I believe in Olive’s angel. I believe in Olive’s angel and I
want
to believe in it.”

Harry shut up.

T
HE DAY AFTER HARRY
and Lee talked about Olive’s angel, Harry had a very bright idea. He had been thinking about how he had used his wings to help several other people, even when he didn’t know he was helping, and it occurred to him that he might use them to solve his own problems. And right then, Harry’s biggest problem—besides his clumsiness, which was pretty hopeless—was how to get rid of Miss Clyde and get Mom and Mr. Brighton to marry each other.

Putting the idea of using his wings together with Lee’s idea of haunting Miss Clyde, Harry came up with a terrific scheme. If he could make Olive Furdell think he was an angel without even trying, why couldn’t he, with a little effort, make Clarissa think he was something scarier. The biggest problem was making sure no one saw him except Clarissa, but Harry soon thought of a way to do that.

That afternoon he spent some time rummaging around in the attic for something he remembered putting there after last Halloween. After a while he found it in a box of other holiday junk. It was a mask. One of those gruesome rubber ones that pull on over your head. It was one of those monster faces with scars and warts and fangs all over the place.

Harry’s plan was to wait for an extra dark or foggy night and then fly around to Clarissa’s window and knock on it. She wouldn’t be able to see much except the mask and the fact that it was floating in the air two stories above the ground. That ought to be enough to scare anybody into moving.

It was a typical San Francisco August, foggy almost every night, so Harry didn’t have long to wait. That very night, when he looked out of his bedroom window, the damp gray mist was so thick he couldn’t even make out the T.V. antenna on Madelaine’s roof. So instead of going to bed or out on a flight, Harry just waited. He sat on the stairs between the second and third floor until he heard Clarissa Clyde come up to her bedroom. Then he went back to his room and got ready.

It’s not a bit easy to see in a thick fog with a rubber mask over your whole head, and Harry came close to bumping into the chimney as he flew over the top of the house. It would have been his first bruise in a long time. But, fortunately, he just missed, and he made it over and down to Clarissa’s window without any more trouble.

The window shade was down so Harry didn’t have to worry about being seen before he was ready. He eased up to the window and rested his hands on the outside sill. By hanging on tightly and keeping his wings going gently, he was able to keep his head with its monster face on a level with the window. When he was all set he knocked sharply on the glass.

For a second nothing happened, and then the shade was drawn quickly to one side, and—to Harry’s horror—there was another monster looking right back at him. It was so awful-looking that Harry forgot about hanging on to the window sill, and before he remembered to get his wings going, he had dropped down several feet. If he hadn’t been so experienced at flying, he might have had a serious accident. But he caught himself in time and flew quickly back around the house and scrambled in his own window. Then he sat on his bed in the dark and shivered.

But even after his heart began to slow down and he was able to think more calmly, he still couldn’t imagine what it was he had seen. It couldn’t have been his own reflection in the glass of the window, because it wasn’t the same kind of monster at all. The one Harry had seen was more like a mummy. There had been a white bandage thing around the chin and the skin was all caked and cracked as if it were covered with layers of clay. Only on top of its head were a lot of round disk-like objects, like maybe it was some kind of mechanized thing from Mars. “A mummy from Mars,” Harry was saying to himself with a shaky grin, when all of a sudden he became aware of a commotion going on downstairs. He had a feeling that he’d been hearing it for quite a while, but he’d been too busy thinking about the mummy to pay any attention.

Somebody was yelling down on the second floor, and Harry could hear doors slamming and people running around. With all that noise going on, Harry realized he’d have to go downstairs, or Mom would be sure to come up to see why he hadn’t. He leaped off the bed and recited the reverse incantation.

A few minutes later, when Harry, dressed now in his robe and pajamas, started down to the second floor, the screaming had stopped. When he reached the hall, Mr. Konkel, Mrs. Pusey and a traveling salesman named Mr. Lewis, were talking together at one end of the hall, and at the other end Mr. Brighton was apparently having a spell of silent hysterics. Mom and Clarissa were no place to be seen.

When Mr. Brighton saw Harry, he stopped laughing enough to motion Harry to come downstairs with him. “What happened?” Harry asked. “What’s all the yelling about?” But Mr. Brighton only put his finger to his still laughing mouth and went on leading the way to the kitchen.

When Mr. Brighton had poured himself some coffee, he finally stopped laughing and started explaining. “It was Miss Clyde,” he said. “A few minutes ago she came running out into the hall insisting she’d seen some sort of terrible-looking face at her window. Your mother’s in her room with her now trying to calm her down.”

“Well for Pete Squeaks!” Harry said as innocently as he could. “What do you suppose she saw?”

Mr. Brighton started to laugh again. “I don’t know,” he said. “But judging by the fact that her window is at least twenty feet above the ground, and by certain other observations, I’d say she probably got a glimpse of her own reflection.”

Just about then Mom came in and sat down with them, and the three of them sat there and laughed the way they’d done the night Miss Thurgood sat in the water heater flood. Only this time Harry still wasn’t quite sure just what he was laughing about. At least he wasn’t sure until Mom started describing what Clarissa had looked like when she ran out into the hall screaming that a ghost had looked in her window.

Mom said that Clarissa had been wearing a mud pack, and a thing called a chin strap that was supposed to get rid of double chins, plus a bunch of big fat hair curlers. It wasn’t until he heard Mom’s description that Harry was completely convinced that he hadn’t really seen a mummy from Mars after all.

T
HE HAUNTING SCHEME WORKED
just the way it was supposed to. The very next day Miss Clarissa Clyde packed up her imitation alligator bags and went away. But even though that was what he’d been hoping for, Harry didn’t feel altogether happy about it in the days that followed.

In the first place, he couldn’t help feeling a bit guilty. Scaring someone just a little to get her to move was one thing, but Harry had a notion that Miss Clyde hadn’t left just because she was scared. It’s almost fun sometimes, after it’s all over, to look back on a good scare, especially if it’s the kind of thing that makes a good story to tell your friends. But nobody tells his friends about being embarrassed in front of a lot of other people. Harry couldn’t help feeling a little mean every time he thought about poor Miss Clyde running out there in front of the other boarders in all her beauty stuff. He really hadn’t meant it to work that way.

In the second place, the whole thing began to look like a lot of wasted effort. Even without Clarissa around, Mom and Mr. Brighton didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. They did spend a little more time talking to each other; but as far as Harry could tell, it was all friendly public sort of conversation, in front of everybody. And from what Harry had observed about such things, they weren’t going to make any progress at all that way.

By the end of August Harry was feeling really gloomy. Not only was the Plan a failure, but as far as he could tell by looking in the bottle, he had only about enough magic ointment left for one more flight. In fact, he didn’t fly for several nights, partly because he was saving that last flight for a special occasion, and party because he just couldn’t bear to use it up and then face the fact that his wings were gone forever. His wings gone, the summer almost over, and nothing to look forward to but lonely old Kerry Street, with no kids to fool around with and nothing to do.

It was on the very last day of August that Harry walked down to Wong’s Grocery after dinner to chat with the Wongs and see if they knew when Mike might be coming back from the Sierras. While they were talking, he got started helping Mr. Wong stock the can shelves, and by the time they were finished it was already dark. When Harry finally got back to Marco’s, Mrs. Pusey and Mr. Konkel were in the living room, but he didn’t see Mom or Mr. Brighton anywhere. He went on out to the kitchen, but they weren’t there either. At last, he went back to the front room and asked Mrs. Pusey where Mom was. Just as calm as could be Mrs. Pusey said, “I believe your mother and Mr. Brighton are out on the veranda.”

Sure enough, from the dining room bay window, Harry could get a glimpse of them, sitting side by side on the porch swing, talking and laughing. But no matter how hard he stretched his ears, he couldn’t quite hear what they were saying. Just the same, as he went on up to his room, he was feeling pretty excited and hopeful.

It was after he got to his room that he had another bright idea. At least it seemed like a good one at the time. Since he was going to have to use the last drops of magic ointment sometime, he might as well do it tonight. He’d get all ready and then he’d begin his final flight with a little detour. He’d just light for a moment on the roof of the veranda and check on the conversation going on below. After all, it wouldn’t be just ordinary eavesdropping because he sort of had a right to know. Then he would go on from there and have a wonderful extra-long flight.

It wasn’t many minutes later that Harry eased out of his window, coasted silently around the house, and came to a stop at the opposite end of the veranda roof from where Mom and Mr. Brighton were sitting. He didn’t dare land directly over the swing because even when you’re a very experienced flier, you sometimes make a bit of a thud when you land.

He came down nicely and began to move quietly along the roof. He had almost reached the point he was headed for when he was betrayed by a smooth-worn gym shoe and a dew-wet shingle. Right over Mom and Mr. Brighton’s heads, Harry sat down with a shattering thump.

He slid over on to his stomach and lay there listening. Below him he heard Mom say, “For heaven’s sake! What was that?”

“It sounded as if something heavy lit on the roof,” Mr. Brighton said. “I’ll take a look.”

Footsteps crossed the veranda to the front steps, and Harry panicked. If Mr. Brighton walked out a little distance from the house, he would be able to see the entire veranda roof, and it would be impossible for Harry to get to his feet, take off, and be out of sight in time to avoid being seen.

There was only one thing to do. It might not get Harry out of trouble, but at least there’d be no “public notice” and Mr. Mazzeeck wouldn’t be in dutch with his company. Lying right there on his stomach, Harry quickly recited the reverse incantation.

Dream of the earthbound—Spin and Flow

Flicker and Fold and Furl and NO!

Just as always, there was the tingling, shrinking sensation, and the whirling dizziness. It was the dizziness that Harry had forgotten to take into account. It must have been the spinning dark clouds in his mind that made him loosen his grip on the slippery shingles. But whatever it was, the next thing Harry knew, he was coming to on the bed in Mom’s room and a strange man was bending over him. Mom and Mr. Brighton were standing at the foot of the bed.

“Well, young man,” the doctor said. “I hope you’ve learned a lesson about playing games on the roof in the dark. You’re pretty lucky you didn’t break an arm or leg.” He turned to Mom, “I can’t find a thing wrong with him except a few bruises and a small bump on the head. But you might keep an eye on him for a few hours, and it wouldn’t be a bad idea to take him to his regular doctor tomorrow for a check-up.”

After the doctor left, Mom and Mr. Brighton came back and the three of them had a talk. When it was over, Mom and Mr. Brighton seemed to be satisfied with Harry’s explanation of how it had happened, but Harry wasn’t. It made him feel pretty bad to think they would believe he was dumb enough to dress up in a pair of Mom’s drapes and prance around on the roof playing Superman.

After Mr. Brighton left, Harry got sleepy and wanted to go on up to his own room, but Mom told him to go to sleep right where he was. She said she was comfortable where she was on the chaise longue and she wanted to stay there a while longer anyway. Harry knew she was keeping an eye on him like the doctor said, and there was no use arguing with Mom about a thing like that.

When Harry woke up sometime later, he had been dreaming that he heard someone crying. The room was dimly lighted. Just as Harry opened his eyes, the hall door opened and Mr. Brighton came in carrying two cups of coffee. “I brought up a little coffee,” he whispered. “Why, Lorna, you are crying? What is it? Is Harry worse?”

“No-o-o.” Mom’s voice was trembly. “He’s asleep, and he seems to be fine. It isn’t that.”

“Then what is it? It must be something serious, to make you cry.”

“Well, it is about Harry in a way,” Mom said. “You know what he’s always been like. I’ve been so happy and proud of the way he was turning out, even without a father to help him. But something has been wrong this summer. His mind seems to be a million miles away, and he’s so sleepy and groggy acting. He hasn’t wanted to do anything or go anywhere all summer, and he doesn’t seem to have any of his normal interests. I feel as if it’s my fault for disappointing him again about the summer trip he wanted to take. And now this strange thing tonight. It just doesn’t seem like Harry at all.”