The Curse of the Blue Figurine (14 page)

"Duston Park," said the professor. "It's named for— but never mind. Go on."

"Ah, yes. Duston Park. Well, I think you should go there with him. He should keep his 'appointment' with this idiotic nonexistent ghost. Then, when no ghost shows up, and nothing hideous or nasty happens to him, he'll feel better. After that, as soon as school is out, I think he ought to be gotten out of town. Can his grandparents afford to take him on a vacation?"

The professor frowned and shook his head sadly. "No. They're as poor as church mice—poorer even. They—" He stopped because a thought had struck him. He snapped his fingers. "By God!" he exclaimed. "But
I
can take him on a trip! I'd
love
to! How about that? Eh? Eh?"

Dr. Melkonian grinned and nodded approvingly. "I think that would be just peachy-dandy. After the experience he's had—or thinks he's had—he needs to get away. Good. Excellent. I'm glad you'll be able to take him. Oh, by the way, I have something that belongs to him. A ring. It was on his finger, and he told me—under hypnosis—that the ghost of Father Baart had given him the ring. There's a letter B under the stone, and I suppose you could imagine that that stood for
Baart.
At any rate, according to Johnny the ghost had told him that he couldn't take the ring off. He would die if he did. Well, I took it off while he was asleep, and needless to say, he didn't die." Dr. Melkonian paused and dug his hand into his coat pocket. He fished out the ring and handed it to the professor. "Here. Do you know anything about it?"

The professor took the ring and turned it back and 
forth, examining it. The small yellow stone sparkled fitfully in the lamplight. "No," he said slowly. "No, I don't know a blessed thing about it. I saw it on Johnny's finger one day, and I asked him where he had gotten it, and he said that his grandfather had given it to him. Then I asked his grandfather about it, and he said that Johnny had told him that
I
gave it to him. And from all this I concluded that Johnny had gotten the ring in some weird way and didn't want to tell anyone how." The professor flipped the ring up in the air and caught it. "I can't imagine that he stole it. I mean, he's not the thieving kind, and anyway, it doesn't look like it'd be worth stealing. The stone looks like a piece of bottle glass, and the body of the ring seems to have been made out of a rusty—"

At this point the door of the examining room opened, and Johnny came stumbling out. His hair was mussed, and his glasses were stuck on crooked, and his eyes were heavy with sleep.

"Hi," he said shyly. "Can I come out now?"

Dr. Melkonian asked Johnny to sit down in one of the easy chairs. And then he and the professor had a long talk with him. They explained to Johnny that Mr. Beard —otherwise known as Father Baart—was just a figment of his imagination. When Johnny heard this, he was shocked and bewildered. And then he got angry.

"Whaddaya mean, I didn't see him!" Johnny burst 
out. "He was right there in front of me, just like you are!"

Dr. Melkonian smiled blandly and folded his hands on the desk. "Yes, yes, young man," he said smoothly. "You saw him, all right—only he wasn't there. He existed only in your mind. You've heard of mirages, haven't you? Well, Mr. Beard was like a mirage. You've been through a great deal of sorrow lately, young man. And sorrow can make us do strange things and... and
see
strange things. Please try to understand. I'm not saying that you're crazy or that you are lying. I'm merely trying to help you understand what happened to you."

Johnny was stunned. He didn't know what to say. "But... but..." he stammered, "he... he gave me a ring..." Johnny looked down at his left hand. The ring was gone! Immediately he felt panic. What would happen to him now?

The professor held up the ring. "Dr. Melkonian took this off your finger while you were asleep," he said gently. "And don't worry—you're not going to die. There's no ghost, and no curse on you, or on that stupid blue hunk of crockery. So relax. Everything's going to be all right."

Johnny was not so sure about that. Dr. Melkonian and the professor talked very seriously with him for a long time. They argued and wheedled and were terribly logical as they tried to prove to Johnny that the ghost was just imaginary. Johnny resisted. Like most people, he re
sented it when somebody told him that he had not seen something that he really thought he had seen.

"But what about the ring?" he said insistently. "I mean, I didn't make it up. It's right there on the desk!"

"I know," said Dr. Melkonian patiently. "But you may have found the ring somewhere. Maybe you found it in the church that night when you thought you ran into Mr. Beard for the first time. Don't get me wrong. I'm not accusing you of lying. Mr. Beard must have seemed very, very real to you, as real as the professor here, or as me. But hallucinations are that way. You can't tell them from the real thing—you really, truly can't!"

Johnny was beginning to feel desperate. "But he talked to me! I
heard
him!"

Dr. Melkonian was not impressed. "Auditory illusions are common," he said. "Haven't you ever imagined that you heard somebody calling your name?"

"Okay, okay! But what about the time I told you about, when the ring flashed and this big wind knocked Eddie Tompke for a loop? How about that, huh?"

"Ring stones flash in the sunlight sometimes," said the doctor smoothly. "And as for the sudden wind... well, when you live in New England, you learn to expect things like that. The sea causes violent and unexpected changes in the weather."

"But Eddie was scared! He really was!"

Dr. Melkonian smiled faintly. "I'm sure he was. Something startling like that, a wind strong enough to knock you off your pins... well, it would have scared me too. 
But it's a
natural
occurrence, not a supernatural one! Can't you see that?"

And so it went. After an hour of this sort of thing Johnny was beginning to have doubts about what he had seen and heard. He was still not entirely convinced, but he did have doubts. To tell the truth, he
wanted
to have doubts. If Father Baart was imaginary, that meant that he was not being threatened with death and destruction. On the other hand, the whole experience had been so real, so very real. Johnny's mind began to whirl. Nothing made sense anymore. Was Dr. Melkonian real? Was the professor real? Was
anything
real?

After the session in Dr. Melkonian's office Johnny rode home to Duston Heights in the professor's car. On the way the professor asked Johnny if he would like to go on a little trip with him after school was over. He explained that they would be going up into the White Mountains to sight-see and hike around, and maybe even do a little mountain climbing. Johnny was delighted by this idea. He had seen pictures of the White Mountains of New Hampshire, but he had never actually been up there on a visit. The trip sounded great. But now his mind shifted to a totally different subject: What was he going to do about the meeting that he was supposed to have—or wasn't supposed to have—with Mr. Beard in Duston Park next Friday night? The professor, glancing sideways, saw the look on Johnny's face, and he read his thoughts.

"Are you worried about your midnight rendezvous?" he asked with a slight smile.

Johnny nodded glumly. "Yeah. What
... whaddaya think I oughta do?"

The professor's smile got broader and more confident. "Dr. Melkonian and I discussed this," he said briskly, "and we think that you should keep this so-called appointment. I'll go with you, and if a ghost shows up... well, I've always kind of had a hankering to see one. Are you game? Are you still willing to go?"

Johnny nodded. And so that was settled.

When they got back to Fillmore Street, the professor had a little talk with the Dixons. He explained to them as well as he could what Dr. Melkonian had said about Johnny and his problems. They were suspicious because they didn't like psychiatrists. They thought psychiatrists were like witch doctors, and they also thought that only crazy people believed in the things that psychiatrists said. But they were glad to hear that Johnny was not seriously ill, or ready for the insane asylum. And they thought that the trip to the White Mountains was really a very wonderful idea.

Several days passed. One afternoon when the Dixons were out shopping, the professor sneaked over and took away the blue figurine and the hollow book that held it. He had told Johnny that he was going to do this, and Johnny agreed that it was probably a good idea. Meanwhile Johnny went about his usual routine. He felt 
much, much better than he had felt in a long time. He slept soundly at night, and he did not hear any strange noises. He felt as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. Naturally he was still a bit worried about Friday night. He did not know what was going to happen—not really. But, he reminded himself, the ring was gone from his finger, and he was still among the living. That was an encouraging thought, to say the least.

Friday night came, and it was pouring rain outside. The professor, umbrella in hand, met Johnny at the front door of his house at a quarter to twelve. Off they went, through the wind and wet, and finally they arrived in Duston Park. They stood around by Hannah Duston's statue and waited. The streetlight burned placidly, and the bronze Hannah hovered as menacingly as ever. The rain pelted down and made a racket on the stiff cloth of the professor's umbrella. Across the street the columned church loomed ghostly and white, thrusting its tall spire up into the night sky. Time passed. Fifteen minutes, half an hour. Nobody came.

The professor unbuttoned his raincoat, reached into his jacket pocket, and pulled out his watch. He glanced at it, sniffed, and looked around.

"Well," he said dryly, "Shakespeare would say that this was a night when the sheeted dead might squeak and gibber in the streets. But they ain't out, and on a night like this I don't blame them. No, sir, I don't blame them at all." He put his watch back in his pocket and peered owlishly around. Then he folded his arms, leered jaunt
ily, and began to whistle. It was an old tune, "The Ghost of John." After he had whistled it through once, he sang softly:

Have you seen the ghost of John?

Long white bones and the flesh all gone?

Oh, ooooh-ohhhhh!

Wouldn't it be chilly with no skin on?

Johnny was not in such a jolly mood. He would have liked to be, but he couldn't manage it. He was staring intently at the great mass of shadow on the right side of the Unitarian church. Mr. Beard had walked out of that darkness last Saturday night. Try as he might, Johnny just couldn't persuade himself that Mr. Beard was imaginary. Yet the professor had told him that Mr. Beard didn't exist. Dr. Melkonian had told him this too. And now, here in the park, the professor was singing silly songs and making fun of ghostly fears. Johnny asked himself why he couldn't let go of his lingering fear and be cheerful too.

The rain kept pouring down. Now the wind began to blow, and Johnny felt rain slashing across his legs. A hard gust hit them, and the professor staggered sideways.

"Drat!" growled the professor as he pulled the umbrella back over their heads. He turned and looked at Johnny, who was still peering anxiously this way and that. "Look, John," he said in a more gentle tone, "we ought to be getting on home. Nothing is going to happen here, believe me. Nothing except that we might go 
to sleep on our feet. I'm an old geezer, and these late hours are not for the likes of me." He yawned hugely and flapped his hand against his mouth. "Let's head for home. How about it? Eh? Are you with me?"

Johnny nodded. They trotted off down the long sidewalk that ran diagonally across the little park. They paused at the curb, and a car whooshed past. Its taillights stained the pavement red. As they started across the street Johnny glanced back, one more time, over his shoulder. Nobody there. Why couldn't he be calm? Why couldn't he heave a deep sigh of relief? Well, he couldn't. Johnny felt nothing but foreboding, the fear of someone who is waiting for something to happen.

On a bright but chilly day in June, Johnny was sitting in the front seat of the professor's mud-spattered maroon Pontiac. They were zooming along on U.S. 3, which winds north into the White Mountains. Johnny felt happy. He was eating Planters peanuts out of a can, and he was gaping this way and that. They were in the mountains, in the mountains at last. For some time they had driven through rather blah, ordinary, slightly hilly country. Then in the distance Johnny began to see rumpled blue shapes. Now they were among those shapes. Great humped masses rose above the road. Trees marched up the sides of the mountains or bristled on their ridges—pines and maples for the most part, with here and there the startling white fork of a birch tree.

Crags and horns of stone topped some of the mountains or jutted from their sides. Here and there the masses of trees would part, and dizzyingly high on the side of a mountain, Johnny would see a slanting green pasture and wonder if animals or people could ever get to such a place.

Johnny was entranced. Growing up on Long Island, he had never seen mountains, except in pictures and in movies. Now here he was.

The professor darted a quick glance at his companion. "Well, are you enjoying yourself?" he asked.

Johnny nodded. He was sublimely happy. The sense of foreboding that had hung over him for days had finally passed away.

He had had three more sessions with Dr. Melkonian, and finally, after a lot of thought, he had become convinced—well, more or less convinced—that Mr. Beard was a product of his imagination. "Insufficient grievement" was the phrase Dr. Melkonian had used when he was explaining Johnny's problem. It was a pretty highfalutin term, but what it meant in plain English was that Johnny had not cried enough over the death of his mother. This, together With the other changes that had taken place in his life, had caused Johnny to see and hear things that weren't there. All these horrors and hallucinations were behind him now. The "magic" ring was in his desk drawer. The blue figurine was over at the professor's house. And right now the only question in Johnny's mind was, when do we eat?