The Curse of the Blue Figurine (3 page)

Johnny's mouth dropped open. "Father Baart?"

The professor nodded. "The same. He was quite a striking-looking person—you'd never mistake him for anybody else. He was short and wore a black cloak, and he had a big head and a jutting chin and lots of grayish hair that he wore long. And an overhanging forehead, and a hawkish nose, and deep-set, burning eyes. So if you're ever in the church late at night, well..."

"Oh, for pity's sake!" said Grampa, cutting in. "Don't scare the poor kid to death! I'll never get him to go to 
church with his gramma on Wednesday nights if you carry on like that! By the way, I think it's a shame that a man like that, a priest and all, should have gone over to the devil. Servin' the powers of evil and darkness. Can you imagine?"

The professor twisted his mouth into a wry smile. "It's happened before," he said. "If you read your history, you'll find that some of the great medieval sorcerers were priests. Like Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus. Of course, they stayed on the white magic side... most of the time. But if you fool around with magic, there must be a terrible temptation to call upon the powers of hell. After all, white magic can only do so much. It can't get revenge for you. It can't help you to wipe out an enemy. Only the bad guys can help you with that."

Silence fell. The story was over, and neither Johnny nor Grampa felt like asking any more questions. The professor gobbled the last piece of fudge, and then he announced that he had to go. It was getting late, and he had papers to correct before he went to bed. Johnny had homework to do, so he went out to the dining room table, turned on the light, and sat down to struggle with the square-root problems he had been given. The front door opened and closed. The professor was gone. Grampa went back to the parlor to get the plates and glasses. On his way to the kitchen he stopped by the table where Johnny was working.

"Some story, eh?" he said, chuckling. "That old so-and-so sure knows how to scare you, don't he?"

Johnny looked up. "You mean you don't think it's the truth, Grampa?"

Grampa looked thoughtful. "Well, I wouldn't go so far as to say that the old boy was feedin' you a line of bull, but... like I say, he loves good stories, and he sure knows how to tell 'em!"

Johnny felt disappointed. He was not nearly as skeptical as he thought he was. When he heard a good story, he always wanted to believe that it was true. "It... it
might
be true," he said weakly.

"Oh, sure," said Grampa with a humorous shrug of his shoulders. "It
might
be!" He chuckled and went on out to the kitchen with the dishes.

Johnny struggled a bit with his homework, but he found that his eyes kept closing. Oh, well. He could get up early tomorrow and do it before breakfast. Johnny closed his book and turned off the light. He went to the front door and rattled it, as he always did, and then he started up the steps. Halfway up he paused. There was a tiny square window there, and he liked to peer out of it. He watched the snow fall for a while. He imagined it falling on the cemetery, far away, where his mother lay buried. Sadness welled up in Johnny's heart. Tears sprang to his eyes. He wiped the tears away with his sleeve. Then he turned and climbed on up the stairs to bed.

Days passed. Weeks passed. Nothing very exciting happened to Johnny. He had the usual things to do, like snow shoveling, dish drying, and homework. Johnny went to St. Michael's School, a Catholic grade school in the town of Duston Heights. It was a two-story brick building with a slate roof and a pointed stone arch on the front. At St. Michael's, Johnny was taught by the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. They wore navy-blue robes with black scapulars and black veils. The seventh-grade teacher was Sister Electa. She was nice, most of the time, but she really piled the homework on. Not that Johnny had a lot of trouble with homework. He was a real brain, and everybody at St. Michael's School knew it. Most of the other kids didn't mind that 
Johnny was smart. They thought it was odd, but they didn't hold it against him. But there was one kid who was really jealous of Johnny. The kid was named Eddie Tompke.

Eddie was a seventh grader, like Johnny. He lived on a farm outside of town, and as everyone knows, farm work builds up your muscles. Eddie was strong, and he was good-looking. He thought that he owned the world, and he was ready to fight any kid who got in his way. Eddie had problems, though: He was not doing very well in school. His last report card had been all C's and D's, and as a result he had gotten a royal chewing-out from his father. So Eddie was mad a lot of the time now. He was mad at the world in general, but he was particularly mad at Johnny Dixon. Lately Johnny had begun to notice the way Eddie felt about him. Standing in line during lunch hour one day, he had happened to turn around, and he saw Eddie scowling at him. And later Johnny had been standing around on the playground, talking to another kid, and Eddie had walked by and kicked him in the shins for no reason at all. And now, whenever Johnny passed Eddie, Eddie would glower and say things like "I wish I was a brain!" or "It must be great to be a brown nose. Is that how you get those good grades, kid? Because you're the biggest brown nose in the school? Is that how you do it?"

All this had Johnny worried. He was short and he wore glasses and he was not very strong. Also he was in a new school, and he had not yet made any close friends.

And he had a very great fear of getting beat up. It was one of his really big fears, like his fear that someday he would step on a nail, get an infected puncture wound, and die of lockjaw. Johnny was always reading things in the paper about people who had gotten "beaten to a pulp" or "beaten beyond recognition," which meant that they had gotten smashed up so badly that no one could tell who they were. Stories like this hit Johnny right in the pit of his stomach. And he wondered, often, whether someday Eddie Tompke might get it into his head to beat him up.

One cold dark February day Johnny was standing under the big stone arch out in front of St. Michael's School. The school day was over. Everyone else had gone. As usual he was the last kid out of the building. He fiddled with his scarf and adjusted his stocking cap on his head. Johnny was a fussy kid—everything always had to be just so, or it was no good. Finally he was ready to go. Johnny peered out to his right. Oh, no. There was Eddie! He was standing on the corner, talking to some other kid. His back was to Johnny—he hadn't seen him yet. But he would when Johnny came that way, and he had to go that way to get home. Johnny peered quickly around the corner. A narrow alley ran between St. Michael's Church (which stood on the corner) and the school. If he moved fast, Johnny could zip down the alley and get out onto the street in any of three different ways. But for some reason Johnny decided that he would 
duck into the church. He could say a prayer for his mother and hang around till Eddie went away.

St. Michael's Church was a tall brick building with a brick steeple on the northeast corner. There were three big, pointed wooden doors at the front of the church. A flight of worn stone steps led up to each one. Johnny headed for the nearest door. It was a short dash, and he made it easily. Now he was tugging at the heavy iron ring. The door swung open. Johnny slipped inside, and the door closed behind him,
Clump!
Johnny heaved a sigh of relief. He had made it.

Johnny was standing in the vestibule, which is what the front hall of a church is called. He dipped his fingers in the holy water font, made the sign of the cross, and shoved open one of the inner doors. He was in the main body of the church now. Rows of wooden pews stretched away before him. Overhead arched the high vaulted ceiling. It was painted midnight blue and was powdered with little gold stars. At the far end of the nave was the Communion rail, and beyond it was the altar and the massive carved altarpiece. Johnny liked the old church. It was vast and gloomy and smelled of incense and candle wax. He loved the flickering red sanctuary lamp and the strange pictures on the stained-glass windows. The church was a place where he often went just to sit and get away from the world.

Johnny walked down the main aisle. His footsteps, though soft, seemed to echo from the high ceiling. When 
he got to the broad polished steps that led up to the Communion rail, Johnny stopped. With his arms folded over his chest he gazed up admiringly at the altarpiece that the mysterious Mr. Nemo had carved. It was quite a production. Over the altar table rose a three-decker wooden screen with lots of pointed niches in it. Each niche had an elaborately carved hood, and in the niches were wooden statues. The statues were painted all different colors, and gold paint had been used lavishly. The statues in the lower two levels were of saints. There were Saint Peter and Saint Paul and Saint Catherine and Saint Ursula and some nameless saints with swords and palms in their hands. At the top of the screen there were only three statues. These three were angels. One held a trumpet; one held a sword and shield; and one held a golden censer on a chain.

Johnny went on staring at the altar screen for a while. Then he went over to the iron vigil-light rack that stood near the confessional. He lit a candle for his mother, and then he walked down the side aisle and out into the vestibule again. Cautiously Johnny pushed the main door of the church open. He didn't open it far, just a crack. Darn! Eddie was still there!

Johnny let the door fall softly shut. Now what was he going to do? Gramma would be expecting him—he couldn't stay here forever. There was a back way out, but you had to go up into the sanctuary and out through the sacristy to get to it. And only Father Higgins and the altar boys and the sisters were allowed to go out that 
way. If Father Higgins caught him going through the sacristy, he would have a fit. Johnny stood, pondering, in the dark vestibule. He felt frustrated; he felt trapped. Then suddenly he had a very strange and interesting idea. He would go have a quick look in the basement.

Johnny grinned. He was a well-behaved kid most of the time, but he wasn't all
that
well behaved. Like most kids he enjoyed poking around in places that were forbidden. And he knew he was alone—there wasn't anybody in the church but him. Now was the time!

Quickly Johnny walked down to the far end of the vestibule. Now he was standing under the belfry. Overhead was a wooden ceiling with holes in it: the bell ropes hung through the holes. There was the dark, varnished wooden staircase that led up to the choir loft. And under the staircase, set in a paneled wall, was a narrow door with a black china knob. It led down to the basement. Johnny paused. He was thinking about the ghost of Father Baart. What if he appeared now? Or what if he suddenly materialized in the dark basement? Johnny shrugged and forced himself to smile. Hadn't Grampa told him that the professor's story was really a lot of hooey? Sure. There was nothing to worry about.

Johnny put his hand on the knob. He twisted, and the door opened easily. Mr. Famagusta, the janitor, was supposed to keep this door locked. But, as Johnny well knew, Mr. Famagusta was a rather careless man. Johnny put his foot on the first step, and then he pulled it back. He needed something... ah! There it was! The flash-
light! Johnny had heard Mr. Famagusta say that there was no electric light in the church basement. And, sure enough, on a little dusty ledge near the door was a small and rather battered flashlight. Johnny picked it up, snapped it on, and started down.

The flight of creaky steps turned once at a wooden landing and went on down to a hard-packed dirt floor. Johnny played the flashlight beam around. Some rickety shelves had been built into the wall underneath the steps. He saw a silver censer that was so tarnished that it looked black. A grimy, cobwebbed box that said AD ALTARE DEI INCENSE. A headless plaster statue of some saint. A glass tumbler full of cassock buttons. A pipe wrench and a section of brass pipe, left—no doubt—by the careless Mr. Famagusta.

Johnny played the beam back into the darkness of the basement. He saw the brick pillars that held up the floor of the church. Beyond the first row of pillars was a stack of tabletops. Leaning against the stack was a raffle wheel, the kind they used for the turkey raffles at Thanksgiving time. And in the shadowy distance he could see the big sooty iron furnace that heated the church in the wintertime. Johnny sighed. The whole place was a lot less interesting than he had hoped it would be. He pointed the beam of the flashlight here and there. Without much interest he noticed a bookcase with warped, sagging shelves. The top shelf was empty, but the second shelf held a row of thick, black volumes. Johnny reached for one of the books, but he jerked his hand away with a 
disgusted cry. The book was crawling with little gray spiders.

Johnny closed his eyes and shuddered. He couldn't help it. He hated spiders, and the small gray ones were, to him, the most disgusting of all. A bad taste rose into Johnny's mouth, but he swallowed, and it went away. Johnny opened his eyes. He shone the flashlight at the book again. The spiders were gone! Well, now, that was odd—where had they gone to? Johnny looked at the floor. Nothing there. Then he pointed the flashlight at the wall behind the bookcase. It was a brick wall, and it was in pretty bad shape. The mortar looked powdery and loose, and the bricks were crumbling. In one place the mortar between two bricks had fallen out, and there was a hole. Maybe that was where the spiders had gone. Johnny went back to looking at the row of books. For some reason he was interested in the book that had had the spiders on it. He wanted to take it out and look at it. Three times he reached out his hand to touch it, and three times he jerked his hand back at the last minute. Finally, on the fourth try, his hand closed over the end of the grimy book. He pulled it out quickly and stepped back. Now he carried the book over to the stairs and laid it down on one of the lower steps.