For many months Lewis Barnavelt had been worried. It all started when his uncle Jonathan looked up from the evening paper one snowy February afternoon. “Well,” Uncle Jonathan had said softly, “the fools have done it. Progress is coming to Capharnaum County.” He tossed the paper aside with a snort of disgust.
Lewis had been lying on his stomach in front of the Barnavelts’ TV set, a nifty Zenith Stratosphere that had a round screen like a porthole. He pushed himself up from the prickly brown carpet and looked away from the Hopalong Cassidy cowboy movie to glance at Jonathan Barnavelt. “What’s wrong?” asked Lewis.
His uncle, a heavyset, gentle man with red hair and a red beard streaked with white, shook his head. He put his thumbs in the pockets of his vest and frowned. “Oh, forget I said anything. Probably nothing.” He wouldn’t talk about it anymore.
Later that evening Lewis looked through the paper for a clue to what was bothering his uncle. He found an article on page three that might be it. The headline read COUNTY TO REPLACE BRIDGE. The story said that concerned citizens had complained about the old bridge over Wilder Creek. The county authorities had decided that the iron bridge was too narrow and in need of expensive repairs. Therefore, the county was going to replace the aging structure with a modern concrete one. That bothered Lewis almost as much as it seemed to bother his uncle.
Lewis was a stocky kid with blond hair and a round moon face. He had been born in Wisconsin, and for the first nine years of his life he had lived in a town outside of Milwaukee. Then his mother and father both died in a terrible car crash, and Lewis had come to live with his uncle Jonathan in the town of New Zebedee, Michigan.
For a little while Lewis had been lonely and miserable. He was also a bit afraid of his uncle—but only at first. Soon he learned that Jonathan was a sorcerer whose magic was real. He could create wonderful three-dimensional illusions. And their neighbor Mrs. Florence Zimmermann was an honest-to-goodness witch. A wrinkly-faced, laughing, sprightly good witch who also happened to be a fabulous cook.
As time passed, Lewis grew to feel at home in New Zebedee. Now it was the 1950’s, and Lewis and his best friend, Rose Rita Pottinger, were in junior high school. In many ways, Lewis remained timid and unsure of himself. Rose Rita called him a worrywart because his active imagination always pictured the very worst that could happen to him.
And yet, together with Rose Rita, Uncle Jonathan, and Mrs. Zimmermann, Lewis had shared some pretty frightening adventures. Still, he especially dreaded change of any kind. Maybe this was because of everything that had happened in his life after the death of his parents. Or maybe, as Uncle Jonathan had said one day, Lewis was just naturally conservative and liked his life to remain comfortably the same from day to day.
Whatever the reason, any little alteration bothered Lewis. When Uncle Jonathan had all the wallpaper in their house at 100 High Street replaced, Lewis had been fidgety for weeks. Later, when Uncle Jonathan had given up smoking his stinky pipes on a dare from Mrs. Zimmermann (who then had to give up her crooked little cigars), Lewis actually missed the odor.
And now the news that the county was going to replace the bridge over Wilder Creek depressed Lewis and made him jumpy. Of course, he had other reasons too.
He tried to explain these reasons to Rose Rita about a month after he had read the newspaper story. Rose Rita was nearly a head taller than Lewis. She was a thin girl with long, straight black hair and big black-rimmed glasses. She was also something of a tomboy, but Lewis admired her level-headed good sense. One day in March, on their way home from school, Lewis and Rose Rita stopped at Heemsoth’s Rexall Drug Store to have a couple of sodas.
The soda counter was on the right side of the store as you entered, and it smelled wonderfully of hamburgers and coconut pie. Lewis and Rose Rita sat near the front, at a little round glass-topped table beside the window. Their chairs had frames of twisty wire painted white, with red leatherette cushions. Lewis liked them because when you sat on one, the air poofed out of it like an exasperated sigh, as if the chair were saying, “That’s right, sit on me! Nobody cares about my feelings.” At least, that’s how he had felt when he was younger.
It was a bright, sunny day, but Lewis had been in a bad mood for weeks by then. Rose Rita watched him as she slurped her soda. Finally, she said, “Okay, Gloomy Gus. What’s been on your mind lately? You’re about as much fun as a toothache.”
Lewis scowled and shook his head. “You wouldn’t understand,” he answered.
Rose Rita sat back in her chair and crossed her arms. “Try me. You might be surprised.”
Lewis took a deep breath. “You know the old iron bridge out on Wilder Creek Road?” he asked. “Well, they’re going to tear it down.”
Rose Rita frowned. “So what? That’s progress for you.”
“Yeah,” Lewis said glumly. “That’s just what Uncle Jonathan said.”
With a keen glance at his face, Rose Rita said, “This really bothers you. Okay, Lewis, spill it.”
Lewis stared at his half-finished soda. “You know a lot of it already. When I first came to New Zebedee, Uncle Jonathan, Mrs. Zimmermann, and I had to face the ghost of Mrs. Isaac Izard.”
Rose Rita looked quickly around, but nobody was near enough to overhear them. She leaned closer and said in a low voice, “You’ve told me about that. Old Isaac wanted to end the world, but he died before he could pull that off. Then his dead wife rose from the grave and tried to end the world with a super-duper magic clock the old wizard had hidden in the walls of your house.”
“She nearly did it too,” said Lewis. As he remembered the light gleaming off of Selenna Izard’s glasses, he couldn’t keep from shivering. “Well, what I’ve never told you is that one evening, Uncle Jonathan took Mrs. Zimmermann and me out for a long drive. That was in November, and we were just riding around, seeing the sights. It was dark when we started back. Then Uncle Jonathan noticed the lights of a strange car coming up behind us.”
Rose Rita listened in silence as Lewis told her the whole story. Uncle Jonathan had really been frightened, and Lewis had been practically terrified. When Lewis had been younger, he had often pretended that any car he was riding in was being followed by some car or other. That night, though, the game had been for real.
Lewis described how his uncle’s car, an old 1935 Muggins Simoon, had sped through the darkness. On the straightaways, Jonathan must have gunned the car to eighty or ninety miles per hour. The Muggins Simoon lurched dangerously around sharp curves, its tires spitting stones and squealing as it crossed patches of gravel. Finally, Uncle Jonathan screeched the car into a tight turn at a place where three roads met. Lewis saw in one heartbeat a Civil War cannon white with frost, a wooden church with smeary stained-glass windows, and a general store with a dark, glimmering window that said SALADA. He could still close his eyes and see that scene in his imagination, like a picture in an album.
Then they were on Wilder Creek Road. With the mystery car hot on their trail, Mrs. Zimmermann had hugged Lewis and spoken reassuring words. He still remembered how he had felt her heart beating fast with her own fear. That scared him even more than the frantic race.
At last Wilder Creek came in sight. Over it stood the iron bridge, a web of crisscrossing black girders. The old car had thundered across it, raising a rolling clatter from the bridge boards beneath the tires—
Sitting at the table with Rose Rita, Lewis gulped and broke off his story. He felt sick to his stomach just remembering that night. He pushed his soda away.
“What happened then?” asked Rose Rita in an urgent voice. “Lewis! Tell me!”
Taking in a deep, shaky breath, Lewis said, “Uncle Jonathan stopped the car and we got out. The ghost car had vanished.”
“Because,” said Rose Rita slowly and thoughtfully, “ghosts can’t cross running water. I read that in Dracula.”
“That’s vampires,” objected Lewis.
“Same difference,” retorted Rose Rita. “A vampire’s just a kind of blood-sucking ghost, you know.”
“Well, anyway,” said Lewis, “whatever it was, it had disappeared. Mrs. Zimmermann said it couldn’t chase us any farther partly because of the running water, but also because of something else. She meant the bridge.”
Rose Rita made a rattling sound as she sipped the last of her soda through the straw. “What about the bridge?”
Lewis frowned. “It was made by—by somebody whose name I don’t remember. But he put something special in the iron, Mrs. Zimmermann said. It was supposed to keep the ghost of some dead relative from coming to get him.”
Neither of them said anything for a minute. Then Rose Rita said softly, “This really bothers you. You’ve turned pale.”
Lewis sighed sadly. “I know you think I worry too much about stuff like this, that I get all worked up over nothing. But just the thought of that bridge being torn down makes me—I don’t know. I feel crawly inside, as if something bad is about to happen.”
“Have you talked to your uncle about this?” asked Rose Rita.
With a grimace, Lewis shook his head. “The story in the newspaper bothered him a lot,” he said. “I didn’t want to pester him. I mean, he can’t do anything about the bridge being torn down.”
Rose Rita thought for a few seconds. “You finished with your soda?”
Lewis nodded.
Rose Rita stood up. “Then let’s go see Mrs. Zimmermann about this. She’ll know whether to worry, and what to do if there’s really something to worry about. If the ghost of old Whosis’s relative is going to come charging over the new concrete bridge, Mrs. Zimmermann will settle his hash.”
Lewis smiled in a weak sort of way. Rose Rita liked Mrs. Zimmermann immensely and trusted her judgment in everything—even though Lewis knew that Rose Rita’s dad sometimes called Mrs. Zimmermann “the town crackpot.” And, come to that, Lewis had always found Florence Zimmermann a staunch friend. “Okay,” he said in a small voice. “But I hope she won’t be upset.”
They walked down Main Street, turned onto Mansion, and continued to High Street. Lewis and his uncle lived in a three-story stone house at the top of a steep hill. A frilly wrought-iron fence crowned with pompons ran around the yard, and an old chestnut tree shaded everything. When Lewis had first come to New Zebedee, he had thought the best part of his uncle’s house was the turret, with a little oval window set in the shingles at the top, like a calmly watchful eye.
Right next to the Barnavelt house stood Mrs. Zimmermann’s. It was small but cozy, with a neatly trimmed yard and flower beds that, in the summer, were bright with petunias, asters, and nasturtiums. Often delicious aromas would drift over to the Barnavelts from their neighbor’s house, and whenever they did, Mrs. Zimmermann was sure to invite everyone over for a tasty meal or to show up at Jonathan’s door with a plate of oatmeal-walnut cookies or a fudgy, gooey, delicious chocolate cake.
Today, Lewis couldn’t smell anything cooking. Rose Rita rang the doorbell, and Mrs. Zimmermann opened the door a second later. She was a retired schoolteacher, and she looked as if she would have been a great one. Her wrinkly face easily broke into a wide smile, and her bright eyes could be mischievous and affectionate behind her gold-rimmed glasses. She loved purple, and she was wearing a purple flower-print housedress, with a purple kerchief tied around her untidy mop of white hair. She grinned the moment she saw them. “Lewis and Rose Rita!” said Mrs. Zimmermann. “What a pleasant surprise! Come on in. I’m just finishing some spring cleaning, and you can help me lug and tug my furniture back where it should be.”
It didn’t take long to do that, and then Mrs. Zimmermann served them chocolate-chip cookies and milk at her kitchen table. “Now,” she said briskly as she poured herself a cup of coffee. “You two have some deep, dark secret on your minds, or I’m not a witch. So what’s troubling you, Lewis? Has old Frizzy Face conjured up some illusion he can’t get rid of?”
Lewis had to smile at the thought. Sometimes Uncle Jonathan’s illusions almost took on a life of their own, like the Fuse Box Dwarf who once had lived in the cellar, or Jailbird, the striped neighborhood cat that still occasionally whistled tunes, though badly off-key. “No,” he said. “Not this time.”
“Lewis and his uncle are worried about the old bridge over Wilder Creek,” said Rose Rita promptly. “We want to know if anything terrible will happen when it’s torn down.”
Mrs. Zimmermann sat back in her chair, looking surprised. She touched her chin with her finger and murmured, “Good heavens, Rose Rita! You don’t waste time getting to the point, do you?”
Even Mrs. Zimmermann’s yummy cookies didn’t tempt Lewis. He moved his plate away and said, “Uncle Jonathan got upset when he read about the new bridge last month. And I know he’s still worried, because he won’t talk to me about it.”
“Lewis told me that some wizard put a magical whammy on the bridge,” said Rose Rita. “I knew you could give us the whole story.”
Mrs. Zimmermann chuckled. “‘Come clean, or else,’ is it? Well, my friends, there isn’t really much that I can tell you. The iron bridge was constructed back in, oh, 1892. The man who built it was a rich fellow named Elihu Clabbernong. His family had been farmers for generations, and they used to own hundreds of acres between New Zebedee and Homer. People said that Elihu’s old uncle Jebediah—I think Jebediah was really his granduncle—was a wicked magician. He had his own farm somewhere outside of town, and at night people passing by saw strange lights and heard eerie sounds. Well, when Elihu was just a young boy, both of his parents died mysteriously. Their will left everything to him, so their big farm was sold at auction and the money was put into a trust fund for Elihu. He came to live with his uncle.”
Lewis felt goose pimples breaking out on his arms. “I don’t like this story,” he said in a quavery voice. “That’s just what happened to me!”
Mrs. Zimmermann leaned over and gave Lewis a friendly pat on the shoulder. “Except that your uncle is a very good man, Lewis. Even if he does play a lousy game of poker! Where was I? Elihu grew up on Jebediah’s farm, and people say that his uncle taught him sorcery. I don’t know anything about that. Elihu never talked about magic, and he never joined the Capharnaum County Magicians Society. The few times I saw him, he seemed perfectly normal—for a rich recluse, I mean.”
“Do you mean he was some kind of hermit?” asked Rose Rita.
Mrs. Zimmermann looked thoughtful. “You could say that. He pretty much minded his own business. At any rate, what I do know is that one December midnight in 1885, a meteor came whizzing through the skies. It lit up everything for miles around Capharnaum County. People said it was as red as blood, and that the weird light lingered behind it for ten minutes. The meteorite crashed to Earth somewhere past the barn on the Clabbernong farm with a tremendous explosion that made church bells ring and cracked windows all the way into town. That same night, just about the time the meteorite slammed down, old Jebediah died.”
Lewis gulped. He asked, “Did the meteorite hit him?”
“Oh, no,” replied Mrs. Zimmermann. “I think the timing of his death was just a coincidence. Elihu was about twenty-two or twenty-three, so the farm and everything went straight to him. He had a mysterious bonfire the next day. People suppose that he burned Uncle Jebediah’s evil magic books and papers. Then he burned his uncle.”
“So he didn’t really become a magician himself,” said Rose Rita.
Mrs. Zimmermann replied, “I don’t think so. Maybe he considered himself too well-off to need magic. By then he could legally control the money that had been put in trust for him, and it had grown with interest over the years. In the next weeks Elihu added to his wealth. He sold almost everything, abandoned the family farm, and moved into New Zebedee. Can you guess the one thing he didn’t sell?”
Lewis shook his head.
Rose Rita bit her lip and screwed up her face as she thought hard. “The meteorite,” she said at last.
“Bingo!” said Mrs. Zimmermann. “Good guess, Rose Rita. I never saw the thing, but an older friend of mine did. She said it was not much bigger than a baseball, and that it gleamed with unearthly colors, colors she couldn’t even describe. It made her nervous just to look at it, she told me, and it didn’t do much for Elihu’s nerves either. Even though Elihu had plenty of money, he was timid and jumpy and always acted as if something were following him. Finally, in 1892, seven years after his uncle’s death, he offered to replace the old wooden bridge over Wilder Creek with an iron one. He would pay for the whole thing himself. Of course the county accepted. Now, they say that Elihu melted the meteorite down and mixed it into the iron used to make the bridge. At any rate, after the iron bridge was finished that fall, Elihu was a happier man. He invested in banks and businesses. He got richer and richer, and he lived in New Zebedee right up until the time he died of natural causes in 1947. No ghost ever got him, so I suppose his bridge worked.”
“So you’re not worried?” asked Rose Rita.
With a sigh, Mrs. Zimmermann shrugged. “The ghost of old Jebediah doesn’t have anyone to come after. Elihu never married, and there are no other living Clabbernong descendants. So even if tearing the old bridge down lets that tormented spirit cross Wilder Creek, it has no victim it could haunt or hurt.”
“Then why is my uncle so upset?” asked Lewis.
Giving him a kind smile, Mrs. Zimmermann replied, “Well, Lewis, it could be that your uncle is more like you than you know. He doesn’t care too much for change, and especially for any change that has to do with magic. Then too for many years now, I’ve realized that Jonathan Barnavelt, whatever he may say, is a first-class fretter!”
Rose Rita laughed at that. Even Lewis felt a little bit of relief.
But he was still concerned. And as more weeks went past, and March became April and April turned into May, his anxiety never went away, but just grew deeper. By the first of June it was like an ache buried in his heart. An ache for which he could find no cure.