CHAPTER EIGHT

 

 

Sarah wanted to know all about Mr. Mergal, but for days Johnny put her off. He didn't want his new friend to start wondering if maybe he was a little nutty. The rest of the week passed, and then Monday came around again. It happened to be another delivery day, and Johnny settled down to what had become a normal routine.

This time, though, something was different about the Gudge Museum. It still had the creaks and groans of any old house, but Johnny kept thinking he heard something else, something soft and sly and sinister. It was exactly like hearing someone whisper from the next room, a maddening s-ss-ss of sound, with an occasional evil chuckle thrown in. But every time Johnny went to find the source of the noise, it seemed to be coming from the room he had just left. Sometimes Johnny was too imaginative for his own good. In his mind he conjured up all sorts of explanations for the unusual whispery sounds. It might be the mysterious Mr. Mergal, slipping from one hiding place to another, planning to murder him. It might be old Blackleach's ghost, roaming the halls of the museum, guarding his witchy treasures. It might even be the spirit of Sophonsoba Peabody, gliding sorrowfully from room to room, trying to find someone to listen to one of her terrible poems.

Whatever it was, Johnny grew more and more nervous listening to the sound. He tried to control his wild fantasies, telling himself that the noises were just the sound of tree leaves brushing against the wall outside, or the cranky old air-conditioning system getting ready to break down. Still, he was so jumpy that when the loading door buzzer sounded, he yelped and leaped off his chair. With a red face, he hurried to open the back door. It was just the delivery man, and he had Johnny sign for a box of soap and paper towels. Johnny hurriedly stored them away and then left for home.

He was jumpy all evening. He had dinner and then sat in the parlor and watched a Red Sox baseball game with his grandfather. The black-and-white television didn't have the greatest reception in the world, and the static was so bad that it was a little like watching a ball game played in the middle of a blinding blizzard. Unfortunately the Red Sox had not improved as the summer wore on. They lost to the Cleveland Indians, a team that was giving the New York Yankees a tough contest for the pennant that year.

It was a hot night, and after Johnny went to bed, he tossed and turned restlessly. His window was wide open, but the breezes that came in were sluggish and warm. His Big Ben alarm clock ticked and ticked, its monotonous metallic voice going on and on, like a boring speaker droning on about nothing. Every now and then a car would drive past, the reflection of its headlights making patterns of light and shadow move across his bedroom ceiling. Once a shadow vaguely like a hand crept above his bed, and Johnny turned onto his stomach and closed his eyes. Finally, after midnight Johnny drifted off to sleep. Some time later he began to dream.

In the dream he was working in the museum as usual, dusting the exhibits in the Peabody Room. He felt someone's eyes on him the whole time, and he got jittery. He kept thinking he heard someone whispering, and he looked this way and that, but he was all alone. Then, as he had finished carefully cleaning the vases on the mantel, he heard a low, nasty laugh behind him. "That's right, baby Johnny," said the taunting voice of Eddie Tompke. "Make 'em nice and pretty now!"

Johnny whirled, but no one was behind him. "Eddie? Darn it, where are you hiding? You're sure not s'posed to—"

"Here I am," said the voice from the other end of the mantel.

Johnny looked, and to his horror he saw a blue vase leap off the mantel and fly across the room. It shattered on the floor. The nasty voice said, "See, I learned how to become invisible, baby Johnny. I'm gonna make your life re-e-al interesting from now on!" And one, two, three other vases smashed against the wall. Then unseen hands began to rip the precious manuscripts of Sophonsoba Peabody's poetry. Fragments of sonnets and ballads whirled through the air like snow. And at that moment Miss Ferrington's harsh voice came from the corridor: "Johnny Dixon! Here I come!"

Johnny tried to run and found himself held back. Something was strangling him, choking him, as Eddie Tompke's laughter rang out. Desperately, Johnny lunged—

And fell out of bed, waking himself up. He was all tangled in his sheets, and he was sweating. He struggled up, angry at himself. What a baby! The luminous hands of his clock said that it was after 3:00 a.m. Johnny switched on his reading lamp to make his bed again. He was very fussy about certain things. They had to be just right. He hated sleeping in a rumpled bed, and he carefully made hospital corners as he tucked the sheet around the mattress.

He had put on his glasses to do this task. He switched off the light and then for some reason he looked out his window. He had a good view of Fillmore Street from up there. Everything looked spooky and deserted at this time of night. A high moon that he could not see cast a dim silvery light over the neighborhood. The professor's stucco mansion glimmered in the glow, looking unearthly, the way Johnny imagined Edgar Allan Poe's House of Usher looked even in the daylight. Except, he thought, the House of Usher probably did not have the square Italian cupola with the ridiculous radio aerial that his old friend's house sported.

The shadow of a small cloud drifted over the roof of the professor's house. Johnny yawned. Then he stiffened and leaned forward for a closer look, pressing his nose against the screen. Was that gliding black shape a shadow? It was hard to be sure. The patch of darkness came flowing down the roof and then moved onto the stucco wall.

Johnny's heart seemed to stop. The shadow had a definite shape. It looked like a man, dressed all in black from head to foot. And it clung to the stucco wall just like an insect. It scuttled around, hanging head down, then moving sideways, exactly as a fly might creep over the frosted surface of a cake. It seemed to be fiddling with a window screen.

Johnny leaped up and ran downstairs. He switched on a light and grabbed the telephone. His hand was shaking, but he managed to dial the professor's number. It rang once, then twice. "Come on, Professor," groaned Johnny. Three times. Four.

After the seventh ring, the professor picked up the phone. "Hello!" he roared in his crabbiest voice. "Whoever this is, I hope you're calling about an emergency. Someone had better be on the way to the hospital, at least!"

"Professor!" said Johnny. "It's me! There's a guy tryin' to climb in your bedroom window!"

"Johnny?" muttered the professor in a surprised voice. "The devil you say! Hold on—if I'm not back in five minutes, call the police!"

Johnny was not wearing his watch. He tried counting seconds the way he had learned in the Boy Scouts, murmuring, "One, one thousand, two, one thousand, three, one thousand, four..."

He lost count at two minutes and something and was about to hang up and call the police anyway when the professor picked up the phone again. "False alarm, John," he said in a tired voice. "No one's there. What made you think someone was trying to break in?"

Johnny stammered out his strange story, realizing that it sounded as if the shadow had been part of his bad dream. "It was there. I mean, it was real, not just my imagination. And, Professor, he went down the wall like he had suction cups for hands and feet!"

"You don't say," responded Professor Childermass. "Isn't that odd?"

"What?"

"At the very instant you called and woke me, I was just starting one of my lovely dreams about that creepy-crawly hand. Ugh! I wonder—good heavens, look at the time! You go right back to bed, John, and don't worry about any weird interlopers. I can take care of myself. But thank you for phoning me. You probably saved me from a doozy of a nightmare."

The phone clicked, and Johnny hung up the receiver. He went back to his bedroom with dread in his heart. What if the menacing black shadow had been some sort of spirit or spell instead of a person? And what if it somehow knew he had called the professor? Would it visit his home next, climb down the wall outside his room, softly pry off the screen over his window?

Shivering despite the heat, Johnny huddled in his bed. After a long time he fell asleep again and this time did not dream.

 

Naturally Johnny felt groggy and cranky the next morning. Gramma had made some delicious oatmeal-raisin bread, and she toasted him a couple of big slices to go with his scrambled egg and bacon. Johnny didn't have much appetite, though, and soon he left to go to the museum.

He rode his bike downtown and along Merrimack Street toward the river. On a Tuesday morning in mid-July, everything was sleepy and slow, but that all changed as Johnny came within sight of the museum. A police car was parked outside the front door. With a creepy feeling of déjà vu, Johnny pedaled faster. He parked his bike and hurried around to the front and up the steps.

He heard Miss Ferrington's wail as he pushed the door open: "It's terrible! Nothing like this has ever happened! And it isn't my fault!"

"Well, gosh, Miss Ferrington, nobody said it was!" It was a young man's voice, but Johnny did not recognize the speaker.

"But just think of what might have happened! The Sophonsoba Peabody pieces are irreplaceable! If they had only known how valuable they were, the museum might have been ruined, desecrated, vandalized!"

What in the world was going on? Johnny paused outside the office door and gave a hesitant knock. For a moment everyone inside was quiet. Then the door opened. Miss Ferrington glared at him for a second or two. Then she turned and said, "Here he is! Johnny Dixon is responsible! And the little hoodlum comes walking in as if he owns the place!"

Johnny backed away, his heart pounding and his throat dry.

A policeman came to stand behind Miss Ferrington. He was young and looked irritable. He carried a clipboard in one hand. "Now, wait," he said. "We don't have any evidence that—"

"He left the door unlocked!" shouted Miss Ferrington. "He's probably the ringleader of a whole band of hooligans! Officer, arrest this boy! Johnny Dixon is the thief!"

For a moment Johnny just stood there with his mouth hanging open, staring at the furious Miss Ferrington and unable even to speak. Then terror raced through him. Without even meaning to do it, he spun and ran. He flew down the steps, raced around the corner, and unlocked his bike. By the time the young policeman was standing in the open doorway of the museum and yelling, "Hey, you!" Johnny was already speeding away. His legs pumped the pedals furiously. He did not know where he was going or what he was planning to do. He only knew that he was in serious trouble, that he was now a fugitive, and that the police were coming after him.