The Whistle, the Grave, and the Ghost

By the middle of the third week in July, Rose Rita was feeling frantic with worry. She and Lewis had occasionally had tiffs before, as all friends do, but this one seemed to be getting really serious. She had expected him to call and mutter some kind of apology. She was more than willing to forgive him. Days had gone by, however, and she had not heard even one word from him.

Billy and Stan had been in the news again recently. They seemed to be doing better in the hospital in Detroit. Their blood count, whatever that was, had returned to almost normal, and they were able to get out of bed. Still, the doctors did not want to let them leave the hospital. No one could understand what was wrong with them to begin with, and the doctors wanted to find out what had given them such severe anemia in the first place. They were going to have to have a lot of tests, and doctors in New Zebedee were being asked to report any suspicious or unusual cases with symptoms like theirs.

Every day Rose Rita called Mrs. Zimmermann to ask if she had learned anything else about the grave in Richardson’s Woods, or about the whistle. Every day Mrs. Zimmermann’s answer was no. She always cautioned Rose Rita not to worry herself too much, but that was like cautioning a fish not to swim. Rose Rita just couldn’t help worrying. Finally, able to stand the suspense no more, Rose Rita rode her bike over to High Street, but not to visit Lewis. She went straight to Mrs. Zimmermann’s house.

Mrs. Zimmermann let her in, and the two of them sat in her kitchen, munching gooey chocolate chip cookies and drinking milk. “He’s turned weird,” complained Rose Rita.

Rose Rita nodded. “I know he’s worried about that whistle and the stone in the woods. He thinks he’s set free some kind of ghost. I understand all that. But I’m on his side. He didn’t have any reason to bite my head off.”

Mrs. Zimmermann sighed. “Well, sometimes we have to make an allowance or three, Rose Rita. I know you only mean to help Lewis, but there are times when the menfolk think they don’t need any help. They are almost always wrong, of course, but that doesn’t keep their silly male pride from getting dented when we women dash in, all flags flying, to take charge and set things right.”

“It wasn’t like that!” But Rose Rita twisted in her chair with the uncomfortable feeling that, yes, it was at least a little like that. She stared glumly at the table. A white tablecloth with embroidered violets in a bright shade of purple covered it. She rubbed her finger over one bumpy violet. “Back when Lewis had that magician’s amulet that lured him off into the wilderness, you came to the rescue!”

Mrs. Zimmermann shivered. “Ugh. Yes, indeed, and a fat lot of good it did! That evil ghost was so strong that when I tried a spell on it, it drained away all my magic power for a couple of years! Much more, and I think it would have killed me. And even so, I wasn’t the only reason it lost the fight, as you well know. Lewis had a lot to do with that himself.”

Mrs. Zimmermann gave her a wrinkly smile. “And we will help him again! But you can’t just go jumping onto your horse and riding madly off in all directions at once, you know. Believe me, Rose Rita, I have been trying to learn about lamiae and even silver whistles, but all I’ve turned up is such a deal of skimble-skamble stuff that it makes my head ache! The history of real magic is all tangled up with folklore, fairy tales, and just plain lies. It’s hard to find a needle of truth in such a messy haystack of ignorance!”

Rose Rita stopped picking at the embroidery on the tablecloth and took a bite from a cookie. “But I hate just doing nothing! Has the book you sent for come?”

“I don’t know for sure,” said Mrs. Zimmermann slowly, thoughtfully touching her forefinger to her chin. “I’d say the main thing was not to blow that blamed whistle if he should come across it again. Some magical amulets don’t work on the first try. They gain power gradually as the owner tries them out. You know the old saying, ‘Third time’s a charm’? Sometimes that’s literally true.”

“I’m going to go right over there and warn him,” said Rose Rita. “I don’t care if he does think I’m meddling in things I shouldn’t. I think he’s a—a stubborn pig-headed donkey!”

Mrs. Zimmermann chuckled. “Heavens, Rose Rita! You have quite a way with words. But if Lewis is still brooding, be understanding. I’m sure that he’s worried about those scouting friends of his who are in the hospital.”

“I do indeed,” replied Mrs. Zimmermann tartly. “I don’t live in Outer Mongolia, you know! And I know that those two are bullies and that they take a particular delight in pushing poor Lewis around. Whatever is wrong with them, I’m sure Lewis feels guilty about it. He’s just the sort to think he’s behind all the woes of his friends and his enemies, like Joe Bfstplk!”

Despite her feelings, Rose Rita had to smile at that. In a newspaper comic strip called “Li’l Abner,” Joe Bfstplk—and how Mrs. Zimmermann had managed to pronounce that name, she could not say—was a lumpy, chinless little guy who was the world’s worst jinx. He walked around with a dark cloud over his head. He was always trying to help his friends, and always his best efforts caused some kind of calamity. “But Lewis isn’t like that,” objected Rose Rita. “Not really.”

“That doesn’t keep him from feeling sometimes that he causes trouble or that the whole world is against him,” pointed out Mrs. Zimmermann. “You’ve had days like that, Rose Rita. I’ve had days like that. Everyone has. The trouble with Lewis is that he thinks it’s just him. Maybe the best thing a good friend could do is just be ready when he needs her. ‘They also serve who only stand and wait,’ as John Milton said.”

That really wasn’t enough to satisfy Rose Rita. When she saw Jonathan Barnavelt come out of his house a few minutes later, she hurriedly said good-bye to Mrs. Zimmermann and rushed out to catch up with him. She did, about halfway down the street. He greeted her with some surprise. “What’s cooking, Rose Rita? I haven’t seen you for days. You look all done in.”

Jonathan stroked his beard. “Hardly anyone has,” he muttered. “He’s been grouchy and cranky and snappy lately. In fact, if those three were all members of the Seven Dwarfs, Lewis could be any one of them!”

They walked along side by side. “He’s turned into a hermit,” said Jonathan slowly. “He comes out of his room for meals, but except for that, he hardly says three words a day to me. I think he’s still really worried about that stone out in Richardson’s Woods, and about the whistle he found and then lost.”

“He thinks he caused a couple of the Scouts to get sick,” explained Rose Rita. She rapidly filled him in on what had happened to Billy and Stan as they walked toward town.

When she finished, Jonathan looked serious. “Thank you for telling me the whole story. Florence and I have talked about Billy and Stan, of course. But I’ve never heard of a magic whistle that could summon up an illness, and neither has she. Our feeling is that it’s probably just a coincidence that the two of them got sick. They pal around together, and if one of them caught some kind of germ, the other probably would get it too. I don’t know. This doesn’t seem like magic, but that’s something that Florence and I will keep in mind. Still, it’s something that Lewis would worry about, all right. It’s just like him to take something like this to heart,” he observed.

Jonathan answered her with quiet assurance: “Strolling along here in broad daylight, no. But then, I’m a fuddy-duddy grown-up, and if I were Lewis’s age, and half afraid of my own shadow, or if it were a dark, dark night—well, that might be another story! Do you remember a few years ago when there was that polio scare?”

Rose Rita did. It was the year she was eight. A kid came down with a case of polio, and everyone in New Zebedee had panicked. The Athletic Field had closed, and lots of families had left town. Fortunately, the victim had not had a serious case, and he had almost completely recovered, and happily Dr. Jonas Salk had come up with a vaccination that kept people from getting polio these days. Still Rose Rita recalled how frightened and worried her mother had been. “I remember all about it,” she told Jonathan.

“Well, Lewis found an old newspaper with that story in it the year he came to live with me,” Jonathan went on. “My gosh, how that boy fretted! Every little ache or itch or tickle meant he was coming down with polio, and he actually hid from me one day to keep me from catching it! Lewis has what you might call an overdeveloped organ of guilt. That’s one reason I’d like Father Foley to ease up on him a little. Lewis gets himself into a stew over every little thing, and he’s such a worrier that the slightest little problem sometimes flummoxes him. And then something very serious comes along and that just about pushes him over the edge. I’m glad he has a friend like you, Rose Rita.”

Jonathan nodded, and then smiled. It looked to Rose Rita as if he were trying to force himself to be cheerful again. “Well, I’m off to the barber shop, Rose Rita. I’d suggest you pay a call on old grouchy-cranky-snappy, but he’s probably still not in the mood for company. Don’t worry. These things blow over, you know.”

In the mansion at 100 High Street, Lewis Barnavelt had seen all of this. He had been standing at a front window when Rose Rita ran past the house, and from another window, he saw her catch up to his uncle and walk off talking to him. He felt a dull anger. Here she was again, poking her nose into business that didn’t concern her! He clenched and unclenched his fists. Why, if he had the whistle—

With a groan, Lewis pressed his hand over his eyes. “I didn’t mean that,” he said, not knowing if anyone or anything could hear him. “I don’t want anything to happen to Rose Rita.”

Lewis almost yelped, and he actually jumped in his surprise and fright. He heard the voice very often now, a woman’s voice, but somehow it always came from inside his head. “She’s my friend.”

Lewis did not say anything. What was the voice suggesting? That he should somehow give Rose Rita to—to the thing that had attacked Billy and Stan?

The voice, or whatever it was, did not bother to reply. Lewis had heard about people losing their minds and hearing voices that no one else could hear. Was that happening to him? What if he wound up sitting in a padded cell, wrapped in a straitjacket, drooling and gibbering and talking to someone who wasn’t even real?

Lewis wandered through the house restlessly. In the front hall, he looked into the magic mirror on the hat stand. Instead of reflecting his face, it showed some strange stone coffins, with hollows scooped out in them for the bodies. They lay scattered about a pebbly yard. It had appeared before, and Uncle Jonathan had told him the coffins were in Holyrood Abbey in Scotland, where Mary, Queen of Scots, had once lived. After England had broken away from the Roman Catholic church, King Henry VIII had closed all the abbeys in 1537, and looters had emptied the tombs, seeking jewelry.

Lewis stared at one of the stone coffins. It had been chiseled out so that the interior had a hollow shaped somewhat like a mummy: The legs broadened toward the hips, and then there was a rounded niche for the chest and shoulders, and a smaller oval one for the head. Lewis could just imagine what it might feel like to be pushed into one of those, to see the heavy stone lid slide into place, shutting out the light—

He felt as if he were going to have a nervous breakdown. He could not read, he could not concentrate on television or radio, he didn’t feel like talking to anyone. It was a bit like being shut up in a coffin at that, he thought bitterly.

Lewis clapped his hands over his ears, although he knew he could not keep that voice out. He climbed the stairs to the bathroom. He stood in front of the medicine chest and unbuttoned his shirt. Fearfully, he pulled it open.

For days he had had two red marks on his chest. They looked like wounds, but they never seemed to heal. He could not remember hurting himself. Or had he? The marks didn’t hurt, exactly. They ached, with a low, dull sensation that was not quite pain and not quite an itch. He had swabbed them with Mercurochrome and with hydrogen peroxide, and he had covered them with Band-Aids, but they did not close up or scab over.

What had happened the night he saw the ghostly figure outside the French doors? He could remember nothing after stepping through the door and looking into her terrible empty eyes. Had she lured him outside, or even worse, had she come into the house? Had she—he shuddered—drunk his blood?

He went to his bedroom and pulled open the drawer in his night table. Rummaging in the clutter, he found his mother’s rosary and pulled it out. It wasn’t fancy. It was just a small silver crucifix hanging from a short length of five white beads. This was attached to a necklace made of five sets of one large coral bead and ten smaller white ones. You were supposed to use the rosary to keep count of your prayers. You could also “pray the rosary,” saying prayers like the Apostles’ Creed, the Our Father, and the Hail Mary as you counted off the beads.

Red pain rose in his head, blinding him. He fell to his knees and dropped the rosary. For a little while, everything went dark. When he could see again, he found himself lying crumpled on the floor and clutching his head, as if to keep it from exploding. Tears were running from both of his eyes.

Shaking and fearful, Lewis dropped the rosary back into the drawer. He fell facedown on the bed. What was happening to him? What had that figure at the window done to him?