The Curse of the Blue Figurine (2 page)

"Cars!" he snorted. "I
hate
them! Hate them, hate them, hate them! If I didn't have to have one to drive to work, I'd push this thing into the Merrimack River! So help me, I would!"

Grampa ambled slowly across the street, brushing snow off himself. "You know, Rod," he said slowly, "it would kinda help if you would put chains on your tires."

The professor looked startled, and then he waved his hand in an irritated way. "Oh, chains! Yes... hmm, yes, I suppose I
should
have thought of them! But I have so many things on my mind these days... hmmm... chains... yes. By the way, Henry, don't call me Rod. I hate to be called Rod. You know that."

"Sorry," said Grampa, shrugging apologetically. "I keep forgettin'."

"Think nothing of it," said the professor brusquely. "Can I come into your house and get something strong to drink? Some booze, I mean. It would make me feel better."

Johnny gasped. He had always had it drummed into his head when he was little that you never, never invited yourself into other people's houses. It was terribly impolite. But here was the professor—a college teacher and a respected member of the community—doing just that. And to top it all off, he was asking for liquor! Asking for it first, instead of waiting to be served. And Grampa didn't seem to mind at all. It seemed unfair, somehow.

Laughing and talking, the professor and Grampa 
stomped through the snow and up the stairs to the porch. Johnny trailed along behind. When they got to the front door, they found Gramma blocking the doorway. She had a mop in her hand, and she looked grimly determined. She was not going to let the professor track up her rugs and floors a second time. He took the hint. Meekly, with downcast eyes, he shuffled over to the coat-tree, sat down on the boot box, and began peeling off his galoshes.

A few minutes later Johnny, Grampa, and the professor were all sitting around in the parlor, talking. Johnny had gotten a Coke from the refrigerator, and Grampa was drinking coffee. The professor had a water glass half full of whiskey in his hand. Gramma disapproved of liquor, so she was not present. She was upstairs in her bedroom, listening to the radio after saying her rosary.

"So, y'see, it wasn't such a big job after all," said Grampa amiably as he sipped from the steaming mug. "It only took us, oh, I'd say about twenty minutes, at the outside."

"Is that all?" grumbled the professor. He was trying hard to be grumpy, in spite of the cheerful company. "It seemed like
hours.
You know," he went on, wagging his finger at Grampa, "you know, Henry, in a hundred years people will think we were out of our ever-loving minds to spend so much of our valuable time taking care of automobiles. Think of it! Everybody on this block owns a two-ton hunk of metal that he has to feed gas and oil 
into, wash, and get fixed when it goes flooey. We spend half our lives thinking about cars! It's ridiculous, I tell you! R
ee-dick-u-lous!
Why..."

Suddenly the professor stopped talking. He had noticed something. On the floor next to the armchair that Johnny was sitting in was a pile of books. They were books on archeology that Johnny had taken out of the library recently: there were
Gods, Graves, and Scholars,
by C. W. Ceram, and
The Mountains of Pharaoh,
by Leonard Cottrell, and James Henry Breasted's
History of Egypt.
Egypt was Johnny's latest craze: he read everything he could about Egypt, and he was always combing the library for Egypt books that he hadn't read.

The professor looked at Johnny questioningly. "Are... are those books yours?" he asked. He said this as if he could scarcely believe that the answer might be yes.

Johnny did not see what was so unusual about reading books on Egypt. He was always reading books about something. "Yeah, they're mine," he said casually. "I mean... well, they're not really mine, they belong to the library. But I took 'em out to read, if that's what you mean."

"You took them out to read," the professor repeated in a wondering tone. "Do you have an assignment in school about Egypt? Is somebody
making
you read those books?"

Johnny grinned and shook his head. "Nope. I like to read."

The professor was astounded. He acted as if Johnny 
had just told him that he was the pope, or the sultan of Zanzibar. "Good heavens!" he exclaimed. "You can read, and you
like
to read! Please excuse my amazement, but I have just come from visiting my sister's daughter, who lives up in New Hampshire. She has two children about your age, but they couldn't read their way through a book of cigarette papers. Which is scarcely odd, because their parents don't read anything except the phone book and the directions on spaghetti boxes. You like to
read!
Lord have mercy! Will wonders never cease!"

Johnny found that he was beginning to like the professor. He smiled happily and felt proud. Usually grownups were not in the least interested in Johnny's reading ability. If they noticed it at all, they said, "Oh, that's nice," in a polite sort of way. But what they really thought—as Johnny well knew—was that boys who liked reading as much as he did must be weird.

Johnny asked the professor some questions about mummies, and the professor answered them as well as he could. From mummies the conversation turned to ghosts, and the professor told about the haunting of the Borley Rectory in England and other spooky happenings that he had heard about. Johnny loved ghost stories. That was one of the reasons he listened to
The House of Mystery
and
The Hermit's Cave.
But, as he told the professor, he didn't actually believe in ghosts, not really. As far as Johnny was concerned, believing in ghosts was... well, it was like believing in Santa Claus, or the Easter Bunny. It was for little kids, not for him.

"Oh, is that so?" said the professor, eyeing Johnny curiously. A faint half-smile curled the corners of his mouth. "Is that really so? It's kid stuff, is it? Well, my friend, you might be surprised someday. Do you know about the ghost of Father Baart that haunts the church you go to every Sunday? Do you? Hmmm?"

Johnny was really taken aback. He went to St. Michael's Catholic Church all the time, with his grandmother and grandfather. But he had never heard about any ghost.

The professor grinned. He could see that he had Johnny's attention. And then, without any further ado, he launched into his tale.

"Now then," he said, rubbing his hands, "it all began when... oh, by the way, Henry, I feel like some sort of cheap guzzler drinking this whiskey all by itself. Do you have anything to go with it? How about some of your wife's fudge? I think she makes wonderful fudge! Could I have some?"

Once again Johnny was amazed by the professor's crust. And, as before, Grampa didn't seem to mind. He went out to the kitchen and came back with a blue Willoware plate that held several thick squares of dark chocolaty fudge. Everybody took one, and as he munched the professor went on with his story.

"Father Remigius Baart," he began, "was the rector of St. Michael's Church way back in the 1880s. He was the one who had the church built—the church that's there now. And he hired a wandering artist—a mysterious 
character who showed up in Duston Heights one day— he hired him, as I say, to do the altarpiece in the church." The professor paused and stared thoughtfully out the window. "I often wonder about that man—the artist, I mean. He claimed that his name was Nemo, but
nemo
is Latin for 'no one.' Well, whatever his name really was, he was a talented wood-carver. All those saints and angels and prophets on the altar screen! I've never seen anything quite like it. But it seems that the wood-carver was more than just a wood-carver. The story is that he had dealings with the devil, that he diddled around with the black arts. The truth, I suppose, will never be known. After he finished the altar screen and got paid, this Nemo character left town and was never seen again. But people claim that before he left, he gave Father Baart something."

Johnny by this time was totally fascinated. He was sitting way forward on the edge of his seat. "What was it?" he asked. "What did this Nemo guy give to the priest?"

The professor stared at Johnny strangely. "Nobody knows. He may not have given him anything, but a lot of the older people in this town—your grandmother, for instance—will swear up and down that the artist gave Father Baart a talisman, or a book, or some sort of evil object that allowed him to do all kinds of nasty things, and may—in the end—have caused his own destruction."

The professor paused and grabbed another piece of fudge. He stuffed it in his mouth and chewed it slowly, 
savoring every chocolaty smidgin of it. The professor loved dramatic pauses. He felt that they added to his stories. Johnny squirmed impatiently in his seat. He wanted to hear more.

"Mmmm! Dee-li-cious fudge!" said the professor, smacking his lips. "Absolutely scrumptious! By the way, where was I? Ah, yes. Now, at this point you have to know what sort of man Father Baart was. He was not popular. He had a sharp tongue, and he used it often, and he had made quite a few enemies in the town of Duston Heights. If the people in the church had had their way, they would have got rid of him. They would have found a new rector. But only the bishop could fire him, and he didn't feel like it, so Father Baart stayed and made enemies. Well! A little while after the mysterious artist left town, funny things started to happen. Mr. Herman—he was a rich farmer in the area, and there was no love lost between him and Father Baart—Mr. Herman, I say, was standing looking up at the tower of the church one day—they were still building it at the time—and a carved stone, a big, heavy pinnacle that had just been put in place on top of the tower, fell off and hit Mr. Herman—killed him outright!"

Johnny wanted to say something, but the look on the professor's face told him he wasn't finished talking. So he waited.

The professor took another little sip of whiskey and another little nibble of fudge, and then he went on. "So Mr. Herman was dead. There were no workmen on the

tower at the time, so nobody could be blamed. The coroner's verdict was 'accidental death.' Nothing to argue about—the stone was probably loose for some reason. But a few days later somebody else got eliminated. This time it was Mrs. Mumaw. She was another one of Father Baart's enemies. She had disagreed with him publicly, at parish meetings, and she had told him his qualities in no uncertain terms. And what happened to her? She got run down by a horse pulling a wagonload of barrels. One minute the horse was standing quietly in front of a store on Main Street; the next minute it was charging wild-eyed at Mrs. Mumaw, dragging the wagon, hell-bent for election, behind. Well, that was the end of
her!"
The professor paused and peered at Johnny over the tops of his glasses. "Now, then, my fine feathered friend," he said, "does anything occur to you? Hmmm? Does it?"

Johnny looked thoughtful. He saw what the professor was getting at. "It sounds kinda like... like Father Baart made those accidents happen. Like maybe he murdered those two people some way."

"You catch on fast," said the professor dryly. "Many of the people who were living in this town back then thought that Father Baart had murdered Mr. Herman and Mrs. Mumaw. But there was no way they could prove it. No way at all." The professor paused and sipped at his drink. "However," he went on, "however, and be that as it may, Father Baart got his comeuppance. He got it in spades!"

Johnny's eyes were wide. "What happened to him? Did the ghosts of the people he killed come back and get him?" Johnny had read some stories where things like that had happened.

The professor smiled mysteriously. "Nobody knows what happened to Father Baart," he said somberly. "One morning he didn't show up to say Mass in the church, and people got worried. His housekeeper and some other people went to the rectory and searched all the rooms, but he was gone. His clothes were still in the bedroom closet, and everything else was in its usual apple-pie order. But Baart was gone. The only clue left behind— if you want to call it a clue—was a note, found under a paperweight on his desk. The note was not written in Baart's handwriting—nobody knows who wrote it. To tell the truth, the note was not terribly helpful. It was simply a quotation from
Urne-Buriall,
which is an essay that was written long, long ago by an Englishman named Sir Thomas Browne. I like the essay—I like it a lot. And I've memorized parts of it. Let me see... I think I can quote for you the passage that was in the note."

The professor paused and closed his eyes. Then he smiled and nodded and opened his eyes again. "Ah. Ah, yes. I have it. This is the way it goes: 'The man of God lives longer without a Tomb than any by one, invisibly interred by Angels; and adjudged to obscurity, though not without some marks directing human discovery.' "

The professor paused again. He looked at Johnny. "There! Did you understand any of that?"

Johnny shook his head.

The professor sighed. "Well, it's a bit obscure, I must admit. The passage refers to Moses. According to the Bible, when Moses died, his body was carried away by angels and was buried secretly somewhere. Now, what that has to do with Father Baart's disappearance I don't know. But that was the message that was found on his desk after he vanished. He was never seen again... not
alive,
anyway."

Johnny looked puzzled. "Do you mean... did they find his body somewhere?"

The professor shook his head and smiled tantalizingly. "No. I didn't mean that. They never found his body. But he has been seen in St. Michael's Church, several times. Every now and then late on a winter night somebody will be sitting in the back of the church saying the rosary or praying. And then this person will feel a sudden chill and hear a funny noise. And they'll turn around, and there he'll be, big as life!"