Wrath of the Grinning Ghost (12 page)

He tried to pray, but words would not form themselves in his mind. Seconds may have flown past, or hours may have dragged by. Time had no meaning. The only reality was the endless fall and rising horror.

And then, somehow, Johnny was standing. Standing on a gray, rolling plain that stretched endlessly away from him in all directions. He gasped in air, and heard the sound of his gasp. The surface he was standing on felt springy, more like firm rubber than earth, and yet things grew from it. Leprous fungi sent up curved sprouts, like the fingers of dead men. Here and there, twisted trees held their leafless branches up, as if begging for mercy from the dark sky.

The sky. Johnny looked up. A disk of dark gray cloud was overhead, reaching practically all the way to the horizon. There dim, washed-out light marked what could be a glimpse of sky. All around the edge of this strange world, it was the same. The lid of cloud ceased a little above the horizon, letting that bleary, bloodless light leak in.

Johnny had never felt so alone in all his life. "Professor?" he yelled as loud as he could. The word died with no hint of echo. "Fergie?" No answer. No sound at all, not even wind.

Johnny was lost and terrified. "What should I do?" he asked, not even hoping for a response. Which way should he go? Where were his friends?

Johnny had a fleeting moment when he wondered if he had actually gone insane, if all this was some crazy nightmare in his brain. Maybe he was lying helpless in some mental ward right this instant—

"There you are!"

Johnny squeaked in alarm and spun around. Standing a few feet behind him was the strangest being he had ever seen. It looked like a little man only about three feet high, except that his body was completely covered with black feathers. He had the head of a hawk, with a down-curved beak, hooded, ferocious-looking eyes, and a proud expression. He wore a kind of kilt of white linen, golden bracelets and armbands, a strange double golden crown, and golden sandals on his feet, which, despite their feathers, looked human.

"B-Brewster?" Johnny asked.

The little creature bowed. "One and the same. Good weather and good fortune my specialties! I appear at religious rites, spring festivals, harvest feasts, and bar mitzvahs! Well, not the bar mitzvahs so much, to tell the truth. Are you all right?"

"I think so," Johnny said. "This is a terrible place."

Brewster looked offended, or as offended as a being with a bird's head could manage. "Hey!" he said. "This isn't the
nice
part, okay? Give me a break. What if you popped up on earth for the first time in your life in the middle of Death Valley, or on the Greenland ice cap? They wouldn't look so hot either, right?"

"I'm sorry," said Johnny. "I didn't mean to—"

"Don't sweat it," Brewster said. "Johnny, this is a part of our world we call the Blighted Lands. It doesn't look like much, but I don't think there's anything around that can hurt you. Now I have to go round up Whiskers and Fergie, and I need to keep tabs on you. So you go over to that palm tree there and sit very quietly beneath it. I'll be back in two shakes of a poltergeist's tail."

"Palm tree?" asked Johnny. "Where?"

"That one right there," said Brewster, pointing. "And tell it to keep its hands to itself!" He disappeared with a soft pop.

Johnny walked slowly toward the tree, though it didn't look like any palm tree he had ever seen. It was more like one of the live oaks down in Florida, but leafless, its twisted branches looking tortured and stark. As he approached it, Johnny saw how it got its name. Each branch ended in a hand—a hand with spread-out, clutching fingers made of twigs. These began to strain toward him, clenching and unclenching as if eager to seize him and tear him to bits.

"K-keep your hands to yourself!" faltered Johnny, trying to sound big and bold but only succeeding in sounding half scared out of his wits.

The strange tree quivered as if in frustration. The branches folded up, crossing the trunk. It looked like one of those Indian idols with about eight arms having a grumpy day. Nervously, Johnny edged up to the trunk and sat down on the strange, spongy ground. He wondered what would happen next.

* * *

Splash!

Fergie plunged feet first into water. At least, it
splashed
like water. It had a gunky, greasy, disgusting feel to it, though, and it was as warm and slimy as blood. He kept his eyes and mouth clamped shut, squeezed his nose with the fingers of his left hand, and struck off kicking for the surface. He opened his eyes to find himself floating in an empty sea. The water was thick and sluggish, like oil. It had a sick gray color shot through with veins of red and purple. Slow, ponderous waves spread out from the spot where Fergie had landed.

He began to tread water. Above him was a purple sky of broken clouds, with one angry red star burning far away. Everything was in a kind of half-light. With growing desperation Fergie saw that he was alone, and that the sea went right on to the horizon. He was a good swimmer, but he could not stay afloat forever.

And then, to his vast relief, he saw an island nearby. A low, humped island, bare of any trees, but not too far away for him to swim the distance. He struggled to untie his sneakers, got them off, knotted the laces together, and slung them around his neck. Then he struck out in a long, powerful crawl stroke.

Fergie hated the feel of that otherworldly liquid against his face. He tried to gulp air only when his mouth was well clear of the surface. Closer and closer he came to the island. When he was a few feet away, Fergie dropped his feet and felt for the bottom. He sank seven or eight feet and then kicked back to the surface.

Weird, he thought. The beach must have a drop-off like nobody's business! He swam the ten or eleven feet to the rocky island, then dragged himself up until he was out of the water. He lay there gasping and hugging the ground. Then he climbed up the domed, greenish-blue rock on all fours until he was at the summit. All around him was the empty sea. Except for scraggly red tufts of what looked like wire grass, the island had no vegetation. It was maybe a quarter of a mile in diameter.

Fergie noticed something else. Everything was quiet. He had never been to an ocean, lake, or even pond that didn't have
some
sound going on around it: the chirping of crickets, the swash of waves, the whisper of wind. But this place was absolutely dead silent.

Dead.

Fergie wondered where in the world—or out of it—Johnny and the professor had wound up. Had they plunged into this ocean too? If so—

Fear climbed Fergie's spine. Johnny was not a very good swimmer. The professor was over seventy years old. How long could they live in this bizarre sea? Had they already drowned? Were their bodies drifting down, down, to endless depths?

Fergie leaped to his feet, seized with an impulse to run away. Run—that was a laugh! Run
where?
Despite his dread, Fergie laughed at himself. "Byron Q. Ferguson," he said aloud, "you can run in little circles until you die of exhaustion or go nuts with th' howling heebie-jeebies! Great choice, huh?" He stood there dripping, wondering what to do next. In all the stories the hero would go and explore the island. But what was the point? From up here Fergie could
see
the whole island, and there wasn't anything to explore!

"Oh, boy," he said. "I've landed in a load of trouble for sure this time."

"You said it, Bright Eyes," came a familiar voice.

Fergie turned around and somehow instantly recognized the little creature that stood just behind him. "Brewster!" hollered Fergie. "Where th' devil have you been? An' where's Johnny?"

"Keep your hair on," Brewster said. "He's okay. That's two down! Now I have to get you to Johnny, and then I've got to locate Whiskers. Okay, I'm going to fly you. Don't be scared."

"Hah!" said Fergie. "Let's take off. The sooner the better!"

Though he had no wings, Brewster rose up into the air. Somehow, and Fergie had no idea of exactly how, Brewster became a gigantic falcon, flapping powerful wings to keep aloft. "Hold still," he said. He came behind Fergie and slipped his talons around the boy's shoulders. They grasped beneath Fergie's armpits. With no apparent effort, he picked Fergie up until his toes dangled a few inches above the peak of the island's dome. "Hmm," said Brewster thoughtfully. "I think I can manage it. You're not as heavy as I thought. All right. Up, up, and away, as Superduperman says in the funny papers!"

Fergie caught his breath. It was like being in a runaway elevator. They shot straight up, then hovered there. Looking down past his big dangling feet, Fergie saw the round island. "Not much of a vacation spot," he grunted.

"You're not just whistling 'Dixie,' " said Brewster. Then he shouted, "Okay, Poseidon! I got him now!"

To Fergie's astonishment, the whole island rose and tilted. An enormous face looked up at them—the face of a manlike being with greenish, fishlike features. "Glad to help!" came a glubby reply from the creature's blubbery lips, and then the head submerged.

"Oh, wow," Fergie said as Brewster began to swoop through the air with him. "This is a crazy place!"

* * *

Professor Childermass tried to take a squelchy step. Thick, cold, clammy mud clutched and sucked at his legs. He groaned and fell forward in slow motion. Then he caught himself and forced his aching legs to take another step.

"No-man's-land," he said, shivering. He had fallen into a nightmare landscape. Tangles of briars, curled like concertina wire, rolled across an expanse of splintered trees and gaping craters containing stagnant, stinking green water. A cold drizzle began to fall from the gray, ragged sky. The professor had seen something very much like this before in his life, back in World War I.

That war had been fought between armies that hunkered down in trenches facing each other. The ground between the two armies was called no-man's-land. Shells and bombs ripped it to shreds, and the endless rain mixed with human blood to create a dreadful mud. Professor Childermass had entered the Army as a cook. Serving in the front lines had been appalling, and when he performed an act of bravery and was offered a battlefield promotion as a reward, he took the opportunity like a shot. He became an intelligence officer, working behind enemy lines. Though he faced the threat of capture and torture at every moment, he preferred that to the hideous living death of the trenches and of no-man's- land.

"It isn't the same," he told himself, grunting. "Not the same at all. For one thing, there's no sound of five-nine shells whistling in. And no whomps of poison-gas canisters bursting open to choke the life out of you! Keep moving, Captain Childermass!"

He slogged painfully to a little rise. It was at least more solid than the sea of mud that lay all about. The briars were bad there, though, springy coils of vines with nasty sharp hooks that latched into his skin and tore painful gashes. He swore between his teeth and painfully worked himself free, all the while wondering what had happened to Johnny and Fergie. "Dear God," he breathed. "What have I gotten those boys into?" He felt chilled to the bone, and as weary as death. "John Michael!" he shouted at the top of his lungs. "Byron! Where are you?"

The only answer was the dreary, endless hiss of rain. Professor Childermass took off his glasses, tried to scrub them dry, and put them back on again. He might as well have tried to look through the bottoms of two pop bottles. "Brewster!" he yelled. "Hang it, Horus! Where are you? You promised to help, you chicken-headed excuse for a squidgy-nosed old idol!"

"I'm here, I'm here," said Brewster. "Give me a hand up, would you?"

Professor Childermass dropped to his knees and looked over the steep side of the rise. A feathery black creature was creeping up—or trying to.

"About time!" roared the professor, reaching down and grabbing him by the scruff of the neck. He swung Brewster up, finding him surprisingly light. "Where are John and Byron? What—"

"Please," groaned Brewster, slapping his feathered hands to the sides of his head where his ears would have been if he'd had any. "You three wound up in different places, that's all. You're all fine."

The professor scraped a handful of mud off his trousers and tossed it at Brewster's feet, where it landed with a squelch. "You call
this
fine?" he snarled. "You obviously are using some definition of the word with which I am not familiar!"

"You're alive and in one piece," said Brewster hastily. "And, what is even better, you haven't attracted the attention of Nyarlat-Hotep. Yet. But that can't last for long. Now, are you ready to join your friends?"

"What do I do?" asked the professor crabbily. "Tap my heels together three times and say 'There's no place like the spirit world'?"

"That won't be necessary," replied Brewster sulkily. "If you can walk in this direction, the going gets easier. You can find Johnny and Fergie if you just don't give up."

"Walk through this?" demanded the professor with a gesture that took in the endless mud. "Maybe when I was twenty! I've tried to keep myself in shape, but I've got old-geezer legs!"

"Easy, easy," said Brewster. "There is a path through the mire. I'll go first, and you follow in my footsteps. It's yucky and slippery, but not hard. Ready? Or are those old-geezer legs going to fold up under you like a couple of bamboo umbrellas?"

"You sawed-off smart aleck," snapped the professor. "Anywhere you can go, I can go faster! Want to race? Want to put your money where your beak is?"

"Come on, Grandpa," responded Brewster, hopping down into the bog with a curious birdlike motion. "See if you can keep up!"

The professor had not been boasting. He
had
kept himself in good shape, exercising and going for long, long walks. He had even given up smoking not long before, and now he was grateful for his increased lung power. Here, though, with lardy clots of slick mud underfoot, he stumbled and staggered for what felt like hours. At last the ground rose, becoming gray and rubbery, but dry. An exhausted Professor Childermass stumbled on, following a silent Brewster.