The Tower at the End of the World (Action Packs) Read online

  “I don’t like this,” mumbled Rose Rita. “It isn’t like him to disappear with no warning.”

  “Get the flashlight from the junk drawer in the kitchen,” Lewis told her. She hurried away.

  Lewis stood on the top step, his heart hammering. Had the lightbulb burned out? Had Jonathan started down to change it and tripped in the dark? Was he hurt?

  Soon Rose Rita was back with the flashlight. Lewis switched it on and sent its bright beam downward. The big yellow oval of light traced the steps, then moved slowly over the concrete basement floor. It came to rest on something long and tan.

  His uncle’s leg!

  Lewis hurried downstairs. Jonathan Barnavelt lay motionless on his stomach, his hands flung out. His face was turned away from Lewis, and for a terrible, wrenching moment, Lewis thought he might be dead. Then the fallen figure stirred and groaned.

  Lewis shined the flashlight on Rose Rita, who was standing halfway down the steps. “He’s knocked out!” he yelled. “Go get Mrs. Zimmermann, quick!”

  Rose Rita flew back upstairs. Lewis knelt beside his unconscious uncle, with only the flashlight to chase away the gloom and darkness of the cellar.

  He was so worried about Uncle Jonathan that he even forgot to feel afraid of what might be lurking in the dark.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Okay,” rumbled Dr. Humphries in a deep voice like a bass viol, “how many fingers am I holding up?”

  “Eleven,” growled Jonathan Barnavelt, sitting propped on a big pile of pillows in his own bed. Lewis, standing at the foot of the bed, gulped hard. Had his uncle’s accident made him lose his mind? But then he relaxed as Jonathan continued, “Of course, that’s in binomial notation. In decimal terms, it’s three. Does that satisfy you, you pill-pusher?”

  Dr. Humphries laughed. “Well, your fall down the stairs didn’t knock the orneriness out of you, anyhow! You take it easy for a couple of days, Jonathan, and call me if you have any unusual symptoms, like a bad headache, double vision, or tomato vines growing out of your ears!” He turned to Lewis, Rose Rita, and Mrs. Zimmermann. “Nothing too much wrong with Bickering Barnavelt here. The scientific name for his ailment is bumpus nogginus, otherwise known as a crack on the head. He’ll be fine.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” said Mrs. Zimmermann. “It was kind of you to come out so quickly.”

  The physician winked at her. “I charge more for a house call,” he said cheerfully. “And besides, I love to drive fast. The cops don’t dare stop me when I’m on an emergency call!” He picked up his leather case full of rattling square pill bottles, and wished them all a good afternoon.

  As soon as the doctor was out of the door, Jonathan Barnavelt threw off the quilt that had covered him. He had come to in the cellar just as Mrs. Zimmermann and Rose Rita came running over, and he had made the climb to his bedroom under his own power. He hadn’t undressed, and now he jammed his shoes onto his stockinged feet. “I feel like a prize nincompoop,” he complained.

  “What happened, Jonathan?” asked Mrs. Zimmermann.

  Jonathan rubbed the top of his head gingerly. “Darned if I know. I heard someone on the cellar steps, or thought I did. So I opened the door and tried to turn on the light, but the bulb was on the fritz. Then I thought I heard Lewis call me. So I started down the stairs, and the next thing I remember is an almighty thump on the head and lots of pretty spinning colored stars. I guess I must have tripped in the dark.” He tugged at his red beard. “Lewis, I suppose it wasn’t you in the cellar, after all.”

  Lewis shook his head. “We were next door,” he said. He explained how he and Rose Rita had hunted for Jonathan for several minutes before they found him.

  “Odd,” commented Jonathan. “I could have sworn I heard someone down there. Maybe we’d better check.”

  “Do you feel up to it?” asked Mrs. Zimmermann.

  “I’m not a baby, Florence,” replied Jonathan with a touch of exasperation. “I’ve had lots of bumps and thumps in my time, and none of them has killed me yet!”

  Lewis’s heart pounded. He hated to hear his uncle mention death. Ever since his own parents had died, Lewis had lived with a fear of being left alone in the world. He bit his lip, but didn’t say anything.

  Jonathan dug out a big flashlight, not the small one that was kept in the kitchen drawer, and they all trooped into the cellar. Jonathan fumbled on a shelf for a hundred-watt bulb. “Let me get this in, and we’ll see if there’s any sign of an intruder.”

  “Let Lewis do it,” suggested Mrs. Zimmermann. “You have no business standing on a ladder after a head injury.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” responded Jonathan. “Anything you wish. Lewis, drag out the stepladder.”

  Lewis climbed up on the ladder. The only light in the cellar hung from the ceiling in a conical green and white metal shade. He reached up to take out the old bulb and found it was loose. Surprised, he tightened it and almost fell off the ladder when it suddenly gave out a glaring white light.

  “That’s more like it,” Jonathan said. “Lewis, what’s wrong? You’re white as a ghost.”

  “I—I didn’t change the bulb,” stammered Lewis. “S-SOMEONE must have loosened it on purpose!”

  “Unlikely,” his uncle said. “It probably just worked its way loose on its own. They sometimes do that, you know. It’s caused when turning the light on and off alternately heats and cools the base, causing it to expand and contract—”

  “Oh, expand and contract yourself, Brush Mush,” said Mrs. Zimmermann tartly. “Cut out the Mr. Wizard stuff. Did you go over to the coal bin?”

  “Not that I recall,” Jonathan said thoughtfully. “I had just gotten to the bottom of the steps, when blooey! I fell flat on my kisser. Why?”

  Mrs. Zimmermann pointed. “Because someone was down here, all right. Someone with big feet.”

  Lewis looked where she was pointing. The coal bin was empty and disused because Jonathan had changed the furnace over to oil years ago. But the big open bay still had a coating of grimy coal dust. Its back wall was a heavy sheet of plywood, covering a weird passageway that Jonathan had discovered shortly after Lewis had come to live there. Lewis saw what Mrs. Zimmermann had noticed: the faint coal-dust outline of shoe prints on the cellar floor, leading away from the coal bin.

  “Strange,” said Jonathan. He went to the bin and peered at the plywood. “Hmm. Someone has pulled this loose too.” He tugged, and the plywood sheet fell away. Behind it was a plaster wall with a ragged opening leading into darkness. Jonathan shined his flashlight into the passage, which looked like a mine shaft. “Nothing was in here, so whoever it was must have gone away empty-handed and disappointed.”

  Mrs. Zimmermann stood beside him and touched his arm. “I don’t like this at all. That is where Isaac Izard hid his Doomsday Clock.”

  Rose Rita gave Lewis a quick look. He had told her all about Izard, an evil magician who had owned the house before Jonathan. She knew that Izard and his equally wicked wife, Selenna, had plotted to end the world with a magical clock, and she knew that Lewis, Uncle Jonathan, and Mrs. Zimmermann had fought hard when Selenna Izard had risen from her tomb to complete the spell. “Was the clock still there?” she asked. “Could someone have been after it?”

  “Not a chance,” declared Jonathan firmly. “First, Lewis smashed the clock to smithereens, and Frizzy Wig and I disposed of the remains so that it could never be put together again. Second, no one knew that it had ever been here except for the Izards and us. We’ve never spread the word about it, and I know that Selenna Izard will never be able to rise from the dead and tromp around hunting the clock again. Besides, these footprints have to be size tens. Mrs. Izard was no beauty, but she didn’t have feet the size of gunboats!”

  “Th-then who broke in?” asked Lewis.

  Jonathan shook his head, winced, and rubbed the lump on his head again. “Don’t know, Lewis. Probably some tramp. Don’t worry about it, though. I’m okay, and we’ll carry on with our vacation plans.”r />
  “Aren’t you going to tell the police?” demanded Rose Rita.

  With a thoughtful expression, Jonathan said, “No, I don’t think so. Nothing was taken, after all. And I’m not even sure that Mr. Intruder conked me on the bean. I still think I probably just tripped and took a header off the stair. It’s my guess that whoever was down here has high-tailed it out of town. Just to be on the safe side, though, I think maybe Florence should cast some protective spells to keep Barnavelt Manor safe and sound while we’re away. Feel up to it, O Enchantrix?”

  Mrs. Zimmermann stuck out her tongue at Jonathan. “Pooh to you, Jonathan Barnavelt. Of course I feel up to it! I’ll work up a honey of a spell that will zap any evil-intentioned intruder to kingdom come. You concentrate on getting over your cracked cranium, that’s all!”

  And for a time that seemed to end it. Jonathan and Lewis spent the next several days getting ready for their trip to the Upper Peninsula. Though Lewis remained jumpy, nothing happened. Sometimes he woke up in the night, thinking he heard furtive footsteps roaming the halls. But when he worked up the nerve to check, there was never anyone about.

  Toward the end of June, they made the last few preparations. Jonathan had arranged for the part-time cleaning lady, Mrs. Holtz, to check on the house a couple of times a week and take in the newspapers. She also agreed to forward any important mail to the General Delivery window in Porcupine Bay. Then on a bright Friday morning everything was ready. Jonathan and Lewis had packed their clothes in the huge cardboard suitcase that had once belonged to Lewis’s dad. They added a couple of fishing rods and reels, an assortment of books to read, and various other odds and ends.

  Mrs. Zimmermann and Rose Rita were ready too. They were going to drive up, and Mrs. Zimmermann insisted that they make the trip in Bessie. She didn’t trust Jonathan’s car, which was an old 1935 Muggins Simoon, a boxy automobile like something out of an old-time movie. Luckily, the Plymouth Cranbrook had a roomy trunk. After some rearranging and muttering, Jonathan got everyone’s bags and the fishing gear inside. Then they were off in a cloud of exhaust smoke, with Mrs. Zimmermann and Jonathan in the front seat and Lewis and Rose Rita in the back.

  It was a long trip, up through Lansing, the state capital of Michigan, and then through small towns like Ithaca, Mount Pleasant, and Rosebush. In Houghton Lake they switched drivers, and Jonathan promptly got them lost on a shortcut. Mrs. Zimmermann kidded him about that, but when he stopped at a diner to ask directions, the place smelled so good that they decided to eat there. The hamburgers were the most delicious ones that Lewis had ever tasted, and with a beaming smile, Jonathan pointed out that even if they were off the track, his food-finding instincts were working perfectly.

  They got back onto the main highway soon afterward, and as they rolled along through the summer afternoon, they sang crazy songs: “The Hut-Sut Song,” “Mairzy Doats,” and “Flat-Foot Floogie.” They all joined in on that tune’s nonsensical refrain, “Floy-doy, floy-doy, floy-doy!” Late that day they stopped at a motor hotel, a group of little cabins scattered beneath pines. Mrs. Zimmermann and Rose Rita took one cabin, and Jonathan and Lewis took the one next door. That night Lewis got the first really good night’s sleep he had had in weeks, despite his uncle’s world-class snoring.

  The next morning, they drove onto a ferryboat for the ride across to the Upper Peninsula. Then they turned west. Jonathan mentioned that the Michigan citizens who lived on the Upper Peninsula thought that people from the southern part of the state were a little nuts, “and vicyversy.”

  “Michiganders,” corrected Mrs. Zimmermann.

  Jonathan snorted. “I hate that word! Anyway, it would only apply to the men. The women would have to be Michigeese!”

  They squabbled good-naturedly like that through the whole morning. Occasionally the road took them within sight of Lake Superior, which to Lewis looked as big as an ocean. Sometimes sailing boats would be here and there on the rolling water, leaning against the wind as they skimmed along. Other times the lake just looked vast and empty, slate-gray under an increasingly cloudy sky.

  It was afternoon by the time they reached the town of Porcupine Bay. It turned out to be a half circle of buildings and houses clinging to the edge of the water. Rose Rita had directions from her grandfather to meet him in the general store facing the long wharf. They found the place, Mrs. Zimmermann parked Bessie, and they all piled out of the Plymouth, stretching their cramped legs.

  The store was cavernous and dark, and it smelled of cheese and fish. Some old men were playing checkers at three little tables in front of the counter, and a very short man, no more than five feet tall, stood at the cash register paying for two bags of groceries. Jonathan waited until the customer had picked up his bags and then spoke to the man at the cash register: “Hi. We’re supposed to meet Albert Galway here.”

  The counterman had rusty-brown hair about the texture of a Brillo pad. He nodded and said, “Yep, he’ll be in before long. He told me he was expecting you. You’re Mr. Jonathan Barnavelt, I s’pose?”

  Lewis heard a sudden crash. He looked behind him. The short man had dropped one of his grocery bags. Cans of salmon, pork and beans, and peas rumbled across the rough wood floor. One of the cans bumped against Lewis’s foot, and he bent to pick it up.

  The stranger’s face jerked into a ghastly smile. “Th-thank you,” he said in a hoarse voice. He reached out a bony hand to retrieve the can of salmon that Lewis offered him. Lewis saw that his fingers were dirty, deeply grained with black oil, and that all his fingernails had black grime under them. For some reason Lewis shivered. The little man had an ugly face, with one thick eyebrow that went all the way across. His nose was round and upturned, almost like a pig’s snout. And his teeth were yellow and snaggly. But he seemed reasonably grateful as he repacked his bag and hurried out, letting the screen door slam behind him.

  “You get some pretty strange customers in here, Jake,” one of the checker players said. “I hope you made sure the money that character gave you isn’t counterfeit. I wouldn’t trust that Clusko guy any farther’n I could heave him.”

  “Clusko’s okay,” the counterman replied. “He comes in, buys what he wants, and pays up. He don’t hang around playing checkers and tellin’ lies like some people I know!”

  The other checker players laughed at that, and even the man who had objected to Clusko’s presence chuckled.

  Not long after that the screen door opened and Lewis saw Albert Galway step into the store. Though he was in his eighties, he stood straight as a ramrod. He wore a jaunty white yachting cap perched atop his bald head, a dark blue double-breasted blazer over a white shirt with no tie, white trousers, and white shoes. “Hi, Rose Rita,” he said as soon as he had stepped in. “Sorry about the delay, folks. I was making sure that some fuel oil would be delivered to the house. Even in June it gets kind of chilly out on the lake!”

  They all climbed back into Bessie, and Mr. Galway directed Mrs. Zimmermann to a pier where a blue and white sailboat was moored. Lewis couldn’t wait to climb aboard her. He and Rose Rita helped lug the suitcases over, and then Mrs. Zimmermann parked Bessie in a secure lot near the pier. Grampa Galway helped Mrs. Zimmermann, Rose Rita, and Lewis climb onto the vessel. Jonathan saluted the quarterdeck—really the tiller—and said, “Permission to come aboard?”

  Grampa Galway laughed. “Granted,” he said, and Jonathan joined the rest. “Welcome to the good ship Sunfish. And now if Lewis will cast off the bowline and Rose Rita will help me run up the sail, we’ll go out to Ivarhaven Island!”

  It was a grand trip, though the gray sky looked increasingly stormy. With its white triangular sail billowing, the Sunfish skimmed over the dark water. The wind was fresh and steady, and Lewis thought this vacation might turn out to be a lot of fun after all.

  He was mistaken about that. Very badly mistaken, as it turned out.

  CHAPTER THREE

  For four days and nights Lewis enjoyed himself immensely. They were staying in a hous
e that belonged to a Mr. Marvin. “Jim Marvin,” explained Grampa Galway. “He was a shavetail lieutenant in the old Hull back in 1917. I was older’n him, but of course I was just an ordinary seaman first class. Well, in the middle of the Atlantic one night, a German U-boat attacked us. Sent a torpedo amidships. It was a heck of an explosion, and I saw Lieutenant Marvin fall right over the rail. Everyone was runnin’ this way and that, yellin’ at the top of their lungs. You know the old ‘General Order for Emergencies,’ Lewis?”

  Lewis shook his head, a smile of anticipation on his face.

  With great relish Grampa Galway recited, “ ‘When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!’ Well, sir, that’s what the crew seemed to be doing. I grabbed a life ring and did a swan dive into the Atlantic. Talk about cold! Anyway, I spotted Lieutenant Marvin splashing and floundering in the light of the fire—the Hull was ablaze by then—and got to him with the life ring. By then the gunners had finally shaken themselves awake, and they started pounding the U-boat. Finally sank her too, and by then someone on deck had seen us by the light of the flares and picked us up. Luckily, they put out the fire and we limped into port. Well, ever since then, Jim Marvin’s been a friend of mine.”