The Ghost in the Mirror, page 11
Mrs. Zimmermann paused a moment. Then with a funny look at Hilda she said, “This was almost the first spell I ever learned. An old woman named Granny Wetherbee taught it to me. It’s what a good witch uses to undo spells of binding cast by evil magicians—like the one keeping this door locked. Recite after me.” And she began to whisper to Hilda the words of power that no longer worked for her.
Hilda repeated them, her voice quavering. At the last word the crystal flared up brighter, and a single thin ray shot out to touch the doorknob. When Mrs. Zimmermann tried it again, it turned in her hand and the door soundlessly opened.
Bending low, Mrs. Zimmermann whispered into Hilda’s ear, “I’m going to try to bluff the old man. You have to help Heinrich get loose. Then whatever happens to me, you children run back to the buggy and go home as fast as you can. Don’t wait!”
They slipped along the hall to a door through which flickering blue light showed. It was open, for old Stoltzfuss was confident that no one had any idea of what he was doing. Just as they got to the door, a clock began to bong somewhere in the house, a dreadful, fateful tolling. It was twelve o’clock, the witching hour!
Mrs. Zimmermann stepped inside the room and gasped. She heard Hilda stifle a cry beside her. They saw Stoltzfuss’s back. Before him was Rose Rita, still lying faceup on the table. A huge knife was stuck into the wood beside her right leg. Beyond her, hanging on the wall, was a mirror that was the twin of Mrs. Zimmermann’s. And in the mirror was a horrible presence.
Mrs. Zimmermann did not look directly at it, but she had an impression of ravenous hunger, of deep, dark evil, and of implacable hatred. She did not have to be told that she was in the presence of something demonic. Baleful power radiated from the dark image—flickering blue flashes like heat lightning on a restless summer night.
The clock was halfway through its twelve chimes. Stoltzfuss had not even noticed the two slipping into the room. In a high, horrible, screechy voice he was crying out, “Aziel! Great Aziel! I offer you drink and food for the answer to my humble question! Tell me now, and you shall drink the wine that pleases you, and eat the flesh that strengthens you. Where is the treasure I seek?”
And something happened. Mrs. Zimmermann reeled. Hilda had slipped away to the right and was tearing at the ropes binding Heinrich, but Mrs. Zimmermann, behind Stoltzfuss, was in the path of Aziel’s “answer.” It was not expressed aloud, nor in any language that a human ear could hear, but it washed out in a great black wave of feeling. It had no meaning for Mrs. Zimmermann, but she vaguely heard Stoltzfuss cry out in triumph and glee. The last stroke of twelve sounded. Baleful red eyes, glowing like embers, stared out of the mirror on the wall, hungry and commanding and anciently evil.
Without thinking, Mrs. Zimmermann held up the mirror that she still carried, trying to shield herself from that hellish gaze. Instantly she felt the power of the demon ease, and she peeked cautiously around the edge of the mirror.
By accident she had held her mirror up so that it was exactly opposite Stoltzfuss’s mirror on the wall. She saw that her mirror reflected his, and his reflected hers. There were an infinite number of glaring red eyes, reflected and reflected again, over and over. The dark power pouring out of the mirror on the wall was caught and sent back by hers.
And between the two was Stoltzfuss. He had already lifted the great knife high to strike. He was crying out something in a high, hawklike shriek. The knife began to plunge downward—
Clang! A flying, tumbling sword struck his arm, and the knife spun away into the air. Free of his bonds, Heinrich had snatched up the sword and thrown it spinning. He screamed, “Run, Rose Rita!”
“No!” Stoltzfuss grabbed for her arm, but Rose Rita had come to life! She rolled off the table and lunged away.
Dark, soundless laughter seemed to drink up all the light in the room. The mirror that Mrs. Zimmermann held pulled at her hands. It was like holding a powerful magnet that was being attracted by one equally powerful. But Mrs. Zimmermann did not know whether she should hold the mirror or let go of it.
For the first time Stoltzfuss seemed to realize that intruders had broken in on him. He whirled away from the mirror, shielding his eyes—only to be caught in the hate-filled red gaze of the leering demon reflected from Mrs. Zimmermann’s mirror. He tried to run, but the same awful power that he had used to hold Rose Rita and Heinrich now gripped him. He screamed, “No! No! Don’t take me! Take them, instead, I command you!”
The dark, silent laughter rolled again. Mrs. Zimmermann blinked. Stoltzfuss was dissolving. His body seemed to be pulled in two directions at once, and it was becoming misty, like black smoke. With a wailing scream he tried to cover his eyes.
Too late. His body suddenly was nothing more than a dark band of smoke connecting the two mirrors. Then the power of magic was too strong for Mrs. Zimmermann to resist. The mirror pulled free of her fingers, sped through the air, and smacked against the one on the wall. A soundless explosion of dire blue light flashed out—
And both mirrors disappeared without a trace.
Stoltzfuss was nowhere to be seen.
But—Mrs. Zimmermann shivered at the thought—no doubt Aziel the demon dined well that night.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“I thought we’d be home by now,” Rose Rita complained.
Another whole week had passed. On the night that old Stoltzfuss had met his end, Rose Rita, Mrs. Zimmermann, Hilda, and Heinrich had struggled back through a raging snowstorm to the Weiss farm. They told the whole family about what the evil sorcerer had attempted to do. April 1 found the family practically snowbound, but the blizzard blew itself out in the afternoon. The next morning Mr. Weiss and some neighbors rode out to the Stoltzfuss farm. What they found there was more than enough to convince them all that Stoltzfuss, and not Grampa Drexel, was the evil magician who had been plaguing the community. They discovered books of black magic, and other magical paraphernalia, like black candles, human bones, and some wax figures. One of these resembled Grampa Drexel. When these images were brought to him, he took them and performed some cleansing ritual. The next morning Grampa Drexel was out of bed and looking far healthier than Mrs. Zimmermann and Rose Rita had ever seen him. The family later heard that three other people in the community who had been ailing made miraculous recoveries the same day.
As for Stoltzfuss, no trace of him could be found. Some thought that he had fled after his terrible deeds had been discovered. Others guessed the truth: that dark forces had stolen him away. The four people who really knew—Rose Rita, Mrs. Zimmermann, Hilda, and Heinrich—agreed it would be better never to tell the whole fantastic story. Many people might believe such a tale, but others would always think the four had lost their wits. Yet no matter what the people of the valley thought had happened to Mr. Stoltzfuss, they seemed to feel that his disappearance improved the community.
The weather improved too, that first week of April. The sun grew warm, and the snow really began to melt. The spring thaw was clearly upon them at last. At the end of the week a delegation of farmers and their wives came out to the Weiss farm with offerings of food and tearful apologies, which Mrs. Weiss apparently enjoyed more than anything else that she had experienced in a long while. The Weisses would not have to move after all. Grampa Drexel’s life had been saved. And yet Mrs. Zimmermann and Rose Rita received no signal that they could return to their own time. “There must still be unfinished business,” Mrs. Zimmermann said. “One other deed that Granny Wetherbee’s ghost wanted us to perform. But what it is I couldn’t say.”
The two of them were sitting at the kitchen table, drinking steaming-hot tea. Rose Rita looked haggard and worn. “I know Mom’s going to kill me when I get home,” she said. “I’ve been gone for months! She’ll never trust me to visit you again.” She reached into her jeans pocket and took out a crumpled piece of paper. “As for unfinished business, do you think it might be this stupid treasure?”
Mrs. Zimmermann picked up the paper and unfolded it. Rose Rita had told her all about the fraktur writing, and she had looked at the original, but she could not figure out the meaning. “It could be,” she said. She wrinkled her face. “It isn’t a very good poem, is it?”
“It stinks,” Rose Rita said. “I mean, look at how he spells ‘live.’ It looks like the Roman numeral fifty-four. He—” She broke off and grabbed the paper. “My gosh! That’s it!” She dashed away from the table and ran through the house, screaming for Heinrich and Hilda.
The two of them came, together with Mr. and Mrs. Weiss and Grampa Drexel. “What is it?” Mrs. Weiss asked. “Such screaming and yelling and laughing you make, you would think that a young man had asked your papa for your hand—”
Rose Rita thumped the copy of the poem down on the table. “I solved the puzzle!” she said. “Look, it isn’t a code at all—it’s just in the way you read the poem! Read the first word of each line, going top to bottom! The first shall find riches!” She had a pencil stub in her jeans pocket. She pulled it out and underlined the first word of each line, like this:
To the Sons of Liberty, That They Mite
Discover the Welth of Freedom
Step ye sons of freedom smart;
Liv with liberty in your hart.
Paces the foe with heavy tred;
North, your countrymen are lying dead.
From Boston, from Concord, from Lexington,
Cottage and mansion send forth their sons.
Rock-hard the hart of the British soldier,
Then harder still are we, and bolder.
Line your rebelion with corage brave;
Great harts will live where our flag shall wave.
Tree and river shall hide our arms
And as ye hear war’s loud alarms,
Mountain and hill, and valley so deep,
Dig like the foxx your den to keep.
For if we keep fayth, our people true,
Treasure of liberty must be our due.
This-Vers-Made-By-Heinrich-Weiss-MDCCLXXVIII
The-First-Shall-Find-Riches.
Hermann Weiss blinked and slowly read aloud, “Step fifty-four paces north from Cottage Rock, then line great tree and mountain. Dig for treasure. Well, what do you know!”
“Papa,” said Mrs. Weiss, “the great tree must be the old oak that your mother would never let you and your brothers cut down!”
“I’ll get the shovels,” Mr. Weiss said.
* * *
The directions were still not terribly clear, but after a day of digging, Hermann Weiss shouted in excitement. From the hole they had dug, he and his sons hauled up a wooden chest, bound with brass that had long since turned green with age. They pried off the rusted lock. When they opened the chest, hundreds of golden coins gleamed up at them.
“Now,” said a happy, panting Heinrich, “we are too rich to have to move, forever!”
Rose Rita and Mrs. Zimmermann had stood watching the proceedings. They followed the treasure hunters back to the house, the men staggering under the tremendous weight of the golden trove. The whole family crowded around the kitchen table, where Mr. Weiss excitedly began to count and stack the coins.
But Mrs. Zimmermann and Rose Rita lingered in the doorway, feeling wistful and sad. “Come,” a kindly voice whispered. “I have something to show you.”
It was Grampa Drexel, looking spry again. He led them upstairs to his room. He closed the door and had them sit down. “As you know, the neighbors destroyed all the magical items they found at Stoltzfuss’s place,” Grampa Drexel said. “All but the wax dolls and this.” He reached into a drawer and pulled out a small round mirror. He handed it to Mrs. Zimmermann. “I have removed the evil spell that was cast over it. It is a good mirror now. And I think a friend of yours has something to say to you. I will wait outside.” He rose and shuffled out.
Rose Rita stood up and looked over Mrs. Zimmermann’s shoulder. The round mirror, much smaller than the square one, had a rosy glow in its depths. Slowly the glow intensified, and then suddenly a beautiful old woman’s face looked out. Her hair was snowy white, and deep lines etched her face, but the black eyes were bright and lively. Rose Rita felt rather than heard the words the woman in the mirror spoke: “Thank you, my Florrie. You have righted the great wrong. Now you may return to your own time, and you may find what you wanted. For the last time, dear Florrie, good-bye.”
“Wait!” Mrs. Zimmermann said. But the mirror went dark, and a moment later it popped. A zigzag line now ran across it. Mrs. Zimmermann sighed. “‘The mirror crack’d from side to side,’” she said. Then she stood up briskly. “Bessie is waiting for us,” she told Rose Rita. “And there’s no time to lose!”
They did not pause to say good-bye to the excited Weiss family. Only Grampa Drexel saw them off. Rose Rita felt a little tearful. “I wanted to tell Hilda how much I liked her,” she said. “And I never really thanked Heinrich. If he hadn’t been such a good shot when he threw that sword, I wouldn’t even be here!”
“They know how you feel,” Grampa Drexel said kindly. “Now you must hurry. These things don’t happen every day, you know. So go back to your home, and remember—you must believe hard, with all your heart, to get there!” He waved a farewell to them.
The weather had become springlike, and the long walk to Fuller’s Hill was a warm one. They toiled up the road until they found the right clump of rhododendron, and then they climbed into Bessie. “I doubt if she’ll even start after all this time,” Mrs. Zimmermann grumbled. The car was a mess outside, with dirt and leaves and bird droppings all over it. It smelled lonely and cold inside, because the thick bushes had kept the warming sun off it. “Well,” said Mrs. Zimmermann, “here goes nothing.”
The engine started on the first try. Mrs. Zimmermann revved it, and the radio crackled with static. Mrs. Zimmermann smiled. “One down. Now to get out of here.”
She carefully backed the Plymouth out and, after a few minutes of maneuvering, turned it around. They crept back up the track. Soon they saw where the old mountain road curved hard to the left, away from the granite cliff. “What did Mr. Drexel say?” Mrs. Zimmermann asked. “Believe with all your heart? Well, right there is where the tunnel would be, if there were a tunnel, and so I believe that we’ll head right for that cliff. Are you with me?”
Rose Rita swallowed. “Sure,” she said.
“Here we go!” Mrs. Zimmermann wasn’t kidding. She stomped on the accelerator, and Bessie leaped forward. The cliff seemed to roar toward them, faster and faster. Rose Rita grabbed the armrest and held it tight. I believe, I believe, she told herself. She wanted to close her eyes, but if she did—
The rock wall was just ahead of them!
Zoom! The car made that funny sound that cars make when they plunge into tunnels, and for an instant everything went dark. Then fluorescent lights flashed above the car, and a semicircle of hot summer daylight glared ahead of them. In a moment they burst out into the open air. On the radio an excited announcer bellowed, “Clyde Vollmer blasts it over the fence! What a game! A grand-slam home run for Vollmer, and the Red Sox take it eight to four after sixteen innings!”
“We’re back!” Rose Rita screeched. “We’re really and truly back!”
Mrs. Zimmermann pulled Bessie off onto the shoulder. Her hands were shaking. “We are,” she said. “And that’s the same baseball game we were listening to, weeks and weeks ago! Not a day has passed in 1951! Oh, thank you, Granny Wetherbee!”
The two of them had some planning to do. Rose Rita wanted to go straight to New Zebedee. She felt as if they had been away from home for weeks. However, Mrs. Zimmermann pointed out that as far as the world knew, they had not missed a day. In the end Rose Rita reluctantly agreed that they should go ahead with their tour, just as if nothing had happened.
So they turned around, and after a moment’s hesitation they went through the tunnel again. This time they came out still on a modern highway. They found the site of the Weiss farm, because Cottage Rock still loomed there off to the left of the highway, but now the farm was a small village named Weissburg. They drove in and found it a charming little place. They ate at Harry and Betty Weiss’s Cafeteria, and Mrs. Zimmermann talked to the owners. Harry Weiss was clearly a relative of Hermann’s: He had the same broad red face and blue eyes. Harry told them that his family had lived here for ages, and he told them where the family cemetery was, not far outside of town. After some searching Mrs. Zimmermann and Rose Rita found the old graveyard, and after rambling through it they paused before a grave with an elegant marble headstone that read, “Wilhelm Peter Drexel, 1751–1844. Beloved stepfather.”
Rose Rita felt very sad, but Mrs. Zimmermann said, “He lived his full span. He wasn’t cut off in 1828. We actually changed history, and it wasn’t all a dream or a hallucination.”
But she must have felt sad too, because they didn’t look for any other graves. The two of them continued their Penn Dutch vacation. They spent a couple of days in Stonebridge, where in a junk shop Mrs. Zimmermann found a broken old lamp with a base supported by three bronze claws. “Griffins’ talons,” she said. “Griffins’ talons, or I don’t know my talismans. Well, it won’t give light, but griffins can be lucky animals to have around, so I’ll pay a quarter for it.”
The two of them enjoyed their vacation. The dark clouds of fear and despair had cleared. But a little sorrow still lingered in Rose Rita’s heart. On their last night in Pennsylvania, in another tourist cabin, Mrs. Zimmermann suggested a game of chess. Rose Rita just shook her head and sighed.
“All right, young lady, that is it!” Mrs. Zimmermann said. “You are just about as much fun as a toothache. Rose Rita, what in heaven’s name is the matter with you?”
With a miserable expression on her face Rose Rita said, “It’s just that I messed everything up! I was gonna be so smart. I snooped around and got hexed by old Stoltzfuss. Then I fooled with magic and nearly got eaten by a demon. Then I did it again and nearly got Heinrich and myself killed. I shouldn’t be trusted to do anything alone. I guess I need a keeper.”
