The Specter From the Magician's Museum (Lewis Barnavelt) by Brad Strickland

Author:Brad Strickland [Strickland, Brad]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2004-08-03T04:00:00+00:00

Rose Rita turned more pages. She found a whole long chapter headed “Belle Frisson: Or, Speaking to the Spirits.” Before reading it, Rose Rita stopped at an old-fashioned steel engraving, all dark cross-hatched lines. It showed a woman with a thin, oval face, large, piercing, dark eyes, and jet-black hair. She wore an Egyptian head-band with a round medallion in front, and on the medallion was an engraving of a spider. Her somber eyes seemed to stare right into Rose Rita’s. Rose Rita turned the page very quickly.

And then she stared at another picture, a grainy photograph this time. It showed a flat cemetery with headstones crowded thick. At the center of the picture was a monument far taller than the stones around it. Rose Rita had seen it before. It was the many-sided pillar with the stone ball on top. The caption of the photograph read, “Belle Frisson, née Elizabeth Proctor, lies buried beneath this strange monument. People report that the ball slowly revolves, with no visible power. Does her spirit still strive to reach us? Who can say?”

Feeling very odd indeed, as if she might be the only one who could answer that question for sure, Rose Rita began to read the chapter about Belle Frisson.

* * *

As for Lewis, he despaired more and more as the days went past. Surprisingly, the source of his trouble was not teasing. He found that the other kids didn’t make fun of him nearly as much as he expected. The talent show was soon forgotten as other topics came up, such as the high-school football games and the approach of Halloween. Oh, every once in a while someone would cluck like a chicken as Lewis walked past, but more people seemed to remember the “Who’s on first?” routine that Dave and Tom had done. The boys had come in third, and lots of people thought they should have won the contest.

Lewis’s growing concern came from the way his best friend was behaving. Rose Rita’s coolness bothered Lewis a lot. He did not have very many friends, and Rose Rita was the one who understood and liked him best. One afternoon as he and his uncle were raking leaves, Lewis talked to Jonathan about her, and his uncle sympathized. “Growing up is a very rough process,” Jonathan told him, leaning on his rake. “Your feelings get bruised, and you don’t think you can ever make it, but somehow most people do. Give Rose Rita time to live down her embarrassment, and things will be fine.”

“I messed everything up,” said Lewis sorrowfully, sweeping wet maple leaves into a musty-smelling scarlet-and-yellow pile.

Jonathan patted him on the shoulder. “Accidents happen. Do you know the notion I had when everything started to go wrong? I thought, ‘Lewis and Rose Rita could still save the day if they just turn the whole act into a comedy routine.’ But I had no way of telling you that.”

Lewis piled his batch of leaves onto the large heap that the two of them had made in a corner of the yard.

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