Wrath of the Grinning Ghost by John Bellairs Page A

tell you is that unless someone has moved it, the cursed thing is still in that house. Be careful! It's more like a live creature than a book, and it has soaked up a lot of evil. It may be tricky! Now go scatter and find it! And let me know when you have! Whoosh! I have to rest now!" The floating bird figure dropped to the floor as if someone had cut an invisible string. Johnny picked it up and tucked it into his shirt pocket.
    "You heard him," the professor said sternly. "Scatter! I'll take my bedroom. Byron, you search this room. John, look in your bedroom. Then we'll all tackle the kitchen, and if we don't find anything, we'll trade off rooms and look again! Go!"
    Johnny hurried to his bedroom. It had not changed much since the last time he had been in the cabin. The spread on the bed was now dark blue instead of dark green, but that was about it. He dragged a chair over to the closet door and stood on it to peek on the little triangular shelf above the clothes bar. Nothing but dust. He looked in all the drawers beneath the bed. Empty. Then he had a sudden inspiration and pulled the drawers themselves all the way out. But the book wasn't beneath the bed either, or under the mattress or jammed between the head of the bed and the wall. Nor was it propped up against the windowsill behind the curtains. And there just wasn't any other place to look.
    Johnny went back to the parlor and found that Fergie had cheerfully taken everything apart. The sofa cushions lay scattered over the floor. The radio, a big old wooden table model shaped like a Gothic arch, had been taken off its stand beside the sofa. The coffee table had been turned upside down. Fergie had even rolled up the throw rugs. "Any luck?" Fergie asked.
    Johnny shook his head. "It isn't in there," he said. "I guess you didn't find anything either, huh?"
    "Oh, yes I did!" retorted Fergie. "I found thirty-seven cents in loose change! Plus a Hershey bar that some kid dropped between the sofa cushions about thirty years ago! But no book."
    Professor Childermass came out of the other bedroom, his hair bristling, and shook his head. "The kitchen," he said. They all went in there, and they poked everywhere. Johnny remembered that his dad had first found the book in a drawer, so they pulled out and emptied every drawer. They looked in the oven and in the refrigerator. They opened the cabinet beneath the sink and surprised a mouse. But they did not find the book.
    They did succeed in making an incredible clutter. The professor sat down on the kitchen floor amid a pile of knives, forks, pots, pans, and dishes. "If Brewster hadn't all but sworn that fool book was here, I'd give up," he grumbled. "I don't see how it could be hidden anywhere we haven't looked, because we've looked everywhere."
    "The bathroom!" yelled Fergie.
    The professor shook his head. "I've searched the bathroom."
    "Maybe," Johnny said slowly, "it's under the house. After all, we're up on pilings."
    So the three of them trooped out and went under the house. The gray earth beneath was bare, with little funnel-shaped dimples in it where ant lions, predatory bugs that looked like a Martian's nightmare, had dug traps for ants. Overhead were the joists and supports that held up the floor of the cabin, but there was no book.
    "Well," began the professor, "I for one—"
    "I can help."
    The three had thought themselves all alone. At the sound of the voice, Johnny jumped like someone who'd received an electric shock. The professor started too, and gasped, "Holy H. Smoke!" as he spun around. Even Fergie's usually sleepy eyes popped wide open.
    A woman stood nearby. "I saw you when you passed my house," she said.
    "Madam Lumiere!" shouted Johnny, seeing the figure of the old woman beside the front steps of the house. He, Fergie, and the professor crept out, and Johnny introduced her to the others. Quickly he told her about the book and about his father's illness.
    "No," she said solemnly. "He is not sick. He has been