John Bellairs - The Curse of the Blue Figurine (Johnny Dixon 01)

THE CURSE OF THE BLUE FIGURINE

by John Bellairs

illustrations by Edward Gorey

digital preservation by Guy Montag

It was a cold winter evening in January. The year was 1951. A short, pale, bespectacled boy named Johnny Dixon was sitting in a big comfy easy chair in the parlor of his grandparents' house. Outside, it was snowing. Through the bay window you could see the flakes falling. The room was dark except for the faint yellow light that shone from the fan-shaped dial on the front of the big walnut Atwater Kent table-model radio that was next to the easy chair. Johnny's eyes were wide open. He was staring into the darkness and listening intently to the program. On his lap was a plate of Ritz crackers spread with pink pimiento-flavored cream cheeseJohnny always munched while he listened to the radio. This evening he was listening to one of his favorite programs, The House of Mystery. In this episode Sir Philip Stapleton, the renowned archeologist, had entered the forbidden temple of Kali in the jungles of India. With him was Inspector Marcus Quaterly of Scotland Yard, who had traveled all the way from London to help Professor Stapleton unravel the mystery of the savage killings that had plagued Delhi recently. The temple was dark. Each footstep that the two men took raised endless sinister echoes. Suddenly at the far end of the pillared hall something began to glow eerily. It was a huge golden statue of the four-armed goddess Kali. Now, as the two men stood frozen in their tracks, the statue began to move its arms slowly back and forth. And a hideous croaking voice chanted:

Yaa-maaa Yaa-maaa

Professor Stapleton's voice was an incredulous gasp. "What is it? What can it mean?"

Inspector Quaterly answered grimly, "Yama means deathit means death!" And then...

"Johnny! Johnny! Didn't you hear me? I've called you three times! Your grampa 'n' I are waitin', and your dinner's gettin' cold!"

Johnny looked up, startled. He really hadn't heard his grandmother calling. With a sad sigh he turned off the radio. He got up and brushed away some cracker crumbs. Then, meekly, with the plate in his hand, he followed his grandmother out to the dining room.

A few minutes later Johnny was sitting at the big mahogany dining room table with his grandfather and grandmother. As usual Grampa sat at the end by the window, in the chair with the arms. Grampa was a tall, slightly stooped old man who always wore gray work shirts and gray wash pants. He had a high, freckled forehead, and on his big sunburnt nose was perched a pair of gold-rimmed glasses. A few strands of white hair were strung carefully across the top of his head. Loose wrinkled flesh hung down in wattles from his cheeks, and his large hands were covered with brown freckles. Grampa was seventy-four years old. He was old, but he was cheerfulmost of the time. He sang songs like "Oh, Susanna!" and "Peter Gray," and went on long walks all over the town with Johnny. He listened to baseball games with Johnny and helped him with his homework and played checkers and cribbage with him. Grampa was a good egg. He was almost like a father to Johnny, which was a good thing because (these days) he was just about the only father that Johnny had. And Grammafor that matterwas the only mother he did have.

Up until about six months before, Johnny had lived in New York State, in the town of Riverhead on Long Island. But then his mother got sick and died of cancer. At first it seemed to Johnny as if the world had come to an end. Then, as the shock and grief wore off, he began to think that he was getting used to the idea of living alone with his dad. But the Korean War changed things. Johnny's father had been a bomber pilot during World War II. So the Air Force asked Mr. Dixon to come back and serve again, this time as a jet pilot. Mr. Dixon could have refused. He was the sole surviving parent of a child under the age of eighteen. But Mr. Dixon was itching to get into the cockpit of a fighter plane. And when he found out that Gramma and Grampa Dixon would be glad to take care of Johnny, his mind was made up. So Johnny went north, to the town of Duston Heights, Massachusetts, to live with his grandparents. It had been hard for Johnny to adjust to his new surroundings. He felt lonely a lot of the time, and he was also a little scared. But Gramma and Grampa had been as nice as they could be to him, and that helped a lot.

Johnny smiled happily as Gramma spooned mashed potatoes onto his plate. It was snowing outside, but it was warm and comfy in the big old house. A coal fire was roaring in the furnace in the basement, and the register in the floor breathed warm air into the room. The black Sessions clock on the sideboard ticked quietly and reassuringly. The dining room table was covered with a white linen cloth, and on it were good things to eat: roast beef, cabbage salad, mashed potatoes, and plenty of thick dark-brown gravy. And for dessert there would be either chocolate pudding or lemon meringue pie. The food that Gramma Dixon made tended to be the same, day after day, but it was always good.

As they ate, Gramma and Grampa talked quietly. Sometimes they talked about things that Johnny liked to talk about, but this evening they were chewing over some local gossip, about what so-and-so down the street was doing. Johnny thought all this was very dull, so he just munched and drank and went back to living in his own little dream world. He thought about how great it would be to be an archeologist. That was what he wanted to be, right now, more than anything in the world. He imagined himself with a pith helmet on his head and a pickax in his hand, wading through sand while the hot sun sizzled in the sky. Or exploring by moonlight, which was much more dramatic. Johnny saw himself wandering among the columned halls of the temple of Dendur or Karnak at night, when a pale, silvery sheen fell upon the mysterious hieroglyphs and the carved shapes of pharaohs and beast-headed gods. Was there danger here? Who could tell? What if a shape wrapped in tattered bandages stepped from the shadows and confronted him? What would Professor John Wellesley Dixon, Ph.D., do? Of course there was the large British Army service revolver in the holster that hung from his belt. But it would not be of much use against... The doorbell rang.

Once again Johnny was jolted out of his daydream. He glanced quickly toward the front hall. Gramma heaved a deep, discontented sigh. "Lord, I wonder who that is?" She hated to be interrupted during meals.

"I'll go see," said Grampa. He shoved his chair back and got up.

"Me too," said Johnny. He got up and followed his grandfather out to the front door. He really had no reason to go along, but he went anyway, out of sheer uncontrollable curiosity.

Grampa pulled at the front door, and it opened with a rattle. There on the snowy porch stood Professor Childermass. Professor Roderick Childermass, Ph.D., to be precise. Professor Childermass was a short, elderly, red-faced man. A wild nest of white hair covered the top of his head, and mutton-chop whiskers sprouted from the sides of his face. His nose was red and pitted and reminded Johnny of a strawberry. Perched slightly askew on the professor's head was an old shapeless gray fedora, and thrown over his shoulderssort of like a capewas an unbelievably dirty and threadbare tweed overcoat. In his left hand the professor clutched a shovelor what had once been a shovel. It had been one of those little collapsible shovels that the Army calls "an entrenching tool." But the red-colored blade had been battered into a shapeless mass of metal, and the hinged wooden handle was splintered and almost broken in two.