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said reluctantly.
"Please, Professor," begged Anna. "Just look at the night-clock and the jar
itself, then I'll be satisfied."
Professor Qualt thought for a moment. It was plain that he took his leisure
time seriously, and that he didn't relish the idea of driving all the way back
along the Cape in mid-August heat for the sole purpose of looking at an old
jar. But this wasn't just any old jar, and there was a night-clock to inspect,
and academic curiosity was struggling hard in the favor of checking them out.
In the end, Qualt said, "Okay-just give me a chance to pack up my stuff and
get dressed." Anna and I both let out sighs of relief, stood up and helped him
fold up his beach blanket and stow away his lunchbox.
As we drove toward Winter Sails, Professor Qualt leaned forward from the back
of the car and filled us in with more details of the Ali Babah legend.
"The Arabs used to say that Ali Babah had made a pact with a strange and evil
sect of necromancers who lived in the hills. These wizards performed
extraordinary and quite obscene rites, one of which was said to involve
carrying around a young girl on top of a long pole which had been pushed
through her vagina. This sect is sometimes known as the N'zwaa or the Unswa,
and sometimes by an unpronounceable name which means
Those-Who-Adore-The-Terrible."
Professor Qualt opened the rear window and lit up his pipe again.
"The thing was that Ali Babah was losing his magical influence. A great wizard
from Bagdad, Ali Shama, was becoming a favorite at court, leaving Ali Babah
out in the cold. Ali Shama was said to be able to make carpets fly and dead
people come to life. Ali Babah, although he was a very good sorcerer, could do
neither of these things, nor many o£ Ali Shama's other tricks, and he was very
annoyed.
"That's when he went to the N'zwaa. It was a risky thing to do, because, from
what I've heard, the N'zwaa would just as soon kill you as say good morning.
He made a pact that if they could summon a great and terrible djinn for his
personal use, he would let them have, every year forever, a young girl for
their religious rituals and their personal amusement. The N'zwaa agreed. They
conjured up for Ali Babah one of their foulest djinns, the Forty Stealers of
Life, and in return he gave them, so it's said, the thirteen-year-old daughter
of a friend. What disgusting things the N'zwaa did to this girl-or any of the
other girls that Ali Babah gave them-is not recorded. But one ancient legend
says that each girl took seven weeks to die."
Anna shuddered. "That's awful," she said. "But did Ali Babah get his influence
back?"
"So they say," answered Professor Qualt. "Not long after Ali Babah's return
from the hills, AH Shama was found dead in his bed. In the night, some kind of
tick had burrowed its way into his ear and through his brain. Nobody said
anything about it, but most people believed that this insect had been Ali
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Babah's djinn, manifesting itself in one of its forty revolting forms."
I checked my watch. "Another fifteen minutes and we'll be there." I looked in
my mirror and pulled out to overtake a large trailer.
"What I want to know," said Anna, "is why the djinn so desperately needs a
face? If it can turn itself into a giant centipede or a tick or a puff of
smoke, why does it need a face?"
Professor Qualt took the pipe out of his mouth. "I can only tell you what the
legends tell us," he said. "If a djinn is sealed by the Seal of Banished
Faces, then it is unable to take what they call its master form. In other
words, even a djinn with forty different manifestations has to have one
fundamental manifestation, which in most cases is a human one-or quasi-human,
anyway. Without a master form, it's a bit like asking a composer to write
forty variations on a theme without giving him the theme."
For the rest of the journey, we were silent. As we drove nearer and nearer to
Winter Sails, I began to grow increasingly apprehensive, especially since the
light was beginning to fail, and it would soon be dark. We passed the slanted
trees, bounced down the driveway, and there was the pallid house with its
sinister Gothic turret and its scimitar weathervane. Behind it, the sea was
marked with flecks of white foam, and the last of the sailboats were heading
home.
Suddenly, Anna tensed. "Who's that?" she said, pointing into the shadow of the
driveway.
I eased my brakes on immediately and peered through the windshield. It was a
young kid on a bicycle. He was wearing a striped T-shirt and a back-to-front
baseball cap, and he was whistling as he cycled along. I rolled down the car
window and called, "Hey, son!"
The boy stopped beside me. He had a freckled nose and two front teeth missing.
"Yes, sir?"
"Have you been down to the house?"
"Yes, sir. I was."
"What for?"
"I delivered the papers, sir, and Time."
Professor Qualt leaned forward from the back seat. "You delivered Time?" he
said tautly.
"Sure. That's what they asked for. They called up the store and asked for it.
This is my last trip today."
Professor Qualt slumped back in the seat "We may be too late already," he said
worriedly. "Maybe we ought to forget the whole thing and turn back."
"Why?" said Anna. "What's wrong?"
"Don't you understand? Time is full of pictures of faces. Now the Forty
Stealers of Life has everything it needs to escape. It's probably escaped
already. That house is harboring the most horrible and evil-hearted spirit you
could ever imagine."
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Almost as if she had been listening to what Professor Qualt was saying,
Marjorie, in her long black dress, suddenly flung open the front door of
Winter Sails and began to run across the main lawn, her arms raised in the
air. She fled away so fast that it looked as if she was actually shrinking in
size.
Chapter 5
We watched in fascinated horror as Marjorie stumbled across the lawn. She
seemed to be beating or flapping at something in the air just behind her, even
though we couldn't see anything there at all. When the sea breeze gusted in
our direction, we could hear that she was shrieking. A thin, high-pitched,
terrified shriek.
Without a word, I gunned the Cougar's engine, swerved off the driveway, and
began to drive across the grass. The car bounced and swayed, and both
Professor Qualt and Anna were gripping the armrests for dear life. I circled
around in front of Marjorie and stopped. She came running toward us and
collapsed against the side of the car, still twitching and beating at her
invisible pursuer.
Qualt and I pushed our way out of the car and knelt down beside her. Her eyes
had rolled up into her head so that only the whites showed, and she was
shaking and shivering and mumbling. Her thin legs, in their wrinkled gray
stockings, lay like two broken sticks.
"Marjorie," I said gently. "Marjorie, it's Harry." She didn't seem to hear me.
She was moaning and mumbling, and her arms still jerked feebly at the terrible
thing that wasn't there. It was strange, though, because I thought I caught
the dry, leathery sound of flapping wings. I looked up quickly, and there was
nothing there at all. Just the dark-smudged sky, the gathering shadows, and
the curiously luminous shape of Winter Sails.
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