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The creature's mouth opened in a terrible grin. "I shall take my final sacrifice from the world of the living!" said a dead, rustling voice. "And the universe shall be mine!"
"Gravely ill." The haunting words keep repeating themselves over and over in Johnny Dixon's brain. After all the tests, doctors still can't find any earthly reason why Johnny's father lies unconscious. Could it be that Johnny's own tangles with the malevolent creature have caused his father to be its latest victim?
To save Major Dixon, Johnny and his friends Professor Childermass and Fergie Ferguson must not only enter into battle with the fearsome fiend, they must fight it in the realm of its own unearthly world. Can the rescue Johnny's father? Or will they all die, leaving the earth in peril from the demon's rage? |
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Forget about Waldo -- Play Where's Brewster? on the front jacket cover! |
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Who is Professor Childermass' mystery woman -- you know, the one who sends the package? "Roddy -- choo got some 'splainin' to do!" (end bad imitation of I Love Lucy's Ricky Ricardo) |
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Johnny gasped. The shape had shot out of the crystal ball and hovered above it! It was a face. A dead-white face of a thin man. Long white hair trailed at the sides. The eyes were wide and black. They were the worst of all. The eyes had no whites, no pupils, but were pools as dark and glistening as puddles of oil. Johnny could see no lips on the face, just a gash of a mouth. The creature's mouth opened in a terrible grin.
"Free!" said a dead, rustling voice. "Free! I shall take my final sacrifice from the world of the living! And the universe shall be mine!"
The monstrous face quivered in the air, and then it vanished. In its place hung something black, the shape of a bird. To Johnny it looked like an eagle or a falcon. It was not flying. The wings were folded, and the figure resembled a statuette of a falcon more than it did a living bird. "Johnny Dixon! Can you hear me?"
The downturned falcon's beak did not move. It couldn't really be speaking, not with any normal voice, but in his head, Johnny heard a raspy voice that was somehow familiar: "Now you've done it! I tried to appear and warn you about what was going to happen, but no! I can't fight this evil thing alone! Get help! Get to Professor Frizz-Face as soon as you can! Or else the world is doomed!"
And then Madam Lumiere shrieked as Johnny toppled out of his chair and fell to the floor.
And everything went dark.
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| "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" courtesy Jonathan Abucejo. |
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This is book eleven in the Johnny Dixon series.
Originally titled The Grinning Ghost, Strickland says that after a conference with the editor he changed the title from The Fate of the Grinning Ghost to The Wrath of the Grinning Ghost, becasue, "let's face it -- the ghost is quite mad, in two senses of the term."
Strickland says to research this book, he and his wife flew to Boston. "We traveled up to Haverhill and, as usual, made nuisances of ourselves by poking and prying and asking all sorts of weird questions. Mr. Gorey reportedly liked the story a great deal and thought it was one of the best I had done."
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| Stats |
Author: Brad Strickland (52)
Published: September 1999
Chapters: 15
Pages: 166
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| Adaptations |
There are no known adaptations of this work. |
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| Allusions |
None known. |
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| Dedication |
For Phyllis Fogelman
Phyllis Fogelman began her career in 1966 as editor-in-chief of Dial Books for Young Readers. It was at her suggestion that John Bellairs rewrite his contemporary adult fantasy novel into a story more geared toward younger readers - and The House With a Clock in Its Walls was born.
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