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Johnny gets the job and is paid $10 a week for working four hours a day, Monday through Friday. After Johnny has been on the job for a while, he meets a strangely enthusiastic but sinister man named Mattheus Mergal. Mattheus wants one of the artifacts that the professor has kept -- a scary hand carved out of wood.
One day, when Johnny is walking around town, he meets a girl named Sarah Channing. She is nice, but Johnny does not want to share his troubles with her. The professor has recently had his house torn apart by a man, whom Johnny believes was Mattheus Mergal, searching for the hand. Mattheus Mergal begins to frighten Johnny and the professor. Sarah and Johnny decide to check out the house Mergal has bought. When they open the door, they sense something is wrong. A skeleton with moldy flesh barely attached to its bones appears! Sarah and Johnny turn and run. It soon becomes obvious that Mergal is up to something very sinister.
When the professor disappears without a trace, Sarah and Johnny go to Father Higgins for help. He gives them a note that says the professor has gone fishing in Maine. Johnny senses something "fishy" is going on. Using the rhyme in a strange birthday card that he has received to help him, Johnny locates the wooden hand. Johnny and Sarah realize that the professor has been kidnapped by Mattheus Mergal. They decide to rescue Professor Childermass. Soon after, they find the professor in a bad state in a burned out church. Mergal traps them, but one of his spells goes wrong, and he is brought through a portal to the dead.
Kirkus Reviews: "Strickland leads readers out on an entertaining frolic. There are enough well-paced frissons to keep readers flipping those pages."
Amazon.com: * * * *
Behind the Books: A Closer Look at John Bellairs: * * * *
"One of the best villains in Mergal and a great new character go well together with the suspense of this book."
