Professor Gargoyle (11 page)

The boys grabbed their backpacks and left the computer lab. Out in the hallway, two teachers were speaking in low whispers. They stopped talking as the boys approached. Their eyes seemed full of mistrust. One of the teachers brought out his cell phone and punched in a number.

“Don’t panic,” Glenn whispered, clapping Robert on the shoulder, like they were two old pals taking a friendly stroll. “Just keep moving.”

From out of nowhere, Mr. Loomis shoved his way between them. “Glenn Torkells!” he exclaimed. “What did I tell you about hitting Robert?”

“Me?” Glenn asked. “What?”

“Last time, you got a warning. This time, it’s a suspension. Come on, I’m taking you straight to the principal’s office.”

“Mr. Loomis, it’s okay,” Robert said. “Glenn and I are friends now.”

Mr. Loomis looked exasperated. “Stop protecting him, Robert. If he doesn’t get punished, he’s never going to leave you alone.”

“I’m not lying this time, I promise.”

Mr. Loomis crossed his arms over his chest. “All right, fine. You’re friends? Prove it.”

Prove it? Robert didn’t know how to prove it. What did Loomis want them to do? Shake hands? Hug?

Glenn cleared his throat. “Uh, I had dinner at
Robert’s house last night? And his mother still cuts his spaghetti into little pieces. Like he’s four years old. But I didn’t make fun of him, because we’re friends.”

Robert thought this was a weird thing to say. Didn’t everyone serve spaghetti cut into little pieces? Because it was easier to eat that way?

“Well, here’s something you don’t know about Glenn,” Robert told Mr. Loomis. “On the way to school this morning, he decided to rescue ten thousand worms. He picks them off the sidewalk after rainstorms and moves them to the grass so they don’t bake in the sun. I thought it was a little weird, but since we’re friends now
I
didn’t say anything.”

Mr. Loomis looked from one boy to the other, astonished. “You really
are
friends, aren’t you? How the heck did that happen?”

“Can we tell you later?” Robert asked. “We need to get to the library before the assembly starts.”

“Fine,” Mr. Loomis said, stepping aside. “I hope you find some good books. Have fun.”

The boys hurried on their way.

When they arrived at the library, Ms. Lavinia was in her usual perch at the circulation desk. She saw the boys enter, picked up her telephone, and whispered a few words before hanging up.

Robert and Glenn had to walk past her to reach the fiction section.

“Can I help you find something?” she asked.

“Just looking,” Robert said.

He turned down the nearest aisle, following it until they were out of Ms. Lavinia’s line of sight.

“What now?” Glenn asked.

Robert knelt down and unzipped his backpack. Pip and Squeak scrambled out onto the floor. “Guys, we need your help. You have to take us to the attic. Can you do that?”

Pip and Squeak cringed. After escaping the attic via Robert’s backpack, it was clear they didn’t want to return.

“Please, guys,” Robert said. “I know it’s not safe there, but we’re not safe here, either. We need to go back.”

Pip and Squeak chattered at each other for a few moments, as if they were actually debating the decision. It seemed like Pip was willing to go, but Squeak needed some persuading. Finally they turned and set off down the aisle.

“Come on,” Robert told Glenn. “They’re going.”

It was the same route he’d taken last time, through F
ICTION
then M
YSTERY
then P
ARANORMAL
. The shelves stretched upward as they advanced deeper and deeper into the maze. Books blurred past them. Pip and Squeak were running, and Glenn and Robert ran after them.

“Are you sure this is the right way?” Glenn asked.

“Definitely.” The air was thick with the odor of moldy mothballs. “We’re almost there.”

After another minute or so, they arrived at a dead end. In the corner, barely visible, was the old wooden doorway that led to the attic. Pip and Squeak were standing at the base of it.

“Thanks, guys,” Robert said, unzipping his backpack so they could climb inside. But Pip and Squeak
shook their heads. They may have been willing to lead Robert to the attic, but they weren’t going any further. “Fine,” Robert said. “Wait here. We’ll be back in five minutes.”

Glenn hesitated. “You want me to wait with them?”

“Come on,” Robert told him. Once again, he nearly stumbled walking through the doorway. He told Glenn to watch his step but it was too late; he tripped and fell to his knees.

“What just happened?” Glenn asked.

Robert thought he knew the answer, but he wasn’t going to say anything. If Glenn knew the truth, there was a good chance he’d turn around and never come back.

They climbed the rickety stairs leading to the attic. When they reached the top, Robert pulled back the patchwork curtain and there was Karina, sitting at the round wooden table reading a book.

“What are you doing here?” She was even more surprised to see Glenn. “And why is
he
here?”

“We’re looking for you.”

Robert took a chair beside her. “I know your secret, Karina. It took me a while to figure it out, but I know.” He reached out to touch her wrist, and his fingers passed right through it. “You died in the explosion, right? With your parents?”

“You shouldn’t have come,” Karina said.

“We need your help.”

She shook her head sadly. “You’ve walked right into his trap.”

“Whose trap?”

The patchwork curtain moved again, and Professor Goyle stepped out, blocking the exit.

“Thank you for coming, gentlemen. I believe you have something that belongs to me.”

“I knew you’d come eventually,” Professor Goyle told Robert. He had forced the boys to sit at the round wooden table beside Karina. “You mentioned you’d been spending some time in my Master’s house.”

Robert shook his head. “I never said that.”

“Of course you did! Don’t you remember? When I caught you with the mutated rat, you said you’d found it in the attic above the library—but there is no attic above the school library! The only logical conclusion was that you’d found a way to cross over.”

Glenn was bewildered by the entire conversation. “Cross over
where
?”

“This is the attic of Tillinghast Mansion,” Karina explained. “I lived here in 1983. And I guess I still do. My parents were scientists who worked for Crawford Tillinghast.” She looked to Goyle with disgust. “Until they learned the true nature of his research.”

“Your parents were cowards!” Goyle said. “Master gave them an opportunity to change the world!”

Karina shouted back, “My parents wanted to help the human race, not destroy it!”

Goyle shrugged. “Well, it’s water under the bridge. Their souls belong to Master now. So do yours,” he told Robert and Glenn. “You boys won’t be returning to Lovecraft Middle School, and neither will your little polycephalous friend. Give me the backpack.”

Robert removed the bag from his shoulders and flung it across the room, knowing Goyle wouldn’t find more than a few notebooks. The professor carefully searched each of the pockets.

“Now that’s peculiar,” he said. “I’m certain I smell rodent fur.” He walked over to the patchwork curtain, sniffing the surrounding air. “Did your creatures
insist on waiting outside? Were they afraid to cross over with you?”

Robert didn’t say anything. He didn’t want Goyle to know that he was exactly right, that he’d left Pip and Squeak at the bottom of the stairs, waiting in plain sight.

“Well, I suppose I should fetch them,” Goyle said. “You boys sit tight. I won’t be long.”

As soon as Goyle passed through the curtain, Robert turned to Karina and whispered, “Don’t worry. We’ll give him two minutes and then we’ll sneak out of here.”

She didn’t move. “It’s no use.”

“What do you mean? We can’t stay here.”

“Seriously,” Glenn said, standing up. “I’m not waiting another second.” He crossed the room, threw back the patchwork curtain, and nearly collided with a brick wall. “Where are the stairs?”

“He took them away. He can make them vanish and reappear,” Karina said. “That’s why you haven’t seen me since Monday night. He’s kept me trapped up here. Now we’re all trapped.”

Robert paced the length of the attic, searching for windows or ceiling hatches or
something
. He found an old flashlight and aimed its weak beam along the walls. Most of the space was given over to old books and bookshelves. But in one corner he spotted a pile of old blankets, a pillow, and a few small framed photographs. He realized he was looking at a young girl’s bedroom. A very lonely bedroom.

Glenn drummed his fingertips on the table. “Look, Karina, I need you to start at the beginning and walk me through this. If we’re inside Tillinghast Mansion, what happened to Lovecraft Middle School?”

“It’s all around us,” Karina explained. “Or rather, we’re all around it. That was Tillinghast’s plan. To create a parallel dimension where he could rule for eternity.”

“Slow down,” Glenn said. “You’re already confusing me. I thought you died in an explosion.”

Karina shook her head. “When the laboratory exploded, we didn’t really die. We simply left your dimension and moved to a new one.” She scowled. “My
parents and I have been trapped here ever since, forced to help Tillinghast raise his army of monsters and demons. In this dimension, his house is never demolished. It’s always 1983.”

Glenn pressed his hands against the side of his head, like he was trying to keep his brain from exploding. “But in
my
dimension, his house
was
demolished,” he said. “It was turned into Lovecraft Middle School.”

Karina nodded. “Yeah. That’s the confusing part. Somehow the transformation created holes between the dimensions. I call them gates. Places where you can pass from one world into another. They’re all over the mansion and throughout the school.”

Karina explained that the real Professor Goyle was a kindly old science teacher who had stumbled through a gate by accident. Now Goyle’s soul was a prisoner of the mansion—and his physical body was being used as a disguise by Azaroth, an ancient demon under Tillinghast’s control.

“An ancient demon?” Glenn asked. “Like an actual monster?”

“Exactly. Every time a person accidentally crosses over, their human soul is captured and one of Tillinghast’s monsters goes back in their place. He’s transforming the school one person at a time. And you guys are next in line.”

“What are you saying?” Glenn asked. “Some monster’s going to wear my body like a cheap rubber mask?”

Karina nodded. “Pretty much.”

“And what happens to me?”

“Your soul will stay here. Trapped with Goyle’s and the others for all eternity.”

Robert knew that being trapped for all eternity wasn’t the worst of it. Not by a long shot. The worst part was that, sometime today, a person who looked like him and sounded like him—but was definitely
not
him—would go to his house, talk to his mother, and sleep in his bedroom. There would be a monster under his own roof and his mother would have no idea.

Glenn pointed to the far end of the room, to the door barricaded with the wooden planks. “What if we rip off those boards?”

“You don’t want to do that.”

“Why not?”

“For starters, it goes the wrong way. Deeper into the mansion.”

“Right, but you said there are more gates inside the mansion. What if we find one that brings us back to the school?”

“There are … 
things
on the other side of that door. Things you do not want to meet.”

“What kinds of things?”

Karina fell silent. She had just explained a number of very complicated concepts, but somehow the challenge of describing these creatures left her speechless. They were more horrific than words could convey.

“Things that fly?” Glenn asked. “Things that breathe fire?”

“How big are they?” Robert asked. “Six feet tall? Eight feet tall?”

Karina shook her head. She stared down at her hands, and when she spoke again, her voice was barely a whisper.