The Monsters of Morley Manor (2 page)

“So . . . how much do you want for this dumb box?” I asked, trying to sound cool.

She took it from my hands, studied it for a moment, then said, “Five dollars.”

I could feel my eyes bulge, but I tried not to make a choking sound. “How about a dollar?” I asked.

The woman laughed out loud. I could feel myself start to blush.

“Two dollars?” I asked.

“Four,” she replied, without batting an eye.

Well, that was progress. Maybe Sarah was right.

“How about two-fifty?” I suggested. As I did, I realized something weird: Now that I had started to try to buy the box, I
really
wanted it, so much that it was almost scary.

The woman narrowed her eyes. “Three-fifty,” she said in a firm voice.

And that was as low as she would go. Which was a lot better than five, but still a problem, since I only had two dollars and thirty-seven cents in my pocket. (When I realized
that
, I was actually relieved that she hadn't said yes to my offer of two-fifty, since I would have looked really stupid counting out the change and coming up thirteen cents short.)

I thought about going home and trying to hit up my grandmother for some money. But I was afraid someone would buy the box while I was gone, even if I hid it again.

So I went to see if I could squeeze some money out of Sarah.

I found her in one of the bedrooms, trying on old hats.

“Do you like this?” she asked when I came into the room. She was wearing something blue and fuzzy that didn't look bad on her.

“It looks stupid,” I said, just like I always did when she asked if I liked something.

She made a face. “Don't be such a snot, Anthony.”

She was right. I shouldn't be a snot, especially if I wanted to borrow money from her. She noticed I was carrying the box. “Did you buy it?” she asked, looking pleased.

I shook my head. “I don't have enough money. How much do you have?”

She looked nervous.

“I'll pay you back,” I said, exasperated.

“You still owe me a dollar from last week.”

“I've got it at home. You just never asked for it.”

“I did, too!”

“Look, all I need is a dollar and thirteen cents.”

She frowned. “I want to buy this hat.”

The hat was a dollar-fifty. Sarah had two dollars. I felt as if I was trapped in a math problem.

“Let's see if we can make a deal,” said Sarah.

The woman didn't look exactly pleased to see me, so I let Sarah do the talking. Having a cute little sister is not always a bad thing. Sarah twinkled and pleaded and pouted, and next thing I knew, the woman had sold us both the hat and the box for four dollars and thirty cents.

We argued all the way home about how much I owed Sarah.

The argument stopped when we walked through the front door and Mr. Perkins bit me.

2

M
R
. P
ERKINS
is my mother's monkey. Mom bought him last year when she turned forty. She said she had always wanted a monkey when she was a kid, but her parents wouldn't let her have one.

“I can have a midlife crisis or a midlife monkey,” she announced on her fortieth birthday. “I've decided to go for the monkey.”

My father wasn't entirely amused, but he decided having a monkey was better than having my mother go bananas. (I think he was secretly afraid that if we didn't get the monkey she might decide she wanted to have another baby instead.)

Anyway, that's how we got Mr. Perkins.

I have to admit that up until the day we actually got the little beast I had figured it would be cool to have a monkey. Then Mom brought him home, and I found out how loud, smelly, and cranky monkeys really are.

Also that they like to pee on your head, which Mr. Perkins has done twice to me.

Anyway, when we came through the door, Mr. Perkins was lurking on top of the coat tree, which is one of his favorite places. As soon as he saw us, he jumped down and bit me on the ankle. Not hard enough to break the skin; I swear he knows that if he did that Mom would get rid of him. No, he just bit hard enough to startle me into yelling and dropping the box.

Instantly, Mr. Perkins grabbed it and ran away, as if he knew that was the thing he could do that would bother me most.

“Hey!” I shouted. “You bring that back!”

Sarah and I began chasing the monkey around the house, making so much noise that after a while even Gramma Walker heard the uproar and came to help us.

(Gramma Walker is my father's mother, by the way. My mother's mother won't visit us now that Mom has a monkey. She takes it personally.)

Working together, the three of us finally cornered Mr. Perkins behind my father's reading chair, and I managed to get the box back.

“Man, I hope he didn't scratch it,” I said bitterly, examining the wood for any sign of damage. But the box was not harmed, which relieved me more than I would have expected.

The only good thing about all the fuss was that by the time it was over Sarah gave up bugging me about how much money I owed her—probably because she could tell I was in such a totally bad mood it wouldn't do her any good.

I took the box into my room and slammed the door behind me. Then I got out my set of miniature screwdrivers. Grampa Walker had given them to me for my last birthday, which had been just a month before he died. He gave them to me because I had always liked to play with them when I visited him at the farm. He used to use them for the model railroads he liked to build, but he had dropped that hobby when his hands got too shaky.

Sometimes I wondered if the reason he had passed them on to me was that he knew he was going to die soon.

After carefully unwrapping the screwdrivers, which Grampa had kept folded in a black cloth pouch, I began to study the box. How was I supposed to open the thing? I tried sticking the smallest screwdriver into the keyhole and wiggling it around. No luck I didn't want to break the lock, though I was willing to do that if I had to. But I wasn't sure I could do it without damaging the wood, and that I did not want to do.

I turned the box around to examine the hinges. They were held on by tiny screws. Still using the smallest of the screwdrivers, I tried to loosen them.

As I was working, the box seemed to get warmer, which was truly weird. I thought about stopping, but my curiosity had the best of me, and I was dying to see what was inside. After a lot of fussing, I managed to get the screws out. Then I pried the hinges off.

The darn box
still
wouldn't open.

Frustrated, I poked the tip of a slightly larger screwdriver between the lid and the body of the box and tried to ease them apart. Just when I was about to stop, for fear of breaking Grampa's screwdriver, the lid made a horrible squeak and moved up about a half an inch. At the same time my desk lamp began to flicker.

Again, I thought about stopping.

It was too late. Something like fog came pouring over the edge of the box, and a green glow showed through the opening. Suddenly a crackle of tingling energy shot up my fingers.

“Yow!” I cried.

When I let go of the lid it slammed back onto the body of the box so fast it was almost as if it had been sucked down.

I stared at the box, torn between terror and a deep curiosity. When I finally got up enough courage, I reached forward and touched it again, just a little tap with the tip of my finger.

I pulled my hand back quickly.

Nothing happened.

I tried again.

Still nothing.

Must have been some weird buildup of static electricity
, I told myself. But I wasn't entirely convinced. I decided to go get something to eat, mostly as a way of putting off making a decision about opening the box. Part of me had begun to think it was a bad idea. Part of me was dying to see what was inside. (And yet another part of me was afraid that once I did get it open, I would find nothing interesting at all, which was a different kind of scary.)

I had lunch, then watched some cartoons with Sarah, which is fun, because you can really bug her by telling her how stupid the plots for
Scooby-Doo
always are.

Two hours later I went back into my room.
It's just a box, for pete's sake!
I told myself.

Even so, I was plenty nervous as I slid it toward me to try to open it again.

The lid creaked as I pried it up, but this time there was no fog, no tingle. I did see the green glow again, but it vanished as soon as I got the lid all the way open—sort of the reverse of the light in the refrigerator.

Underneath the lid was . . . another lid! This one was made of wood, too, though a lighter shade, and had a pair of knobs, one on each side, which I figured were for lifting it out. Painted in the center was a fancy circle. In the center of the circle, written in bold black letters, were the words
MARTIN MORLEY'S LITTLE MONSTERS
.

Below that, in very fine print, it said,
OPEN NOT THIS BOX LEST MY CURSE FALL UPON YOU
.

“Yeah, right,” I muttered. It looked like Old Man Morley was even kookier than everyone had thought.

Grabbing the knobs, I pulled out the second lid. I gasped in delight.

The box was divided into five compartments. And inside each compartment was a metal statue of a tiny monster. Three appeared to be male, two female. They were very detailed, beautifully made, and extremely weird.

At the base of each compartment was an engraved nameplate. I had to rub them clean with a tissue before I could read them.

I blinked. According to the nameplates, the monsters' names were Gaspar, Albert, Ludmilla, Melisande, and Bob.

“Weird names for a bunch of monsters,” I muttered as I picked up Gaspar. (At least, I assumed it was Gaspar. It was possible someone had played with the monsters and put them back in the wrong slots.)

The little monster was about five inches tall. He had a head like a lizard's, stuck on top of a muscular, manlike body. A spiny crest rose from the top of his head then disappeared under the neck of his lab coat. A long, powerful tail extended from the back of his ragged trousers. He looked (and felt) as if he were made of solid brass. I fooled around with him a little, making him bounce across my desk and growl and stuff. Then I stood him at the edge of the box, and took out the next figurine, which was Albert.

Albert was about an inch shorter than Gaspar, and seemed to be a typical mad scientist's assistant—a fierce-looking hunchback with shaggy hair and a squinty face. His hands stretched forward in a grabbing gesture, as if he had been frozen in midaction. Whoever had made him was really good. He even had a patch sewed into the back of his coarse tunic to make room for his hump. It was all done in brass, of course. But the effect was very realistic.

Still holding Albert, I looked at the others. Ludmilla was sort of a vampire lady. She had a cape wrapped around her, big eyes, and a pair of fangs that poked down over her lower lip. Melisande had snakes for hair. Bob looked like your basic wolf-man—a human form with a snarling, wolflike face that was, oddly enough, kind of cute. He was in a slight crouch, as if ready to spring at something.

The detail work on all five of the monsters was amazing; Melisande's face, for example, had tiny, delicate scales, and she was wearing a slinky, skintight dress that seemed to have scales, also. I began to wonder if the figurines might be more valuable than I had expected.

I was about to set Albert next to Gaspar so I could examine Ludmilla when Sarah shrieked, “Anthony!
Help!”

Her voice was coming from the bathroom. Still holding Albert, I pushed away from my desk and raced down the hall.

The bathroom door was half open. I could hear running water and angry chattering. I groaned. Sarah was trying to give Mr. Perkins a bath again!

“You get back in that tub!” she ordered the monkey as I came through the door.

The floor was like a swamp. Sarah was half soaked herself, and her damp hair lay flat on her forehead. Mr. Perkins, soaking wet, clung to my sister's neck, screeching and hissing.

What really griped me was that he didn't bite her, and probably wouldn't, no matter how angry he got. Me he bites out of sheer cussedness. My pukey little sister could tie a knot in his tail and he still wouldn't set tooth in her skin.

“Anthony!” cried Sarah again.
“Help!”

What did she expect me to do? If I got near the monkey he was sure to take a chunk out of me. I set Albert on the back of the toilet and made a couple of moves as if to help Sarah. But my heart wasn't in it, especially when Mr. Perkins turned toward me and bared those nasty little fangs.

I really don't know what my mother was thinking when she bought him.

As it turned out, Sarah didn't really need my help. A minute later, she had Mr. Perkins off her neck and back in the bathtub.

It was like turning on a blender. Water splashed all over the place.

When we were finally done shampooing and toweling Mr. Perkins (I helped with the toweling, because he couldn't bite me through the thick cloth), I noticed that some water had splashed onto Albert's hand. When I said something about it, Sarah wanted to know where the little monster had come from. I ended up showing her the whole set, which she thought was pretty cool.

Two more strange things happened that night. The first came after supper, when we were cleaning up the kitchen. Gramma had been reading the newspaper and had left it on the table. Sarah glanced at it, then grabbed my arm.

“Anthony!” she hissed. “
That's him!”

“Who's him?” I asked. “What are you talking about?”

“Him,” she said, pointing to the paper. “That's the old man who showed me the box you bought today!”

I picked up the paper and felt a cold chill shiver down my spine. The paper was a few days old, and the article was about the sale to be held at Morley Manor—the sale we had gone to that day. And the picture? It was labeled, “Martin Morley, recently deceased owner of Morley Manor.”