The Monsters of Morley Manor

by Bruce Coville

  I did as he directed. As soon as I had pushed the third button, a thick green mist began to fill the chambers. Thunder shook the sky outside. Rain pounded against the roof.

  Suddenly a crackle of energy filled the room, so strong and intense that Sarah and I both cried out. When I reached for her hand, a bolt of green power shot between us.

  “Look!” she cried.

  The monsters were getting bigger—slowly at first, then faster and faster. Soon they were taller than us (except for Albert, of course).

  Gaspar waved his fists in triumph.

  I wondered if it was going to be a good idea to let them out of the chambers. The choice was out of my hands. The glass cylinders lifted on their own.

  “Big!” cried Gaspar in a deep baritone voice. “We’re big again! Now is the evil spell reversed. Now are we ourselves once more.”

  Albert leaped to the floor and began to caper about the room. Ludmilla swirled her cape and transformed herself into a bat that had a wingspan of at least three feet. Melisande’s snakes nearly tied themselves into knots, they were so excited. Bob threw back his head and howled with joy.

  “Ah, my young friends, the Family Morleskievich is deeply in your debt,” said Gaspar, stepping toward me.

  I know he meant to be friendly, but now that he was over six feet tall, his lizard head was terrifying. I took a step backward. Sarah moved closer to me.

  Gaspar stopped and smiled, showing about four thousand teeth, “I understand your reluctance for me to approach,” he said. “Very well. You may be on your way.”

  The five monsters gathered in a half circle. “You have done the Family Morleskievich a great service,” said Gaspar. “We thank you.” Then they all made that same sweeping bow they had made when they pledged us their friendship.

  Sarah and I headed for the door. To my surprise, I felt a little sad at the idea of leaving. But I was proud, too. We had helped the monsters.

  My sorrow and pride lasted until I opened the door.

  “Yikes!” cried Sarah. “Who’s that?’

  7

  A Wentar’s Tale

  THE MANLIKE BEING standing at the door was tall—taller than Gaspar—and dressed in a dark blue robe. At his side hung a leather pouch. His pale face, peering from beneath the shadows of a hood, was long and lined. His dark purple eyes were the most frightening things I had ever seen. Even so, he looked almost human.

  Almost, but not quite.

  Sarah and I took a step back.

  “Is it really you, Wentar?” cried Gaspar. His red tongue flicked in and out between his two-foot-long jaws.

  I blinked. What was the ghost of a Transylvanian wizard doing here in Owl’s Roost, Nebraska?

  The being—I still didn’t know if he was a man, a ghost, a wizard, or something else altogether—stepped into the room without answering.

  “Where have you been all these years?” demanded Gaspar.

  Now Wentar did speak, his voice as rich and deep as a church organ. “What I have been doing since I last saw you is a long story, and one I don’t really want to tell right now. We have little enough time as it is if we are going to rescue your brother.”

  “Martin is dead,” said Gaspar, his voice heavy. Then he glanced at me and Sarah and wrinkled his long, lizardy nose. “At least, that is what I have been told.”

  “What you have been told and what is true are not necessarily the same thing,” replied Wentar.

  “You vicked children lied to us!” cried Ludmilla. Turning toward me, she bared her fangs and hissed. Now that she was a foot taller than me, this gesture was considerably more frightening than when she had been only four inches high.

  “Do not be foolish, Ludmilla,” rumbled Wentar. “I was listening. Anthony and Sarah told you the truth as they knew it. The one who lied to you was Martin—or, to be more specific, the being that your family believed was Martin.”

  Gaspar’s eyes grew wide. “Martin was a changeling?” he cried in astonishment.

  “Not as you use the word,” said Wentar. “Not a goblin creature, or anything such as that—though he was certainly left in place of your brother, just as in the old stories. And yet, in a strange way, he really was your brother.”

  “You’re not making much ssssennnsssse,” hissed the snakes on Melisande’s head. They were writhing and twisting, and I realized that the more upset she was, the more active they got.

  “I’m making perfect sense,” replied Wentar. “The problem is that you are operating on insufficient information.”

  “Then give us more,” growled Albert. The wild-eyed hunchback was crouched beside Gaspar, clinging to the edge of his lab coat. I got the impression he didn’t particularly like Wentar.

  Gaspar shook his enormous head. “Wentar never gives information, Albert,” he said, a trifle bitterly. “You know there is always a price involved.”

  “Where I come from information is the preferred form of money,” said Wentar. Then he sighed and added, “Alas, where I come from, there is also no doubt that I owe the Family Morleskievich a debt larger than one of my kind should ever owe anyone. So you already have some information coming to you, Gaspar—prepaid, as it were. However, we shall have to be quick. We must be out of here and through the Starry Door before morning comes. Now, what do you want to know?”

  Gaspar hesitated just a moment. Then, with a sly look on his lizardy face, he said, “Tell me what I need to know.”

  Wentar smiled, which made it look as if some invisible fingers were pulling up the sags of his pale, droopy face. “Oh, very good! You’ve learned a lot since last I saw you.”

  “I’ve suffered a lot since last you saw me.”

  Wentar shrugged. “The two things often go together. All right, gather round. Quickly! There is much to be done, not much time to do it, and some things you do need to know before we act. I assume, by the way, that you have told the others of all that passed between us back in the old country, Gaspar?”

  Gaspar nodded—an interesting effect now that his snout was at least two feet long. Gesturing to me and Sarah, he said, “And I have given these youngsters a quick version of the story.”

  Wentar glanced at us, and a troubled expression crossed his face. “It would be best to send you two home immediately,” he muttered.

  Before I could protest that I wanted to stay and hear his story, he added, “However, I fear the danger is too great for you to leave Morley Manor at this moment”—which made me want to get out of there immediately.

  “What danger?” asked Sarah, stepping closer to me.

  Wentar lowered his voice. “You are not the only ones out and about tonight. Others are near, including a group that does not wish well to the Family Morleskievich . . . or any of its friends.”

  I was tempted to say that we weren’t really friends of the monsters, since we had just met them a couple of hours ago. But that seemed rude, not to mention potentially dangerous. Besides, I really did feel as if they were our friends.

  “Come first light and you two will be safe,” said Wentar soothingly. “Until then—better you should stay with us.”

  Gaspar made an impatient sound. “Tell us what we need to know, Wentar. Quickly!”

  Wentar sighed. “Well, the first thing you need to know is that Wentar is not my name. It is the title for what I do. I am a Wentar. One of many.”

  I glanced at Gaspar. His yellow eyes blinked rapidly. Now that he was big, I noticed that the pupils were vertical, like a cat’s. In a sorrowful voice he said, “Truth reveals itself in layers, and those you think you know may hide worlds beneath their words. All right, my old teacher, you have my attention. What is a Wentar?”

  The Wentar opened his palms, as if to show he had nothing to hide. “A little bit of this, a little bit of that. An explorer. An observer. A reporter. A listener. A judge, sometimes. Primarily . . . an admissions officer.”

  “But not a wizard,” I said. I had a feeling I knew where this was going. Even so, I was surprised to realiz
e that the words had come from me. I had thought I was too scared to speak.

  “Not a wizard,” agreed the Wentar. “Though I do have some magic at my command. I suppose the most likely term would be . . . an alien. I work for the Coalition of Civilized Worlds.”

  The monsters murmured in surprise. “You mean, as in from another planet?” demanded Albert. “Oy, I should have guessed.”

  “Why did you not tell me this before?” asked Gaspar. He sounded angry, and a little hurt, as if he felt he had been betrayed.

  “When first we met, it was not a time and a place where that idea would have made sense to you,” replied the Wentar. “You and Martin were expecting a ghost. And given the nature of my imprisonment—due to my own foolishness I had been caught halfway between your world and mine—a ghost was very much what I seemed.” He closed those strange purple eyes for a moment, then said, “At the time, the true nature of my being was not information I was willing to sell to a pair of overactive teenage boys.”

  Gaspar started to say something, but the Wentar cut him off. “Enough questions. What you need to know now is this: The night that you and Martin were foolishly walking a maze and he fell through a hole in the world, he was caught and held prisoner.”

  “How could he have been held prisoner?” asked Gaspar. “He came back before the sun had risen.”

  “I am well aware of that,” said the Wentar, raising his hands as if to hold off the objection. “What you are not aware of is that time passes differently in different worlds—differently enough that in Flinduvia, the world Martin entered, they were able to make a clone of him. That clone is what they sent back here.”

  “Vat is a clone?” asked Ludmilla.

  “An exact copy,” replied the Wentar.

  Ludmilla bared her fangs. “Vat a stupid idea! Vun of Martin vas more than enough.”

  “That may well be,” said the Wentar. “But the Flinduvians wanted to keep the original.”

  “For what purposssse?” asked Melisande.

  “They wanted to study him,” said the Wentar. “To get even more information, they loaded the clone with a copy of Martin’s personality, then programmed in some additional instructions of their own and returned it to Earth. The clone was to observe and send back data—much as I do myself, though for considerably different reasons. So if Martin seemed to be the same and yet not the same after his return, it is because that was the exact situation. He was a perfect reproduction of your brother, with some additional . . . programming.”

  Sarah looked at me nervously, and I could tell she was wondering what it would be like to have a brother like that.

  “Why are you telling us this now?” asked Gaspar.

  “I have only recently worked it all out myself,” said the Wentar. “Also, I am concerned because the Flinduvians have called the clone home.”

  “Called him home,” I repeated. “Does that mean that Old Man . . . er, Mr. Morley didn’t actually die a few months back?”

  “Precisely,” said the Wentar. “The Flinduvians sent yet another clone—an empty one, this time; just a well-aged body with nothing in it—and used it to replace the first clone. Now we must try to find the real Martin.”

  “To save him?” asked Gaspar eagerly, his long, lizardy tongue flicking in and out of his snout.

  “Saving Martin would be nice,” said the Wentar. “Certainly it would help ease my conscience. However, the main thing I need to do right now is find out what the Flinduvians are up to, and I think there is a good chance I can do that by tapping Martin’s brain.”

  “But why did they send a clone of him here to begin with?” I asked. “What were they after?”

  “I should think that much would be obvious,” replied the Wentar. “They want to take over your planet.”

  8

  The Starry Door

  “WHY WOULD THE FLINDUVIANS want to take over Earth?” I cried. (I suppose that wasn’t a particularly sensible question. It just popped out.)

  “The other Wentars and I have often asked our selves the same thing,” replied the purple-eyed alien. “Considering the mess you people have made of this place, it’s hard to imagine why anyone would want it. Of course, the planet’s basic structure is still sound; lots of water and so on. But everyone in the galaxy knows how much work it would take to clean up your world enough to make it suitable for civilized life. So there must be something else. We have some theories, but we still—”

  Before he could finish the sentence, he spun as if he had heard something behind him—though what it was I couldn’t have said, since I heard nothing but the rain pounding against the windows. When he turned back, his eyes were wide. I wasn’t sure it was a look of fear (with an alien, who can tell?) until he whispered, “Quickly! Follow me! The Flinduvians are coming.”

  The urgency in his voice made it clear: He was terrified—which didn’t do anything to calm me down, let me tell you.

  I glanced at Gaspar to see if he was going to do as the Wentar said.

  He was already heading for the door.

  “What about the children?” he asked.

  “They’ll have to come with us,” said the Wentar. “We’ll try to bring them back later. Hurry!”

  Sarah grabbed my hand. Normally, I wouldn’t have put up with that, but this was not a normal situation. It didn’t make any difference. My fingers had barely closed over hers when I felt her hand being yanked out of mine.

  “Sarah!” I cried, terrified that the aliens had snatched her. Then I saw what had really happened: Albert had picked her up and thrown her over his shoulder—the one without the hump. Moving amazingly fast, he scuttled out the door after the Wentar.

  Bob the werehuman was close on their heels.

  “Hurry, Anthony!” said Ludmilla, just before she turned into a bat and flew after them.

  Melisande took my hand. “Sssstay with meeee!” hissed her snakes.

  I did just that. Weird as she was, it was better than being alone. The two of us scurried into the hall. We hadn’t gone more than twenty or thirty feet when I felt a jolt that reminded me of the time I accidentally touched the electric fence at Gramma and Grampa Walker’s farm with my head. Except this time was both less painful and about twenty times more powerful.

  “What was that?” I cried.

  No one answered. I had a feeling I knew what it meant, anyway. We had crossed some line—a line like the one we had crossed when we first entered the hallway.

  Now we were somewhere else.

  But where?

  We kept running. I heard a shout behind us. When I looked over my shoulder, I was so startled that I stumbled and would have fallen if Melisande had not pulled me back to my feet.

  Though the corridor stretched behind us, it didn’t go all the way back to the stairs, or even back to the place we had stepped through when the bookshelf had lifted out of the way. Instead, it ended at a shimmering wall of black. I figured that must mark the place we had passed when I felt that weird jolt.

  Now, to my horror, that black wall began to bulge. Something from the other side was slamming against it. I could hear angry shouts. The blackness seemed to be stretching, getting thinner.

  Melisande yanked me forward.

  “Don’t sssstop!” hissed the snakes on her head.

  And then we were there. The Starry Door.

  There was no mistaking it. It was as black as the wall behind us, as if we were in some sort of long capsule, with a black wall at each end. But unlike the wall we had already come through, which was solid black, this wall was marked with a circle of stars that pulsed with silver light. The Wentar paused, glanced behind us. I heard a shout and turned to look, too.

  The wall behind us had been sliced to tatters by thick, glittering claws. But the tatters themselves still had power, because the creature on the other side was struggling with them, trying to get through. I caught a glimpse of a face—large eyes and a bulging purple snout, with big fangs thrusting up from its lower jaw—that was bo
th fierce and frightening.

  The creature let out a cry of rage that seemed to scrape along my soul.

  “Hurry!” cried Gaspar. “Hurry!”

  The Wentar ran his fingers over the circle of stars, touching them in an order I couldn’t make out. With a musical shimmer, the door opened, revealing a great black void sprinkled with stars. I expected to be sucked through, destroyed instantly. But as if the stars themselves were only an image on a curtain, the Wentar reached forward and touched one.

  “I want to go there,” he said, speaking to the door. Then he turned to us and said, “Follow me.”

  He stepped forward. The black void rippled and seemed to swallow him.

  Gaspar followed at his heels. Ludmilla went next; fluttering after her brother, she disappeared into the darkness. Then Albert stepped through, with Sarah still flung over his shoulder.

  “Wait!” I cried.

  It was too late; they were gone.

  I glanced behind me. The creature I had seen before was pushing its way through the tattered black ribbons that were all that remained of the barrier. Though they clung to him and tried to hold him back, it was clear he would be free of them in seconds. Behind him were more of his kind, growling and snorting.

  Then the monster locked eyes with me. I felt a coldness, and a strange glimpse of terror to come. I stood, frozen, like some helpless prey in the eyes of a great hunting beast.

  “We musssst go!” cried Melisande, yanking my hand.

  The spell was broken. Turning, I followed her through the Starry Door.

  I FELT AS IF I were being stung by a thousand bees and kissed by a thousand butterflies, all at the same time.

  My body was still tingling when I realized I was standing in a green field dotted with little red flowers. The moment of comfort I felt when I saw this didn’t last very long. Though the field was green, what grew on it was not like any grass I had ever seen. It looked more like a lawn of two-inch-high broccoli. It was the same with the flowers: Though clearly like flowers in general, they were just as clearly unlike any flowers I had ever actually seen. (And as the son of two florists, I’ve seen more than my share of flowers.) The stiff red petals that radiated out from the bumpy centers had a metallic look. I reached down to touch one, then cried out in pain. The edge was so sharp it had cut me, almost like a paper cut.