The Monsters of Morley Manor

by Bruce Coville

  She lunged for the main lever. I caught her just in time. She may be nicer than I am, but sometimes nice isn’t the answer. I held on to her with all my might as she fought to get to the controls. It wasn’t easy, because I couldn’t stand the screams either and wanted desperately for them to end. Even worse, I was secretly afraid that something really had gone wrong, that Gaspar and Melisande were being tortured, maybe even dying. But Gaspar had been deadly serious in his instructions: I must not stop the process once it had started.

  Sarah broke free of my grasp. I tackled her and we both fell to the floor.

  The screams of Gaspar and Melisande were louder and more desperate than ever.

  I felt as if I was being tortured myself. Was I doing the right thing? I was on the verge of letting Sarah go, of letting her pull the lever that would halt the horrible process, when I heard three loud snaps, just as Gaspar had said we would.

  Instantly the mist in the chambers turned purple.

  “There!” I said, letting go of Sarah. “Now we can turn it off.”

  Her face was streaked with tears. “I hate you!” she sobbed.

  Ignoring her, I stood up and pulled the lever that raised the chambers.

  Coughing and choking, Gaspar and Melisande stepped out.

  Bob took one look at the two of them and began to howl.

  “Holy mackerel!” cried Sarah, wiping at her tears with the back of her hand. “You guys look like movie stars!” Turning toward me, she muttered, “Sorry about the fuss, Anthony.”

  “Don’t worry about it, kid,” I replied softly. “When you’re big like me, you’ll know better.”

  “You’re a booger,” she said. She probably would have said more, but she was too interested in Gaspar and Melisande.

  The human Gaspar had jet-black hair; a strong, prominent nose; a high forehead; and wide-set brown eyes. He stretched and rubbed his arms, then shook his head like a dog that had just climbed out of the water.

  Melisande, still wearing her slinky dress, reached up to touch her own hair. She made a terrible face. “How boring!” she muttered, as she ran her hands through the tangled mass of glossy raven curls. It was strange to hear her speak with no hissing.

  “So—now what do we do?” I asked.

  “First Gaspar and I have to change our clothes,” said Melisande decisively.

  I thought this was a terrible idea. Her dress looked spectacular. But she was right—she couldn’t walk around Owl’s Roost that way without attracting attention.

  Actually, she probably couldn’t walk around anywhere that way without attracting attention.

  “Melisande speaks truth,” said Gaspar. “Too often a man is judged on how he dresses. I must work fast this morning and will need every advantage I can get. Fond as I am of this lab coat, it has seen better days.”

  “Changing your clothes is a good idea, but I don’t think there’s much chance of doing it,” said Sarah. “Why not?” asked Melisande.

  “Well, aside from the fact that any clothes you had would be fifty-some years out of style, I doubt there are any here. Remember, they had a sale to clear the place out before the wreckers came. That’s how Anthony got you to begin with.”

  “Can you help us?” asked Gaspar desperately. “I must get to a lawyer immediately. They may be a vile species and the curse of humanity, but they’re our only hope at the moment.”

  Sarah glanced at me. “Do you suppose they could wear Mom and Dad’s clothes?”

  I didn’t think Mom and Dad would be particularly pleased by the idea. On the other hand, we were in so far at this point that I figured a little thing like loaning our parents’ clothes to a couple of recently transformed monsters shouldn’t slow us down. “Hard to say. I think Gaspar is a little taller than Dad. And Melisande is a little more . . .” I let the sentence drop. “I don’t know. It might work.”

  “Lets go,” said Gaspar.

  “What about Bob?” asked Sarah.

  Gaspar looked at Bob. The werehuman began to whine.

  “We’d better take him with us,” said Gaspar. “If anyone comes along, we’ll just have to hide him. Do you think you can keep him quiet, Melisande?”

  She looked at Bob, then shrugged. “It won’t be easy, but I think I can manage it.”

  As it turned out, hiding Bob wasn’t necessary. When we went outside a pale light was creeping across the sky; Bob began to bark. Then he flopped onto his side and kicked, the way dogs do when they’re dreaming. Then he rolled over and over.

  In a few moments, he wriggled out of his clothes, a floppy-eared cocker spaniel, panting and wagging his tail.

  “That is too weird,” said Sarah, as Bob came trotting over to lick her hand.

  “What a good dog!” cried Melisande, patting Bob’s head.

  “Come along,” said Gaspar. “We have to hurry.”

  Easy for him to say. He wasn’t going to have to explain all this to his grandmother.

  We slipped into the house. Gramma was still asleep, though how long that would last, I wasn’t certain. Given her deafness, we weren’t likely to wake her with our noise. On the other hand, she was an early riser. The one I was really worried about was Mr. Perkins. But when he came loping into the kitchen and bared his nasty little monkey fangs at us, Melisande said sharply, “Oh, don’t be silly! Settle down and be a nice boy.”

  To my astonishment, Mr. Perkins did exactly that. He trotted docilely to her side, and when she reached down her arm, he climbed up and sat gently on her shoulder.

  “Melisande has always had a way with animals,” said Gaspar. I could hear a kind of pride in his voice at his younger sister’s talent.

  I shook my head. We had seen a lot of bizarre things that night, but the sight of the fabulously beautiful Melisande in her skintight, slinky dress, with Mr. Perkins on her shoulder, running his paws delicately through her curly black hair, was as weird as any of them.

  Sarah yawned, which got me started, too. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so tired in my entire life,” I muttered.

  “Please,” said Gaspar urgently. “Just help us find something to wear. Then you can sleep.”

  Sarah led the way to our parents’ bedroom, where Gramma was sleeping. Even though I didn’t think she would hear us, we moved quietly.

  It took about a half an hour, and a few safety pins, but we finally got Gaspar and Melisande looking pretty acceptable. Dad’s suit looked sort of doofy on Gaspar, but as Sarah said, he was so handsome he could get away with it. Melisande didn’t look quite as wonderful as she had in her own dress, but that was probably just as well.

  “Now what?” Sarah asked.

  “Now Melisande and I go wake up some poor lawyer and try to save Morley Manor,” said Gaspar. “It’s not going to be easy, but we should at least be able to stop the wreckers for a day. After all, we are the rightful heirs. In the meantime, you two get some rest. I want you fresh and ready for our trip to the Land of the Dead.”

  14

  Past Meets Present

  DESPITE THE FACT that I was exhausted, my mind was in such a whirl that I didn’t know if I would be able to sleep or not. But the minute I hit the sheets, I fell into a sleep so deep it was like being dead.

  Good practice for what was to come, I suppose.

  I didn’t wake up until noon.

  When I staggered out to the kitchen, I found Gramma standing at the counter, kneading some bread dough. Mr. Perkins was sitting on his perch, eating an apple. He snarled at me when I came in. Obviously, Melisande’s influence had worn off. In fact, the whole scene looked so normal that I began to wonder if everything that I thought had happened the night before had just been some weird dream after all.

  Gramma didn’t hear me come in, of course. I went and stood next to her, so I wouldn’t startle her when she realized I was there.

  She jumped a little, anyway. “Good morning, slugabed,” she said cheerfully. “What did you two do last night, sneak out and watch TV after I had gone to sleep?”
>
  “Something like that,” I said, looking straight at her. This is the best way to talk to Gramma Walker. She uses the way your lips move to help figure out what you’re saying. “Is Sarah up?” I added.

  “She’s in the bathroom. Why don’t you pour yourself a bowl of cereal?”

  That sounded like a good idea. I had been so tired when we got in that I’d forgotten I was also starving.

  Mr. Perkins hissed at me as I went to the cupboard. The sound reminded me of Melisande’s snakes. I wondered how she and Gaspar were making out with their quest to find a lawyer to help them save Morley Manor.

  Before I could worry about it too much, I heard the doorbell. Gramma didn’t hear it, of course, but when I stood up and started toward the door, she said, “I’ll get it, Anthony. You eat.”

  While she was gone, Sarah came back into the kitchen. I was about to ask her if last night had really happened when Gramma came back, too. She had an odd look on her face. Melisande and Gaspar were behind her, Bob trotting happily at their heels.

  “These people say they’re friends of yours,” said Gramma, looking a little puzzled. (It may seem strange to some of you that she would let them in, but you have to remember that in Owl’s Roost, Nebraska, people still leave their doors unlocked at night. We are not what you would call the crime capital of the world.)

  “How did you make out?” I asked, jumping to my feet.

  Gaspar smiled. “Justice has triumphed! We obtained a temporary restraining order to stop the demolition. Morley Manor still stands!”

  “Gracious!” said Gramma. “What do you two have to do with Morley Manor?”

  Then she narrowed her eyes. Her hands began to tremble.

  “Gaspar?” she whispered.

  He looked at her curiously.

  She clutched at her heart. “Gaspar!” she said again, and this time her voice sounded accusing.

  Gaspar looked at her more intently. Suddenly his eyes grew wide. “Ethel?” he cried in astonishment.

  Gramma staggered and grabbed the back of a chair. Slowly, she lowered herself into it. “Gaspar,” she murmured. “Melisande. Bob!”

  “What’s going on here?” I asked, totally baffled.

  “That’s what I want to know,” said Gramma. She sounded terrified.

  Gaspar turned to me. “Your grandmother and I were once engaged to be married,” he said, his voice thick with emotion.

  “It is you,” whispered Gramma in awe. “But how is it possible? Where have you been?”

  “It’s a long story,” said Gaspar.

  “He’s not kidding,” I said.

  “Sit,” said Gramma firmly. “Tell.”

  We SPENT most of that afternoon at the kitchen table. There were two stories that needed to be told: what had happened to Sarah and me in the past twenty-four hours, and what had happened to Gaspar and the other Morleys over fifty years ago. Sarah, of course, also wanted to know all about Gaspar and Gramma having been engaged. But they seemed hesitant to talk about it, as if the topic was too painful to touch, and after a few questions she gave up.

  “I could tell it was upsetting them,” she told me later.

  As for what had happened to the Morleys . . .

  “We don’t actually know all of the story ourselves,” confessed Gaspar, “and won’t, unless the Wentar is able to bring back not only my brother, but the clone that had pretended to be him for all those years. But I can tell you how it began.” He folded his hands on the table in front of him. “I was, as you know, both a scientist and a magician.”

  “It was considered a great scandal by those who figured it out,” put in Gramma Walker.

  “Yes, and an even greater scandal when big brother here started going out with a woman so much younger than himself,” said Melisande. “Such is the way of a small town.”

  It took me a moment to realize that the “younger” woman she was talking about was Gramma!

  “Don’t fool yourself, Melisande,” said Gramma sharply. “I’ve lived in the big city. People there gossip just as much as small-town folk. More, probably. It’s just that you have to be better known to get gossiped about by the “right’ people. Go on, Gaspar. I’m eager to find out why you broke my heart.”

  “Breaking your heart was the last thing I ever intended,” said Gaspar, reaching out to take her hand.

  “Can we skip the romance and tell the story?” I asked. I was still trying to get used to the idea of Gramma being younger than Gaspar, since she now looked thirty or forty years older than him. But then, she had kept on living for the fifty years that the Morleys had been frozen.

  Gaspar nodded, his face no longer that of a great lizard, but that of a lean, handsome man. I wondered if Grampa Walker had known about this—which got me to wondering what it would have been like if things had worked out differently and Gaspar actually had married my grandmother.

  It was too weird to wrap my mind around.

  “Our real troubles started when I discovered the secret of the Starry Doors,” he said. “I was angry, because I realized Martin had known it for some time, and had not shared it with me.”

  “Of course, that was when we still thought Martin was our real brother,” said Melisande.

  Gaspar sighed. “It changes so much to know the truth. And we haven’t had time to think through all that it means. Anyway, since Martin had not told me what he was doing, I returned the favor and did not tell him what we were up to. But with Ludmilla, Melisande, Albert, and Bob at my side, I began to explore other worlds. One planet in particular, Zentarazna, held a great fascination for us. In that place, people had learned to shape their own bodies as they wished, to change them as it suited their fancy. Since Melisande and Ludmilla had grown tired of all the attention they got for their great beauty, they quickly embraced the idea of taking on a strange image.”

  “We tried several,” said Melisande. “It was fun. Like changing clothes in a dressing room. And not nearly as difficult to do as it is here,” she added, turning to me and Sarah.

  Gramma shot her a glance, and I got the sense that they had not liked each other all those years ago.

  “Of course,” said Gaspar, “Albert was always Albert, and Bob’s were-problems had started back in Transylvania. They are who they are. It was Ludmilla, Melisande, and I who played at shape-shifting. In late October of 1948, there was a townwide Halloween party—”

  “The last night I ever saw you,” murmured Gramma.

  Gaspar nodded. “The three of us had decided to go in our altered shapes, which seemed like the best of all possible costumes. Alas, that was the night Martin discovered what we had been doing. A great argument broke out when we got home. Martin pulled out a strange weapon, something I had never seen before. And that’s the last thing I remember until I found myself standing on the edge of your bathroom sink, looking up at Anthony and Sarah!”

  Gramma squeezed his hand. “I cried for a long time after you disappeared,” she whispered.

  Gaspar shook his handsome head. “I did not expect this, Ethel. My heart has gone into hiding, and I have no words for what I feel.”

  I was startled to see tears in his eyes. Then I realized that even though fifty years had gone by for Gramma, for Gaspar it was as if he had last seen her only the day before, seen her young and beautiful, seen her as the woman he was going to marry.

  And now she was old.

  “There was a great scandal,” said Gramma softly. “People suspected that Martin had killed you all. But there were no bodies, so the police couldn’t put together a case.” She shook her head. “And all that time you were trapped in a box inside Morley Manor. Oh, that Martin! I could just—”

  She stopped, unable to finish the sentence, though I wasn’t sure if it was because she couldn’t bring herself to say something violent in front of me and Sarah, or because she couldn’t think of something bad enough to do to Martin.

  “He wasn’t the real Martin,” said Gaspar softly. “Though whether any of us can ever
know our true self is a great question, anyway.”

  “Those fifty years seemed like only a moment to us,” added Melisande. “But the world has changed so! We were only out for a few hours this morning, but it was as if we had gone to another planet. Had we not traveled before, been to Zentarazna and other strange places, I do not think I could have coped with all this.”

  “And now you need to travel again,” murmured Gramma, awe and wonder in her voice. “You need to go to the Land of the Dead to see my poor husband.”

  Gaspar nodded.

  “Well,” she said, “I’m going with you.”

  Gaspar started to protest, but it was pointless. I knew that tone of voice. He had as much of a chance of talking Gramma out of going with us as I had of sprouting wings and flying—though the way things had been going lately, I suppose even that wouldn’t have surprised me. As for Gramma, she might have been astonished to see Gaspar, might even have felt the stirrings of an old love. But there was no way she was going to miss a chance to visit Grampa.

  SINCE GRAMMA could provide the needed connection for the trip, we had a long argument about whether or not Sarah and I should be allowed to come. Gramma thought it was too dangerous. We pointed out what we had already been through, but that didn’t convince her. Even Sarah’s pleading, which is usually quite effective, did not change Gramma’s mind. It was only when I argued that we would probably be in more danger on our own than we would if we went with them that she relented.

  So, at eleven o’clock that night, we returned to Morley Manor.

  “There’s one thing I don’t get,” said Sarah, as we approached the house. “If the key to making the trip is our connection to Grampa, then why do we have to come back here to do it?”

  “Two reasons,” said Gaspar. “First, the aura of magic is stronger here. That was one of the reasons we bought the place to begin with, of course. And our work over the years did a great deal to increase that. Besides, we can go deeper into the Earth here, which makes the journey easier.”