“Thank you for coming, gentlemen. I believe you have something that belongs to me.”
SIXTEEN
“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.
“They’re spiders.”
Robert laughed. “Did you say spiders?”
“It’s not funny.”
“Karina, don’t take this personally, but you’re a ghost. Spiders should be afraid of you!”
“There’s a lot of them, Robert. Tillinghast knows I’ve got arachnophobia, so he keeps a bunch of them waiting behind that door.”
“Then you just need to stand up to them,” Robert told her. “The best way to face your fear is to deal with it head-on. Do you remember giving me that advice?”
“I do,” Karina said, “but it was a lot easier to say it than to mean it.”
The attic was quiet as they contemplated their choices. It was Glenn who finally broke the silence.
“We can wait here for Goyle, or we can stomp on a few creepy-crawlies.” He placed his size-twelve boots on the table. “And I’ve got really big feet.”
SEVENTEEN
Glenn found an old hammer in the corner of the attic and quickly went to work. The nails squealed as he pried them from the wooden planks, as if to warn him he was making a terrible mistake. The first board clattered to the floor, then the second. Glenn was halfway finished with the third when he stopped to ask a question.
“These gates,” he said, “what do they look like?”
“Pictur
e a vortex floating in the air,” Karina said. “Black water flushing down a black toilet. You just dive right in.”
“What if the monsters follow us through?”
“Tillinghast has strict rules against that,” Karina explained. “No one’s allowed in your dimension unless they’re properly disguised. Anyone revealing their true form is punished by death.”
“We can talk more later,” Robert said. “Let’s get out of here before Azaroth returns.”
Glenn wrenched the last board off the door.
“All right, everybody ready?”
Robert twisted the handle and pulled. The door opened inward with a loud squeal. Huge swaths of gray cobwebs clung to the back of the door. Robert aimed his flashlight into the darkness.
Ahead of them, a narrow stairwell descended into the darkness; it appeared to be cocooned in a tunnel of fine white silk. Robert placed his foot on the first step, testing the web.
“Is it sticky?” Glenn asked.
“No, it’s fine,” Robert said. “Come on.”
They advanced single file: Robert first, then Karina, then Glenn. It was like walking on a staircase spun from cotton candy. Robert kept his hands at his sides to avoid touching the webbing. He was close enough to see strange white clumps tangled up in the silk. Some of these clumps twitched as he walked past.
“Egg sacs,” Karina whispered. “Female spiders can lay up to three thousand eggs at a time.”
Robert didn’t see any of the grown-up spiders, but he wasn’t trying hard to find them. There was no point in frightening Karina. He kept his flashlight trained on the steps, one at a time, all the way to the bottom.
They found themselves at the end of a long corridor. There were doors on either side, spaced every twenty feet or so, and light fixtures on the walls. It could have been a hallway in a fancy old hotel—except for the white spiderwebs spanning the length of the floor like a thin layer of fog.
Robert switched off the flashlight.
“Well, I guess that’s the worst of it,” Glenn said, brushing a few loose silk strands from his clothes. “That wasn’t so bad.”
“You’re right,” Karina said, taking a deep breath. “I’m sorry I was being such a baby.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Robert said. “Now how do we find one of these gates?”
“This is the fourth floor of Tillinghast Mansion,” Karina explained. “These doors are all guest rooms and bathrooms. A gate could be waiting in any one of them. The problem is, so could anything else.”
Glenn looked to Robert. “Do you want to go first, or should I?”
Robert reached for the nearest doorknob and turned it. Inside, the bedroom was draped in dust and more cobwebs. It had a large canopied bed, a chest of drawers, and a dressing table. He stepped inside and scanned the room, searching for signs of movement. “This one’s empty,” he announced. “All clear.”
“Any gates?” Glenn asked.
“Nope.”
Something dripped on the back of his neck. It reminded him of Glenn’s half-chewed gummy worm from the first day of school. Robert reached up to wipe it away and found his fingers coated in a slimy green mucus.
“Uh, Robert?” Karina called from the hallway. “I think you should come out of there.”
He turned to leave and more mucus dripped on his arm. He craned his neck, looking up at the ceiling—and the ceiling looked back. It was covered with a quivering green jelly that was spotted with dozens of eyeballs. The jelly began peeling away from the ceiling and Robert ran out the door, pulling it closed behind him.
“I’m not going to open any more of these,” he said.
Glenn went to reopen the door, to see for himself, but Robert pushed him down the hall.
“Try the next one,” he said. “We need to find the gate.”
Glenn opened the next door. Robert didn’t see what was inside this room. He just saw all the color drain from Glenn’s face, and that was enough.
Glenn pulled the door closed. “I’m not gonna open any more, either,” he whispered. “Let’s just follow the hallway and see where it goes.”
After another fifty feet, the hallway curved to the left, revealing more closed doors and another long carpet of cobwebs.
And there, at the far end of the hallway, was a swirling black vortex, just like the one that appeared inside Robert’s locker.
“That’s it!” Karina said. “That’s a gate!”
“Perfect,” Glenn said. “Let’s go.”
But Robert noticed it had become increasingly difficult to walk. As if his legs were growing heavier. “Do you guys feel that?” he asked. Simply putting one foot in front of another required a tremendous amount of energy. “It’s like gravity’s pushing down on me.”
Glenn tried to raise one foot off the ground. The webbing clung tightly to the bottom of his boot; he could barely lift it more than a few inches.
“That’s not gravity,” he said. “It’s these cobwebs. They’re sticky here.”
Glenn tried yanking the silk from his boot but it just clung to his hand. It stretched from his boot to his hand like pulled taffy. He was completely tangled in it. “Help me get it off, all right?”
But Robert was stuck in a mess of his own. The webbing stuck to everything—clothing, skin, sneakers. The more he messed with it, the less he could move.
Karina was the only one not caught in the strands. She might as well have been walking on the beach. She glanced nervously behind them.
“Um, guys?”
Robert looked back. At the far end of the hallway a shadow was spreading across the walls and ceiling. Beneath it, lumbering down the center of the hallway, was a giant black figure. With six furious eyes, a spiked abdomen, and eight legs with bladed tips. It took Robert a moment to realize the thing was, in fact, a spider. And the shadows were thousands of baby spiderlings, following their mother toward dinner.
“What is that?” Glenn yelled.
“I warned you!” Karina said.
“You told us scary spiders. You never said giant spiders!”
“What’s the difference?!?”
Robert glanced ahead to the gate. It was just five feet away but it might as well have been a mile. He was stuck, hopelessly stuck. “Pull me out,” he asked Karina.
“I can’t.” She reached for his wrists and her hands passed right through him. “I wish I could help you, Robert, but I can’t.”
Somehow Glenn was making more progress. He’d managed to inch his way through the muck until he was even with Robert. Then he reached down and yanked Robert’s foot from the goo, allowing him to take one halting step forward.
“Hurry up!” Karina called.
“Slow them down!” Robert shouted back.
“How do you expect me to slow them down? I can’t touch them!”
“And they can’t touch you, Karina. Remember that. Now do something!”
Glenn took another step toward the gate and dragged Robert along. By now they were surrounded by spiderlings, all over the walls and ceiling, thousands of them, in all different shapes and sizes. Some were as small as a nickel. Others were bigger than Robert’s fist. All of them looked ready to leap off the walls and pounce on them.
Karina turned to face the mother spider. The creature stepped gingerly across her webbing, instinctively knowing which strands were safe to walk upon.
“Stay back!” Karina warned.
The mother spider bared her fangs and hissed. Karina screamed and the spider reared up on its hind legs like a horse, kicking with her forelimbs. Karina willed herself not to move, to let the legs swipe through her body. The spider seemed angered by its inability to harm her. It began to make a loud spitting noise.
“What are you doing?” Karina asked. “Why are you spitting?”
She realized too late that it was a signal. All at once, the spiderlings leapt from the ceilings and walls. There were hundreds of them, falling on Karina’s face and hair, falling upon a girl who was and wasn’t there.
She closed her eyes and screamed until she heard Robert calling her name.
“We made it!” he shouted. “Come on, let’s go!”
Karina opened her eyes and saw Robert and Glenn standing beside the gate. She began to run, and all three of them jumped into the vortex at the same time.
Suddenly Robert was falling, and when he landed he found himself face-to-face with a grinning skull. He was lying atop a life-size human skeleton. He screamed, flinging the bones away from him.
It took him a moment to realize he was no longer in Tillinghast Mansion. Somehow he had reemerged in Professor Goyle’s classroom. So had Glenn and Karina. The gate had ejected them through the chalkboard at the front of the room; it was already disappearing, swirling away like water down the drain, leaving just a fine trace of white frost in its wake.
Glenn helped drag the skeleton away from Robert. “We did it!” he said. “We made it out.”
“Did you see that spider?” Karina exclaimed. “Did you see how big it was?”
“You were incredible,” Robert said. “That was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen. You totally saved our lives.”
Someone applauded from the center of the classroom. “Yes, yes, congratulations.” The three looked up and saw Azaroth seated at one of the student desks. “You managed to evade a swarm of baby invertebrates. But let’s see how you fare against me.”
He rose to his feet, and they could see there was now very little resemblance to the old Professor Goyle. He was bigger, taller, more muscular. Two long horns protruded from his skull. His face looked bright red, as if his skin had been scorched to a crisp; his ears were long and pointy, like a bat’s.
Robert ran for the door but it was already locked. He peered out into the hallway: Empty.
Where was everybody?
Then he remembered: the sixth-period assembly. Every student and teacher was in the first-floor auditorium, all the way on the other side of the building.
Azaroth walked along the windowsill, lowering and closing the blinds, so that no one could see what happened next. “I suppose you think it’s easy being me,” he said. “Trapped inside a suit of stinking human flesh. Eating your vile human food. Forced to lecture to stupid human children all day long. We all make sacrifices for the greater good. It’s what Master requires. But sometimes I like to remove the camouflage and simply … breathe.”
Professor Gargoyle Page 7
