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The Gargoyle in the Dump
John Bellairs
Introduction
Literary agents take authors on for many reasons, most of them obvious. One motive that may not be readily apparent, however, is our need to protect the helpless. Because authors are artists, or at least artistic by nature, they are more vulnerable to the wounds inflicted by the world than most other segments of humanity. John Bellairs was in greater need of an agent’s protection than most. You felt that if you didn’t wrap him completely in the cloak of your protection he would not only be harmed, he would be eaten alive. It is not that publishers are any more predatory than any other business people, but unworldly authors have few defenses, even against normal publishers simply trying to make a buck. John had sold his first couple of novels on his own before seeking my representation, and when I saw what he had signed away, I had to trade some significant favors to get his publishers to revert the more noteworthy rights that he had yielded without so much as a bleat of protest.
Thus covered by my agency’s paternalistic umbrella, John was free to produce the outlandish, charming, and wickedly wry works that have made him one of America’s beloved children’s book authors. Those not familiar with his work have only to look at the titles to deduce what they are going to encounter. There are figures in shadows, faces in frost, mansions in mist, underground rooms, haunted operas, magician’s museums, wizard’s bridges, warlock’s tombs, grinning ghosts, sinister sorcerers, chessmen of doom, zombies, necromancers, beasts, specters, and spellbinders. But the creator of this congeries of grotesques was a gentle soul with a round face, slightly protuberant eyes, and fleshy lips always parted in a warm smile. His expression was so completely open that your only choice upon meeting him was to extend your heart, the way we do for kittens and calves.
The process by which John wrote and delivered manuscripts to his publishers will seem not merely quaint to modern observers, but absolutely primitive. In the first place, digital was not only an unknown concept in the 1960s and ’70s when John turned in many of his significant books, it was an unknown word. John typed his texts on a vintage typewriter whose keys were broken, misaligned, or gummed up with decades of dried ink. He reworked these drafts by hand and delivered them to his dedicated and long-suffering editor, who copyedited them as best she could and delivered them to the printer, where somehow they were transformed into surprisingly legible copy.
I mention this process in detail because not long ago, I was delving through some of John’s papers when I recognized that distinctive typeface on several manuscripts. Some were false starts at novels, but several were completed short stories. They emerged from the mass of paper like artifacts exhumed from an ancient archeological midden. The typography was unmistakable: the loop of the a saturated with ink, the t and h in the and this running together, the d a millimeter too high, and the w a millimeter too low. And, of course, letters were crossed out and corrections made by pen. I could not conceive submitting these for publication without having them retyped (they were too far gone for a simple scanning).
One of these vintage stories, “The Gargoyle in the Dump,” is published here for the very first time. Here, two pages from the manuscript are included so that you too can hearken back to that quaint golden age called the twentieth century.
—Richard Curtis
The first two pages of the original manuscript show John Bellairs’s unmistakable typography: the loop of the a saturated with ink, the uneven letters, and the typos corrected in pen. Bellairs’s agent, Richard Curtis, would retype the author’s works on the computer before submitting them to publishing houses.
The Gargoyle in the Dump
Michael, 18; David, 7; and Alphonsus Jr., 10, who was called Fonsy, since no one likes to be called Alphonsus Jr. except Saint Alphonsus Liguori, who is dead, were all spending a long boring summer out at the lake. Brace Lake—called that because there were actually two lakes connected by a narrow weedy channel—was (or were) one of those round, quiet spring-fed lakes where you have to walk halfway out to the middle to get wet up to your chest. And by then, you are standing in oozy slimy muck, and your feet go down till you sort of touch rock, or the beer cans and broken bottles left over from last winter’s ice fishing. You can always grab big hunks of green muck and have muck fights, but the stuff is stinky and you have to wash it off later.
So the boys did not do much swimming. Instead, they spent their time trying to blow up the dock with underwater firecrackers (unsuccessful), filling the next-door neighbor’s rowboat with stones to sink it (successful), and playing two week–long Monopoly games. One of these games was going on when our story begins, and it was in its sixth day by then. Fonsy—who owned Boardwalk and Park Place with hotels, motels, castles, and state penitentiaries—had just sold David into slavery to Michael, who was sitting on the lawn at some distance from the board, trying to figure out how he could cheat Fonsy into taking some of the seven Sherry Robertson bubblegum cards he was stuck with.
David did not like being sold into slavery, so he dumped a whole jar of Beezy-Weezy Farm Fresh Honey on the $500 bills in Fonsy’s bank and started to smear them over his brother’s body, shouting things like “See how you like it, huh?” and “I ain’t not no slave!” Fonsy sat there for a while, and then he picked up a GO TO JAIL card, spread one side with honey, and slapped it over David’s mouth. Then he grabbed a large plastic pitcher of grape Kool-Aid and dumped it over David’s head. David yelled out “Woo!” as the ice cubes ran down his back. Finally, they both jumped on Michael, who was studying his baseball cards, and the three of them rolled around for a while in a tangle of torn mosquito netting, honey, and sticky gold-colored paper.
After burying the remains of the Monopoly set and the mosquito netting, the boys went swimming, but when four o’clock came around, they were sitting on the hot wooden dock picking splinters out of the gray wood, and they were bored silly.
“Well,” said Michael, “what are we going to do?”
David had just pulled a bloodsucker off his leg and was squeezing it in two.
“Wanna play checkers?” he asked. “I’ll let you win.”
“I know what,” said Fonsy. “Let’s play Take-David-Out-In-the-Middle-of-the-Lake-and-Tie-Stones-to-Him-and-See-If-He-Sinks.”
“Just you try, boy,” said David. “Boy, just you try.”
Michael got up and tried to skip a rock out into the middle of the lake. It didn’t skip, not even once.
“I know!” he said. “There’s a dump way down River Road. Let’s go see what’s there. Maybe we can get a lot of oilcans and build my submarine.”
Michael had spent one whole afternoon planning a submarine that could go out into the middle of the lake undetected and fire torpedoes that would sink Mr. A. Fred Burgy’s rowboat.
The Burgys lived next door behind a fence that looked like a straightened-out bushel basket, and their name was written in colored reflectors on their porch. The sign on their garage said “The Ageless Elms,” whatever that meant. They had two daughters who didn’t like to play anything, two German shepherd dogs who probably bit, and a red rowboat made out of some kind of plastic. Fonsy had planned a machine that would saw the rowboat in two while Mr. Burgy was out fishing, but he never got a chance to make it.
At any rate, before long, the three boys were walking slowly down the gravelly, winding River Road. They had put on their leather-soled shoes because of the broken glass and rusty nails at the dump, but otherwise they were wearing just their we
t swimsuits. The dump was out behind an old boarded-up ice-cream shop. Last year, when the place had been McCloud’s Dairy, Mrs. McCloud had sold the boys very small and very watery strawberry cones for fifteen cents, and she had chased them out of the store for reading comics with popsicle goo all over their hands. They had been hoping that she would fall into a well or something, but she had just moved away, and now the tin SEALTEST sign was full of buckshot holes. They picked their way through a lot of yellow quackgrass, watching out for boards with nails stuck through them all the while, and soon they were standing at the edge of a sooty heap of brass bedframes; coal scuttles with the bottoms out of them; broken sewing machines with strange twisty-metal designs on their wheels and footboards; rusty-red iron pumps that still went eee-awww when you pushed the handles up and down; and bottles and beer cases and general slag and junk. The field around them was quiet except for a few big black flies that were buzzing around a caved-in Royal Crown Cola case.
Michael startled everyone with the squeee that came from the big shiny brass ball on a bedframe he had found. He unscrewed the knob and peered into the hole, hoping to find hidden messages—there weren’t any—then looked for a long time at the curvy yellow reflection of David, Fonsy, himself, and the ice-cream store. He thought that this ball, if he could round off the flat end, would be a good piece of shot for a twenty-four pounder on the galleon he was going to build. He opened a beer case, tipped it on its side, and pulled out a row of brown bottles, so that they looked like cannon.
“All right!” he shouted to Fonsy and David, “heave to or I’ll blow you out of the water! Run out the long nines, Mr. Ponsonby, if you please!”
“IT’S THE DEEP SIX FOR THE LOT OF YOU IF YOU DON’T BRAIL UP YOUR MIZZEN AND COME BEFORE THE WIND. FORETOPS AND T’GALLANTS CLOSE-HAULED, AND STEADY SHE GOES.”
Michael did not say this. Fonsy did not say this. And David certainly did not, because it was in a deep, rumbly baritone, a voice that came out of a deep cave with wind blowing through it and cold water dripping somewhere in the back. All three of the boys stood dead still, and then started looking around, though they really did not want to see the owner of such a voice.
There was no one there. From somewhere on the other side of the junk pile came a noise. A tin can bounced all the way from the top of the pile to the bottom, and then the whole rusty heap shifted. Bedsprings jangled like banjoes.
“Run out to the road, David,” said Michael. “Fonsy and I are going to investigate.”
“Uhh-uh!” said David, shaking his head, “If there’s a pirate under the junk pile, we can push junk on him and sit on him and tie him up and …”
“Oh, come on!” said Fonsy. “Unless you’re scared, Michael.” “Are ya? Are ya? Are ya?” Each time he said ya, Fonsy jabbed Michael in the ribs.
“Cut it out!” said Michael. “You’ll find out how scared I am when you have to pull yourself out of the middle of the lake. Now go around that side, and I’ll go around this side. David, guard the rear.”
When Michael and Fonsy met on the other side of the pile, they stared at the loosened and recently shaken-up heap of scrap iron. About three-quarters of the way down the pile, staring out between two black stovepipes that looked like columns, was a large stone gargoyle. Not a whole gargoyle, just the head: a long-snouted, grinning stone gargoyle head of gray stone. His nostrils were wide and ridged with carved muscles, his eyes were bulging and had deep-drilled pupils, and some of his big square teeth were broken. On his heavy cliff-like forehead words were carved. SUM QUOD ERIS, which means “I am what you will be.” This made no sense at all, even to Michael, who was an altar boy and could read some Latin.
The boys stared at the gargoyle and the gargoyle stared back.
Suddenly, with a grinding stone crunch, his grin got wider.
“Well? What did you expect? You didn’t really think there was a pirate under all this mess, did you, eh? No pirate would lie here for six weeks with a rusty bedspring in his eye. Which, by the by, was why I had to shake things up a bit.”
“Are you fierce?” Michael asked. He was looking around for something that he could throw if the gargoyle sprang.
The gargoyle cackled. “Fierce? Not likely. No, not to you.”
Fonsy looked at the thing suspiciously. “Well, if you’re not fierce, what good are you? And what are you doing here?”
The gargoyle yawned widely. Michael was afraid that his head would split in two, like a hot-dog bun.
“As for the first question,” said the gargoyle, when he had got through yawning, “you talk too much. As for the second, it’s too boring to answer. Well, aren’t you going to take me home?”
“Why should we?” said Fonsy nastily. “What good are you?”
“Shhhh!” said Michael. “Don’t hurt his feelings.”
The gargoyle laughed again. “My feelings are not that easily hurt. Stone innards are proof against the prattle of babes. But the gentleman has a point. What good am I? What good is anyone, for that matter? But let that pass. I used to be a rainspout on a cathedral, as silly as that sounds. They call us gargoyles. People thought, at one time, that bare pipes sticking out of the sides of buildings were ugly. Some of us look like newts with their heads in their hands, and some of us—he giggled—“look as though we are going to throw up. But back to the point. What can I do? Well, STAND OUT OF THE WAY.”
This last command was shouted in the cave voice they had heard at first. Michael and Fonsy jumped aside.
At first the gargoyle made a sound like an old stuffed up faucet that hasn’t been turned on in years. He spat big clots of muck and a couple of wadded Zagnut wrappers. Then, in a long steady whoosh, he shot out a crackling jet of bluish-purple flame. It roared across the field and through the yellow quackgrass. The stream held, strong and hissing, for a full thirty seconds. Then the gargoyle gulped, and the fire shot back down his throat. He swallowed hard.
The boys looked at the path where the fire had been. But there was no scorched and blackened swath cut through the grass. It just looked as though someone had trampled a path halfway out into the field.
“WELL?” said the gargoyle. “Are you going to take me home, or aren’t you?”
“Yes!” said Michael. “Yes, yes, yes!”
“I still don’t see what good he is,” said Fonsy, “if his fire doesn’t burn anything.”
“Can you play checkers?” This was David, who had been hiding behind an iron cookstove.
Now, three small boys cannot lift a stone gargoyle, and you know it. But the gargoyle, concentrating his powerful brain on light topics, like feather dusters, balloon ascensions, soufflés, and empty milk cartons, managed to make himself so light that the boys were able to lift him into an American Flyer wagon, which Fonsy had run home to get. When the wagon, rattling like a heavy cavalry charge, pulled into the driveway of the boys’ cottage, it was beginning to get dark. Their parents were not back from their fishing yet, so the boys wheeled the wagon around to the side of the house until it stood under the windows of the huge upstairs bedroom where all three boys slept. They wrapped the gargoyle in blankets, made a sling of ropes, and hauled him up the side of the house and into one of the windows. The gargoyle, tired out from thinking light thoughts—his mind usually ran to weightier matters—expressed a desire to be left alone, so the boys covered him in more blankets and went outside to play Indian ball on the long back lawn.
Late that night, after supper, after moonlight swimming, and after several attempts to get a tired gargoyle to say something interesting, the three boys were asleep on three large mattresses scattered around the big high-ceilinged room. It was a hot night, and the four tall screened windows were open. A moth was batting around near the ceiling, and some tiny green bugs were making pock sounds on the shade over the yellow nightlight in the hall. Suddenly Michael awoke.
He was not sure what had awakened him, but as he lay th
ere he heard something that sounded like a marching band practicing across the lake. Snare drums riffled and rattled, horns moo-eeed and barr-aaahed, playing some exciting song he had never heard before. Then he noticed the firelight on the wall. This was odd, because there was no fire in the fireplace. Just to be sure, he twisted his head around at a painful angle and looked. The brick fireplace was dead, black and sooty. Then he looked at the gargoyle. The blankets that had been covering him had been thrown off into wrinkled heaps. He was not smiling; his long mouth—closed except for the drain hole in the front— was curved into a worried scowl.
The pale orange blotch on the plaster wall leaped, pulsed, stretched, and widened. Drums rattled loader. This was the gargoyle’s dream, and Michael somehow knew it, for he got out of bed and crawled around the room to wake up the other two boys. He shook each one gently, then pointed at the glowing wall. Fonsy and David did not have to be told to be silent. They sat motionless on the floor beside their brother and watched.
The gargoyle was dreaming of a time when he had been part of the Basilica of St. Denis, a wealthy and famous church outside Paris where many of the kings of France were buried. On this particular night, almost two hundred years ago, the gargoyle, from his perch high up on the west wall of the church, saw a singing, shouting, torch-carrying mob in the distance. It was hard to tell if the people were happy or angry, but they did look mean, and they were coming straight toward the church. Some of them wore strange puffy nightcaps, and nearly all of them were carrying things—poles, spears, axes, crowbars, hatchets, flags, and torches. The boys saw it as the gargoyle had seen it, and was seeing it again in his sleep.
The mob stopped under the great west portal of the church, and their horrible, angry shout seemed to fill the bedroom. Then several men came forward carrying a heavy log, and they swung it against the thick wooden doors to a rhythmical chant of “Un … deux … TROIS!” There was a splintering crash, and suddenly the boys saw the inside of the church. Men and women ran down the aisles, waving their hatchets and hammers. Little groups gathered around flat-topped tombs that looked like altars, and now Michael knew what the crowbars were for. He wanted to put his hand over David’s eyes, but he was afraid of breaking the spell.
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