Teacher's Pest

by Charles Gilman

  “Robert Arthur!” Mr. Loomis shouted, pointing to the sheet of loose-leaf paper. “Please tell me you’re not passing notes. Is that something you’d like to share with the entire class?”

  Robert shook his head. I just did, he thought.

  FIFTEEN

  Three-fifteen finally came, and Robert ran to meet Glenn in the school auditorium. The space was as grand and majestic as any Broadway theater, with a curtained stage and enough seating for an audience of seven hundred. In the center of the ceiling was a large dome, currently under reconstruction. A few weeks earlier, its glass had been shattered after Robert unwittingly summoned a giant harpy during a student council debate.

  Glenn was waiting in the front row.

  “Why are we meeting here?” Robert asked. “This is nowhere near the basement.”

  “Let me explain,” Glenn said. “I’ve been thinking about the ventilation ducts. Basically, they carry heat from the basement and deliver it all over the school. But some rooms need more heat than others, right?”

  “I guess,” Robert said.

  “A tiny room like the nurse’s office needs a tiny amount of heat, so it has a tiny vent. But a bigger classroom needs a bigger vent. And a giant auditorium needs a giant vent … one that’s big enough for a person to climb through.”

  Glenn stepped aside, revealing a large slatted vent at the base of the stage. He had already removed the screws so Robert could peer inside. Behind the vent was a cramped metal tunnel, eighteen inches high and stretching into the darkness.

  “You’re a genius,” Robert said, grinning. “Do you think this goes all the way to the basement?”

  “There’s only one way to find out,” Glenn said. “Are you coming with me?”

  “Absolutely not!” a distant voice exclaimed.

  Ms. Lavinia had entered the auditorium through the backstage entrance, and now she was crossing the stage. Her shrill voice echoed throughout the theater. Karina Ortiz trailed a few steps behind, carrying her skateboard.

  “Why not?” Glenn asked.

  “It’s far too dangerous,” Ms. Lavinia insisted. “We’ve already lost the rats. If anything happens to you—”

  “Nothing’s going to happen,” Glenn said.

  “You have no idea, Mr. Torkells.” The librarian only used their last names when she was extremely upset. “We are talking about thousands of insects. Dozens of different species. What if they joined forces and attacked you simultaneously?”

  Glenn reached into his coat pocket for his secret weapon: a large aerosol spray can of Dead Bug. “ ‘One blast kills virtually anything,’ ” he said, reading aloud from the label. “ ‘Ants, bees, flies, wasps …’ ”

  “And people!” Ms. Lavinia exclaimed, snatching the can from his hands. “Are you crazy? If you spray this garbage inside the ducts, you’ll poison yourself and the entire school. Absolutely not.”

  Karina remained silent. Robert hadn’t seen her since two nights earlier, when he lost his temper and called her a ghost. She wouldn’t even look at him.

  “Karina?” he asked. “Can I talk to you about something?”

  She shrugged. “Go ahead. Talk.”

  “In private,” Robert said.

  Grudgingly, she followed him to the back of the auditorium. Ms. Lavinia didn’t even notice—she was still lecturing Glenn on the stupidity of spraying bug poison into the school ventilation system.

  “I’m sorry I called you a ghost,” Robert said. “I know you don’t like that word. And I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. It was right after Pip and Squeak disappeared, and I was scared.”

  “I know,” Karina said. “I was scared, too.”

  “The first couple times I met you, I didn’t even realize you were … not living. Do you remember?”

  “I remember.”

  “I never thought of you that way. I still don’t. When we’re hanging out and stuff, I think of you as a regular, ordinary girl.”

  “Ordinary?”

  “Totally ordinary,” he insisted. “If we were strangers? And I saw you standing in a crowd of other kids? I wouldn’t even notice you.”

  “That’s very sweet,” Karina said, shaking her head. “That’s probably the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

  “So you’re not mad anymore?”

  “I was never mad. I’m just frustrated, that’s all. I’m tired of being trapped in this place.”

  “We have fun hanging out, don’t we?” Robert asked.

  “Yeah, but in a few years, you’ll be in high school. You’ll have a driver’s license. And I’ll still be stuck here and I’ll still be thirteen. Will you like hanging out with me then?”

  “Of course I will.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Look, I’ll probably be a ghost myself,” Robert assured her. “If Tillinghast gets his way, Glenn and I will be dead before I leave this place. And then the three of us can hang out all the time.”

  Karina scowled. “That’s not even funny,” she said, and all of a sudden she seemed angry again. “You don’t ever want to be stuck here. You’d hate it, and I’d spend the rest of eternity blaming myself.”

  With that, she abruptly returned to the front of the auditorium, where Glenn and Ms. Lavinia were still arguing.

  “I’m going with the boys,” Karina announced. “They need my help.”

  Ms. Lavinia frowned. “Now you think this is a good idea?”

  “We owe it to Pip and Squeak. We sent them into the vents and told them everything would be fine. They trusted us.”

  “The basement will be full of insects,” Robert reminded her. “You hate insects.”

  “I only hate spiders,” Karina reminded him. “Technically, they’re not insects. They’re arachnids.”

  “Same difference.” Back when they first met, Robert, Glenn, and Karina shared a close call with a giant spider and thousands of spiderlings in Tillinghast Mansion. But whatever was waiting in the school basement was likely to be much, much worse.

  “The bugs can’t touch me, and I can’t touch them,” Karina said. “As long as I remember that, I’ll be fine. I want to do this.” She turned to Ms. Lavinia. “Please let us do this.”

  Against her better judgment, Ms. Lavinia stepped away from the vent. “Keep your voices down,” she warned. “Any sounds you make will echo through the school.”

  Glenn crawled into the duct first, followed by Robert and then Karina. Once they were all inside, Ms. Lavinia replaced the vent cover and screwed it in place. “Be careful,” she said.

  Right from the beginning, moving through the duct was much harder than any of them had imagined. It wasn’t big enough for Robert to crawl on all fours. He had to creep forward in tiny increments, pushing off with his sneakers and “walking” with his elbows. It was hard work; he was using muscles he didn’t normally use, muscles he wasn’t even aware he had. After ten minutes, he was exhausted.

  “You guys need to be more quiet,” Karina said. “You’re making a racket.”

  “I can’t help it,” Glenn told her.

  “Are we almost there?” Robert asked.

  Glenn laughed. “Look behind you.”

  There was barely enough room for Robert to turn his head and shoulders. Karina was directly behind him, and just beyond her was the vent cover. Robert was still close enough to see Ms. Lavinia watching them through the slats.

  They had barely traveled twenty feet.

  SIXTEEN

  So they crawled.

  And crawled and crawled, and then crawled some more.

  This is how it feels to be a bug, Robert thought. A person could walk the entire length of Lovecraft Middle School in about five minutes. But here in the ducts, down on his belly, advancing just two inches at a time, that same journey was going to take all afternoon.

  Even worse, the ducts were stifling hot. Robert felt as if he was in an oven and soon wished he had removed his jacket. Sweat dripped down his forehead and stung his eyes. The only relief ca
me when they passed beneath one of the large circular fans, spaced every twenty feet or so. A warm breeze was better than no breeze at all.

  Sometimes, the duct would fork, and the three of them would stop to discuss the best way forward. Sometimes they passed vents offering views into classrooms and offices; they learned that this particular duct brought heat to Principal Slater’s office, the cafeteria, and a space that appeared to be the faculty lounge. Occasionally, they would hear or see a teacher working late, and Glenn would give the signal to freeze. Then they would all lie silent and wait until the teacher moved on.

  After more than an hour of crawling, the duct finally widened into a sort of hub. Five other ducts extended from there, like spokes on a wheel. Robert, Glenn, and Karina had just enough room to sit up and face one another.

  “Which way?” Robert asked.

  Not one of them had any idea.

  “We must be getting close,” Karina said.

  Glenn aimed his flashlight into the different passages. Each one looked identical. Robert felt as if he was in one of those cornfield mazes where every path looked exactly the same; there was no way for him to orient himself. At this rate, they would be trapped behind the walls all night.

  “This one,” Karina pointed.

  To Robert and Glenn, it seemed like she had chosen at random.

  “How do you know?” Robert asked.

  “Take a whiff,” Karina said.

  Robert placed his head in the duct, inhaled deeply, and immediately wished he hadn’t. It smelled like the back of a garbage truck.

  “Oh, man, that reeks!” Glenn exclaimed.

  “It must be the food supply,” Karina said. “All those bugs have to be eating something.”

  “And if we find the food supply, I bet we find Pip and Squeak,” Robert said. “Let’s go.”

  Glenn pulled the front of his shirt up and over his nose and then led the way into the passage. Until this point, the crawling had been merely uncomfortable. Now, with the stink of rotten garbage, it became unbearable—and the more they crawled, the worse the odor grew.

  Yet they were definitely on the right track. After another few minutes in the cramped passage, Glenn announced that they had company. Sure enough, Robert felt a housefly land on his arm. Then another and another. Here and there on the sides of the vent were tiny white blobs, what appeared to be larvae.

  “Every time I think this can’t get more disgusting,” Karina said, “the school finds new ways to surprise me.”

  “They can’t touch you, and you can’t touch them,” Robert reminded her.

  “But they’re all touching me,” Glenn chimed in.

  Five o’clock came and went, and still they were only creeping along. A swarm of black flies had settled on Robert’s head, shoulders, and back. He’d stopped shaking them off—there were too many and they were relentless. He realized he wasn’t going to be home in time for dinner, that his mother would be worried sick, but what could he do? He was beginning to think they would be trapped inside the stifling vents forever.

  “Uh-oh,” Glenn said.

  “Uh-oh what?” Robert asked apprehensively.

  They had reached a three-foot gap. It looked remarkably similar to the chasm that had swallowed Pip and Squeak, and Robert realized he was facing their same predicament. The passage continued on the other side of the gap, but there was no way they could make it across. They couldn’t leap very far while crawling on their hands and knees.

  Glenn pointed his flashlight into the chasm, and all three looked down. The airshaft dropped more than twenty feet into darkness.

  “The basement’s down there,” Karina said. “It has to be.”

  “Anybody bring a rope?” Glenn asked.

  “I wish,” Robert said.

  They had only three options, and none of them were good: Leaping across the chasm to other side was impossible. Backtracking through the vents to the auditorium would take hours. And dropping into a bottomless pit was the worst choice of all. It meant falling to an all-but-certain death.

  “We’re stuck,” Robert said.

  “You’re forgetting about me,” Karina said. “I can go check it out. If it’s safe when I get to the bottom, I’ll call up and let you know.”

  “And if it’s not?” Robert asked.

  “What’s the worst that could happen?”

  On a purely logical level, Robert knew Karina was right—it’s not like she could die twice. But all the same, the idea of her jumping into a bottomless pit made him nervous. Anything could be waiting down there. There was no telling what Howard and Tillinghast had planned for the basement.

  “I’ll be fine,” Karina assured him. “Make some room.”

  She squeezed past the two boys, crawling up to the precipice and diving over the edge headfirst. Her figure vanished into the darkness without a sound. As the moments slowly passed, Robert started to worry that they’d made a terrible miscalculation. Maybe Karina could die twice. Or maybe, in the basement of Lovecraft Middle School, lurked a fate even worse than death—

  Then her voice rose out of the darkness:

  “All right.”

  Glenn insisted on a little more information. He leaned over the edge and shouted into the void. “What do you mean, ‘all right’? What’s down there?”

  “You can jump.” Karina’s voice was tinny and soft; it sounded like it was a million miles away. “You won’t get hurt.”

  “Why not? What’s down there?”

  “Um … you’ll see. Just keep your mouths closed.”

  Glenn and Robert exchanged nervous glances: Keep your mouths closed?

  “I’ll go first,” Robert volunteered.

  He swung his legs over the edge of the chasm and dropped feetfirst. The fall lasted only a few seconds, but time seemed to pass in slow motion. The aluminum panels of the duct blurred past. Flies pinged off his face and hands, as if he were flying through a dense swarm. As he reached the bottom the airshaft grew brighter and brighter, and then he was sailing out of the vent, dropping from the ceiling into a large subterranean room. And the whole time Robert was afraid to look down. He feared that—despite Karina’s promises—he would see a solid concrete floor rushing up to meet him.

  Instead, he landed on a cloud.

  Or at least that’s what it felt like—this soft, spongy surface that absorbed the impact of his fall. Robert sat up and looked around. He was in the basement mechanical room—and he was up to his waist in a Dumpster full of wet rice.

  “Get out!” Karina yelled. She was standing on the side of the garbage bin, gesturing for Robert to move as quickly as possible, but he didn’t understand the urgency.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “That didn’t even hurt.”

  “Keep your mouth shut,” she said. “Just get out!”

  “What’s the big deal? It’s only garbage.”

  And the garbage wasn’t even particularly disgusting. Here and there were moldy peaches, apple cores, and other rotting fruits, but most of the bin was filled with white rice.

  Many thousands of grains of squirming white rice.

  Robert’s eyes narrowed.

  Maggots.

  SEVENTEEN

  Robert leapt out of the garbage, shrieking and shouting and swatting the larvae from his clothes, neck, and hair. They were everywhere—inside his sneakers, behind his ears, under his collar. They clung to his skin like tiny leeches.

  “I’m sorry,” Karina told him. “I figured it was better if you didn’t know.”

  Glenn dropped into the garbage a moment later—and unfortunately he ignored Karina’s warning to keep his mouth closed. Worse, he screamed “Yahoooo!” all the way down and ended up swallowing some larvae. He spent the next few minutes spitting on the basement floor, trying to rid his mouth of their awful bitter taste. “This is the most disgusting thing that’s ever happened to us,” he said, groaning.

  “Stick around,” Robert told him. “We’re not finished yet.”

  “Look on
the bright side,” Karina said. “At least we’re out of the ducts.”

  They looked around. The mechanical room was a labyrinth of giant steel pipelines, plastic tubes, and metal ducts that appeared to deliver heat, cold air, and water all throughout the building. The room was alive with the buzzing of boilers, handlers, pumps, and generators.

  “So, this is it?” Glenn asked. “This is the giant underground burrow?”

  “It’s too bright,” Karina said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Have you ever walked into the woods and flipped over a rock? You know all the weird slithery bugs that cling to the bottom? The bugs that like cool, dark places? That’s the kind of space we’re looking for. They’re going to be hiding.”

  “Howard said the entrance was well-concealed,” Robert remembered. “He said not even the janitors would be able to find it.”

  They spread out across the mechanical room, checking every corner. Robert crawled under boilers; Glenn squeezed behind air compressors; Karina searched in supply closets. Everything was neat and clean and orderly. Apart from the swarms of flies, there were no signs of anything amiss.

  At the far end of the basement was a window overlooking a much smaller adjacent room; a sign on the door read POOL UTILITY. Robert glanced through the window but saw nothing unusual, only several fifty-five-gallon barrels of liquid chlorine, stockpiled in the corner. He was turning away when he stepped on something small and brittle.

  He leapt back, thinking he had crushed some kind of hard-shelled beetle. But no—it was the frayed end of a yellow USB cable.

  “That’s the wire!” Karina exclaimed. “Remember the cameras Pip and Squeak were wearing?”

  Robert lifted the cable. Karina was right—it was the same yellow wire that Ms. Lavinia had affixed to the camera helmet, the same yellow wire that had disappeared through the ventilation ducts. “It was a hundred feet long,” Robert said. “If Pip and Squeak are still attached to the other end, they must be close.”