Substitute Creature

by Charles Gilman

  Robert hadn’t anticipated this, but he knew Glenn was right. Three months ago, when Nurse Mandis and Howard Mergler drowned in a lake that mysteriously sprang from the soccer field, the school mourned their deaths with all kinds of tributes and memorials. Everyone would want to read Robert’s last words.

  “But it’s cool,” Glenn said. “I mean, I’m sure you didn’t write anything embarrassing, right?”

  Actually, Robert had. Instead of signing the card with “from,” he had written the word “love”—but he would rather die than admit this to Glenn or anyone else.

  Suddenly, it seemed very important that he deliver the card himself.

  “I’ll try walking one more time,” he decided.

  Robert inched toward the corner of the building, taking the tiniest of baby steps. When that didn’t kill him, he took another.

  “All right,” he admitted, “this isn’t so bad.”

  “You’ve gone three inches,” Glenn said.

  The ledge was already covered with a thin layer of snow, but Robert managed to take bigger steps without slipping. The wind was blowing at his back, pressing him against the stone wall, almost propping him up. Robert told himself it was just like walking on a sidewalk curb—if there was such a thing as a forty-foot-tall sidewalk curb.

  They soon arrived at the corner. The ledge wrapped all the way around the building—it was a square corner—but Robert would have to step away from the wall to make the turn.

  “Be careful,” Glenn said. “I bet the crosswinds are pretty rough.”

  “What are crosswinds?” Robert asked.

  “All the wind on this side of the building? It’s coming from the north,” Glenn explained. “And all the wind around the corner is from the east. But when you make that turn? And step out on the corner? You’ll have two winds blowing at the same time. In different directions. Crosswinds.”

  Robert shook his head. “And meanwhile you’re failing three classes. How do you know this stuff?”

  “My grandfather was a sailor.” Glenn shrugged. “All he ever talked about was wind.”

  “So what should I do?”

  “Be quick. And don’t look down.”

  Robert knew that if he tried to think of a better strategy, he’d never move. He stepped out onto the corner and the crosswinds snapped at the bottom of his robe, shaking him like a ragdoll. He pivoted on his left heel, spinning around, his other leg swinging out in midair.

  To Glenn, it looked like his best friend had done a ballerina spin right off the side of the building.

  “Robert!” he shouted. He leaned over, peering around the corner, relieved to find his friend clinging to the wall, practically kissing the stone. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fi-fi-fine,” Robert said. “Give me your hand.”

  He helped Glenn navigate the corner, and then the boys continued side-stepping along the ledge. On this side of the building, the snowdrifts were accumulating more quickly; some were already two and three inches high. The boys were close enough to see the balcony. It extended from the side of the building, a ten-by-ten platform surrounded by an iron railing.

  Robert quickened his steps. He was no longer thinking about falling. He was thinking about hot chocolate in the cafeteria and the warm socks he’d left in the Music Room. He was thinking about the knitted hat and gloves on the top shelf of his locker. He was thinking he might wear them for the rest of the day, even in class, even if he looked ridiculous.

  As he hurried along, looking forward to all these things, he didn’t notice the cracked rain gutter near the roofline, or the thin vein of ice trailing down the wall. He didn’t even notice the janitor in the hooded parka, carrying a snow shovel, until the man stepped to the edge of the balcony and hollered, “What are you idiots doing?”

  Robert was so startled, he slipped off the ledge.

  The janitor grabbed Robert’s wrist, catching him just in time and hoisting him over the railing. Robert landed hard, scraping his palms on coarse concrete, but he didn’t care. He was simply glad to be back on solid ground. If the janitor hadn’t been yelling his head off, Robert could have curled up and slept like a baby.

  “Are you two out of your minds?” He yanked Glenn by the arm and pulled him over the railing, too. “Do you have any idea how lucky you are? If I hadn’t come up here to gather the snow shovels, you’d both be splotches on the sidewalk!”

  The janitor’s name was Martin McGinnis, but every kid in Lovecraft Middle School knew him as “Maniac” Mac. He was a tall, shambling mess of a man, with a weathered face, chopped brown hair, and a drooping mustache. He kept to himself and never chatted with students, which resulted in all kids of rumors: Mac was an ex-Marine who gunned down hundreds of men in the Gulf War. Mac had spent two years in a hospital for the insane. Mac lived in a junkyard in a broken-down ice cream truck.

  “Could we please go inside?” Glenn asked. “We’re freezing.”

  “Of course you’re freezing! There’s a huge blizzard on the way and you morons are running around barefoot! Where are your shoes?”

  “Blizzard?” Robert asked. Earlier that morning, he had listened to the radio, and there had been no mention of snow.

  “A nor’easter! They’re predicting thirty-six inches! Maybe more. And guess who has to shovel it?” Mac’s voice was enraged, as if he somehow blamed Robert and Glenn for causing the entire storm. He stomped across the balcony and flung open the door. “Now get inside.”

  There were plenty of beautiful rooms in Lovecraft Middle School, but the space they entered may have been the finest. Comfortable sofas and armchairs were arranged throughout the room. Soft classical music played on a hidden stereo system. Beautiful paintings hung on the walls. Glenn looked around in awe. “What is this place?” he whispered.

  “Teachers’ Lounge,” Mac explained. Robert moved to sit down but Mac shook his head. “We’ve got no business in here. Keep moving.”

  He led the boys out of the lounge, down a hallway, and through a door marked DO NOT ENTER. After climbing a short staircase, they surfaced in a cramped rooftop shed. In the center was a rickety wooden table littered with cookie crumbs and playing cards. Mac gestured dramatically at the dirty windows and their drab view of the roof. “Welcome to the Janitor’s Lounge. Make yourselves comfortable.”

  Robert and Glenn fell into chairs, exhausted, while Mac rummaged through his shelves. Finally he unearthed a large canvas drop cloth spattered with paint. “Here’s a blanket,” he said, tossing it to the boys. Then he filled two paper cups with thick black coffee. “Drink this.”

  “We don’t like coffee,” Glenn said.

  “And I don’t like rescuing wise guys who think it’s funny to walk on a snow-covered ledge. But here I am.”

  Robert was happy just to cradle the warm cup in his hands, to hold the steaming liquid beneath his chin. With every passing moment indoors, his face felt a little less numb.

  Mac took his shovel outside and pushed it across the rooftop. Robert realized he was trying to clear snow off the solar panels, but the snow was falling faster than Mac could shovel it away. After clearing six of the panels, he looked back and saw the first three were already covered again.

  Mac gave up and returned inside, throwing down the shovel and stomping his boots.

  “What’s going to happen to the power?” Robert asked.

  “That’s my problem, not yours,” Mac said. “Let me see your feet.”

  Robert held them out. Already, the pink was fading from his extremities; Mac flicked his finger against a big toe and Robert cried out in surprise.

  “Did that hurt?” he asked.

  “Yes!”

  “Good. It means they won’t have to amputate it. Do you knuckleheads realize how close you came to dying?”

  Closer than you know, Robert thought.

  “Now, I am going to give you one chance to explain yourselves,” Mac said. “And I want the truth.”

  Robert didn’t know what to say. He knew Ma
c wouldn’t believe the truth. He figured the fastest way to get out of the janitor’s lounge—and get back to the concert—would be to make up a believable story.

  “Glenn dared me to do it,” he said. “He said he’d give me ten bucks if I put on a chorus robe and walked around the whole ledge barefoot.”

  Mac sipped his coffee but said nothing.

  “Yeah, totally,” Glenn said, doing his best to act the part. “Boy, that was such a dumb bet! What were we thinking? We could have been killed! For ten lousy dollars!”

  Outside, the wind whipped against the windows, shaking the shed, threatening to rip it right off the roof.

  “So, uh, can we go now?” Glenn asked.

  “I don’t believe you,” Mac said. “I think you boys are lying to me.”

  “It’s the truth,” Robert insisted.

  Mac shrugged. “Is that so, Robert? Fine. Let’s go tell this story to the school nurse.”

  It never occurred to Robert that Maniac Mac knew his name, let alone his mother.

  “You know my mom?”

  “Sure, she’s a very nice lady. Patched me up last month after I gashed my hand on a broken window.” Mac held up his palm, revealing a hideous purple scab. “Let’s see what Mrs. Arthur thinks of your story.”

  He marched the boys out of the roof shed and down to the first floor. Robert felt like a prisoner walking along Death Row. Lying to a janitor had been hard enough. There was no way his mother would ever believe him.

  Just before they reached the nurse’s office, Mac’s cell phone chirped. He ordered the boys to halt and answered it. Robert couldn’t tell what the conversation was about, but it didn’t seem to make Mac any happier. “I understand,” he said. “I’m on my way.” Then he clicked off the phone and turned to the boys. “On second thought, I’m going to deal with you clowns later. I need to go.”

  “What’s happening?” Robert asked.

  “They’re evacuating the school. State of emergency. They want everyone out of the building in the next hour.”

  Mac told the boys to grab their socks and sneakers and then report to the cafeteria, where their classmates were waiting to be evacuated. Instead, Robert and Glenn went straight to the library. Whenever anything strange happened at Lovecraft Middle School, they always headed to the school librarian, Ms. Claudine Lavinia, for good advice.

  She was their most trusted ally—the only adult who knew the truth about the school. She was also Crawford Tillinghast’s sister and had been working with Robert and Glenn to foil her brother’s plans.

  Most mornings, they could find her at the library’s circulation desk. Today, an unknown woman was standing in her place. She had a long narrow face, and her dark hair was pulled back in a bun. She saw the boys and frowned. “Library’s closed,” she explained.

  “Where’s Ms. Lavinia?” Glenn asked.

  The woman straightened. “She’s fallen ill. My name is Miss Carcasse and I’ll be teaching all of the library lessons until Ms. Lavinia returns.”

  Robert had been at Lovecraft Middle School long enough to recognize all the usual substitute teachers, and he’d never seen this person before. A funny smell tickled his nose, and he realized it was Miss Carcasse’s perfume.

  Glenn crossed his arms over his chest. “It’s freezing in here,” he said. “Is the air conditioning on?”

  “I’m quite comfortable,” she said. “Many libraries can be drafty, but in our profession one gets used to it.”

  Robert had never felt a draft in Lovecraft Middle School before. There were no leaks or cracks or rattling windows. The building was just six months old, practically brand new.

  “Something’s wrong,” he said, stepping inside for a closer look.

  Miss Carcasse hopped out of her chair, blocking his way. She moved with a curious limp, as if one of her legs was longer than the other, or perhaps her knees didn’t bend properly. Up close, her perfume was overpowering. It smelled like a nauseating blend of blooming roses and burning hair.

  Robert looked past her to the computer lab and saw a fine layer of snow atop one of the keyboards. More flurries were blowing in through a wide-open window. “That machine’s getting ruined!”

  “Whoops,” Miss Carcasse said, walking calmly to the window and pulling it closed. “Looks like someone was careless.” She didn’t seem concerned that the computer was likely destroyed. “Now it’s time for you boys to leave. You can go to the cafeteria with everyone else, or I’ll send you straight to the principal’s orifice.”

  The boys stared back at her.

  “You mean the principal’s office?” Glenn asked.

  Miss Carcasse frowned. “That’s what I said.”

  The boys chose the cafeteria instead.

  “Something’s up,” Glenn muttered.

  “Oh, yeah,” Robert agreed. “Something’s definitely up.”

  When the boys arrived in the cafeteria, Robert’s mother was standing on a small platform at the front of the room, addressing the students with a microphone. “I need everyone to pay attention,” she was saying. “This is a very dangerous storm. We already have three inches of snow on the ground …” The rest of her sentence was lost beneath a round of cheers and applause.

  Robert wasn’t thrilled when his mother started working at Lovecraft Middle School, but he had to admit she seemed a lot happier. She loved helping children, and she often bragged that Lovecraft was one of the top-ranked schools in the region. She seemed completely oblivious to the strange things happening there day in and day out.

  “I want you all to look out these windows,” Mrs. Arthur said. Normally, the cafeteria offered a panoramic view of the front lawns and the long winding driveway that led toward town. Today, it was like peering through a giant snow globe. “These are white-out conditions. When you step outside, you won’t see more than five or six feet in any direction. It’s extremely disorienting and very dangerous. That’s why no students can leave the school today without adult supervision.”

  There was a lot of eye-rolling and a couple of kids groaned, but Mrs. Arthur said that she meant business. “If your parents are already here, you’re dismissed. The rest of you will leave by bus. We’ll begin loading now by homeroom. Will everyone in Room 115 please line up by the door?” She clapped her hands. “Come on, everybody, on your feet!”

  Other teachers were helping guide the students into orderly lines. When Mrs. Arthur recognized her son, she came hurrying over.

  “Where have you been?” she exclaimed. “I’ve been looking everywhere.”

  “Sorry,” he shrugged. “I was—”

  “Listen to me, Robert. Don’t get on the bus. I’ve got our car in the parking lot, and as soon as everyone’s safe, I’ll drive us home.” She turned to Glenn, who ate dinner at their house nearly every night and was practically part of the family. “You, too, Glenn. Come with us.”

  “No, thanks,” Glenn said. “If there’s a bus leaving now, I’m getting on it. The sooner I get out of here, the better.”

  Glenn grabbed his backpack and got in line with the other kids in his homeroom. Mrs. Arthur returned to the microphone and called out more directions. Robert took a seat in the back of the cafeteria and looked out the windows.

  Six yellow school buses were idling in the driveway; Maniac Mac was out in the snow, shoveling furiously, carving a path so that kids could get onboard. Across the driveway, the teachers were rushing out of the faculty parking lot, their cars fish-tailing over the snow, the engines revving helplessly. A crossing guard with a STOP sign ran shouting from one vehicle to the next, trying to bring order to chaos.

  Karina dropped into a chair beside Robert. “Some Valentine’s Day, huh?”

  “Sorry we missed the concert.” He explained how he and Glenn had ended up trapped on a ledge four stories above the ground, and Karina just nodded matter-of-factly, as if these sorts of things happened all the time.

  “I’m glad you didn’t fall,” she said. “You’d really hate being a ghost.”


  “Do you still have Pip and Squeak?”

  “They’re napping in the gym. Do you mind if I watch them for a few days?”

  “Sure,” Robert said. “They love it when you babysit.”

  Karina once confessed that Saturdays and Sundays were her least favorite days of the week because she was trapped in the school all by herself. With a nor’easter on the way, she could be facing a week or more of solitary confinement. Having Pip and Squeak would take her mind off the loneliness.

  Mrs. Arthur kept calling homeroom numbers, and more and more students were exiting the cafeteria. Soon only a few dozen kids were left.

  “I should leave,” Karina said, “before your mom tries to stick me on a bus.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “I’ll just hide in the locker room until everyone’s gone. See you in a couple days, I guess.”

  Robert thought of the Garfield valentine in his backpack and decided this was as good a moment as he was likely to get.

  “Hang on.”

  He reached into his backpack, looking for the red envelope, but it was no longer there. He emptied all his textbooks but still couldn’t find it. Robert was certain he had it at the concert—yet somehow the card had mysteriously vanished.

  “What are you looking for?” Karina asked.

  Suddenly Robert felt foolish and empty-handed. He removed a raisin granola bar from his knapsack and placed it on the windowsill.

  “For Pip and Squeak,” he explained. “In case they get hungry.”

  Long after the other teachers had all left for home, Mrs. Arthur was still hurrying around the cafeteria, barking orders until the last of the students had boarded buses. And even then, she wasn’t ready to leave. She walked around turning off lights.

  “We need to go,” Robert said.

  “Lights are expensive,” Mrs. Arthur said. “When you have to pay your own electric bill, you’ll know what I mean. Help me find the switches.”

  Robert was looking for a way to turn off the kitchen lights when Maniac Mac appeared in the doorway, glaring at him. “What are you still doing here?”