Copyright © 2013 by Quirk Productions, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Number: 2012935996
eISBN: 978-1-59474-622-2
Designed by Doogie Horner
Illustrations by Eugene Smith
Cover photography by Jonathan Pushnik
Cover model: Griffin Anderson
Production management by John J. McGurk
Quirk Books
215 Church Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106
quirkbooks.com
v3.1
This book
is for
my parents
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
About the Author
About the Illustrator
Acknowledgments
Sneak Preview of Substitute Creature
ONE
“Don’t move.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Something’s on your neck.”
Glenn Torkells touched the flesh around his throat. “I don’t feel anyth—”
“Careful!” Robert Arthur warned. “It’s a bug.”
“What kind?”
Robert wasn’t sure. The creature had two wings, a bright purple abdomen, and a stinger in its tail. “I think it’s a wasp.”
Glenn froze. Like every other twelve-year-old boy in the world, he understood the first rule of dealing with wasps was to remain absolutely still. If you left them alone, the insects would eventually lose interest and fly away.
Only this one didn’t. This one seemed to think the back of Glenn’s neck was the perfect place to rest.
The two boys were standing on a soccer field outside Lovecraft Middle School. Glenn was playing goalie; Robert was the defensive fullback. The rest of their gym class was on the far side of the field, watching Lynn Scott launch a penalty kick past Eddie Milano. Coach Glandis tweeted his whistle and shouted, “Hustle! Hustle! Hustle!”
It was a Tuesday morning in early November.
“Is it still there?” Glenn asked.
“Yeah,” Robert said.
“What’s it doing?”
“Nothing.”
“Try pulling it off.”
“With my fingers?”
“No, with your toes. What do you think?”
Robert didn’t like the idea of touching a wasp with his bare hands. For starters, there was no good place to grab the darn thing. Its head was too small. Its wings were too flimsy. Its purple belly was covered with brittle spikes, like the quills of a porcupine.
“Maybe you should move,” Robert decided. “Maybe if you spin in circles, it’ll get dizzy and fall off.”
Glenn stretched out his arms and began twirling like a clumsy ballerina. He spun faster and faster but the wasp didn’t budge. From out of nowhere, a soccer ball streaked past him, blasting into the net.
“DEFENSE!” Coach shouted. He came charging down the field, waving his clipboard like a flag to get their attention. “What the heck’s going on here?”
Glenn didn’t answer; he kept right on spinning.
Coach was dressed in his usual white polo shirt and red track shorts. It was rumored that he wore track shorts every day of the year, even in the winter, even in the worst New England blizzards. “What’s wrong with Torkells?” he asked.
“There’s a wasp on his neck,” Robert explained.
The rest of the class quickly gathered around, pointing and gasping. Everyone agreed it was the biggest wasp any of them had ever seen, that its venom was probably poisonous, or at least extremely painful …
“Torkells!” Coach shouted. “Stop spinning and get over here. Let me look at this monster.”
Glenn wobbled over, dizzy from all his twirling. Coach peeked inside his shirt collar and the wasp buzzed angrily, warning him to stay back.
“Sheesh!” Coach exclaimed. “Where’d it come from?”
Robert pointed straight up at the sky.
“Can you please get it off me?” Glenn asked.
Coach studied the wasp from different angles. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“I don’t want to get stung.”
“See, that’s the problem,” Coach explained. “You’re already stung. It’s stinging you right now.”
“What?!”
The other kids stepped forward for a better look, but Coach ordered them to keep a safe distance. Robert realized the wasp’s tail was resting on a round red welt; it was the size of a nickel and growing by the second.
“I could whack him with my clipboard,” Coach explained, “but we don’t want to break the stinger. We want a nice, clean extraction.”
“I’ll take my chances,” Glenn said. “Just get it off!”
The wasp buzzed again, louder this time.
“All right, on a count of three,” Coach said. He raised the clipboard up over his head. “Ready?”
“Yes, yes, just do it!”
“One—”
Glenn grabbed a goalpost, steadying himself, and closed his eyes.
“Two—”
Robert nearly closed his eyes, too. He didn’t think he could watch.
“Three!”
TWO
At that moment—just before Coach brought the clipboard crashing down—the wasp fell from Glenn’s neck, dropped to the grass, and died.
“What are you waiting for?” Glenn shouted. He still had his eyes squeezed shut. “Go ahead! Get him!”
“It’s over,” Robert said.
Glenn opened his eyes and blinked.
Coach reached down and lifted the wasp by a wing. Strangely, all the purple color had drained from its body; it was now just a lifeless gray husk. “Well, I’ll be darned. How do you feel, Torkells?”
Glenn pressed his fingers to the welt. “Not so good.”
“Better go see the nurse. Robert will take you. And bring this.” He held out the dead wasp, but neither boy wanted to touch it. Exasperated, Coach yanked one of his attendance sheets from his clipboard, wrapped it around the insect, and gave the packet to Robert. “Go on, hurry! This could be serious.”
As the boys set out across the field, Glenn tripped over his own feet, and Robert grabbed his shoulder. “Are you all right?”
“I feel weird,” Glenn said. “Like I’m all hot.”
“Keep walking,” Robert said.
The boys entered Lovecraft Middle School through a side entrance. It was a brand-new building, not even three months old, and filled with state-of-the-art technology. The hallways were lined with high-definition video screens; the lockers had electromagnetic doors to prevent theft; there were multiple computers in every classroom. But all these fancy features were masking a sinister secret.
Hidden throughout Lovecraft Middle School were mysterious “gates” that led to an alternate dimension—a sort of world wi
thin our world, where a demented physicist named Crawford Tillinghast was planning to overthrow the entire human race. He was raising an army of demons and monsters, disguising them as humans, and sending them into the school. Some looked like teachers; others looked like students. Danger was everywhere, and no one could be trusted.
“What about Miss Mandis?” Glenn whispered. After a few minutes of walking, the boys had finally arrived at the nurse’s office, but Glenn stopped just outside the door. “What if she’s one of them?”
“We’ll know if she tries to bite us,” Robert said, and he was only half kidding. “Come on.”
It was their first time meeting the nurse. Robert expected to find Miss Mandis dressed in scrubs, like the uniforms worn by nurses in hospitals. Instead, she looked like a regular mom, in a regular blouse and skirt.
She saw Glenn and leapt out of her chair. “What happened?”
Robert handed her the wasp. “This thing stung him. It was purple five minutes ago.”
Miss Mandis hurried the boys behind a privacy screen and told Glenn to lie down on a cot. “Are you allergic to bee stings?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Have you ever been stung before?”
“Never like this.”
“How are you feeling? Headache, nausea, any trouble breathing?”
Glenn scratched the top of his head. “No.”
She aimed a lamp at the welt on his neck, then studied it through a magnifying lens. It looked redder now, almost violet, and it had swollen to the size of a marble. “I don’t see a stinger anywhere. That’s good.” She cracked open a cold pack, wrapped it in a washcloth, and pressed it to the welt. “This will stop the swelling. Are you feeling any pain?”
“Only where it got me. It feels like my neck’s on fire.”
“We’ll try some antihistamine.” She lifted the cold pack and squeezed some white cream onto the welt. “Let’s see if this helps.”
Robert was afraid Miss Mandis might tell him to go back to gym class, so he tried to look busy. He paced around the office, studying all of the health safety posters. After a few moments, he became aware of a faint buzzing noise. He traced it to the nearest window, where three chunky houseflies were throwing themselves at the glass, over and over, desperate to get outdoors.
He reached to open the window but Miss Mandis stopped him. “Leave them be,” she said. “I don’t want those flies buzzing around my office.”
Robert then realized he was mistaken. The flies were outside the school and trying to come in. They were all flinging themselves against the glass as if they were expecting to smash through.
It might have been funny if it wasn’t so weird.
“How are you feeling?” Miss Mandis asked Glenn. “Is the medicine helping?”
He scratched the hair above his neckline. “I’m not sure.”
“You should probably go home,” she said, reaching for the telephone. “What’s your mom’s number?”
“She lives in Arizona,” Glenn explained.
This was the only thing Robert knew about Glenn’s mother: she lived on the other side of the country and hadn’t been home in a long time. Glenn never mentioned her, so Robert didn’t ask questions.
“How about your father?”
“He’s at work.”
“Can I call him?”
“His boss doesn’t like it. If he gets a phone call, they have to stop the whole line.”
Mr. Torkells worked at Dunwich Cosmetics, the last surviving factory within fifty miles. His job was to squirt shampoo into little foil packets that were bound into magazines as free samples. Glenn sometimes bragged that they never had to buy shampoo in a store, because they had thousands of defective shampoo packets stashed in their bathroom.
“This is an emergency,” Miss Mandis explained. “What’s the phone number of the factory?”
Glenn scratched the top of his head again. “I’m not sure.”
“You keep scratching yourself,” she observed. “Is your scalp bothering you?”
“That’s normal,” Glenn said. “It’s been itchy all week.”
“That’s not normal,” Miss Mandis said.
She pulled on a pair of latex gloves and redirected the lamp to Glenn’s scalp. Then she used a comb to poke through his wavy blond hair. “Oh, dear,” she said, sighing.
“What do you see?” Glenn asked.
“A bunch of tiny wingless insects,” she explained. “Head lice.”
THREE
At the end of the day, after most of the teachers and students had departed for home, Robert walked out to the school parking lot. His friend Karina Ortiz was already there, circling the asphalt and doing ollies on her skateboard. She laughed when she saw Robert coming.
“Oh, no!” she exclaimed.
“Go ahead,” he said. “Laugh it up.”
It turned out that Glenn Torkells wasn’t the only one with head lice. Robert had them, too, and Miss Mandis insisted on treating both boys immediately. She washed their scalps with a medicated shampoo that smelled like tar—and then used electric clippers to shave off nearly all their hair.
“It’s cute,” Karina said “You look like a puppy.”
Robert studied his reflection in the window of a school bus. “I feel like a skinhead.”
“At least you’re not a girl. Jill Warrington was growing her hair for seven years, and this afternoon Miss Mandis hacked it all off. Said it was the only way to make sure the bugs didn’t come back.”
“That seems pretty drastic.”
“Apparently they’re some kind of super-lice. Very contagious. Twenty-eight cases were reported today. And the usual treatments don’t work. You have to go nuclear, or the little grody babies keep hatching.”
“Grody?” Robert asked.
Her face flushed. “Sorry. It means gross.”
Karina often used slang from the 1980s by accident. Technically, she was only thirteen years old, but she had died three decades earlier in an explosion at Tillinghast Mansion. Thanks to some help from Robert and Glenn, she now roamed Lovecraft Middle School like a regular student—but her spirit was trapped on the school grounds. Which is why she and Robert often found themselves goofing around the parking lot after class.
Today, they were joined by Pip and Squeak, a two-headed rat that had crawled inside Robert’s backpack during the first week of school. Robert didn’t know where the rats had come from or why they had chosen him to be their master, but after two months of being together, he couldn’t imagine life without them. Pip and Squeak were smart, courageous, and (along with Glenn and Karina) his best friends.
“So, where is Glenn?” Karina asked.
“Miss Mandis sent him home early,” Robert explained. “He was stung by this crazy purple wasp.”
“It’s been a really weird week. Today at lunch, a ladybug flew into Emily Sena’s mouth. Went right down her throat. And did you hear the janitors are striking?”
“What’s that mean?”
“They’re not cleaning the school until they get a raise. That’s why the trash is piling up. And the bathrooms smell so bad. If you ask me, it’s just going to get worse.”
Karina pushed off on her skateboard and raced toward the handicapped ramp on the edge of the parking lot. All week long, she had been trying to grind the handrail—to leap three feet off the ground and then slide down the railing while balanced on her skateboard.
Instead, she tumbled onto the pavement, and the board went skidding away from her.
“You know, there’s something I don’t understand,” Robert called. “You can’t pick up a pencil. You can’t even open a door. So how is it you can ride a skateboard?”
Karina dusted off her jeans and hopped to her feet. “It’s complicated. Do you have a lot of homework?”
Whenever Robert asked questions about her life as a ghost, Karina tried to change the subject—but this time, he wouldn’t let her. “I want to understand how it works,” he said. “Can you ride a bi
ke? Can you paddle a canoe?”
“Just the skateboard,” she said. “It was with me when I … when the explosion happened.” She kicked the skateboard in Robert’s direction and he tried to stop it with his sneaker, but the board sailed right through his foot.
“Cool!” he exclaimed. “A ghost skateboard!”
She frowned. “You know I hate that word.”
“Right, sorry,” Robert said. “What am I supposed to say?”
“You could just stop bringing it up. We could try to have a conversation where you don’t call me a ghoulish freak.”
“I never said ‘ghoulish freak.’ ”
“What’s the difference?”
“Hey, at least you still have your hair,” Robert joked.
Karina didn’t laugh. “I’d switch places with you any day.”
Pip and Squeak made a loud chattering noise. They seemed to be harassing a trail of ants. Robert called for them to leave the bugs alone but the rats kept chattering. They wanted him to see.
“All right, all right.” He walked over and realized it was no ordinary trail of ants: it was an army. There were hundreds, maybe thousands, marching across the parking lot, ascending the brick wall of Lovecraft Middle School and disappearing through a crack in the mortar. “Look at this,” he told Karina. “Where do you think they’re going?”
“I’m guessing the cafeteria,” she said. “I bet there’s plenty of extra protein in tomorrow’s lunch menu.”
“Maybe this will stop them.” Robert removed a bottle of water from his backpack and poured some on the wall, washing away dozens of ants in a miniature tidal wave.
The rest of the army immediately changed course. Now, instead of marching toward the wall, they marched toward Robert. A few of the ants scaled his sneakers, and he kicked them loose.
“They’re coming to get me, Karina!” he laughed. “Help!”
The ants spread out in a V-shaped formation, as if they were trying to surround him. Their little legs were remarkably fast, and Robert had to jog backward to stay ahead of them. The ants couldn’t catch up, but they didn’t stop trying. They chased him all around the parking lot.
Karina watched their activity with growing dismay.
Tales From Lovecraft Middle School #3: Teacher's Pest Page 1
