Elizabeth Webster and the Portal of Doom

by William Lashner

  “Do you understand, Elizabeth?” she said slowly, as if I was a little French girl who didn’t speak English.

  “I zink so,” I said.

  She glared at me before asking my father to join her for a little chat. He had known what was coming before we arrived, due to a series of angry text messages about my unknown appointment with some long-retired doctor. Still, he nervously adjusted his glasses before he followed her into the laundry room.

  After the door slammed shut, Keir dropped his pack on the kitchen floor and we sat in silence at the table as my mother’s angry voice vibrated through the walls like, well, like the screech of a banshee.

  “Your mam seems pleasant enough,” said Keir.

  Yes, Keir was at my house, too. Where else was my father going to take him? A few moments later my brother, Petey, wandered into the kitchen, looked around hesitantly, and sat at the table. “Are you staying for dinner?” he said to Keir.

  “What are you having?” said Keir.

  “Zilch. A plateful of zilch. Mom was too mad at me to cook.”

  “She’s not mad at you,” I said. “She’s mad at my father and me. But what did you do this time?”

  “Nothing.” He looked at me with his earnest face, and then, when the face cracked, added, “Much.” Peter, a second grader, was always getting in trouble. That was his superpower.

  “If she didn’t cook,” I said, “I guess that means Chinese food.”

  “I never had Chinese food,” said Keir. “Is it any good?”

  Petey perked up. “Where have you been all your life? Chinese food is not good, it’s the best. And you have to eat it with sticks. Hold on, I’ll teach you.” He jumped up and opened a kitchen drawer.

  When my mom and dad finally came out of the laundry room with fake smiles on their faces, Keir was practicing picking up red grapes with a set of chopsticks. My mother and father stared as Keir’s sticks crossed and a grape spun into the air and onto the floor.

  “I guess we’re having Chinese food,” said my mother.

  “I’m sorry I can’t stay,” said my father. “But Keir, you can stay. In fact, Melinda—I mean Mrs. Scali—has agreed that you can stay here until your hearing, if that’s okay with you.”

  Keir stood up and said, “That would be a pleasure, Mrs. Scali. If I won’t be a bother.”

  “You can stay in my room,” said Petey. “I’ll clear the science experiment off the spare bed. You might need a new blanket, though.” He looked up at Mom. “Did you know that hydrochloric acid is, like, a thing?”

  My mom narrowed her eyes at Petey for a moment before saying, “Keir can use the guest room.”

  Peter and I looked at each other with eyes wide. The guest room was sacred, no kids allowed. In truth, no one was allowed. Ever. We joked that my mom was saving the guest room for the Queen of England in case she ever showed up, but only if the spare bed in Peter’s room was already being used. And now she was giving the guest room to Keir?

  “I’ll put on fresh sheets and lay out some towels for you, Keir,” said my mother. “So what would you guys like to order?”

  “Let’s get General Tso’s,” said Petey.

  “Who is General Tso?” said Keir.

  “He was a famous general,” said Petey.

  “Who fought a courageous battle,” I said.

  “Before dying in a vat of hot oil,” added Petey.

  “And being buried in a sweet sauce,” I said.

  “Such a sad, sad story,” said Petey. “Tasty but sad.”

  As my brother and I laughed and pounded on the table, Keir just stared at us. “I don’t get it,” he said.

  “And you won’t,” said my brother through his laughter, “if you try to eat it with those sticks.”

  Later, during dinner, it was my stepfather, Stephen, who asked the question that would change so much.

  Stephen had brought home the Chinese food—yay!—and Keir was using his fork to eat his General Tso’s chicken, no knife required. There were also egg rolls, and dumplings in soup, and green beans in garlic sauce, and these little green things called bok choy. A feast! But, tragically, there was also conversation.

  “Where do you go to school, Keir?” asked my stepfather.

  “I don’t go to school,” said Keir. “The dead general is quite tasty, Mrs. Scali.”

  “Thank you, Keir,” said my mom.

  “No school?” said Stephen. My stepfather was thin and bald and spoke slowly, as if each of his words was a caramel that would stick in his teeth if he tried to finish it too quickly. But no matter how slowly the words were getting out, all this talk of school could not end well. “A boy your age has so much to learn. What do you do if you don’t go to school?”

  “He’s homeschooled,” I said, jumping in with a half-truth. I mean, Keir had certainly learned a lot at the Château Laveau, like how to avoid the dogs. “Please pass the bok choy?”

  “Homeschooled,” said Stephen. “That’s interesting. Who homeschools you, Keir?”

  “And pass the green beans, too,” I said, jumping in to hijack the conversation and landing on, well, anything. “I guess I’m just on a vegetable kick. You know, Mom, we should have more vegetables. Aren’t vegetables great? What’s your favorite vegetable? Mine is Brussels sprouts. I just like saying it. Brussels sprouts. Let’s go to the store and buy a bucket of Brussels sprouts. Yum!”

  There was a moment when everybody just looked at me like a bushel of Brussels had sprouted right out of my head.

  Then Keir, ignoring my really quite brilliant Brussels sprout maneuver, broke the quiet. “There are plenty of old books in the house,” he said.

  I gave him a stern look before adding, “And his aunt instructs him.”

  “My auntie?” said Keir.

  “Miss Myerscough,” I said. “We met her. Nice lady. She keeps pets. Birds mostly.”

  “She’s not my auntie,” said Keir. “But Miss Myerscough is very instructive.”

  “And very strict,” I said.

  “You can say that again.”

  “And very strict,” said Petey.

  My stepfather looked at me, then at Keir, and then at Peter. I thought for a moment we had sidetracked him from all this school nonsense, but no. He was a lawyer, after all—a mere patent lawyer, as my grandfather always said but a lawyer nevertheless—and it’s hard to sidetrack a lawyer.

  “Well,” he said, “since you’re staying with us for the time being, and Miss Myerscough won’t be around to guide your lessons, perhaps you could go to school here.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said.

  “It would be a shame for Keir to just waste the time,” said Stephen. “And think of the friends, the classes. Lunch. They serve lunch there, don’t they, Elizabeth?”

  “Yes, they serve lunch.”

  “See,” said Stephen. “Tater Tots. Who doesn’t love Tater Tots? That’s a vegetable, too, I believe. And you’d look out for him, right, Elizabeth? Introduce him to your pals. Show him the ropes. Gosh, I think back on my school days with such fondness.”

  “Mom?” I said. “Really? Can you say something, please?”

  My mother would put an end to this nonsense. My stepfather looked at Keir and saw your average kid, but my mother knew better. That was why she was sticking him in the guest room. My mother understood you couldn’t just dump someone like Keir McGoogan, unsuspecting and innocent, on a bunch of wild middle school delinquents who would rip him to shreds.

  My mother looked at Keir for a long moment and then said, “What do you think, Keir?”

  “Trust me, he won’t choose to go to school,” I said. “If I had the choice, do you think I’d choose school? Keir has no interest. None. And why doesn’t he? Because he is sane, that is why. Tell them, Keir. Tell them how sane and normal you are.”

  “It might be educational, Mrs. Scali,” said Keir. “I’m willing to give it a try, if you both think it best.”

  My mother looked at Keir and then
at me and I could see her mind working. I looked at Keir and gave him my What are you doing? face, but Keir just put on that tilted smile of his and shrugged.

  “That’s settled, then,” said my stepfather. “Would you like me to call Superintendent Bartrum, Melinda? She owes me a favor after the last Board of Commissioners’ meeting.”

  “No, dear, I’ll take care of it,” said my mother. “I know just whom to talk to. More beans, Peter?”

  “No thank you,” said Petey. “I don’t want to hog the beans, since Lizzie is suddenly so hungry for vegetables. I could give you all the beans still on my plate, Lizzie, if you want, since Mom gave me so much.”

  “That’s sweet of you,” I said.

  “And good news!” said Petey. “I think there are some carrots in the fridge.”

  Later, after things had settled down and my parents had finally gone to bed, I tiptoed to the guest room and tapped lightly on the door.

  “Come in,” said Keir.

  He was still up, pacing around, looking at the walls, out the window. His pack was sitting on his bed, its contents spilling out. Along with some clothes there were tubes of suntan lotion. It was almost as if his mother had packed for him, his dead banshee mother.

  “What got into you?” I said. Did I say it sweetly? No. Were my hands on my hips? They might have been. Did I sound like my mother? Yes, I’m sad to admit, I did. “How did you get yourself roped into going to school?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “My brain, it just went bonkers.”

  “Then tell them it was a mistake. I’ll bring them in right now and you can tell them.”

  “Is it, really? A mistake, I mean. I don’t know, Elizabeth. It might be a bit of fun.”

  “I’m there every day and I assure you—there’s no fun. Why do you think they call it school?”

  “I don’t know. Why?”

  “Because there’s no fun!”

  “I didn’t last long at school my first go-round. The nuns wouldn’t put up with my nonsense. Maybe I can do it right this time. You think?”

  I stared at his hopeful face for a moment. “The kids are going to eat you alive.”

  “I’m a bit rusty in palling around, true,” he said. “But if I’m to live outside the château’s gates like you want me to, I’m going to have to learn to deal with people who look to be the same as me. Like I said, it might be educational.”

  Didn’t I have enough to worry about just then? Schoolwork, and the sweeping at Webster & Spawn, and my battling parents, and the gremlin. The gremlin! Didn’t I have enough on my plate without having to usher Keir McGoogan around the halls of Willing Middle School West?

  Apparently not.

  And the whole mess turned even messier when late that night I was woken up by something scraping and banging against my window. I tried to ignore it, but that wouldn’t do. Maybe it was Natalie on the branch by my window with some secret message. Or maybe it was the squirrels, which had made a home in that tree, scrambling around like chipmunks. I grabbed the flashlight I used to read under my covers at night, slipped out of bed, and crept over to the window.

  I raised the blinds and flicked on the flashlight to get a look. Then I flicked it off, lowered the blinds, jumped back in my bed, and hugged my knees to my chest.

  What had I seen?

  A bat is what I had seen. Except, this bat was as big as a cat. As it flapped around, it stared through the window right at me and showed me its sharp little teeth. And I began to sense what exactly we were dealing with in the strange case of Keir McGoogan.

  Was I scared? Let’s just say if I’d hugged my knees any tighter, they would have been behind me.

  PIRANHA

  There were birds in the trees outside our house the next morning, not sweet little birds twittering about love and worms, but great black birds with red heads, so heavy from the carcass bits sitting in their bellies that the branches drooped.

  “Nothing to worry about,” said Keir. “Just the countess’s little spies.”

  “Not so little,” I said.

  The same pack was sitting in the trees outside the school when my stepdad dropped us off. They had beat us to the spot. They were clever winged things, I had to give them that.

  After we climbed out of the car, Keir and I stood side by side as we faced the old stone building. He had on his red plaid jacket and his blue baseball cap, but his usual sly smile was nowhere to be seen. He stood frozen while kids streamed around us.

  “Is something wrong?” I said.

  “For some reason I’m feeling green around the gills,” he said. “It must be the dead general I ate.”

  “It’s not the food,” I said. “You’re just scared. And why wouldn’t you be? This is the most terrifying building known to humankind.”

  “Don’t be forgetting I just spent a hundred years in the queen bee’s flophouse.”

  “This makes the Château Laveau look like a petting zoo,” I said as I spread my arms wide. “Welcome to middle school.”

  As I led Keir McGoogan through the halls of Willing Middle School West, I tried to see the scene through his innocent eyes. Packs of wild kids shouting and jostling, pushing and shoving, calling out greetings and insults, knocking books onto the floor. Other kids staring down at their feet, wearing headphones, trying to be ignored as they headed for their lockers (my people!). Kids and more kids, a kaleidoscope of kids of all sizes and colors and cliques, with their fears and hopes, their packs and eyeglasses, their own little demons sitting on their shoulders and jabbing spears into their necks. They made the birds in the trees outside look like bath toys, the hounds look like stuffed puppies.

  “It seems safe enough,” said Keir.

  “Not if your eyes are open,” I said.

  “But why is everyone squeaking? They pass us and they squeak.”

  “I have no idea,” I lied. “Maybe their voices are changing.”

  “That girl there is waving at you.”

  “It’s safer to just ignore everyone,” I said. “Keep your head down and pretend you don’t hear or see anything.”

  “Lizzie, Lizzie, over here,” I heard above the shouts and laughter.

  I broke my own rule, looked up, and saw Natalie standing at her locker with Henry. I put up a hand, telling them to wait, and then took hold of Keir’s sleeve and guided him through the streaming crowd, like I was guiding a baby deer through a piranha-filled section of the Amazon. We made it safely to the other side, barely, and entered the school office.

  “Hello, Elizabeth,” said Mrs. Haddad at the front desk. “How was your doctor’s appointment yesterday?”

  “Eventful,” I said. “This is Keir McGoogan. He’s a new student? I was told he was supposed to check in at the office?”

  “We’ve been waiting for you, Keir,” said Mrs. Haddad. “Mrs. Scali told us all about you. Have a seat, and Mr. Gavigan will be with you shortly.”

  “Mr. Gavigan?” I said.

  “Yes, of course. All new students need to be evaluated by a guidance counselor.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” said Keir before walking over to the row of chairs against the wall. I followed and sat down next to him.

  “We have a problem,” I said in a soft voice.

  “What kind of problem?” said Keir.

  “Mr. Gavigan. He’s going to ask you all kinds of personal questions, but he can’t know anything other than that you’re a twelve-year-old kid who has been homeschooled. Nothing about the countess, or your mom being a ghost, or especially about how old you really are.”

  “Don’t worry, Elizabeth,” said Keir. “I think I can handle a wee guidance counselor.”

  “Don’t be so sure. He’s going to look into your eyes and say all he wants to do is help. They’re trained to do that, like seals are trained to balance basketballs on their noses. But if you let down your guard for even a moment, he’ll snatch you up like a mackerel.”

  “Elizabeth?” said Mrs. Haddad. “Don’t you need to get to homer
oom?”

  “I thought I’d wait with Keir,” I said, “him being new and all.”

  “That’s nice of you, dear, but I’m sure he’ll be fine.” She waved her fingers like she was shooing flies from her desk. “Scoot on off to class.”

  I gave Keir a warning look and then I scooted.

  Natalie and Henry were still waiting for me when I came out of the office. Natalie was giving me one of her stern faces, the kind she gives when you snatch a French fry off her plate. Natalie’s not a sharer with her food.

  “I texted all night but got nothing,” she said. “You ghosted me.”

  “What else do you expect from Webster?’ said Henry.

  “What was the emergency that got you out of Armbruster’s class,” said Natalie, “and how can I have one before I have to give my report on that stupid book of yours?”

  “It was my dad,” I said.

  “Ah, the plot thickens,” said Natalie.

  “It had something to do with a case.”

  “Your gremlin case?” said Henry. “Natalie told me about it. Oh man, what I wouldn’t give to see a gremlin. Maybe rub his head and make a wish.”

  “Those are genies, not gremlins,” said Natalie.

  “Her name’s Althea,” I said. “And I might need that old book back, Natalie, because I think I’m seeing her at the office this afternoon.”

  “Can I come, Webster?” said Henry. “Please? We’re a team, right? Like when we found Beatrice’s head. You, me, and Natalie, we’re like the Three Musketeers.”

  “Now we’ll be the gremlineers,” said Natalie.

  “Why would we be a gremlin’s ears?” said Henry.

  I looked at Henry, who didn’t understand why Natalie was laughing at him. “I actually might need an official gremlin wrangler,” I said.

  Henry raised his hand. “Let me do it, Webster. Please.”

  “Do you have any experience with animals?”

  “We had a dog,” said Henry. “He died. And then we got Perky.”

  “Good enough. Meet me at the front door after school.” I looked left, looked right, and then lowered my voice. “But that’s not what yesterday was about.”