Elizabeth Webster and the Portal of Doom

by William Lashner

  THE ONE QUESTION TOO MANY

  Althea didn’t bolt right through the opening like she had in my grandfather’s office. Instead she cautiously stuck out her head and looked around. At that very same moment the ram’s head reared up—as far up as it could rear, stuck as it was on the wall—and it bellowed so loudly that the licorice stick fell out of its mouth.

  Althea stepped slowly out of the crate, hunched as if afraid of the ram, before Henry gently lifted her into his arms. She looked up at Henry with her big glowing eyes and she cooed.

  That’s right, she cooed. Was Henry Harrison the greatest gremlin wrangler of all time or what?

  “Is this your gremlin, Mr. Topper?” asked the judge.

  Mr. Topper stood. “Yes, it is, Judge. My very sweet little Althea.”

  “Althea?” said the judge. “I once knew an Althea. She was the mistress of an estate in Lancashire.” His bloodred eyes grew distant. “She was quite a spirited woman.”

  “It was my mother’s name, Your Honor,” said Mr. Topper.

  “You don’t say,” said the judge. “How extraordinary.”

  “Ms. Moss,” I said. “Have you ever before seen the gremlin that is cooing now at Henry?”

  Cassandra Moss stuttered a bit and then said, “I don’t know.”

  “Would you like a better look? Henry, please bring Althea closer to the witness.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” said the suddenly nervous witness. “Not necessary at all.”

  “Maybe we all need a closer look,” said the judge. “Come forward, Mr. Harrison, and bring Althea with you.”

  Henry carried the gremlin around the table and toward the witness. Althea hung on to Henry’s neck and muttered as if she was terrified of what Ms. Moss would do to her. The ram’s head on the wall was making such a commotion that the judge turned around and pointed his gavel at it.

  “Bailiff,” said the judge. “Control thyself.”

  “Y-y-yes, sir,” neighed out the ram.

  “Look closely at Althea, Ms. Moss,” I said. “How tall would you say she is?”

  “I don’t know,” said the witness.

  “She’s surely not six or so feet tall, is she?”

  “I’d say not,” said the judge.

  “And what is its color?”

  “Something green?” said the witness.

  “Not gray. And though its eyes glow, as you said before, you wouldn’t say they burn with hatred, would you?”

  Just then Althea tickled Henry’s chin and giggled her gremlin giggle.

  “In fact,” I said, “while Althea matches the glimpses you got of her while she was on Mr. Topper’s property, she is nothing like the beast you claimed devoured your goat.”

  “It doesn’t make any—”

  “Maybe, getting out of the bath without your glasses and then looking out the window, you were confused by what you saw.”

  “I suppose that—”

  “And yet you are seeking to destroy this sweet little animal, isn’t that right?”

  “Objection, Your Honor,” said Josiah Goodheart. “This is simply too much to bear. Ms. Webster is parading this beast around the court as if it’s a baby in a beauty pageant.”

  “Rylands v. Fletcher, Mr. Goodheart,” said the judge. “There is a question as to whether this innocent little creature was the one that indeed attacked the goat in question. But beyond that, without any showing of negligence—and Ms. Webster has ably established that the plaintiff has no knowledge of the care defendant took or didn’t take in protecting the neighborhood from his gremlin—the question becomes whether this gremlin is the kind of animal likely to do mischief. For that we need to judge the creature on a case-by-case basis. Let me get a closer look. Lift her up to me, Mr. Harrison,” he said, tapping the top of his desk. “Put her right here next to me.”

  Henry looked at me and I nodded. He took a snack out of his pocket and gave it to Althea. As she was chewing, he lifted her onto the desktop next to the judge. Henry looked again at me and I gestured to him to step back, leaving the judge and Althea alone at the judge’s bench.

  I couldn’t help but flinch when the judge reached his pale, wrinkled finger toward the gremlin. Would the gremlin bite it off? Would she set it on fire with her eyes or use it as a step to climb onto his head before leaping up to the chandeliers hanging from the ornate ceiling? I had gambled the entire case on the behavior of a gremlin. What kind of idiot would do such a thing?

  Exactly!

  But Althea didn’t snap off the judge’s finger with her teeth. Instead she wrapped her little hand around it and started laughing. The judge ruffled the tuft of hair beneath the gremlin’s ear, and the gremlin snickered. The judge wagged his gavel back and forth, and the gremlin’s little head wagged back and forth with the hammer, forth and back. It was more than cute.

  “Why, this is a delightful creature,” said the judge. “She is such a sweet, peaceful thing, with a lovely name. And you seek to destroy her, Mr. Goodheart?”

  “The law is the law, Your Honor.”

  “The law may be the law, but it contains an element of mercy in all its provisions,” said the judge. “Do you have any other witnesses, Mr. Goodheart?”

  “No, Your Honor.”

  “And you, Ms. Webster, will you be foolish enough to call a witness of your own?”

  I looked at my father sitting on the barristers’ bench. He shook his head slightly, just enough for me to see. “No, Your Honor,” I said.

  “Very wise. I believe I’m ready to rule. In the matter of—”

  There was a banging from the back of the courtroom. The judge stopped speaking and peered up the aisle to the courtroom door. We all turned and looked as the door slowly opened.

  Then it appeared, through the now-open door, ambling in without an ounce of concern for where it might be or what it might be disturbing, looking left, looking right, searching for a tuft of grass as it moseyed ever forward toward the judge.

  A goat.

  That’s right, a goat. I looked at the goat and then turned to look up at Althea, who was staring at the goat with eyes glowing ever redder.

  I swiveled my gaze back to the goat, then back to the gremlin. The judge was also twisting his head back and forth, facing first the goat, then Mr. Topper’s gremlin. He pulled away from the gremlin as Althea let out a little exclamation that sounded like,

  “Uh-oh.”

  Uh-oh was right. Uh-oh had never been righter. Uh-oh was my new life motto. Sew it onto my flag, write it into the chorus of my personal anthem. Uh-oh, daddy-o, a goat has come to court.

  As I turned back to see what the goat was up to, my gaze snagged on the face of Josiah Goodheart. His eyes were smiling, his lips were smiling, the teeth peeking through his smile were smiling. When he saw me looking, he gave the tiniest shrug, which told me just how bad this uh-oh was going to be.

  That was when Althea started to change. Her body swelled, as if she was a balloon being blown up. Her arms grew longer, her nails turned into claws, her teeth lengthened into twisting spears. The cute little horns running down her back sharpened into vicious spikes as her green skin turned gray.

  The ram within the five-pointed star on the wall above the judge’s desk began to screech. His rounded horns banged into the wall behind him, cracking the plaster. And then the ram let out a call that shook the courtroom so much that the chandeliers swayed and the flying babies held on to the painted dome for dear life. And this is what the ram called out in all his terror:

  “Chupacabra!”

  The goat stopped, looked up.

  He didn’t know it, the poor little goat, but he himself was the one question too many. And the answer, trust me when I tell you, wasn’t pretty.

  HAMLET’S GHOST

  Chupacabra?” said Doug Frayden, leafing through my grandfather’s copy of White’s Legal Hornbook of Demons and Ghosts. When he found the right page he tapped a finger on one of the entries. “Uh-oh,” he said. “Not good, Elizabe
th. Not good at all.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said.

  We were sitting on the floor in Young-Mee’s basement, all the kids from the original Julius Caesar banshee experience—like a ride at Disney World!—along with Keir, the banshee’s son. We had asked Barnabas, still guarding Keir, to join us inside, but he said he was more comfortable keeping an eye on the perimeter of the house. Good old Barnabas.

  “According to the hornbook,” said Doug, “we’re talking about a vampire for goats.” He glanced uneasily at Keir before continuing. “From the Spanish words chupar—”

  “Which means ‘to suck,’” said Natalie.

  “And cabra,” said Doug.

  “Which means ‘goat,’” said Natalie.

  “Hence, chupacabra,” said Doug.

  “Goat sucker,” said Natalie.

  “Sounds like a milk shake,” said Charlie Frayden. “I’ll have two burgers and a vanilla goat sucker.”

  “With a side of fries,” said Henry, lying on his back with his legs crossed, looking up at the ceiling.

  “The only thing fried in that courtroom,” I said, “was my case.”

  “It says chupacabras have gray fur and glowing red eyes,” said Doug, “and they’re found primarily in Mexico and Puerto Rico.”

  Henry sat up. “Didn’t Althea come from Puerto Rico?”

  “Yes, she did,” I said. “But how did a Puerto Rican chupacabra end up in a pet store in Fishtown just when Mr. Topper was searching for a solution to his goat problem?”

  “A mystery begging to be solved,” said Charlie.

  “I have to admit I miss Althea,” said Henry. “She was a cool little fiend.”

  “What happened to her?” said Young-Mee, holding her fluffy white dog on her lap.

  “Nothing good,” said Henry. “She got the cage.”

  “The cage?”

  “Oh man,” said Natalie. “I hate that cage.”

  As soon as the chupacabra attacked the goat, as Goodheart knew it would, Ivanov came running from his post behind the door with his tightly buttoned uniform, his orange hat, and a net he used for just such emergencies. The net had come from the other side, he told me later, and could neutralize the supernatural power of any troublemaker that acted up in court. The chupacabra, in the middle of sucking the blood from the poor dying goat, lifted its head and snarled as Ivanov tossed the net on top of it.

  In an instant the chupacabra turned back into Althea, sweet Althea, her cute little green face now smeared with goat blood.

  “To the cage with you,” said the judge.

  “Noooo!” said Althea.

  “Althea!” said Mr. Topper.

  “What about due process?” I said, as if the words themselves would make my argument. “The trial isn’t even finished. Mr. Topper has the right to be heard. Due process!”

  “Mr. Topper has had all the process he is due,” declared the judge. “Lock up that thing.”

  And just that quickly, Althea was shoved through the open cage door. The door was locked and the cage descended slowly, slowly, its chain creaking all the while, slowly into the hole in the floor. After a great flash of light the cage rose again, empty.

  “Now,” said the judge, “about those damages.”

  It was as brutal a defeat as a barrister could suffer in court. You know how they say there was blood on the floor? Well, this time there really was blood on the floor. As the judge calculated how much Mr. Topper owed Ms. Moss based on the current price of goat meat in something called the Kingston Jubilee Market, Ivanov mopped.

  Even worse was the way my father looked at me through it all. Like his disappointment was more than disappointment, like he was embarrassed that I even existed. It was enough to make me want to quit the whole legal thing. But we weren’t in Young-Mee’s basement only to hash out my latest disaster in the Court of Uncommon Pleas. That was just for sport. We had more important matters to discuss.

  Since this was the gang there at the beginning of the banshee case, I thought it only fair (after swearing them to utter secrecy) to bring them up to speed on everything that had happened since. They were amazingly cool about Keir’s vampireyness—to his new friends, it seemed just another part of his essential Keirness. Now they were helping us figure out our next step. Like how to get hold of the contract that bound Keir McGoogan to the Château Laveau for all eternity. And what to do about the girl who tried to kill Keir. And then there was the peculiar Dr. Van and his Sedona Academy for Special Cases.

  “It maybe doesn’t look half bad,” said Keir, paging through the full-color brochure Natalie had received from the academy, “for a prison.”

  “It’s not a prison,” I said. “It’s a paradise.”

  From what we could tell from the brochure—and it was quite the brochure, thick with pictures of happy children frolicking and an ultramodern schoolhouse perched on a cliff with playing fields and pools and horses—the academy was like an amusement park for peculiar children. And did I mention the horses?

  “They even have private chefs,” said Natalie.

  “Yum,” I said. “What about butlers?”

  “I don’t see anything about butlers,” said Keir. “But it says here that the staff caters to the students’ every whim.”

  “That’s a lot of whim,” said Charlie Frayden.

  “If I end up in boarding school,” I said, “that sounds like the boarding school for me.”

  “Maybe for you, Elizabeth,” said Keir, “but I’ve been locked up long enough. And I already told you Dr. Van gives me the creeps.”

  “He seems nice enough,” I said. “And he saved you once already. What have you found out about him, Natalie?”

  “Nothing,” said Natalie. “Other than some stuff on the school’s website. He’s like a ghost. But I might have found out something about the girl who attacked us. It seems to be quite the tragic story, a real weeper. I’m thinking I should try talking to her mother on Saturday. You want to come with?”

  “I suppose,” I said.

  “Maybe I should come, too,” said Keir.

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

  “Why not?” said Keir.

  “Safety?”

  “But it’s me she was after. I should be part of finding out why.”

  I looked at Natalie, who shrugged.

  “Fine. And we’ll bring Barnabas for protection. But what you really should be thinking about, Keir, is how to find that contract. My father is doing what he can to find a copy, but you said the original might still exist in the Château Laveau.”

  “If it’s anywhere, it’ll be in the countess’s private library,” said Keir. “But there’s still the matter of the birds.”

  “You mean guards?” said Young-Mee.

  “Birds,” I said.

  “I’ll bring Kyu,” said Young-Mee. She took hold of her little dog’s face, turned it to her, and nuzzled the dog’s nose with her own. “Kyu will scare them away, won’t you, Kyu?”

  “They’ll eat your dog,” said Keir. “And clean their beaks with its bones.”

  “Not my Kyu!” said Young-Mee.

  “With the help of a crew, I can trick the birds and handle the countess’s dogs, too,” said Keir.

  “We’ll be your crew,” said Doug.

  “Don’t be so quick to volunteer,” said Keir. “It’s scarier than you think.”

  “That’s okay,” said Charlie. “We like scary.”

  “No you don’t,” said Doug. “Remember that movie about the dead clown? You ran out after the first smile.”

  “Of course I ran,” said Charlie. “There was a dead clown. But things are different now that we work with Elizabeth. She’s way scarier than some dead clown.”

  “Was that a compliment?” I said. “That doesn’t sound like a compliment.”

  “We’re in,” said Doug. “Both of us.”

  “Me too,” said Henry.

  “We’re all in,” said Natalie. She looked at Young
-Mee, who nodded.

  “Why would you all risk anything for me?” said Keir. “I don’t have enough money to make it worth your while.”

  “Because we like you,” said Henry.

  “Don’t be daft. No one does anything just because they like you.”

  “Now who’s being daft?” I said.

  I couldn’t really imagine what a hundred years under the control of the countess had done to Keir, but I was starting to get the idea. What kind of person would only help a friend if you paid him? What kind of person would think the only way to get a friend’s help was to pay for it? My mother might have been right to send Keir to school after all.

  Just then there was a knock on the basement door.

  We looked at each other as the door opened and we heard footsteps. We were imagining all the terrible things that could be coming down after us—Miss Myerscough, a chupacabra, a girl with a wooden stake—but it was only Young-Mee’s mother carrying a tray with a plate of pastries and a pitcher of iced tea.

  “I brought you down some bungeo-ppang to keep up your energy,” said Mrs. Kwon.

  “They look like fish,” said Keir.

  “But they taste like heaven,” said Young-Mee, and she was right.

  “It’s wonderful to see you children so interested in Shakespeare,” said Mrs. Kwon. “And I must say, unusual. Are you still discussing Julius Caesar?”

  “We’ve moved on to Hamlet, Mrs. Kwon,” said Charlie. “The ghostly parent, the son who can’t make up his mind, the big sword fight at the end where everyone dies.”

  As soon as Charlie said that we all looked at each other nervously, as if a curse had been cast and some sad and brutal ending of this story had just been assured.

  “How sweet,” said Young-Mee’s mother.

  EMPTY GLASS

  Travis and Diego were the best of friends,” said Natalie during our Saturday bus ride to the neighborhood where Pili grew up. This was the second of two buses—quite a journey. Natalie was in the row in front of Keir and me, turned around on her seat and leaning on her elbows as she talked. “They went to the same school, hung out at each other’s houses. The obituary talked about them being closer than brothers.”