Professor Gargoyle (9 page)

“Don’t let go!” Glenn yelled, his eyes wide with terror. “Please, Robert, don’t you let—” And then a thin purple tentacle coiled itself around Glenn’s
mouth, silencing his voice.

Robert could feel Glenn’s wrists slipping through his fingers. It was too late. He was losing his grip and Glenn was going to disappear inside the black, swirling vortex …

And then Robert felt four tiny paws racing up his back and vaulting over his shoulder. Pip and Squeak landed on the largest tentacle and sank their teeth into it. From deep within the locker came a low, bellowing roar. Pip and Squeak bit again and again. Fizzy green goo bubbled out of the wounds like a strange toxic sludge. One by one, the tentacles released their grip on Glenn and retreated into the locker. Robert pulled hard on Glenn’s wrists, yanking him back into the hallway. Both boys landed in a heap on the floor and for a long time, at least a minute, they didn’t move. They were too numb and frightened and exhausted to do anything.

The next time Robert looked at his locker, it resembled a perfectly ordinary locker, with rigid metal walls and a hook for hanging coats. Pip and Squeak were
resting contentedly on the small shelf near the top.

“What just happened?” Glenn finally asked.

“We saved your life,” Robert said. “You’re supposed to say thank you.”

Robert stepped through the front door of his house and called out to his mother. “Mom, are you here?”

“In the kitchen,” she called back.

“I brought a friend for dinner, is that okay?”

“You brought a
what
?”

Glenn lingered in the doorway, as if he hadn’t made up his mind to stay or go. “Maybe I should just leave,” he whispered. “We could talk tomorrow—”

Mrs. Arthur came out to the living room, wiping her wet hands on a dish towel. “Come in, come in!” she exclaimed warmly, as if the governor of Massachusetts had just arrived in her living room.

“Mom, this is Glenn.”

“You’re one of Robert’s classmates? You go to Lovecraft Middle School?”

Glenn shrugged. “I guess.”

“It’s very nice to meet you. We’d love to have you stay for dinner. Does your mom know you’re here? Do you want me to call her?”

“She lives in Arizona.”

“Oh,” Mrs. Arthur said. “How about your father?”

“You don’t need to call anyone, Mrs. Arthur.”

“Well, dinner will be ready at five. Let me fix you a snack in the meantime.”

The boys carried bowls of pretzels and potato chips up to Robert’s bedroom. Once the door was closed, Robert unzipped his backpack and the rats scampered out onto the carpet.

“This is Pip and Squeak. We’ll need to swipe some food for them at dinner. Whatever you can drop in your lap without my mother noticing. They eat pretty much anything.”

Glenn stared at the creature, fascinated. Pip and
Squeak seemed to relish the attention. They smiled, chattered their teeth, and purred.

“Which one controls the body?”

“I’m not sure. They might take turns.”

“I thought Professor Goyle got rid of them.”

“He tried,” Robert said. “But last night I snuck into his classroom and took them back.”

“You did not!”

“I sure did. And that’s not the worst part.”

Robert told Glenn the whole story. He started with Karina and the attic above the library. Then he explained how he and Karina hid in the supply closet and saw Goyle swallow the hamster. Then he described how he tried to return to the attic but couldn’t find it.

“I’ve been dying to talk about this stuff all day. But who’s going to believe we saw a giant squid come out of my locker? Who’s going to believe any of it?”

Glenn chewed thoughtfully on a potato chip. “Nobody.”

They sat across from each other on the floor, with Pip and Squeak between them gnawing on the corner
of an old Monopoly game box. Robert didn’t stop them; he was too caught up in the weirdness of the moment. Glenn Torkells, his least favorite person in the world, was sitting in his bedroom. Hanging out and munching on potato chips. Like they were old pals.

“And by the way,” Robert continued, “when those tentacles grabbed you? I was pretty tempted to let them carry you away. Just so you know.”

Glenn stared down at his lap, and his dirty blond hair fell over his face. “I know.”

“That’s all you’re going to say?”

“What do you
want
me to say?”

“You’ve been a real jerk to me, Glenn. All the name-calling, the pushing, the shoving, the gummy worms. I used to wish that a giant monster would come out of nowhere and swallow you whole. I never thought it would actually happen.”

Glenn didn’t respond. He just sat there watching Pip and Squeak as they gnawed through the Monopoly box. Finally he reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of wrinkled bills. “Here.”

Robert counted the money. “Three bucks? That’s your apology? Three lousy bucks?”

“It’s dweeb tax,” Glenn explained. “How much have I taken from you since I started? A hundred? Two hundred?”

“More like five hundred,” Robert said.

“Then I’ll pay back five hundred,” Glenn said, wincing as he made the promise. “It’ll probably take me a while. But I’ll give you a little every week. I swear I’ll pay you the whole five hundred bucks, all right?”

All Robert really wanted was for Glenn to say he was sorry, but he’d be happy to take the five hundred bucks instead. He supposed that, to a kid like Glenn, five hundred bucks probably meant the same thing.

“Apology accepted,” he said.

“So what now?” Glenn asked. “What happens when we go to school tomorrow?”

Robert didn’t know the answer to that question. Part of him wanted to find a trustworthy adult—probably Mr. Loomis—and describe everything he’d seen. But what he’d seen was impossible. In real life,
tentacles didn’t come wriggling out of school lockers. In real life, science teachers didn’t eat the classroom pets. How could he expect anyone to believe him?

And what if Professor Goyle wasn’t acting alone? What if other teachers at Lovecraft were just like him? What if Principal Slater ate hamsters every morning for breakfast? If Robert told the truth to the wrong person, he could end up in bigger trouble than he was now.

“We need to find Karina,” he said. “She watched Goyle swallow that hamster and she didn’t even flinch. I think she knows more about Lovecraft than she’s letting on.”

“So where do we look for her?” Glenn asked.

Before Robert could answer, he heard his mother calling. “Boys, come quick! You need to see this!”

Robert and Glenn hurried downstairs to the living room. Mrs. Arthur had the television tuned to the evening news. On the screen, a reporter was standing outside the main entrance of Lovecraft Middle School.

“… live coverage with more disturbing developments
at the new Lovecraft Middle School in Dunwich, Massachusetts. Just yesterday morning, we reported that seventh-grader Sylvia Price was missing, and her whereabouts are still unknown. This afternoon, we learned that Sylvia’s twin sister, Sarah, has also disappeared. Two missing children in forty-eight hours. Should we expect more?”

The news anchor turned to the chief of the Dunwich Police Department, who gave all the usual warnings about avoiding strangers and staying out of unfamiliar automobiles.

Robert and Glenn exchanged uneasy glances. They both understood that they had narrowly escaped becoming the third and fourth missing students from Lovecraft Middle School.

And there would almost definitely be more.

The next morning, Robert was brushing his teeth when he heard a knock at the front door. He went downstairs and found Glenn standing on his porch.

“What’s up?”

“Your house is on my way to school,” Glenn shrugged. “I thought we could walk together.”

“All right.” Robert whistled for Pip and Squeak, zipped the rats inside his backpack, and pulled the front door closed. “Let’s go.”

It was a cool gray morning. It had thunderstormed the night before, and the potholes in the street were filled with rainwater.

“This is a nice block,” Glenn observed.

“You think?” Robert had never heard anyone describe his street as nice. Most of his neighbors didn’t even have grass.

“It’s quiet,” Glenn said.

Every few steps, the boys would pass an earthworm writhing on the sidewalk, washed up by the rainstorms, and every time, Glenn would reach down and fling the worm onto a muddy lawn. It seemed like weird behavior, but Robert didn’t say anything. Lately, he was learning all kinds of weird things about Glenn Torkells.

“I’ve been thinking about what happened yesterday,” Glenn said. “I figure the school must be haunted.”

“By what? Giant squids?”

“Once I saw this movie about a haunted house,” he explained. “It looked totally normal on the outside, but inside all this weird stuff kept happening. Stuffed animals floating around. The daughter got sucked into a television set. Finally they figured out the house was built on an old Native American burial
ground. The spirits of all the dead bodies were trapped under the house, so they were rising up to haunt them.”

“You think Lovecraft Middle School was built on an old graveyard?”

“It’s possible, isn’t it?”

Robert shrugged. “When you’ve got giant squids coming out of lockers, anything’s possible.”

They agreed to meet at lunch to research the theory, but Robert couldn’t wait three hours to get started. His first class of the day was gym. He told his teacher he wasn’t feeling well and asked permission to study in the school library. Once there, Robert asked Ms. Lavinia to point him to the old newspapers. It took him just a few minutes to find the September 7 issue of
The Dunwich Chronicle
, the local daily newspaper. There was a front-page article about the grand opening of Lovecraft Middle School. Robert scanned the text until he reached the important part: