The Monsters of Morley Manor

by Bruce Coville

  The only good thing about all the fuss was that by the time it was over Sarah gave up bugging me about how much money I owed her—probably because she could tell I was in such a totally bad mood it wouldn’t do her any good.

  I took the box into my room and slammed the door behind me. Then I got out my set of miniature screwdrivers. Grampa Walker had given them to me for my last birthday, which had been just a month before he died. He gave them to me because I had always liked to play with them when I visited him at the farm. He used to use them for the model railroads he liked to build, but he had dropped that hobby when his hands got too shaky.

  Sometimes I wondered if the reason he had passed them on to me was that he knew he was going to die soon.

  After carefully unwrapping the screwdrivers, which Grampa had kept folded in a black cloth pouch, I began to study the box. How was I supposed to open the thing? I tried sticking the smallest screwdriver into the keyhole and wiggling it around. No luck I didn’t want to break the lock, though I was willing to do that if I had to. But I wasn’t sure I could do it without damaging the wood, and that I did not want to do.

  I turned the box around to examine the hinges. They were held on by tiny screws. Still using the smallest of the screwdrivers, I tried to loosen them.

  As I was working, the box seemed to get warmer, which was truly weird. I thought about stopping, but my curiosity had the best of me, and I was dying to see what was inside. After a lot of fussing, I managed to get the screws out. Then I pried the hinges off.

  The darn box still wouldn’t open.

  Frustrated, I poked the tip of a slightly larger screwdriver between the lid and the body of the box and tried to ease them apart. Just when I was about to stop, for fear of breaking Grampa’s screwdriver, the lid made a horrible squeak and moved up about a half an inch. At the same time my desk lamp began to flicker.

  Again, I thought about stopping.

  It was too late. Something like fog came pouring over the edge of the box, and a green glow showed through the opening. Suddenly a crackle of tingling energy shot up my fingers.

  “Yow!” I cried.

  When I let go of the lid it slammed back onto the body of the box so fast it was almost as if it had been sucked down.

  I stared at the box, torn between terror and a deep curiosity. When I finally got up enough courage, I reached forward and touched it again, just a little tap with the tip of my finger.

  I pulled my hand back quickly.

  Nothing happened.

  I tried again.

  Still nothing.

  Must have been some weird buildup of static electricity, I told myself. But I wasn’t entirely convinced. I decided to go get something to eat, mostly as a way of putting off making a decision about opening the box. Part of me had begun to think it was a bad idea. Part of me was dying to see what was inside. (And yet another part of me was afraid that once I did get it open, I would find nothing interesting at all, which was a different kind of scary.)

  I had lunch, then watched some cartoons with Sarah, which is fun, because you can really bug her by telling her how stupid the plots for Scooby-Doo always are.

  Two hours later I went back into my room. It’s just a box, for pete’s sake! I told myself.

  Even so, I was plenty nervous as I slid it toward me to try to open it again.

  The lid creaked as I pried it up, but this time there was no fog, no tingle. I did see the green glow again, but it vanished as soon as I got the lid all the way open—sort of the reverse of the light in the refrigerator.

  Underneath the lid was . . . another lid! This one was made of wood, too, though a lighter shade, and had a pair of knobs, one on each side, which I figured were for lifting it out. Painted in the center was a fancy circle. In the center of the circle, written in bold black letters, were the words MARTIN MORLEY’S LITTLE MONSTERS.

  Below that, in very fine print, it said, OPEN NOT THIS BOX LEST MY CURSE FALL UPON YOU.

  “Yeah, right,” I muttered. It looked like Old Man Morley was even kookier than everyone had thought.

  Grabbing the knobs, I pulled out the second lid. I gasped in delight.

  The box was divided into five compartments. And inside each compartment was a metal statue of a tiny monster. Three appeared to be male, two female. They were very detailed, beautifully made, and extremely weird.

  At the base of each compartment was an engraved nameplate. I had to rub them clean with a tissue before I could read them.

  I blinked. According to the nameplates, the monsters’ names were Gaspar, Albert, Ludmilla, Melisande, and Bob.

  “Weird names for a bunch of monsters,” I muttered as I picked up Gaspar. (At least, I assumed it was Gaspar. It was possible someone had played with the monsters and put them back in the wrong slots.)

  The little monster was about five inches tall. He had a head like a lizard’s, stuck on top of a muscular, manlike body. A spiny crest rose from the top of his head then disappeared under the neck of his lab coat. A long, powerful tail extended from the back of his ragged trousers. He looked (and felt) as if he were made of solid brass. I fooled around with him a little, making him bounce across my desk and growl and stuff. Then I stood him at the edge of the box, and took out the next figurine, which was Albert.

  Albert was about an inch shorter than Gaspar, and seemed to be a typical mad scientist’s assistant—a fierce-looking hunchback with shaggy hair and a squinty face. His hands stretched forward in a grabbing gesture, as if he had been frozen in midaction. Whoever had made him was really good. He even had a patch sewed into the back of his coarse tunic to make room for his hump. It was all done in brass, of course. But the effect was very realistic.

  Still holding Albert, I looked at the others. Ludmilla was sort of a vampire lady. She had a cape wrapped around her, big eyes, and a pair of fangs that poked down over her lower lip. Melisande had snakes for hair. Bob looked like your basic wolf-man—a human form with a snarling, wolflike face that was, oddly enough, kind of cute. He was in a slight crouch, as if ready to spring at something.

  The detail work on all five of the monsters was amazing; Melisande’s face, for example, had tiny, delicate scales, and she was wearing a slinky, skintight dress that seemed to have scales, also. I began to wonder if the figurines might be more valuable than I had expected.

  I was about to set Albert next to Gaspar so I could examine Ludmilla when Sarah shrieked, “Anthony! Help!”

  Her voice was coming from the bathroom. Still holding Albert, I pushed away from my desk and raced down the hall.

  The bathroom door was half open. I could hear running water and angry chattering. I groaned. Sarah was trying to give Mr. Perkins a bath again!

  “You get back in that tub!” she ordered the monkey as I came through the door.

  The floor was like a swamp. Sarah was half soaked herself, and her damp hair lay flat on her forehead. Mr. Perkins, soaking wet, clung to my sister’s neck, screeching and hissing.

  What really griped me was that he didn’t bite her, and probably wouldn’t, no matter how angry he got. Me he bites out of sheer cussedness. My pukey little sister could tie a knot in his tail and he still wouldn’t set tooth in her skin.

  “Anthony!” cried Sarah again. “Help!”

  What did she expect me to do? If I got near the monkey he was sure to take a chunk out of me. I set Albert on the back of the toilet and made a couple of moves as if to help Sarah. But my heart wasn’t in it, especially when Mr. Perkins turned toward me and bared those nasty little fangs.

  I really don’t know what my mother was thinking when she bought him.

  As it turned out, Sarah didn’t really need my help. A minute later, she had Mr. Perkins off her neck and back in the bathtub.

  It was like turning on a blender. Water splashed all over the place.

  When we were finally done shampooing and toweling Mr. Perkins (I helped with the toweling, because he couldn’t bite me through the thick cloth), I noticed that
some water had splashed onto Albert’s hand. When I said something about it, Sarah wanted to know where the little monster had come from. I ended up showing her the whole set, which she thought was pretty cool.

  Two more strange things happened that night. The first came after supper, when we were cleaning up the kitchen. Gramma had been reading the newspaper and had left it on the table. Sarah glanced at it, then grabbed my arm.

  “Anthony!” she hissed. “That’s him!”

  “Who’s him?” I asked. “What are you talking about?”

  “Him,” she said, pointing to the paper. “That’s the old man who showed me the box you bought today!”

  I picked up the paper and felt a cold chill shiver down my spine. The paper was a few days old, and the article was about the sale to be held at Morley Manor—the sale we had gone to that day. And the picture? It was labeled, “Martin Morley, recently deceased owner of Morley Manor.”

  “You’re crazy,” I said. “He’s dead.”

  “He may be dead,” replied Sarah, “but I swear I saw him.’’

  She looked really nervous.

  I didn’t believe her. I didn’t want to believe her.

  But I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

  As if that wasn’t enough, something even stranger happened when I was getting ready to go to bed. I hadn’t thought any more about Albert’s hand getting wet, until I decided to take a last look at the monsters before I went to sleep.

  Then I saw that his hand had changed color, the brass tones transformed to a dark, fleshy shade.

  I got mad, because I figured the water had damaged whatever Albert was made of. But when I touched his hand I drew my finger back, my anger quickly shifting to fear.

  The little monster’s hand was no longer hard and metallic. Now it felt warm—warm and . . . fleshy.

  I picked up the figurine and stared at it.

  To my horror, its fingers began to move.

  3

  Just Add Water

  I SLAPPED ALBERT back into the box, closed the lid, and latched it. Then I put the box in the bottom drawer of my desk, closed the drawer, and locked that, too.

  But I didn’t leave it there.

  I couldn’t.

  Which isn’t to say I didn’t try. But I couldn’t sleep, thinking about that tiny hand, stretching and grasping. It was horrifying—but not as horrifying as the idea that a living creature was locked, frozen, in my desk. A creature I could revive just by adding water. If Mr. Perkins hadn’t splashed him, if I hadn’t seen that hand move, I would never have known, and it wouldn’t have made any difference. But I did know, and because I did know it seemed to me that I had to do something about it. The thought of keeping some tiny person frozen (or statued, or whatever) was too awful to live with.

  Unfortunately, the idea of bringing him completely to life was pretty awful as well. After all, it was possible he had been frozen for a reason. What kind of monster was he, anyway?

  Well, a small one, to begin with. It wasn’t as if he could tear me limb from limb or anything.

  After fussing like this for an hour or so, I got out of bed, slipped into my robe, and went to my desk.

  I took out the box and opened it.

  Albert’s fist was still moving, clenching and un-clenching, a bit of living flesh stuck on a lifeless metallic figurine. I took a deep breath, then whispered, “All right, buddy, let’s thaw you out.”

  I tucked Albert into the pocket of my robe, then stepped into the hall. It was dark and quiet. I hoped Mr. Perkins was asleep and not just hiding somewhere, getting ready to jump on my head and pee on me again.

  About halfway down the hall, I stopped and went back to Sarah’s room. I stood outside her door, trying to decide whether to wake her. Part of me wanted to do this on my own, keep it all to myself. Another part of me thought it would be a good idea to have someone else along, just in case things got out of hand—and so I would have someone to talk to about it. Also, it’s always better to have Sarah along when I’m doing something that might get me in trouble, since my parents never seem to get as mad when she’s involved.

  Finally I knocked on her door, then pushed it open and hissed, “Sarah! Wake up!’’

  She moaned. “What do you want, Anthony?” (She doesn’t like waking up, especially in the middle of the night.)

  “I have to show you something.”

  She sat up fast, and I remembered that the last time I woke her and said those words, I had also dropped a snake onto her bed.

  “This is different,” I said urgently. I turned on the lamp next to her bed as I spoke, then thrust Albert into the cone of light.

  Sarah gasped at the sight of his tiny moving fingers. Scooching back against the wall, she whispered, “Anthony, that is too weird.” She shuddered, then asked, “How did you do it?”

  “It happened when he got wet. I’m going to go get the rest of him wet now.”

  Sarah grabbed my arm. “Do you think you should?”

  “I have to. It’s not right to leave him like this.”

  “Maybe he’s that way for a reason,” said Sarah, who is very big on being sensible. “Maybe he’s evil.”

  “Maybe whoever froze him was evil.”

  Sarah thought about that for a moment. Though she’s big on being sensible, she’s also big on compassion. She’ll probably be a vegetarian in a year or so. “How can we find out?” she whispered at last.

  “Unfreeze him.”

  “What if it turns out that he is evil?”

  “We’ll squash him!”

  I said that with more certainty than I actually felt, and I had a brief vision of Albert escaping and hiding in the walls, then sneaking out at night to torment us. But just as I was about to change my mind about thawing him out, Sarah said, “Okay, let’s do it!”

  She slipped out of bed and grabbed a flashlight from her nightstand. We both used to have flashlights, but I had lost mine.

  We tiptoed down the hallway—though we didn’t really need to; Gramma Walker is so hard of hearing we probably could have stomped to the bathroom without waking her up.

  Albert’s tiny hand continued stretching and grasping, something I could see all too well by the glow of Sarah’s flashlight.

  “What do we do now?” asked Sarah, when we got to the bathroom.

  “Get him wet,” I replied. I looked at him for a second, then added, “Should we sprinkle him, or dunk him?”

  Sarah thought about it. “Dunk him,” she said at last. “It would be really gross if he came to life in little spots all over his body. Dangerous, too, maybe. I mean for him.”

  I wasn’t sure what the medical rules were for bringing a monster back to life. But I decided Sarah was right.

  So we filled the sink. I dipped Albert into the water, planning to pull him right back out. But as soon as I put him in, the water began bubbling and boiling, splashing over the edge of the sink like some sort of weird chemical reaction. I dropped Albert and jumped back with a yelp. A weird green glow came from the sink.

  Sarah huddled against me. I didn’t push her away.

  When the water calmed down, I saw a little hand thrust through the surface.

  “He’s drowning!” hissed Sarah. “Go save him, Anthony!”

  I started forward, but Albert was already hauling himself onto the edge of the sink. He shook his head, spattering tiny drops of water in all directions. Then he stood, looked around, scratched his head, and said, “Oy, now what has the boss gotten me into?”

  He started to walk along the edge of the basin. “What a strange white road,” he muttered.

  I cleared my throat.

  Albert glanced up at me and Sarah. “Yikes!” he screamed. “Monsters!”

  Then he dived back into the sink.

  I hurried over and looked in. Albert was at the bottom of the basin, clinging to the drain plug. I didn’t do anything at first, but when I began to be afraid he might drown, I reached in and pulled him out. He pounded on my fingers as
I lifted him. I half expected him to bite me in order to get me to drop him, but that was probably only because I’ve spent so much time with Mr. Perkins.

  Albert didn’t bite. He just squirmed like a demented squirrel, shouting, “Let me go, you big brute! I never did nothing to you.”

  “Hey, hey,” I said softly, “I’m not going to hurt you. I thawed you out, didn’t I?”

  He blinked, and a series of expressions raced across his face, shifting through surprise, understanding, anger, fear, and back to understanding. “Uh-oh,” he said. “I think we’ve got a little problem here.” Looking up at me, he asked in a suspicious voice, “What are you, anyway?”

  “I’m a kid.”

  His eyes got wider. “How did you get so big?”

  “How’d you get so small?” I responded.

  We stared at each other for a moment. As far as I was concerned, I wasn’t all that big. Heck, if I was, I wouldn’t have so many problems with Ralph Mangram at school. But I was certainly big compared to Albert. At first I had figured that the little guy had somehow gotten shrunk, but now I wondered if he was from some other world. Maybe he had always been this size, and we humans were giants compared to his people!

  “Would you put me down, please?” he asked softly.

  I set him on the edge of the sink, then knelt so that we were face-to-face. His head was about the size of my eyeball. Sarah knelt next to me.

  “Where are you from?” she asked.

  “Brooklyn, originally,” said Albert.

  “Brooklyn?” I asked.

  “Yeah, you know, as in New York City. Then I lived in Transylvania for a while.”

  Well, those were both on Earth. So much for the other-world theory.

  Sounding nervous, Albert asked, “Where am I now?”

  “Owl’s Roost, Nebraska,” said Sarah proudly.

  Albert’s eyes widened. “But that’s where I live!” He swallowed. “You . . . you’re not giants, are you?”

  Sarah and I shook our heads.