The Monsters of Morley Manor

by Bruce Coville

  “But your chains don’t hold you,” I said, thinking of how it had lifted its hand to receive us.

  Ivanoma actually smiled, and I thought that I would die of joy on the spot.

  “My chains are of my own making, and I can break them at any time. I choose to be here, to console the dead, to offer them help, and guidance, and love, when they are ready to receive it.”

  I saw Gramma nudge Grampa, as if to say, “You should have taken advantage of this, you old fool.”

  “The dead need your help now,” I said.

  Ivanoma raised a single eyebrow. The gesture was like a sunrise.

  Quickly, I told the angel what we knew about the Flinduvians.

  Its frown nearly killed me.

  “I know this to be true,” it whispered in a voice that throbbed with pain, as if it held the weight of ten thousand years of human misery. “I have sensed five times in the last moments—you must understand, moments are different to me than they are to you—I have sensed five times someone being wrenched from the Land of the Dead, heard a cry of terror, felt a stab of fear different from the fear I feel when they enter here. I did not know what it meant.”

  “Can you help?” I cried.

  “I can warn the dead,” Ivanoma replied.

  “Surely you can do more than that,” I said urgently. “You are so strong, so powerful.”

  “I am bound,” replied Ivanoma.

  “But you can break the chains!”

  “I have promised not to.”

  And that was all it would say. It was all we had come for, really. We wanted to warn the dead. Ivanoma said it would do that for us. Our mission was accomplished. But still . . .

  “Come,” whispered Gaspar. “It’s time for us to leave.”

  He might as well have said it was time to rip my heart out of my chest and drop it, still beating, into the dog’s dish.

  “Leave?” I cried. “We can’t leave!”

  “You must,” whispered Ivanoma. “The living do not belong here. It was brave of you to come, but you must go back where you belong. Let me warn the dead. You tend to the living.”

  The angel closed its eyes and laid its head back against the frozen lake.

  It was like being released from a trap you didn’t know was holding you. I could never have left the Land of the Dead as long as I was looking into those eyes. Now I was free to go.

  And we did go, almost instantly, for in the space of less than a heartbeat we were back in our bodies, back in the world of the living.

  It was clear that Ivanoma had hurried us on our way.

  It was also soon clear that the angel had made another mistake.

  17

  Grampa

  WHEN I OPENED my eyes, I saw nothing but deep blackness. For a minute I feared we hadn’t made it back after all. Then I remembered we had left our bodies in a sub-sub-sub-basement of Morley Manor, and that the place was completely dark.

  I heard Sarah stirring beside me. “Anthony?” she whispered. “Are you there?”

  “I’m here,” I said quietly.

  “Did all that really happen?”

  “I think so.”

  “It was real,” said Gaspar. I heard him fumbling around. He struck a match. Even though it was a tiny flame, in the darkness its sudden flare seemed horribly bright. As I blinked against it I saw that Melisande was sitting up, brushing herself off. Bob was still lying on his side, twitching and whining.

  Gramma was not moving at all.

  I scrambled to my feet to see if she was okay. As I did, I heard a familiar voice cry, Ethel! Ethel, are you all right?

  I stopped dead, so to speak.

  “Grampa?” I said softly. “Grampa, is that you?”

  Uh-huh. He sounded subdued, embarrassed almost.

  “Where are you?”

  I heard Gaspar curse as the match’s flame reached his fingertips. He dropped it. We were in darkness again.

  “Anthony, who are you talking to?” asked Sarah.

  Gramma groaned.

  Thank goodness she’s alive! said Grampa.

  “Where are you?” I shouted.

  “Right here,” said Sarah.

  “Not you,” I snapped. “Grampa!”

  I’m right here, too, said Grampa.

  Suddenly I realized what he meant. Horrified, I grabbed the sides of my head and shouted, “What are you doing in there?”

  He sighed. I’m sorry, Anthony. Whatever Ivanoma did when it sent you all back made it possible for me to— well, to sort of hitch a ride with you. I landed in your body.

  “You what?”

  Grampa sighed. I didn’t mean to do it. I’m not even sure how it happened, except that I’ve missed your grandmother so much. I think maybe having been so close to her, having seen her again, I just couldn’t let her go. So I . . . came along for the ride.

  “But this is—”

  I was interrupted by someone shaking me. “Anthony!” said Gaspar sharply. “Are you all right?”

  He had found the flashlight. A dim yellow glow filled the cellar. Suddenly I realized that though I had been talking to Grampa out loud, his answers had all been inside my head.

  I must have sounded as if I had lost my mind.

  Don’t tell them I’m here! said Grampa urgently.

  “What?”

  Your grandmother won’t like it. She’ll be mad. Please, Anthony—I’ll leave as soon as I can.

  I didn’t say anything for a minute.

  PLEASE!

  I sighed. Grampa had always been good to me. What was I going to do? Tattle on him? Send him back to the Land of the Dead?

  We’ll talk about this later, I thought, hoping he would understand me if I spoke only in my head.

  Thanks, Anthony. You’re a good boy.

  Well, obviously he could understand my thoughts. Out loud I said, “Sorry, Gaspar. Guess I was woozy from the trip.”

  “Speak up, Anthony,” said a voice from below me.

  “Gramma!” I cried. “You’re all right!”

  “Well, mostly,” she said. “My hearing is gone again. Too bad about that. No surprise, though.”

  She started to stand up. Help her! said Grampa, but Gaspar beat me to it. I could sense Grampa’s annoyance. He was always after her, he muttered.

  I doubted that Gaspar was still interested in Gramma now that she was more than fifty years older than she had been when he last saw her. Then I wondered if Grampa had picked up on that thought. He didn’t mention it if he had.

  “Well,” said Gramma, once she was on her feet again. “I must say I never expected anything like this when I told your parents I would watch you children for the weekend.”

  Her voice was kind of shaky, for which I couldn’t blame her.

  “We’d better get upstairs,” said Gaspar. He sounded a little shaky, too, which made me nervous, since he was the closest thing we had to a leader. “I wonder when the others will get back?”

  What he didn’t say, but what I suspected was on his mind, was that it wasn’t just a question of when the others would get back.

  It was a question of if.

  What would happen if the Wentar, Albert, and Ludmilla were caught in Flinduvia?

  Maybe that was why he was shaky. After all, this was his family we were talking about.

  AS IT TURNED OUT, the return of the others was one thing we didn’t have to worry about. When we got upstairs—all the way upstairs, to Gaspar’s lab—we found Albert, Ludmilla, and the Wentar waiting for us.

  With them was a skinny, dark-haired boy, not much older than me. He was dressed in a one-piece outfit that looked as if someone had made a pair of coveralls out of blue aluminum foil.

  “Martin!” cried Gaspar in astonishment.

  “Martin?” echoed Sarah, Gramma, and I all at the same time. (Actually, Grampa said it, too, but I was the only one who could hear him.)

  “But he’s just a kid!” I said.

  “Of course he’s still a youngster,” said the We
ntar, who was standing behind the boy, looking gloomy as usual. “He’s been in suspended animation for nearly a century!”

  Martin was staring up at Gaspar with an expression that seemed half fearful, half hungry. Suddenly I realized how strange it must be for this boy to see his twin as a grown man. It was a good thing Gaspar had at least gotten rid of his lizard head (something Ludmilla and Albert had seemed only moderately surprised to notice).

  Martin uttered a few words in a foreign language. That was a surprise, but only because I was being sort of stupid. Of course he spoke a foreign language. The Flinduvians had kidnapped him when he was still a kid living in Transylvania, and they had had him in suspended animation ever since. What did I think he would speak? Basic American?

  The second, and much bigger, surprise came when Gaspar answered in the same language, and I realized I could understand it!

  I blinked and looked at Sarah. She appeared to be as startled as I was. Then she smiled. “The translation spell!” she exclaimed. “It’s still working!”

  What Gaspar had said was, “So, the big brother is now the little brother, and the little, the big. Welcome back to the world we know, Martin.”

  Martins face quavered. I thought for a moment he was going to cry. But then he got control of himself. It was as if his face froze in place.

  I had enough sense of Gaspar by now to realize that normally he would try to comfort a kid who was feeling as bad as Martin seemed to. But Martin wasn’t just any kid. Not only was he Gaspar’s twin brother, he was—or had been—the just-barely-older brother. And from what Gaspar had told us, Martin had always taken advantage of that fact. Not only that, during the sixteen years that passed between the time Martin fell into Flinduvia and the time that his replacement clone shrank and froze Gaspar and the others, the family had lived with the belief that the clone was the real Martin.

  What a mess! No wonder they all seemed to have feelings that were, to say the least, confused. I tried to imagine what it would be like for me to go to sleep some night, and wake up to find my little sister was now a twenty-six-year-old woman. The idea gave me the willies, and I figured it would have been even weirder if she had been my twin. And weirder still if I had first been rescued from an alien planet and dragged back to a foreign country by someone like the Wentar.

  I couldn’t blame poor Martin for looking like he wanted to cry!

  It was Ludmilla who broke the moment. She went to Martin and put her arms around him. “Poor little brother,” she whispered.

  This gesture might have been more comforting to Martin if she had not shown her vampire fangs while she spoke. Looking startled, he pulled away from her. “Leave me alone!” he shouted.

  Then he put his face in his hands and began to sob.

  Her own lips quivering, Ludmilla dropped her hands to her sides and stepped back At the same time, Gaspar went to stand beside Martin. He said nothing, only put one hand gently on the boy’s shoulder.

  Martin pushed away and bolted for the door.

  Albert and I both started after him. Before we had taken two steps the Wentar raised his hand and made a weird gesture.

  Martin slumped to the floor.

  Bob dropped into a crouch and growled at the Wentar.

  “What have you done?” cried Melisande.

  “It is merely a spell of sleep,” said the Wentar quietly. “He will rest in comfort while we talk. And we must talk, for there is a great deal to say, and not much time to say it.”

  Who’s the tall, bossy guy? asked Grampa.

  It’s a long story, I thought back.

  That’s all right. I think I can figure it out on my own if I just look around in here a bit.

  I blinked and shook my head. Hey! No fair poking around in my head without my permission!

  It’s all right, Anthony. Believe me, once you’re dead, you’ll find a lot of stuff you used to take seriously isn’t really all that important. For example, I already stumbled across a memory that told me it was you who broke that cellar window three years ago. I would have been mad at the time. Now—eh, there’s more important stuff to worry about.

  I started to answer him, but the Wentar recaptured our attention by saying, “Martin has already given us some vital information—namely, why the Flinduvians want Earth’s dead.”

  “And just why is that?” asked Gaspar.

  “They intend to use them to reanimate dead Flinduvian warriors.”

  “Well, that’s just silly,” said Melisande. “If they can do that, why don’t they just use the souls of their own dead?”

  The Wentar made a sniffing sound. “A more cynical being than I might say it is because Flinduvians have no souls. However, like most simple answers, that is not accurate. The real reason is more complicated.”

  He glanced over at Martin, as if to make sure he was still asleep, and then continued. “Though the Starry Doors provide a wonderful way to travel from world to world, that very ease of transport carries with it the possibility of evil.”

  “Why?” asked Sarah.

  “Because if it were unlimited, it would allow renegade planets to launch massive invasions of other worlds without warning. Of course, the Coalition doesn’t have many planets like that, since we carefully screen worlds before we allow them access to the doors. Even so, errors sometimes happen.”

  “Like the Flinduvians?” asked Gaspar.

  “Precisely,” said the Wentar. “Mowing the creatures of the red haze into the Coalition of Civilized Worlds was one of our few mistakes, and one of our worst. They are subdued now, and have been for some time. But their planet is a world where great evil lies sleeping. It would not take much to waken it, for the Flinduvians have a lust for conquest. To guard against such peoples using the doors improperly, those who designed them specified that no more than ten members of a species can pass through a gate on any given day.”

  “I still don’t understand what this has to do with Earth’s ghosts,” I said.

  “I’ll be glad to explain,” snarled a voice from behind me.

  I turned, then screamed.

  The Flinduvians had arrived.

  18

  The Flinduvian Plan

  THE FIRST TIME I saw a Flinduvian, it had been tearing its way through the barrier that separated the magical corridor leading out of Morley Manor from our own world. I had gotten only a peek, then, because just as the alien was breaking through we had fled through a Starry Door.

  That brief sight had been fairly terrifying. Even so, it had not prepared me for the full horror of the Flinduvians.

  To begin with, they were big—between six and eight feet tall. Of course, Gaspar and the Wentar were tall, too. But they didn’t have biceps like basketballs, and thighs as big around as my waist. We’re not talking fat thighs, either. I could see that they were solid muscle (or whatever Flinduvians have), because the aliens’ uniforms consisted of nothing more than tight-fitting shorts, broad silver armbands, and chest harnesses to hold weapons and ammunition. They didn’t even wear shoes, which you would think would be a basic item for warrior types. At least, you would think that if you hadn’t seen a Flinduvians foot, which is sort of like a horse’s hoof made long and flexible.

  Their fingers were even more flexible, because they weren’t really fingers but scale-covered tentacles. What really gave me the creeps was that the tentacles were of different lengths and thicknesses. I figured this meant they had specialized uses . . . something I decided not to think about too much.

  The Flinduvians’ muscles weren’t the only things that bulged. They also had bulging snouts and eyes.

  All in all, they were pretty ugly.

  Mom has always told us not to judge people by their looks, but I was having a hard time following that advice right then. Not only did the Flinduvians look big, mean, and nasty, my gut was telling me that they probably acted the same way.

  There were ten of them, and they pretty much filled the room.

  The guy at the front, who I assume
d was their leader, smiled.

  I wished he hadn’t. Not because of the two rows of silvery fangs, though they were bad enough. No, it was the black, snaky tongue flicking out of his mouth that really got to me. It was far more horrible and frightening than Gaspar’s had been, probably because it had two big holes in the end of it—holes that opened and closed like sniffing nostrils.

  “The plan is simple,” he said, in a voice that sounded like pebbles being run through a blender. “While no more than ten members of a species may pass through a gate, that restriction applies only to the living. We can transport as many corpses as we wish. Once we have them here, we can inject them with the spirits of Earth’s dead, and bring them back to life.”

  “What good will that do you?” asked Gaspar. “You can’t expect Earth’s dead to fight on your behalf.”

  “They’ll have no choice,” said the Flinduvian cheerfully. “All we need is their life force to animate the body. Once we install them, their actions will be completely under our control.”

  “And where are you going to get an army’s worth of corpses?” asked Gaspar.

  The alien smiled again. “No Flinduvian hesitates to die in the service of his planet. When the call goes out for bodies, our biggest problem will be sorting through the many volunteers eager to earn a spot in warrior heaven. Such a death is a great honor, a privilege.”

  “If you can put a soul into a body, vy don’t you just reinsert the one that vas there to begin vith?” asked Ludmilla.

  The leader sneered. “Once a body has died, reinstalling a soul can give it power and movement, but not genuine life. These re-animates will be mere zombies.” (He didn’t actually use the word zombie, of course, since he was speaking in Flinduvian. But that was the sense of it.) “To be trapped in such a thing is not a proper fate for the soul of a Flinduvian hero. It would be an insult to his honor. That’s why it was such a great boost to our plans when we captured young Martin there. By studying him, we eventually discovered what an absurdly strong connection to life the ghosts of this miserable, long-ignored little planet of yours possess—strong enough to make them cling even to an alien body. It makes them perfect for our uses.”