Professor Gargoyle

by Charles Gilman

  Robert imagined telling the truth: “Last night I snuck into the school after dark and watched Professor Goyle swallow a hamster.”

  It wasn’t going to fly.

  “Everything’s fine, Mr. Loomis. I’m just a little tired.”

  “And that boy Glenn? Is he still bothering you?”

  “No, he leaves me alone,” Robert said. “Can I go now?”

  “All right,” Mr. Loomis said. “Just checking.”

  Robert bypassed the cafeteria and went straight to the library. Eating lunch wasn’t nearly as important as getting to the attic and talking to Karina about last night.

  He paced up and down the aisles of the fiction section, trying to retrace his steps from the previous week. He found the paranormal mystery section but couldn’t find his way to the attic. I turned left here, then right here, then right again. Or was it left? Robert looked for a corner that was shrouded in shadows; he remembered it was hard to see. Today, he could not see it at all.

  Finally he approached Ms. Lavinia at the circulation desk. She was waving a paperback book under the red glow of a bar-code scanner.

  “Hello, young man. Can I help you?”

  “I’m trying to find that room with the old books? At the top of the stairs?”

  Ms. Lavinia peered over her cat-eye glasses. “Did you say old books?”

  “Yeah, big leather-bound books. Some of them look like they’re two hundred years old.”

  “You must be thinking of the town library,” she said. “All of our books are brand-new. We received a very generous donation from a charitable foundation.”

  Robert shook his head. “I know it’s right over there,” he said, pointing toward the fiction shelves. “It looks like an attic. You can see rafters and everything. One of the doors is nailed shut with planks.”

  Ms. Lavinia stared back at him in astonishment.

  “Young man,” she said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  ELEVEN

  In the minutes between sixth and seventh periods, Robert stashed Pip and Squeak on the top shelf of his locker. “Now stay here and be quiet,” he told them. “Science is my last class of the day, and then I’ll come back to get you.”

  He was preparing for the worst. He knew Professor Goyle would be furious, that he’d be looking for the person who broke his aquarium and freed Pip and Squeak. And Robert was the most likely suspect. He didn’t think Goyle would threaten him in a classroom full of witnesses. But what if Goyle told Robert to stay behind after class? What would happen then?

  It was tempting to skip the class altogether, but Robert worried that doing so would make him look even guiltier. He decided he would go to class and act like he’d had nothing to do with it. Maybe the rats had simply overturned the aquarium on their own. That was possible, wasn’t it?

  Robert was one of the last students to arrive in the classroom. Someone had cleaned up the broken glass and shavings. There was no sign of any disturbance. But at least one other student noticed that Pip and Squeak were gone.

  “Hey, Nerdbert!” Glenn called from across the room. “Looks like Goyle got rid of your pet!”

  Robert ignored him, sat down, and took out a notebook. He began to recopy his homework in neater handwriting. He wanted to be busy working when Goyle arrived, so he’d have an excuse for not making eye contact.

  But the late bell rang and still no teacher came.

  The skeleton at the front of the classroom appeared to be watching the door, as if it was waiting for a teacher like everyone else. Robert was reminded of the first day of school, when Sarah Price suggested that Robert go to the principal’s office and get help. It was only two weeks ago, but it seemed like ancient history.

  Finally, the classroom door opened and in walked a short, stout woman with thick glasses and curly black hair. The students gawked as she carried a stack of folders over to Professor Goyle’s desk.

  “Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Mrs. Kinski and I’ll be your substitute teacher this afternoon. It seems poor Professor Goyle has an upset stomach today.”

  Again, Robert recalled the image of Goyle with his jaw unhinged, stuffing a live hamster into his mouth.

  “Now pay attention, because I have some exciting news,” Mrs. Kinski continued. “For today’s lesson, we’re going to look at a strange world that’s teeming with thousands of bizarre species. You’ll be shocked to learn that this world is waiting just outside the doors of this school. In fact, it’s so close, you kids could bike over and dip your toes in it.” As she spoke, Mrs. Kinski lowered a projection screen at the front of the classroom. It was filled with images of a rolling blue sea. “I’m talking about the ocean, of course, and today we’re going to watch a documentary about the exciting field of marine biology!”

  A couple of kids clapped, but the rest had already started passing notes or goofing off. Robert had never been so grateful to have a substitute teacher. He hoped Mrs. Kinski would teach Goyle’s class all week.

  At 2:45, the last bell rang and Robert returned to the library. He spent another twenty minutes trying to find his way back to the attic, without success. Ms. Lavinia watched him skeptically from her chair at the circulation desk. “We’ll be closing in ten minutes,” she told him. “There’s always the public library, if you need more time.”

  Robert walked to his locker. By this time, all his classmates were gone; all the hallways were empty; all the digital bulletin boards were already turned off for the night.

  His footsteps echoed across the tiled floor.

  He stopped in front of his locker, entered the combination, and opened the door.

  “Squeak? Pip? Where are you guys?”

  The top shelf was empty except for Fangs Dungaree and the large leather-bound book that Robert had taken from the attic. There was no sign of his pets. Robert panicked, tearing through the pile of the books at the bottom of his locker. Finally he noticed that the hood of his windbreaker was moving; he peered inside and there were Pip and Squeak, cozied up as if they were resting in a hammock.

  “There you are!” he exclaimed. “You guys scared me!”

  “Who scared you?” Glenn Torkells asked.

  He had come out of nowhere. Robert tried to swing the locker door closed but he wasn’t fast enough; Glenn blocked it with his big, dirty boot.

  “I asked you a question, Nerdbert. Who scared you?” Glenn peered into the locker, but Pip and Squeak had burrowed even deeper into the hood of the windbreaker.

  “Nobody,” Robert said. “I was just talking to myself.”

  Glenn laughed. “So you scared yourself? You’re such a chicken you actually scared yourself? I should charge you a double dweeb tax for that one.”

  Robert grabbed the windbreaker and tucked it beneath his arm. “I have to go.”

  “Hang on a second,” Glenn said, reaching into the locker for the leather-bound book. “Where’d you get this thing? From one of those Halloween stores?” Glenn opened the cover and dust fell from the pages. He pointed to an illustration of an old man with a single horn in the center of his head. “Who’s this,” he asked, pointing at it with a dirty fingernail, “your dad?”

  “Very funny,” Robert said. “Give it back.”

  “Hang on a second,” Glenn said, “I’m going to tell you a story.” He flipped to a passage in the middle of the book. “Deph-pha. Ctzelzog. Enorhula-tu.” He was stumbling over the words; they were impossible to pronounce. “Is this French or something? Who talks this way?”

  “Just give it back,” Robert pleaded.

  “Hey, listen to this one. Kyaloh yog-sothoth f’ah. Kyaloh yog-sothoth f’ah.” He bobbed his head like he was rapping to a beat box. “Ky-ky-kyaloh. Yo-yo-yog-sothoth.”

  Robert became aware of a cold draft coming from his locker. It was weird; it felt like the temperature in the hallway had abruptly dropped thirty degrees. And there was a smell, too. A strangely familiar smell. Like moldy mothballs. The draft was stronger now, an actual gust of
wind—but how was that possible?

  “Ky-ky-kyaloh—”

  “Glenn,” Robert said.

  “Yo-yo-yog-sothoth—”

  “Glenn, I think you should stop,” Robert said. As he spoke, puffs of white vapor left his mouth, like he was outdoors in the middle of January. An icy frost was forming on the edges of the book, as though it had suddenly frozen solid.

  “Yow!” Glenn exclaimed, dropping the book to the floor. “What’s wrong with that thing?”

  “I don’t think you should have read that.”

  Robert tried to pick up the book, but it was so cold it burned his fingertips. He yanked his hand away.

  The wind was making his locker buckle and stretch; it seemed to be widening, almost yawning. The back wall of the locker had dissolved into a sort of swirling blackness. Robert stared into the center of the spiral. There was something hypnotic about it. He might have kept staring if Glenn hadn’t tugged on his arm, yanking him back to the present.

  “Hey, what is that?”

  Robert looked down. Extending from the locker and coiled around Glenn’s left ankle was a purple and yellow tentacle. Like the arm of a giant octopus, minus the suckers. Its surface glistened with slime.

  The tentacle tugged on Glenn’s leg.

  “Whoa!” Glenn shouted, shifting off-balance suddenly, hopping on his one free leg and struggling to stand upright. “What the heck, man! Get it off!”

  Robert reached down but there was no place to grip the tentacle; his hands slipped helplessly over its slimy surface. “I’ll get a teacher.”

  “No!” Glenn shouted. The tentacle tugged again, pulling Glenn closer to the locker, pulling his right leg inside the locker. “Don’t leave me here, Robert!” Glenn grabbed the sides of the locker to steady himself, but more tentacles were tethering themselves around his arms and wrists and waist. “Come on, help me! I’m losing my grip!”

  Robert hated Glenn more than anyone he’d met in his entire life, but what else could he do? No one deserved this. Whatever this was. He swung his leg with all his might, kicking one of the tentacles. It didn’t budge.

  Another tentacle slithered out of the locker and grabbed Glenn’s right ankle, yanking his leg into the black vortex. He was off the ground now, hanging on for his life, nearly consumed. Robert reached out and grabbed Glenn’s wrists, trying to pull him out, but he was no match for the beast beyond the locker.

  “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.”

  TWELVE

  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 sup
posed 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.