“They should use this room as a biology classroom,” Sully said. “It’s got its own ecosystem. Bacterial colonies, nests of bugs, families of frogs living in the drains . . . it’s educational, really.”
“Must be a monster thing.” Ratface wrinkled his nose. “I’ve never smelled a bathroom like this before.”
“Hey, look, everybody,” Mugsy said. “It’s snowing!”
They looked out the window. Sure enough, fat white flakes were spiraling down from the night sky outside. Thicker and faster they came. The wind picked up, blowing the snow around in driving sheets. The night seemed gray instead of black.
“A blizzard,” Victor said. “Back home I would’ve been all excited. It would mean a snow day tomorrow. No school!”
“No such thing as a snow day here, I bet,” Ratface said.
“Someone’s coming,” Cody whispered.
They switched off the bathroom lights and peeked out the doorway.
Miss Threadbare, the secretary, and Mr. Howell, a teacher, came into view. Miss Threadbare pulled back one of the drapes from a ground-level window.
“Cold makes his arthritis flare up in his knees. He’s more interested in his research right now, anyway,” Threadbare pointed out. “He keeps saying he’s really onto something this time. Except there’s some missing ingredient he’s waiting for, and he won’t say what it is or when it will get here.”
“Experiments schmeriments,” Howell growled. “Farley’s always making things complicated. We want to get rid of the boys? I say we do it the old-fashioned way. Eat ’em. Nothing elaborate, just a little salt and pepper . . .”
“I’m partial to Tabasco sauce, myself,” Threadbare said. “Or roasted on a spit with a nice lemon butter sauce.” She sighed. “But you know what happened last time Farley tried to hurt the boys, Howell. Major trouble. We can’t eat them. We can’t even hurt them.” She smiled, showing her nasty teeth. “But there’s nothing saying we can’t change them.”
“Fine, fine” Howell said. “Farley can experiment on the boys all he wants. But he’d better keep his mitts off me.” Howell looked out the window once more and growled low in his throat. “I hate nights where we can’t go hunting. So boring. If we can’t go out tonight, I’m gonna go watch Thriller on BooTube.”
And together they walked away.
“Did you hear that?” Cody said when the teachers were out of hearing.
“Yeah,” Victor said. “Farley’s cooking up a new way to mess with our heads. I am not letting him suck my brain out again.”
“No, not that,” Cody said. “The hunt is canceled tonight. Do you realize what that means? It means if we can somehow get outside, we can get free! There’ll be no one outside to see us or stop us. We can make a run for it!”
“Maybe on our way,” Mugsy said, “we can stop at a burger place for some fries with ketchup.”
“Let me point out a few wrinkles in your plan,” Sully said. “One: It’s forty below outside and blizzarding. Two: We have no coats, boots, mittens, or gloves. We’d get lost in the snow and freeze to death in less than an hour. Three: Once they notice we’re gone, they’ll come after us. Howell, the wolf-man, will have no trouble following our tracks.”
Cody bit his lip and said nothing. Sully was right and he knew it, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. There must be some way . . .
The silence was broken by the sound of a clanging gong going off. It hung on the wall near the bathroom door so the noise nearly deafened the boys.
“It’s a doorbell,” Victor whispered. “Who’d be coming here this late at night?”
“And in a storm?” Carlos added.
They watched and waited. Ivanov, the hunchbacked hall monitor, shuffled into view with Pavlov, the Hound of Death, trotting at his heels. Pavlov looked at the boys, bared his teeth, and growled.
“Hush, boy,” Ivanov scolded. “That’s no way to greet our visitors.”
He pulled the door open. In a flurry of swirling snow, someone stepped inside.
Her voice was soft, feathery soft, yet strange. Cody strained to listen. She stared at Ivanov with an unblinking gaze that made him take a step back.
“I—I’ll check,” Ivanov stuttered. He turned and hobbled as fast as his crippled legs would take him down the corridor.
Farley soon appeared. He bared his fangs in his most welcoming hideous smile.
“Professor Eelpot,” he said, bowing low. “Welcome to Splurch Academy. How very good of you to join us.”
Cody’s jaw dropped. Professor Eelpot? Join us? Oh no! Not another freaky monster teacher.
“The pleasure is all mine, Archibald” Professor Eelpot’s soft voice said. “Now that we have finally reached an agreement on my salary.”
“Yes. Well, I would rather you not mention your salary to the other faculty.” He caughed. “At any rate, I’ve had the science room dusted and prepared for your arrival.” He held out his hand. “And now, if I may . . . ?”
“It’s so beautifully simple,” Farley whispered. “I don’t know why I never thought of it before.”
“Because you never paid attention in science class like you should have,” Professor Eelpot whispered eerily. “Knowledge is power, Archibald.”
Farley patted her on the shoulder. “Well, now you’re here,” he said. “Won’t you come inside and join me for a Bloody Harry?”
Professor Eelpot shrugged out of her jacket, revealing a stiff, white lab coat underneath. “Who’s Harry?”
Farley grinned. “The mailman.”
CHAPTER THREE
THE SPECIMEN
The next morning Cody shivered himself awake, only to see icicles hanging from the windows in their dormitory, which was nothing more than the old refurbished stables of Splurch Academy. The boys slept in horse stalls on piles of moldy straw with only one rat-chewed blanket apiece. They looked out the windows to see snow piled in eight-foot drifts around the building with more dumping down every second.
Carlos came into the room and knelt down by Cody.
Carlos stuffed all the pieces into his pockets. “There’s lots of microtechnology in a cell phone,” he explained. “I can use it to make my communicator device.”
Ratface slept curled in a shivering ball, his teeth chattering. Cody kicked his feet. “Wake up, Ratface,” he said. “You’ll feel warmer if you move around.”
One by one the other boys rose, stretched, and trudged to the cafeteria. They passed by Dr. Farley and Nurse Bilgewater in the midst of a whispered conversation. Cody perked up his ears. He could just make out what they were saying.
“I’m counting on you to get this done right,” Farley told her. “I know how softhearted you are.”
Victor and Ratface snorted with laughter, and Cody gave them a shove. “Shhh! Or they’ll know we were spying on them.” He craned his neck to see what was in the bag as Nurse Bilgewater passed by on her way to the infirmary, but he couldn’t really tell.
Sully poked at his plate of blackened English muffin hockey pucks spread with horseradish jelly. “That was bizarre.”
Carlos used the horseradish jelly squirty bottle to draw pictures on his plate. “She’s up to something, Cody,” he said. “I don’t know what. But she’s got a secret of her own.”
“Let’s go spy on her and figure out what it is,” Ratface suggested.
They left their crummy breakfast untouched and tiptoed down the hall toward the nurse’s office. They peered through the window to see what their hideous nurse was up to.
“I don’t know about you,” Victor said, “but dumping a bag of stuff into a fish tank and filling it up with shiny colored stones, a toy scuba diver, and a treasure chest hardly seems like ‘getting rid of’ something.”
“She’s not following Farley’s orders,” Mugsy concluded. “Wonder what he’ll say when he finds out.”
“For once it won’t be us in trouble.” Ratface giggled. A little too loudly.
Bilgewater stiffened and turned to see where
the noise came from.
“Duck!” Ratface warned. “Here. Into this closet.”
They could hear her heavy footsteps lumbering toward the door. Ratface held the closet door open while the boys all scooted through. Only it was not a closet. A narrow staircase wound through the dimly lit space behind the door.
Cody pulled the door shut as softly as he could.
“Hurry! Go up! Go up!” Cody whispered.
“If she comes after us, we’ll be trapped and cornered!”
They tiptoed up the stairs until the bottom floor was out of sight, then paused to listen for Bilgewater.
“We made it,” Carlos said. “Wonder where these stairs go.” They looked around at the narrow stairwell. It led up incredibly high to a landing with a ladder reaching up to a trapdoor.
“Looks like it must lead to the roof,” Sully said.
“Excellent! Let’s go.” Ratface started climbing up.
“It’s blizzarding out, remember?” Sully said. “We’ll get blown off the roof.”
“Phooey,” Victor said. “Maybe the blizzard will blow us home. Don’t be a wimp. Come on, let’s see what’s there. Up and out!”
They climbed up and up, story after story, spiraling round and round until Cody thought he might puke. The stairs creaked under their feet, and he wondered if one of the teachers would hear them. Sully panted with each step.
They reached the top. Victor opened the trapdoor and pushed his way through onto the snow-covered roof. Sparkling gusts of snow swirled down onto their hair and noses. One by one they all climbed onto the roof.
“Awesome!” Ratface cried. “Wish I had a sled. I could slide right off this roof and land in those snowdrifts.”
“Yeah, and break your neck,” Carlos said.
“We’ll die of pneumonia up here,” Sully said, shivering.
“We’re just here to take a look, Sully,” Cody told him. “Five minutes won’t kill us.”
POW! Victor plastered the side of Sully’s face with a snowball. Soon they were all going at it in a furious snowball war. Then the sound of a truck engine backing through the driveway made them stop.
“See anything down there?” Carlos said. “What’s going on?”
“In all this snow, I can barely make it out,” Cody said. “Someone’s moving around down there. That might be Farley in the cape.”
“Let’s go. We’ll be late for class.” Sully shivered. “Mr. Fronk’ll be furious.”
“Are you kidding? He’ll be fast asleep, napping,” Cody said. “Guys, listen! I’ve got a plan. Let’s slide off this roof and land on top of that truck. When it leaves, we’ll go with it, and we’re free!”
The boys all stared at him. Their noses were starting to turn blue.
“Free and dead, you mean,” Sully said. “‘Live free or die’ is the state motto of New Hampshire, but it sure isn’t mine.”
“We won’t die!” Cody cried. “The snow will cushion our fall!” will cushion our fall!”
Carlos squinted through the swirling snow, trying to read the letters on the side of the truck. “Sid’s Aquatic Supply,” he read. “Serving Monsters and Mad Scientists since 1277.”
“Yeah, um, Cody?” Victor said. “I don’t think that truck’s a good way for us to escape.”
“Sully’s turning blue,” Mugsy said. “C’mon. Let’s get to class.”
CHAPTER FOUR
THE TENTACLE
The boys defrosted themselves and tiptoed into Mr. Fronk’s classroom so as not to wake him from his nap. They found him, as usual, asleep behind his desk, his head leaning to one side, and his power cord plugged into the wall. But just as Cody slid into his chair, he heard the clicking sound of chalk on a chalkboard. He looked up.
Fronk was awake, shuffling papers on his desk. And a tentacled arm, poking out from behind his back, was writing on the chalkboard!
“Whoa! Wait! Mr. Fronk!” Cody yelped.
His teacher fixed his yellow-eyed gaze on Cody. “Yes? What is it? What’s so important that you must disturb my lesson?”
Behind him, the arm, thick and gross, kept on writing, listing out spelling words.
Cody could barely find the words to speak. Did Fronk know about this arm? How could he not? There it was, writing out his lessons.
Lessons?
“It’s just . . . ,” Cody said lamely. “It’s just that, uh, you don’t usually do spelling first. You do, um, math.”
Carlos made a weird face at Cody.
“S-Sully,” Carlos stuttered, “w-what’s going on here?”
Sully shook his head, dumbfounded.
“He’s . . . he’s like a monster!” Ratface yelped.
“Duh, he already is a monster,” Victor said. “What else is new?”
“Yeah, but we were used to that monster,” Ratface said. “Now he’s more monstery.”
“Silence,” Mr. Fronk’s mouth said. “Anyone who speaks will be torn into bits, ground to a pulp, and devoured.”
Fronk stopped, frowned, and shook his head. It seemed as if he was surprised by what he’d said. The ancient rules governing the Academy prohibited teachers from eating kids inside the building.
There was nothing else to do but pretend to do schoolwork. Cody dug inside his desk, found an old English textbook, and flipped through the pages. Borrrrrr-ing. The day went on like this forever until the classroom door opened, and Headmaster Farley entered the room.
“How are you this morning, Fronk, old boy?” Dr. Farley asked brightly. He could clearly see Fronk’s tentacles, but they didn’t seem to surprise him.
Cody waited for Farley to explode, but he only smiled. “Excellent, excellent!” he said. He rubbed his hands together, then gestured to the boys.
“Come with me, lads,” he said. “There’s a change to your class schedule. You’ll still spend most of your school day in here with Mr. Fronk. But starting today, you’ll have a mid-morning science class period with our newest faculty member, Professor Eelpot. If you’d be so kind as to follow me?”
Cody hated it when Farley pretended to be all polite and gentlemanly. It was always an act and a crummy one at that.
The boys trooped down the hall after Farley. They turned a corner and saw a table that usually wasn’t there. Pieces of candy were scattered across the table along with several different hats. It looked like someone was preparing for a costume party.
“The hat!” Mugsy said. “It stabbed me. Something inside it was sharp.”
“Probably a hatpin,” Sully said. “Old-fashioned hats used to have those.”
“Quick! Put everything back!” Ratface hissed. “Farley’s coming!”
They threw the hats back on the table and tried to hide the candy wrappers. When Farley returned they were looking their most innocent.
Farley inspected the table and rubbed his hands together once more. “Well then,” he said. “Time for science class. Professor Eelpot can’t wait to eat you. Meet you, that is! A mere slip of the tongue. Ha-ha! Right this way, lads.”
CHAPTER FIVE
THE TEACHER
Farley opened the door to the science lab. No one was there. A sign on the desk read MARLIN EELPOT, PHD.
The science lab was pretty cool. Carlos went straight for the electrical gadgets. Cody ignited a Bunsen burner and thought about the good old days, when he’d set Honey Bee Elementary on fire, back before he ever came to Splurch. Mugsy went straight for the walls where huge fish tanks stood stacked on top of one another like building blocks. Fluorescent light gleamed on the colored pebbles.
The boys backed away from the tank. One look at their new science teacher, and they sure weren’t about to mess with Ethel.
The new teacher wore a white lab coat and clasped her hands behind her back. Her black-rimmed eyes seemed to bulge out of her head and stare at each boy, regardless of where they were in the room. They shuddered. She did not smile.
“Thank you, Dr. Farley,” Professor Eelpot whispered. “You may go now. I will take over
from here.”
Farley raised a finger and opened his mouth to protest—Cody knew he wasn’t used to taking orders from his staff—but then he seemed to change his mind. He left.
Professor Eelpot paced the front of the room, her hands still clasped tightly behind her back.
“Take a seat,” she purred. Cody and the other boys sat down.
“Welcome to science class,” she said. “In this room you will learn the mysteries of the natural world like you’ve never learned them before.”
Cody had a feeling she was right about that—and he wasn’t altogether sure this was a good thing.
“Now raise your hand if you think you know,” she went on, “what we will study in science class.”
Carlos’s hand shot up in the air. “Galileo?” he cried. “Copernicus? Isaac Newton? Charles Darwin? Louis Pasteur? Albert Einstein? Stephen Hawking?”
“Geez, Carlos,” Ratface muttered. “You’re making the rest of us look stupid.”
“Like that’s hard,” Victor snorted.
“I know you are, but what am I?” Ratface snapped.
Professor Eelpot ignored Victor and Ratface. “What is your name?” she asked.
“Carlos.”
“Very well, Carlos. Do you know what all those men had in common?”
Carlos’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. He seemed suddenly less confident. “They were all groundbreaking scientists, er, ma’am?”
Professor Eelpot leaned closer to Carlos. She shook her head and showed her pointy teeth. “No,” she said. “They were all imbeciles.”
Sully flinched as if someone had just punched him. Carlos’s jaw dropped open.
Professor Eelpot pointed at a huge ocean mural on the wall. On it were terrifying pictures of hideous sea creatures with razor-sharp fangs and massive jaws.
The Trouble with Squids Page 2