The Midnight Door

by Sam Fisher

  “I can’t get down!” Willow said tremulously.

  Morton suddenly realized just how dangerous this situation was. If Willow were to get blown out the window, who knew what would become of her.

  “Hold on to the lights and stay away from the windows,” Morton bellowed, but no sooner had he said this than a fierce wind howled down the hall and Willow rolled like a tumbleweed across the ceiling and shot out of sight around the corner, screaming as she went.

  “We have to help her!” Morton said.

  “How?” Robbie said, grabbing on to a nearby fire extinguisher for support.

  Before Morton could answer he saw a swirling triangle of dense black smoke racing toward them from the far end of the hall.

  “A miniature tornado?” James said, staring in complete shock at the rapidly approaching vortex.

  Morton wasn’t sure exactly which toy or combination of toys might be causing a tornado, but he didn’t want to stand around talking about it. The fearsome artificial cyclone was wrenching drawings from the walls and picking up everything else in its wake, including a dozen stray dogs and several children.

  “Quick!” Robbie said, heading in the opposite direction. “Follow me!”

  James and Morton followed Robbie as he slithered down the hall and took a sharp left into an adjacent hallway. Robbie quickly slammed the heavy fire doors behind them, just as the cyclone tore past, howling like a small jet engine. The boys all huddled around the square window in the door and peered at the devastation beyond.

  “We’ve got to stop this!” James said. “Somebody’s going to get hurt.”

  “You can say that again,” Robbie said. “It’s like they’re all possessed by a clown with a very bad sense of humor.”

  “You know, something tells me this is Derek’s doing,” Morton said, and as he did so a whining voice droned from behind them.

  “Talking about me behind my back again?”

  The three boys spun around to see that there, completely blocking the passage ahead, was a large group of teachers, among them Mr. Noble, Mr. Rickets, Mrs. Houston, and, most alarmingly, Principal Finch. This sight itself was strange enough, but what made it utterly bizarre was the fact that Derek Howell was standing at the front of the group like the captain of a small army.

  The boys stood staring with complete incomprehension. Morton wondered for a moment if Derek had told Finch and the other teachers that he and James were somehow responsible for the current mayhem, but Principal Finch wasn’t even looking at them. He was looking directly ahead with an unusually docile expression on his face.

  “It is you,” James said accusingly. “What have you done to the teachers?”

  “Nothing,” Derek said in an oily voice. “Or at least, nothing they’ll remember.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Derek made a gloating smile and held up what looked like a pocket watch hanging from a silver chain around his neck. Morton noticed immediately that instead of a numbered face, the watch had a black and white spiral that turned lazily behind the glass.

  “It’s the Mesmer Disk,” Morton said. “He’s hypnotized everyone!”

  “No keeping secrets from you, is there?” Derek said.

  “Are you mad?” James sputtered. “This whole situation is completely out of control. Somebody could get hurt!”

  “From where I’m standing it doesn’t look out of control,” Derek said. “In fact, I seem to be in perfect control of everything.”

  “Really?” James said. “You mean you actually intended to get a school full of barking dogs, tornadoes, and wild children?”

  “That’s exactly what I wanted,” Derek said confidently.

  “Why on earth would you want that?” Robbie said, his face a mixture of revulsion and confusion.

  “So you’ll get in trouble, of course,” Derek snapped, as if this was somehow obvious.

  James, Morton, and Robbie were dumbfounded by this response and simply stared back at Derek.

  Derek sighed impatiently. “I thought you were supposed to be smart, but obviously I was wrong,” he said. “I’ve hypnotized everybody in school and they’re all going to wake up tomorrow with no memory of what happened. But when they get here in the morning the school will be a complete wreck. And you three are going to confess to having done it.”

  “And why would we do that?” Robbie asked.

  Derek held up his Mesmer Disk again and this time the spiral face started spinning at a more rapid, dizzying speed. “Because you’ll do anything I tell you to do,” Derek said. “And the best part is, you won’t even remember doing it, which is why the first thing you’re going to tell me is how you’ve been doing all this magic in the first place.”

  “Us tell you?” Robbie said. “We thought you were the one doing the magic.”

  Derek made a small jump of surprise at this comment and eyed the three boys suspiciously. “You’re just saying that to trick me into thinking you don’t know how to do magic.”

  James groaned and clutched his head. “We don’t know how to do magic, you idiot!”

  Derek flushed angrily. “I’m not an idiot! I’ve outsmarted you and the whole school. And it’s obvious you’re responsible for all this stuff that’s been happening. I know you’ve got magical powers, and I want them. Now, if you’ll watch the disk …”

  “Don’t look!” Morton shouted, holding his hand up to block the spinning silver object from his sight, but James had already caught a glimpse of it and his eyes were going a little misty. Morton rushed at him and turned him around so he had his back to Derek. James quickly shook his head and seemed to recover, but Derek merely snorted derisively.

  “We can do this the hard way if you prefer,” he scoffed, then in a more commanding voice he said, “Hold them!”

  To Morton’s horror, Principal Finch, Mr. Rickets, and Mr. Darcy responded at once to Derek’s command and stepped forward with outstretched arms.

  Morton dove out of their reach while James produced the X-ray Specs from his pocket, put them over his eyes, and lunged for Derek. Derek held up the spinning Mesmer Disk like a defensive amulet and yelled for James to stop, but James obviously wasn’t affected by it while wearing the glasses and he crashed into Derek a split second later. Derek lost his grip on the disk and it went swirling up out of his hands.

  Derek screeched in outrage, “Stop them! Stop them!” And Mr. Darcy rushed at James and wrestled him to the ground at the same time Mr. Rickets dove at Robbie.

  Only then did Derek look up in search of his precious hypnotic disk — which, strangely, had gone up but not come down. Morton followed his gaze to find Willow on the ceiling. She was holding the disk so that its face was pointing directly at Derek.

  “You are feeling very sleepy,” she said, presumably because she didn’t know what else to say. Derek was so outraged that he didn’t think to look away and almost instantly his eyes took on the familiar glassy vacant look.

  “You will tell Mr. Darcy and Mr. Rickets to let Robbie and James go,” she said, and quite remarkably Derek turned to the teachers and said in a monotone voice, “Release them.”

  They did exactly that, and Robbie and James pulled themselves to a sitting position.

  “What should I do now?” Willow said, accidentally turning the disk to face them all. They all quickly threw up their hands to shield their eyes.

  “First you should put the cover on the disk,” Morton said.

  “Oops! Sorry,” Willow said, closing the silver cover over the pendant.

  “So, what should we do now?” James said, getting to his feet.

  Morton looked around at the wreckage that only a few hours before had been a perfectly orderly school environment. Derek had single-handedly hypnotized every teacher and almost all of the kids and managed to destroy half the school. Just how could they ever hope to recover from this?

  After a brief debate, Morton and the others agreed that they couldn’t just abandon the school and had to at le
ast try to minimize the damage done by Derek’s hypnosis, but it took almost an hour for them to figure out a plan of action. This was largely because they were interrupted by barking dogs and the still rampant tornado on several occasions so they had to keep moving to different parts of the school. Despite this, they finally managed to lay out what Morton thought was a pretty good solution to the nightmare circus that Derek had created.

  It was Morton who figured out that since Derek had already hypnotized everyone to forget everything the next morning, all they had to do was get everyone to stop causing mayhem and go home. And since they would all do exactly what Derek told them to do, and Derek would do exactly what Willow told him to do, then in theory Willow just had to tell Derek to tell everyone to go home with symptoms of a cold and go straight to bed. The next morning they’d all arrive at school with no clue as to what had happened.

  In practice this seemingly simple plan was difficult to execute and took them several more hours. First they had to get Willow and several other students down from the ceiling, which involved tracking down the second Antigravity Laser Cannon and dragging one of those big blue gymnastic mattresses around to cushion everyone’s fall. Next Willow gave Derek very careful instructions, and Morton, James, and Robbie followed him around the school, cornering each student, confiscating their toys, and sending them home. They also set to work driving out the stray dogs and opening windows to clear the fog from the second floor as they worked their way along. (Things went a little more quickly after they managed to stop Nelly Stark from shooting the Tornado Spinning Top down the hallways.)

  It was almost the end of the day by the time they’d emptied the school of students and at last turned to the teachers. Under Willow’s instruction Derek mechanically told the teachers to go home, one after another, until only a single teacher remained. It just so happened that the last teacher there was Mr. Noble.

  “Wait!” Morton said, interrupting Willow before she could instruct Derek once more. He suddenly realized he had a golden opportunity — he could make Mr. Noble forget all about the difficult homework assignment he’d given him. That would certainly take a load off his shoulders, and right now he had more than his share of problems without having to worry about extra homework.

  “What is it?” Willow asked, looking up at Morton patiently.

  But Morton had second thoughts. Mr. Noble hadn’t really been unfair in giving him the assignment. He had been talking in class, after all, and he suddenly realized just how tempting it was to use magic for selfish purposes. He also realized that giving in to that temptation would make him no better than Derek … or even Mr. Brown.

  “Never mind,” he said quickly. “Go ahead.”

  Willow shrugged, and moments later Morton watched Mr. Noble pace out of the school with a determined focus, just as all the other teachers had done.

  Finally there was nobody left except for Derek, and the school had an eerie, ghostly feeling. It reminded Morton of a Scare Scape story about a boy who had the power to make anybody who annoyed him vanish … which of course ended up being everybody, including his parents and siblings.

  “Be sure to give Derek an extra dose of amnesia,” James said. “Make him forget all about that Antigravity Laser Cannon and getting stuck on the ceiling. Otherwise we’ll just have to go through this all over again.”

  Willow did exactly as James suggested, and Derek simply turned away and sauntered out the door as if everything were completely normal.

  “So, I guess that’s everybody,” James said. “We should get out of here too before the cleaners show up.”

  “I suppose I should give you this,” Willow said, holding up the Mesmer Disk.

  “Yeah, we should probably put it with the others,” Morton said.

  “You promise you won’t hypnotize me,” Willow said, looking a little nervous.

  “I promise,” Morton said with a warm smile. “But you have to make a promise too. You have to promise not to tell anyone what happened. Magic is a dangerous thing and we’re trying to stop it, not make it worse.”

  Willow played thoughtfully with her long golden hair. “So, are you like some kind of secret anti-magic police?” she asked.

  “Uh, yes, I suppose we are,” Morton said, feeling somehow pleased with that title, as if it satisfied something deep inside of him that he had never been fully aware of before.

  “Can I join?” Willow asked. “That sounds like fun.”

  Morton glanced at Robbie, who was frowning and shaking his head. “Maybe when you’re older,” Morton said. “I think it’s a bit too dangerous for you now.”

  Willow sighed and handed over the disk. “I knew you’d say that,” she said, blinking rapidly and smiling up at Morton. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

  “Yes, see you tomorrow,” Morton said, although even as he said that, he wondered if he really would. With all the magical insanity that was surrounding them, he was starting to feel very pessimistic about the prospect of there even being a tomorrow.

  Robbie and James seemed to have the same thought and the three of them stood in silence for a few seconds until James nudged Morton on the arm. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  A few minutes later they were walking home in the crisp, cool sunshine, which at least brought some warmth to Morton’s mood.

  “I’ll say one thing for Derek,” James said. “He’s not stupid. Although, he obviously doesn’t know anything about magic, which I guess makes Nolan our number one suspect again.”

  Robbie sighed. “Yeah, but I still can’t imagine why Nolan would make all the Scare Scape toys magic. What does he gain from that?”

  “Well, we have to find him and ask him,” Morton said, with an air of determination.

  “In the meantime, let’s hope Melissa has learned something about the missing books. That should shed some light on this whole crazy mess,” James said as they plodded tiredly along the driveway toward the back porch.

  As soon as the house came into view, Morton saw that several of the windows on the ground floor were open and a nasty-smelling smoke was billowing out.

  “Oh no! What’s happened?” Robbie said in sudden panic.

  Morton and James, however, remained calm. This was not the first time they’d witnessed such a scene.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Morton said. “It’s probably just supper.”

  Sure enough, when they entered the kitchen Dad was on his hands and knees in front of the oven, wafting acrid black smoke out into the room. The smell was so bad Morton could hardly breathe.

  “What are you doing?” he said, holding his scarf over his nose.

  “I don’t understand it,” Dad said, coughing and choking. “I haven’t even put anything in the oven yet!”

  “Maybe you left the mitts in there again,” Morton suggested, remembering the last time Dad almost set fire to the kitchen.

  “Not this time,” Dad said, holding up a very tattered pair of red polka-dotted mitts. “There must be something else in here that — aha!” Dad reached for a pair of metal tongs and pushed them into the smoky blackness of the oven. A moment later he pulled out what looked like a charred hairy potato, billowing with wretched smoke so dense that it stung Morton’s eyes.

  “It’s one of those blasted rats!” Dad exclaimed, leaping to his feet and running for the door.

  Morton, James, and Robbie jumped aside quickly as Dad pushed past them to throw the smoking carcass out onto the lawn.

  “The blighters are getting into everything,” Dad went on, stomping on the smoldering lump. “I found one in the car this morning on my way home. It bit me on the ankle. I must say, it’s getting quite out of hand. Thank goodness they’re going to release the gas in the sewers tonight.”

  “What?” Morton shrieked.

  “You don’t sound too happy about that,” Dad said, still stomping.

  Morton quickly changed his tone. “No, I mean, wow! That’s great news! Uh, what time tonight?”r />
  “Midnight,” Dad said. “They want to do it when there’s nobody on the streets, for obvious reasons.”

  “Let’s hope it works,” James said.

  Dad finally stepped away from the smoldering carcass and looked back up at the house. A gray smog was still billowing out the door. “You better stay here while I go and open some more windows,” he said, and went back inside, immediately coughing and choking again.

  Morton, Robbie, and James did as Dad asked and waited outside, standing well clear of the windows to avoid the smoke. Nobody said anything, and an odd tension seemed to hang in the air. Morton was sifting through a list of worries in his head when Jake’s old yellow car suddenly squeaked to a halt at the end of the driveway.

  Jake jumped out and ran around to open the back door like a well-trained chauffeur, and both Wendy and Melissa climbed out and smiled politely at him. Morton noticed that this time there was no kiss. In fact, Melissa behaved as though Jake was nothing more than a kind stranger who had given them a ride.

  As Jake drove away, Melissa and Wendy walked toward the house and both got a whiff of the smoke.

  “What is that disgusting smell?” Melissa exclaimed.

  “Never mind the smell,” James said. “We’ve had a bit of a rough day, and we’re really hoping that Jake told you who bought King’s library.”

  “Oh?” Melissa said. “How rough?”

  “Well, Derek hypnotized almost every kid in school and organized a riot, and Dad just told us they’re releasing the gas in the sewers tonight.”

  “You’re right, that is a bad day,” Melissa said. “Even by our standards.”

  “So?” James prodded.

  Melissa sighed and looked at Wendy. “I’m not sure it’s good news,” she said. “But it turns out King’s creepy maybe-brother bought his entire collection.”

  “Crooks!” Morton said. “Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.”

  “We should set a watch outside the store,” Wendy suggested. “We could use the X-ray Specs to find out what he’s up to.”