Professor Gargoyle

TEN





When Robert woke the next morning, Pip and Squeak were waiting in his backpack, apparently ready to return to Lovecraft Middle School.

“Are you kidding me?” he asked. “Did you hear anything Goyle said yesterday? Remember how he smelled you through my backpack? Remember the hamster?”

Pip and Squeak nodded their heads as if they shared all of Robert’s concerns. But when he reached into the backpack, they squirmed away, avoiding his grasp.

“Guys, this is crazy. You’re not safe at Lovecraft. You need to stay here until I figure out what’s going on.”

Pip and Squeak shook their heads. They seemed determined to return to the school—to follow Robert wherever he went—but he couldn’t understand why.

“Fine, suit yourselves,” he said, zipping up the backpack and slinging it over his shoulder. “But you’re staying in my locker during science.”

It had just started raining when Robert arrived at school, and his morning classes seemed to last for hours. He couldn’t concentrate on anything besides the events of the previous evening. He could remember exactly what Goyle had said to Pip and Squeak:

What if an adult had seen you? Can you imagine the consequences?

This whole plan, everything Master has designed, it would all come tumbling down.

Shub-niggurath! K’hala dorsath f’ah!

What the heck did it all mean?

After what seemed like a hundred million hours, the lunch bell finally rang. Robert was just leaving English class when Mr. Loomis stopped him.

“Hey, Robert? Got a second?”

“Yeah?”

“Is everything all right? I noticed you weren’t paying attention in class today. You seem like you’re worried about something.”

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.”