SEVEN
At the end of the day, Robert opened his locker and found a note waiting on the top shelf. Come to the library immediately, it read. We have important business to discuss.
The note was signed by Ms. Lavinia, the school librarian. She was Crawford Tillinghast’s sister, and the only adult in Lovecraft Middle School who knew about his sinister plans.
Robert arrived at the library and found Ms. Lavinia standing on the circulation desk. She was wearing a tool belt and mounting an electric bug zapper to the ceiling. It looked like a large hanging lantern with a glowing blue coil in the center.
“Trouble with flies?” he asked.
“Moths,” she explained. “They’re eating the cloth on the hardcover books.”
“That’s not good.”
“They’re the least of my worries.” She climbed down carefully from the desk and then smoothed out her skirt and blouse. Ms. Lavinia was well past sixty years old, but she had the energy and pluck of a much younger woman. “Where are your pets?”
Robert unzipped his backpack and coaxed Pip and Squeak onto her desk. The rats stretched their paws and yawned. Ms. Lavinia opened a dictionary, and a flat greasy insect wiggled out. It had a sickly gray color and two long quivering antennae. Pip and Squeak pounced on it, pinning the bug with their forepaws.
“Silverfish,” Ms. Lavinia said. She riffled the pages and another dozen critters slithered out, fleeing in all directions. “They eat cellulose, the wood pulp used to make paper.” After chasing the last of the bugs from the dictionary, she lifted one of the pages. It was speckled with holes small and large, like a slice of Swiss cheese. “In another two weeks, this book will be completely destroyed. All these books, my whole library, ruined.”
Pip and Squeak sniffed the silverfish and decided it was too disgusting to eat. They lifted their paws, releasing it, and the insect darted away.
“What can I do?” Robert asked.
“Come with me,” Ms. Lavinia said.
Robert, Pip, and Squeak followed her to an office at the back of the library. The room was small and cramped, with stacks of books piled up to the ceiling. The walls were lined with AV equipment: video cameras, digital projectors, laptop computers, and dozens of power strips and extension cords. Karina was already there. She spent most of her day hanging around the library, where the teachers wouldn’t notice her.
“Something big is happening,” Ms. Lavinia said. She sat on a chair and addressed the children in a low voice. “The lice, the moths, the silverfish—they’re all part of it. They’re being controlled by a shaggai.”
“Did you say ‘shaggai’?” Robert asked.
“It’s the arthropod occupying the body of Howard Mergler.”
Robert realized he had glimpsed the shaggai from a distance on the night of the school Halloween dance, when Howard had sprouted two membranous wings and soared into the sky. “What is he, exactly? Some kind of giant bug?”
“More like a giant bug leader,” Ms. Lavinia explained. “Imagine a queen bee with power over every bug on earth. Wasps, head lice, walking sticks, silverfish. Howard is summoning all these creatures to Lovecraft Middle School.”
“Why?” Karina asked.
“Why, indeed,” Ms. Lavinia said. “That’s what we need to find out …”
Her voice trailed off as she realized they were no longer alone. Standing in the doorway was one of the exterminators. He was dressed in a yellow hazmat suit and his hands clutched a spray wand and a tank of pesticide, as if he were prepared to fumigate the whole office and every living creature inside it.
Pip and Squeak reared up on their hind legs, hissing and baring their fangs. Robert wondered how long he’d been listening, if he’d heard any of Ms. Lavinia’s explanation. If maybe he was a shaggai himself.
The exterminator set down his tank and removed his helmet. Robert saw that it was only Ms. Lavinia’s husband, Warren.
“Sorry if I frightened you,” he said. “I’ve been doing a little undercover work.”
Ms. Lavinia explained that Warren had managed to infiltrate the exterminators by arriving at the school dressed in his own mask and hazmat suit.
“What have you learned?” she asked.
“Nothing good, my dear,” he said, sighing. “I’m afraid it’s worse than we thought.” Warren sank into an empty chair. Pip and Squeak leapt into his lap, nuzzling their faces against his chest, and he scratched both rats behind their ears. “But at least my favorite furry friends are here.”
Warren was a marine biologist who worked in a lighthouse down by the waterfront, and he was committed to foiling Tillinghast’s plans. He was one of the few adults in town whom Robert trusted completely.
“I’m confused,” Robert said. “If Howard is summoning insects inside Lovecraft Middle School, why did he hire exterminators?”
“He’s just fooling you,” Warren explained. “These goofy radiation suits are part of the charade. Watch.”
He took an empty coffee mug from his wife’s desk and placed the spray wand inside it. Then he pumped the handle on the tank, filling the mug with gloopy brown pesticide. When he finished, Warren raised the mug to his lips.
His wife grabbed his wrist. “Are you crazy? You’ll kill yourself!”
“No, I won’t. Howard supplied the tanks, and he has no intention of killing anything.”
Warren sipped from the mug, grimacing at the taste but forcing himself to swallow. Robert waited for him to choke or gag or clutch his throat, but he seemed perfectly fine.
“It’s maple syrup,” Warren explained.
Of course, Robert thought. That was the smell he’d recognized that morning—not pancakes, but maple syrup!
“Which is basically sugar,” Karina realized. “Instead of killing the bugs, you’ve been feeding them.”
“Exactly,” Warren said. “And that’s not all.”
He explained that real exterminators would set about spraying every inch of an infested space. But Warren’s team received instructions to spray only certain hallways. He showed Robert and Karina a floor plan of the school—the targeted areas were highlighted with a yellow marker. It looked like a sunburst, with all the lines converging in the center of the building.
“They’re trails,” Warren explained. “We spent the day marking trails for the insects to follow.”
“Where?” Ms. Lavinia asked. “And why?”
“That’s what we need to find out. All the lines lead to one place.” He pointed to the middle of the sunburst—a room labeled NURSE’S OFFICE.
“Miss Mandis?” Robert asked. He thought back to the previous morning, when Glenn was lying on her cot. He thought of the three chunky houseflies flinging themselves against her window. “What does she have to do with this?”
“Maybe nothing, maybe everything,” Warren said. “I propose we follow the bugs to her office and see what they’re doing.”
“What if we see a janitor?” Karina asked. One of the strange conditions of her existence was her confinement to the property of Lovecraft Middle School. She lived in the school twenty-four hours a day and spent a good portion of every afternoon hiding from the janitors. She knew all of their schedules and work habits.
“They’re still on strike,” Ms. Lavinia explained. “At this point in the day, we’re probably the only ones left in the school.”
That wasn’t completely true. It was nearing four o’clock when Ms. Lavinia led them out of the library, and the hallways were empty of students and teachers. But they were far from alone.
Creeping along the edge of the hallway was a long procession of insects—crickets, caterpillars, ants, beetles—all of them following the trails of maple syrup.
“Should we stomp them or something?” Robert asked. “Just to be safe?”
“It won’t make a difference,” Ms. Lavinia said. “For every one you stomp, a thousand more will be right behind it.”
Warren nodded. “They’ve got us outnumbered.”
Even Pip and Squeak seemed intimidated by the sheer number of bugs. Instead of walking beside the critters on the floor, they rode atop Robert’s shoulder.
Eventually they arrived at the nurse’s office. Along the bottom of the door was a half-inch opening, just enough space for the bugs to pass underneath. Ms. Lavinia knocked on the door, waited a moment, and then turned the handle.
The office was empty. The lights were off. The trail of insects passed through the reception area, under the privacy screen, and then disappeared beneath one of the cots.
“Give me a hand,” Warren said to Robert.
Together they dragged the cot away from the wall. In the floor was a small slatted vent. The insects were squeezing through the slats and disappearing into a tunnel behind the walls.
“It’s a ventilation duct,” Warren explained. “Used for heating and air conditioning. There’s a whole network of these ducts traveling all over the school.” He knelt down, grabbed a screwdriver from his belt, and used it to remove the vent cover. Then he aimed a flashlight inside. The duct was short and narrow, barely eight inches wide. The long line of bugs marched into the darkness.
“Can you see where they’re going?” Karina asked.
“No, not at all,” Warren sighed. “And I’m sure this is part of their plan. Now they can travel anywhere in the building, and we’re too big to follow them.”
“Well,” Ms. Lavinia said, “we’re not all too big.”
She turned to the rats who were perched on Robert’s shoulder.