Professor Gargoyle

THIRTEEN





The next morning, Robert was brushing his teeth when he heard a knock at the front door. He went downstairs and found Glenn standing on his porch.

“What’s up?”

“Your house is on my way to school,” Glenn shrugged. “I thought we could walk together.”

“All right.” Robert whistled for Pip and Squeak, zipped the rats inside his backpack, and pulled the front door closed. “Let’s go.”

It was a cool gray morning. It had thunderstormed the night before, and the potholes in the street were filled with rainwater.

“This is a nice block,” Glenn observed.

“You think?” Robert had never heard anyone describe his street as nice. Most of his neighbors didn’t even have grass.

“It’s quiet,” Glenn said.

Every few steps, the boys would pass an earthworm writhing on the sidewalk, washed up by the rainstorms, and every time, Glenn would reach down and fling the worm onto a muddy lawn. It seemed like weird behavior, but Robert didn’t say anything. Lately, he was learning all kinds of weird things about Glenn Torkells.

“I’ve been thinking about what happened yesterday,” Glenn said. “I figure the school must be haunted.”

“By what? Giant squids?”

“Once I saw this movie about a haunted house,” he explained. “It looked totally normal on the outside, but inside all this weird stuff kept happening. Stuffed animals floating around. The daughter got sucked into a television set. Finally they figured out the house was built on an old Native American burial ground. The spirits of all the dead bodies were trapped under the house, so they were rising up to haunt them.”

“You think Lovecraft Middle School was built on an old graveyard?”

“It’s possible, isn’t it?”

Robert shrugged. “When you’ve got giant squids coming out of lockers, anything’s possible.”

They agreed to meet at lunch to research the theory, but Robert couldn’t wait three hours to get started. His first class of the day was gym. He told his teacher he wasn’t feeling well and asked permission to study in the school library. Once there, Robert asked Ms. Lavinia to point him to the old newspapers. It took him just a few minutes to find the September 7 issue of The Dunwich Chronicle, the local daily newspaper. There was a front-page article about the grand opening of Lovecraft Middle School. Robert scanned the text until he reached the important part:

The new middle school is situated on five acres near the intersection of Grove Avenue and Clive Hills Road. Longtime Dunwich residents will recognize this land as the former site of the 120-year-old Clemson Family Berry Farm. Angus Clemson deeded the land to the town of Dunwich upon his retirement five years ago.

It was enough to rule out Glenn’s theory, Robert decided, and he nearly stopped reading. But then another paragraph near the bottom of the page caught his attention.

Lovecraft Middle School is one of the most environmentally friendly schools in the United States and generates 90 percent of its own power from rooftop solar panels. The school was constructed almost entirely from recycled materials; many of the doors, windows, floor tiles, and masonry were reclaimed from the old Tillinghast Mansion before it was demolished earlier this year.

The name sounded familiar. Hadn’t his mother mentioned the Tillinghast Mansion just the other night? There was a pay phone near the entrance to the library. Robert swiped his student ID card and then dialed the number of the hospital where his mother worked. When she finally reached the phone, she sounded out of breath.

“Robert, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Where are you?”

“At school.”

“Why are you calling me?”

“I had a question.”

She took a deep breath. “My goodness, Robert, I thought you’d been kidnapped like those girls! Do you know how much you’ve scared me?”

“I’m fine, Mom. Everything’s fine. But do you remember that story you told me the other night? About Crawford Tillinghast? Why did your friends think the house was haunted?”

There was a long pause. “I don’t understand. You’re calling me at work to ask about Crawford Tillinghast?”

“It’s for a school project,” Robert said.

“Can this wait until later?”

“It’s important. I just want to know why you thought the house was haunted.”

“Gosh, honey, I don’t remember all the details. He was some kind of physicist, I think. He had a laboratory in his basement. There was a whole team of scientists helping him. And if you believe the rumors, he was summoning evil spirits. Inviting these ancient demons and monsters into his home. A lot of hocus-pocus mumbo jumbo, you know what I mean?”

“You said something about a house fire. When did that happen?”

“Oh, a long time ago. I was in middle school myself. For thirty years after the fire, everyone in Dunwich claimed the house was haunted. I have friends who swore they’d seen figures moving through the windows. Or heard strange chanting coming from inside. The cops used to drive out there every weekend to investigate something or other. I’m sure they were thrilled when the house was finally demolished.”

Yeah, Robert thought, except the house wasn’t completely demolished. Many of its raw materials were recycled into Lovecraft Middle School.

What if the evil forces were somehow recycled with them? Was that possible? What if all the hocus-pocus mumbo jumbo had carried over to the new building?

“Does that help with your project, Robert? Because we’re short-handed and I really need to get back to work.”

“Just one more question,” Robert said. “You said Tillinghast was summoning monsters into his home. Do you know what they looked like?”

He glanced up and saw Ms. Lavinia watching him from across the library. She was holding a phone to her ear, but she seemed to be listening to Robert’s conversation.



“Sweetie, let me be clear about something. Demons and monsters are not real. Crawford Tillinghast was a lunatic. And you’re a lunatic for bothering me at work with this stuff, do you understand?”

Robert was tempted to explain himself but didn’t dare say anything with Ms. Lavinia nearby. He wondered if the librarian was friendly with Professor Goyle, if they ever chatted together in the faculty lounge.

He thanked his mother for her help and hung up.