Professor Gargoyle

THREE





Incredibly, the strangest part of Robert’s first day at Lovecraft Middle School was yet to come.

Most of his teachers were very nice. His American History teacher promised a class trip to Philadelphia, where students would tour the National Constitution Center. His Mathematics teacher demonstrated a neat trick for adding large numbers without a calculator or even a pencil. And all of his teachers boasted about the school’s extraordinary new facilities. They claimed Lovecraft Middle School was the most environmentally responsible school on the East Coast; much of the building was constructed from recycled materials. They seemed like good teachers who were proud to be working in a good school.

Then Robert went to Science.

As soon as he arrived, he noticed Glenn Torkells seated on the far side of the classroom. Robert ducked his head and grabbed a desk near the door.

There was no sign of a teacher, but the students had plenty to admire while they waited: chemistry flasks and beakers and enough test tubes to stock a mad scientist’s laboratory. At the front of the classroom was a life-size model of a human skeleton. In the back were a dozen aquariums housing tropical fish, lizards, a hamster, and other small animals.

The seventh-period bell rang and still no teacher arrived. Robert’s classmates continued to chat away, but the mood had changed. Something was wrong.

He checked his class schedule.


PERIOD 7 – SCIENCE

MRS. KINSKI – ROOM 213


He was in the correct room at the correct time. But where was Mrs. Kinski?

The girl on Robert’s left turned to him. “I think you should go to the principal’s office,” she said. “Tell them we’re waiting for a teacher.”

“Me?” Robert asked.

“Don’t listen to her,” said the girl sitting on his right. “She likes to boss people around.”

“I do not.”

“Do too.”

Robert looked from left to right and back again. Both girls had fair skin and long red hair. They looked so similar, they could have been sisters.

In fact, they looked virtually identical.

“Wait a second,” he said. “Are you two—”

“Twins,” they said simultaneously, almost sighing, as if they were tired of answering the question.

“Cool,” he said, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say. “I’m Robert.”

The girls didn’t bother to introduce themselves.

Suddenly the door to the classroom swung open and Robert looked up, expecting to see Mrs. Kinski.

Instead there was an old man, tall and gnarled and dressed in a jacket and tie. He seemed surprised to find the classroom full of students. His cold blue eyes surveyed the desks, taking everything in. He did not blink.

“Good afternoon,” he finally said. His voice was rich and deep and smooth as polished wood. “I hope you’ll forgive my tardiness.”

He lumbered toward the front of the classroom and laid a worn leather satchel on his desk. Without a word, he turned to the blackboard, picked up a piece of chalk, and began scratching some notes:

Rattus norvegicus

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Mammalia

Order: Rodentia

Robert watched in astonishment with the rest of his class. “Excuse me?”

The teacher whirled around. “Yes, young man?”

Robert immediately regretted opening his mouth, but someone had to ask the obvious question. “What about Mrs. Kinski?”

“Kinski?” The teacher scrutinized Robert through his bushy eyebrows. “Kinski, Kinski. Why does that name sound familiar?”

Robert held up his class schedule. “It says she’s teaching seventh-period science. Here. In Room 213.”

“You mean the substitute! Of course! Mrs. Kinski is one of our many wonderful substitute instructors. She’d been assigned to cover my duties while I was, ah, recovering. From illness. But as you can see I’m feeling perfectly fine, so her services are no longer required. I am Professor Garfield Goyle and I will be your seventh-grade science teacher.”

Robert had seen some kooky teachers over the years, but this guy was far and away the strangest. Professor Goyle didn’t even bother to take attendance. He just turned back to the chalkboard and began sketching an anatomical drawing of a rat skeleton. It was extremely detailed and took him the better part of ten minutes. He drew forcefully and furiously, and several times the chalk snapped in his grip.

When the drawing was finally complete, he labeled the bones one at a time—the sternum, the scapula, the tibia, the thoracic vertebrae …

One of the twins raised her hand.

“Excuse me, Mr. Goyle?”

He didn’t turn around. “Professor Goyle.”



“Professor Goyle, is this going to be on the test?”

“I don’t understand the question.” He went right on labeling the head of the rodent: the incisors and the mandible and the maxilla.

“I mean, should we be taking notes or something?”

Again, the chalk snapped in Goyle’s fingers; the broken pieces clattered to the floor.

He turned around to face the class, looking weary from all the frenzied scribbling.

“I understand,” he said, “that many of you were disturbed by this morning’s incident. This is completely understandable. Humankind has long associated rats with disease and filth. In fourteenth-century Europe, rats carried the dreaded black death, a plague that killed some one hundred million people.” Professor Goyle laughed. “Can you imagine that, children? A hundred million humans? Wiped off the earth by a bunch of tiny rodents? They’re truly deadly creatures! Much more dangerous than they appear!”

The class stared back at him. If he was trying to put them at ease, he wasn’t doing a very good job.

Goyle walked over to the window and glanced outside. “You need to remember that, six months ago, all of this property was farmland. Trees. Streams. Hundreds of natural ecosystems invisible to the naked eye. The rats were probably quite happy living here. They had food, water, shelter, everything they needed.” His expression darkened. “Until man came along and bulldozed all their underground burrows. Destroying their homes in the blink of an eye. Now what would you have these creatures do? They needed a new place to hide, and the result was this morning’s unfortunate surprise.”

The other students were nodding as if this made perfect sense, but Robert wasn’t satisfied at all. It didn’t explain how a rat ended up inside his locker. But Robert was too shy to ask another question, so he didn’t raise his hand. He figured it was no big deal. If everyone else in class accepted Goyle’s explanation, then it was probably—

“Uh, Professor Goyle?” Glenn asked. His voice was full of uncertainty; Robert couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard Glenn ask a question in class. “I hear what you’re saying, but I found one of those rats inside my locker. It was there, like, before I opened it.”

Professor Goyle nodded. “An adult rat can gnaw through bone, brick, concrete, even lead piping. Your school lockers are made from sixteen-gauge sheet metal, a much thinner material. No match for the teeth of a rodent.”

“Yeah, but I checked my locker,” Glenn continued. “There weren’t any holes in it.”

Now Goyle seemed irritated.

“What’s your name, young man?”

“Uh, Glenn?”

“Glenn what? Do you have a family name?”

“Glenn Torkells.”

“Mr. Torkells, are you sure there were no holes in your locker? You’re absolutely sure?”

“Yeah, I checked all over. No holes. Just the air vents in the door.”

“Just the air vents in the door!” Goyle exclaimed. “Now we’re getting somewhere! Tell me, Mr. Torkells, how would you describe the width of those vents? Did you happen to notice?”

“Maybe half an inch?”

“Maybe half an inch,” Goyle said, smiling now. “And did you know, Mr. Torkells, that the rat is the only known mammal that can literally collapse its own skeleton at will, allowing it to squeeze through spaces as narrow as half an inch?”

“I did not know that,” Glenn mumbled, and the whole classroom laughed.

“Of course you didn’t! Because you’re too busy wasting my time with stupid questions!”

Robert gasped. It was the first time he’d ever heard a teacher describe any question as “stupid.”

“May I suggest,” Goyle continued, “that you listen obediently to my lecture, like the rest of your peers? Then maybe you’ll learn something. Do you think you can manage that?”

Glenn nodded, face flushed, and slouched down sheepishly into his chair. Professor Goyle returned to the chalkboard and continued labeling the rat.

Robert couldn’t believe it. For just one moment—for the tiniest split second—he actually felt sorry for Glenn Torkells.

It was by far the strangest thing that happened to Robert all day.