FOUR
Robert lived with his mother in a tiny two-bedroom house at the bottom of a dead-end street. When he arrived home, Mrs. Arthur was waiting at the front door. “Oh, you poor thing,” she said, pulling him close. For a moment, he thought she was giving him a hug—but her hands were covered with white latex gloves. She gripped the sides of his head and proceeded to check his scalp, searching for lice that Miss Mandis had overlooked.
“I’m pretty sure she got them all,” he said.
“It’s the nits you have to worry about,” Mrs. Arthur said, raking a spiky comb over the top of his head. “A single louse can lay three hundred eggs in its lifetime.”
Robert’s mother was a nurse at Dunwich Memorial Hospital. When it came to matters of hygiene, there was no one she trusted more than herself.
“Here’s an egg,” she said. “And here’s another, two more. How could she miss these? Let me pluck them—”
She might have searched Robert’s hair for an hour if Pip and Squeak hadn’t shifted inside his backpack, rustling the pages of his math notebook.
“What’s that?” she asked. “Is something in your bag?”
“Be right back,” he exclaimed, twisting out of her reach and hurrying upstairs. Mrs. Arthur was terrified of mice, and she would never allow a two-headed rat to live in her home. So every day Robert smuggled his pets into and out of the house. When he reached his room he unzipped his backpack, and the rats scrambled into a shoe box beneath his bed. “Stay put,” he told them. “You nearly got us busted.”
When Robert went back downstairs, his mother was placing a bowl of ravioli and meatballs on the kitchen table. “I made Glenn’s favorite,” she said. “Do you know if he’s coming over?”
Robert realized it was already six o’clock, their usual dinner hour. “I guess not,” he said.
Glenn had been coming to dinner every night for weeks. He usually ate more food than Robert and his mother combined, but Mrs. Arthur didn’t mind the extra cooking. The house felt livelier with a third person around. Glenn was always telling stupid jokes at the dinner table; sometimes he made Robert laugh so hard that milk dribbled out of his nose.
“Well, it’ll be nice to have some one-on-one conversation,” Mrs. Arthur said. She sat across from Robert and unfolded her dinner napkin in her lap. “How are you liking seventh grade?”
Robert never knew how to answer that question. He couldn’t bring himself to reveal the awful things he had learned about Lovecraft Middle School. Mrs. Arthur didn’t know anything about Crawford Tillinghast or the secret gates leading to his mansion. Robert hadn’t told anyone that Tillinghast was abducting students and teachers, placing their souls in urns, and then using their flesh and hair as disguises for his army of bizarre beasts. How could he expect anyone—even his own mother—to believe him?
“Seventh grade is awesome,” Robert said finally.
His mother smiled. “That’s so nice to hear.”
When they had finished eating, she scooped some ravioli into a plastic container. “Why don’t you take these leftovers to Glenn’s house?” she suggested. “I bet he’d love it if you stopped by.”
Robert wasn’t so sure. He’d been friends with Glenn for three months but had yet to see the inside of his house. From the outside, it looked dark and rundown, and Robert was in no hurry to visit.
But Mrs. Arthur was insistent. She pushed the container into Robert’s hands. “Go,” she said, “before it gets too late.”
So Robert put on a coat and hat, went out the front door, and stood underneath his bedroom window. He whistled twice, and, a moment later, Pip and Squeak came scurrying down the drainpipe.
“Follow me, guys,” he said. “We’re taking a stroll.”
The nicest houses in Dunwich, Massachusetts, were built on tall cliffs overlooking the ocean. Robert and Glenn lived two miles away from the coast, in what people still called the “industrial section,” even though most of the industries had vanished years ago. The street lamps on his block were all dying or dead, and with just a sliver of moon in the sky, the night seemed especially dark.
Pip and Squeak trotted along beside Robert, occasionally darting at shadows and strange noises, their fangs bared. “Take it easy,” he whispered. “Everything’s cool.”
Glenn lived six blocks away on Liberty Street. His house was a small squat box with dirty yellow aluminum siding. The front yard was littered with junk: car tires, cinderblocks, a section of highway guardrail, a rowboat full of muddy rainwater. More than once, strangers driving by had stopped their cars to wander among the debris, thinking they had stumbled upon some kind of yard sale.
Robert was relieved to see the driveway was empty—this meant Mr. Torkells wasn’t home. Glenn’s father was a tall, stoop-backed man who rarely spoke and never smiled. Robert was terrified of him. If he thought there was a chance Mr. Torkells might be around, he never would have knocked on the door.
Glenn answered almost immediately.
“What are you doing here?” he whispered.
“Special delivery,” Robert explained, holding up the container of food. “It’s your favorite. Ravioli and meatballs.”
Glenn crossed his arms over his chest. “We have food, Robert. We’re not poor.”
Robert suddenly felt very embarrassed. He hadn’t meant to suggest that Glenn was poor. “It—it was my mom’s idea,” he stammered. “It’s your favorite.”
“And you shouldn’t stop by people’s houses without asking,” Glenn said. “It’s rude.”
“Why are you whispering?”
“I’m not whispering,” he said. “My throat is sore.”
“Are you sick?”
“I’m just busy right now. I’ll see you later.”
Glenn turned to go back inside, and Robert glimpsed the welt on the back of his neck. It was darker now, almost black, and had swollen to the size of a golf ball.
“Glenn!” Robert exclaimed. “That thing—are you OK?”
“I’m fine,” he said.
“Does it hurt?”
“I’m taking care of it. Good night.”
“Maybe my mom should look at it—”
But Glenn had already closed the door.
Pip and Squeak scrambled up to Robert’s shoulder, chattering like crazy. Even they could tell that something was wrong. “I know,” Robert agreed. “I don’t get it, either.”
As they walked home, Robert replayed the conversation in his mind, trying to understand exactly what he’d done wrong. He couldn’t make sense of it.
And what was the deal with the back of Glenn’s neck?
Robert was nearly home when he remembered he still had the ravioli. He couldn’t imagine telling his mother that Glenn had refused it, so he stopped under a flickering street lamp and opened the container. Pip and Squeak came over to sniff the food, then looked up to Robert with their cutest begging faces.
“Go on,” he told them. “It’s all yours.”