Scare Scape Read online

  A storm of images burst into Morton’s head like fireworks exploding in the sky. His mind raced from one recent event to another, replaying everything that had happened right from the day they’d arrived in Dimvale. The sensation was so overpowering that he literally felt dizzy and had to steady himself on one of the large stone candleholders. The candle swayed dangerously, spilling a pool of hot wax onto his hands. For a brief moment he found himself looking directly into the candle itself. He thought about John King’s obsession with working by candlelight, with staring at the very heart of the flame, just as Morton was now staring into that black void. And then somehow Morton knew. It was just as King had described: The answer seemed to pop right out of the blackness.

  It was funny, he thought, that the truth had been there all along, but he couldn’t see it for the clutter of emotions and fear and false facts. In the end, he realized, truth was just the thing left over when you took everything else away. It was a small thing, beautiful in its own way, but also a little bit sad and, in this case, a little bit frightening.

  “You said that was King’s book,” Morton said to Brown, regaining his balance.

  “King’s book?” Brown said, smiling. “You’re confusing the story. King approached me because he knew I had it. It was my book. I bought it in an auction, remember?”

  “I remember that’s what you said. But later you said it was King’s book.”

  Everyone turned to face Morton. Mr. Brown’s smile wavered slightly. “Oh, did I? Well, a slip of the tongue, I guess.”

  “That’s what I thought at first,” Morton said, “until I saw the book.”

  “What is it, Morton, what’s wrong?” Melissa said, recognizing the shift in the mood.

  “I’ve seen that book before,” Morton said. “We all have.”

  Everyone began glancing at one another in confusion.

  “Remember the magazine article that Wendy found?” Morton went on. “The one with the photo of Dad’s office? That’s how we found the hatch, right? Well, there were hundreds and hundreds of books in King’s office, but right behind him, sitting on top of a pile on his desk, was this one. This strange old book with a black jewel mounted on the front.”

  Brown wasn’t smiling now. He was shaking his head and frowning. “It must have been another one.”

  “Another book with a black jewel on the front?” Morton said. “I don’t think so. I’ve been trying to figure it out since this afternoon. Your story sounded right but it also sounded wrong. It could have happened the way you described it, but the truth is you’ve taken the facts and jumbled them up to suit your needs.”

  “Melissa,” Brown said urgently, “Morton’s wasting precious time. Hand me the fingers, and we’ll reverse these wishes before it’s too late.”

  Melissa didn’t budge. Her hand tightened on the pouch around her neck. “Keep talking, Morton,” she said.

  “It’s just like Dad said, about the solar system,” Morton went on. “If even one fact doesn’t fit, then the whole theory has to be wrong.”

  “Look, the moon will set soon,” Brown said, stepping toward Melissa. “And then it will be too late for James! Now hand me the fingers.”

  Melissa turned, suddenly grabbing her sword and pointing it directly at Mr. Brown’s rotund belly. He stopped dead. “Let Morton finish,” she said with a dark, dangerous glint in her eye.

  “This is madness. We’re running out of time,” he said in a pleading tone.

  “It should have been obvious,” Morton went on, looking at his teacher, “because you don’t collect books. You don’t like books. You don’t have any in your office. The only book you ever bring to class is the textbook assigned by the school board, and you’re not even interested in that. King was the one who loved books. He had a passion for books bigger even than his passion for drawing. The very idea that King would come to you looking for a book is ridiculous. He didn’t come to you. You went to him.”

  There was a long silent pause, and Morton could hear wax boiling away at the tips of the giant candles.

  “So? What if that were true?” Brown said, his tone even. “It wouldn’t change anything. You need to reverse the wishes and you need to reverse them now.”

  James suddenly pulled himself to sitting position. “It changes everything,” he said.

  Morton nodded in agreement. “All along we’ve thought that King was behind this whole thing. We even thought he might still be alive. I secretly wished he was alive because more than anything I wanted to meet him. But King is dead, isn’t he?”

  “I have no idea,” Brown said.

  “Yes, you do,” Morton said, “because you killed him.”

  “He killed John King?” Wendy said, in abject horror.

  There was a sudden swish of steel as Wendy and Robbie lifted their swords and joined Melissa, pinning Brown on all sides with gleaming blades like the spokes of a silver wheel.

  “Let’s not get carried away,” he said, raising his hands higher. “What would be my motive?”

  “Three wishes,” Morton said simply. “That’s anything you want — riches, fame, immortality even. I can’t think of a better motive. Even the most saintly person in the world would be tempted. That’s why King fell for it, isn’t it?”

  “King was no saint!” Brown spat, losing his calm for the first time. “He was a madman. That much is obvious to anyone.”

  “No, he wasn’t,” Morton said, at last feeling completely confident about the facts. “I should have listened to my instincts all along. King wasn’t a murderer or a lunatic. But then, he wasn’t an infallible genius either. He was just a regular guy, struggling through life like the rest of us.”

  “Regular guy!” Brown scoffed. “What kind of ‘regular guy’ locks himself in a room staring at candles and writing creepy stories for kids?”

  “The kind that you needed to make the gargoyle’s power come to life,” Morton said. “The story you told was almost true but it was upside down. It wasn’t your book. You were the one who stole the gargoyle from the museum of course — a blind man couldn’t have done that — but you didn’t know how to activate the magic. Somehow you found out that King had the only existing copy of The Book of Portals. You moved to Dimvale, got a job as a history teacher, and then made your move on him. You told him about the gargoyle and the wishes. You needed him, for the book, and he needed you, for the gargoyle. No doubt you promised him one of the wishes, the only wish he’d want: to get his sight back. That would be enough to tempt him. But you didn’t tell him about the human sacrifice, and he wouldn’t have known because he was blind. He couldn’t read his own books anymore. But you could. At the last minute you tried to kill him. But King must have been quicker or smarter than you expected. There was a struggle, and somehow he overpowered you and managed to get away with the gargoyle. No doubt he buried it in a hurry because he wanted to hide it from you forever. I’m not sure what happened then. I think you probably caught up to him and maybe he wouldn’t tell you where he’d hidden it, or maybe he told you he’d thrown it down the well. Either way it ended up the same. You pushed King down the well that night.”

  As Morton finished the story he felt a tremendous sense of relief and stood up straight, looking Brown directly in the eyes, daring him to deny the charge. Brown surprised him by snorting through his nose dismissively, as if Morton had just told him nothing more shocking than the fact that his shoelaces were untied.

  “For a tiresome little boy you certainly are observant,” he said dryly. “I’ll plead guilty to everything else, but I didn’t mean to push old King down the well. The rest was pretty much as you described. I stole the gargoyle and convinced King to help me. Oh, he refused at first, tried to tell me there was no such thing as real magic, but I knew he’d come around eventually, and sure enough he did. After months of sitting in the darkness of his sad, lonely life, he saw the light, if you’ll pardon the pun.

  “We did everything it said in the book. We sacrificed the five pigs, w
e burned the roots of a laburnum tree, and we recited the words of an ancient summons to the creatures of the underworld. King was sitting in the center there. It should have been so easy. I had the knife in my hand, I raised it silently, but it was almost as though he had a sixth sense. He caught my hand as it was coming down. I’ll never know how he did that. And he was strong. He twisted the knife right out of my grip and smacked me over the back of the head with the handle. The next thing I knew, he and the gargoyle were gone and my head was throbbing. I ran outside looking for him, and there he was, standing by the well with his hands inside it. ‘Stop or I’ll drop it,’ he said. I panicked. I jumped for him, and then I heard a loud clatter as something fell down the well. I thought he’d dropped the gargoyle. What else could it have been?”

  “A shovel,” Morton said. “The shovel he’d used to dig the hole.”

  Brown nodded gravely. “If I’d been a bit calmer, I might have gotten that information out of him. As it was I throttled him. There was a struggle. He slipped …”

  “You pushed him, you mean!” Robbie erupted, his hatred boiling over.

  “Pushed? Slipped? What does it matter?” Brown went on without remorse. “Either way, he fell. I managed to calm down after that. I thought it through very carefully. I decided to burn his diaries and put the cover back on the hatch to the attic. Nobody would ever know to look up here, and that’s where all the evidence was. Take all that away, and this book, and all that’s left is some crazy blind old man falling down his own well.

  “I have to thank you, Morton, for finding the gargoyle. If it hadn’t been for you, I would have lived out the remainder of my days thinking that all hope was lost forever.”

  “All hope is lost for you,” Morton said fiercely. “We’re going to tell Sharpe everything.”

  “Before or after you reverse the wishes?” Brown asked casually.

  “After!” Wendy said. “We have to reverse the wishes now. If the moon goes down James will …” She couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence.

  Melissa nodded in agreement. “What do we have to do?” she said, looking hopefully at Morton.

  “Oh, how sweet,” Brown chuckled. “Everyone’s pinning their hopes on the comic book expert. But I’m sorry to tell you, Morton doesn’t know how to reverse the wishes, and as you already guessed, I’m not going to reveal anything. I’m just here to get my hands on the gargoyle and the fingers. I’d like to say, give me the gargoyle and nobody gets hurt, but that won’t work. I’m going to replace the fingers myself, then use one of you as a sacrifice to reactivate the gargoyle. The rest of you, sadly, will probably end up down the well with dear old King.”

  Everyone exchanged quizzical looks. Melissa prodded Brown’s belly threateningly with the tip of her sword. “You’re definitely missing the point, if you’ll excuse my pun,” she said. “There are five of us, and we have swords. There’s one of you.”

  “Did you know that choosing the person to sacrifice is an art?” Brown said, smirking at Melissa. “A certain flavor of the victim’s character permeates the wishes. I think I’m going to choose you.”

  “You disgusting old —” Wendy began, but Morton cut her off.

  “Don’t!” he said, raising his hand to stop her. “He’s just trying to make us angry. Hoping we’ll make some mistake. He’s desperate, that’s all.”

  “I’m far from desperate,” Brown said in a gloating voice. “In fact, I’m just beginning to have fun.”

  Brown then snapped his fingers, and the next moment a deep gurgling growl echoed from the room below and a ghastly dark shadow rose through the open hatch in the floor.

  Wendy screamed.

  Morton’s heart started hammering against his ribs as an oily black form stood breathing heavily in the flickering light, separating him from the others. He recognized it at once and realized in that same instant that he had grossly underestimated Brown. The immense two-legged lizard with a bird’s beak, black leathery wings, lifeless white eyes, and huge, fierce talons for hands leered slowly around, as if taking in the situation.

  “Let me introduce a friend of mine,” Brown said. “I’m quite proud of it. It’s my first other-dimensional beast.”

  “It’s a Galosh,” Morton said, determined not to let fear consume him.

  “Galosh!” Melissa scoffed. “What is that, a rubber-boot monster?”

  Brown chuckled. “You like it? I summoned it using King’s book.”

  “So that’s the real reason you were late,” Morton said, trying desperately to remember if a Galosh had any known weaknesses. “You were summoning monsters!”

  “Among other things,” Brown said with a mysterious smile. “You didn’t really think I’d come here unprepared, did you?”

  Everyone remained frozen. Brown was still pinned at the center of a wheel of swords, but now all eyes were on the growling, powerful creature.

  “Now,” Brown went on. “I think you better hand the fingers over to me and stand back before someone gets hurt.”

  Melissa glanced back and forth between Brown and the black beast, as if searching for a way out.

  “Morton,” she said, “you know all about this voodoo magic, right?”

  “It’s not voodoo,” Morton said, backing away from the creature and reaching quickly for a sword.

  “Well, whatever! What do we do?”

  Morton wiped sweat from his eyes and focused his mind like a laser on the task at hand. Killing a Galosh was very difficult. Their leathery skin was more than an inch thick and even when severely wounded, they didn’t feel any pain. That’s why they were the first choice as foot soldiers in large-scale inter-dimensional wars. The only possible way to stop it would be to …

  “Well, what is it?” Melissa demanded from across the room. “Come on! I can see that little brain of yours churning!”

  “Well, if Brown summoned this thing, then it’s tied to his life force,” Morton explained reluctantly. “If Brown dies, the beast returns to its own dimension.”

  “Aha! Just as I thought,” Melissa said almost gleefully to Brown. “Your leather buddy is not invulnerable after all. So, the question is, Brownie, how fast do you think he is? Do you think he can make it across the room before I can push this blade through your black heart? Because that would have to be pretty fast, wouldn’t it?”

  The creature let out a fierce growl and took an angry step forward. Melissa immediately pushed the tip of the blade harder into Brown’s shirt.

  “Stop!” Brown yelled at the beast.

  The Galosh did so immediately.

  “Very wise,” Melissa said. “Now, if you want to live, you better tell your beastie to go have time out in the basement until we’re finished here.”

  Brown stared defiantly back into Melissa’s eyes, still smirking.

  “If you think I’m bluffing,” Melissa said, “then you don’t know me very well. I’ve killed a lot of monsters in the last few weeks.”

  “But you’ve never killed a human,” Brown said tauntingly.

  “No, but in your case I’ll make an exception,” Melissa retorted. “You’re worse than a monster anyway. Monsters don’t have any choice but to be what they are, but you do.”

  Brown shrugged, seemingly still unafraid of the swords.

  “On the count of three, then,” Melissa said adjusting her sword so that its tip sat neatly between his ribs. “One Mississippi.”

  Morton swallowed hard. Would Melissa actually do it? The Galosh began snorting furiously, stamping its clawed feet like a bull, ready to charge.

  “Two Mississippi …”

  The beast let out a terrifying roar, causing Wendy and Robbie to flinch, but amazingly, Melissa held firm.

  “Three Miss —”

  Several things happened at once. Brown yelled, “Now, Galosh!” and at the same moment dropped to his haunches. Morton thought he was trying to dodge the swords, but the swords were now pointing at his head, which made him even more vulnerable. The Galosh, meanwhile,
was sprinting on its powerful reptilian legs toward Brown. Morton was sure Melissa would have no choice but to pierce Brown’s throat, but Brown then did something completely impossible. He sprang like a gazelle high into the air so that his feet cleared the swords, and kept going up — four, five, six feet high above everyone’s heads. He then somersaulted in midair, dropped his walking stick, and seemed to bounce on the ceiling like a flabby helium balloon, giving Morton the illusion that the room had suddenly been turned upside down. Everyone was staring up in shocked confusion when the beast flung itself into the ring of swords, spinning like a black tornado. In the blink of an eye the powerful creature had knocked the swords aside. Melissa, Wendy, and Robbie were left lying on their backs in a dazed heap. Only Morton, on the other side of the room, was still standing. The beast let out a fierce roar, and Morton lifted his sword and pointed it defiantly at the creature.

  Brown began to laugh hysterically. Morton dared to pull his eyes off the Galosh to see his teacher clambering spider-like on the ceiling. “That was even easier than I thought. I have to say, once you get the hang of it, King’s book is lots of fun!”

  A terrified silence filled the room.

  “I’d love to stay and chat, but the moon is setting and I have a life of eternal riches to get on with. Or should I say, an eternal life of eternal riches.”

  Brown scuttled higher toward the peak of the conical roof, clinging impossibly to the rafters. “Save one of them, kill the rest,” he said coldly. “And be quick about it.”

  The creature raised its fearsome talons and leaped for the huddle of kids on the floor. They rolled and scattered like startled pigeons, only just escaping as the beast’s left claw smashed into the floor with devastating force right between Robbie and Wendy, missing them by a mere inch. Morton struggled to lift the point of the heavy sword and jumped forward, but the Galosh was faster than he expected and it swung its arm around, smashing him in the chest.

  Morton felt as though he’d been hit by a train. The sword flew out of his hands and he crumpled in agony to the old wooden boards. The creature lumbered across the room on its clawed feet and towered over him. Robbie ran in to attack, but the Galosh kicked him away effortlessly. Then Melissa grabbed her sword again and leaped forward. She had the most experience with monsters, but she made the almost fatal mistake of taking her eyes off the Galosh to see if Morton was okay. In one downward blow, it shattered her sword. Then it lifted her up, pinning her neck in one of its birdlike talons. She thrashed about, pounding on the leathery body, but it was no good. The creature didn’t even flinch.