Tales From Lovecraft Middle School #2: The Slither Sisters Read online

  “Who wants brownies?” Sylvia cheered.

  “Wooooooooooo!” they hollered together.

  Howard ignored them. “If I’m elected president,” he promised Robert, “I’ll keep school computers at the forefront of technology. And I’ll bring more nutritious lunches into the school cafeteria …”

  Someone cranked up the dance music. A pounding bass shook the metal doors of the lockers: thump, thump, thump-thump-thump. Robert couldn’t hear a word Howard was saying, but he realized the words didn’t matter.

  In an election against Sarah Price, a candidate like Howard Mergler didn’t stand a chance.

  FOUR

  In the days to come, the halls of Lovecraft Middle School were filled with posters advertising Sarah’s campaign. They all featured the same phrase: SUCCESS COMES WITH A PRICE. It was meant to be a snappy campaign slogan—but to Robert the words sounded like a warning: If Sarah won the election, there would literally be hell to pay.

  But who would believe him?

  How could he warn people?

  What proof did he have?

  The Price sisters looked like perfectly normal, all-American girls. They had photographs of boy bands taped inside their lockers. Their grades were good but not suspiciously good; they earned B’s and B-pluses on every quiz, test, and book report. Sarah played the violin; Sylvia played field hockey. They both contributed moody poetry to the school’s literary magazine.

  They behaved like all the other seventh-grade girls at Lovecraft Middle School in every way except one:

  They never ate lunch.

  Every day at eleven forty-five, when the bell rang and hundreds of seventh-graders filed into the cafeteria, Sarah and Sylvia were nowhere to be found.

  Karina explained that they were probably revolted by the flavors of human food. “The creatures at Tillinghast prefer live meat. They’ll eat anything as long as it’s breathing. Rodents, birds, amphibians. Even bugs.”

  Robert imagined the Price sisters sharing a bowl of live crickets in the middle of the school cafeteria. No wonder they were dining in secret.

  “We need to find them,” he said. “They’re up to something, and we need to know what it is.”

  That became his mission. Every day during lunch period, Robert wolfed down his sandwich and then wandered the hallways of the school, hoping to catch the Price sisters eating roaches in the gym or the computer lab or the music room. It was hard to do so without arousing the attention of his teachers. While searching the library, he was repeatedly approached by Ms. Lavinia, the elderly school librarian.

  “Can I help you, Mr. Arthur?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Are you looking for something in particular?”

  “I’m just browsing.”

  The library was a labyrinth of tall shelves that offered plenty of places for Sarah and Sylvia to hide; as Robert wandered its corridors, Ms. Lavinia was always close by, alphabetizing books or pushing a rickety wooden cart with a squeaky wheel.

  Glenn helped search, too. While Robert explored the inside of the school, Glenn scoped out the tennis courts, the athletic stadium, the parking lots, and the picnic areas. It was a funny thing: there was a time when Robert and Glenn couldn’t stand each other. Glenn had a reputation as the biggest bully in Dunwich, Massachusetts, and he had picked on Robert for years. But after Robert saved Glenn from a squid-monster, the two boys had joined forces, and they were unlikely friends ever since.

  After three days of searching the school for Sarah and Sylvia, it was Karina who finally discovered where the sisters were hiding during lunch.

  “The swimming pool!” she exclaimed. The lunch bell had just rung, and she stopped Robert and Glenn in the hallway outside the cafeteria. “They’re in the girls’ locker room,” she said, “changing into swimsuits. We need to go right now!”

  Robert had been hearing about Lovecraft’s amazing swimming pool since the first day of classes but had yet to see it firsthand; he’d never been able to find it. Karina led them into the east wing and down a stairwell, and soon Robert was completely disoriented. “Where are you taking us?” he asked.

  “This is it,” Karina announced.

  She had stopped in front of a door labeled THE WILBUR WHATELEY MEMORIAL NATATORIUM.

  “What about the pool?” he asked.

  “This is the pool,” Karina explained. “A natatorium is a room with a pool inside it.”

  Glenn opened the door. “Holy cow.”

  It was the biggest indoor swimming pool they had ever seen, fifty meters long and up to twelve feet deep. There were ten lanes for swimming and three platforms for diving.

  But no sign of Sarah or Sylvia Price.

  “They’ll be here any second,” Karina said.

  “We should hide,” Glenn said.

  Robert looked around for a good place but didn’t see one. The air in the natatorium tickled the back of his throat. It was warm and humid and reeked of chlorine.

  “Over here,” Karina called.

  Spanning the length of the pool were rows of metal bleachers for coaches, parents, and other spectators. Karina had already climbed behind the stands. It was a tight squeeze for Robert and even worse for Glenn; they had to crouch down on all fours to fit through.

  “What if a teacher catches us?” Glenn asked.

  “Don’t worry,” Karina said. “As long as we don’t move, no one’s going to see us.”

  It was true: to anyone looking at the bleachers, the kids were virtually invisible, camouflaged by the benches and rails and supports.

  From their hiding place, Robert could see only the very surface of the water, as clear and still as glass. Time creeped forward.

  “You’re sure they were in the locker room?” he asked.

  Karina nodded. “They’re coming here every day. The question is, why?”

  Robert wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer. The last time he tried spying on someone, he’d witnessed his Science teacher, Professor Goyle, eating a live hamster.

  Moments later, Sarah and Sylvia emerged from the locker room, dressed in simple one-piece swimsuits and chatting pleasantly. To anyone watching, they appeared to be perfectly ordinary sisters. But to anyone listening, they sounded like snorting, snarling lunatics.

  “Yh’nghai tsathogua dho-na,” said Sarah.

  Sylvia smiled. “Y’golonac chaugnar faugn.”

  “Hgulet tcho-tcho, ep hgulut shaggai.”

  It was the same bizarre language that Professor Goyle had spoken—but what did it mean? Robert had no idea.

  The sisters had reached the edge of the pool and were preparing to dive in when Sylvia stopped, scowled, and raised her hand. “Gnai glaacki!”

  Both girls glanced around the natatorium, as if suddenly realizing they weren’t alone.

  Together, they approached the bleachers.

  A long forked tongue unfurled from Sarah’s mouth, purple and black and eight inches long. It flicked this way and that, dripping with saliva. Robert remembered learning in Science class that certain reptiles used their tongues to detect smell. He forced himself to remain absolutely still, hoping all the chlorine in the natatorium would mask his scent.

  Then he felt something shift inside his backpack. Pip and Squeak spent most mornings napping but usually woke around noon for lunch—and they never hesitated to let Robert know when they were hungry. He closed his eyes, wishing they would sleep for just a few moments longer. Take it easy, guys, he thought. Stay still for one more minute. And immediately the rats stopped wiggling, as if they had somehow read his mind.

  Finally, Sarah retracted her tongue, satisfied they were alone.

  “Shai shabblat?” Sylvia asked.

  “Y’ai zhro,” Sarah replied.

  Together they raised their arms above their heads and then dove into the deep end. Robert watched the water lapping against the edges of the pool, the waves slowly ebbing until once again the surface was as clear and still as glass.

  “What are they d
oing?” Glenn whispered.

  “Shhh,” Robert said.

  He was counting off the seconds—forty-one, forty-two, forty-three—wondering how long Sarah and Sylvia could stay underwater before surfacing for air. Robert counted all the way to three hundred before stopping.

  “How long can you hold your breath?” he whispered to Glenn.

  “I don’t know. Maybe a minute? They’ve been down there for five.”

  “They’re not human,” Karina reminded them. “Some creatures can stay underwater for hours.”

  “Right,” Robert said. “But why? What are they doing down there?”

  No one could answer that question.

  “We need to see what they’re up to,” he said. “There has to be a reason they come here every day.”

  Robert squeezed out from behind the bleachers and crept toward the pool. He wanted to glimpse the sisters without being seen—but they remained just out of view. He had no choice but to step right up to the edge of the water.

  “Glenn? Karina?” he called. “You can come out.”

  His friends rushed to his side and looked down into the pool. Apart from several hundred thousand gallons of water, it was empty.

  “What happened?” Glenn asked.

  “They vanished,” Robert said.

  Karina shook her head. “They crossed over,” she said. “There must be a gate at the bottom.”

  Robert realized she was right. This would explain why Sarah and Sylvia returned to the pool every day: they were traveling back and forth between Lovecraft Middle School and Tillinghast Mansion.

  He sat down at the edge of the pool, unlaced his sneakers, and pulled off his socks.

  Glenn knelt beside him. “What are you doing?”

  “We have to hurry,” Robert said. “They’ve got a five-minute head start.”

  FIVE

  “You’re crazy!” Glenn said. “You want to follow them?”

  “I want to try,” Robert said. “Before the gate closes. Let’s see if we can cross over.”

  “You don’t even know how to swim!” Glenn exclaimed.

  Technically, this wasn’t true. Robert could swim but had never learned how to swim properly, so his arms and legs tired quickly. But that wouldn’t be an issue this morning. “It’s just ten feet to the bottom,” he said. “Anyone can sink ten feet.”

  “What about a bathing suit?”

  “There’s no time to change.”

  Robert stashed his backpack behind the bleachers. Pip and Squeak were still waking up, and he ordered them to sit tight. “We’ll get lunch when I’m back,” he explained.

  Then he jumped into the pool, jeans and sweatshirt and all. As his clothes soaked up water, it felt like he had gained an extra twenty pounds of body weight.

  Glenn yanked off his boots and tossed them under the bleachers. “I’ve been meaning to wash these clothes, anyway,” he said. “You coming, Karina?”

  “Of course,” she shrugged. “You guys wouldn’t last five minutes on the other side without me.”

  Glenn cannonballed into the pool, splashing giant waves over the sides. But Karina dove into the water without making a splash or even a ripple. It was one of the weirdest things Robert had ever seen: instead of swimming in the water, she was somehow swimming between it. And when she rose to the surface, her face and hair were completely dry.

  “Everybody ready?” Robert asked.

  “Let’s go,” Glenn said.

  Karina nodded. “Last one to the gate is a rotten egg!”

  She plunged beneath the water, leading the way, down, down, down to the bottom of the pool. Glenn followed, then Robert. The extra weight of their clothes helped them sink quickly.

  Robert descended headfirst, searching the bottom of the pool for signs of a gate. On dry land, they were easy to recognize—whirling vortexes that hovered in the air. Underwater, they were proving harder to spot. Underwater, everything was whirling.

  Soon Robert realized he had a bigger problem. The pool was supposed to have a maximum depth of ten feet. Karina and Glenn and Robert should have reached bottom in a few seconds, but somehow the tiled floor remained just a few inches beyond their fingertips. They seemed to be going lower and lower without getting anywhere.

  When Robert finally paused to look up, he realized they had descended into a sort of canyon. The sunlit surface of the pool was now fifty feet above—and he was still sinking. The water was turning darker and darker.

  Robert wanted to call out to his friends and make them stop. Going deeper seemed like a terrible idea. What if the pool had no bottom? What if it stretched into infinity?

  But turning back wasn’t an option. Robert tried but found his clothes were too heavy; his arms and legs were too weak. The best he could manage was treading water—keeping himself from falling farther. He paddled his arms and legs, venting bubbles through his nose, wasting precious energy and air. His muscles were going numb. His lungs were nearly empty.

  “Guys!” he yelled. Underwater the word was just a muffled noise. Glenn and Karina didn’t look back, and Robert realized he had made an incredibly stupid mistake. The silent scream had depleted the last of his air, and the edges of his vision were blurring. He was now seconds away from drowning.

  He reached toward his friends, wishing they would turn around, wishing they would see he needed help.

  And then Karina disappeared into darkness.

  But, no—Robert could still see the wall beyond her. Somehow she had vanished through the wall.

  She had found the gate!

  A moment later, Glenn disappeared, too.

  Robert summoned the last of his energy, forcing his exhausted muscles to work just a little harder. There was a pressure in the gate that drew him in, flushing his body through to the next dimension. In an instant, the water turned from dark black to sunny bright green, and Robert suddenly realized he could stand.

  His head broke the surface of the water and Robert choked on his first gasp of air. He opened his eyes but couldn’t see; his face was covered with some sort of muck. He flailed about in the water, coughing and wheezing, until Glenn scooped one arm under his shoulder, holding him steady.

  “Take it easy,” he said. “Just breathe.”

  Robert rinsed the muck away from his eyes. He and Glenn were standing up to their necks in a small outdoor pond. Glenn’s hair, face, and shoulders were covered with slime. Floating on the surface of the water was a fuzzy carpet of bright green algae. Robert could feel the stuff in his hair, in his ears, on his lips. He spat several times into the water. “This is disgusting!”

  “Don’t blame me,” Glenn said. “This was your idea.”

  Together they trudged to the edge of the pond. In front of them was a large four-story home. Robert recognized it from newspaper photographs as the Tillinghast Mansion. Even though they had crossed into another dimension that was some thirty years earlier, the time of day hadn’t changed. The sun was directly overhead. It couldn’t have been much past noon.

  Karina was already out of the pond, crouching behind some shrubbery. Somehow she was still dry—she’d swum through the water without getting wet. “Come over here,” she said. “Before someone sees you.” Robert crawled out onto the grass, covered in slime, and collapsed. Karina wrinkled her nose. “You smell awful.”

  “I feel awful,” he said.

  “We’ll rest a few minutes,” Glenn said. “Give you a chance to catch your breath. Then we’ll go back.”

  “Back?”

  “Through the water.”

  Robert shook his head. Swimming down through the pool had been hard enough. But swimming up? “I can’t. We have to find a different gate.”

  Glenn laughed. “How are we going to do that? You want to knock on the door and ask Tillinghast for help?”

  Robert studied the mansion, searching the windows for signs of life: Nothing. No faces in the windows. No cars in the driveway. And certainly no sign of Sarah or Sylvia Price. The place appeared deserted.


  “Maybe no one’s here,” Robert whispered.

  “Someone’s always here,” Karina said.

  “Someone’s definitely here,” Glenn said. “When I look at this house, I can feel it looking back at me.”

  They spent the next few minutes debating their options. Glenn insisted on going back in the water. He said it was only a matter of time before someone—or something—from the mansion spotted them. And tried to eat them. “Do you remember the giant spider?” he asked.

  “I remember,” Robert said. The last time they sneaked into Tillinghast Mansion, they were nearly eaten by an enormous hungry spider and thousands of her spiderlings.

  But as much as Robert hated giant bugs, he was even more afraid about going back into the water. He’d just come within moments of drowning and he was still dripping wet. He would rather take his chances inside the house.

  “Let’s just peek through the windows,” Robert said. “Maybe we’ll see a gate.”

  “That’s pretty unlikely,” Glenn said, turning to Karina. “Isn’t it?”

  They both looked to Karina to make the decision. As often happened, she would have the tiebreaking vote. She stood up and walked toward the front door. “We’ve come this far, we might as well take a peek.”

  “Wait for me,” Robert said.

  “Fine,” Glenn said, scrambling after them, “but if we see one spiderweb I’m jumping back in this water and leaving you here.”

  SIX

  As they followed the walkway to the front door of the mansion, Robert realized the yard was completely silent. There were no sounds of cars from neighboring streets, no lawn mowers or leaf blowers buzzing in the distance. Even the wind had fallen silent.

  The grounds of the mansion were deathly still.

  There were two large windows beside the front door, but these were blocked by tangles of tall thorny vines. Robert tried pushing them back and immediately pricked his finger. He studied one of the windows from a distance. The drapes were open but the glass was covered with a thick layer of grime, making it difficult to see anything inside. Yet he recognized a familiar shape.