The Monsters of Morley Manor (3 page)

“You're crazy,” I said. “He's dead.”

“He may be dead,” replied Sarah, “but I swear I saw him.''

She looked really nervous.

I didn't believe her. I didn't
want
to believe her.

But I couldn't stop thinking about it.

As if that wasn't enough, something even stranger happened when I was getting ready to go to bed. I hadn't thought any more about Albert's hand getting wet, until I decided to take a last look at the monsters before I went to sleep.

Then I saw that his hand had changed color, the brass tones transformed to a dark, fleshy shade.

I got mad, because I figured the water had damaged whatever Albert was made of. But when I touched his hand I drew my finger back, my anger quickly shifting to fear.

The little monster's hand was no longer hard and metallic. Now it felt warm—warm and . . . fleshy.

I picked up the figurine and stared at it.

To my horror, its fingers began to move.

3

I
SLAPPED
A
LBERT
back into the box, closed the lid, and latched it. Then I put the box in the bottom drawer of my desk, closed the drawer, and locked that, too.

But I didn't leave it there.

I couldn't.

Which isn't to say I didn't try. But I couldn't sleep, thinking about that tiny hand, stretching and grasping. It was horrifying—but not as horrifying as the idea that a living creature was locked, frozen, in my desk. A creature I could revive just by adding water. If Mr. Perkins hadn't splashed him, if I hadn't seen that hand move, I would never have known, and it wouldn't have made any difference. But I did know, and because I did know it seemed to me that I had to do something about it. The thought of keeping some tiny person frozen (or statued, or whatever) was too awful to live with.

Unfortunately, the idea of bringing him completely to life was pretty awful as well. After all, it was possible he had been frozen for a reason. What kind of monster was he, anyway?

Well, a small one, to begin with. It wasn't as if he could tear me limb from limb or anything.

After fussing like this for an hour or so, I got out of bed, slipped into my robe, and went to my desk.

I took out the box and opened it.

Albert's fist was still moving, clenching and un-clenching, a bit of living flesh stuck on a lifeless metallic figurine. I took a deep breath, then whispered, “All right, buddy, let's thaw you out.”

I tucked Albert into the pocket of my robe, then stepped into the hall. It was dark and quiet. I hoped Mr. Perkins was asleep and not just hiding somewhere, getting ready to jump on my head and pee on me again.

About halfway down the hall, I stopped and went back to Sarah's room. I stood outside her door, trying to decide whether to wake her. Part of me wanted to do this on my own, keep it all to myself. Another part of me thought it would be a good idea to have someone else along, just in case things got out of hand—and so I would have someone to talk to about it. Also, it's always better to have Sarah along when I'm doing something that might get me in trouble, since my parents never seem to get as mad when she's involved.

Finally I knocked on her door, then pushed it open and hissed, “Sarah! Wake up!''

She moaned. “What do you want, Anthony?” (She doesn't like waking up, especially in the middle of the night.)

“I have to show you something.”

She sat up fast, and I remembered that the last time I woke her and said those words, I had also dropped a snake onto her bed.

“This is different,” I said urgently. I turned on the lamp next to her bed as I spoke, then thrust Albert into the cone of light.

Sarah gasped at the sight of his tiny moving fingers. Scooching back against the wall, she whispered, “Anthony, that is
too
weird.” She shuddered, then asked, “How did you do it?”

“It happened when he got wet. I'm going to go get the rest of him wet now.”

Sarah grabbed my arm. “Do you think you should?”

“I have to. It's not right to leave him like this.”

“Maybe he's that way for a reason,” said Sarah, who is very big on being sensible. “Maybe he's
evil
.”

“Maybe whoever froze him was evil.”

Sarah thought about that for a moment. Though she's big on being sensible, she's also big on compassion. She'll probably be a vegetarian in a year or so. “How can we find out?” she whispered at last.

“Unfreeze him.”

“What if it turns out that he
is
evil?”

“We'll squash him!”

I said that with more certainty than I actually felt, and I had a brief vision of Albert escaping and hiding in the walls, then sneaking out at night to torment us. But just as I was about to change my mind about thawing him out, Sarah said, “Okay, let's do it!”

She slipped out of bed and grabbed a flashlight from her nightstand. We both used to have flashlights, but I had lost mine.

We tiptoed down the hallway—though we didn't really need to; Gramma Walker is so hard of hearing we probably could have stomped to the bathroom without waking her up.

Albert's tiny hand continued stretching and grasping, something I could see all too well by the glow of Sarah's flashlight.

“What do we do now?” asked Sarah, when we got to the bathroom.

“Get him wet,” I replied. I looked at him for a second, then added, “Should we sprinkle him, or dunk him?”

Sarah thought about it. “Dunk him,” she said at last. “It would be really gross if he came to life in little spots all over his body. Dangerous, too, maybe. I mean for him.”

I wasn't sure what the medical rules were for bringing a monster back to life. But I decided Sarah was right.

So we filled the sink. I dipped Albert into the water, planning to pull him right back out. But as soon as I put him in, the water began bubbling and boiling, splashing over the edge of the sink like some sort of weird chemical reaction. I dropped Albert and jumped back with a yelp. A weird green glow came from the sink.

Sarah huddled against me. I didn't push her away.

When the water calmed down, I saw a little hand thrust through the surface.

“He's drowning!” hissed Sarah. “Go save him, Anthony!”

I started forward, but Albert was already hauling himself onto the edge of the sink. He shook his head, spattering tiny drops of water in all directions. Then he stood, looked around, scratched his head, and said, “Oy, now what has the boss gotten me into?”

He started to walk along the edge of the basin. “What a strange white road,” he muttered.

I cleared my throat.

Albert glanced up at me and Sarah. “Yikes!” he screamed.
“Monsters!”

Then he dived back into the sink.

I hurried over and looked in. Albert was at the bottom of the basin, clinging to the drain plug. I didn't do anything at first, but when I began to be afraid he might drown, I reached in and pulled him out. He pounded on my fingers as I lifted him. I half expected him to bite me in order to get me to drop him, but that was probably only because I've spent so much time with Mr. Perkins.

Albert didn't bite. He just squirmed like a demented squirrel, shouting, “Let me go, you big brute! I never did nothing to you.”

“Hey, hey,” I said softly, “I'm not going to hurt you. I thawed you out, didn't I?”

He blinked, and a series of expressions raced across his face, shifting through surprise, understanding, anger, fear, and back to understanding. “Uh-oh,” he said. “I think we've got a little problem here.” Looking up at me, he asked in a suspicious voice, “What are you, anyway?”

“I'm a kid.”

His eyes got wider. “How did you get so big?”

“How'd you get so small?” I responded.

We stared at each other for a moment. As far as I was concerned, I wasn't all that big. Heck, if I
was
, I wouldn't have so many problems with Ralph Mangram at school. But I was certainly big compared to Albert. At first I had figured that the little guy had somehow gotten shrunk, but now I wondered if he was from some other world. Maybe he had always been this size, and we humans were giants compared to his people!

“Would you put me down, please?” he asked softly.

I set him on the edge of the sink, then knelt so that we were face-to-face. His head was about the size of my eyeball. Sarah knelt next to me.

“Where are you from?” she asked.

“Brooklyn, originally,” said Albert.

“Brooklyn?” I asked.

“Yeah, you know, as in New York City. Then I lived in Transylvania for a while.”

Well, those were both on Earth. So much for the other-world theory.

Sounding nervous, Albert asked, “Where am I now?”

“Owl's Roost, Nebraska,” said Sarah proudly.

Albert's eyes widened. “But that's where I live!” He swallowed. “You . . . you're not giants, are you?”

Sarah and I shook our heads.

Albert sat down, cross-legged, his shoulders drooping, his hump nearly as high as his head. “I've been shrunk!” he moaned. He sounded really depressed. I suppose you couldn't blame him. Suddenly he jumped to his feet. “Where are the others?”

“In the box,” I replied.

“The box?”

“The box you came in,” explained Sarah.

“Well, go get them! Then we have to figure out a way to get back to our normal size.” He looked around, then said, “Wait a minute. What year is this? It
is
1948, isn't it?”

From the tone of his voice, I could tell he had a pretty good idea that it
wasn't
1948. But when I told him he was off by more than fifty years, he screamed.

“Martin did this! Oh, I knew he was up to no good. Come on, we
have
to wake up the others!”

“What's the hurry?” I asked, not sure I wanted to deal with
five
little monsters.

Albert leaped from the sink, grabbed the front of my pajamas, and scrambled up my chest like a sailor climbing a ship's rigging. I jumped backward and tried to brush him off, but he was too strong. Once he had reached my shoulder he stuck his head in my ear and bellowed, “The hurry is, they're my family and I don't want them frozen! Besides, I'm not the smart one. We need Gaspar and Ludmilla.
Now go get them!”

Jeez. And I thought Mr. Perkins was a problem.

We started down the hall to fetch the other monsters, Albert riding in the big pocket on the left side of my bathrobe. Sarah positioned herself on the other side of me, then tugged my sleeve and whispered, “Anthony, do you think this is a good idea?”

“It's probably a terrible idea,” I replied. “But it's the most interesting thing we've ever done. Besides, I don't think we could talk Albert out of it. And even if we could . . .”

Sarah nodded as my voice trailed off. I sensed that, like me, she was thinking about the little monsters having been frozen (or whatever) for over fifty years. It was time to thaw them out.

When we got to my room, I set Albert on my desk. He ran to the box. “Boss!” he cried in horror when he saw Gaspar. “Oh, boss, boss, what has that maniac done to you?”

“I take it he didn't always look like that?” I asked, picking up the lizard-headed monster.

“I'm not worried about how he looks, you idiot,” Albert said. “We can change
that
. It's the fact that he's been shrunk and turned into a statue that has me upset.” He walked along the front of the box, gazing into each compartment. “Poor Melisande,” he sighed. “Poor Ludmilla. Asleep for over half a century.”

“Not what you'd call sleeping beauties,” I remarked.

“Beauty is as beauty does,” snapped Albert. He stopped in front of the last slot, the one with the wolfman-type guy. “Alas, poor Bob,” he said, patting the figurine on the head. “Trapped in this horrible form all these years.”

“So Bob didn't always look like that, either?” asked Sarah.

Albert shook his head. “Only occasionally. He's were.”

“Were what?” I asked. Then I got it. “Oh! You mean he's a werewolf?”

“Not quite,” said Albert. “Come on, let's stop with the jabbering and wake them up.”

I put Gaspar back in the box, then picked up the whole set. With Albert on my shoulder and Sarah at my side, I headed back to the bathroom.

It was monster time.

4

P
UTTING
A
LBERT
in the sink had made it act like a bubbling stew pot. Dropping in four monsters at once just about turned it into a geyser. Water sprayed everywhere, coming out so forcefully it hit the ceiling (not to mention splashing all over me and Sarah). As before, a weird green glow lit the water from within.

The bubbling stopped. The glow faded. Four coughing, gagging little monsters climbed out of the sink. They were wet, bedraggled, and extremely confused. But they were also overjoyed to see one another.

“Melisande!” shouted Ludmilla.

“Ludmilla!” shouted Melisande.

They threw their arms around each other and hugged. Then Melisande looked up and spotted me and Sarah. Her snakes began writhing in horror, and she let out a scream.

It was amazingly loud for someone so tiny.

I heard an answering scream, and realized Mr. Perkins was on the prowl. I wondered if he thought Melisande was another monkey. I shut the bathroom door, just to be safe.

The other monsters had looked up when Melisande screamed. Their eyes went wide and they cowered together—except for Gaspar, the lizard-headed guy. He just closed his eyes and heaved a deep sigh.

Despite Albert's attempts to assure Ludmilla and Melisande that Sarah and I were friendly, it took several minutes for them to settle down. When they finally did, Albert introduced first Sarah, then me.