Nicholas Gannon - The Doldrums and the Helmsley Curse

Behind him, Benjamin stopped snoring. Archer glanced over his shoulder.

“Why are you up so early, Archer?” Benjamin asked, blinking at him sleepily.

“I was too cold. I couldn’t sleep.”

Benjamin stuck his feet out from beneath the blankets. They were twice the size they should have been.

“Your feet are swollen,” Archer said, sitting down at his desk. “Did the spider come back? Did it bite you?”

Benjamin grinned and shook his head.

The night before, the two boys had gone to war against a large spider that had crawled into their room. Archer threw a lamp, three books, and to Benjamin’s horror, a potted plant, but the eight-legged fiend had escaped unharmed.

“They’re just socks,” Benjamin said over a yawn. “I’ve got four pairs on.” He rubbed his long, tousled hair. A leaf fell out. “But I wonder where that spider came from.”

Archer thought it was obvious. Benjamin’s side of the room was filled with plants, and Benjamin’s desk was barely visible beneath them. They were strange plants—plants unlike any he’d seen growing in the Willow Street gardens.

Archer leaned over to poke at one on Benjamin’s desk. “This one looks like it would sprout spiders.”

“Is that my bog weed?” Benjamin asked. “Or the didactus that sprouted yesterday? If it has pink speckled leaves, then it’s pugwort.”

Archer had learned enough during his time as Benjamin’s roommate to know the plant he was pointing to wasn’t any of those. This one had long, spiraling stems covered in bumps, as though something inside was trying to get out.

“Oh,” Benjamin said, stumbling stiffly to his desk. “That’s my Paria glavra . Be careful with that one. It can be a bit hostile.”

“Hostile?” Archer repeated, and quickly withdrew his hand.

Benjamin opened his notebook and inspected the plant more closely. “Like most Parias , the glavras starts off harmless,” he explained. “But eventually it will become dangerous. Deadly, even.”

Archer threw off his blanket and hurried to the corner sink to wash his hands. The last thing he wanted was to die before meeting his grandparents for the first time.

“The thorns haven’t sprouted,” Benjamin called, measuring the bumps with a pen. “The thorns are what you need to watch out for.”

Thorns or not, Archer should have learned by now not to touch plants unless Benjamin said it was safe. He soaped his hands as Benjamin noted growths and observations in his notebook. It was almost like homework. Benjamin had once told him that if he knew what plants could do, he’d understand. But all Archer thought was that, in a funny way, Benjamin’s long, leafy hair and tall, sticklike body made him resemble one of his seedlings.

“I want to go to the mail room after breakfast,” Archer said, drying his hands and shoving his feet into his boots.

“Again?” Benjamin replied, struggling to pull a third sweater over his head. “That’s why you couldn’t sleep, isn’t it? It’s not the cold. It’s your grandparents.”

Benjamin was right. Archer hadn’t slept for the past week.

“Maybe they finally wrote.”

Benjamin sat on his bed to tie his shoelaces, staring as Archer pressed his ear to the door. Not many students attended Raven Wood, but when the few converged in the dusty, dimly lit corridors, they became something of a thundering horde.

“Let’s wait a moment,” Archer said. “You don’t want to get trampled again.”

“That was terrible,” Benjamin replied, laughing. He pulled a collared shirt from his trunk. “Look. The footprint still won’t wash out!”

Raven Wood students were kept to a very tight schedule, and there were steep consequences for being late. Archer was often late, but he never got into trouble.

Benjamin tossed the shirt back into his trunk. “You’re lucky Mr. Churnick likes you.”

♦ FORTUNATE CONSEQUENCES ♦

Mr. Churnick was Raven’s Wood’s head of school, a somewhat crusty and thickset man whose overgrown teeth were often speckled with bits of cheesecake. Mr. Churnick was terribly fond of cheesecake. He was also quite fond of Archer, which was surprising considering his welcome when Archer had first arrived.

“I’m not in the habit of allowing troubled children into my school, Archer Helmsley. But as it is, Raven Wood has fallen on hard times. So against my better judgment, there you sit.”

Archer’s mother hadn’t spared the slightest detail in listing every offense he’d ever committed. It had all been there in Mr. Churnick’s file, from talking to taxidermied animals to the tiger incident.

“Set tigers lose in a museum, did you?” he’d grumbled. “Nearly got hundreds killed! But your antics only claimed one victim. That’s fortunate. Yes, it says here that you seriously damaged one Mrs. Murk—Mrs. Murkley? You took down Mrs. Murkley? But you’re so… and she’s so—you flattened her with A POLAR BEAR!”

Mrs. Murkley was a former Raven Wood instructor who’d ended up becoming Archer’s instructor at the Willow Academy. Archer, Oliver, and Adélaïde hadn’t been sure what had prompted Mrs. Murkley’s departure from Raven Wood, but knowing her to be a brutish terror, they’d all agreed it must have been something bad—maybe as bad as crushing a teacher beneath a polar bear.

“De-tusked the ol’ boar, did you, Archer?” Mr. Churnick had erupted into laughter and nearly fallen off his chair. “Justice has finally been served! By you ! But how did I not hear about this sooner? Good news always travels slower than bad news, I suppose.”

Archer hadn’t understood Mr. Churnick’s mirth at the time. And Benjamin had been no help in figuring it out. Benjamin was a temporary boarder. He only came to Raven Wood when his father, a travel guide, went away for long periods. (Benjamin never mentioned anything about his mother. Archer wasn’t sure if he had one.) But eventually Archer pieced together the Murkley tale.

Though the exact details varied from source to source, all accounts followed the same basic premise: a boy named Phillip had fallen four stories from the Raven Wood rooftops and would have died had he not landed in a topiary shaped like a raven. It was quite a scandal. And Mrs. Murkley was at the center of it. Nothing could be proven, but most parents withdrew their children from the institution, leaving Raven Wood on the brink of bankruptcy. And Raven Wood looked it. The halls were filthy. Lights were always going out. The gardens were overgrown. And that’s to say nothing of the food.

♦ BENJAMIN’S LETTER ♦

Archer and Benjamin scurried into the dining hall and took their usual spot in the corner. A miserable server plopped bowls before them with a surprising thud. Archer pried his spoon out and studied the white, clumpy slop.

“The oatmeal’s getting worse,” Benjamin groaned, staring despairingly at his bowl.

“I didn’t think that was possible,” Archer said, licking his spoon and quickly wishing he hadn’t. “Now it tastes like cardboard and glue.”

“And maybe a pound of lard?” Benjamin suggested.

Two large hands gripped Archer’s shoulder.

“Morning, boys.” Mr. Churnick was making his morning rounds. “Goodness, Archer! You’re an ice cube! Sorry about the heating cuts. I’m doing the best I can. Must find ways to save money.” Mr. Churnick leaned over Archer’s shoulder to inspect their bowls. “At least the food has improved a bit.”

“Would you mind if we skipped breakfast?” Archer asked, dropping his spoon into the bowl. “I want to go to the mailroom.”

Mr. Churnick glanced around at the other students and nodded. “Quickly now. Don’t make a show of it.”