[Janitors 01] Janitors (3 page)

Burning hot!

Icy cold!

“Yaaaaaggghh!”

Spencer frantically began rinsing his face. The soap was in his eyes now, stinging like crazy. He plunged his entire face directly under the faucet, letting the lukewarm water flush out his eyes. Spencer reached out blindly and pumped a roll of paper towels. Blotting his face with the paper helped make the tingling sensation fade.

Spencer opened his eyes and stared back at his reflection. The front of his shirt was soaked from his rapid and reckless rinsing. His brown hair was damp and clinging to his forehead. And his face . . . it was as red as a tomato and still burning. But at least there was no sign of Dez’s algebra.

Spencer picked up the bottle, blinking rapidly in hopes that his eyes would stop stinging. He smelled the soap again. It was strong—definitely not Best Western shampoo. It might have been paint remover, for all he knew. Whatever it was, Spencer decided he was allergic. He was lucky to have found it first. What if some little baby first grader had washed his hands with the napalm soap?

Feeling like he was doing the world a favor, Spencer tossed the bottle into the garbage can, where it sank out of sight beneath crumpled paper towels.

Suddenly, a flash of movement caught his eye in the mirror. Spencer blinked, still trying to focus. The stall door was open, but he thought he’d seen something duck out of sight.

Spencer took a cautious step toward the bathroom stall and peered in. Seeing nothing, he gently pushed the door. It swung on its hinges to reveal an empty stall, nothing but scraps of toilet tissue littering the hard floor.

“Weird,” Spencer muttered, still blinking against the eye-tingling sensation. Dispensing another small piece of paper towel, he used it to open the bathroom door. Then he headed for the lunchroom.

Chapter 5

“Better hurry up.”

Miss Sharmelle’s afternoon lessons were back up to par. The students sat on the floor for the last twenty minutes of class listening to her read aloud from some novel about the Civil War. Spencer had read the book on his own the year before, but he didn’t mind hearing it again. Anything was better than algebra.

As Miss Sharmelle turned another page, her voice escalating with the narrative, Spencer glimpsed movement by the bookshelf. There was something crawling across the top of the books!

Before Spencer could say anything, something sprang forward, unfolding leathery, batlike wings. It had the bald head and hooked beak of a vulture. The rest of its black body, no bigger than a softball, was covered in short, bristly hair.

From the bookshelf, it flew in a jagged arc over the students, turning only inches away from Miss Sharmelle’s pink-streaked hairdo.

“Ahhh!” Spencer cried, flattening himself to the ground. “Look out!”

As soon as the words left his mouth, the winged creature arched back and dove as fast as a falcon behind the teacher’s desk.

“Spencer?” Miss Sharmelle said, looking up from the novel. “Is something wrong?” The other kids were staring at him, some trying to suppress giggles.

What? Impossible!
Of course something was wrong! Some hideous bat thing had just come out of the bookshelf. Spencer glanced toward the teacher’s desk. The creature was hiding now. Probably waiting for the perfect moment to swoop down and scoop out everyone’s eyeballs.

“I thought I saw something,” Spencer said. “Did anyone else . . . I mean . . . did anyone see anything?” His classmates slowly shook their heads with looks on their faces that might have condemned him to a lifetime in the loony bin.

Finally, someone broke the silence. “Yeah. I saw something.” Spencer turned. It was Dez. “I saw some doofus put his face on the floor and shout, ‘Look out!’” This won laughter from several kids, but Miss Sharmelle killed it.

“Spencer, what exactly do you think you saw?”

“Well,” Spencer said, unsure how to explain it. “It was kind of hairy, with black wings and a sharp beak.”

“Like a bat?” one of his classmates asked.

“Yes!” Spencer said. “Kind of like a bat.”

“Uh, bats don’t have beaks, Doofus.” This was from Dez, who clearly thought everyone was taking Spencer too seriously.

“It came out of the bookshelf over there,” Spencer explained, rising to his feet. “It flew right down here, close to Miss Sharmelle. But when I saw it, the thing just shot down behind the teacher’s desk.”

Instant stampede. About half the kids in the class rushed over to Mrs. Natcher’s desk, surrounding it from every angle.

“There’s nothing here!” shouted Daisy. “It’s gone.”

“Of course there’s nothing,” answered Dez. “Spencer just imagined it. See, Daisy. He’s got that flu I was telling you about. The only way to stop it is by doing this.” Dez stuck his thumbs up his nose and put his pinkies in his ears. Then the bell rang and he jumped up, grabbed his backpack, and ran out of the classroom screaming.

As the students poured out of the room, Miss Sharmelle called Spencer over. “I’m a little worried about you,” she said. “I don’t know what Mrs. Natcher usually tolerates, but you’ve been kind of disruptive today. Now, I won’t tell her about this, or about how you slept through math. But I surely hope you weren’t
trying
to make a scene.”

“No, ma’am,” Spencer promised. “I’m pretty sure I saw something.”

“Well, maybe you did. I’ll keep my eyes peeled.” Miss Sharmelle gave him a heartwarming smile. “See you tomorrow.”

Unable to resist, Spencer took a few steps forward and peeked behind the desk.

Nothing.

It took Spencer a few moments to gather his things; by the time he entered the hallway, most of the kids were outside loading into the busses. It would be a long walk if he missed the bus. And Spencer really didn’t want to bother his mother for a ride—assuming that the station wagon started in the first place.

Spencer rounded a corner, heading for the main doors, and stopped in his tracks. There it was, nestled in the trash can, its bat wings sticking up over the top edge. Frozen, Spencer watched it rummage through the garbage, poking its bald head in a Kit Kat wrapper.

“Get down!” someone shouted, and Spencer instinctively dropped to the carpet. Dez appeared behind him, waving his hands at invisible objects above his head. “Save us, Batman! They’re everywhere!”

Dez’s sixth-grade buddies showed up laughing. “Good one, dude.” Dez stopped swinging his arms and joined in the laughter.

One of the bullies pointed as Spencer scampered to his feet. “That’s the weirdo from your class? What a loser.”

Spencer looked instinctively at the garbage can. The vulture-headed creature was still there. Lifting a chocolaty beak from the Kit Kat wrapper, it ruffled its wings and flew off down the hallway.

“Come on.” The bullies burst through the school doors. Spencer’s face still might have been a little pink from the soap that morning, but now it was bright red. Dez was telling everyone! It was bad enough that he didn’t have any friends at Welcher Elementary. But it would be far worse if everyone in the school thought he was crazy.

Then, as if to seal his insanity, something else moved down the hallway, scuttling low to the floor. It was the size of a prairie dog but as round and bushy as a bath loofah. It had long, gray fur that was so dingy it looked like a giant mothball rolling down the hallway. The dust gopher stopped in a dirty corner where the carpet met the wall and began chowing down on . . . dust?

Suddenly, a broom sailed out of nowhere and slammed into the corner by the dust-ball critter. Spencer jumped as the gopher ran for it. It dashed to a doorway across the hall, but the way was instantly blocked by a huge, oafish man with a vacuum.

Hearing the vacuum rev to life, the dust-ball scurried back just as the vacuum hose came down. The suction came so close that Spencer saw the creature’s fur change direction, bits of dirt tumbling out and rattling up the vacuum hose. In an instant, the dust-ball escaped, racing back toward the lunchroom.

Casually, as though nothing strange had happened, the bearlike janitor dragged his vacuum hose along the edge of the carpet, picking up tiny bits of paper that had fallen near the garbage can. With his other hand, he grabbed his leather belt, laden with a large ring of heavy keys and a walkie-talkie radio. His dirty white shirt came untucked as he hiked up his sagging pants.

“Better hurry up,” the man said without looking. “Don’t want to miss the bus.”

Spencer backed away slowly, unsure if he should feel better because he wasn’t hallucinating or worse because there really were demon creatures roaming the halls of Welcher Elementary School.

One thing was sure: No one could see them but him and the janitor. And Spencer had a feeling that he wasn’t supposed to be on that list.

Chapter 6

“You believe me?”

The morning was crisp and cool when Spencer coasted into the parking lot of Welcher Elementary School. He’d found a bicycle in Aunt Avril’s garage. The tires were low, but he’d found a pump, too. It was still very early—school wouldn’t start for another twenty minutes. But Spencer needed that time to investigate.

At home, in his tidy bedroom, Spencer had replayed the previous day over and over again, sorting out all the information and trying to determine what made him different . . . or special . . . or psycho.

It wasn’t hard to figure out, just hard to accept. Everything had been normal until he had washed his face. Right after he’d dried his eyes, with his face still tingling unnaturally, he’d seen movement in the bathroom stall. Then he saw the bat thing during reading, then more little monsters after school.

The janitor guy saw them too, which made perfect sense because the janitors were in charge of all cleaning supplies in the school. They must have accidentally left that burn-your-face-off soap in the bathroom.

Spencer chained his bike to the empty rack. He needed to tell someone what he’d seen. His mother was too busy to help. On Monday, Spencer had told her that he’d been abducted by aliens on the playground and she had said, “That sounds neat, Spence.” No, he needed to tell someone who would take time to listen. Spencer hoped it would be Miss Sharmelle.

Spencer wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead. The morning was cool, but it had been a long ride from his house to the school. He tugged on the door.

Locked.

“They’ll open it in five minutes,” said a voice from behind a tree. Daisy Gates appeared, book in hand. “I always like to be the first one in the school, so I get here early and read until they open the doors. I don’t live far away. Just like three blocks.”

“Yeah,” Spencer said. “I wanted to get here early too.” He studied Daisy. Her long, thick hair was in its usual braid down her back. She was taller than some of the boys, and when she smiled big, her mouth was full of teeth. Despite her extra height, she still seemed small. She looked truly impressionable, which made sense since Spencer knew that she believed anything anyone said.

Gullible Gates. Suddenly, Spencer realized that she was exactly who he needed.

“Hey,” he said, walking over to the grass. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about.”

“About Dez?” she said, tucking a bookmark into her novel. She looked down and began backing away. “I know. People tell me all the time that I shouldn’t believe him. But sometimes he says some really interesting things.”

“Actually,” Spencer said, “it’s about yesterday. Remember when I said I saw something during the read-aloud?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I’m
sure
I saw something.”

“The little bat?”

“It was more than a bat. It was . . .” Spencer took a deep breath, putting all of his hope in Daisy’s gullibility, “a little flying monster.”

All right. Now that he’d said it aloud, it sounded absolutely stupid. Daisy stared at him for a long time. Her eyes got wide.

“What did it do?” she asked intently.

“You believe me?” Spencer cried in disbelief.

“Wait a minute, are you tricking me?”

“No! No. I’m serious.”

“How come no one else saw it?”

“The janitor did. He tried to vacuum one up after school, but it got away.”

“Marv,” she said.

“What?”

“The janitor. Was it the big guy with a shaggy black beard and a bald spot on his head?” Spencer nodded. “His name is Marv Bills,” she said. “He’s really nice. Marv does most of the work, but John Campbell is really the head janitor.”

“You’re friends with the janitors?”

“No,” Daisy said. “I just study the yearbook and memorize people’s names.”

Spencer wanted to tell her that was kind of weird. But then, he’d just told her that he saw flying monsters, so he had no room to talk.

“Yeah.” Daisy nodded. “The yearbook’s great. You probably don’t have one yet ’cause you’re new around here. Anyway, did you have monsters at your old school?”

Spencer couldn’t believe that she was taking him seriously. But that was Daisy’s greatest weakness. “It all started when I found some magic soap . . .”

That was it. Spencer had pushed it too far. He saw Daisy’s eyebrows furrow in skepticism. If he’d only said “special soap” or “unusual soap”—but no. He’d said the “m” word.