Milrose Munce and the Den of Professional Help (12 page)

“Oh yes,” said Milrose, “more annoying than friend.”

“—I figured I better get personally involved. He doesn’t seem like the most effective guy.”

“Magnificent understatement. But hey: you should team up with my buddy Hurled Harry in the basement. He’s potentially useful.”

“The basement? Hm. Will ponder that. Contacting the basement is not trivial.”

“He’s keen.”

“I’ll look into it. We must get moving, however. I can’t stick around for long—I’m really not supposed to be here. This, uh, temporary explosion … it’s considered, technically, an assault on the first floor.”

“For good reason.”

“And we’re expressly forbidden, you know, from using ectoplasmic manipulation against the first floor.”

“Actually, I didn’t know that.”

“The enemy’s got us pretty seriously tied down. I have to be back in the lab before this episode gets traced to me. And they have very sophisticated tracking methods.”

“Ghost-sniffing dogs?” inquired Milrose.

“Something like that.”

“Who are ‘they’?” asked Arabella.

“It’s complicated. And, uh, I can’t talk about it. They know when they’re being talked about. They can tune in the conversation and identify your precise location, and come at you with weapons too gruesome to be contemplated.”

“Right. So let’s change the subject.”

It was difficult to know where precisely Dave led them when they set out from the site of his magnificent explosion. He insisted that they not turn on any lights, as this too would be an invitation to “them.” Ghosts are quite good without light; living humans, however, tend to find it difficult to see.

“How are we expected to find our way back to the Den, Dave?”

“I think I have that covered.”

“You
think?
What’s the plan?”

“All shall be revealed.”

“Sure hope so.”

“Where precisely are we, David?”

“We are between the wall.”

“Between the walls, you mean.”

“No, between the wall. It’s complicated. Involves turning left where you could never turn left before.”

“Ah, that.”

“Which takes you to a place, as far as we can determine, which is neither on one side of the wall nor the other, but between the wall.”

“A lot more space between the wall than you’d expect.”

“Yes. Nevertheless, you’re not precisely
outside.
I can get you between the wall, but I can’t get you to the other side. Or I’d have no trouble freeing you.” Deeply Damage Dave shrugged apologetically. “And now,” he said, “we are here.”

“Here” did not seem like much of a place: it was a dead end. “This is a dead end,” said Milrose. “But then, you’re dead, so you probably approve.”

“This,” said Dave, “is the opportunity for another glorious if temporary disaster.”

“Wonderful!” said Milrose, thrilled.

“Oh,” said Arabella, worried.

“Watch,” said Dave, intent.

He leaned forward in the darkness and placed both of his dead palms against the wall in front of them. (A wall between the walls, thought Milrose. All very confusing.)

When Dave removed his palms, the wall glowed phosphorescent blue where they had touched it: bright and ghostly handprints. He mumbled a few words.

“Is that Latin, David?” asked Arabella.

“Older,” he said.

The words glowed in the air, just in front of the palmprints. Milrose and Arabella had never seen words glow before—neither of them had ever
seen
spoken words before, come to think of it—but there they were: mumbled expressions, in a language older than Latin, hovering in the air, quite visible.

Deeply Damaged Dave cleared his throat, as if to remind the hovering words that they had something to accomplish. Upon this hint, the words flowed into the handprints. It was like watching water from a tap enter a half-full sink, thought Milrose, thinking fondly of their aborted experiment with potassium. What followed was probably more exciting, even, than that experiment would have been if followed to its messy conclusion.

The handprints, as they filled with ancient words, began to grow. Slowly, they spread across and up the wall, like hand-shaped puddles of some glowing chemical. This was no ordinary chemical, Milrose knew from his profound experience of ordinary chemicals: must be a ghost chemical.

“Stand back,” said Deeply Damaged Dave, in a voice that combined drama and pride: the voice of a suave magician.

They stood back.

The hands blew up.

Actually, they didn’t so much blow up as in. Hand-shaped holes tore through the wall in front of them, but whatever had filled those holes exploded, conveniently, into the room on the other side: all Milrose and Arabella experienced was a percussive blast of air, accompanied by the appropriate noise.

“Nice,” said Milrose.

“Very impressive, David,” said Arabella.

They both clapped politely.

“Thank you. Thank you. Now, this is a slightly more temporary explosion: you have approximately two hours before the hole deplodes. Which is to say ex-explodes. Which is to say, fills back in, and entombs you, if you don’t get out.”

“Approximately?” said Milrose. “Can’t you be more precise?”

“After further experimentation, I imagine I’ll have the timing down to a science. This is a preliminary investigation.”

“Ah. Which could, if we misjudge things, ‘entomb’ us.”

“Yes. Might want to err on the side of caution.”

“Gotcha.” Milrose glanced at his watch. “And the other hole? In the ceiling?”

“Oh, that was a different chemical process. I had a bit more space to work with, and fewer concerns about collateral damage.”

“You mean, killing us.”

“Yes. I suspect you have at least two hours and fifteen minutes before the hole above your bed deplodes. Must be off now. Good luck.”

“But,” said Milrose.

There was no point in finishing the sentence, or even starting it properly, as Dave had vanished. Milrose looked at Arabella, and smiled weakly. He shrugged. And then he stepped through one of the hand-shaped holes in the wall in front of him. Arabella stepped through the other.

“Where are we, Milrose?”

“Interesting you think that
I
might be able to answer that question.”

As their eyes adjusted, it became clear to both of them that they were in an enclosed space. Certain objects were glowing—not so much like the palmprints but more like tired fireflies: pinpoints of dim light—and these were sufficient to illuminate the room. What these objects were, however, for the moment remained a mystery. As did the room itself.

The wall in front of them was one huge filing cabinet. It was filled from floor to ceiling with closed steel drawers. To either side were rough concrete walls, stained with damp.

The room had no windows. It also had no door. Luckily, it had temporary hand-shaped holes in the wall behind them, or there would be no possibility of exit. Which led both of them to wonder what
kind of room this was. (The word
entombed
occurred to both of them, in fact.) Dave was right: even the Den of Professional Help seemed hospitable relative to this place.

Milrose decided to investigate. First he set out to determine precisely what was glowing. The light came from the drawers themselves. Each had a tiny bulb above the drawer’s metal-framed label, and these bulbs all seemed on the verge of winking out completely. Some were a touch closer to death than others, but all were unhealthy. The feeble lights were, however, more than sufficient for him to make out what was written on the labels.

“Take a look at this, Arabella …”

The labels were not comforting. Oh no. They purveyed the opposite of comfort, which in this case was a heady mixture of confusion, nausea, angst, and that mysterious impulse which makes hunters want to kill moose.

“Helped: Jan. 1–Mar. 31, 1972.”

“Helped: Apr. 1–Jun. 31, 1972.”

“Helped: Jul. 1–Sep. 31, 1972.”

Etc.

Milrose had no doubt that the Help to which these labels referred was of the Professional variety.

Arabella was squinting at another group of labels, and had come to a similar conclusion. “Milrose, I think we’re in some kind of archive.”

“Yes … the collected documents relating to decades of horror inspired by Professional Help.”

“Try to be a little less pessimistic, Milrose.”

“Does this look like a jolly archive to you?”

“Appearances can be deceiving.”

“Yeah, well, while we’re throwing about hackneyed phrases, sometimes what you see is what you get.”

“Let’s not argue, shall we. If something terrible happens, then I’ll grant your argument.”

“Great. I hope something really slitheringly horrible happens. So I win.”

Although he wasn’t entirely keen to, Milrose opened one of the drawers. In fact, he opened the very last drawer: in the bottom corner on his right. Why this drawer? Well, it helped that as he was trying to decide which to open, the light above this drawer’s label began to flicker, then grew bright, then flickered, then went out. As he approached, it flickered again. The drawer was clearly teasing him. It was behaving like a coy firefly. None of the other drawers was going to nearly so much trouble to catch his attention. Moreover, it had a different designation than the others: instead of “Helped” and a date, the label read “Pending.”

“What’s in there?”

“I don’t know … it’s slithering and it’s horrible …”

“Is it?”

“Just kidding. It’s a bunch of file folders.”

One of these file folders seemed most anxious to be consulted, as it kept bobbing up and down, flirtatiously. Milrose began to reach for this folder, and it obliged by sliding—of its own accord—up and out from between the others and finding its way into his hand.

“Hm,” said Milrose. “Slithering file folders.”

“But not horrible …”

“No, not yet.”

Arabella stood cautiously at his shoulder as Milrose examined the eager file. The folder was of the usual bland manila, with a tab on the top left to identify the contents. On this tab was printed a name, in handwriting that seemed to Milrose not entirely under control—as if the writer were in the midst of a psychotic break, or perhaps a fierce battle with armed opponents: “Milrose Bysshe Munce.”

“Your middle name is
Bysshe
?”

Milrose blushed so deeply that he glowed like a palmprint. “Er, I don’t use it much.”

“It’s lovely.”

“It’s appalling. But thank you.”

Milrose opened his folder with hands that shook only slightly, but enough to ensure that the papers within fell onto the floor in a complex mess. Arabella calmly sat on the floor and collected the pages. Milrose got down on his knees beside her, less
calmly, and together they began to examine the file. The light was not good, but their eyes were becoming accustomed to it, and they found themselves capable of reading if they squinted.

Much documentation had been devoted to the case of Milrose Bysshe Munce. Dozens of sheets of closely lined paper had been entirely filled, by hand, with observations. Milrose recognized the same jittery—actually, mad—handwriting that had scrawled the name on the folder.

Because they had a limited amount of time before they were entombed, Milrose and Arabella skipped randomly through the pages, intending in this way to arrive quickly at a deep understanding concerning the case of Milrose Bysshe Munce.

And because random skipping is not the best path to wisdom, they did not quite succeed. Also, the notes were not entirely coherent. It was easy to imagine the author, in fact, foaming at the mouth and howling at his pen while writing. But they did glean a few crucial points. Milrose discovered that he was—according to this report—a student widely revered by the student population, and widely feared by the staff. He was a “natural-born leader,” according to one note, which made him a “danger to the educational harmony of the school.” He was also, according to one loony note, a “sarcastic hero.” Most of this was news to Milrose. But then,
the person who had written these notes was clearly insane.

The crazed author had also made one very sane and somewhat disconcerting observation. He/she/it knew, quite clearly, that Milrose Munce was conversant with the dead.

An hour later, Milrose and Arabella were still sitting on the damp floor of the archive, and were now surrounded by a messy heap of file folders. They had frantically searched each of the drawers, looking for information that might prove useful. Arabella’s file had been right behind Milrose Munce’s, and had been approximately as informative. Again, however, one salient fact stood out: the mad author knew, ominously, that Arabella was on friendly terms with the dead.

They had immediately wondered whether seeing ghosts was an attribute shared by any of the other students on file. They had opened drawers and searched randomly through different folders and found—to their excitement and dismay—that in fact
all
of the students they looked into seemed to have this in common. Admittedly, they had not had time to go through more than a portion of the cases, but it was eerie to note this common theme. Both Milrose and Arabella strongly suspected that were they to go through every folder, they would
probably find that every one of these Helped individuals had been intimate with the world of the dead.

All of the folders they examined said much the same thing. A student had been deemed a candidate for Help. He or she had been admitted to the Den. The daily reports regarding the weeks following this were mostly dull and uninformative, consisting of statements like: “Today patient made no substantial progress towards socialization. On the Wickter Scale of Normalcy, patient has still barely progressed beyond 6.2, which is unacceptable.” The last page of every file (except their own) ended abruptly with: “Patient cured.”

This cure was always abrupt. In fact, the cure always seemed to take place precisely forty-two days after the patient had been admitted into Help. Generally the patient had made little or no progress on the Wickter scale—and had often worsened—yet six weeks after commencement, each patient was suddenly “cured,” and the file terminated.