The Mystery of the Grinning Gargoyle (6 page)

“Izzy was right,” said Benny. “There is a legend of the grinning gargoyles.”

“And look at the picture,” said Violet, pointing at the computer screen. “That's the same picture that's on the newspaper on Miss Hollenberg's desk.”

“Why would she tell us that we wouldn't find any clues here in the library?” Henry asked. “Do you think she might be behind the gargoyles?”

“She seems very nice,” said Jessie, “but she also might be sad about the Alden Library replacing this old library. Maybe she's trying to protect it, just like the gargoyles in the legend. She could be a good suspect. But first, let's look at Raven's videos.”

Henry did another search on the computer and soon found several videos Raven had made about the gargoyles at Goldwin University. He clicked the first video and the children began to watch.

On the video, a girl stood in a dark stairwell, dressed all in black and looking as gloomy as she had looked at the coffee shop.

“That's Raven!” said Benny. “That's the girl who sold me those yummy cookies! And she's on a movie! In the same stairwell we went running down!”

“Here I am, in the old library,” Raven said to the camera. “I'm hunting for the eerie and elusive Goldwin grinning gargoyle.”

There was a scratching from somewhere off camera—a scary, scratchy scratching, like claws on a wall or a window. But Raven didn't look scared.

“I hear something,” Raven told the camera. “I think it might be a gargoyle!”

Slowly, Raven opened the door of the stairway. The camera didn't show what was behind the door, though. It only showed Raven's face.

“Oh, no!” said Raven. “It's a gargoyle! But I'm not afraid. I've got you, gargoyle!”

The camera followed Raven as she ran from the door to the window. When it finally turned to film what Raven had seen, the window was empty.

“Once again, the grinning gargoyle of Goldwin University away before I could catch it on camera,” said Raven. “But keep watching my online videos—soon enough I'm going to film the ghoulish, grinning gargoyle, and you, my computer fans, will be the first to see it!”

The Alden children turned away from the computer screen and toward one another.

“Raven sure seems worried about getting people to watch her videos,” said Jessie.

“But her video didn't show the gargoyle,” said Henry. “If she was behind it, wouldn't she want to show what it looks like?”

“Not if she wants her fans to keep coming back,” Jessie said. “I think she's another good suspect.”

“This is kind of boring,” Benny said. “I thought we were going to look for some real clues.”

“These are real clues,” Henry said. “But you're right. We can go look around the library now and see if there's anything we missed.”

The library wasn't just quieter when it was nearly empty at night—it was spookier, too. Now, the Alden children didn't believe that ghosts or ghouls or gargoyles were real, but they were all a little shy about climbing the empty, echo-y stairs when it was so late and they were so alone. So they decided to take the elevator.

Benny rushed to be the one to push the up button. His siblings waited with him while the elevator came down to the first floor. While they stood there, they noticed more carts of books waiting there, too.

Violet read the titles of the books out loud. “Pablo Picasso, Painting with Watercolors, Papier-mâché,” she read excitedly. “Those books are all about my favorite thing—art!”

“You're right, Violet,” Henry said. “Pablo Picasso was a famous painter. Papier-mâché is a type of craft where gluey strips of paper are formed into shapes and allowed to harden. It's how piñatas are made.”

“And these books are arranged in alphabetical order,” said Jessie, “waiting to be put on the library's bookshelves so people can find them and check them out.”

At last, the elevator arrived. It carried the children to the floor where they had seen the gargoyle.

The four of them studied the window where the gargoyle had been. They looked all around it, and all around the rest of the room. But there were no clues to be found.

“What about the light we saw on the top floor?” Violet asked.

“Let's take a look,” said Henry. “We never got a chance to look around up there, since we ran downstairs when Benny screamed.”

The top floor was hardly lit, and a little bit spooky. The Alden children made their way through aisles of books and around dark corners.

“Look at these books!” Henry said suddenly. “They're college yearbooks from a long time ago. I bet we could find who that Holly Page was who wrote about the gargoyle legend. Everyone grab a book and check the index!”

The Aldens looked in the back of each yearbook, searching the indexes for the name “Holly Page.” The name was nowhere to be found.

Then the four of them flipped through page after page of black-and-white photographs of students from decades before. Soon they had searched all of the old, dusty college yearbooks. But after looking at all of those pages of pictures, they still found no Holly Page.

“That's strange,” said Jessie. “It's almost like Holly Page wasn't a real person.”

The children continued their search of the library's top floor. As they rounded yet another dark corner of what seemed to be an entire floor without windows, they came to the window where they'd seen the light—a window that looked outside. And outside that window, they could see one of the stone gargoyles.

“Look!” said Violet. “It's a gargoyle! It scared me until I realized it's just one of the statues.”

“And look at this!” Jessie said, wiping her fingers across the windowsill. “There's some kind of white powder here.”

Henry bent down and picked up a piece of string off the floor underneath the window. “What about this? Maybe this string and the powder are clues…”

But their findings were cut short by a sound coming from somewhere nearby.

“Do you hear that scratching sound?” she asked.

Henry, Violet, and Benny all nodded that they heard it, too.

Scratch.

Scratch.

Scratch.

CHAPTER
6

Scratch, Scratch, Scream

“Where is the scratching coming from?” Violet asked.

“Is it a gargoyle?” Benny wondered.

“It's coming from over here,” Henry said. “Follow me.”

The children walked down a short hallway. The scratching grew louder.

They turned a corner, and came to another room where another stone gargoyle could be seen from a window. But the gargoyle outside the window wasn't scratching. It was the person in the room who was making the scratching sound.

It was Coach Woods, and he was writing on a chalkboard.

“Coach Woods,” Henry said. “What are you doing here?”

The coach turned around, surprised to see—“I guess I could ask you four the same question,” he said. “I'm just up here getting ready for tomorrow's big game.”

On the chalkboard were all sorts of X's and O's. Coach Woods was drawing the letters and then connecting them or moving them with lines and squiggles.

“How will all those scribbles and letters help your football team?” Benny asked.

Coach Woods laughed. “What I am doing is drawing up plays,” he said. “Each of these X's and each of these O's is a player. And the different directions I am making them move shows where I want the players to go. Watch this…”

The coach drew a straight line from an O, making it stretch the length of the chalkboard. “Pretend this is you, Benny,” he said.

“This is the quarterback,” said Coach Woods, pointing at another O. “He's the one who throws the football.”

Then the coach drew a dotted line from that O to the O that was Benny. “And that dotted line is the football. See? You just caught a touchdown pass. Way to go, Benny Alden!”

“I like that idea!” said Benny. “But all of that still looks like scribbles to me.”

“I never was much of an artist,” said Coach Woods. “But I do know about football.”

“Why are you drawing your football plays here in the library?” Henry asked. “Isn't there a place to draw them at Goldwin Coliseum?”

“Yeah,” said Benny. “Aren't you afraid of the grinning gargoyles?”

“I have to come here,” said the coach, “because there has been a flood in the room of the stadium where I usually draw my football plays. The plumbing at Goldwin Coliseum is so old and rusty that some of the pipes have burst. So unless I want to stand in a yard of water, there's no way for me to plan a fifty-yard football play.

“And about these gargoyles,” Coach Woods said, pointing to the statue outside of the window, “I'm not afraid of them at all. In fact, sometimes it seems like they're the only ones who agree with me that this old library should stay.”

“I'm not afraid of the gargoyles, either,” said Benny.

“You're not only a very good football player, but you're brave, too!” said Coach Woods. “Now, children, I had better get back to my chalkboard so that we can win tomorrow. As you saw, our star player might not be able to play, so I have my work cut out for me.”

“We have some work to do, too,” said Henry. “Good luck tomorrow!”

The Alden children left Coach Woods to his football plays, and left the library for the night. They'd already spent more time there than they had planned, and their grandfather might be wondering where they were. Hurrying across campus, the children looked back at the old library. In the moonlight, the old building looked kind of like a scary old castle, and its gargoyles stood out like shadows, lurking from its roof and looking down on whoever might try to uncover their secrets. The Aldens hurried even faster, and soon reached Harper Hall, where they would spend the night.

Finding the door that said 4A, the children quietly entered their suite of rooms, in case Grandfather Alden was already asleep. Even with his door closed, their grandfather's snoring told the children that he was.

The suite had a large main room with two couches and two chairs. Besides Grandfather's closed door, there were two other bedrooms connected to the living room. Benny and Henry saw that Grandfather had already placed their duffel bags in one bedroom, while Violet and Jessie found their bags in another.

“Before we all go to bed, maybe we should go over what we learned today,” said Jessie. “Let's sit out here and talk. Grandfather is such a sound sleeper that we won't wake him.

“Good idea,” Henry said, plopping down onto one of the couches while his siblings sat down next to him. “Who are our suspects so far?”

“I'll go first,” said Jessie. “I think Raven is a very good suspect. She really seems interested in the gargoyles and interested in getting attention. Maybe she's somehow faking the gargoyle sightings so that people will like her and her videos.”

“Izzy seems really interested in gargoyles, too,” said Violet. “Remember all of the gargoyles painted all over the walls of Goldwin Gyros? They were even on the washrooms! And remember the Gargoyle Gyro?”

“I remember the Gargoyle Gyro!” said Benny, rubbing his stomach. “I could eat another one right now.”

“It's a little late for that, Benny,” Jessie said. “But can you think of any suspects who might be behind the grinning gargoyle that you saw?”

“I think it might be Miss Hollenberg,” Benny said. “She didn't want us snooping around the library, and she had that spooky gargoyle newspaper on her desk.”

“Good thinking, Benny,” said Henry. “But I think Coach Woods could be behind the gargoyle sightings.”

“Coach Woods?” Benny asked. “But he's so nice. He said I was brave, and really good at football. He even tried to draw me on his chalkboard.”

“That's just it,” Henry said. “Don't you remember that Coach Woods wants a brand new stadium to be built instead of a new library? What if he's pretending the gargoyles are trying to protect the old library, so that a new one can't be built?”

“We have four good suspects,” said Jessie. “I think we should look at all of them first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Jessie,” Benny interrupted, “do you hear that?”

The children listened closely. They all heard it.

More scratching.

Scratch.

Scratch.

Scratch.

“It's coming from the room where Jessie and Violet will be sleeping,” said Henry. “Quick! Let's check it out.”

By the time the children had reached the girls' room, the bedroom window was empty and the scratching had stopped.

But then the scratching started again.

This time it was coming from another room.

“That sounds like the room where we're going to sleep, Henry,” Benny said.

The children left the girls' room and followed the scratching into the boys'.