Creeples, p.1
CREEPLES!, page 1
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Published by Greenleaf Book Group Press
Austin, Texas
www.gbgpress.com
Copyright ©2021 Patrick D. Pidgeon
All rights reserved.
CREEPLES is a trademark and brand of Pidgeon, Patrick D.
Thank you for purchasing an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright law. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the copyright holder.
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Cover and interior design by Patrick D. Pidgeon
Cover and interior illustrations by Marco Bucci
Cover, interior design and illustrations © 2020 by Patrick D. Pidgeon
Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data is available.
Print ISBN: 978-1-62634-775-5
eBook ISBN: 978-1-62634-776-2
Part of the Tree Neutral® program, which offsets the number of trees consumed in the production and printing of this book by taking proactive steps, such as planting trees in direct proportion to the number of trees used: www.treeneutral.com
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
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First Edition
In loving memory of my mother,
Sally Perkins Pidgeon, who always looked out for me…
in spite of my perpetual mischievousness, naughtiness,
foolishness, and many other complete lapses in judgment.
“Alone we can do so little.
Together we can do so much.”
—Helen Keller
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1:ABERDASHER ACADEMY OF “WEIRD” SCIENCE
CHAPTER 2:THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE HORRID
CHAPTER 3:GOON PATROL
CHAPTER 4:ALL IN FOR MONKEY EARS
CHAPTER 5:THE 3D BIO-PRINTER
CHAPTER 6:BELL TOWER
CHAPTER 7:DRACONEM SERUM
CHAPTER 8:CREEPLE PEEPLE
CHAPTER 9:SKOOTA, COCO, ROYAL, BEEZER, NAZ, AND TATZ
CHAPTER 10:MYSTICAL MISCHIEF AND MAGICAL MAYHEM
CHAPTER 11:THE CATNIP CRAZIES
CHAPTER 12:CAFETERIA CHAOS
CHAPTER 13:CAMPUS CURFEW
CHAPTER 14:GIDEON FLITCH’S FAMOUS TRAVELING CARNIVAL
CHAPTER 15:THE GRIM KEEPER
CHAPTER 16:RAMBUNCTIOUS RAMPAGE
CHAPTER 17:THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS . . . AND CREEPLES!
CHAPTER 18:THE RITUAL
CHAPTER 19:CREEPLES’ GOT TALENT
CHAPTER 20:THE MILLION-DOLLAR ATTRACTION
CHAPTER 21:BOISTEROUS BEDLAM AT THE CARNIVAL
CHAPTER 22:DEAD OR ALIVE
CHAPTER 23:THE SECRET SOCIETY
CHAPTER 24:COMMISSIONER GORDON’S HELP
CHAPTER 25:TRAPPED AND CAGED
CHAPTER 26:RARE BOOKS COLLECTION
CHAPTER 27:THE DEVIL’S DISCIPLES
CHAPTER 28:THE GOLDEN DAWM
CHAPTER 29:TEAM GOOZE VERSUS THE RED DRAGON
CHAPTER 30:IN THE MIDNIGHT HOUR
CHAPTER 31:SORCERER’S DEN
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PROLOGUE
CHESHIRE, ENGLAND: LINDOW MOSS BOG–1938
“DIG, infidels! DIG! Or you’ll all bloody well end up as Bog People.” The British scientist’s warm breath frosted in the cold air as he roared over the fume-spewing diesel generator, his nose and cheeks blotchy with rage. Oil-fueled spotlights belched smoke and dull orange light over the massive, mossy bog pit and the workers within. In spite of the chilly temperatures, the middle-aged scientist wiped his clammy forehead and sponged spittle from his thick, distinctive handlebar mustache. His finely cropped ginger hair stood out from his pristine white lab smock as he leaned against a dingy utility truck with the letters N.O.M.T., Ltd., stenciled on the door. It was the science expedition’s fourth straight night excavating heaps of black, mucky peat from the Lindow Moss Bog, and they were all exhausted. The gold coins the American had promised to the overworked and spooked laborers made it worth their effort.
The expedition’s intended artifact hadn’t yet been located. They had, however, unintentionally recovered ancient archeological curiosities: the skeletal remains of a massive prehistoric pterodactyl, extinct for 150 million years; fifth-century Anglo-Saxon weaponry; and five gruesome Bog People that lay frozen in unnatural poses. The two-thousand-year-old human remains, remarkably preserved by the tannic acids within the peat bog, were lined up on the ground like a slumbering army patrol. The Bog People, terror frozen on their faces, had apparently died violently, as their limbs were kinked and broken into rectangular shapes, and many of their torsos shifted sideways on their hips.
“This has to be the place. The codex brought us here,” the American insisted, nervously dabbing the sweat from his brow. In his mid-fifties and also dressed in a white lab smock, he wore round wire-rimmed spectacles that appeared too small for his doughy, goateed face. He glanced at the pinkie ring on his right hand. Its sizable oval magenta gemstone started to pulsate through the smoky haze. “It’s here!” the American barked.
“We need more!” an elderly scientist with a Scottish accent ordered, and additional laborers raced over to help dig. The scientist’s lips quivered as he gazed down into the bog pit with eyes alight.
The American’s left hand anxiously tapped the bulky leather-bound manuscript clenched in his right. He nodded to his young assistant, whom he referred to as Keeper. The tall, painfully slender nineteen-year-old was the “Wisdomkeeper” of the opulent ruby-encrusted gold container. He gripped firmly a medieval reliquary tucked against his body. His other hand held a gleaming Colt Single Action Army revolver with a mother-of-pearl handle. He kept it pointed down at his side, yet his index finger remained on the trigger as he jittered with nervous energy.
“Hurry up! On with it,” the irate Keeper groused in a clipped British accent. He raised his pistol in the air and squeezed off two shots . . . BANG! BANG!
The panicked laborers doubled their pace, digging through the soft dead-plant material with ease. THWACK! A shovel struck something solid.
“Watch it, you clumsy, stupid fools!” The eager American trudged through the quagmire and extracted a filthy, moss-covered spherical object the size of a rugby ball. “It’s magnificent!” Delicately wiping off the peat, he exposed a marbled magenta surface. He raised the object over his head like a championship trophy and declared, “Gentlemen, the GREAT Draconem Beast has awakened!”
Standing at the edge of the pit, the two scientists and Keeper enthusiastically shook hands and slapped each other’s backs in celebration of their success. The laborers whispered apprehensively among themselves. Suddenly, the magenta object glowed and throbbed as if it had a beating heart, causing the terrified workers to tumble backward, stumbling over one another. Luminous, flickering magenta beams discharged from the object’s surface, ZAPPING straight into the American’s eyes. The workers desperately tried to clamber up the sides of the slick, soggy pit, and the British scientist recoiled in shock. Magenta lightning beams of energy BLASTED from the American’s mouth and fingertips. He stood rigid, arms spread wide and eyes blazing red. Then he lowered his head, entranced and expressionless. He gradually raised his right arm and fired lightning rays that seared through the Scottish scientist’s body. Keeper and the British scientist dove behind the utility truck to safety.
A magenta energy force discharged from the object and enveloped the American’s convulsing body. The six frightened laborers fainted, one after the other, stacked up like cords of wood. The supernatural turbulence dissipated, yet the American collapsed, clutching the treasured object with the hand bearing his pulsating gemstone ring. The oil-fueled spotlights exploded one by one into the bitterly cold night sky, plunging the excavation site into pitch black . . . except for the steady, pulsating radiance of the magenta gemstone ring.
CHAPTER 1
Aberdasher Academy of “Weird” Science
USA, PRESENT DAY
The grotesque, mucous-coated cephalopod sea creature used its eight arms and two sucking tentacles to encase Spigs’s face, but the boy lay unresponsive. His legs were outstretched and his arms were crossed over his chest. A few moments lapsed; his limp body, garbed in a faded black T-shirt and slate jeans, began to sway from side to side; and then . . . BOING! . . . he bounced onto the hot, sticky floorboard.
Spigs thrashed about in his secured surroundings, flinging off the Cryptozoology Quarterly News magazine that featured the mythological kraken on the cover, which had been draped over his face to block out the sunlight. He opened his sleep-encrusted hazel eyes, startled and confused as he was wedged between two Greyhound bus seats. He latched on to the front seat pocket to anchor himself for an upright shift.
“What the . . . huh?” He shook his head to clear his thoughts and reached down to retrieve his narrow-brimmed trilby hat, then scooted in his seat toward the windo w for a view of the road outside. “Dang, that was freaky. Thought for a second there a ginormous squid had snatched the bus and dragged us to the deepest depths of the ocean.”
These were hypnotic days and nights full of nothing but asphalt roads and green mountainous terrain rushing by his window. The bus motored up another turn on the winding mountain road, but Aberdasher Academy was still blocked from view by a sheer rock cliff.
Spigs sighed and slouched as he pulled his cell phone from his pocket. Almost there, he texted Aunt Gussy. Another five or ten minutes. Will have to rush to make orientation, so thought I should tell you now.
He didn’t expect a reply. However, some small part of him hoped for one. He knew her only interest in his safe arrival was it meant he wouldn’t be bothering her for the next nine months. His entire life she’d branded him “that hapless misfit,” “no-account,” and “a downright pain in the arse.”The only time she begrudgingly referred to him as her grandnephew was when she introduced him to new principals and teachers.
Spigs preferred to think of himself as a nonconformist, and he hoped he might find other scientifically curious minds like his at Aberdasher Academy of Science—preferably those with a penchant for mischief-making. It would be a fresh start for him . . . at a mysterious institution known for studies in fringe science, but Spigs enthusiastically acknowledged it as “wonderfully weird” science. What had drawn him in was the academy’s mystifying curriculum of unconventional phenomenology—alternative science. His bedroom was his sanctuary from spiteful ol’ Aunt Gussy. And where he absorbed the fascinating world of the pseudoscience of crypto-creatures, from the infamous Sasquatch to the Jersey Devil, and every obscure cryptid in between. Spigs had applied to the enigmatic but elite academy, never dreaming he would get accepted.
When a thick envelope addressed to Mr. Johnny Spignola had been overnight delivered to his rural Tennessee town, Spigs had seen his chance to escape a bleak future. The school had also offered a full scholarship, so there was nothing to debate.
The academy was swaddled by sweet-smelling Ponderosa pine trees. Spigs viewed the school as a hidden jewel, isolated in the Adirondack Mountains near Letchworth Village in upstate New York. And he was truly engrossed in the morbid fact that Letchworth Village once housed an “insane” asylum in the 1930s, providing the perfect backdrop for him to delve into forbidden scientific mischief at the school.
It had taken Spigs two and a half days and four bus connections, but the school was now within reach. Flanked by dense, forest-blanketed mountains, the school’s sleek, modern buildings appeared alien and imposing. Spigs checked his phone out of nervous habit. No big surprise Aunt Gussy hadn’t replied. Eyes locked on the school, he sucked down the last bit of the soda he’d bought at the last stop, as if he needed more caffeine. He squirmed like a five-year-old on a sugar rush.
As the bus pulled into the school’s outermost parking lot, Spigs eyed a blue pavilion stationed on the path into campus. A gleaming Mylar banner read Orientation Registration in blocky font, and a poster board sign outside the pavilion shouted, in handwritten letters, New Students—Register Here.
Spigs was never keen on protocols, but he figured he should probably play by the rules on day one. Just this once. Spigs rotated in his seat to keep the pavilion in his view, but his pale brown brows scrunched down at what he observed. A stout brute of a boy with a fiery red buzz cut had a smaller boy in a headlock and was rapping his head with his curled-up knuckle. The blond-haired kid grimaced in pain from the rapid noogies. Spigs could imagine what the brute was snarling in his victim’s ear. He’d heard it all before: “Stay out of my way, pipsqueak” or “Hand it over, loser, or I’ll send you home to Mommy with a shiner.”
Spigs clenched his teeth and ripped off a chunk of his hamburger wrapper. He chewed it and rolled it into a ball between his tongue and the roof of his mouth. The slobbery wad went into his soda straw, and Spigs cracked open the window as the bus crossed in front of the pavilion. Steady. Aim. And with a deep gulp of air . . . FIRE! Spigs launched the spitwad right at the brute’s forehead. He watched it fly with pride . . . and SPLAAAT!
“OOPS!” Spigs squealed. He cringed and drew his hat down over his eyes as a man in a classic blue blazer with leather patches on the elbows walked right into the projectile’s path. The spitwad lodged in the man’s ear. He whipped around and stared daggers into Spigs’s soul. Spigs slid farther down in his seat and stifled a laugh with his hand.
The bus maneuvered carefully into a parking slot. Spigs planned to linger and disappear into the middle of the group of disembarking students. But he didn’t get a chance to act out his escape plan because the goateed man in the blue blazer charged onto the bus and jabbed a forceful index finger in Spigs’s chest.
“YOU! Jokester! Come with me,” he boomed, shoving his tiny spectacles up his nose and squashing them against his doughy, red-cheeked face.
Spigs threw up his hands in surrender. “Sorry, Professor, uum, sir. I really am. Wasn’t aimin’ at you. I was—”
“Don’t care who you were aiming at,” bellowed the man. “Come with me.” With a snarl, he lunged forward and grabbed Spigs by his jacket collar.
“Hey, hey, easy!” Spigs said as the man yanked him from his seat, his jacket digging into his armpits.
Forced to scramble after the man with his head down and his arms spread wide, Spigs stumbled on the bus steps. The man kept him from falling but nearly ripped Spigs’s jacket.
“Stand up straight, boy,” the man barked. “What’s your name?”
Spigs had been in this situation many times before, so he put on his best apologetic face. “Freshman Johnny Spignola, Professor, uh . . . Mr. . . . uh.”
“That’s Dean Smathers.” The dean crossed his arms and assessed Spigs up and down as if he were a cockroach ripe for the squishing.
Spigs gulped. Oh boy. He’d done it this time . . . and to the dean! He’d been kicked out of several schools, but expulsion on the first day would be a record.
A heavyset man in a uniform sped up on a Segway. “Dean Smathers, sir, may I be of assistance to you?”
“I can handle it, McTaggart. It’s move-in day, so keep the traffic flowing.”
“I’m sorry, Dean Smathers.” Spigs removed his hat and held it in front of his belt like a good Southern boy entering a church. “But it’s like this!”
He pointed over Smathers’s shoulder, where the student had released his victim. Now he was grabbing at the boy’s backpack as the boy held back tears and begged to be left alone. The dean spared the pair only a brief look over his shoulder and scowled back at Spigs.
“I am not concerned with what they’re doing. This is all about you. Now take responsibility for your actions, Mr. Spignola.”
The brute flung rocks at the kid and laughed with two brawny allies who’d appeared at his side. Spigs clenched his hands into fists at his sides and forced his eyes away from the tormentor. There was no use in arguing with the head honcho. If Spigs wanted to experience what this exclusive academy had to offer, he’d better play along.
“Yes, sir, uh, Mr. Dean,” he mumbled, but refused to lower his gaze or hang his head. “I mean Dean Smathers. Sorry I caused you trouble on the first day. It won’t happen again.”
“Something tells me I’m going to have plenty of trouble with you.” Smathers forced his glasses up his nose. “Got my eyes on you, Mr. Spignola. Now get in line and register.”
The dean walked away without a backward glance, and Spigs begrudgingly did as he was told.
The start of every school year bustled with activities and disorientation. And it was no different at Aberdasher Academy, as throngs of backpack-toting students scurried about, not fully recognizing the campus topography, immersed in their electronic devices or grooving to their headsets. At the center of the sprawling, grass-covered grounds of this private co-ed boarding school rose the European classic–inspired ten-story Bell Tower. The tallest and oldest building at the academy stood out from the neo-Gothic architecture of the rest of the campus buildings. The tower’s belfry displayed a clock face with elaborate carvings and round bejeweled stained-glass windows on all four sides. But the strange and perplexing reality was that nobody ever entered or exited Bell Tower, according to the information Spigs had gathered from online threads started by past and present students. There were spooky rumors it was built on a sacred burial ground so as not to wake the dead, and it seemed students weren’t too eager to question the fact it had never been opened to the public. In fact, as Spigs tilted back his head, securing his hat on his mousy-brown hair with one hand, and drew close to the tower with mouth wide in amazement, he noticed he was the only one who walked within ten feet of the tower’s front door.
