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A knock on the door jolted Olive out of her reverie. She had been sitting at her desk, thinking about doing homework but really doing not much of anything. The room was lonely without a roommate to share it with.
A few weeks before, Lucy's family had up and moved to Metropolis without warning. Something to do with her mom's job. The thought occurred to a morose Olive that Lucy had finally gotten what she wanted. She tried to tell herself it was nice to have the dorm all to herself, but the reality was anything but.
Thinking of the mess inside, Olive opened the door just enough to see who it was.
It was Hammer-Head, looking as stern as usual. At his side, chewing gum and carrying a duffel bag, was Pomeline.
"Um," said Olive, brain whirring. Pomeline didn't seem like the type to snitch on people, but maybe the headmaster had found out about their various adventures some other way. Pomeline didn't look freaked out, but then she usually didn't. Staring at her, Olive tried to get her to send a message with her expression unsuccessfully. There was nothing but the usual coolness in Pomeline's gaze.
"Olive Silverlock," the headmaster pronounced gravely, interrupting Olive's frenetic thoughts. "Meet your new roommate."
"My new . . ." Olive repeated faintly. Pomeline's eyes narrowed, as if she were daring Olive to be displeased.
"Roommate, yes." He sounded impatient. "There has been a problem with Miss Fritch's living quarters, and as you are now occupying a two-person dormitory room by yourself, this was the ideal choice."
"It was really gross," Pomeline said flatly. "Otherwise I wouldn't be here."
Hammer-Head cleared his throat meaningfully, and Pomeline rolled her eyes. "There is no need to bore Miss Silverlock with the details, Miss Fritch."
"How long will this be for?"
He raised an eyebrow. "For the foreseeable future. Now, if you will . . ." He gestured toward the door, which Olive reluctantly opened further.
Pomeline came in without further prompting, glancing around at the interior – Olive could only imagine the judgmental look on her face – while the headmaster stayed out in the hallway.
"I hope," said the headmaster, "that you will not take this as license to engage in further outlandish behavior, Miss Silverlock."
At his words Pomeline turned and smirked at her.
"You as well, Miss Fritch," he added mildly.
The smirk disappeared.
After Hammer-Head left, it was just Olive and Pomeline. Olive shifted, uncomfortable. They'd come to some kind of – not friendship, exactly, but truce. Going through weird stuff didn't make you like someone, but it did make you closer to them. It hadn't stopped Pomeline from making the occasional disdainful comment or stopped her from turning up her nose, but the both knew they were in this, whatever this was, together.
She was scrutinizing her new digs. As if seeing it through new eyes, Olive noticed the clutter on her desk and the laundry on the floor with embarrassment and rushed to pick up the clothes and dump them in the hamper.
"It'll do, I guess," Pomeline said finally, inspection complete, and dropped her duffel on the empty bed.
As Olive helped her with the fitted sheet, she asked what the problem was with her old room, only thinking she would make awkward conversation.
But Pomeline shuddered. "It was so weird. The wall on Anne's side of the room started to leak."
"Leak? Like a . . . pipe burst, or something?"
Pomeline shook her head. "It was coming from under the baseboard, like there was a gap or something. And it wasn't water. It was this weird goop. Blue goop."
"What was it?" Olive asked.
Pomeline just shrugged. "No idea. I took a picture of it with my phone, but then I deleted it right away. Looking at it made me feel super creeped out." She sounded a bit befuddled about why that was, but then shook her head again as if to clear it.
"Weird."
"Anne said it was giving her nightmares." Pomeline handed Olive the other end of the flat sheet, and Olive began to tuck in the corners.
"Where is Anne?"
"With her BFF, at long last." She snorted, but Olive heard an echo of her own feelings about Lucy in it and felt a little warmer toward her.
* * *
Maps, at least, was extremely happy about the roommate situation, and proposed they hold girls-only Detective Club meetings in their room. However, at the first such meeting, despite the agenda being full of items like investigate whether there is a poltergeist stealing Mr. Randall's toupee, Maps was distracted by the story of Pomeline's dorm room and its mysterious blue goop.
"Ectoplasm!" she breathed, her eyes round. "I bet it was ectoplasm."
While Pomeline rolled her eyes, Olive wanted to know, "What is ectoplasm?"
"Ectoplasm," Maps began, infusing the word with much significance, "is a substance given by ghosts when they want to get bodies and become corporeal. They need it to make a material form!"
She said this like it was a fact and not something that came from a Stephen King book. "We already know Millie Jane's ghost isn't real," Olive reminded her.
Maps nodded, rubbing her chin between her fingers. "And that," she said dramatically, "is how we know there's another ghost. A real ghost this time!"
Oh boy, thought Olive, remembering Kyle's protectiveness. She traded a look with Pomeline over Maps's head. Pomeline was smirking, and Olive almost did too. But it felt wrong to make fun of Maps behind her back, so Olive looked away quickly.
"Maybe we should check it out," she offered, and Maps lit up. Olive didn't believe that there was a ghost in Pomeline's old dorm, but maybe there would be something there to disprove Maps's theory. She almost missed the way Pomeline's mouth turned down at the corners at Olive's suggestion.
There wasn't anything noticeably wrong with room when they reached it, though they'd cordoned off the rest of the hallway beyond, but as they drew closer a pit of dread began to grow in Olive's stomach. From a look at the other girls, they felt the same way.
"Whatever, it's just my room," Pomeline said a little too loudly as she reached for the doorknob. Somehow Olive didn't think she was speaking to them.
Inside the feeling didn't go away. Just as Pomeline had described, one of the walls was leaking . . . something. Olive had thought of "weird blue goop" as something funny and even cute, but this was anything but.
The bed on that side of the room had been pulled away from the wall, showing a few inches of accumulated slime on the floor all along that wall. There was something about it that was inherently repulsive; Olive could barely get her eyes to stick to it no matter how hard she tried.
"We should get a sample," Maps squeaked, sounding less enthusiastic about the prospect than Olive expected.
None of them moved. Unconsciously they had drawn themselves together in a tight grouping, as if for protection.
Finally Maps turned around to rummage in her backpack, visibly relieved to not be looking in that direction anymore. From it she retrieved a vial and a plastic butter knife. When she spoke, her voice wobbled. "Okay. One, two . . . three!"
She was speaking to herself: quick as a bunny she turned around and darted toward the slime; Olive cringed, afraid for her, and reached after her. But Maps was already kneeling at the edge of the slime and scraping a patch of it into her vial, though her hand was shaking as she did so. After a few seconds, she moaned, a sound of pure fear, and wiped her forehead.
Breaking through her own haze of fear, Olive took the three long steps after her and grabbed her by the top of her backpack. "Come on, Maps, come back."
She didn't have to tell her twice; in a second Maps had corked the vial and backed away several paces, almost knocking Olive over in the process. A massive wave of relief came over Olive; Kyle wasn't going to kill her (or worse, be disappointed in her) for putting his little sister in mortal danger . . .
Moving as a group, the three girls fled the room and took sanctuary in the hallway outside. The fear abated a little. They were all panting and sweating like they'd run a marathon, though it occurred to Olive they hadn't exactly exerted themselves.
The vial was shaking in Maps's grip; she held it away from her body. Olive didn't want to go anywhere near it either, but then Maps asked, her voice small, "Could you put this in my bag? Maybe if I can't see it . . ."
She nodded. "Turn around." Olive unzipped the top of her backpack and, with a sickened feeling, reached for the vial. (Pomeline shuddered away from it as it came near.) As quickly as it was humanly possible to move, Olive dropped it in the bag and zipped it back up, grateful that her skin didn't have to be so close to it anymore.
All of the girls breathed a sigh of relief when it was out of sight and buried under papers and books. Pomeline voiced everyone's thoughts first. "What was that?" The hitch in her voice belied her nervousness.
Olive shook her head. "I don't know."
Maps shivered theatrically, though Olive didn't think the feeling was insincere. "Just like a horror movie! The blob is going to eat us!"
"Maybe," Olive said dubiously, though she had to agree it didn't feel like a ghost.
"Being repulsive to your food doesn't seem like the best evolutionary strategy for survival," said Pomeline dryly. Olive shot her a look. "What? I pay attention in biology."
"Where's it coming from?" Olive asked, eyeing the room next door with trepidation. She really, really didn't want to go in there.
The diffidence in Pomeline's shrug was unconvincing.
"It's either in the wall or on the other side, right?" Maps suggested. She sounded much more timid than Olive had ever heard her.
"I'll look," offered Olive, knowing she couldn't let Maps go ahead again. Ignoring Maps's grateful look and Pomeline's appalled one, she started toward the next door. The only barrier to the rest of the hallway was a bunch of warning cones and a sign that read No Entry; Olive stepped between them easily.
Each step she took made her fear and dread intensify. Closer to the room she could see the fresh caulk spread under the baseboard. But the goop was peeking out from behind newly forming cracks in the caulk; she shivered at the sight. Even more was coming out from underneath the door in a thick layer.
Every cell in her body resisted as she reached for the doorknob and turned it slowly, her grip heavy, and pushed the door open a fraction.
There was resistance, she realized, nauseated. She was pushing the door against the accumulated slime. It seemed to pulse against the door almost rhythmically. The feeling of that alien heartbeat was enough to make Olive back away immediately, stumbling and knocking over one of the cones in her haste to get away.
"Go go go," she urged, not looking back, and the other girls didn't have to be told twice.
* * *
Three days later, Maps texted them about a super-secret Detective Club meeting and brought the vial by their room.
"Oh, ew," Pomeline said instinctively, knocking her book out of her lap as she stood up.
"No, it's okay." Maps was her usual cheerful self again. "Look, now it's just some harmless powder." She shook the vial for emphasis. "It doesn't feel wrong anymore, you know?"
It was true; Olive didn't want to back away from it like it was coming to eat her anymore. Pomeline leaned toward it and then nodded grudgingly.
"I didn't open my backpack for two days," Maps confessed, sounding momentarily guilty and miserable. It wasn't like Maps to shy away from an adventure or mystery; Olive guessed she felt disappointed in herself now that the spell had passed. "I had to ask for new copies of all my homework assignments just because I didn't want to look at it."
Olive nodded, remembering the feeling. "But now it's gone." She picked up the vial and waved it in front of her face. Harmless blue powder, just like Maps said.
"Wait," said Pomeline. "That stuff was lining my room for weeks. Why didn't it break down earlier?"
"Maybe it keeps regenerating," Olive suggested, much as she didn't want to. But it was impossible to imagine that terrible pulsing heartbeat just stopping out of the blue like that. "Maybe more keeps coming out from wherever it's coming from."
"The girls on the other side of my old room have moved out too, I heard," Pomeline said with reluctance. "Unofficially. But what makes this our problem? Shouldn't Hammer-Head be taking care of it?" She'd adopted Olive's nickname for the headmaster with glee.
Olive chewed on a fingernail. A few days away from the slime had made everything a little clearer in her head and given her a few ideas. "All they're doing is keeping people away from it. I bet they don't want to come close to it, either, just like us. Reverse magnetism or something."
Maps was nodding, enthusiasm restored, but Pomeline was as doubtful as ever. "How are we going to do anything without touching that stuff? I am not touching it," she added, as if Olive was about to suggest doing that.
Olive's eyes fell on the little broom in the corner of their room, and she had a sudden thought. The other day she'd seen the janitor in the cafeteria mop up a mess by using a squeegee first to get it all in one place.
"We could use a squeegee," she suggested, realizing how silly it sounded only after it was out of her mouth.
Pomeline apparently thought it sounded silly too, because she stared at Olive for five seconds before saying, "Seriously? That's your plan? Squeegees are your plan?"
"It could work," Olive argued, her determination mounting. "The floors are wood, they're perfect for a squeegee."
"They're the fake stuff, not real," Pomeline corrected with the air of somebody who would know. She probably did, Olive supposed.
"Doesn't matter. All we need is the squeegee. Maybe," Olive relented, "we can just find out where it's coming from, and then tell the headmaster, okay?"
"If he doesn't kick us out," Pomeline grumbled, but she looked relieved.
"Where are we going to get a squeegee?" With a clear plan in her sights, Maps looked excited.
Pomeline sighed. "The lock on the third-floor janitor's closet doesn't work."
Olive raised her eyebrows. "And how do you know that?"
She shrugged one shoulder. "Sometimes Heathcliff and I like to have some alone time, okay?"
"In a janitor's closet?" asked Maps skeptically, and Olive bit back a smile.
* * *
The janitor's closet was just as unlocked as Pomeline promised, and inside there was not one, but two squeegees for the borrowing.
Olive handed the second one to Pomeline, who almost didn't take it, but then Olive jerked her head toward Maps in silent communication, and Pomeline sighed. "Fine, fine."
Close to the door, the dread came back, fogging up Olive's head and the plan that was in it. Logically she knew that it was just an effect of the slime, but that didn't stop her from feeling it.
She opened the door – the slime must have pushed it closed, ugh – and her fear intensified tenfold. "Maps, stay behind me," she said in a voice that was supposed to be commanding but came out rather small and withered instead. Against her arm, Maps nodded.
"Here goes nothing." Once the door was open, Olive began pushing the slime away with her squeegee. It worked, but Olive couldn't get rid of the feeling that maybe that wasn't a good thing.
Beside her, Maps took a deep breath, and her words came out all in a rush. "So this is like that time I went on a quest deep in the mountains of Thumrir, all by myself without my party, because it's a solo quest, but I had never done one before and I was way younger and less mature than I am now, so I don't mind telling you I was really freaked out . . ."
She kept chattering in that vein, and when she paused, perhaps overcome, surprisingly it was Pomeline who encouraged her to keep going. Olive was grateful. Something about Maps's chatter about orcs and healing spells and intelligence factors interrupted the slimey rhythm and kept some of the darkness in the room at bay.
And it was, strangely, so dark. Olive had turned on the light right away, but somehow it hadn't seemed to help. The effect was like wearing sunglasses inside. And their progress was slow; she wanted to wipe away every last little streak of horrid blue slime so that they wouldn't get it on their shoes at all.
"Look," said Olive, when Maps paused to take a breath. "Look at the clock."
There was an enormous grandfather clock on the other side of the room. But rather than looking homey and stalwart and traditional, like Olive expected of grandfather clocks, it had a foreboding air.
It was the source of both the darkness and the slime, Olive knew immediately. You couldn't look at it and not know that; there was something about its twisting shadows and horrible ticking that spoke of its malevolence directly into your heart.
"That's where it's coming from," Maps said, her conviction weakened by fear. The door to the clock's body was open, and the slime was piled up around it.
In the silence it got harder and harder to stay, to keep her feet planted where they were. "Keep talking," said Olive weakly.
"There's something weird about the face," Pomeline said after a moment. "It doesn't have regular numbers on it."
Olive concentrated. Pomeline was right. "And there's only two hands. A second hand, but it's not really a second long, and something else."
At the top of the clock was an inscrutable mark, not recognizable in any language Olive knew of. Not that she knew what they all looked like. "Does that look like a language to you guys?"
Maps shook her head. "It's not Japanese or Korean, that's for sure."
"It's nothing I recognize," added Pomeline. "And I know what Hindi, Thai, and the Cyrillic alphabet look like."
"That's a really weird collection," said Olive, not rancorously but just to have something to say.
"Yeah, I know."
The other hand was less than ninety degrees away from the top. If Olive looked very, very hard, she could see it just barely moving in that direction. Maybe.
"I think it's a countdown clock," she said, and her voice seemed to run ahead of her and get lost in the darkness.
They were all quiet for a moment. Olive felt Maps wrap her arms around her waist and speak directly into her back. "Counting down to what?" said her small voice.
"I don't know. But I don't want to find out. Stand back."
Olive knew, in a wild, violent moment of realization, that the clock had to be destroyed. If they left this room, the fear would get the better of them forever; they weren't ever going to come back. She raised the squeegee handle and aimed a strike directly at the face.
It wasn't hard enough; it bounced off the glass.
"Here." Pomeline joined her with the other squeegee. Together they broke through the glass.
Almost immediately there was another wave of terror, this one stronger than anything Olive had ever felt.
"Can't stop," murmured Pomeline in her ear, and despite her horror Olive knew she was right. Besides, she couldn't run when Maps was behind her, counting on her.
Together they broke the clock's face. Olive felt it the moment the gears bent and were unable to continue working: an intense relief washed over her, like a wave breaking, but she didn't stop, and neither did Pomeline, not until the clock was lying in pieces at their feet.
Olive found she was gasping, almost bent double, and so were the other two. She laughed and heard the tinge of hysteria in it.
"It's over, I think," she whispered. Whatever had been on its way wasn't coming anymore. Maps's arms almost squeezed the air out of her.
* * *
The following Friday, Olive got another surprise visit from the headmaster. Pomeline was listening to her MP3 player, eyes closed and lying down on her bed, so it was Olive who answered the door.
"I would like to speak to Miss Fritch," the headmaster intoned.
Pomeline had been paying attention after all, her apathy apparently a disguise; she was at the door in moments. "Yes, Mr. Hammer?" she said, sounding bored.
The headmaster cleared his throat. "Well, it seems that the . . . problem . . . with your dorm room has been cleared up. You may move back this weekend, if you wish."
Olive watched Pomeline as she thought about it for a minute. "Nah. I'm good." Without elaboration, she stuck her earbuds back in and wandered back to her bed, flopping down on it.
The headmaster turned to Olive, looking skeptical. "And you, Miss Silverlock? Do you find this arrangement acceptable?"
Olive felt her face break out into a wide smile. "Yeah, I think so."