THE MAGISTER'S MANSION

Sample From My Award-Winning MG Horror Novel

THE GRUFFS

“Beast!”

“What?” said Eylem. “So I'm the beast now? Terrific… Why am I even surprised?”

Moist soil covered this new room's floor where dozens of colorful mushrooms grew. There were houses carved into them all, like Halloween pumpkins. It resembled a small-sized town, a village maybe, but a portion of it was in ruins where Eylem landed. Her huge, kind of heavy ‘beastliness’ had leveled a district of the creepy mushroom houses below the ventilation duct. The beast had no legs, was thankful for having hands, suffered from digestive issues, and had no significant future plans other than learning how to play the drums.

"Can it be him? Has the Magister come at last?" cried one of the tiny creatures surrounding Eylem. He had hairballs glued to his chin, an attempt at a long, wise beard, and stood with an exaggerated hunch. Marker stains covered his face, drawn in to mimic wrinkles. He leaned on a straw, clutching it as if it were a wizard's staff. An old sock was draped over his shoulders, worn like a robe.

Eylem ‘the beast’ eyed the room. The mushroom houses came in every height and width, all big enough to house a few Gruffs. Their colors created a cursed forest ambiance with their near-rotten appearances. Some glowed in the darker corners of the chamber, with spots bright enough to illuminate their surroundings. Violet, yellow, blue, green, red, turquoise; all present in the room. Despite the glamorous colors, they all showed indications of decay, projecting their moldy mushroom nature in the unhealthiest way possible. The mushroom’s poisonous odor brought the taste of ink into Eylem’s mouth, butchering her tastebuds. Fortunately for them, the Gruffs were immune to anything fractionally human.

The town's inhabitants were as dilapidated as their desolate sanctuaries. Their given name fit the creatures like a glove. The Gruffs, what a proper title. They had inherited their heads from old toys, resembling broken dolls in a haunted mansion. The dints on their faces resembled scars, and the tops of their heads looked like barren wheat fields. Their hair had been plucked, leaving behind only a few synthetic pieces of fiber on their heads. The Magister had torn apart a wide collection of dolls and impaled their heads on the Gruff’s tiny bodies to create the creatures. Although each one was uniquely different, the members of this ‘small’ population shared one commonality: their raggedy appearance. Their rolling metal eyes leaked rust; some had two, some had one, and others had none. Eylem could count their toothpick look-alike bones, for their fleshy bodies were skinny.

One of the armed soldiers shouted. "Not The Magister, but it's alive, Papa Gruff!" He took five steps back to approach the old-looking Papa Gruff, keeping his fork pointed at Eylem. There were spade symbols tattooed on his shoulders. "Shall we slay it?"

The whispers grew louder behind the Gruffs’ firm lips, like a radio broadcast from the other side of a wall. Their heads lacked expressions and were too big compared to the rest of their bodies. They nodded in agreement, resembling the bobblehead that used to decorate Eylem's dad's car.

"The Magister has never sent us living flesh before." Papa Gruff pondered. His head had a movable jaw, looking like a creepy ventriloquist's even creepier puppet. He was the sole Gruff with movable lips, sounding deep and clear when he spoke. The others' voices echoed as though they wore masks. "Halt! do not hurt it! I'll hear it out."

Ugh! I hate video game gnomes, and now I have to deal with them in real life as well. This is all too weird! Eylem moved her hands on the ground to gain better balance and squished another mushroom under her palms by accident. “Ooops!”

"My home!" yelled a Gruff among the crowd. "It wrecked my home!"

"Beast, know your place! You have no need to harm us. Why are you leveling our town? Did we somehow offend The Magister?" Papa Gruff took a step toward her, still leaning on the straw he held like a staff. As the sole creature with a movable mouth, Papa Gruff was the spokesperson of the town, begetting his status as the leader.

"Papa Gruff, look at its head. The hair on top is so… bushy and soft."

"Cut clean."

"And abundant."

“Let's take it!”

“Every single strand, one-by-one!”

“We need them more than it does!”

The Gruff crowd cheered for blood while approaching Eylem. Their unsettling cries made her crawl back a bit but failed to outright frighten her due to their small stature. And the poisonous smell in the air made her feel a constant need to check her face for fever emergencies or nosebleeds.

Leaning on his broken straw, Papa Gruff raised his hand and hushed the crowd. His fellow countrymen heeded his command in submission. “Quiet, sons and daughters.” Papa Gruff raised his staff at a slow pace, staring at the eyes of every single Gruff one by one. His voice wasn't loud, yet all the other tiny creeps heard him like he was the center of their attention at all times. “What we face here is not an ordinary beast, but the worst among the beast-kinds. The cruelest!”

The crowd collectively raised a question. “What is it?”

“It's a human!”

The townsfolk covered their motionless mouths with their hands, blending confusion and concern. Even the aggressive ones who carried forks took a few steps back to keep away from Eylem. They whispered. It was already hard to comprehend their words, but now the Gruffs spoke even more Gruffly.

“Indeed, a human! A murderer of dolls! The kind of beast that carved your eyes out, scratched your faces, plucked your hair, ripped your heads, and tossed you out. A child even!” His kin threw their hands up in horror when Papa Gruff declared Eylem's age bracket, yet they went silent when he raised his hands. “Tell me, human beast, did The Magister send you here so we can get our revenge on you?”

“Umm… Revenge for what?”

A bunch of the Gruffs assumed the fetal position and covered their ears when she spoke, rocking in their places. The others made do with trembling and covering their mouths with shaky hands.

“Its voice is like thunder!”

“It'll make the sky break and collapse on our heads!”

“The sky? You mean the ceiling? And stop calling me it! That’s not my chosen pronoun.” Eylem screwed up her face so tight that even Rotterfly's screwdriver would fail to loosen it. She lifted her head. An unvarnished lamp on the town-like room's ceiling illuminated the chamber. The miracles of electricity had skipped the upper stories and directly reached this floor. Eylem could see and distinguish everything around her as though it was daylight. There were dirt piles that created hills on all four corners of the room where the houses spread up to. A black, tar-like substance leaked from the ceiling, covering the walls. This room was—despite all the mushrooms—in cold bluish tones, unlike the blood-like rusty red patterns that dominated the upper floors. Water poured out of a drainpipe, having carved out a river canal. Some tiny creatures washed their clothes by the river. They herded cockroaches and farmed weeds. There was an established culture here, a civilization.

“It's obvious The Magister sent this creature to reward us, my children!” The old one turned his back to Eylem and faced his people. He spread his arms, yelling. “We knew we'd be rewarded for the sacrifices we've offered him all these years. The mushroom paints and molds! Avenge your plucked hairs and true, fleshless bodies that you've been separated from! Attack, for the sake of every single tortured toy!”

“What the flock?” Eylem exclaimed.

One of the Gruffs—the one who had a warrior's spirit and spades tattoos on both shoulders—climbed onto her coat. Before Eylem could make sense of the situation, he thrust the fork into her flesh and pulled her hair. Three other Gruffs clung to her coat, jumped on her nape, and thrust another fork into her shoulder blades as she screamed. The tiny monsters had surrounded her in the blink of an eye, like a fire ant colony.

“Stop! You're hurting me!” Eylem hit herself to shake off the Gruffs, as though her coat was set ablaze and she tried to put out the fire.

“You won't know what pain is until your head gets separated from your neck, beast!”

“Oh, if you only knew everything I've been through!” Eylem carried on thrashing about for a while. As she threw off the Gruffs with the backs of her hands, she strained every nerve to keep calm. Not stepping on the tiny jerks was difficult enough by itself, and keeping her blows light so as not to hurt the creatures got harder as their number swooping on her increased. So she grabbed one of the rascals on her shoulders and hurled him to a hill. “Enough is enough, get off me!” As the creatures screamed, Eylem slapped two other Gruffs who climbed on her. The third one, however, fell into her pocket. She had no intention to carry the burden of a stowaway. Roaring like Godzilla, she put her hand in her pocket and grabbed him.

Eylem's lucky thimble was stuck on the Gruff's head like a hat.

Her temper died down all of a sudden. Although she worried about softening her horrifying and over-lording image, she couldn't get a grip on her cackles. The laughter broke its chains. “Go ahead, you nerve-wracking shrimp!” said Eylem, placing the grumpy creature on the ground.

“The monster laughs at us, mocking…” Papa Gruff stopped glaring at the monster girl and set his eyes on the Gruff that Eylem had put on the ground. Her thimble was still on his head. Papa’s beady and lopsided eyes opened so wide they could fall from their sockets any second, which would surprise no one. “You who fell inside the purple cave on the creature! The one with the flowerpot on his head! Approach!”

“Purple cave? My pocket?” With her hands, Eylem suppressed her laughter. The creatures’ lack of understanding of pockets was both sad and hilarious. “Dude! This is, like, the worst civilization ever!”

The Gruff with the thimble on his head walked in shame among the crowd. He did not appreciate being ridiculed, yet the graveness of Papa Gruff's face made him speed up.

Papa Gruff held his disgraced subject by his shoulders and commanded him to turn his head. He grabbed the thimble and pushed him aside before addressing Eylem with a demanding roar that echoed through the whole town. “Tell me human, what is this thing with cute flower patterns?”

Papa Gruff's voice was so potent, it dragged down Eylem's laughter. “Hahaha! Oh, that? It's my ceramic thimble. Helps me calm down when I'm stressed out.” Being erratic, she forgot how the creatures had pricked her with their forks mere seconds ago.

“A thimble? Did The Magister send it to us?”

“Huh?”

“I refer to this headpiece! A vestige of style and high fashion. A relic, an artifact! It has to be The Magister's gift to us!” The old man stopped addressing Eylem and faced the crowd once again. He raised the thimble in the air, shouting, “What we've yearned for decades is finally bestowed upon us, my children! The Magister, our dearest Magister, sent us an artifact that will restore to us what the humans have taken from our hands! Our motionless faces will smile again! The world will light up, and our gardens will flourish! Our long-lost beauty has been returned to us!”

The monstrous townsfolk jumped around in joy and approached Papa Gruff to get a better look at the thimble.

Eylem laughed no more. Her abdomen hurt, and her lungs were overworked. She rubbed her tummy to relieve her muscles. “I don't think a thimble can…”

“Quiet down, human! I'm promising my people a better future here.”

Eylem kept silent, curling her lips and knitting her eyebrows. She listened to the old one's long and boring speech.

Papa Gruff gave voice to the arrival of their Gruffiness's end. He told his people that The Magister had always protected and watched over them, that they were going to retrieve their 'cute' doll outfits, and their foretold utopia would come true. He recited, giving his sermon. By the time the old one came to the point, Eylem was yawning. “… and now is the time, my dear children! As the leader of our beloved Gruff Town, mentor to our children, and the number one bachelor, I will put this elegantly designed object on my head to assure you that our future's secured! All praise to The Magister!” Papa Gruff raised the thimble above his head, oh so theatrical.

He had made his people's brains go numb by talking nonstop, and the folk simply watched. They did not stop the old Gruff from taking the one thing they had craved for so many years.

Yawning, Eylem resembled a roaring walrus during mating season. She slurped her mouth to prevent a drooling accident. "Wouldn't it be fairer if you just handed it over to the folk?" She paused for a second, regained her senses, and added, "Wait, what am I saying? That’s my precious thimble, you old fart! Give it back!"

"Silence, human! You shall not raise Cain among my people! I know what's best for them. Only I can carry the burden of such power and glamour."

Eylem rubbed her forehead and slapped herself on the cheek to come round. She glared at the old creature with her bloodshot eyes. "That thimble is mine."

"Seizers keepers." Papa Gruff almost chickened out. He raised his foot in an attempt to take a step back, yet the old one could not risk looking like a coward in front of his fellow citizens. With trembling hands, he slammed the nib of his broken straw staff down on the ground. "Return to The Magister. Tell him we received his delivery and give him our gratitude."

"I don't intend to go back to your Magister, you Gruff. On the contrary, I need to get away from him as far and soon as possible." She turned her head to examine the chamber. "Can't see my legs. They must be somewhere further down. I suggest you give me back my thimble! Don’t make me smash every single one of your remaining houses.”

“Do what you must, but this precious headpiece stays with me… I mean, with us!”

“Over my dead body!” Eylem tried folding her arms, but remembered that she needed them on the ground to stand upright. She almost kissed the dirt, drawing a long breath. “Look, that thimble on your head is precious to me, okay? Someone I deeply cared about handed it down to me before she… passed.”

“Passed where?” Papa Gruff regretted not having eyebrows to frown with.

It took Eylem three seconds to come up with an answer. The creatures had no notion of death. Like children they were, and she had no idea how adults introduced kids to such dark concepts… Then she looked around the town and remembered things couldn't get any darker for them. Having seen no reason to be kind or caring, she retorted. “Away!”

“A way? Which way? And who was it anyway?”

“My nana.” Eylem sighed. “I loved her, and she returned the favor, which is something few people do. The folk outside don't take shots at one another. You have to cherish the people who give you unconditional love and…”

“What's a nana?”

“Na… Dudes, stop interrupting my emotional discourse!” She opened and closed her mouth a few times, trying to form a legit sentence to make a valid definition. “It’s, like, short for grandma. You know, the person who had given birth to the person who gave birth to you.”

“Umm, I don’t think we’re smart enough to understand that sentence,” yelled a Gruff among the crowd, raising a hand. “You give us too much credit.”

“It’s okay. I’m also surprised I formed that sentence in a single try… Don’t you tiny monsters have parents? Who gave birth to you?”

All the Gruffs stared at one another with blank faces. There were many of them, so it took a lot of time.

“I mean, who made you?” Eylem slammed her hands down on the ground.

“Well, The Magister, of course. Who else could make us, or bother to do so?”

“Umm, okay.” Eylem smiled and nodded at a slow pace like struggling to explain to a dog how quantum physics worked. “We’re getting somewhere. Does that mean he’s, like, your mother?”

“What’s a mother?”

“Gosh, seems the mother card won't work on you… I kind of miss The Misdirected.” Eylem paused, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath to ease her mind, remembering how she had no torso or lungs just a few hours ago, drowning on land. “Let's say The Magister is your mother. That means the person who made him is your grandmother!”

“Blasphemy! What nonsense is this? He's the all-father, and father of all! No one made The Magister. He was, is, and always will be!”

“Oh boy, we're heading into dangerous grounds.” Eylem rubbed the space between her eyebrows. “Stubby, fanatical idiots! I have neither the time nor the patience to discuss theology with you!”

“Enough!” yelled Papa Gruff, raising his staff in the air like he was about to part a sea somewhere. “You shall not threaten The Magister's favored people, savage beast! Seizers keepers. You've come to our land and wrecked our town. If you mean to leave this place in peace instead of in pieces, you'll leave behind either the thimble or your teeth!” He turned back to face his people, expecting to hear their cheers.

So they cheered, for Eylem's mouth had drawn the Gruffs' attention.

"Teeth!"

"Its teeth would make beautiful hats. Each Gruff will have a personal headpiece if you seize the pearls in its mouth, becoming almost as 'winsome' as me. All you need is to pull its teeth out one by one and wear them on your heads. You'll probably need straps as well though, so better skin it as well.” Papa Gruff caressed his beard.

"Oh, don't you dare come any closer! Get hold of your creatures, old man! And give me back my thimble! It's… It's cursed. Don't say I didn't warn you! My nana cast a spell on it!" The dirt under Eylem’s sweating hands made her palms muddy.

"Your kind's curses cut no ice with us, human. Attack!" Papa Gruff pointed at her with the tip of his staff, ordering his army to charge.

The Gruff folk continued the attack from where they had left off. Their goal was set; to climb onto her, get in her mouth, and pull her teeth out. Once again, a bunch of Gruffs clung to her nape, others climbed on her coat, and two more ascended to the summits of her shoulders.

Eylem shook to rid herself of her aggressors. Her mouth was shut tight, holding the Gruffs at bay. She waved her hands high above her head to scare away the creatures but lost her balance, falling on her face. The humiliation was more severe than the pain.

The Gruffs had circled her with ropes and strings in their hands, tying her up. They neutralized Eylem before she could comprehend what was happening, more desperate than Gulliver himself.

"Open up!"

Eylem shut her eyes and shook her head.

"Suit yourself." Papa Gruff slammed the nib of his staff down on the ground once again. "Bring the lifter-jack!"

As Eylem wondered what the old man meant by 'lifter jack', two Gruffs drew near. They carried a wooden clothespin on their backs, elbowing their way across the crowd.

"Plug its nose. Make it open its mouth to breathe and get access to its teeth!"

Hence, the lifter jack, Eylem thought.

Before she knew it, the lifter jack carriers climbed to her ears, jumped on her forehead, and latched the clothespin onto her nose. The flow of events had been too rapid for her taste.

"Begin plucking its hair strands when you're done with the teeth, my little Gruffs. I'll be in my chamber, where you can bring my supper." Papa Gruff turned his back and walked to the colorful and glamorous giant mushroom at the center of the room, taking slow steps.