Here's the anual Halloween Special!
At the campus where Calvin and the others went to camp, there was an amazing building. It was built to look like an old castle, and had was covered in gargoyles, grotesques, griffons, and one owl. Although they are traditionally used to prevent evil spirits, the building had its share of bad luck.
Twice, it had been struck by lightning, sending one particular grotesque tumbling to the ground. Both times. In order to prevent a third time, which could have been its last, the grotesque was placed in a garden next to the castle, as a mascot of sorts.
Sadly, one day, its smiling face vanished. Some young vandal had stolen it. And there, the lonely, headless grotesque sat, smiling no more. No one ever did find out who stole the head...someone who had no regard to the feelings of stone.
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"Did I ever tell you guys about the time my brother stole a gargoyle's head?" Eddy asked his friends one morning. Before long, they found themselves walking towards the castle, Eddy leading the way and narrating his brother's other exploits.
"...and then he chugged all the bananas in one sitting!"
"Eddy's brother is the man!" cheered Ed.
Calvin shivered. "Geez, it's cold this morning. That's a bad sign in the summer, especially with all the issues of Global Warming. It must be a mood-setting element for a Halloween Special!"
"I just live with him," Hobbes whispered to Jason.
"Calvin is the man!" Ed cheered again.
"Calvin's right," said Jason. "Eddy, if your brother stole a gargoyle's head, he could be in trouble. Gargoyles hold the world's biggest grudges.
"Gargoyles are the..." began Ed, before Eddy smacked him.
"So, Jason, Marcus," said Double D, "what do you two know about gargoyles, anyway? Care to share some interesting folklore?"
Marcus rolled his eyes. "You wouldn't believe us."
Double D insisted. "I find superstitions silly to believe but fascinating to hear about. Do tell us."
Jason grinned. "Cue the music!"
(To the tune of "Heffalumps and Woozles")
Jason: A really tough gargoyle is so hard to foil
Especially when it carries a grudge
Jason and Marcus: Grudge, grudge, grudge
Marcus: By night or day or sunset
They will have their fun yet
They'll catch you even when they only trudge
Jason: They're dangerous when they're mad
When they're not, they're still bad
They're not the kind of guys that you should cross
Jason and Marcus: Cross, cross, cross
Marcus: You might live if you charm them
But if you do harm them
They'll grab you and they'll show you who's the boss
Jason: They're strong
Marcus: They bite
Jason: They growl
Marcus: They're nuts
Jason: They sneak
Marcus: Real well
Both: They'll rip out your guts
Jason: Don't steal a limb, or any part
Marcus: They'll remember that, cause they're really smart
Jason and Marcus: Beware, beware, beware, beware...
BEWARE!
By this time, they had reached the castle. "Thank you for that grim little number," said Double D.
Above the castle, they could see several statues smiling down at them. It was hard to describe exactly what they looked like, they were similar to large, grinning bats without wings, only normal arms. Sticking out of the castle's walls were a few long-necked gargoyles sticking out.
Sitting above the entrance to the castle was a large stone owl, meant to represent wisdom.
And there, sitting the courtyard, was another batlike statue, this one headless. Eddy happily pointed to it. "Here we are! Check out the gargoyle! Only ya can't check out its head! Cause my brother took it!"
Calvin appeared sympathetic. "Gee, I'd hate it if someone took off MY head."
"As would we all, Calvin," agreed Double D. "Vandalism is nothing to applaud. Besides, Eddy, that's not a gargoyle at all. It's a grotesque."
"You bet it's grotesque! Without the head. CAUSE MY BROTHER TOOK IT!"
"No, no, no," explained Double D, "gargoyles serve as waterspouts in addition to architecture. Grotesques do not."
Hobbes looked nervous. "All these gargoyles or grotesques or whatever you call them are making my fur stand on end. I'd rather go back to camp, warm up and eat some tuna."
"I'm with Hobbes," said Marcus. "Except for the tuna part."
"Don't be a chicken! Check me out, boys!" Grinning, Eddy climbed up on top of the headless grotesque. "I'M KING OF THE GOYLE!"
Suddenly, Eddy was being squeezed tightly by two stone hands. It took everyone a second to realize that he was being held by the statue!
"Sorry," Eddy corrected himself, "grotesque."
Ed clapped his hands. "Way cool! I want to be hugged by a statue! Only they would understand me."
"We told you!" cried Jason in terror. "Our song served a purpose!"
Eddy managed to wriggle out of the grotesque's grip. "But my brother took the head, not me! I don't even know where it is!"
"Eddy," reasoned Double D, "perhaps your brother looked like you at the time he stole it."
The horrible thought registered with Eddy. "Uh-oh."
Pointing a gray finger at them, the grotesque stretched out its legs and began to march forward.
Calvin took a step back. "Could be worse, right? Right?"
And, of course, whenever someone says that, things ALWAYS get worse! Indeed, above them, all of the other grotesques and gargoyles snapped to attention and lumbered out of their normal positions. The gargoyles pulled themselves out of the wall, revealing long, lizardlike bodies.
Being no idiots (not even Ed), the kids took off running.
Eddy yelled to Hobbes, "You're the tiger, bite them or something!"
"Ever sink your teeth into stone?" cried Hobbes. "It hurts!"
"Who's pathetic enough to bite a rock?" wondered Jason.
Calvin laughed. "I played a prank on him. It was hilarious."
In response, Hobbes tripped Calvin, leaving him behind as they ran. "Well, now you're gravel bait!"
Calvin scrambled up and grabbed Hobbes by the tail, pulling him back. "If I get killed by a stone owl, you're going down with me!"
Calvin and Hobbes started to fight. Everyone else stopped running for a second and looked back. The gargoyles and grotesques hadn't followed him.
"They are gone!" cheered Ed. "We are alive! Break out the gravy!"
"Odd," murmured Double D, "they have indeed vanished. Perhaps they were only trying to scare us."
They all turned to see Eddy rocking back and fourth, nervously.
"Sure worked on one of the group," said Jason.
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That night, Eddy had Ed and Double D over to his house. He had a feeling that the grotesques weren't done with him yet.
"Thanks for staying with me, guys," he said to his friends as they spread out in his bedroom. "I can't believe Calvin and those other jerks didn't show up!"
"Don't be too hard on them," said Double D. "After all, being chased around by figures of stone can certainly rattle one's nerves."
Ed bounced around happily. "We are in Eddy's top friends! Can we hold hands and share ghost stories?"
"Shut up, Ed!" growled Eddy. "This better not be one of those things where it wants my head in return!"
Double D looked uncertain. "It certainly seems like it, sadly. But I wouldn't worry too much, Eddy. After all, I doubt the gargoyles and grotesques will follow you home."
At that moment, the stone owl from the castle smashed through the window! It flew around the room, trying to dive bomb Eddy.
Eddy's eyes bugged out. "They're here!"
Ed opened Eddy's bedroom door to reveal a few smaller stone creatures, which looked like small dragons. "You have visitors, Eddy!"
"Gargoyles!"
"Actually," corrected Double D, "aside from the owl, the two beasts are actually Griffins. You can tell by..."
"I could care less!" exclaimed Eddy.
Ed tried to hug a Griffin, which squirmed away. "It's a real party now!"
At that momet, Jason, Marcus, Calvin, and Hobbes jumped into the room through the window! "No," said Jason, "NOW it's a party!"
Calvin looked at the Griffins. "Yikes, these are worse than the monsters under our bed!"
"We've been waiting out here all night!" called Marcus, as he shoved one of the rocky figures off of Eddy.
Hobbes pounced on the owl, who clawed at him frantically and flapped away, somehow able to fly. "Ouch! I'd rather be fighting a fish!"
The owl was too distracted in escaping Hobbes to notice Calvin coming from the rear, armed with a net. "I've got one of them!" Calvin threw the net down over the owl.
Undaunted, the owl took off out the window, dragging Calvin (still holding the net) behind him. Hobbes snagged Calvin's leg and flew off as well. "I'm with you!"
The Griffins, which had pinned Eddy, noticed the owl escaping and followed it out the window and into the night.
"Bye, Calvin and Hobbes!" called Ed.
Double D gasped. "Horrors! Our friends have been captured!"
"In a sense, I guess," said Jason.
"It's not them the grotesque wants," reasoned Marcus, "it's Eddy."
"Don't remind me!" yelled Eddy.
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Calvin and Hobbes, holding tightly onto the net, found themselves being dragged over the lagoon. They looked up to see the castle in the distance. Although the lights were all off, it had a greenish glow emitting from it.
"We should let go now," said Calvin.
"We should really let go," agreed Hobbes.
"Definitely."
But they held on still. When they reached the castle, the owl shook off the net. Calvin and Hobbes landed on the roof and were surrounded by grotesques and gargoyles from every side.
"We should have let go."
"We absolutely should have let go."
The creatures reached out with stone hands and claws, and it all went black.
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The next morning at camp, the others stood outside, waiting for some sign that their friends were okay. Double D frantically paced back and fourth. "Oh, worry, worry, worry! Calvin and Hobbes aren't back! I shudder to think what those monsters have done with them!"
"Who'd want Calvin's head, anyway?" wondered Jason.
Marcus shook his head. "I don't know, a tiger's head would be pretty cool."
"Totally," grinned Jason.
"Just like Carni-Man and the Panthers!" beamed Ed, seemingly oblivious to the whole situation.
"Don't go blaming ME for this!" Eddy said stubbornly. "It was my brother who did it! I don't know where the head is!"
Jason smiled. "Hey, calm down. Calvin and Hobbes will be fine, and we're sure to defeat the grotesques and the others next time they attack!"
"How do you know?" asked Eddy.
"The Rule of Threes, of course!" Marcus said triumphantly.
Jason decided to explain. "Not only is it an art term, but it's also a law we made up after reading all these campy Batman comics. It goes as follows:
1. Batman and Robin meet a new criminal and/or an old foe returns. The criminal commits a crime or two and gets away.
2. Batman and Robin encounter the foe again and are captured.
3. Batman and Robin escape wherever they have been imprisoned and fight the foe a final time, prevailing in the end."
"So you see," concluded Marcus, "Calvin and Hobbes will be rescued and we'll win the next fight!"
At that moment, they heard a heavy flapping in the sky. Above them, the Griffins fly swooped down and dropped two concrete statues down onto the pavement. In the seconds before they hit, it was evident that they were statues of Calvin and Hobbes. When they hit, they smashed open revealing the real boy and tiger inside. No one knew what to say.
Calvin gasped for breath and pulled off a paper that the grotesques had attached to him with a safety pin. Written in smeared, black ink with crude handwriting, they could make out the words "TEN MINUTES."
"Call me crazy," Hobbes said sarcastically, "but I'm pretty sure this is a warning."
Eddy started to run around in circles, panicking. "Save the sarcasm, I've gotta pack right now!"
They heard loud thumping. Coming for them was a large row of marching grotesques!
"Apparently, gargoyles can't tell time," said Calvin.
Eddy did the natural thing, which was screaming and running inside. The others followed him, with the grotesques chasing them down the hall.
They bumped into Kevin near the main room. He noticed the grotesques (how could you miss them?), which were all standing still for one brief second. "Dude, did you steal the gargoyles?" he asked, more bewildered than anything.
Jason was in no mood to talk. "Can't explain now, but you might want to stay where it's safe right now. Get them, Ed!"
"The cow jumped over the moon!" Ed nodded and shoved all the other kids into the main room, putting a random huge board of wood in front of the door that barred them in.
"They'll get over it," said Calvin, watching the kids pounding on the door through a small window.
At this point, the grotesques started moving again. The kids ran, but reached a dead end a few feet away at the end of the hall.
"This is the end!" gasped Marcus, backing up as far as he could.
Jason turned to his friend for support. "Do something, Ed!"
"You're right!" Ed ran off, and returned a second later. "Forgot to lock the other door. All done now."
Stone hands reached out and grabbed each boy (and one tiger), dragging them off towards the castle.
"But the Rule of Threes never fails!" cried Jason. "Unless this is...a dark ending."
"Wait a second..." wondered Double D. "Where's Eddy?!"
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During the few moments where the grotesques stood still, Eddy decided to run in the opposite direction. There he sat, locked in the art room.
All alone. HE was safe, of course...but what about the others?
"Aw, geez. The grotesques have my partners! My...friends."
With a heavy sigh, Eddy got to work on something.
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The others, meanwhile, found themselves sitting up on the roof, surrounded by gargoyles, afraid to move. Nearby, several grotesques were busy stirring up a vat of cement. All of them appeared to be conversing, but no sounds came out of their mouths.
"Oh dear," sighed Double D, the first to speak in a while. "I have a feeling they're being serious this time!"
"Why'd they take us, anyway?" complained Calvin. "They're after Eddy! I mean, Eddy's brother."
"I guess they figured we were the next best thing," shrugged Marcus.
"If you're so good at gargoyle folklore," said Hobbes, "do you have any idea how to escape?"
Jason threw his arms up in frustration. "We hardly know anything! That song was a bunch of rhymes that restated the only facts we know a ton of times!"
"Although," said Marcus, "I would say a good way to escape is by figuring out how to touch a heart of stone."
"Those may be the last poetic words I hear," sighed Double D.
"I know poems!" Ed announced proudly. "Old King Mike met Dick Van Dyke and both of them took a long hike until they caught the biggest pike and rode away on his new bike."
"Beautiful," Double D said sarcastically. Well, at least his friend had tried. Unlike a certain other friend who didn't bother to come and rescue his...
"Wait!"
Everyone, kids, tigers, and stone alike, peered down to see Eddy approaching with something in a bag. "Grotesque-thingy!" he called. "I have what you want!"
The head grotesque (ironic, because he was headless) curiously opened up the bag to find a fake head made of clay.
"I made it out of play-dough," explained Eddy. "Listen, I didn't take your head. My brother did it, and I don't even know where it is! My brother's a wiz at hiding stuff. But I hope that you..."
Just as Eddy was turning to leave, he tripped over something in the bushes. He picked up...the grotesque's head. "Hey, here's the real head!"
The others climbed down into the courtyard with Eddy and the grotesque.
"Makes sense if you think about it," said Hobbes. "No one would have looked right there."
Eddy held out the head to the grotesque, but to everyone's surprise, the grotesque put on the fake one instead.
Eddy's eyes widened. "You like mine more?"
"Yep," Marcus whispered to Hobbes, "the stone heart's been touched."
Eddy happily extended his hand towards the grotesque. The statue shook it, and nearly broke it in the process. "OUCH! That was my scamming hand, too!"
"Well," said Calvin, "it doesn't take a genius to tell you not to shake hands with the thing! Honestly!"
With a wave to their new friends, the kids walked off, returning to camp. Sure, they would have a lot of explaining to do to the angry kids that were probably still locked up, but the bulk of their problems were gone.
"I could go for some rocks right about now," said Ed.
"Is it getting warmer?" wondered Double D.
"What did we learn from this, anyway?" asked Jason.
Marcus thought for a moment. "Grotesques are not immune to emotions."
"Works for me."
And so, there stood the grotesque, and there it still stands, headless no more. Now it waves to the kids as they pass by the castle, as do all the gargoyles, griffons, and owl. A true happy ending.
The early title of this story was "March of the Gargoyles," before I realized that the offended statue was, in fact, a grotesque.
The grotesque is based off a real thing at the campus where the stories take place. A grotesque which I loved once had its head stolen (twice actually, but the head was recovered the first time). He's been headless for years, and I recall once being inspired to belt out an impromptu-mock-country ballad called "The Headless Gargoyle." Of course, I can't remember it now, it was a while back.
Finally, there was an alternate opening to the story which was taken out merely because it was too slow and didn't cut to the chase long enough. It includes more about Eddy's brother and an extra verse of Jason and Marcus's song. Oh, the legend at the beginning of the story was originally going to be narrated by Eddy after the musical number.
(Calvin and Hobbes are walking into camp)
Calvin: Geez, it's cold this morning. That's a bad sign.
Hobbes: Why?
Calvin: Because it's not supposed to be cold in the summer! Especially with all the issues of Global Warming! This is mood-setting device, which must mean that it's a Halloween Special!
Hobbes: A what? This isn't TV. We don't have 'specials.'
Calvin: Sweet naive tiger. I pity thou.
(They walk into the main room to find Eddy telling stories to Jason, Marcus, Double D, and Ed)
Eddy: And THEN my brother chugged the whole thing down in one sitting!
Ed: Wow...solid bananas! Your brother is the coolest!
Jason: Ed, that's not that impressive. I bet you could chug even more bananas than that!
Ed: I will measure up!
(Ed bounds off)
Double D: Follow your dreams, Ed! Even if they involve 'chugging' bananas.
Calvin: Are you telling stories about your brother again?
Eddy: I never run out of 'em!
Hobbes: Lucky us. How do we know any of this is true?
Eddy: I've got proof! You know that building that looks like a castle a few blocks away with all the gargoyles?
Calvin: Yeah...
Eddy: You know the headless one?
Calvin: I think I missed that one.
Eddy: Well, my brother's the one that decapitated it! Come on, it's field trip time! Let's go check out his handiwork!
Double D: Applauding vandalism. Hmph.
(Jason and Marcus look at each other)
Jason: Uh...did you just say HE'S the one who decapitated the gargoyle?
Eddy: Did he ever!
Marcus: That's really not good.
Eddy: Jealous?
Jason: No, we're relieved that we're not ones the gargoyle will be after!
Eddy: What are you talking about?
Marcus: Gargoyles hold the world's biggest grudges.
Calvin: Gargoyles are alive?
Double D: Highly improbable.
(Ed runs by, being chased by Sarah)
Sarah: Give Jimmy's banana back!
Ed: I must chug!
Calvin: Whatever, let's just get to the stone before she goes crazy on us.
(They head down the block)
Double D: So, Jason, Marcus, what do you two know about gargoyles, anyway? Care to share some interesting folklore?
Marcus: You wouldn't believe us.
Double D: I find superstitions silly to believe but fascinating to hear about. Do tell us.
Jason: Cue the music!
(To the tune of "Heffalumps and Woozles")
Jason: They're big
Marcus: They're gray
Jason: They're mean?
Marcus: I'd say
Jason: They're tough
Marcus: They're stone
Both: They'll catch you alone!
Jason: They're fast
Marcus: They're sly
Jason: They're bad
Marcus: No lie
Jason and Marcus: Just pray they don't know how to fly
Look out, look out, 'cause the 'goyles are about!
