by M. G. Harris
Tyler laughs. He thinks I’m kidding.
It takes longer than I’d hoped to reach Saffron Walden. There’s no bus to Cambridge for another hour. We talk a little, then stare out of the window. Tyler gets a text and then spends the rest of the time chuckling to himself and texting. He won’t show me the texts. “Private,” he smirks. “From a girl.”
I try to ignore him and daydream about Ollie.
The bus takes ages but gets us most of the way, and we have to catch another to Saffron Walden, then another to the little village of Ashdon, where Thompson used to live.
It’s past sunset, dark, the village centre decorated with trails of pinpoints of blue lights strung over the trees and shops, which are about to close. I walk into the pharmacy, figuring that the pharmacist must know everyone.
“Excuse me, we’re looking for a house called ‘Yale’. Used to belong to an archaeologist called Sir J Eric Thompson.”
The pharmacist nods and smiles, her curly brown hair bobbing. “You’ll be looking for the fancy-dress party, then? They have one every year, don’t they? First week of December. It’s like the start of the Christmas season here.”
I pause for just a little too long, but Tyler comes to the rescue. “That’s right. We’re supposed to deliver some . . . ah . . . costumes.”
“Our parents forgot to pick them up,” I say. “From some shop nearby. . .”
The pharmacist chuckles. “No costume shops here! There might be one in Saffron.”
I groan. If there’s a party going on, it’s going to be hard to get time alone with the current owner of the house. On the other hand. . .
“Where’s the house?” I ask.
She gives me directions – the house is no more than ten minutes’ walk from the village centre. Shorter if we cross a field, but in this weather she wouldn’t recommend that. “Get all muddy, you will!”
Outside, Tyler and I debate our strategy.
“It’s blatant, innit?” he says. “We get some costumes, we sneak in as guests.”
I like the plan. We catch the bus back to Saffron Walden, hoping to hunt down some costumes. What worries me is that we don’t know who lives there now, whether they have any connection with Thompson at all. The fact that the pharmacist recognized the name doesn’t mean much – he was a famous archaeologist, after all. It could be his heirs living there . . . or anyone, really.
I’m kicking myself that we didn’t ask more questions. I need to get better at this, and fast.
The village bus service makes it to Saffron Walden just as the shops are closing. We rush around like loons asking for the “costume shop”. Just our luck – it’s as far away as possible, right the other end of town. We arrive out of breath and sweating in time to see the manager closing up. He can hardly make out what we’re saying, we’re panting so hard.
“Please . . . need costumes . . . tonight.”
“Good Lord, boys, take a breather, why don’t you? Now then, this would be for the party at the Thompson place?”
Great – a Thompson still lives there.
“Well, as you can see, we’ve just closed.”
We’re bent double, trying to catch our breath. With my head somewhere around my knees, I say again, “Oh, go on. Please. We’ll get into big trouble with our parents.”
The shop manager is a man in his late forties, with a big mop of messy, sandy-coloured hair that gives him a sympathetic look. He hesitates. “OK. But this is just a normal shop, you know. There’s no magic portal to one of Mr Benn’s worlds, if that’s what you’re looking for.”
He’s still chortling away at his obscure joke as he unlocks the front door.
The shop isn’t a real costume shop but a charity shop with a few costumes in the second-hand-clothes section. In the window, a child-sized dummy is dressed up like a fantasy hero, with a sword, shield, amulets and everything.
We check through the collection. There are maybe three costumes that would fit me. Two of those are for girls – flowing white dresses.
“That one’s multi-purpose,” the manager says helpfully. “The Snow Queen, White Witch of Narnia, Arwen from Lord of the Rings. Or a ghost, if you take a hood as well.”
Tyler turns over a pair of costumes that I realize, the minute I see them, are perfect.
“Hey, look, Josh. Batman and Robin.”
“I call Batman!”
The shop manager weighs in. “I shouldn’t lend you the Batman. Only the Robin. I already rented out another Batman suit. Bad form to turn up in the same costume as another guest.”
Tyler picks up the Batman costume, holds it against himself. “Wouldn’t fit me anyway. It’s about five centimetres too small.”
“That Robin suit is adult-sized,” says the manager.
“I’m Robin!” shouts Tyler, before I can say anything. Not that I would, because I can tell right away it wouldn’t fit me. Tyler’s either fully grown already, or he’s going to be a giant. Me, I’m still growing. I check out the Batman suit. It looks perfect.
“Oh, go on, let me borrow the Batman,” I wheedle. “Then we’ll be a match, my mate and me. Anyway, it’s the only one that fits.”
“Apart from the White Witch,” Tyler says with a snigger.
The manager relents, again. I guess he just wants us out of there.
“Do you know the Thompsons?” I ask as we hand over cash.
“I’m not that old,” he replies with a smirk. “Died back in the seventies, didn’t he, Sir Eric? Some niece of his living there now. No idea what she’s called.”
But she’s a relative. She might still have Thompson’s Mayan stuff. That makes sense – why else would the NRO drag my father there?
“Has she lived there since Thompson died?”
“No,” he says, pausing. There’s a tiny shift in his attitude towards us. Maybe I’m imagining it, but it’s as though the can-do, easy-going nature has suddenly vanished. And it’s replaced with an air of conspiracy. . .
“Who lived there after he died?”
“His widow; then the house was empty for a while.”
“It didn’t sell?”
“It wasn’t on the market. Not with that history.”
“What history?”
The manager looks me calmly in the eye. “The history that any half-decent research would uncover. The stories from the time Thompson lived there.”
We stare blankly. “Like what?”
“Probably a lot of nonsense. As I say, I was too young to remember much. There were people who reckoned that it wasn’t only Egyptian archaeologists who came back with curses on them.”
Tyler says, “What, Mayans had pyramid curses too?”
“So it was reckoned, round here. Mostly just whispers. All because of that young assistant of Thompson’s, the one that disappeared. There were folks who wondered if it was covered up at a high level because – it got a D-Notice, as it was called back then. One of them things the government slaps on a case – making it a national secret. You need someone high up to get a D-Notice. It didn’t make the national papers. And that young fella, they never found him.”
I gather up the costumes in a major hurry. I’ve got a hunch that Tyler’s next question is going to give the game away.
“We’d better get going,” I announce. “Going to be late.”
Minutes later, standing in the bus shelter, Tyler says breathlessly, “Wow . . . what do you reckon to that story? Thompson’s Mayan curse could be linked to the Ix Codex, innit? Didn’t those blokes who emailed you say it was dangerous or cursed and that?”
He’s right, of course. And my mind can’t help going back to that news story in the Lebanon newspaper about Madison. How many of these “cursed” artefacts are out there in the world?
“It is cursed,” I say, shortly. I’m so close to a possible answer – it’s time I told Tyler a bit more. “But the codex isn’t there any more. Someone got there already, years ago. And my dad would have known that too. What I want to know is, why did
he go to the trouble of coming back here? With those NRO men?”
Tyler stares at me. “What are you talking about? How do you know all that?”
“My grandfather found the Ix Codex,” I tell him. “And I think I know how – he must have found the stories about Eric Thompson’s assistant in the local newspapers. Something must have put him on to Thompson – I guess we’ll never know what. But once my grandfather realized that Thompson had some sort of cursed Mayan relic, he must have decided there was a chance it was the Ix Codex.”
That’s the thing about mysterious disappearances – curious people can’t resist them.
Tyler isn’t entirely satisfied with my answer, I can tell. But for some reason, he doesn’t push it further. He just leans against the shelter, like me. Thinking.
Half an hour later we’re back on the bus to Ashdon, clutching plastic bags with our costumes inside, wondering where we’re going to change.
“Too bad they got rid of most of those red phone boxes,” remarks Tyler. “We could do a Superman.”
Of course, they didn’t completely get rid of them – not everywhere. I cross my fingers that Ashdon is considered cute and traditional enough to keep its original phone box.
A single main road passes through the village of Ashdon. Our luck is in – they’ve kept their old-fashioned phone boxes and we can change into our Caped Crusader outfits. The house named “Yale” lies along a lane surrounded by fields, lined with trees. There are very few street lights and the sky is layered with dense grey clouds. We have to walk a long way in the cold, foggy dark. It’s just as well that it’s hard to see us in the murky light, with us dressed as Batman and Robin.
Tyler hasn’t said much since I half-answered his question. Finally, he breaks his silence. “This Mayan codex . . . if it was here in Saffron Walden all along, why did no one find it before?”
“I guess no one knew to look for it here.”
“But this Thompson bloke, he was a Mayan archaeologist, right? So he must have known what he had, yeah?”
I don’t answer, remembering how I dug up the codex at the shrine of those creepy little statues in the forest – the chaneques. And those two NRO agents; how they watched me dig, the horrible way they died when they touched it. . . My guess is that Thompson didn’t know what he had. Because once he’d seen what it could do to a person, he never would have let that weird volume be touched again.
Which means that most likely, Thompson would never have seen inside the box, never looked at the actual codex.
“Maybe he kept it a secret,” I suggest.
“Maybe,” replies Tyler. But he doesn’t sound convinced. “So what’s the plan?”
“We go in, we act natural at the party, we try to chat to the owners about Thompson. Then we mention my dad, see if it gets any reaction.”
“And if they ask us who the heck we are. . .?”
“Easy,” I tell him. “We tell them to try and guess. No one recognizes their friends in proper fancy dress.”
“But we’re dressed like Batman and Robin.”
“Yeah, so?”
Tyler shrugs. “Seems like a waste to me . . . if we won’t be recognized, we could go unnoticed for ages. We’d have a chance for a proper snoop first.”
“Now that is not a bad idea. . .”
It’s easy to see there’s a party going on at the Thompson house. Balloons are strung around the front yard. Christmas decorations hang in the leafless branches of a small tree. Light blazes from every window in the house, the only light for at least half a mile. It’s a big timber-framed country house, with deep brown logs that criss-cross the walls, covered by ivy. The windows look old and rickety. The downstairs windows have tiny leaded panes.
A car passes when we’re only a few metres from the gate. It catches us in the full beam of its headlamps for a second, then swings in and parks in the already-crowded, gravel-covered front yard.
We hang back for a minute, waiting. I’m impressed when I see who gets out of the car . . . it’s Batman!
Batman according to the latest movie incarnation, mind you. Not the cheesy TV version, like our costumes. Compared to me, this guy is huge, menacing. Batman Suit knocks on the door, glancing around for a second in our direction. I push back against the hedge. But it’s pretty likely that he’s spotted us already.
Someone opens the front door; Batman Suit steps through. We wait for a few more seconds, then creep up to the door.
“We should go in round the back,” Tyler says. “If the hosts have to greet us, there might be questions.”
Maybe it’s the kind of party where people spill out into the back garden. . . So we slip around there.
It isn’t that kind of party. Behind the house it’s dark.
We try all the doors and downstairs windows. There’s an open window. We let ourselves in. The window leads to a utility room, piled high with laundry. Both the washing machine and the tumble dryer are on, so any sound we make is masked. We open the door to the kitchen, wait until there’s no one in sight, then sneak in.
The very next second, the kitchen door opens. A woman walks in, dressed as a flapper girl from the Roaring Twenties.
“Lovely, Batman and Robin! You’re . . . ooh, wait, don’t tell me. You’re Poppy’s friends, aren’t you? You boys lost? Or looking for food?”
“Looking for food!” Tyler says, giving her a wide grin.
She directs us through the large hall and towards the main living room, where the party seems to be in full swing. The room’s packed with people wearing elaborate costumes – vicar outfits, girls in bunny costumes with fancy face masks, a couple of Supermen, an Elvis, two James Bonds, a Darth Vader and a whole crew of pirates.
We wait until Flapper Girl is out of eyesight, then turn around and head for the staircase. It isn’t easy – the hall is crammed with people drinking mulled wine and talking loudly. From wall speakers, Christmas music blares – that song by Mariah Carey. I spot Batman Suit in the far corner, still by the door, with his back to us. He’s with a woman dressed as a Bond girl. At least I assume she’s a Bond girl, with such a skimpy outfit and handguns strapped to her thigh.
Tyler and I try to sidle casually up the stairs. Once upstairs, we pad down the corridor, away from the festivities.
“Where are we going?” Tyler asks.
“No idea,” I reply, trying a door. It’s open. A bedroom. “Not there.”
“Look for a library,” he whispers.
“Thanks, Einstein, cos I was thinking the bathroom. . .”
“Oh, shut it.”
The third door we try leads to a room that’s a cross between a study and a library. I switch on the light. Three of the walls are lined floor to ceiling by shelves covered with books and some computer equipment. Against the fourth wall is a huge oak desk, with drawer handles carved into open lions’ mouths. Towards the centre of the room, a red leather sofa sits in front of a low coffee table, which is stacked high with magazines. I pick one up – Architectural Digest.
“What are we looking for?”
“Anything to do with Mayan archaeology,” I say, replacing the magazine. “Look for copies of Thompson’s books.”
“How’s that going to help?”
“I dunno! I just want to see if they’ve kept anything of his. If they have, then maybe he has notes, or a diary. It’s what my dad would have been looking for, if he really did come here.”
We continue searching. I’ve just discovered a rich seam of books about the Maya when we hear a sound from the corridor. Footsteps and voices, definitely approaching this room. With barely a second to glance at each other, we turn out the light, throw ourselves into the only hiding place – under the desk. The front and sides of the desk go all the way to the floor, so unless someone actually tries to sit at the desk, we’ll be OK.
The door opens, light turns back on and we hear two voices – a man and a woman. My blood runs cold when I hear the man.
I recognize the voice.
&
nbsp; “What a nice room,” he begins. “My father’s study is just like this.”
It’s the guy who chased me in the blue Nissan – Simon Madison, or whatever his real name is. The man who killed my sister.
The woman sounds quite elderly and speaks in a clipped accent that I don’t quite recognize. It’s somewhere between Australian and South African.
“Professor Martineau? Oh yes, I’m not surprised. D’you know, we’ve kept this room almost exactly as my uncle had it. Course, we couldn’t bring all our books from Rhodesia.”