The Longest Night of Charlie Noon

by Christopher Edge

  I remember the muffled howls that I heard above the surface of the water and wonder if that was Johnny. I can tell that he’s crying now, the tears rolling down his cheeks as he speaks.

  “The men on the beaches and the planes diving out of the sky. He said they were sitting ducks, waiting for the boats to come. Bodies in the water. Death everywhere. I was so scared, Charlie. I didn’t want to die. Neither of us did. He just wanted to go home – just like me. I made a promise to him – a promise to myself. I said that if I didn’t drown, then I’d make things right. All the things I’ve done wrong – all the people I’ve hurt. I’d make it all right if he’d just let me live.”

  From the darkness I hear the crack of a twig snapping underfoot and hope to God this is Dizzy, but Johnny doesn’t even seem to hear it as he carries on talking. It’s almost as if he can’t stop.

  “That’s when he told me that it wasn’t my time. There were places I had to go and promises to keep. He said you were coming to save me, Charlie. I just had to call your name.”

  Johnny looks up to meet my gaze, his eyes bright with tears.

  “So that’s what I did. I shouted your name with the only breath I had left. And that’s when you came. That’s when you saved me.”

  With a trembling hand, Johnny reaches up to his shirt pocket. “I found this in my pocket,” he says, pulling out a folded square of paper. “When we got out of the water. I swear it wasn’t there before. Take a look at it, Charlie.”

  Reaching out, I take the yellowed paper from his shaking fingers and slowly open it out.

  It’s a map. In the light cast by the fire, I see the shape of the north of France, the names of cities dotted along the coastline. Boulogne. Calais. Dunkirk. Lines and arrows are drawn across the dog-eared paper, some of them disappearing in the places where the map has cracked at the folds. But it’s the words I see scrawled across the English Channel that make me gasp in surprise.

  THE WAY FORWARD IS THE WAY BACK

  It’s the same message we saw written in the Freemasons’ code. Inside my head, I see the strange patterns made by the bone-white sticks and remember the laughter echoing from the trees.

  “What does it mean?” I breathe, looking up into Johnny’s eyes and seeing the fear there. “Who wrote this?”

  Johnny bites his lip, silent for a moment as he glances out into the dark.

  “It’s my handwriting,” he says, his voice barely more than a whisper. “But I didn’t write this, Charlie. I promise you. It must’ve been the man in the water.”

  I stare down at the map, the lines and arrows blurring until they look like trees in my mind.

  “You do believe me, don’t you?”

  I remember standing in the darkness of the wood as a voice whispered in my ear. I know we’re not alone here. Folding up the map, I hand it back to Johnny.

  “I believe you.”

  His face crumples in relief.

  “When we get out of here,” he says, tucking the map back into his pocket. “I’m going to—”

  But whatever Johnny is about to say next is lost as Dizzy stumbles into the circle of light. His arms are empty – he doesn’t seem to have found any wood to feed the fire – but his eyes shine bright with excitement as he gestures for us to follow him.

  “You’ve got to come and see this!”

  “It’s a tree,” Johnny says, unable to hide his annoyance at Dizzy dragging us away from the safety of the fire.

  Even I can’t help feeling disappointed as the torch beam illuminates the giant oak tree. The fire kept the darkness at bay, but the sickly-yellow glow of the torch barely even touches the shadows as it crawls over the cracks and bulges in the oak’s gargantuan trunk.

  “I know,” Dizzy says, stooping slightly as he directs the torch towards a darkened crevasse. “It’s a really old one too, but look at this.”

  In the torchlight the crevasse is transformed into a crude doorway, an opening that time has gouged out of the base of the tree.

  A way in.

  “Come on,” Dizzy says, stooping down with the torch in his hand as he slips inside the tree. “Follow me.”

  Ducking my head, I follow Dizzy with Johnny right behind me, both of us eager to stay close to the torchlight. Beyond the doorway the space inside the tree suddenly opens out and we’re able to stand up straight again. The smell of old leaves and rotten wood fills my lungs as I take a look around.

  “Wow!”

  Dizzy props the torch in a convenient cranny on the far side of the tree and, as its light illuminates the interior, I can see that the tree is completely hollow, the space inside almost big enough to fit most of our class, except maybe Miss James who’d probably have to duck down a bit. Tilting my head, I stare up at a roof of decaying wood and glimpse the tiny beetles crawling there. The air feels warm – so much warmer than the air outside – and my head swims slightly as I step further inside the tree.

  The ground springs beneath my feet and I look down to see a carpet of ferns and fresh green leaves. With a sigh of relief, Johnny sinks down into this, propping himself up on his elbows as he stretches his legs out.

  “We can camp here,” he says, the ghost of a smile flickering across his face. “It’s safe and warm and then when morning comes we can find our way out of the woods.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Dizzy says, nodding his head in agreement. “And that’s not all.”

  He reaches inside the niche where he’s propped up the torch. For a second, a flickering darkness fills the tree as Dizzy stands in front of the light, but when he turns back round, I can see that his hands are full.

  “Look what I found.”

  The torchlight returns as Dizzy squats down, its yellow glow illuminating an array of brightly coloured packets as Dizzy spills these on to the floor. Crowding round, we stare at the rainbow of colours, now strewn across the bracken. There are chocolate bars, sweets and toffees. It’s like Dizzy’s been keeping a tuck shop hidden away from us.

  “Where did you get all these from?” Johnny shouts, unable to contain his excitement. “I’ve not had anything to eat since lunchtime and you’ve been carrying around this feast.”

  Dizzy shakes his head.

  “These aren’t mine,” he says as Johnny tears the wrapper off one of the chocolate bars. “I found them here in the tree.”

  My stomach twists as Johnny starts to wolf the bar down. I’m just as hungry as he is, but this isn’t why I suddenly feel sick.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t eat these,” I say. “Not if they belong to someone else.”

  “Finders keepers,” Johnny replies with his mouth full of chocolate. “Losers weepers.”

  I look across at Dizzy who’s rifling through the mound of confectionery. He picks up a chocolate bar and holds it out to me.

  “Johnny’s right,” he says. “If we’re going to stay here all night, we’ve got to have something to eat.”

  Reluctantly, I take the chocolate bar from Dizzy’s hand. On its golden wrapper a single word is spelled out in bright-blue letters: Secret. But how this stash of sweet things got here isn’t a secret – it’s a total mystery.

  I look again at the brightly coloured packets, reading the names written across each one. Cadbury’s Fuse, Rowntree’s Cabana, Spangles, Banjo, Toffo and Treets. I don’t recognise any of these from the counter of the corner shop.

  “This would make a brilliant den,” Johnny says as he tears the wrapper off another chocolate bar. “It’s warm and dry and we’ve got enough food to last for a week.” He stretches out on the bed of green bracken that carpets the floor. “This stuff’s even comfy enough to sleep on.”

  It’s warm inside the heart of the tree, but this doesn’t stop me from shivering. The perfect den filled with treats, but who left these here? Inside my head, I can’t help but hear the whisper of a voice in my ear. Old Crony.

  “This isn’t right,” I say, dropping the chocolate bar back on the pile as I rise to my feet. “We haven’t got time for a
midnight feast. We’ve got to get out of here.”

  Johnny looks up in surprise.

  “What do you want to go back outside for?” he says, unable to hide his horror. “You saw what happened out there.”

  My eyes dart towards the darkness that lies beyond the doorway. I don’t really want to go outside, but we can’t stay here either. What if this is where Old Crony lives? I take a step towards the place where the torch is propped, but as I reach to take it I feel my foot catch on something hidden beneath the leaves.

  Kneeling down to investigate, the sharp edge that I touch tells me straight away that this isn’t a tree root. I brush the bracken back to reveal a rectangular wooden box that’s been buried beneath the leaves.

  “What’ve you found?” Johnny asks as he and Dizzy crowd round.

  The box looks like it’s made out of oak, the grain of the wood darkening at the corners and the edges. Opening the metal clasp at the front, I lift the lid of the box open to reveal a keyboard.

  This reminds me of the typewriter I found among Granddad’s stuff when I cleared the cupboards out – another piece of Post Office property that he must have “borrowed” and forgotten to give back. But unlike Granddad’s typewriter, the one inside this box seems to have two keyboards instead of one.

  “It looks like a typewriter,” Dizzy says, “but where does the paper go?”

  The bottom half of the machine has twenty-six round keys, a different letter of the alphabet shown on each one.

  Q W E R T Z U I O

  A S D F G H J K

  P Y X C V B N M L

  But above this keyboard, where you’d expect the paper to go, the same letters are laid out again, each one contained in a dull flat circle. I try tapping at one of these top letters, but nothing happens.

  “It must be broken,” Johnny says.

  I press down now on one of the bottom keys, feeling it click beneath my finger. But as the key clicks, one of the top letters now lights up with a bright white light.

  “No,” I say, glancing up in triumph. “It works.”

  Johnny shakes his head.

  “It’s broken.”

  He points at the letter that’s lit up. Instead of the letter “A” that I pressed, the letter “N” is illuminated. Feeling confused, I tap the “A” key again, but this time the letter “G” lights up.

  “Must be a loose wire,” Dizzy says. “That’s why it’s getting the letters wrong.”

  I shake my head. There’s something familiar about this machine, the touch of the keys beneath my fingers reminding me of something. Peering more closely, I spot a single word engraved in the wood, almost hidden away near the hinge. The small black letters are arranged in the shape of an oval. ENIGMA, it reads.

  I know what this word means. I remember Dad sitting at the kitchen table, his newspaper spread open in front of him as he puzzled over the crossword. “Seventeen down,” he barked. “It’s the last blasted clue I can’t get. ‘Something of a mystery’. Six letters. First letter ‘E’, second letter ‘N’, last letter ‘A’.” This was my signal to go scurrying for the dictionary that was kept on the shelf near the door. I remember flicking through its pages until I found the words that started with “en”, running my finger down the page as I checked their definitions. Dad reckons it doesn’t count as cheating if I do this. I remember my finger pausing as I found a word that fitted the clue. “Enigma,” I said, reading the definition out loud. “‘Something very difficult to understand; a puzzle.’ E – N – I – G – M – A.” I remember Dad grunting in satisfaction as he filled in this final answer, the flash of his temper postponed for another time.

  Sitting in the heart of the tree, I stare down at the strange machine. That’s what this is. A puzzle. A mystery. An enigma. But I can’t help feeling there’s something that I’m missing – a fragment of a thought, floating just out of reach at the back of my mind. Not quite a memory, but something that I need to know.

  Without thinking, my hands start to move across the keyboard. The top letters light up one after the other as I tap at the keys.

  V A

  C S

  Q T

  P O

  H R

  I M

  J I

  M S

  Z C

  V O

  H M

  Y I

  G N

  B G

  This is important, but I don’t know why. With every click of the keyboard, I feel like I’m turning a key but the riddle still stays firmly locked. My head aches as I try to make sense of the flashing symbols. I’m not even thinking about the keys that I press, but it seems like the same patterns of letters keep lighting up again and again.

  I S C O M I N G A S T O R M I S C O M I N G A S T O R M I S C O M I N G A S T O R M I S C O M I N G A S T O R M

  Inside the tree the air seems to thicken, the glow of the torch now tinted with a strange blue light.

  “I don’t like this,” Johnny says, his voice suddenly loud in my ear. “Something’s not right.”

  I can’t answer, keeping my eyes fixed on the machine. My fingers move without asking, tapping at the keys as the lights flash on and off. The air seems to crackle with electricity, almost as if a signal is being sent. Deep inside something tells me that if I can decode this, then I’ll save us all.

  “Charlie, stop!” Dizzy says. “You’re scaring me.”

  From somewhere in the distance I hear a rumbling sound, but my fingers keep frantically pecking away. I’m so close to working out what this means.

  “Stop it!” Johnny shouts.

  But I can’t get my fingers to stop as the riddle is unlocked. It’s as if this strange machine has taken control of them, the lights behind the letters flashing out the same message that we heard in the bird’s Morse-code call.

  A S T O R M I S C O M I N G

  Reaching over me, Johnny flips the top of the box back and I have to snatch my hands away before my fingers are crushed by the closing lid.

  Feeling dazed, I stare up at him in shock.

  “I’m sorry,” Johnny says, his face painted with fear in the strange blue light. “I didn’t know how else to get you to stop.”

  I feel a strange tingling sensation and look down to see the hairs on my arms now standing on end.

  Then the entrance to the tree is suddenly illuminated by a flash of blinding light, instantly followed by a thunderous boom.

  And I realise that the storm isn’t coming. It’s here.

  “Get out! Get out!” Dizzy shouts, grabbing hold of my arm as another boom shakes the tree.

  Blinking, I look through the doorway that’s carved out of the trunk, the world outside momentarily lit by another blinding flash. The thunder follows instantly; an ear-splitting crack even louder than the last.

  I close my eyes against this brightness, the scene outside still illuminated against my eyelids. Inside my head I hear Johnny’s sing-song voice: “Beware the oak; it draws the stroke.”

  Lightning always strikes the highest point and we’re inside a tree.

  We’ve got to get out.

  Snatching the torch, Johnny pushes past us, ducking his head down as he squeezes through the doorway. Dizzy keeps a tight grip on my arm as we follow him, the two of us clambering out into the seething darkness.

  Branches crash around us as the storm roars through the trees. I raise my hand to shield my eyes from a swirling blizzard of leaves as another flash of lightning silhouettes the trees.

  Inside my head I start counting the seconds before the inevitable roll of thunder.

  One Piccadilly, two Piccadilly, three Picca—

  BOOM

  The ground shakes as this explosion of sound engulfs us, almost knocking me off my feet.

  “Stay away from the trees,” Johnny shouts, his voice almost lost in the tumult. “The lightning can’t hit us all if we split up.”

  He turns on his heel, the torch beam flailing wildly as he runs into the raging dark.

  Another
blinding flash illuminates the shadows, followed almost simultaneously by a thunder crack that rattles my bones. Dizzy lets go of my arm, pushing me forward as the ground heaves again beneath our feet.

  “Run!” he shouts.

  There’s nothing else I can do.

  I run.

  The woods groan as I dive beneath the whipping branches, the trees contorted as if they’re being tortured by the storm. I crash through the undergrowth, my chest heaving as I hurdle over fallen limbs. The air tastes of electricity.

  Another blinding flash throws the world into silhouette. Then a tree explodes.

  It seems to happen in slow motion. A bright gash of flame splits the trunk, the bark blown off in a shower of shrapnel. The force of the blast knocks me off my feet, pressing my face to the ground as the sound of the explosion resounds.

  I can smell burning.

  Lifting my head, the air is filled with smoke and dust, but through the gap now torn in the canopy of leaves I can see a strange orange glow. It looks like the sky is on fire.

  My ears are still ringing, but as I look up at this patch of sky I see tiny specks of flashing light, incredibly bright against the crimson smoke. And after each flash, I hear another sound above the ringing in my ears; a terrible screaming noise that gets louder with every second that passes. I clap my hands over my ears, burying my face in the fallen leaves as these screams reach a crescendo and the ground shudders again.

  This doesn’t feel like a storm any more.

  My heart pounds in my chest as I lift my head to see moonbeams of light raking the sky, each one nearly as bright as daylight. I glimpse the silver shape of a plane caught like a moth in this searching light and hear the angry drone of its engines. Dazed, I watch as the plane disappears into the darkness again, the engine noise swelling to a grinding roar that sounds like a furious swarm of bees. Then another blinding flash illuminates the sky; night turning to day for a single split second before darkness falls and a deafening boom thunders through the trees.