by Ali Sparkes
Polly held Bessie and whimpered, ‘Freddy—oh, Freddy, look!’ She turned the puppy’s furry brown snout around and pulled her handkerchief away from it.
On the hanky was a blurry rose of blood.
‘Bleeding first, then teeth and nails … blindness, then …’ Freddy stared down at his hands, which were wringing the bedclothes into a tight bunch. ‘But look—she could just have scratched her nose with her claws. Puppies have very sharp claws, don’t they? It doesn’t mean what happened to the rats is happening to her or … or …’
‘Or will happen to us,’ said Polly. She hugged Bessie to her and peered down at the puppy’s wrinkled brown muzzle. She dabbed at it again and they all stared at the hanky. ‘Doesn’t seem to be any more blood now, at any rate,’ said Polly. ‘And we never had this happen before, did we, Freddy?’
‘We didn’t stay frozen for fifty-three years before,’ pointed out her brother.
‘We should go to Uncle J,’ said Rachel. ‘We should.’
‘No,’ said Freddy. ‘It’s just a scratch, you’ll see! Father sorted out the problem which killed the rats, I tell you. We’re not going to panic about nothing. I mean—yes—if we all wake up tomorrow with our noses gushing like Niagara Falls, fair enough—but right now I feel fine, don’t you, Polly?’
‘Yes, I’m quite all right,’ said Polly. ‘I think you’re right—it’s just a scratch. Sorry I was such a goose about it. Let’s all get some sleep. We can plan what to do next to find Father in the morning.’
Rachel was impressed. She was seriously frightened by the bleeding and the awful thought of what could happen to Polly and Freddy—and Polly must surely be terrified. But the girl was now getting up with a smile and tucking Bessie back into her arms.
‘Good plan,’ Freddy was saying. ‘Let’s get some decent kip. Tomorrow we can shake our gravy asses into town and do some sleuthing.’
‘I knew the radio was a bad idea,’ sighed Ben, pulling his pillow over his head.
‘Sorry, you really can’t wear those.’ Rachel firmly removed the little pink grips from either side of Polly’s dark wavy hair.
‘But they keep me neat!’ protested Polly.
‘Or that.’ Rachel surveyed the pale yellow pinafore dress that her great-aunt wore.
‘But this is one of my best dresses! You always ought to try to look decent when you go into town!’
‘Polly, you look like a six year old! Nobody over seven wears that kind of stuff in 2009! Nobody! You’ll have to borrow some of my stuff. Look, these will fit you.’ She rummaged in her wardrobe and pulled out a pair of newish blue jeans, with a chain of silver stars threaded through the belt loops, and a pale blue T-shirt. Polly stared at them in awe, and then sighed and shrugged out of her pinafore dress.
When they reached the hallway, Freddy was also dressed twenty-first century style, in a pair of Ben’s jeans and a white T-shirt. ‘Not bad, eh, Polly? Really rather gravy, I reckon!’
‘Groovy,’ corrected Ben, with a sigh. ‘Or cool. Cool is better.’
‘I say—you look jolly nice, too, Poll.’
Polly smiled, slightly doubtfully, but she did look great in Rachel’s gear. Much less little-girlish. ‘I like these,’ she murmured, playing with the little silver stars on a chain around her waist. ‘But what have you done to your hair?’
‘Wax!’ grinned Freddy, whose neat parting had now been messed up. ‘Isn’t it ghastly? Ben says it’s “cool” though. Which means good. I think.’
‘Still have to sort out their shoes,’ Rachel said to Ben, and they nodded, like anxious parents, as they looked at the old-fashioned, round-toed leather sandals with buckles that Freddy and Polly wore. ‘We’ll have to ask Uncle J for some money to get them trainers, or they’ll be laughed out of Amhill.’
‘Got some from him already,’ said Ben, patting his jeans pocket. ‘Right, back on the bikes then. But I think we should leave Bessie behind today—just to be on the safe side.’
‘She’s fine,’ said Polly, bending down to play with Bessie’s ears—and Bessie did seem fine. There had been no more bleeding when they woke up that morning, much to everyone’s relief, but Ben was adamant.
‘No, town is too busy, full of cars. And we need to go into places which won’t let dogs in. She’s too little to stay outside on a lead on her own. Someone might nick her.’
Freddy and Polly exchanged worried glances. ‘All right,’ said Freddy. ‘We can’t risk her being dognapped!’
They left Bessie in the hallway with her basket, a bowl of water, a Chatz doll to chew, and plenty of newspaper laid down. Uncle Jerome said he’d look in on her when Rachel took a sandwich down to him in the vault, but they doubted he’d remember. ‘We’ll have to get back by lunchtime,’ said Polly.
It was downhill into the town, so Freddy and Polly didn’t shame Ben and Rachel quite so much this time.
‘We can’t let them bike all the way in—they won’t be used to the traffic,’ Rachel said, as she cycled alongside Ben. ‘If we chain up the bikes in the park we won’t have to go too far in. We can walk from there.’
The park was on the outskirts of the small town of Amhill, alongside the pretty River Am which ran through the valley. They reached it in ten minutes and locked the bikes up together against some chain-link fencing.
‘It’s very colourful now,’ said Polly, gazing at the swings, the roundabout, the slide, and the little horse-y things on springs that the toddlers rode on. ‘It was all just red and grey when we used to come here. The witch’s hat has gone. And the pirate ship too …’
‘What were they?’ asked Rachel, following Polly as she stepped out onto the playground and gave a little squeak of surprise when she realized the ground, which looked like black tarmac, was actually spongey underfoot.
‘The witch’s hat was jolly good fun—my favourite. Like an upside-down cone made of metal—a sort of cage with a wooden seat all around the bottom edge, hanging off a metal pole up through the middle. It spun and swung around. I loved it!’
Freddy was crouched down, poking the rubbery ground with fascination. ‘The pirate ship was the best. It wasn’t really a ship, of course—just a long log-type thing with seats on, and we all sat on it and it swung back and forth until it went so fast we started to fall off. One time it cracked Gus Blaine in the back of the head and knocked him out cold! It was hilarious! He went down smack on his face. I wonder why they took it away. It was heaps better than this. This is all little kids’ stuff!’
‘Um …’ said Ben, ‘I think with this stuff people tend not to get knocked out so much.’
‘Safe,’ said Freddy, kicking the multicoloured roundabout. ‘But jolly dull.’
Ben felt slightly embarrassed. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s get into town.’
On the modest high street of Amhill, Freddy and Polly were once more open-mouthed with astonishment at all the cars, the shiny shop fronts, the vending machines, the buses with their digital number and destination displays, the perspex BT phone hood next to the Post Office, the colours—everywhere—luminous, glaring, iridescent colours. ‘It’s so … so bright,’ murmured Polly, staring all around her. ‘And it smells … funny.’
Ben and Rachel couldn’t really work out how it would smell different—except perhaps for more traffic pollution. The cars held Freddy mesmerized. ‘How can there be so many cars on one road?’ he gasped.
Ben shrugged. ‘You should see it on a Saturday— this is nothing.’ And in fact, only ten or so cars had passed them. It was a fairly quiet high street.
‘Is there a band playing in that one?’ Freddy stared, incredulously, at a BMW which cruised by, pumping out a chart hit so loudly it made the pavement vibrate beneath their feet.
Ben laughed. ‘Just a really loud sound system, that’s all.’ Freddy looked blank. ‘He’s just playing a CD and pumping up the volume.’
Freddy looked pained and shook his head. ‘A seedy? A seedy what?’
Ben glanced at the Woolworths acro
ss the road. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’ll show you.’
‘Oh, goody! Woolworths is still here!’ said Polly. ‘How lovely! They do super frocks and petticoats.’
Inside, Ben took Freddy to rack upon rack of CDs, DVDs, CD ROMs, computer games—discs of all kinds. The display took up a quarter of the store. Rachel led Polly to the children’s clothing at the back. Polly surveyed it, her smile fading. ‘Not so much choice now, is there?’ she sighed.
‘Well—it’s just children’s stuff really,’ said Rachel, apologetically, glancing down the rack of toddler’s clothing and Marvel comic character pyjamas.
‘But we are children,’ protested Polly.
‘Well … sort of,’ said Rachel. ‘We’re nearly teenagers … kind of tweenagers. We don’t wear the same stuff as little kids, you know.’
They wandered back through the sweets aisle with its rows and rows of confectionery; Polly looked quite overcome. ‘Is there some kind of … of … sweets festival?’ she breathed, running her fingers along the rack of luridly coloured treats.
‘Well, no. This is, kind of, normal,’ shrugged Rachel. ‘People eat lots of sweets.’
Polly stared up at her. ‘It’s a wonder you have any teeth left at all!’
Ben and Freddy arrived beside them and Freddy immediately went into the same routine of gasps of astonishment as he laid eyes on the sweets. It was getting to be quite tiring, dealing with the constant amazement, shock, and horror. ‘Come on,’ Ben muttered to Rachel. ‘Let’s get them to the library before they find the mega-sour jaw-breakers. Those’ll make their eyeballs explode.’
They chivvied their great-aunt and great-uncle along the road quickly, hauling them away from shop windows and nudging them on past a cashpoint, where both were riveted by the sight of a building spitting out money. Then Polly got quite spooked by a man who walked past her, behaving, she said, like a lunatic.
‘Did you see him? Oh, poor man!’ She clutched Ben’s arm and gestured over her shoulder, keeping her eyes firmly ahead. ‘He was walking along talking to himself! All on his own, just talking to himself, and he’d poked a wire into his ear. How awful. Don’t you look after people like that in 2009? He shouldn’t be out on his own!’
Ben stared back along the road. He hooted with laughter. ‘You’d better get used to that, Polly,’ he said. ‘He was talking into his mobile phone—using his hands-free kit. People do it all the time.’
And then, of course, they had to explain mobile phones. Goshing went off the scale.
At last they reached the quiet and calm of Amhill’s library. Happily, it was an old-fashioned building with its old-fashioned interior lovingly maintained. It did have computers and internet access, but in a little side room. Apart from the barcode scanner when you took a book out, there was nothing too shocking about it. It smelled reassuringly old.
Ben approached the middle-aged lady librarian, as she stacked a pile of books at her corner desk. ‘Excuse me … we want to do some research on old newspaper stories,’ said Ben, in his best voice. ‘Can you help us?’
‘How far back?’ she asked, not taking her eyes from her task.
‘1956—ish,’ said Ben.
‘Hmmm, that’ll be downstairs then. Microfiche, I’m afraid. They haven’t all been uploaded to computer yet. What do you want to find?’
‘Well … er … there was a sort of murder story, in 1956. Here in Amhill. It was never solved. We thought it would be interesting for our school project.’
The librarian looked up, smoothing back her brown hair and narrowing her eyes at him slightly. She smiled. ‘Forgive me if I’m being dense,’ she said, ‘but aren’t you still on holiday a couple more days?’
‘Yes … well … um … it’s f-for one of those school h-holidays projects,’ said Ben, hurriedly. The librarian looked vaguely familiar to him, but he couldn’t remember where from.
‘OK,’ she smiled at them all. ‘Follow me. I’ll set you all up. I must say, it’s nice to see four young people interested in research. Mostly kids just look stuff up on the net and cut and paste it. There’s no art to it, these days,’ she sighed. ‘It’s a Wikipedia world.’
She led them down some stone steps behind the biographies section. Here it was cooler and quieter, the walls panelled with dark wood. It was a basement room but high up narrow windows gave a street level view at the top. They could just see people’s feet and ankles and buggy wheels passing by. An old lady was working at one screen at the far end of the room, but otherwise it was empty. The librarian showed them to a table with another screen and then loaded something up into a machine below it, which reminded Ben of a slide projector. She hit a switch and a bright light shone from the screen, making them squint. The librarian showed Ben two twisting buttons on either side of the screen.
‘It’s very basic,’ she said. ‘But I’ve loaded the Amhill Bugle, 1956, so you can look through that. It was a weekly, so you’ll only have fifty or so to look through— it’s all on one reel. Careful though, not to spin it along too fast. It can make you a bit queasy. Have you got something to make notes on? You can’t print off from here. It’s just a sort of rolling slide show, really.’
‘Yes,’ said Freddy, pulling out a notebook and pen from his backpack. ‘We’re all organized. Thanks awfully, miss. It’s jolly decent of you to help us.’
The librarian blinked and smiled at him, clearly charmed. She was not used to this kind of appreciation from thirteen-year-old boys. She looked at Freddy for a very long time and then glanced up into the corner of the room, looking slightly flushed. Then she said, ‘You’re very welcome, young man,’ before stepping away and fiddling with something on one of the shelves.
The screen was now a blur of newsprint as Ben worked the controls and began to whip the images from the old Amhill Bugle from left to right across the screen. Page after page of stories edged past jerkily as they tried to spot anything important. Parish notices, council meetings, raging debates about a new road being built, a local girl winning a beauty pageant, a milkman discovering an old lady who’d fallen downstairs, a celebrated local athlete going out to the Melbourne Olympics … on and on it went. Often Polly or Freddy would give a shout of recognition. ‘Sally Wilson! I remember her!’ said Polly. ‘She won the Singer’s Sewing Susan contest! She made that dress herself and I saw her buying buttons for it in the haberdasher’s! Gosh … she must be a grandmother now …’
‘Shh,’ said Ben. He didn’t think anyone could hear, but the old lady down at the end might and the librarian was still somewhere around. She’d finished with whatever she’d been adjusting on the shelf opposite and had wandered off, but not up the stairs.
At last they found the cuttings about the strange events at Darkwood House and they all grew sombre and quiet as Ben paused his button twisting, so they could read the details again. Most of them they had already seen, in Uncle Jerome’s folder of cuttings, but there were one or two which they hadn’t read before. Just more fascination for what might have happened to the children and their respected but now doubted father. More comments from Mrs Minstead; a service held for them at the local church, where the junior choir sang the children’s favourite hymns.
‘Nothing from the family,’ said Rachel. ‘No comment at all. That’s funny, isn’t it?’
‘Why is it funny?’ said Freddy. ‘Nobody wants to talk about their personal life to a newspaper, do they?’
Ben and Rachel looked at each other. ‘Some people do … these days. Sometimes,’ said Ben. ‘If this happened today, you’d have the press camped on your doorstep and ringing the bell all day and night until you said something to them.’
Freddy looked appalled. ‘I should call the police!’
They continued to look for clues, but after a while, during which Ben did begin to feel quite sick, with all the newsprint whooshing sideways, they realized that the story had tailed off.
‘We’re probably looking in the wrong place for clues anyway,’ said Freddy. ‘We should be lo
oking for stuff that happened before. Stuff that might explain why Father did what he did. Perhaps we should look at the Amhill Bugle for 1955?’
Everyone else groaned. ‘We really must go back for Bessie, now,’ said Rachel. ‘We’ll have to come back and look some more another day. And we’re also meant to be getting you some proper shoes and—oh, blimey— you’ll need school uniform and stuff. There’s hardly any time left. I think we might have to come back to this next week. Sorry, Freddy.’
Freddy stood up and ran his hands through his waxy hair, which had begun to fall out of its carefully constructed mess look and back to its smooth, neat parting. He set his jaw and looked hard into the distance, as if he could make the clues to his father’s disappearance manifest themselves here in the library.
‘I don’t care about going to some stupid school,’ he muttered. ‘I don’t care, I tell you! Finding out about Father is much more important. He could be in danger! He might need our help!’
‘Freddy,’ Polly touched her brother’s shoulder. ‘We don’t even know that he’s … that he’s alive.’
He brushed her off. ‘Of course he’s alive! I know it! I can’t believe you’d even say that!’ And he stomped away from them all and then sprinted up the stone steps.
They followed him up, feeling flat. The research hadn’t really helped at all, thought Ben. They were no nearer getting an answer, even after more than an hour of staring at the whooshing screen and feeling slightly motion-sick. While Polly and Rachel went to join Freddy, as he sat on the stone steps outside, Ben went to find the librarian. She was back at her desk, on the phone. She seemed to be speaking another language, in quite a low voice. She looked up and gave him a little wave, still looking a bit flushed, thought Ben. Maybe she really didn’t get many kids in doing research these days. She covered the mouthpiece of the phone. ‘You all done now, down there?’ She smiled.
‘Yes, but I didn’t know how to switch it all off,’ said Ben.
‘Not to worry—I’ll nip down and sort it out. Did you find out what you wanted to know?’