The Hidden Boy

by Jon Berkeley

  “What do you think they’re afraid of?” said Phoebe.

  “Who says they’re afraid?” said Bea.

  “Look at all those thornbushes.”

  Bea peered into the shadows beneath the tree houses. “What about them?”

  “They’re always right below the windows.” Phoebe saw most things in terms of the opportunities they presented for jumping, climbing or dangerous feats of acrobatics. She had noticed right away that it would be difficult to do any of those things around these houses, unless you wanted to end up looking like you had sat on a porcupine.

  “Maybe they get a lot of burglars,” said Bea.

  The path was sloping gently downward now. The number of houses dwindled to nothing, and the trees grew closer together. The meerkat stayed ten leaps ahead, his tail standing up like an antenna. The night did not get quieter as they left the town behind. On the contrary, the farther they got from Bell Hoot the more it sounded like a miniature metropolis was hidden among the trees. On all sides there was a symphony of squeaks and clicks, coughs and whistles, hooting and hissing and the occasional distant howl. Dry leaves rustled with the passing of little claws and the swishing of tails, and nightbirds floated silently through the darkness, flapping only when they had to.

  Phoebe stopped and grabbed Bea’s arm so suddenly that she almost jumped out of her skin. She pointed into the shadows beneath the trees, and Bea caught a glimpse of a pair of large round eyes staring out at them. The eyes blinked, and for a moment she thought she saw the shape of a boy slipping away into the darkness.

  “Someone’s spying on us,” said Phoebe.

  “Maybe it was just a monkey,” said Bea doubtfully.

  Phoebe laughed. “Monkeys don’t wear hats!” she said. She plunged into the bushes where the boy had been a moment before. “Let’s follow him,” she called.

  “We can’t,” said Bea. “We’ll lose Nails.” She looked along the path and saw the meerkat lolloping along toward the falls. Phoebe had already vanished among the trees. “Phoebe!” she called urgently. “We have to go. And we don’t know who’s in there.”

  “You go ahead,” came Phoebe’s voice. “I’ll catch up.” The nocturnal racket had intensified around her as birds scolded, and the ground shook with what sounded like startled rabbits thumping their alarms.

  Bea was torn between the desire to follow Phoebe into the thick of the teeming forest and the urgency of following Nails. There was no real choice, of course. All they had left of Theo was his disembodied voice and the rapidly receding meerkat, and if she lost sight of Nails she might never see him again. “Don’t go far,” she called after Phoebe. She rejoined the path. She felt nervous now on her own. The path seemed less welcoming, and the leaves muttered in the night breeze.

  Nails was far ahead now, and she had to hurry to catch up with him. She kept her ears open for any sign of Phoebe. After a while she noticed a soft hum behind all the noise. She could not tell what it was, but it brought to her mind’s eye a picture of sunlight, put to rest somewhere for the night but never quite sleeping. She took some comfort from it, but no matter how she strained she could not hear it more clearly. As she approached the falls the sound was drowned out by the growing roar of the water.

  Where the path emerged from the trees Nails paused and stood up straight like a miniature security guard. His whiskers twitched and his pointed nose turned from side to side as he surveyed the area. The Blue Moon Mobile stood silently by the water’s edge as though it hadn’t moved in years. The meerkat ran toward it. When he reached the busmarine he stood and placed his front paws against the curved metal hull.

  “Theo’s not there,” said Bea quietly.

  The meerkat looked back at her, and Bea could have sworn he jerked his head as though beckoning to her. She rubbed her eyes and crept closer to where Nails stood. She was afraid that he would run away if she got too near, but his eyes seemed to be fixed on the Blue Moon Mobile’s painted hull. As she neared the busmarine she could see a black line between two of the metal panels below the level of the busmarine’s floor. It looked as if a luggage compartment had been left slightly open. She could not be sure in the dim light of the moon, but it seemed the gap was getting gradually wider.

  She held her breath and leaned in for a closer look. Two of the screws that held the panel in place were turning by themselves. There was no doubt about it. She could see another couple of screws glinting in the grass beside her, where they had already fallen out. She took in a sharp breath and grabbed Nails just in time. The heavy steel panel fell outward with a dull thud, narrowly missing them both.

  A wave of hot stuffy air escaped the dark compartment, and a gasp came with it. Bea’s heart missed a beat. “Theo?” she said. There was a scrabbling sound from inside; then a hand quickly emerged. It was a large hand with long articulate fingers. It was certainly not Theo’s. Bea’s heart plummeted. The hand grasped the top edge of the panel and tried to pull it back into place, but without success. The panel was heavy, and became heavier still when Bea planted her foot on it. The hand withdrew.

  “Who’s there?” said Bea. “And what have you done with Theo?”

  “Theo?” echoed a voice from the darkness.

  “Come out where we can see you,” said Phoebe from behind Bea, making her jump.

  A head appeared, followed by a long thin body in a pair of dirty overalls. A greasy rag was stuffed half into the breast pocket, and a set of wrenches clinked in a tool belt. The man got to his knees, then straightened up stiffly. His face was round and open. He wore an impressive handlebar mustache that swept up to join a set of thick graying whiskers. His hair was long and slicked back. He looked at the two girls with a befuddled expression. “Am I late?” he said.

  “Late for what?” said Phoebe.

  “I just came to,” said the man. He spoke slowly. “I was fixing the ice-cream machine, but I got my head stuck in the freezalizer. Knocked me out cold.” He got slowly to his feet, creaking like a frozen deck chair. “Again,” he added ruefully.

  “So that’s why it wasn’t working,” said Bea.

  The man nodded. “You can only get at it from underneath. It needs a new freezalizer unit, but it has to come from Japan. I keep fixing the old one until it comes. It’s a long way from Japan, you know.” He looked at Bea and smiled; then his eyes opened wide as he spotted the meerkat struggling in her arms. “Nice doggie!” he said, and his smile grew even wider.

  “He’s a meerkat,” said Bea. She did not know what to make of this man. It was impossible to tell how old he was. He might have been forty or seventy. His face was lined, but there was a childlike innocence in his expression.

  “Nice meerkat,” said the man. “Nice doggie.” He reached out to stroke Nails.

  “Careful,” said Bea. “He bites strangers.” To her surprise the meerkat did nothing of the sort. He stopped wriggling. He pushed his head against the man’s hand and allowed himself to be tickled under his chin.

  “I’m not a stranger,” said the stranger. “I’m Arkadi. Everybody knows Arkadi. I fix things.”

  “Except when you get your head stuck in the freezalizer,” said Bea.

  The man nodded again. If he had taken offense he didn’t show it. “I only woke up because it thawed out. Lucky I…” But he got no further. He caught sight of the moon and the simple smile left his face at once. His jaw dropped open and he stared wildly about him.

  “Where are we?” he asked in a loud whisper.

  “I think it’s called Bell Hoot,” said Bea.

  “That’s the town,” said Phoebe.

  “Bell Hoot,” repeated the stranger, and to look at him you would think he had just been told he was in a tank of hungry crocodiles. “Uh-oh. I’m in trouble. Big, big trouble.”

  “I don’t think they’ll hang you for nearly getting your head turned into ice cream,” said Bea.

  Arkadi sank down to the ground and sat there cross-legged, his knuckles pressed to his mouth. “I’m not suppose
d to be here,” he said.

  “I’m sure it will be okay,” said Bea. “We’ll bring you back to the Millers’ house and…” She was about to say she was sure that Captain Bontoc would arrange to have him sent back, but she remembered the conversation on the verandah, and she had a feeling it would not be that simple.

  The stranger shook his head violently. “Don’t tell anyone,” he said. “I’m only supposed to fix the machines.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” said Bea.

  “That won’t matter,” said Arkadi. He stared wide-eyed at the two girls. “Promise you won’t tell anyone.”

  Bea looked at Phoebe. Her arms were scratched and her T-shirt was torn. Phoebe shrugged. “I promise,” she said.

  Arkadi looked at Bea. “Promise?” he said.

  “I promise,” she said. She felt sorry for the shivering stranger.

  A look of relief came over his face. “Someone must have locked me in,” he said.

  “Maybe they didn’t know you were still in there.”

  “I’ll hide,” he said. “That’s what I’ll do. I can hide in the forest.”

  “What good will that do?” asked Bea. “You’ll have to come out sometime.”

  Arkadi shook his head. “I’ll think of something,” he said. He didn’t look as though thinking of something was his specialty.

  “There’s a little hut in the woods,” said Phoebe. “I found it just now, when I was looking for the spy. There’s some old traps and stuff in it, but it looks like nobody’s been there for ages. You could hide there.”

  “Okay,” said the man. He smiled suddenly and put his finger to his lips. He looked at Bea, and back at Nails. “Nice doggie,” he said half to himself. He got to his feet, and Phoebe gave him directions—three times over—to the hut she had found. The stranger loped off without another word and vanished from sight.

  Here

  “Theo?” said Bea quietly. She sat on the moss-cushioned rock where Captain Bontoc had sat earlier. The listening horn was pressed to the lid of the Squeak Jar, and Bea’s ear was pressed to the listening horn. Phoebe crouched in the grass and watched intently, as though she might catch sight of a miniature seven-year-old boy shimmering in the moonlight that filled the jar. The noise at Cambio Falls was as great as ever, but this was where Bea had first heard Theo’s disembodied voice, and it seemed the natural place to try to hear it again.

  “Anything?” said Phoebe.

  “Ssshh!” said Bea. She had located the distant voice, but she had to tune into it before she could make out his words, like a weak radio signal.

  “Where did you go?” said Theo’s voice.

  “I woke up,” said Bea. She wasn’t sure if the Theo in the Squeak Jar would remember the conversation she had had with the Theo in her dream. She wondered if he would know what she was talking about.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Theo. “First you were asking if I was in a giant jar, which is a stupid question, I think you’ll agree. Then when I looked you were gone. Now you’re back.”

  Bea let this sink in for a moment. “You can see me?” she said.

  There was a pause. Bea could picture Theo’s face, his nose wrinkled with incredulity. “You’ve gotten really weird since we came on holiday. Of course I can see you. I don’t need glasses, you know.”

  “Can he see us?” said Phoebe. Her voice sounded loud, and brought with it a rush of noise. Bea flapped her hand at her urgently, then poked her finger in her free ear.

  “What am I doing?” she said to Theo.

  Theo sighed patiently. “You’re sitting on the branch beside me. You’ve got your finger stuck in your ear. You’re listening to a jam jar through a thingie. Are you going to ask me why next?”

  “Why?” repeated Bea.

  “I haven’t a clue,” said Theo. “Did you bring Nails?”

  “Nails is fine,” said Bea. She had not tried to put the meerkat back in the backpack. From the corner of her eye she could see him foraging for beetles in the long grass. Now that he had won his freedom in a daring escape he seemed content to stay close.

  “You keep saying that,” said Theo, “but where is he? I caught a big green thing for him, but it keeps trying to climb out of my pocket.”

  “Never mind that,” said Bea.

  “I do mind. What if it’s got a stinger?”

  “Theo, listen to me. I know this will sound strange, but…” She tried to think of a way to phrase what she had to say that would not alarm him. “You can see me, but I can only hear you. I’m not actually sitting on a branch; I’m sitting on a rock.”

  “No, you’re not,” said Theo. “The rock would fall out of the tree. Then you’d fall out of the tree. Then you’d cry, and I’d get the blame.”

  “No, it wouldn’t fall, because…Look, just describe to me where you are. Pretend I’m blind.”

  “Okay,” said Theo after a moment. “There’s trees. Lots of them.”

  “What kind of trees?”

  “Skinny thin ones, mostly. They wave about a lot.”

  Bea looked into the forest through which they had just walked. The trees were old and sturdy there. Even the thinnest ones had trunks far thicker than a man’s torso. “What else can you see?” she asked.

  “Just a bunch of leaves. And the Tree People.”

  “What Tree People?”

  “The ones who live here. They have tons of pets. They’ve got about a million cats, and a couple of lizards, and a big parrot called Trigger….”

  “Are they there now?” asked Bea.

  “Of course,” said Theo.

  “Ask them where you are.”

  Theo’s voice became muffled, as though he were talking away from the phone.

  “We’re Here.”

  “Where’s here?” asked Bea. They were both talking now with that sort of exaggerated politeness people use when their patience has stretched to its limit.

  “Just…Here,” said Theo. “I think that’s actually the name of it.”

  “Let me talk to them,” said Bea.

  “I’m not stopping you,” said Theo.

  “But I can’t hear them,” said Bea in exasperation.

  “That’s because they don’t talk with voices.”

  Bea searched for a question that might produce an answer that was of use to her. Her ear was numb from being pressed so hard against the flat end of the horn, and the strain of hearing his distant voice was making her dizzy. “What else can you see?” she said.

  “I can see you and that stupid jar,” said Theo. “I can see trees. I can see leaves; I can see the sky. It’s nice here, but I want to go back to the busmarine now.”

  His voice seemed to be getting fainter as he grew more impatient. Bea could barely hear him, and in desperation she shouted one last question. “What color is the moon?”

  The sound of the falls rushed into her ears like water breaching a dam, and if there was any reply from Theo she could not hear it. She called his name again, but there was no answer. She put the Squeak Jar down in the grass and ran her hands through her hair.

  “Is he gone?” said Phoebe.

  Bea nodded, trying to ignore the clammy feeling in her chest.

  “Don’t worry,” said Phoebe. “Granny Delphine said you’d be able to find him when you’ve had some training.”

  “I don’t think Ma will allow it. She’s always hated Mumbo Jumbo.”

  “What is Mumbo Jumbo?”

  “I don’t know exactly. It’s some kind of secret thing that Granny Delphine belongs to. We were always told never to mention it, ever. Ma says it’s dangerous. Pa says it doesn’t exist, but he says it in that voice he uses when he’s making stuff up.”

  “Like when he told us a giant lizard runs the pizzeria?”

  “Yes. Or about the chocolate mines of Kathmandu.”

  “Did he really think we’d believe those stories?”

  Bea shrugged. “Would you have believed him if he had told us about a car wash
that sent you to another world?”

  Phoebe poked in the grass with a twig. For a while she said nothing; then she looked up at Bea. “You know what this place is, don’t you?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Bell Hoot is an anagram. Think about it.”

  Bea scratched her head. “Boot Hell?” she said. “Tell Hobo?” She knew she wasn’t nearly as good at this as Phoebe was.

  “No,” said Phoebe. “I reckon it’s a bolt-hole.”

  “What’s a bolt-hole?”

  “It’s where people go to hide. It comes from rabbits, I think. This must be where people come to hide when the Gummint men are after them.”

  “Do you think we’ll ever get back?” said Bea. She had been too concerned with Theo’s disappearance during the short time they had spent in Bell Hoot to think about much else. Now for the first time it occurred to her that Phoebe might never see her parents again. She pictured Phoebe’s dressing-gowned mother, her straw-colored hair showing two inches of gray roots and a cigarette glued to her mouth with scarlet lipstick, and the father who lurked in the sitting room with the curtains drawn, oblivious to anyone who was not holding a fistful of playing cards. Phoebe seldom mentioned her parents, and she certainly seemed to prefer the bustle and chaos of the Flints’ apartment to the smoky cave of her own. “Will they be worried?” said Bea. “Your parents, I mean.”

  “They won’t even notice I’m gone, probably,” said Phoebe.

  “Still,” said Bea, “I don’t see why you couldn’t go back sometime if you wanted to.”

  “I don’t want to,” said Phoebe, concentrating on the small crater she had dug with the twig. “And I can’t. You heard what the captain said. There’s always seven more coming through.”

  “Yes, but if Bontoc arranged it in advance, maybe they could bring through one person less.”

  Phoebe got to her feet. “If I did want to,” she said, pointing at the opened compartment in the Blue Moon Mobile, “I could just stow away.”

  “I think that would still count as—,” began Bea; then she stopped dead. A terrible thought struck her. She stared at Phoebe.