by Jess Webster
What James wanted to say was this: I want to go home, because my parents don’t love each other anymore, and I need to make them love each other again or they’ll be miserable forever! But all that would come out of James’ mouth was this: “I – I – uh –” followed by a strange kind of growling noise that one makes when one physically cannot say what one wants to say.
WHY CAN’T I SAY IT? James screamed inwardly. He felt as if he should be crying with rage, but nothing would come out. His stance was completely tense; his fists were clenched at his sides.
“I think you had better go to bed and get some rest, James,” Nurse Esther said warily.
James let out a startlingly loud, strangled kind of growl and stormed out from the infirmary, leaving Esther to stare after him in alarm that bordered now on horror.
Esther went straight to Mrs Bartlett-Cooke. She did not like Mrs Bartlett-Cooke. The woman had been teaching little children for so long that she did not realise that she spoke in exactly the same condescending manner to adults and fellow co-workers.
“Esther,” Mrs Bartlett-Cooke greeted her with a voice reeking of insincerity.
“I want to talk to you about James Winchester.”
Mrs Bartlett-Cooke’s face reddened a little. “That boy has been fibbing constantly these last two days.”
“James has been telling lies?” Esther asked, surprised. Given, James was a little bit of a hypochondriac, but outright lies were an entirely different matter.
“Yes, he has. But the odd thing is that he’s been trying to take blame for things he hasn’t done.” She shook her head, evidently baffled.
“He wasn’t lying,” Andrew Harrison VI muttered from his seat nearby.
“That’s enough from you, Andrew Harrison!” Mrs Bartlett-Cooke snapped. Turning back to Esther she continued, “It’s almost like James is trying to get himself in trouble.”
“More like trying to get me into trouble,” Andrew sulked.
“Andrew Harrison,” Mrs Bartlett-Cooke said, with quiet menace, “go sit in the corner this instant.”
The large, horrid boy stomped over to the corner and plonked himself down, muttering hate-filled things as he went. Esther had no interest in Andrew Harrison whatsoever, for he was a nasty, ugly-souled bully. So she continued: “Has James seemed particularly… anxious in class lately, Mrs Bartlett-Cooke?”
“Well, apart from telling lies, and deliberately trying to get himself in trouble… it seemed like he was growing angry yesterday, which is very unlike him, I must say. Incidentally, where is James? He hasn’t been in class this morning.”
“James was unwell this morning and came to see me.”
“That boy is always feeling unwell.”
“Perhaps he has good reason,” Esther said, thinking that she too would be sick if she had to be in a classroom with this woman all day. Insincerity was one thing in particular which grated against Esther’s nerves (perhaps because she was just about the most honest and sincere person that ever existed). And Mrs Bartlett-Cooke oozed insincerity.
James’ teacher seemed stung by Esther’s reply. “It was only an observation,” she said, with a cloying smile.
“I’ve advised James to spend the remainder of the day in bed. He should be in class tomorrow morning, unless any further problems arise,” Esther said, turned on her heel and left.
James Winchester had been lying, growing angry, sleep-walking and showing… (Esther shuddered as the word passed through her mind)… suicidal tendencies. All in the last two days. As she reached her desk she pulled a thick book down from one of her shelves and hurriedly began to investigate somnambulism, and depression in the young. She would never be able to forgive herself if anything happened to that dear, sweet, neglected little boy.
Now, reader dear, here we see Nurse Esther Mason-Smith jumping to incorrect conclusions, just as our dear James Winchester IV is so prone to do. What Esther should have thought when James (a) mentioned sleep-walking, (b) spoke of a man in a suit and (c) seemed to want to say something yet was unable to, was that his deepest secret had been stolen by Domenic Mancini, the current Secret Stealer.
Unfortunately, Nurse Esther did not come to this conclusion. Instead she began to waste precious time investigating completely irrelevant subjects, whilst poor James, all alone in his room, was about to face a terrible danger.
James Winchester IV stood by his window, watching the children at play. He was just as baffled as Miss Mason-Smith. Why, he wanted to know, had he not been able to speak of his predicament? It was as if at every attempt some invisible force was indelicately shoving the words back down his throat.
Interrupting this train of thought, an inverted face appeared before his own, framed by the open window. It wore a top hat and was grinning cheerily.
“Hello there, little chap,” Domenic Mancini said and swung, lithe and monkey-like, down through James’ open window and into his bedroom.
“What are you doing here?” James asked, surprised, and thinking it strange that Domenic Mancini should be wearing the same clothes as the previous day. He did not look as though he had spent the entire night awake, yet his clothes were not crumpled. On the contrary, he looked as suave as ever.
“I’ve come to help you on your quest to make your parents love each other again,” the man replied, looking about the room as if assessing each object’s value.
“How did you know about that?” James whispered, both awed and embarrassed.
“I borrowed your secret. Don’t worry, it’s a fair trade.”
“How do you mean?”
“I borrow your secret, you can borrow my powers.”
“What powers?”
“I’m what you might call…” (his mouth formed a devious smile about his perfectly white teeth) “…a professional confidence acquisitioner.”
“That sounds very impressive, Mr Mancini, but I still don’t know what you mean.”
“One: you want to steal secrets from the filing cabinet using the little blue key, two: broadcast them over the school PA system, hence doing something bad enough to be expelled, all so you can go home and three: make your parents love each other again. Is that about it?”
“How come you can say it and I can’t?” James demanded. The recent unpleasant episode with Miss Mason-Smith had made him feel terribly put-out.
“Side effect of the powers, unfortunately. You can’t tell anyone your deepest secret.”
James stared rather blankly at Domenic and frowned.
“Look, I’ll explain,” Domenic said. He then launched into a speech that was completely incomprehensible to poor James. There was one thing to say for Domenic Mancini: unlike Mrs Bartlett-Cooke, he certainly did not speak to James as if he were a three-year-old. It might have been wise for Domenic to instead speak to James as if he were a nine-year-old.
Meanwhile, James’ frown deepened, and all the big words and unintelligible reasoning just made him feel as if he would cry. As Domenic Mancini neared the end of his soliloquy, he recognised that the little boy before him was staring uncomprehendingly at him, and seemed to concentrate more on his top hat than on his words.
“You need a demonstration, don’t you?” he surmised. “Not to worry. Follow me.”
With that he jumped out James’ window.
“How does he do that?” James exclaimed, rushing to the sill as he had done the previous night. Domenic Mancini was on the ground, beckoning for James to follow. James shook his head fervently. Domenic looked exasperated. Abruptly he rushed upwards and came to stand, on nothing but air, just outside James’ window.
“Look, James, this distrust is going to get a little tiresome. Think of it this way: how do your arms know to move in the way you want them to?” Domenic waved his arms for emphasis.
“Your brain tells it to move.”
“Correct!” Domenic grinned. “Now, since you are borrowing my powers, you can do all the same things I can. So tell your whole body… to move up.”
James s
tood on his tippy-toes. “Like this?”
“No, James, not like that. Keep your feet still. Just think ‘up’.”
Up, James thought.
“NOT THAT FAR UP!”
James looked around. With a small cry of surprise he realised that he was standing about 300 metres above the roof of the dorm building. A murder of screeching, evil-looking crows passed him by without even a glance.
“Now,” James said to himself, resorting to logic as he always did when he found himself terribly scared. “If I came to be here just by thinking ‘up’, then I must be able to get back down by thinking ‘down’. Slowly.”
He reached the roof of the school and was about to go around it when he realised that he had done no such thing on the way up. Therefore he continued to descend, slowly and measuredly, through the roof. He thought that he should have felt something as he did so – such as a chalk-like, gritty feeling as he passed through plaster, or a splintery, prickly feeling as he passed through wood. Yet he felt nothing; not a single sensation.
“There now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” Domenic Mancini grinned. “Now, let’s go.”
He began to descend, and James followed. It wasn’t at all like flying should be, James thought. Where was the wind? Where was that pull that always made you fall back to the earth?
“Mr Mancini? How come I can’t feel anything?”
“You’re invisible, James,” Domenic explained, looking a little wistful. “Often there are downsides to even the funnest of things.”
“I’m invisible?”
“Yes indeed. Why d’you think all those little children down there in the playground aren’t running about in circles, pointing and screaming” (Domenic’s voice suddenly jumped an octave) “‘there’s a boy in the sky, there’s a boy in the sky’?”
“How is this going to help me get home?”
“You’ll see, James, you’ll see.”
James smiled. How nice it was of this man to offer his help! Domenic Mancini could simply have left James behind and waltzed through the world being suave and debonair and good-looking-in-an-unconventional-way, but he had stopped just to help a luckless nine-year-old schoolboy in his quest to make his parents love each other again. What a nice man, James thought again.
They descended to the centre of the bustling playground. Children, screeching, yelling, kicking, laughing, flew about everywhere, making James think of demon-possessed bats. Maybe three or four of them might be nice, like that albino bat he’d seen on Anastasia once[25], but the rest were nasty, black little creatures intent on sucking blood. Andrew Harrison, James noted (somewhat gratefully), was nowhere to be seen. He was probably on detention again.
“Look around, James.” Domenic spun, indicating with a sweep of his arm the hordes of children that sped about them. “Look very carefully.”
James did as he was told. And as he looked, he began to see something in the children that he’d never seen before. He found little wisps of light behind their eyes, and as he looked closer into the strange, cloud-like things, he saw processions of tiny words, the lines of which at times forming little glowing images, like memories. A faint, ghostly version of each child’s voice seemed to whisper straight into his mind. I like to pick my nose when nobody’s looking, said the eyes of a kindergartener. I love Joshua Yeatman, said the eyes of a little girl in Year 1, as she smiled at the boy directly across the circle of children playing duck-duck-goose. Somehow James instantly knew that the girl, Una Whitman (to whom he’d never once been introduced and previously knew nothing about), had intended to marry Joshua Yeatman ever since she had been four, when he’d given her a flower – a carnation – after her mother died.
“Can you see them?” Domenic asked.
“What are they?” James whispered back, mesmerised.
“They are secrets, James, secrets. Ripe for the plucking. And tonight I’ll show you how.”
“Why tonight?”
Domenic considered this question for a moment. He said, “The mind is weaker in sleep.”
“Is that what you did to me last night?”
Domenic’s eyes narrowed. “You say it like it’s a bad thing. In borrowing your secret I gave you my abilities, so that I could help you. Some thanks I get.”
“Sorry,” James said automatically, without even meaning to. He had found that apologising often got him out of physical trouble at the hands of Andrew Harrison VI. Once, recently, James had said sorry as soon as Andrew had looked at him, just to head off a beating for some feature in himself that apparently warranted punishment. James then wondered why he should make an association between Domenic and Andrew, when they were (quite obviously) two very different people. Domenic seemed nice, for one.
“It’s alright.” Domenic smiled down upon James. “Now, I’ll tell you how it’s to be done, and tonight we shall try. Then you can have all the secrets you’ll ever need.”
One should NEVER give up looking for that which is lost…
for it may simply be that it is being dragged along just out of sight by a dashingly handsome fiend wearing top hat, tails, and very, very shiny shoes.
Nurse Esther, some time later, was nearly frantic with worry. She had gone to the boys’ dorms to check on James, and upon finding him not in his room had proceeded to check the tower. She was almost too afraid to glance over the window-sill, lest she should see James’ broken body lying in the bed of roses at the foot of the tower.
Yet she forced herself to look, and James was not there. Where was he, then? Oh, she should never have let him out of her sight! Suppose he had run away, and been kidnapped by a paedophile! Esther was nearly in tears; she could not stop the surge of images of nasty fates that may have befallen poor James.
At last she rebuked herself: “Esther Mason-Smith. If you do not find this child, who will? Stop being so… so… female! And get on with your job!”
She forced herself to breathe deeply and slowly, and eventually a rational calm descended on her. Nevertheless, upon closer inspection of the boys’ dorm rooms, James still did not appear. He was nowhere in the building.
“Oh!” She scolded herself for not having thought of it before. “Perhaps he just ignored me and went back to class. Yes, that must be it.”
It would be unlike James to disobey her, she thought, but it was a nicer option than being kidnapped by a paedophile. She quickly made her way to the classrooms. Glancing in through the window of the class door, however, she saw James’ seat vacant. Andrew Harrison VI was enjoying himself enormously, Esther noted with a certain measure of indignation: he was releasing about a dozen lizards into the recess in which James kept all his books. Andrew, wearing a nasty grin, closed the desk hurriedly and returned to his work. James was afraid of lizards, Esther knew, presumably from some childhood trauma that he had never elucidated beyond the words ‘I don’t like lizards’ and a huge shudder. Esther told herself she would have to do something about that horrid Andrew Harrison sooner or later. And perhaps sooner rather than later. Wretched child!
There was a reason that Esther Mason-Smith was on the opposite side of the school to James at any one time on this oppressively fine afternoon.
Domenic Mancini had hurriedly led James around, sometimes only a corridor or two ahead of Miss Mason-Smith. He did not want to chance being seen by that Nurse. When he had looked into James’ mind he had seen many images of a certain woman – that Nurse – stored away in James’ memory; a woman who looked alarmingly like someone Domenic knew. He was not about to let his entire plan crumble to pieces if he could avoid it. So Nurse Esther, in growing frustration, could not find James anywhere, because Domenic Mancini continued to lead him from one obscure location to another – in short, anywhere that Miss Mason-Smith was not.
Poor Esther Mason-Smith did not know this, however, and with every room she searched, yet more horrid visions of James’ possible demise flooded her mind. Evening finally came and, practically in tears, Miss Mason-Smith returned to the girls’ dorm, think
ing that if James were still missing by morning she would have to inform the Headmistress. Perhaps, after all, James had just gone for a walk… yes, that may be it…
In this state of physical and emotional exhaustion, Esther fell asleep the instant her head touched her pillow.
“Just go through the door, James,” Domenic Mancini said. “You can’t knock. Besides, even if you could, you’d wake them up. And then they’d be useless to you.”
“But it’s like breaking and entering.”
“You’re not breaking anything. You’re just entering.”
“But I’d be entering without asking. That’s just rude. What if they’re getting changed into their PJs?”
“They’re not getting changed, trust me. I’m very good at this. I can tell when people are asleep nearby.”
“But…” James hesitated. There was something in his mind, tugging at him, telling him to run away from Domenic Mancini. There it was again, James noticed – that strange feeling that Domenic was somehow like Andrew Harrison VI. It was a silly thought. All Domenic wanted to do was help!
“Alright,” James said, and a moment later they were beside the bed of Georgia Harp-Emmerich.
James could remember her secrets from earlier that day; and now, the instant he looked at her, all the secrets he’d seen in her eyes surfaced in his mind unbidden.
There was one in particular that he may have some use for: I steal the class’s art supplies. It was certainly something Georgia wouldn’t want anyone to know. But James also knew that Georgia stole art supplies because she secretly wished to be an artist, something her parents would never allow. James also knew that she wanted to paint because it was the only time in the world when she felt she could escape from being a bad girl; a nasty, naughty girl who always deserved punishment. That secret was complicated and convoluted, and James could not quite understand what he was seeing. She seemed to feel she had to be horrible to other children because it was a way of letting go of her anger – but it was anger at her father for something that James did not, and could not, understand.