Obsidian Pebble

by Rhys Jones

  “Hello?” said a voice, which he recognised as Savannah’s. Oz felt some pressure on the nosepiece of the glasses, and the canyon and the river faded into blackness. And then the glasses were off and he was blinking into the daylight coming in through the windows of S and S’s suite.

  “Well?” asked a grinning Sydney.

  Flabbergasted, Oz couldn’t speak for twenty seconds. He was too busy catching his breath. Finally he managed to say, “But I could feel the sun. I could touch the water. It splashed my face…” He put his hand up, but his skin was bone-dry.

  “Amazing, aren’t they?” Savannah said. “Sydney threw up on the roller coaster.”

  “I did not,” Sydney protested.

  “Almost did,” taunted her sister.

  “But…how?” persisted Oz. “I mean, this is way better than anything I’ve ever played before.”

  “You’d have to ask Mr. Gerber.” Savannah shrugged. “He’s the G in JG Industries.”

  “And the J,” corrected Sydney. “Jack Gerber.”

  “Hang on, I thought he sold property?”

  “He does lots of things. But JG Industries have been working on these SPEXITs for years, or so my dad says.”

  “But I’ve never seen these in the shops.”

  “Not yet. They’re being tested—”

  “—by us.”

  “But…” Oz got no further with his questions. Someone was calling his name from downstairs. He went to the landing and looked down. His mother was standing there looking apologetic, while Mr. Fanshaw hovered in the background.

  “Oz,” said Mrs. Chambers, “can I have a word with you?”

  Oz ran down. Mrs. Chambers stood with her back to Mr. Fanshaw and Oz watched as she explained what was going on. “Sorry, Oz. I’ve got one of my migraines.”

  The words came out ordinarily enough, but Mrs. Chambers’ eyes and eyebrows were doing a dance of their own as they veered in a direction over her right shoulder, where Mr. Fanshaw stood by anxiously. Oz watched as his mum brought her hand up to her throat and feigned strangulation, complete with protruding tongue. It was all Oz could do to stop himself from laughing out loud.

  “Oh, no,” he said, laying on the concern.

  “Do you mind terribly if we leave?”

  “It’s no trouble if Oscar wants to stay for a while. I could escort him back to number 2,” Mr. Fanshaw offered.

  Mrs. Chambers’ face cracked into a rigor of panic.

  “No,” Oz said quickly, “sometimes she has difficulty seeing with her migraines. I’d better go with her. Thanks all the same, Mr. Fanshaw.”

  Oz turned to go back upstairs to say goodbye to S and S, but they were already on the landing peering down, looking like two pink bookends.

  “I, uh…”

  “Thanks for coming,” they said together, then looked once at each other and went back up to their pink suite.

  Oz and his mum made it to the pavement after five minutes of profuse well wishes and goodbyes from Theo and Leticia Fanshaw. As they stepped into the road, Mrs. Chambers let out a huge sigh of relief with her back to Number 3. “Sorry, Oz,” she explained, “I just could not take another minute of it. Fanshaw kept introducing me to estate agents and solicitors. I suppose it serves me right for bumping into Lorenzo, who has a mouth like the Channel Tunnel. Every single one of the people I spoke to in there had heard that I was thinking about putting Penwurt up for sale.”

  “And are you?” Oz took his mother’s arm and “helped” her across the street.

  “No,” said Mrs. Chambers, but without as much conviction as Oz would have liked. “Well, I mean, of course I’ve thought about it. You know how expensive it is to run—”

  “Yes, but what about Dad?”

  A tiny little thundercloud of anger gathered on Mrs. Chambers’ forehead, but then her shoulders slumped. “Oz, I know your dad was enthusiastic about this house, but I just don’t see the attraction. I don’t know what he saw in the place.”

  “Maybe if you opened up his study, we might be able to find out.” The taboo word was out before Oz had a chance to stop himself. Mrs. Chambers opened her mouth as if to speak, but then shut it and frowned. She reached into her purse for the door key, but hesitated and looked at him earnestly. “Oz, maybe it is time we exorcised a few ghosts around here.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that it’s a bit silly to keep your dad’s study locked like this. You’re right; we may well find a little inspiration in there. Lord knows we need some. Go on, I’ll get the key and meet you up there in five minutes.”

  Chapter 6

  The Study

  Oz didn’t need telling twice. He tore upstairs, hardly able to believe what he was hearing. He ran into his bedroom and started changing out of his best clothes, only to remember S and S and their telescope. He went to the window and smiled sweetly up at number 3 before firmly drawing the curtains shut. His phone chirped to indicate a text message from Ellie and he learned that they had drawn their game that morning, two all. He sat on his bed and was on the point of texting her back when his mother, as good as her word, appeared in the doorway.

  “Ready?”

  Oz was on his feet in an instant, and five seconds later they were outside his dad’s study.

  “I’ve warned Caleb that we’re going in,” Mrs. Chambers said, putting the key into the lock. “There’ll be boxes of stuff to go back to the university, unless I’m very much mistaken.”

  She pushed open the door and for a moment they both stood there in silence. A musty, stale smell hit Oz’s nose as he peered into the dimly lit space. It was a corner room, one wall curving outwards as the interior of the bartizan, its one small window looking down onto the drive. Mrs. Chambers went to the window and immediately opened the blinds. Thin, watery afternoon light filtered in to reveal a room crammed with books and a desk laden with the most amazing stuff you could imagine. Even from the doorway, Oz could see bits of arrows, the rusted hilts of daggers, and a bird’s skull. To the side of the desk and its office chair was a shabby leather armchair, upon which was a pile of unopened letters and packages. On the wall next to the door was the ancient drop-dial wall clock that had never actually worked, but which his dad had loved. Oz breathed in the dusty atmosphere and smiled.

  “Just look at it,” said his mother, and let out a deep, theatrical sigh. “Still, no worse than I expected. He couldn’t get rid of anything, could Michael the magpie? Well, I don’t know if I can face it tonight, that’s for sure.”

  “Can I take some of his stuff?” Oz asked.

  “As I said, Caleb has been warned. He seemed just as keen as you were. So don’t take anything until you run it past him, and I don’t want your room ending up looking like a museum exhibit, okay?”

  “No way,” Oz said, and earned a long-suffering glance from his mother. “Thanks, Mum,” he added, and gave her a hug. A blown-up photo of the three of them on top of a mountain in the rain stared back from the wall above the desk. They both looked at it, and suddenly Mrs. Chambers turned her head away and stifled a sob.

  “Mum, we don’t have to—”

  “Yes…” said Mrs. Chambers in a cracked voice. She began waving her hand in front of her face and shaking her head. “Yes, we do. It has to be done. I’ll be okay.” She swallowed loudly and, on seeing Oz’s troubled expression, forced a wan smile. “I’ll be fine. You just go on in and if you find any treasure, we split it fifty-fifty, all right?”

  But she wasn’t looking at the room anymore. Oz knew that being in this study, his father’s private place, meant being just that bit closer to him. And it was obvious that, even after all this time, she couldn’t quite face unearthing all those memories. She would, he knew, come back armed with vacuum and dustpan, and it would be her way of dealing with it.

  But not now. Not tonight.

  When she’d gone, Oz went straight to the desk like a kid on Christmas morning. He picked up small stone Celtic crosses and held Iron Age bo
ar figurines up to the light for inspection. The bird’s skull had something painted on its beak in a writing he couldn’t understand. He hefted an eight-inch black statue of a kneeling, jackal-headed Anubis, which had 240 BC written in felt pen underneath it, and smiled at a Saxon shield mount with an intertwined serpent motif, which he remembered his dad using as a door stop.

  Oz was inspecting a cardboard box at the back of the desk marked “Medieval Arrowheads” when Caleb walked in, grinning broadly.

  “How did you manage to convince her?” he asked.

  “I didn’t. The Fanshaws did,” Oz replied, and on seeing Caleb’s puzzled expression added, “Long story. Do you think I could keep some of these?” Oz held up a three-inch-long pitted metallic arrowhead.

  “Ah, a trefoil. Armour piercing, that one. Probably Viking.” Caleb peered into the box. “Don’t see why not. Looks like your dad might have been cataloguing them.”

  “If I take an arrowhead for Ruff and a boar carving for Ellie, and maybe one of each and a Celtic cross for me?”

  “Take what you want, Oz. But I wouldn’t mind some help with these papers. Some are probably personal.”

  “Fine,” said Oz, delighted with having secured some treasure.

  It took an hour to go through his dad’s desk, but Oz didn’t mind one bit, because in amongst the university documents and paid bills were scattered reminders of shared good times—ticket stubs to the cinema, programmes for football matches and, best of all, photos. Even Caleb laughed at the one of Oz, toothless, on a beach eating an ice cream, most of which seemed to be on his T-shirt.

  “Caleb, all this stuff on Dad’s desk, are they just things he picked up on his travels?” Oz asked after unearthing a collection of Roman coins.

  “Your dad was a Senior Lecturer in Historical Materials, Oz. He was always being given stuff.”

  “And he could tell if it was real or not?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Oz reached down into the bottom drawer and picked out a wodge of papers. On the top was a file with a name on it that caught his eye.

  “Morsman?” Oz read. “I know that name.”

  “Of course you do,” Caleb said. “We talked about him the other day.”

  “Yeah, I remember. The chap who bought Penwurt. Ruff was on about him the other day, too.” Oz picked out the file and read the title properly. “‘Daniel Morsman, Charlatan or Visionary,’ by Dr. M P Chambers.” He looked up at Caleb. “Did my dad write this?”

  “He did, indeed. He wrote all sorts of stuff for magazines and journals. Part of his job.”

  Oz studied the article and frowned. “I know that a visionary is someone who believes in things that eventually come true, like Nelson Mandela. We’re doing a bit on South Africa in history at school. But what’s a charlatan?”

  “Someone who pretends to know a lot about something but really doesn’t.”

  “Cool,” Oz said. “We wanted to find stuff out about the orphanage, anyway. Think I could borrow this?”

  Caleb frowned and sucked air in through his teeth. “This Morsman stuff is a bit of a tricky subject. There may be something in there that’s a bit sensitive. We run everything past the university lawyers before publishing, in case any of us says something that lands us in hot water. Perhaps I’d better hang on to it.”

  Oz shrugged and put the papers down on the desk.

  Caleb had moved across to the pile of correspondence on the armchair. “I think your mum ought to look through these.” He picked up a wodge and a large, lumpy padded envelope slid out on to the floor. Oz reached for it and was about to hand it back when he read his own name written on the address label. He stared at it and felt his heart give a sudden leap.

  “This is my dad’s handwriting. It’s got funny stamps on, too, and…” Oz gasped. “It was sent two and half years ago.”

  “Really?” Caleb said, peering at the date stamp.

  But Oz wasn’t listening. He took the envelope and ran downstairs. His mother was in the laundry room. She looked a little more flushed than usual, but Oz needed to know.

  “I was going to come up and help, but I thought you and Caleb could do a better job,” she said, but Oz could sense that she didn’t really mean it. “What’s that you’ve got?”

  Barely able to contain his excitement, Oz blurted, “It’s a parcel addressed to me from Dad.”

  “Let me see.” Mrs. Chambers’ face showed a mixture of surprise and mild horror as she looked up to meet Oz’s eyes. “You’re right.”

  “So what’s it doing in Dad’s study?” Oz demanded.

  “I honestly don’t know,” Mrs. Chambers said, but then frowned. “Wait, it must have come just after the accident. It must have got mixed up with his papers. I just stuffed everything to do with his work into that study. I must have just assumed it was for your dad.”

  Oz read the defeated look of apology in her face and knew that there was no point being stroppy about this. “Never mind. It’s turned up now.”

  “Thanks, Oz, and I am sorry,” said Mrs. Chambers, grabbing him in a hug. “Where’s it from, anyway?”

  “Egypt,” Oz said.

  “How do you know that?”

  “One of these stamps has a picture of the Sphinx on it,” Oz said as he disengaged from his mother and hurried back upstairs.

  “Aren’t you going to open it?” his mother called after him.

  “Yeah, but maybe there’s more.”

  But there wasn’t. After five minutes frantically searching through the small pile of letters, Oz found nothing more addressed to him. But it didn’t matter. One was better than nothing. Grinning excitedly, he ripped the sellotaped envelope open. Inside, wrapped in bright-orange tissue paper, was a small oblong box, six inches long and four inches wide and about three inches deep. It had a brown, mottled colour and was smooth to the touch, except where a date that read “1761” was engraved in the surface. The lid was shut and secured by a copper hinge and clasp.

  “A horn trinket box,” Caleb remarked admiringly. “Nice present.”

  “Looks old,” Oz said, slightly bemused.

  “Mid-eighteenth century, I’d say,” Caleb said with a straight face.

  “How do you…” Then Oz looked at the date again and knew that he was having his leg pulled. But then a thought struck him. “Wait a minute, 1761? Wasn’t that the date of the Bunthorpe Encounter?”

  Caleb took the box and examined it carefully. “It was, indeed. Bit of a coincidence, that.”

  “Yeah,” said Oz, “it is, isn’t it?” But the tight knot of excitement in his stomach told him that his brain didn’t think that at all. After another hour they’d more or less divided everything up into university stuff and Michael Chambers’ personal possessions. Oz promised to do some more sorting after school the next day, but then his mother’s voice called up to him to say that tea was ready.

  * * *

  He ate fish fingers, peas, and brown bread, which was up there in his top ten meals to die for. Afterwards, Oz went to the library to try and get some more maths homework done. But he took the box and his dad’s old battered laptop with him. He really did try and get his head around more algebra, but Badger Breath’s notes might as well have been written in Klingon.

  The box, on the other hand, smelled faintly of tobacco and exotic spice and felt solid and wonderfully strange in his hands. It was nice, very nice, but Oz couldn’t help wondering why, out of all the things he could have chosen, his father had picked this trinket box as a present. Michael Chambers’ study was full of the kind of stuff that Oz would have been delighted to own. So what was so special about this little box? And then there was the article he’d seen on Morsman. Caleb didn’t want him to read it, but Oz knew that his dad’s laptop had all sorts of stuff on it that no one had ever bothered to erase. He fired it up and typed “Daniel Morsman, Charlatan or Visionary” into the search box. The article took thirty seconds to find and was in a folder labelled “Articles.” Oz opened the file and read th
e first few paragraphs:

  An explorer, intellectual, amateur archaeologist and adventurer, Morsman was the archetypal Victorian. All the more surprising, therefore, that he devoted the last twelve years of his life to trying to locate the four mysterious artefacts he became convinced he had been destined to find.

  Despite years searching for the Obsidian Pebble, the Black Dor, the Ceramic Ring, and the Pearl Pendant that reputedly appeared at the time of the infamous Bunthorpe Encounter, it remains unclear if Morsman ever succeeded in finding even one. His search took him as far as the jungles of the Congo and the deserts of Egypt, all of which he meticulously documented in his journal. But as of yet, this important record remains unaccounted for. Its whereabouts, like the truth surrounding Morsman’s bizarre death, remain one of the many mysteries running through this incredible, articulate, intelligent man’s life. Yet how could a wealthy, charitable entrepreneur give up everything in the search for a collection of arcane artefacts? Was there more to this quest than the Victorian preoccupation with the supernatural?

  There were other files in the same folder, cuttings and notes that were clearly research. One in particular caught his eye. It was labelled “Mysterious Death.” In it were a couple of scanned newspaper cuttings from 1941 and an obituary, but underneath his father had typed bullet points.

  • Daniel Morsman killed in a German bombing raid on the docks in London during the blitz in 1941.

  • Morsman hated London!

  • Meant to have been abroad at the time?

  He was reading these strange sentences for the third time when Caleb popped his head up into the library.

  “How’s it going?”

  Oz shut the lid of the laptop and smiled. “Not bad. You?”

  “Still labelling boxes. What have you got there?”

  “Algebra,” Oz said, and then added, “Can I ask you something? Why was my dad so interested in Morsman?”

  Caleb seemed to hesitate for a long moment, but then walked in and sat in one of the chairs. “Daniel Morsman was a distant relative of your dad’s. That’s really how this house ended up being his. It all came to light when he started researching the old place’s history. I suppose it snowballed from there.”