by Rhys Jones
“Well, that’s very interesting, but I haven’t had a chance to talk to Oz about this. Not seriously, I mean.”
“Well, of course, that is up to you, but I hardly think an eleven-year-old is capable of making a rational decision on such weighty matters. I mean, the upkeep on a place like this must be—”
“Horrendous, yes, it is. But I must discuss it with Oz. That’s how we do things. Just hasn’t been the right moment. Not yet.”
“I see,” said Heeps in a tone that said he didn’t see at all. “All I can tell you is that Jack would be delighted to deal with you in person. Something he very rarely does, what with having so many expanding interests and being the entrepreneur that he is. However, he is mindful of your, uh…delicate situation. And you know, Gwen, I can’t help thinking that if Michael were here, he’d want you to be comfortable and less stressed…”
“Rubbish,” said Oz to himself, a little more loudly than he’d meant to.
“Thank you, Lorenzo,” Mrs. Chambers said after quite a long pause. “I am grateful for your interest and I know you mean well, but I would still want to discuss all of this with Oz.”
“Not at all. And look, if I’m being too much of a bore about this selling business, just tell me to buzz off. But I would so like to see you settled somewhere less… demanding,” Heeps said, and Oz knew he’d be beaming at Mrs. Jones with that hundred-watt smile of his at that very moment.
“More tea?” Mrs. Chambers asked.
“No, I mustn’t. Phillipa is preparing our supper this evening and I must not be late. Bit of a tyrant in the kitchen, is Phillipa.”
“And how is poor Belinda?”
“Delicate. Very delicate. We hope to have her home soon, though, rejuvenated and ready for business.” Heeps chuckled.
“Still convalescing at the villa?”
“Yes. Weather’s so much warmer in Spain, as you know.”
Oz heard the scraping of chairs and Heeps’ voice growing ever fainter.
“You know you can pick up the phone at any time, Gwen. I’m here to help in any way I can…”
Oz waited until he heard the front door slam and then went back down to the kitchen.
“I expect you were listening in that pokey toilet, weren’t you?” Mrs. Chambers asked accusingly.
“He’s a slime bag, Mum.”
Mrs. Chambers looked as if she was about to protest, but then said, “He’s trying to be helpful, Oz.”
“He’s trying to get us out of here, more like,” Oz corrected her.
“Look, I had nothing to do with that. In fact, it was why I left the party early yesterday. Lorenzo kept introducing me to solicitors and mortgage brokers. He’s like a dog with a bone.”
Oz nodded. “A smelly old dog.”
“Oz,” warned Mrs. Chambers.
But Oz was determined to get his point across. “Mum, I know that Dad wouldn’t want us to leave here. Heeps is so wrong about that.”
“How can you possibly know that?” Mrs. Chambers said as she started taking clothes from the dryer and folding them.
“But I do. I feel it all the time. Like something’s going to happen.”
“The boiler breaking down again, you mean?”
“No. I mean something special.”
Mrs. Chambers stopped what she was doing and looked at Oz. She shook her head, a bemused expression lifting her eyebrows. “Well, there’s no denying that you have your dad’s optimistic streak running right through you, Oz.”
“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”
Mrs. Chambers nodded, but Oz wasn’t sure if she did it very convincingly. He went back to his room to finish his homework, but got a text from Caleb as he sat down. A minute later, he was running up the stairs to the library.
“Has Heeps taken absolutely everything?” Caleb asked as Oz appeared breathlessly.
“Heeps took heaps. And why didn’t you help?”
“I see enough of him at the university,” Caleb said heavily.
“By the way, what is it with Lucy Bishop? Why is she so mad at me all the time?”
Caleb shook his head ruefully. “Lucy is a troubled soul, Oz. Her brother…let’s just say he’s in a bit of trouble and she takes out her frustration on others.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“The worst kind. The kind that traps you and never lets you go.”
“You mean like drugs?”
“No, not drugs. Not quite…” Caleb paused as if realising that he’d said too much. But then he went on in more measured tones, “Lucy is looking for answers where there really aren’t any. Meanwhile, she’s doing her degree and I’m trying to help her through all of this as best I can.”
Oz nodded. It was an explanation of sorts, although it lacked a little in essential detail. Still, it explained her moods. He turned away but stopped on the top of the stairs.
“Yes?” Caleb said.
“If I get really stuck with my history, can I text you?”
“No problem,” said Caleb with the merest little curl at the corner of his mouth.
In the end, Caleb’s services were not required, and Oz managed one side of A4 on his own. When he’d finally read through the completed essay and put in the last full stop, he went to his dad’s study and threw himself down into the comfy armchair, opened his laptop and found again his dad’s article on Morsman. Something had been nagging at Oz’s curiosity all day. What was it that had made Morsman want to buy the orphanage? He’d lived there for years as a child, and been to school there. Hadn’t he had enough by then? He searched for a passage he’d already read and studied it again.
Despite being a brilliant entrepreneur, Morsman was essentially a loner. But his wealth did allow him to reach out a helping hand. Indeed, his great friend during his time at Colonel Thompson’s orphanage, John Tanner, accompanied him on one of his most dangerous expeditions. Despite warnings from all and sundry, they travelled to France at a time when the Great War began to ravage Europe, on the first of many artefact quests. What exactly took place during that troubled journey is not clear, but on their return Tanner and Morsman parted company, some say not on the best of terms, never to speak again. Indeed, not much is known of Tanner following this split. Morsman, however, spent ever more time and money in remodelling Penwurt, with the addition of the splendid library in the central tower, an excellent example of one of many projects he carried out when not travelling in search of the artefacts…
Oz had the trinket box on the armrest next to him. Though it was just a small space, he’d filled the box with some of the flotsam he’d found in his dad’s desk—ticket stubs, folded up photos and some foreign paper money with their inked images of exotic cities and long-forgotten rulers—until there was little room for anything else. The box felt solid and full in his hands as he examined it once again. He ran his fingers over the roughly carved date and the copper hinges and clasp. There was no other adornment apart from a small, inlaid symbol on the under surface which, Oz guessed, was probably a maker’s mark. It was barely visible, but Oz picked at it with his nail and saw that it seemed different from the horn around it. Although it looked black at first, Oz cleaned some of the dirt away to reveal bright metal underneath.
Once, Oz’s dad had taught him how to clean gunk off furred-up battery terminals in torches with nail varnish remover. He went to his mother’s bedroom and found the bottle and a cotton bud and attacked the maker’s mark. Years of grime came away with a bit of effort and Oz was able to reveal a pewter-coloured symbol that looked like two mountains over a balance.
It was, like everything else at Penwurt, slightly weird and not at all like the usual stamps on his mum’s old bracelets. It made him wonder what secrets this box really had to tell as he ran his fingers over the intricate design. It felt vaguely warm under his finger, and once he could have sworn he saw a faint pulse of light. But after several more goes revealed nothing, he told himself that it had simply been a reflection from the desk lamp.
; Oz looked about him at the empty room and felt a wistful pang. Just the desk and his dad’s old clock left. It was as if his dad had finally left the place.
Oz got up and walked across to the wall-clock. The face was white and had Roman numerals and blue steel hands. “G. Reading of Coventry” was emblazoned across the middle with the word “Fecit”—which his father had explained was Latin for “made by”—beneath it. It had a glass-fronted rosewood case with a big brass pendulum, and ornately carved scrolls either side of the face. Between the scrolls was an inlaid brass hourglass and more Latin words: “tempus rerum imperator.”
For as long as Oz could remember the hands had been at 9.15. It had never worked as a clock, but his dad had said that it was at least a hundred and fifty years old and was a brilliant piece of long-lost British craftsmanship. A sudden shudder rolled through him and he looked around at the empty study again, a mere shell of the treasure-filled room it had been a few days ago. If Heeps could persuade his mother, the whole of Penwurt would go the same way soon.
“Over my dead body,” Oz said to no one in particular. He wiped some dust off the clock’s glass face and left, shutting his father’s study door after him. Back in his bedroom, he put the trinket box next to his laptop on the desk and went downstairs to say goodnight to his mother. Ten minutes later, Oz was in bed. But that night, there was little rest to be had when sleep came. That night, Oz dreamed.
He was on his way to search for a book in the library, except that the library was at the top of an impossibly long spiral staircase. No matter how hard and quickly he climbed, he got no nearer the light that glowed way above him. But beneath him, something stirred—a monstrous Badger Breath Boggs, his head twice normal size, his breath billowing like poisonous black smoke from his grinning mouth. Oz bolted straight through a dream door into a classroom with a blackboard full of hieroglyphics. He could hear Badger Breath approaching and he knew that if he didn’t solve the problems on the board something awful was going to happen. The room changed shape; it became long and narrow and the strange symbols on the board were transforming into things with small, pinched faces and black, ugly eyes that began mocking him for not being able to understand them.
But in the midst of the gargoyle-like shapes, something glowed. It was the strange mark he’d seen under the trinket box, and it gleamed with a golden light. Oz reached out to touch it, and instantly the mocking, jeering noises ended and the faces melted and transformed into small, brilliantly coloured floating clouds.
And there was a voice. A calm, pleasant girl’s voice that seemed to be telling the clouds what to do in a language Oz didn’t understand. But as he watched, the clouds flowed together into an organised rainbow that seemed, all of a sudden, to make perfect, symmetrical, understandable sense. Oz stared at it rapturously, wanting it never to change. But suddenly the rainbow began to shimmer and break up and a noise began to intrude, an incessant buzz, like a trapped wasp. The clouds burst apart into their separate, ugly, oddly shaped parts. Oz wanted the clamour to go away. He wanted the colours to flow again into their beautiful, organised patterns. But the noise was insistent as it dragged him away from the dream and unconsciousness, until finally he opened his eyes, reached out his hand and shut off the alarm.
One glance at its face told Oz that it was morning and time to get up.
* * *
Mrs. Chambers was making sandwiches when Oz arrived in the kitchen.
“Mmm,” Oz said, leaning over to see what they were. “Ham and tomato ketchup. Yummy.”
“You’re a bit chipper this morning,” she said.
“Am I?” Oz replied, surprised.
“You don’t usually whistle coming down the stairs at quarter to eight in the morning.”
“Was I? Whistling, I mean?”
His mother tilted her head at him. He had been whistling. In fact, thinking about it, he did feel good but had no real idea why, so he just shrugged and attacked his cereal.
“Oh, what it is to be young,” sighed Mrs. Chambers.
Oz just had time to check his email before catching the bus. He fired up his laptop and went to clean his teeth while it loaded. He knew something was different as soon as he walked back into his bedroom with his mouth full of toothpaste foam. Instead of seeing the usual “colliding asteroids” screensaver, his laptop showed something else altogether. On an off-white background, two images slowly rotated on the screen. One was a large symbol, the other a shiny black object with a segmented shape that reminded him of a squat insect.
Intrigued, Oz moved the mouse and tried to shut the page down, but he couldn’t. He clicked on the symbol. Immediately, it stopped rotating. He tried to make sense of it. It looked like a weird letter E with the middle arm poking out the back, twice as long as the other two. Oz tilted his head. Could even have been a fork or a trident on its side.
“Oz, if you don’t leave now, you’ll miss the bus,” sang his mother from the bottom of the steps.
Reluctantly, and with one final glance at the two images, Oz grabbed his school bag and ran out of the door, only to remember that he still had a mouth full of dribbling toothpaste. He did a U-turn and spat out the toothpaste into the bathroom sink before tearing out again.
Sitting on the bus to school, he racked his brain, trying to think what could have happened to his laptop. Had it been infected by a virus? Had Ruff, who was a genius when it came to computers, sent him some kind of message? He was still mulling it over as he bumped into Ellie on his way to registration.
“Mega weirdness,” he said to her questioning face. But he had no chance of elaborating as he followed Ellie’s gaze and saw that Pheeps was making a beeline towards them, her expression set in malign delight.
“My father told me that you’re selling that dump of yours at last.”
“Did he?” Oz said. “Knows more than me, then.”
Pheeps laughed and it was a high, unpleasant noise. “Everyone knows more than you,” she spat. “I even know how much you got in your maths test Friday.”
“How could you know that?” Ellie said.
Pheeps’ eyes sparkled triumphantly. “Badger Breath was marking last lesson Friday afternoon and Daniel Cullen saw the papers. Shame he didn’t see yours, Messenger, but it’s obvious that maths isn’t Chambers’ best subject by a long way.”
“Get lost,” Ellie said.
“Have a nice day,” Pheeps said, smiling sweetly.
“I swear, that girl is a witch,” said Ellie as Pheeps flounced away.
“She didn’t used to be like that,” Oz said. “It was only after her mother became ill that she started to—”
“Turn into Little Miss Nightmare? I’m sorry, but I don’t buy that as an excuse.”
“She was in hospital for over six months,” Oz said gravely.
“You reckon? Don’t go feeling sorry for her,” Ellie said exasperatedly. “Besides, she doesn’t really know anything. She’s just saying this stuff to wind you up. It’s just a sick little game to her.”
“Really?” Oz asked, sounding desperate. He hated letting Pheeps get to him, but her mocking had an awful ring of truth to it and he felt his insides twist at the coming lesson. But by then they were at registration, and for once Miss Arkwright was early because she had announcements to make about a forthcoming trip to a pantomime (“Maybe we’ll see Badger Breath there,” Ruff whispered). As a result they were late for first lesson, where Mrs. Conserdine, a dour Scottish lady who taught science, insisted on her full lesson time.
That left no time to speak about the laptop, since everyone had to rush to second lesson, which was maths. Although he didn’t believe everything that Pheeps had said, he felt that there was probably more than a grain of truth in her carping words. Badger Breath handed out the marked papers without a sound and Oz deliberately avoided his gaze. Even so, it came as quite a shock to learn that he’d come next to bottom, beating only Jenks, who had scored a total of seven percent.
At the top of Oz’s paper, in a
red circle, was a scribbled ten.
Badger Breath stood at the front, a gleam in his small eyes. “Those of you with less than fifty percent will come back here lunchtime to re-sit the exam.”
There was a collective groan from nearly a third of the class.
“Will they be the same questions, sir?” someone asked.
“Of course not,” Badger Breath rolled his eyes. “And if you get less than fifty percent a second time, you will repeat the exam every day until you succeed in getting more than fifty percent. I suspect it will be a long term with very little lunch for quite a few of you. Now, let us get on with inequalities.”
* * *
At break, Ellie and Ruff were full of commiserations.
“I wouldn’t have minded, really, except that megaphone Pheeps knows all about it and is broadcasting it all over the school,” Oz said glumly.
“Forget about her,” Ellie said. “Now, what was it you were trying to tell me before she butted in this morning?”
What with Badger Breath and the test, Oz had almost forgotten about his laptop and the weird images. So he told them as they munched on toast and jam in the refectory. He explained first about the dreams, and then about the black insect image and the funny trident symbol on his screen.
“You haven’t sent me anything, have you?” he said to Ruff.
“No way,” Ruff replied, frowning.
“Then someone has been tampering with it, because I couldn’t get them off my screen,” Oz said.
“We need to see them,” Ellie said.
Oz thought about the best way to do that all through biology and P.E. But then it was lunchtime and he was back in Badger Breath’s class with ten others, waiting for another maths paper. Badger Breath made sure there were empty desks on either side of all the pupils and walked around distributing the papers face-down.
“You have forty-five minutes, starting now,” he said when the last paper was delivered. Oz didn’t turn his sheet over immediately. Instead, he watched as Badger Breath took out a flask and some foil-wrapped sandwiches and proceeded to lay out his lunch. As he poured out strong-looking, steaming tea, he looked up into Oz’s eyes and gave him a knowing and very unpleasant smile.