Felix and the Red Rats

by James Norcliffe

  A little later we reached the site. Uncle Felix was saddened to see that houses now occupied the land.

  He gestured around him with his stick. ‘There were a couple of classrooms there,’ he said, ‘for the big kids. And another couple over there for the little kids.’

  ‘Only four classrooms?’

  ‘And they were quite small, I recall. Much of the space was taken up by the big iron stove they used to keep us warm in the winter.’

  He then gestured further up. ‘Over there was the old scout hall where the Heberson gang had their headquarters. It’s gone, too.’

  I looked at him in surprise. ‘There really was an old scout hall?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And there really was a Heberson gang that used to hang out there?’

  Uncle Felix smiled and tugged at his moustache.

  ‘Of course, I’m not that imaginative!’

  I looked at him to see whether or not he was pulling my leg, teasing me. But he was still staring at the place where he reckoned the Heberson gang headquarters had been. He seemed to be far away. I guessed he was picturing it again in his memory.

  I remembered what Mum had said. When she’d told me that Uncle Felix had put his childhood places in the books I thought she merely meant that he’d used the hill as a setting. She’d said the rest of it had come out of Uncle Felix’s ‘strange brain’. I’d imagined there would have been a sharp line between the two, but if the Heberson gang had really existed, then that line must have been much fuzzier than I imagined.

  At length, Uncle Felix sighed, and then said, ‘Well, where to now?’

  ‘What about the pine forest and the—’

  His eyes twinkled. ‘The concrete shed?’

  ‘Will it still be there?’

  ‘Possibly. It was made of concrete.’

  ‘Yeah, but the pine trees might not be there.’

  ‘True, but I can tell you where they were.’

  We walked down the hill. The view was great from up here. In front of us was the expanse of the ocean and when I looked left I could see the sweep of the great bay and the mountains beyond. I was glad of my jacket, though, as the wind coming off the sea was cool.

  It suddenly occurred to me that the road we were taking must have been the same as the one taken by Bella and Felix after they’d recovered Bella’s diary and were racing away from the Heberson gang.

  I asked Uncle Felix if it was.

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘this is the way we took.’

  ‘We?’

  He laughed. ‘I mean they. You do somehow get mixed up in your own stories!’

  Again I had a nagging feeling that the line was fuzzy.

  It wasn’t long after that, he stopped and turned towards me.

  ‘What do you know!’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The shortcut — it’s still here. Look!’

  I looked and there it was. Just as in Into Axillaris the path was almost inconspicuous until you were suddenly upon it. I looked over the hillside and could see it zigzagging downwards. More exciting still, the path disappeared as it was swallowed by a plantation of old and gnarly pine trees.

  ‘The trees are still there too!’

  Uncle Felix took some moments to appraise the scene. ‘The plantation is a lot narrower, I think,’ he said. ‘I think in the old days the trees spread out more. Or perhaps,’ he added, ‘it’s because I’m looking at it now with eyes of a grown-up. Things often look smaller and shabbier than you remember them.’

  ‘I reckon,’ I said. Even I had had that experience, and I was only a fraction of Uncle Felix’s age.

  ‘That’s why sometimes,’ he said, ‘it’s not a very good idea to go back to places, especially places that hold fond memories.’

  ‘Can we go down?’

  ‘Of course. The path will lead to the other road. But we can get back to your place from there.’

  The path looked too narrow for us to walk side by side, so Uncle Felix let me lead the way. I was in quite a hurry to check out whether the concrete shed was still there so I didn’t waste any time. However, the pace didn’t seem to trouble Uncle Felix. When we eventually turned a bend and I could see the unmistakeable sight of the concrete shed, he was almost at my shoulder.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s still there.’

  I hurried down the last few metres to check out the shed. It was almost exactly as the book described it. Plastered concrete walls, the plaster cracked a little in places, and an iron roof of a faded green. It had to have been painted several times since Uncle Felix’s day, and it looked like it could do with another coat still.

  And there was the door.

  It was a solid door, with a heavy iron bolt locked in a bolthole. Securing the bolt was a powerful-looking brass padlock.

  ‘It’s just like it is in the book!’ I said.

  Uncle Felix seemed a little moved. He didn’t say anything, but gave me a cautious smile.

  ‘Except,’ I added, ‘that the door’s locked.’

  Uncle Felix glanced at the lock. ‘Oh yes,’ he whispered. ‘The door’s certainly locked.’

  He was transfixed. He stood quietly for some time, hardly moving, except once or twice almost blindly reaching to touch the plastered wall of the shed. Eventually, he shook himself a little and turned to me.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘such a surprise.’

  I didn’t really know why he should have said it was such a surprise. He’d told us at dinner the previous night that it would probably still be there. Perhaps he meant because the school and the clubhouse had gone, the shed might have been gone, too.

  I looked at the locked door with a welling sense of disappointment. The lock looked very secure. It was so frustrating.

  ‘Uncle Felix,’ I whispered.

  ‘David?’

  ‘Do you think we might be able to break in?’

  ‘David!’

  ‘I mean the door must be pretty old …’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, if we both put our shoulders to it and shoved, we might be able to break inside.’

  Uncle Felix looked at me carefully. ‘And get arrested for damaging council property? Not to mention breaking and entering?’

  I looked down, feeling a little stupid.

  ‘I guess …’

  ‘And anyway,’ said Uncle Felix, ‘if they wanted us to go in, they would have left the door unlocked.’

  I didn’t have a clue what he meant by ‘they’, and I didn’t get a chance to ask him either, for, without adding anything else or even giving me a teasing smile, he brushed past me and continued down the path towards the lower road.

  This was the second time Uncle Felix had broadsided me with a really weird comment. The first, of course, was when he told me that he feared the rats turning red had everything to do with Axillaris. That had come out of left field. And now this. When he made the first comment I was given the distinct impression he’d immediately regretted saying what he’d said, and it was the same now.

  I followed his uncommunicative shoulders down the zigzagging path, my mind racing. I remembered hoping to find some clue to the rats in Into Axillaris. I’d read quite a lot more since then, but I was still none the wiser.

  Magic, Dad had said.

  Mystery, Mum had said.

  Gray thought him a weirdo and Martha had thought him a fake.

  I didn’t really know what to think, apart from realising that Uncle Felix was a puzzle, a Rubik’s cube with different faces all made up of different colours.

  When we got home, my heart sank to find Gray sprawled on a couch in the living room fiddling with his mobile.

  He glanced up as we entered the room. I was worried that he might make some comment to Uncle Felix about the rats, but all he did was give us both a surly look before immediately returning to peck at his phone.

  Uncle Felix gave me a curious glance and I shook my head warningly. He took the hint, said nothing, and we passed in to the k
itchen where Mum was much more friendly.

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Please,’ said Uncle Felix.

  ‘I take it there’s been no improvement?’ I asked.

  ‘The rats? No, red as ever,’ Mum said.

  ‘I thought so,’ I said. ‘Gray’s in there looking like thunder.’

  ‘Well, did you show David your old stamping grounds?’ she asked.

  ‘I surely did,’ said Uncle Felix. ‘We wandered all over the place. I showed him the site of the old school. All houses now.’

  ‘Everything’s changed, I suppose,’ said Mum.

  ‘Not everything,’ I said. ‘You know in Into Axillaris when the kids find that old concrete shed which turns into a Way Station?’

  Mum nodded, smiling.

  ‘Well it’s still there and so is the path through the pine trees. The pine trees too.’

  ‘A lot older and more twisted,’ said Uncle Felix. ‘Not unlike me.’

  Medulla

  Once Spleen had left, the fair-haired man turned to them.

  ‘Come with me,’ he said. ‘We will have these ropes removed and then you must be questioned.’

  He turned abruptly, strode towards the door, opened it and beckoned them through. They followed down a long bare corridor, turned left into another corridor and right into yet another corridor. At intervals along these passageways were doors, but without obvious identification or numbers. Blank, anonymous doors. Then more corners, more corridors, more doors.

  Felix felt very apprehensive. He tried to memorise the route they were taking even though he knew deep down that they were being led into a situation from which escape would be difficult, if not utterly impossible. And even if the four of them could escape this complicated maze of a building, what then? They would have to negotiate the dark, desolate streets of the seemingly deserted city to find the Cable-car Station somehow. And even were this possible, how could they then get the cable-car operators, if there were any, to take them up to the Way Station? And if this impossibility were somehow achieved, what were their chances of persuading Spleen and his clones to let them enter the Way Station?

  His heart sank even further, remembering Spleen’s claim that there were hundreds of doors into the Way Station. There was no way of knowing which one of these would release them once more, would open on to the pine forest and the zigzag path that led down the hill.

  No, Felix concluded glumly. Unlikely to say the least. Impossible. Improbable at best. All they could do was go with the flow, like four little corks in the rapids.

  Unexpectedly, the fair-haired man stopped and pulling out a ring of keys, unlocked one of the anonymous doors.

  ‘In there,’ he ordered.

  They filed into a small room. It was windowless and sparsely furnished. There was a table and a chair and three wooden benches. The light was not bright and came from a wall fitting on each of the otherwise bare walls.

  The man gestured them towards the nearest bench and, a little awkwardly, they sat down.

  ‘Wait here,’ said the fair-haired man, once they were seated. Do we have a choice? thought Felix bitterly.

  The man then left the room, closing the door behind him. However, he returned almost immediately, apparently having forgotten something. He walked directly to Bella, leant over her and whispered, ‘You do still have the diary Spleen mentioned?’

  Bella said yes and, a little reluctantly, held out the red-covered book, expecting the man to demand it. Instead, to her surprise, he whispered, ‘Hide it!’

  Bella looked at him unsurely and then tucked the diary under her red sweatshirt. The man waited until the book was safely stowed away, then, giving her a small, grim smile, he said, ‘Good.’

  When Bella looked up at him once more he added, still in a whisper, ‘Don’t mention the diary.’

  He locked eyes with hers until she murmured, ‘Okay.’

  ‘Much may depend on it.’

  Then he turned and left them again. They heard the tell-tale click of the key locking the door, and then the sound of his footsteps disappearing down the corridor.

  What on earth was that about? thought Felix.

  Felix gave Bella a wan smile.

  She shrugged.

  Bella has no idea either, he thought.

  He imagined that Bella, too, would have been considering their chances of escape and no doubt have come to the same pessimistic conclusion.

  Felix glanced at her once more to check out whether the diary was convincingly concealed and was relieved to see no outline traces of it whatever. Bella’s red sweatshirt was baggy and the diary little more than the size of a thin exercise book.

  What was it about the diary? The fair-haired man seemed to have a thing about it. First he had told off the little guy Spleen for treating it lightly, which suggested it might be important. But then, his coming back into the room to tell Bella to keep it hidden … From what? From whom? What was that about?

  You could almost, Felix thought, say the diary was the thing responsible for their being in this ghastly mess in the first place. If bloody Dusty Heberson hadn’t pinched it, then he and Bella wouldn’t have had to pinch it back; and if they hadn’t been spotted and chased after they had pinched it back, they would never have taken that shortcut. And if they hadn’t taken the shortcut and hidden in that concrete shed, then—

  ‘What’s with the diary, anyway?’ Felix demanded.

  Myrtle sniffed.

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ said Bella. ‘It’s just a diary.’

  ‘What’s in it?’ asked Felix. He had never asked to look at the diary, and Bella had never offered to show him.

  ‘Nothing much,’ said Bella. ‘Just the usual stuff. It’s more of a notebook, really. Just a few thoughts, jottings. Bits of poetry, and there’s lots of doodles and things.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound much,’ said Felix.

  ‘Not much at all,’ admitted Bella. ‘Not worth getting into this crazy nightmare for, anyway.’

  ‘No smelly secrets?’ grinned Felix, thinking of Spleen’s disgust.

  Moonface snorted.

  Bella flashed him a look of annoyance. ‘Not really. Nothing like that. There’s the odd rebus and magic square. Lists of books and my personal top twenties, but nothing filthy.’

  ‘So you say!’ said Moonface scornfully.

  ‘Shut up, Moony,’ said Felix crossly. ‘You’re an idiot.’ Then he added. ‘What are they? Those rebus things and magic squares?’

  ‘Nothing much,’ said Bella. ‘Word games, really. I rather like them. Rebuses are a kind of code with pictures and magic squares are word puzzles.’

  Moonface Morgan snorted disbelievingly again and Felix turned on him. ‘You really are pathetic sometimes, Moony!’ he exclaimed. ‘And anyway, why the hell did Dusty pinch Bella’s diary in the first place? That’s what’s got us into this mess!’

  Myrtle sniffed again.

  ‘I dunno,’ admitted Moonface. ‘He just said there could be stuff in there we could use.’

  ‘Use?’

  ‘Go figure,’ said Moonface, shrugging his shoulders. And then he added, ‘Oh, and he reckoned it would really, really hack Bella off.’

  ‘Yeah, well, he’s so right there,’ said Bella. ‘It so really did.’

  The sound of approaching footsteps and then of a key in the door silenced any further pleasantries. As they waited for the door to open, the four looked at each other nervously.

  It was the fair-haired man back, this time accompanied by three of the waspy look-alike creatures.

  ‘Untie them,’ he ordered. ‘And then get rid of yourselves and the ropes!’

  Swiftly, efficiently, silently, the three quickly untied the ropes then neatly wound them into rolls which they slung over their shoulders so that they looked like tiny mountaineers.

  ‘Go now!’ said the fair-haired man.

  Without a word or any change in expression from their default sour, the three left, closing the door behind them.

  �
��Who are they?’ asked Bella, as the man sat himself down, laying his clipboard before him.

  He glanced at her. ‘I have no idea of their names,’ he said. ‘In any case, they’re hard to tell apart.’

  ‘I didn’t mean who are they,’ said Bella, ‘I meant what are they?’

  The fair-haired man looked surprised. ‘They’re twerps,’ he said. ‘You don’t know what twerps are? You don’t have them?’

  Bella shook her head.

  ‘My father calls me a silly twerp sometimes,’ said Felix, ‘when I’ve done something stupid, but I’ve never seen one. I figured it was just a word.’

  ‘It is just a word,’ said the fair-haired man, ‘and it does have a meaning as you’ve just seen.’

  Felix looked at him, ‘But you’re not a twerp. Actually, you’re the only non-twerp we’ve seen so far.’

  The man shook his head. ‘You’re quite correct. I am not a twerp.’

  ‘What are you?’ asked Bella, feeling braver.

  For a fleeting second a rather bleak expression flickered across the man’s face. Then, recovering, he gave Bella a small apologetic smile. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘But I have a strange feeling I’m about to be a very abject object or a very exalted object.’

  ‘Or both?’ asked Bella.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said the man. ‘One or the other, I’d say.’

  ‘What’s abject?’ asked Felix,

  Again the brief bleakness: ‘Very, very, very sorry,’ said the man. And then the apologetic smile once more.

  Something about that little smile changed the hitherto rather cold and commanding figure into something a little softer, more approachable. Felix wondered why he had let his guard slip. He reconsidered the man. He was dressed entirely in black, including high black boots, except for a wine-coloured tunic, much longer than those worn by the twerps. He looked like a cross between a soldier and a priest. His features were regular, and, were his face not so gaunt and his usual expression not so cold, he might have been described as good-looking.

  Then, as if reminded of his true purpose, the man returned once more to his official manner, signalling this by picking up the clipboard.