The Quickening of Tom Turnpike (The Talltrees Trilogy)

by Mann, W. E.

  Vanderpump had me cornered now with my back to the trestle table and he was bearing down on me with his teeth gnashing, still hungry. My fingers were pulling desperately at the triggers. All I needed was a little bit more antidote. Surely I could eke some out. Surely...

  But of course! I suddenly remembered what Freddie had told me about whipped cream. Those whipped cream cans are full of Nitrous Oxide.

  I laid hands on two cans and, just as Vanderpump was right in front of me, I knocked their lids off, forced them both into his slobbering mouth, and sprayed. And I kept spraying until both cans were discharged, cream had started oozing out of Vanderpump’s nostrils and the floor around us was as white as Christmas.

  I stepped back, slipped again and landed on my other funny bone. But I was too exhausted to react to the pain. I watched as Vanderpump blinked and looked round him, dazed and spluttering. Then he noticed me, as if for the first time, doubled over and started laughing so raucously that he lost his balance, slipped in the whipped cream and fell asleep, snoring, before he had even hit the floor. I sighed with relief. But my relief did not last.

  “You hold him down,” croaked that terrible voice.

  I had not seen them enter. But of course they knew I was here. I had no time to get up and Miss Prenderghast was already leaning down on my legs, pinning me to the floor.

  Then Head Matron’s bewitching face came into view, pallid, placid and deadly. I saw the glint of green light from the end of her hypodermic syringe. And then I felt it prick my arm.

  They stepped back to watch me. I hauled myself up defiantly and staggered to lean against the trestle table. Surely if I concentrate hard enough...

  My lips and fingers started to tingle. And the tingling spread, creeping up my arms and legs. I couldn’t feel the table, even though I could see that I was touching it. When I looked at my hands, they didn’t feel like they were my own. My body was numb and then the room started to expand and brighten around me. There were faces and bodies in front of me, more than there had been before, but I couldn’t recognise them. They didn’t mean anything. The distinctions between where-things-were and where-things-were-not faded, and then disappeared from view totally. I could not focus because everything had melted into everything else. I looked around and it was all the same. But I could sense movement. Plenty of it, and noise, complicated noise. Jostling and echoing. But I couldn’t understand it.

  And then the world lurched downwards. A blast of white light smashed through my brain. And then there was blackness.

  thirty three

  “Turnpike.”

  “Turnpike.”

  “Hmm?”

  “Looks like he’s back from the dead, Sir.”

  “Yes, well don’t crowd him, Strange.”

  I wiggled my fingers and toes. There was no pain. None at all. I blinked and squinted. Bright light was bursting through the windows and I was lying in an unfeasibly comfortable bed. I propped myself up and sat back against my pillow. It looked like the Sick Bay, but it felt far less sinister than it was when I had been here last. Colonel Barrington was standing by one of the windows and Freddie was on a stool next to me. Over to my left, Samson was silently asleep in another bed.

  I opened my mouth to start asking questions, but no words would form. My mouth tasted like Pritt Stick.

  “Here,” said Freddie, handing me a glass of water. It tasted cleaner and cooler than any water I had ever drunk.

  Barrington turned from the window. “Doctor Boateng found you shortly before midnight,” he said, pre-empting at least one of the many question that were beginning to form a jostling queue in my mind. “You were wandering around in the Basement, covered from head to toe in food. He found Akwasi shortly afterwards in the Crypt, shuddering and foaming at the mouth. That was all two days ago now though. You’ve been asleep for quite some time. So I’m afraid you missed the excitement yesterday morning when Mr. Wilbraham called in the polizei to try to explain who had ransacked the school during the night!”

  “Is he okay?” I croaked. My voice sounded somehow alien.

  “Akwasi? He’ll be fine.” He nodded to the bed next to mine, where I saw that Samson was still asleep. “He managed to break an arm during the evening. I don’t know how and I should imagine he won’t either. But it’ll be fine when he wakes up. As for all the other boys, between us we managed to cure all of them. I burnt the Fetishes after midnight. And it seems that sleep really has healed all of their wounds. Even a boy who managed to break his neck!”

  “And what about Doctor Boateng?”

  “I imagine he’ll be somewhere over the Channel at this moment.”

  “It’s a shame he couldn’t have stayed here to take over Biology from Miss Prenderghast,” I said.

  Barrington raised his eyebrows. “Take over Biology?”

  “Well if Miss Prenderghast is gone, then who’ll take Biology?”

  “Good heavens, boy,” Barrington scoffed. “Are you suggesting that we would have killed Miss Prenderghast? Good Lord, no. No, no, no. She is very much as she was before...”

  The door opened gently and, to my amazement, Head Matron walked in, bold as brass. She looked me over, forced a cold thermometer into my mouth, jabbing the tender flesh under my tongue and then checked her watch. She tottered over to Samson’s bed and plumped his pillows. Barrington studied my baffled curiosity with a chuckle.

  After Head Matron had checked her watch again, removed and read the thermometer, wrung her wrist and left, I began to splutter a jumbled mixture of all of my indignant questions. “But, Sir, what on Earth...? How can they be...?”

  “Settle down, Turnpike. Now look here, we can’t very well go around killing those who have been functioning as normal members of society, can we? Not if we can avoid it. Don’t you think people would notice? What would Professor Ludendorff say if teachers suddenly disappeared? And don’t forget that Miss Prenderghast and Head Matron are nothing more than slaves. In fact, they’re less than slaves. They’re robots. They mindlessly perform the tasks that they are ordered to perform. In any case, they may yet be curable...”

  “And what about Mr. Caratacus, Sir?”

  “Well that really would be murder! No. Next term Mr. Caratacus will return to work as normal. Well, almost normal...”

  “But can’t we call the polizei and get him arrested?” I interrupted angrily. I realised that this was a stupid question as soon as I asked it, but I couldn’t believe that Caratacus could be allowed to get away with what he had done.

  “And what would we say? I hardly think that the regular police would believe that he’s been trying to turn boys into zombies! There’s no evidence now that he has even tried to poison anyone. And, for obvious reasons, we wouldn’t want the Secret Police involved would we? Anyway, Doctor Boateng and I have... dealt with him. We’ve...” he paused, “we’ve given him a taste of his own medicine...”

  I choked on my water. Freddie gasped and said, “You mean... you’ve zombified him?”

  “Precisely, Strange.”

  “But... but,” I spluttered, “that means... so who...?”

  “The new Bokor? Don’t you worry about that.” Barrington paused, looking down at his feet. “It’s someone we can trust.”

  It took me a moment. “You mean Doctor Boateng?”

  He looked at me and then turned away guiltily.

  “How did you do it?” asked Freddie.

  “It’s all set out in the Witchdoctor’s text. There’s a procedure for creating a new Bokor when another one dies. It’s called “the Summoning”. Doctor Boateng and I realised that it was the only possible solution. So, as soon as all of you boys were cured, about ten minutes before the end of the eclipse, we gave Mr. Caratacus a dose of the zombie poison. It was the only way of making the Summoning work without actually killing him. We had a short time before the poison took hold to perform the procedure. I won’t bore you with the details as it looks like Turnpike here is already struggling to stay awake. Suffice to say t
hat ten minutes later, Mr. Caratacus was quickened and we had our new Bokor.” Again he looked down at his feet. “So, as I said, Mr. Caratacus will go back to teaching Latin and none of us will have anything to worry about. He will of course have no memory of anything that has happened and will no longer be any danger to any of the boys, or anyone else for that matter.”

  Well, it was a clever plan and I suppose I should have felt relieved that Mr. Caratacus would no longer be a threat, but all I could think about was that Latin lessons would be as boring as Biology from now on. And my favourite teacher was now a zombie-slave.

  “Sir, one thing I don’t get,” I said, “is how you knew that there was going to be a Quickening even though you didn’t know who the Bokor was.”

  “Yes, quite. Well it all happened back in the Gold Coast, a long time ago, as you know. The account that you heard from young Pontevecchio was accurate, up to a point. My wife disappeared along with a number of others the night before a full lunar eclipse. There was general hysteria and rumours which under normal circumstances one would dismiss as superstitious claptrap. But they were all I had to cling to for any hope of finding her.

  There was one man, a Witchdoctor, who had seen a raid of that kind before and was able to point me in the direction of a Bokor in Dahomey. Ultimately I learnt that the raid had been carried out at the order of the Grand Bokor and he had given my Angela to one of the Lesser Bokors as a gift.”

  Barrington turned back to stare out of the window. I could see that the recollection of these events pained him. But it was interesting that no expression of pain had crossed his face when Head Matron had entered the room. It’s difficult to know the ways in which grown-ups think about these matters, but I supposed that he got used to trying to separate the memory of his wife from the quickened zombie that took her form.

  I was beginning to feel tired.

  “There are a number of Lesser Bokors all over the world. The Witchdoctor suggested that I return to England to follow the Bokor of Grand Bois, the Loa of the Forest. He said that it was that Bokor who had taken her.”

  “Caratacus!” said Freddie.

  “Not quite,” said Barrington, turning towards us. “That Bokor was a monk at the Priory of Saint Katherine.”

  “The Wandering Monk!”

  “Ha, yes! I have heard that nickname before! It seems that he had been an anthropologist in Western Africa before the War and there was a particular area of his research which drew the attention of the Party.”

  I couldn’t help noticing Barrington’s expression of disgust when he explained that the monk began to work hard for the Party and spent time before and during the War in Germany and Poland applying his work on the handicapped and the disobedient. He continued, “It was shortly after my arrival at Talltrees that the monk, Brother Benedict, passed away. Well, it was something that we arranged to happen.”

  Even though I was sluggish with fatigue, his use of the word “we” stuck in my mind, but I was too tired to follow the strand of thought.

  “I thought that the danger would die with him,” continued Barrington, “but obviously he had agreed with Mr. Caratacus that he should be given the zombie-poison. I also realised that the fact that Head Matron and Miss Prenderghast did not also pass away as a result of his death meant that Brother Benedict must have summoned a new Bokor to succeed him. Of course, I had no idea at that time who the new Bokor was. And I certainly had no idea that he might be a teacher here at Talltrees! But then, of course, many years later, just recently, I noticed the coincidences – the disappearances of a number of boys, a great deal of focussed activity by Head Matron and Miss Prenderghast, and, most importantly, the approach of a full lunar eclipse. Turnpike,” he said, noticing the fact that I couldn’t keep my eyelids from drooping, “perhaps you should get some more sleep.”

  I blinked and widened my eyes in an attempt to stay awake. “Sir,” I said, “what about all the old zombies, the Quickened?”

  “Well some of the ones you saw the other night will never return. Their brains were destroyed - in fact, I saw that you dealt pretty effectively with a rather nasty one in the Junior Changing Room. Doctor Boateng and I buried them out in the Forest later that night. But there are plenty of other Quickened in the world, and that, I suppose, meant that Mr. Caratacus was rather a powerful man.”

  “Really, Sir?” said Freddie, his mouth wide open. “How many are there?”

  Barrington chuckled. “I couldn’t possibly tell you how many. But let’s put it this way, Strange: Next time you are walking down the high street, have a look around you and just count how many people look like they are just going about their lives like robots, stamping ration books, pushing prams, stacking shelves. Who knows? There may be thousands, tens of thousands. But we do not need to worry about them. They will continue their meaningless routines and none of them will be any trouble to the rest of us. Right then, Strange, I think we should leave Turnpike to get some more sleep. Come on!”

  In spite of my desperate struggle to stay awake, I just couldn’t. My eyes were closed and there was nothing I could do to keep them open. I heard Freddie and Barrington making their way towards the door.

  “So, Sir,” asked Freddie in a hushed tone, “well if Mr. Caratacus was working for the Party, does that mean that you and Doctor Boateng are in the Resistance?”

  I was trying desperately to cling on to consciousness. That was it: When Barrington had said “we”, it felt like he was talking about the British Resistance. But that couldn’t be right, I thought, we were always told that the Resistance was crushed long ago, when my father was taken.

  “Don’t ask impertinent questions, Strange,” I heard Barrington say in his more familiar, magisterial voice as he closed the door behind him. “You’ve got five minutes to be in prep and if your shoes are not polished next time you cross my path, it’ll be Detention, okay?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  As they left the room, I thought I could hear Barrington saying something else about the underground battle against Nazi oppression and an eternal struggle against the Bokors, waged down the centuries far from this small woodland corner of the world.

  But I was falling asleep and it was all gobbledegook.

  If you enjoyed the first instalment of the Talltrees Trilogy, why not try the second, Tom Turnpike and the Shadow-Stalker?

  Tom Turnpike and the Shadow-Stalker

  W. E. Mann

  “Three sacrifices of human flesh must the creature make. Three sacrifices and its transformation will be complete.”

  Talltrees is plunged into a cruel, dark winter. Storms batter the school, rationing is taking a heavy toll and there is a killer at large.

  When the Gestapo arrives and begins to turn over the school in search of who-knows-what, an atmosphere of suspicion and deceit descends. A series of curious clues and coded messages leads Tom and his friends to the heart of the British Resistance and the perpetrator of a string of bizarre murders.

  What kind of creature would commit these killings? What can be done to stop it? And what has attracted the attention of a band of threadbare travellers who have set up camp nearby?