It was after Mr Kowalski had gone and they were doing the dishes that Alex’s mother remarked how strange it all was.
‘How do you mean?’ asked Mr Howard. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘we’ve always thought Mr Kowalski didn’t like people – he never lets anyone into his house, he hardly says good morning – and then he comes round here and talks like that for nearly three hours. Why?’
‘Perhaps he’s changed,’ said Mr Howard. ‘Like Callum.’
‘And why does he hate animals and children so much?’ Alex’s mother went on. ‘Why’s he so desperate to keep them out of his garden?’
‘A lot of people don’t like animals and children.’ Mr Howard smiled at Alex. ‘Perfectly understandable.’
‘And what’s with keeping his curtains drawn all the time?’ said Mrs Howard, scrubbing at the last of the saucepans. ‘And all the windows tightly closed. Can you imagine how hot it must get in there?’
‘Perhaps he’s hiding something,’ said Mr Howard.
‘Hiding something… ?’ Mrs Howard frowned. ‘Like what?’
‘That,’ said her husband, slowly shaking his head, ‘is something we shall probably never know.’
And in that moment it occurred to Alex that something else you could do with Ctrl‐Z, was solve a mystery like Mr Kowalski in a blink.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
What we have to do,’ Alex told Callum as they walked to school the next morning, ‘is wait until he goes out, then I’ll go into his house and take a look around and see what he’s hiding.’
‘How are you going to get in?’ asked Callum. ‘He’ll have locked the door when he goes out, won’t he?’
Alex had thought of that. He had considered throwing a brick through one of the windows and breaking in, but decided there was no need.
‘He doesn’t lock the door when he’s just going out to the garden,’ he said, ‘and he’s out there every day. At four o’clock he has his tea sitting on the bench and usually falls asleep. He’ll be out there for at least half an hour.’
‘
Callum thought the whole thing sounded very risky and said so.
‘Oh, come on!’ said Alex. ‘I’m not asking you to come with me or anything! I just need you to keep watch. If you see him move back to the house, you press Ctrl‐Z. That’s all you have to do!’
Alex had thought of taking the laptop with him, but then remembered the time he had carried it into Mr Kowalski’s garden and dropped it. It would be safer to leave it with Callum.
Callum still did not like the idea. ‘If something goes wrong…’ he said. ‘It wouldn’t matter if anything did go wrong, would it!’ interrupted Alex. ‘Because if it did, all you’ve got to do is press Ctrl‐Z!’
Callum sighed. Since his accidents had stopped, life had been wonderfully calm and peaceful, and he felt a strong reluctance to do anything that might threaten that. On the other hand, it was very hard to say no to someone who had, only the day before, warned him that Lilly was about to abseil out of her window and suggested someone stop her before she fell and hurt herself.
Callum’s sister was feeling a lot better these days and she had always been an adventurous girl. After the warning from Alex, Callum had gone to her bedroom and found her with one end of a length of rope tied round the bed and the other round her waist, about to climb out of the window. He had given her a long lecture on the need to behave sensibly when recovering from an illness.
Alex had known what was going to happen, of course, because it already had, and he had used Ctrl‐Z to go back to before it happened so that Callum could stop it. When a friend did something like that for you, it was difficult to say no when he wanted a favour in return.
‘All right,’ he agreed. ‘Great!’ said Alex. ‘We’ll meet up in my room at about quarter to four.’
At exactly four o’clock, Mr Kowalski emerged from his back door with a mug of tea and a newspaper tucked under one arm. He strolled across his garden and settled himself comfortably on the bench.
Alex and Callum watched him from the window of Alex’s bedroom.
‘Right…’ Alex pointed to the computer screen on his desk. ‘The time’s all set. You remember what you have to do?’
‘I keep my eyes on Mr Kowalski,’ said Callum. ‘If I see him coming back to the house, I press Ctrl‐Z.’
‘And?’
‘And if you haven’t come out after ten minutes, I press the button anyway.’
‘That’s right,’ said Alex. ‘And don’t look so worried. I keep telling you. Nothing can go wrong!’
As he made his way downstairs and out of the front door, Alex could hear his mother working on her beloved Triumph in the garage and he smiled cheerfully to himself as he jumped over the low wall between his house and Mr Kowalski’s. A moment later he was at the back door of number 16, quietly pushing it open and stepping inside.
It was dark in Mr Kowalski’s kitchen, but once Alex’s eyes got used to the light that filtered through the curtains and blinds, he could see the room was surprisingly neat and tidy. It was clean, everything looked normal, and he made his way through to the hall.
It was even darker here, though he had no trouble finding his way around. All the houses in Oakwood Close were built with the same floor plan and he looked briefly into the dining room – in his own house, his father used it as an office – before making his way through to the sitting room.
It was so dark in this room that it was almost impossible to see anything, and there was an odd, musty smell in the air that Alex couldn’t quite place. He wondered about turning on a light, but decided not to in case Mr Kowalski noticed it from the garden, and went to the front window to pull back one of the curtains instead. It didn’t move. Feeling with his hands, he found it had been nailed to the window sill.
He should have brought a torch, he thought. Even as his eyes got used to the dark, he couldn’t see anything beyond the vaguest shapes, and he was wondering if he should go back to the house and get one, when he froze. He had heard a noise. It was a faint sort of rustling sound that he thought at first he might have imagined, but no… there it was again.
There was someone else in the room, and they were moving – moving quietly, but definitely towards him.
It was time to leave and Alex took a step towards the door – or tried to, but his legs wouldn’t move. They seemed to be glued to the floor and try as he might he could not move them so much as an inch. There was something holding them, something wrapped around the lower half of his legs. Reaching down, Alex could feel something warm and slightly rough to the touch under his fingers, and he knew immediately what it was.
It was a snake.
It had to be a very large snake. There were two coils of it round the bottom of his legs, each of them almost as thick as Alex’s waist, and they were heavy. He could feel the weight of them against his feet, and when he tried to push them away it was like pushing a wall. Nothing moved, except that the coils tightened slightly, increasing the pressure against his legs. There were three coils now instead of two and they were moving, winding themselves slowly further up his body.
Well, Alex thought, at least he had solved the mystery. He knew why Mr Kowalski kept the doors locked and curtains drawn now. If you had a large snake in your house you would want to make sure that it didn’t get out. And you wouldn’t let people inside, either. He had a feeling there were laws about keeping large and dangerous pets and the snake curled round his legs was certainly large…
The three coils had become four now and were still moving. As they passed his waist, Alex opened his mouth and began calling for help. He shouted, shouted as loudly as he could – it didn’t matter now if Mr Kowalski came. In fact, he wanted him to appear. But he didn’t. Nobody came. The double glazing fitted to the windows of the houses in the close was highly effective soundproofing and nobody heard.
The coils were up to his chest now and drawing tighter. It was getting difficult to breathe. Alex tried to think. How long would it be bef
ore Callum realized he had not come out and pressed Ctrl‐Z.
He had told him to wait ten minutes and he had a nasty feeling that by then it would be too late.
Did Ctrl‐Z still work after you’d died, Alex wondered? Could it bring you back to life and take you back to before it had happened? He had once joked about the possibility with Callum, but this wasn’t a joke at all…
The coils covered his body up to the top of his chest now. His arms were pinned against his sides and breathing was almost impossible. It was an effort to expand his chest to pull in even the smallest gasp of air and he had given up shouting for help. Did snakes try to swallow you while you were still alive, he wondered? He didn’t fancy that. Probably better to have someone hit you on the back of the head with a piece of piping than…
It was getting difficult to think. There were little coloured lights in front of his eyes and then suddenly –
Suddenly there was a bright light and the sound of someone’s voice. ‘Boze móje!!’
‘Alex?’ Mr Kowalski’s face had appeared, slightly blurred, swimming in the air in front of him. ‘You don’t move! You hear me? You keep still!’
A slightly unnecessary instruction, Alex thought. There hadn’t been much chance of moving for some time.
‘Oh, you are bad boy! You are very bad boy!’ Mr
Kowalski was saying, and Alex was trying to apologize when he realized the old man was talking to the snake. He had grabbed one end of it, the tail, and was unwinding the coils as he spoke. A bit later, the pressure on Alex’s chest began to ease. He could breathe again and he sank to the floor. Slumping on the carpet, his back resting against the wall, he could actually see the snake for the first time.
It was truly enormous. Well over ten metres in length, its coils seemed to cover most of the floor. Mr Kowalski had a section of it slung over his shoulder and was hauling it across the room, pushing it into a huge wooden chest that ran along one wall. As he put one part of the snake in the chest, another would start to slide out and Mr Kowalski would determinedly grab it and push it back in, talking to it all the time as if it were a naughty child.
Finally, the last section of the snake had been stuffed into the box and Mr Kowalski closed the lid and snapped a bolt to keep it in place. He came back to Alex, knelt down and stared anxiously into his eyes.
‘How are you, Alex? You all right?’
‘I‐I think so.’
‘I am fool. I am such idiot.’ Mr Kowalski smacked himself sharply on the side of the head. ‘I knew this happen one day. You wait here. I get you drink.’
Mr Kowalski left, but was back a moment later with a glass of water. Alex sipped it gratefully.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Kowalski,’ he said. ‘I know I shouldn’t have –’
‘No, no!’ Mr Kowalski waved his hands. ‘Is all my fault. You are young boy. You want to know why old man next door lives in house with curtains drawn and windows locked. You are curious. Of course you are.’ He gave himself another smack on the head. ‘I knew this happen one day.’
Alex was beginning to recover. ‘What… what sort of snake, is it?’ he asked.
‘Is African python,’ said Mr Kowalski. ‘Biggest snake in the world.’ There was a touch of pride in his voice as he spoke.
‘Why… how… where did you get him?’
‘Ah… Long time ago. Twenty years.’ With a sigh Mr Kowalski sat himself on the carpet beside Alex, his back against the wall. ‘When I come to this country, I have no family, no friends, no one. Only Saskia.’
‘Saskia?’
Mr Kowalski nodded. ‘Engineer on ship give him to me. I keep him in my pocket. Talk to him. Tell him all my worries. Ask what I should do. He sleep in bed with me. He curl up by my feet…’ He smiled. ‘He is good friend.’
‘But then, time pass, and he grow bigger.’ Mr
Kowalski’s smile faded. ‘He grow big, then more big, then more and more bigger. My daughter she say, “He is dangerous animal. Is against the law. Get rid of him!” But how can I? Saskia is friend. I cannot get rid of friend! My daughter she say, “I not visit you any more while you have snake. You choose.” I say “OK, I choose snake.”’ Mr Kowalski let out a long breath. ‘Then he eat dog.’
‘A dog?’ said Alex. ‘He ate a dog?’
Mr Kowalski nodded. ‘I try to keep him indoors. I close all windows and lock doors, but one day he escape to garden. Catch Mrs Penrose dog and eat it. So I put up fence and barbed wire. Try to keep animals away. And children. I not want him to eat children. So I feed him. Feed him lot of food so he is not hungry. But lot of food make him grow more big. I put up curtains at window, so no one see him. I make it dark so he move less, but… I don’t know… is always something can go wrong.’
Mr Kowalski looked across at Alex. ‘My sister she say give him to zoo, but how? If I call zoo, maybe they call police. Maybe I go to prison, I don’t know. If I know, maybe I do it, but I think –’
Alex never heard what Mr Kowalski thought because at that moment the old man disappeared, along with his house and sitting room, and Alex was standing in front of the desk in his bedroom, with Callum beside him.
‘I keep my eyes on Mr Kowalski,’ Callum was saying. ‘If I see him coming back to the house, I press Ctrl‐Z.’
Alex took a moment to remember when he was.
‘So why didn’t you?’
‘What?’
‘Why didn’t you press Ctrl‐Z?’ demanded Alex. ‘Mr Kowalski came back to the house, but you didn’t do anything!’
Callum thought for a moment. ‘Is this one of those “you’ve already done it and come back again” moments?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ said Alex, ‘only I nearly didn’t come back at all. What happened?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Callum. ‘I haven’t done anything yet, remember?’ He frowned. ‘But I must have pressed Ctrl‐Z, mustn’t I? Otherwise you wouldn’t have come back from wherever you’ve been.’
Alex realized this had to be true. ‘All right, maybe you did press it, but not until it was nearly too late,’ said Alex.
‘Well, I’m sorry,’ said Callum, ‘but if I didn’t press it, it must have been because I was struck by lightning or something. You know I wouldn’t have left you there without a reason.’
‘No, no, I know that…’ Alex was beginning to recover. ‘I’m sorry. I’m just a bit… You see, that snake nearly killed me.’
‘A snake?’ Callum’s eyes widened. ‘You were nearly killed by a snake?’
Alex took a deep breath and began telling Callum about the snake, about not being able to move, and about Mr Kowalski coming in from the garden, when his mother appeared at the door.
‘I need someone to hold the exhaust in place while I screw in a bracket,’ she said, looking at Alex. ‘D’you mind?’
‘Can I do it later?’ asked Alex. ‘Only I need to talk to Callum about –’
‘Come on!’ His mother briskly closed the lid of his computer with one hand and swept up Alex with the other. ‘You can both come. It won’t take long. Five minutes. Ten at the most.’
‘I think I know why you didn’t press the button now,’ said Alex quietly as he and Callum followed his mother down to the garage.
Much later, as Alex was lying in bed that night going over the events of the day in his head before falling asleep, he wondered what he was going to do about Mr Kowalski. Twice now, at times of great danger, the old man had come to his rescue. He had saved Lilly from being burnt alive and now he had saved Alex from being crushed by a snake. Again, Alex faced the problem of how to thank him for doing something he didn’t even know had happened.
It would be nice this time, Alex thought, to do something more than bake him a cake, and there was one thing he could do for his neighbour. The last thing Mr Kowalski had said, sitting on the floor of his living room, was that he wanted to know whether, if anyone found out about him having the snake, it meant he would go to prison.
And it couldn’t be too difficult to
get a piece of information like that…
CHAPTER TWELVE
Alex rang the police straight after breakfast the following morning. He used the number you were supposed to use if it wasn’t an emergency, gave his name and address, and asked what would happen to his neighbour if anyone found out that he was keeping an African python. Would the snake be confiscated and would the owner have to go to prison?
The answer was not good news. The woman on the phone told him that it was against the law to keep any exotic pet that was a danger to the public and that, yes, the penalties could involve confiscation, a fine and even imprisonment. Alex thanked her, put down the phone and went over to his computer.
The first thing he needed to do was go back five minutes to before he had made the phone call, but when he turned on the laptop, nothing happened. He pressed the On switch several times, but the screen stayed completely blank and there was no little green light to say the power was on. Alex felt a brief moment of panic before he realized what had happened. In all the excitement last night, he had forgotten to turn the laptop off and now the battery had run down. All he had to do was plug it into the mains and then he could use Ctrl‐Z.
Except that he couldn’t find the lead. He searched his room for several minutes and then remembered he had left it at Callum’s house the day before. Using Ctrl‐Z took a lot of power and the laptop needed recharging at least every two or three days. It was no problem. He would walk round and get it.
‘Wish your mother luck!’ said his father, as Alex came downstairs.
Mrs Howard was standing by the front door, wearing a smart black suit, a white blouse and a slightly nervous expression.
‘She’s off to a job interview,’ his father explained. ‘But she’s going to get this one, aren’t you, love?’ He beamed at his wife. ‘Don’t forget. If the car breaks down or anything, you ring and I’ll come and pick you up.’
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