The Wizard In My Shed

by Simon Farnaby

  “Cheer up, sweetheart. It might never happen,” he offered.

  “It already has,” countered Rose, as she swept past him. “It’s called life.”

  Walking down her little garden path was like wading through a jungle, so overgrown was the front lawn. Inside the house, things were as they always were. The red carpet was a faded pink and covered in crumbs, and the walls and shelves were curiously empty. After Rose’s dad died her mum, Suzy, had decided she didn’t want any reminders of the past, and so had hidden away all the smiling photographs of the whole family.

  Suzy was sitting in the lounge watching television, working her way through a box of Congratulations assorted chocolates as usual.

  If you had to describe Suzy’s face you would say it was ninety per cent lips. She had an enormous mouth with large white teeth like piano keys. She had a slender nose, large hazel eyes and scraggly brown hair that she used to keep in a trendy ‘bird’s nest’ style, but now resembled an actual bird’s nest, complete with the odd chocolate wrapper.

  Rose’s brother Kris was looking in the mirror and plucking his eyebrows.

  “Oh, here she is!” Kris announced as Rose walked in the door.

  Kris had major vanity issues. He couldn’t pass a mirror without checking that his eyebrows were correctly plucked or his hair perfectly styled. It wasn’t that Kris wasn’t good looking, he was, the problem was that he thought the only thing going for him was his symmetrical face, so he needed to make the most of it at all times. More than anything, it was the fact that Kris insisted on spelling his name with a K that told anyone all they needed to know about him. Appearances were everything.

  “Have you seen this?” Kris said. He shoved his phone in Rose’s face just long enough for her to see that her audition video had now reached three thousand views.

  “I don’t need to see it, do I? It WAS me. I was there!” Rose snapped back.

  “What are you going to do about it? It’s embarrassing!” rasped Kris krossly – sorry, crossly.

  Rose frowned. “It’s embarrassing for me, not for you.”

  “But what if people find out that you’re my sister?” her brother whined.

  Kris had a long list of ways that his sister embarrassed him. She didn’t seem to care what she looked like, she tried to be good at things that she wasn’t, her best friend was a guinea pig – those sorts of things. Rose was a little confused by his embarrassment. She could sort of understand it while they were briefly at the same school, but he had left now and worked in the men’s fashion store Top Boy in the Oldwell Shopping Centre. So what was he worried about?

  “Why don’t I just change my name then?” Rose offered, sarcastically. “Or maybe I could move somewhere else. Disappear altogether. Would that suit you?”

  “You’d do that for me?” Kris said, hopefully. He wasn’t good at picking up on subtle things, like sarcasm. He was even worse at irony. He thought that irony was something you did when you wanted to get the creases out of your trousers.

  Rose huffed loudly and went to sit next to her mum on the couch. Perhaps she was looking for some words of comfort, but they were not forthcoming. Instead, mother and daughter sat together in silence.

  Suzy was watching a re-run of last Saturday’s Britain’s got Talented People. She was currently viewing the favourite to win, a hot new magician who had come from nowhere to blow away the judges, but she liked the behind-the-scenes sob stories the best. She liked them because she felt like she was a sob story herself.

  Suzy had been a singer in a band called The Mondays. They’d had a few hit records in the nineties, but their star had faded. She then had a decent career as a solo singer, but after Rose’s dad died, it wasn’t the same. Rose’s dad, Barry, had loved to hear her sing. He’d never missed a performance. Seeing an empty chair where he should have been every night was too much for Suzy. So she’d stopped singing altogether.

  “You get used to disappointment, darling,” Suzy said suddenly now. “You want my advice? Give up.”

  “Give up singing?” said Rose, stung. She had decided that being a singer was her call to greatness. She’d seen her mum on stage when she was little and thought how cool it would be, to be up there, rocking out for all she was worth. And if her mum saw how good Rose was, then she might not be so sad any more. Maybe it would get her off the couch and singing again too?

  “I mean, look what happened to me,” Suzy grumped, chewing a coconut Congratulation. She was still wearing her pyjamas, which helped her case. “And I had talent.”

  Rose bit her lip. She knew her mum was sad and angry. But to say Rose had no talent? To say that to her face?

  “That’s just plain rude!” cried Rose.

  Suzy just thrust her hand into another box of chocolates. Then she appeared to remember something. Something very important. “Ooh!”

  Rose wondered if her mum was about to apologise for saying she had no talent …

  “It’s half price fish and chips tonight.” Suzy stuffed a ten-pound note into Rose’s hand. “Here, go to the chippy after you’ve done your homework.”

  Rose stomped upstairs to her bedroom, buried her head in her pillow and sobbed for Britain. If she’d been on a talent contest for the best at crying, she would have won hands down. She would have been Eurovision champion, Olympic champion, World Cup winner, the lot, if only those prizes were awarded for crying instead of singing, athletics or football. But they weren’t. So instead she was just the winner of the Little Girl Sobbing in Her Room on Her Own contest, for which there were no prizes but a wet pillow.

  Just as her tear ducts had been pumped dry, Rose heard a familiar, comforting squeak squeak from the floor. It was Bubbles, her ever faithful guinea pig. She immediately popped his cage open, pulled him out and gave him an almighty cuddle.

  Bubbles was always there for Rose. He never criticised her, said hurtful things about her, or posted embarrassing clips of her on YouTube. Not yet anyway. Rose loved Bubbles right down to his fuzzy yellow fur and big black eyes, and Bubbles loved Rose right back. He showed her as much by pushing a small, oblong poo from his bottom into her lap. Rose was used to this. Guinea pigs pooed approximately every twelve seconds, and there was nothing you could do about it, except be glad they were dry and easy to dispose of.

  Rose watched the poo bounce off her knee and on to a map of the world that she had opened up on the floor the night before. She’d been trying to puzzle out where she was going to live when the world finally realised what a brilliant singer she was. London? New York? Tokyo? But now Bubbles’s poo had fallen on Paris, could it be a sign?

  Bubbles started nibbling at the case of Rose’s smartphone that was sitting on her bedside table. Surely this was another sign. But a sign of what?

  Rose switched the phone on. She didn’t hear the familiar sound of pinging texts because she didn’t use her phone to text her friends. She didn’t really have any friends except Bubbles, and it was no use texting him as he didn’t read or write. Or have thumbs. But Rose had bought the phone with money she’d saved up after her dad had died.

  Suddenly Rose realised WHY the phone was a sign. Her dad!

  Her dad used to tell a story about being in a situation exactly like hers. Except without the talent show, and YouTube video, and guinea-pig poo. But other than that, really similar. When her dad was a kid, he’d told his family that he wanted to be an inventor. They’d all laughed at him and told him to forget such lofty ideas. The Falveys had been sheep farmers for generations, and that was his destiny too.

  “Get back to shearing sheep!” they told him.

  But Rose’s dad never gave up on his dream. When he was sixteen years old, he ran away from the farm and didn’t come back until he was a doctor of engineering. And from the moment he returned with an invention to shear sheep without giving farmers bad backs and sore knees (he called it the EasyPeasyShear – perhaps you’ve heard of it?), his family were so proud of him, and so ashamed of themselves for doubting him.


  YES! thought Rose, a plan crystallising in her head. This was what was going to happen to her! She was going to run away and prove herself, become a famous singer, come back and hand out big bags of cash – and then her mother and brother would be happy and proud at last.

  Plus, she had ten whole pounds in her possession. Surely that would get her to Paris? She could walk to London and get some kind of cut-price bus the rest of the way there.

  “Bubbles, you’re a genius!” said Rose.

  She put the guinea pig on her bed and got to work packing. Bubbles responded by laying another oblong poo on Rosie’s duvet as if to say, “I wouldn’t be too sure, Rose, would a genius do that?”

  But alas

  Bubbles could not

  do a jot

  to stop her!

  Packed and ready to go, Rose skipped down the stairs past her mother and brother and to the front door.

  “Don’t forget extra scraps!” shouted Suzy.

  “Get me some for when I get back from work!” Kris said as he checked that his quiff was still straight. “And I want the low-fat batter!” he added. He knew full well the chip shop had no such thing, but asking made him feel better about himself.

  Rose took one last look at her mum sprawled on the couch and Kris staring at himself in the mirror. Don’t worry, she thought. I’ll save you.

  She imagined for a second that it was a normal household once more. One where Kris wasn’t looking in a mirror twenty-four/seven and her mum could bear to hang up old pictures of the family without bursting into tears. Then she straightened her shoulders, stepped outside and closed the door behind her.

  If her mum and brother had paid Rose any attention instead of being wrapped up in themselves, they’d have seen her bulging backpack and Bubbles being pulled along behind her on an extra-long dog lead – though this was less unusual than it sounds. Rose would often take Bubbles for long walks. They were good for his immune system.

  Rose stood on the front doorstep and took a deep breath. She felt like Dick Whittington, except with a guinea pig instead of a cat. Now, which way? She knew that London was east of Bashingford and used the compass on her smartphone to orientate herself.

  Paris, here we come! she thought.

  Now Bashingford is a funny old place. It has the most roundabouts of any town in the world. Plus the whole place is carved out of woodland, so that as soon as you veer off a path, road or roundabout, you are suddenly thrust into woods. And sure enough, it wasn’t long before Rose came to the end of a pavement, and the trees began.

  She looked down at her guinea pig.

  “We’ll just keep going east, Bubbles,” she said with determination.

  By way of reply Bubbles laid another tiny poo. He’d been doing this since they left the house; partly because he was frightened to death, and partly in the hope that should they get lost, Rose could follow the poo-trail back to the house, like Hansel and Gretel.

  Bubbles knew about Hansel and Gretel because he’d spent many a night sitting on Rose’s shoulder reading her books with her. Rose liked fairy stories, but Bubbles usually found them too far-fetched, and seriously lacking in guinea-pig characters.

  As they walked on, the wood became more and more dense and the path became more and more not a path. The sun was going down and the sky had turned grey. The birds, who had been happily tweeting away, were falling silent. The ground was growing damp and Bubbles was getting wet feet, which were his least favourite kind of feet. It reminded him of when Rose hadn’t changed his sawdust for a while, and it had ended up soggy with his own wee. He was very much regretting Rose’s decision to run away.

  As Rose walked into her fifth invisible spider’s web, she began to regret running away too. Maybe her mum was right. Maybe being a singer was a silly dream. Maybe her dad was wrong. Maybe she wasn’t destined for greatness. Maybe she was just going to be normal like everyone else. And what would be so wrong with that?

  Well, she answered herself, then everyone will stay unhappy. So keep moving!

  The sun was completely gone by now and the wood shrouded in shadows. Rose was getting cold and, to make matters worse, she kept remembering things she’d forgotten, like Bubbles’s vitamin C powder. Rose prided herself on always making sure Bubbles was well looked after. He’d never once been to the vet. And now here she was, on the road without his medication. How could she have been so irresponsible? There was no other conclusion; running away had been a terrible idea.

  Rose was just about to turn back when she heard a noise behind her.

  CRACK.

  Her heart stopped beating in her chest, then started beating again moments later in her ears. She had seen enough scary films to know the sound of a twig cracking under someone’s foot.

  CRICK.

  Another sound. Rose bent down to scoop Bubbles into her arms. As she did so, she saw, out of the corner of her eye, a dirty piece of cloth darting behind a bush. Who or what was following her? Was she being hunted by a child-eating dishrag?

  Rose turned away from the cloth creature and tried to tiptoe quietly in the other direction. She was chilled to the bone to hear the noise now close behind her.

  CRISH, CROSH, CRISH.

  Rose figured she had two choices.

  1. Run as fast as she could.

  2. Turn and face the creature in the hope of scaring it away.

  She looked at Bubbles for advice, but he just stared back at her with his wide, vacant eyes and did a poo. Finding Bubbles no help whatsoever, Rose went for option 2.

  Quicker than a flash she turned and …

  WHUMP!

  She bumped straight into the cloth creature.

  A hand shot out and grabbed her wrist. It was a grubby hand with dirty fingernails. It was like something from Dawn of the Dead or Night of the Dead or one of the many other such films with ‘dead’ in the title that Kris liked to show her to give her nightmares.

  Rose screamed. “Aaaaaaaaaaaaargh!”

  Given the circumstances, Bubbles would ordinarily have pooed himself again, but it had been a scary day and he had no poos left to poo.

  “Child!” shouted the cloth creature, in a low, gruff, man’s voice. “I meaneth thou no harm!” He released Rose’s wrist and held both hands up in the universal ‘I meaneth thou no harm’ gesture.

  Rose backed away. “Who … who are you?” she said. “What do you want?”

  At this point, Rose noticed the man’s shoes. They were very peculiar moccasin-type things with layers and layers of strapping that went all the way to his knees. His trousers were … cowhide? Or leather? And he wore a cloak of multicoloured rags.

  He raised his arms slowly and stepped into a ray of moonlight that was now poking through the trees. He had a long scraggly beard and matted dark hair with silver bits in it. His hat was pointy on top, and floppy at the sides. And … black? Purple? It was hard to tell. It looked like it had NEVER been washed.

  The same could be said for his face. Rose could make out high cheekbones and a long thin nose. His features had a quiet dignity. And then there were his piercing blue eyes. You could hardly look at them, they were so dazzlingly blue, like police lights. They were made even more striking by the dirt caked around them, so it looked to Rose like he was wearing dark make-up or eyeliner.

  “My name is Merdyn,” said the strange man. “This land be Purgatory?”

  “What does ‘purgatory’ mean?” asked Rose.

  “’Tis another word for Hell.”

  Rose blurted out a nervous laugh. “Yeah, you’re in the right place. But we call it Bashingford.”

  Merdyn tilted his head in a perplexed fashion, much like a dog does when trying to understand a basic command. “Ba-shing-ford,” he said slowly, stressing each sound like it was a foreign word.

  Rose thought him a very peculiar man indeed, but reckoned he meant her no harm. He looked lost. Confused. Perhaps he was homeless or something.

  “Where are you from?” she asked.

  “I did c
ometh through the Rivers,” he said, a hint of sadness in his voice. “Sent here against my will. But then, who goeth willingly to Hell?”

  “Well, yes. Most people come here against their will,” mused Rose. “Relocating from London mainly. A lot of businesses find it cheaper to …”

  Merdyn’s eyes started to glaze over as she talked. He was looking at something. What was it? Rose stopped talking and tried to follow his blue-eyed gaze.

  He was staring at Bubbles.

  Merdyn licked his lips. “Thou have bellytimber!” he said.

  “Belly … what?” said Rose.

  “Bellytimber,” Merdyn repeated impatiently. “Food. I am very hungry.” He snatched the guinea pig out of her arms. “Build a fire while I killeth it, we can have it with parsley and sage.”

  He was about to dash Bubbles’s head against a tree when Rose grabbed the traumatised animal back and pulled him to her chest.

  “This is my pet!” she shrieked. “His name’s Bubbles. You can’t eat him!”

  “All right then, what be this?” Merdyn reached over her shoulder and snatched a plastic bag sticking out of Rose’s backpack. It was Bubbles’s food pellets. He opened it and started shoving the contents in his mouth. “Hm. ’Tis a little dry but …”

  “That belongs to Bubbles!” Rose said, seizing it back.

  “Fine,” said Merdyn, irritated. “Then take me to thy lodgings. We will feasteth there. I shall taketh refuge with thee while I endeavoureth to escape this dread place and get back home.”

  “Erm, excuse me. You’re not staying at my house,” said Rose, alarmed. “I don’t even know you!”

  “Worry not, little one, I have monies. Much monies.” He dived into a pouch around his belt and flung some dirty old lumps at Rose. They looked like … pebbles?

  “Right,” said Rose. “For a start, that isn’t money. And for a finish …” She wasn’t sure where to finish. “Look, I wish I could help you, but I’ve got problems of my own, OK? So. Goodbye.”