The Black Book

Chapter 32: Captain R. J. Hayfield

  “FIRST, we must bring back the president,” Matthew told his foster sisters.

  It had stopped raining, but the Booklords still hovered above the three kids.

  “How do we do that?” Stephanie asked.

  “Here,” Nora started, reaching out for the book. “You write his name behind the page to bring him back.”

  “Behind his name?”

  “Yeah, sure. That’s how Marcos did it.”

  “But we don’t have any pen,” Stephanie reminded her siblings.

  “Must it be a pen?” Matthew asked her, using his finger. “There! I guess the president is now back in the White House.”

  As a pharaoh, that is!

  “Are you sure he’s back?” Stephanie asked.

  “I think so,” Matthew replied. “There’s no reason to doubt it, is there?”

  “Your finger?”

  “It’s worked before, you know,” he pointed out.

  “Let’s go home, please?” Nora begged them both.

  “Yes, we can bring back Fat George and Rupert from there now we know how to,” Matthew said in agreement, nodding.

  “And what of them?” Stephanie asked him, briefly looking up at the black figures still hovering above them.

  “We’ll . . . eh, just have to borrow the book a little while longer,” Matthew stammered, glancing at the spirits waiting high above their heads.

  And without a sign of annoyance, the black figures slowly faded away.

  “Thanks,” Stephanie called out to them.

  “Hold hands,” Matthew told his sisters and pressed one of his fingers on his name. The change was as expected. They appeared in his room and in their own clothes.

  “Fat George,” Stephanie reminded her adopted brother and he took a pen from his table and went back to his bed with the book.

  Nora swung around in the room, happy to be in it for once in her life. “Isn’t it good to be home?” she kept asking herself, laughing.

  Matthew wrote ‘Fat George’ behind the fat boy’s name on the opposite page of the leaf and did this for Rupert as well. He felt a strange feeling in his stomach when he saw the spread of ink blotting out the priest’s name on the first page and wondered why this had happened to just that name alone.

  Meanwhile, in an ice cream shop in town, a fat boy had appeared in samurai armor near Mr. Green, the ice cream man, while he counted his day’s earnings. “Whooaaaa!” Mr. Green shouted, almost losing his balance when he looked up to behold this masquerade. “You almost killed me back there, kid.”

  The kid was Fat George.

  “Where’s the princess?” the boy demanded from the ice cream man in Japanese.

  “Say what?”

  “You have hidden her! The Shogun demands her now, or else!” A sharp-looking, curved sword was immediately brandished and Mr. Green’s remaining customers hurriedly started leaving.

  Rupert was more unlucky.

  He appeared in a girl’s locker room in loincloth and the girls ran out, screaming.

  “Mom’s gonna kill me!” he swore.