Cracks.
Boundaries.
Think like an ant.
Flash. Ralph knew the perfect place.
The cellar. He was going to make a hole in the cellar wall.
His mother had once told him that the walls of these houses were ‘paper thin’. She meant there was only one course of brickwork separating their house from that next door. And Ralph knew for a fact that at the far end of the cellar, in the large, airy space that ran under the lounge, the wall was not just paper thin, but crumbling. Put a finger in the mortar between the rows of bricks and you could scrape out damp sand as easily as you pleased. Scrape away enough and a brick would come loose. Remove enough bricks and you had a hole. Make a hole and you had a passage. Crawl through the passage and you had the answers.
It was as easy as that.
As easy as waiting for Jack to go out…then complaining that you couldn’t find your roller blades anywhere.
‘I can’t find my roller blades, anywhere, Mum!’
‘They’re in the cellar,’ she said, ‘with all your other junk. If you took the trouble to clear it like I’ve asked, then—’
She never finished the sentence. Ralph was already down the steps and shouting, ‘OK, OK, don’t go on. I’ll do it.’
It was really no trouble at all.
He flicked on the light: a single bulb on a dodgy-looking wire that smelt of years of toasted dust. It was creepy in here, in the belly of the house. Dampness clung like a fine moist film and your nostrils soon became hopelessly clogged with the cloying scent of paint-brush cleaner and the sweat from a pair of faded wellies. Mum used to tell him when he was little that his gran would come here to feed biscuits to the dragon, because if you didn’t the house would not be warmed. The ‘dragon’ Ralph discovered at the age of nine, was an old gas meter and the ‘biscuits’, coins. Although the meter had been long since disconnected, something called a shilling still sat on top of it, just to keep the fire of the dragon burning. There was no dragon present at the moment, just a niggling breeze from the bare space surrounding the conduit of a gas main, stabbing Ralph’s neck like a vampire’s bite.
He found his roller blades right away. What was clutter to mums was organised chaos to boys like him. He plucked them off the rusting, oil-filled radiator that Mum had refused to send to the tip in case of ‘unexpected dragon emergencies’ and hid them inside the battered, leather case, which had not seen daylight for the past three years and was now a hidey hole for woodlice and mould. This was a ploy to keep him here longer, just in case Mum popped her head into the cellar.
For several minutes he did tidy up, not with any thoughts of making it easier to locate anything, but just to carve a path between the mops, brooms, winemaking equipment, buckets, tools, paint cans and paste board, an old hamster cage, the leather football he’d never inflated (and the pump he should have inflated it with), endless pieces of skirting board, the bathroom mirror he’d cracked with a toffee hammer and his mum wouldn’t throw out for fear of bad luck. He parted it all like Moses at the Red Sea, until the far wall, Jack’s wall, was cleared of everything but cobwebs and whitewash.
Ralph prodded a likely-looking brick. It moved – only a fly’s wing, granted, but the avalanche of sand it produced was spectacular. He found a small chisel from the toolbox on the shelf and quietly began to scrape.
The first brick came out like a baby’s tooth, bringing a spike of cold air with it. Ralph sucked the chill deep down into his lungs. It wriggled and turned inside his air sacs, forcing a dry cough out of his throat. It felt like a warning not to continue, as if some mummy was walled up here and its burial place was cursed with a death cloud. Ralph covered his mouth and shone a torch through the hole. Something glinted. Glass, perhaps? Through a gap this small it was impossible to see. He switched off the torch and struck the next brick.
His intention was to take out twenty. That was what he thought his body would require: a gap four across and five layers down, a hole that wouldn’t take long to rebuild. But after twelve or so bricks he stopped and jumped back when two fell out of their own accord and a row of stone blocks just above his head made a frightening, grinding noise. If the house collapsed, he was going to be in trouble (and horribly squashed). So he stacked the last bricks on the pile beside the meter and played the torch into the hole again.
Surprisingly, the light did not travel far, but struck what appeared to be a large, vertical cardboard box (he reached through and tapped it lightly), which was propped at an angle against Jack’s wall. It was blocking out the major part of the hole, which meant he could squeeze through under cover.
Cool.
But squeezing was easier imagined than done. Head and shoulders went through well enough, but teetering on his tummy with his feet off the ground and nothing to grab onto on the other side was a bad fall waiting to happen…
Crunch.
He landed on the cold, damp floor next door, rolled and banged his head on the cardboard thing (it was surprisingly firm). His hair and sweater were now full of ‘gubbins’ (as his mother would say). An explanation would have to be invented, but he’d think about that once his foray was done. Right now, he needed to see Jack’s cellar.
With fear springing shoots in every pore of his body, he peered into the deepest depths of the crypt. It was surprisingly empty. Frighteningly empty. Frustratingly empty. No vats. No cages. No phials of frothing liquid. No chains. No skeletons. No scientific instruments. Nothing. Just a strong smell of damp and a pair of wooden shelves.
Sturdy white shelves – with jars on them.
Tall bell jars. A little run of them reflected the torch beam back. The beam flickered. Went out. Ralph panicked and struck the torch against his thigh. It flickered again, not unlike his nerves. Stupid batteries. He must work fast.
He hurried to the jars, raising the light to a large one on the end. There was a miniature oak tree inside it, standing up on its tangled roots. Ralph frowned in thought. He had seen small trees several times before when he’d mooched around garden centres with his mum. Bonsai, they were called. Japanese people liked to grow them. But this tree didn’t really look like one of those. It wasn’t in a tray of soil for a start. Its leaves and acorns were withered and dropping, and there was a tiny, grey object among its branches. Ralph trained the light harder. Ugh! It was a squirrel.
He tried the next jar along. There was an old, red telephone kiosk in it.
In the jar next to that was a double-decker bus.
Something seriously weird was going on here.
He dipped to the shelf below. Here was something he hadn’t seen Jack unloading: sweet jars, four of them, hidden in the shadows. He checked the first. It appeared to be filled with fluff. Fluff? Why would Jack keep a jar of fluff?
In the next was some vaguely orange-coloured goo that made huge smears up the sides of the glass.
In the next were thousands of toenail clippings. Probably some from fingers, too.
With a squeak of disgust, Ralph turned and walked towards the hole in the wall. That was it. He was going home. What kind of freak kept nails in a jar? And…oh! His hand shot up to his mouth as it occurred to him now what the fluff could be: tummy fluff, dug from Jack Bilt’s button, and the orange stuff was probably ear wax. And the fourth jar? No. He didn’t want to know.
But now came a find even more disturbing: the truth about the cardboard box. As he stumbled against it he saw the shape properly.
It was a coffin, propped up against the wall.
There was a lidless coffin in Jack Bilt’s cellar.
In the House
At this moment, Ralph had choices. First there was the very sensible choice, which was to scrabble back through the hole he’d made, rebuild the wall (no matter how loosely), retrieve his roller blades from the old suitcase, turn off his torch, dust himself down, hurry upstairs to his loving mum, shut the cellar door and never think of Jack Bilt ever again. Ever.
And then there was the not-so-sensible c
hoice.
This one is not so easy to describe, for it draws upon that twitching inquisitiveness that seems to be at the root of every young person’s mind. That ticklish seed of deep curiosity which makes a boy determined to plant his feet, grit his teeth and say to himself, ‘No. I will be brave. I have come this far, I will not be defeated. I will go on and discover the truth. Hurrah.’
(Comes of reading too many adventure stories, perhaps?)
Whatever the reason, the not-so-sensible choice is the one Ralph took. He gritted his feet and planted his teeth (or something like that) and shone his torch right over that coffin. Was it possible? Was it really possible that Jack was a vampire who slept in the cellar – at an upright angle? Ralph tutted and shook his head. Of course not. Now he was just being stupid. Vampires only came out at night, and he’d seen Jack walking in blazing sunlight. Any blood-sucking creature of darkness would have gone up in smoke at the first bright ray. Unless Jack was a new breed of vampire? What if he’d developed a special type of sun block, made from the ear wax he kept in that jar? Ugh. It didn’t bear thinking about, rubbing ear wax into your skin. That was too gross, even for a vamp. He trained his light on the coffin again. Was it possible to tell if a coffin, like a bed, had been recently slept in? He put his hand inside it and touched the base. Something immediately scuttled through his fingers. With a yelp he pulled away.
A woodlouse tumbled onto the floor.
Perfect, steel yourself, he thought. Be a boy of iron. Take three deep breaths then sneak through the door at the top of the cellar steps – and snoop.
He took six deep breaths. It made him dizzy, but in a few woozy strides he was at the cellar door. The handle was loose and rattled as he turned it. If Jack or Knocker was on the other side… Dry-mouthed, he pressed his ear to the panels. Nothing. You could have heard a ghost sleepwalking out there. He opened the door and stepped into the hall.
It was cold and dead. Dead in the sense of dark and unwelcoming. Even Annie’s taste in floral wallpapers could do nothing to improve the gloom. He tiptoed to the front room and switched on the light.
The place was a tip, far worse than Inspector Bone had described it. There were unwashed cups on every surface (some growing layers of green mould and fungus), socks and pants and other bits of clothing sitting in a heap beside the fire, a bowl of cold porridge on the arm of the sofa and piles of old newspapers strewn across the floor. The loose board Annie had crowbarred out still lay, bottom up, on top of its neighbour. Cold air was blowing through the open gap. It was creepy, bizarre. How could anyone, even Jack, survive in such a dump? The only shred of comfort was the two-cushion sofa. But even that was covered with dog hairs and tobacco and powdered with splashes of cigarette ash. On the floor beside the hearth sat Knocker’s dog bowl, also unwashed and visited by flies. Next to it, a dented watering can. Ralph couldn’t see the point of that. The only plants in the room were a bunch of ferns in a large ceramic pot and they were turning brown with dehydration. Looking round, there were only three things of serious interest: a cluster of shopping bags huddled in the bay; a single wardrobe minus its door; and just beneath the window from where he’d done his spying, a flimsy trestle table, bowed at its centre, supporting an object that was covered by the same blue plastic sheeting shutting out the light from both main windows.
Eeny, meeny, miny, mo: he went to the bags.
To his disappointment, they were filled with tools. Trowels, chisels, clamps, hammers, an electric drill, a spirit level. Ralph clicked his teeth and stood away. Tools were the trademark of a proper builder. And all of these items bore the scratches and batterings of extended use. So Jack wasn’t lying about his profession? But why carry his kit in plastic bags? Why not a toolbox?
Another mystery.
He turned to the wardrobe that wasn’t. There were no shelves and no hanging rail as well as no door. But up the inside walls were two tall columns of coloured light bulbs, which made it look like a cheap magician’s cabinet. Ralph thought about stepping inside it. But he knew about children who stepped into wardrobes: they met lions and witches on the other side. So he circled it warily, knocking the wood. As far as he could tell, it had no mirrors, levers or hidden panels, but on the floor of the cabinet he did find something.
A tiny white van.
It was lying on its side when Ralph picked it up, as though cast away by a spoilt child. There was a bright blue logo across the back doors, but the words had blurred into the sweep of the design, making it impossible to read a name. The same was true of the number plates. Elsewhere, however, the detail was stunning. Especially underneath, where it was possible to trace the silver exhaust pipe all the way up into the engine manifold. You could even see rust on the big box silencer. And when Ralph opened the driver’s door (by actually turning a handle down), he was amazed to see a minute orange lunchbox tumble off the passenger seat, into the foot well of the cab. A pair of microscopic furry dice were dangling from the rear view mirror. A map book was wedged into a pocket of the door. Ralph had kept many toy cars in his time, but never one quite as lifelike as this. To his shame, he was tempted to steal it. But the urge soon passed and all he did was set the van down on its impressively realistic tyres and move across to the trestle table. Gingerly, he lifted one corner of the sheet.
The side of a fish tank came into view.
Inside the tank was a very small house.
Ralph thought, at first, he was peeping at a dolls’ house. But it wasn’t made of plywood, and it wasn’t a toy. It had brick walls blackened by chimney smoke, battlements, gargoyles, a weed-ridden flight of concrete steps with lion statues at either side, and a turret with a pointed top. Ivy was creeping round broken, shuttered windows. Water was dripping from a leaking gutter. Slates were missing from the bowing roof. There was even a small horse chestnut tree growing out of the narrow strip of earth which surrounded the house like a filled-in moat. It was just as if Jack had uprooted the place from a model village and planted it here.
But why put a house inside a fish tank?
Without any water?
Without any fish?
When it didn’t even look like a sunken castle?
At the side of the tank lay a magnifying glass. Ralph stared at it blankly. It never occurred to him to pick it up and look at the house more closely. Instead, his gaze drifted to the corner of the table, where the tub of hundreds and thousands was sitting, kept like fish flakes by the aquarium.
He didn’t have time to ask himself why. At that moment, he heard a sound that set his vertebrae rattling like a row of falling dominoes. A clicking, twisty, metallic sort of snap. The snap a key makes when it half-turns in a lock.
Jack.
Jack was home.
JACK!
Ralph dropped the plastic sheet and ran: out of the front room, straight into the kitchen. One supposes that it must have been the terror that addled him, but yes, he missed the cellar door completely. By the time this error had registered in his brain, it was far too late to double back. Knocker’s leg was tapping out its rhythm in the hall. Jack’s hacking cough was only just behind.
He dived for the door to the garden. The glass panes shuddered as he worked the handle. A chip of dried putty hit the floor. A shocked sparrow fluttered from its water bath outside. But that kitchen door simply would not budge.
In the hall, Knocker stopped knocking. Ralph heard a growl building in the dog’s throat. The terrier had heard him or smelt his fear. Knocker knew that mischief was afoot.
‘Git out the way,’ Jack said, coughing.
Knocker yapped.
Ralph’s temples pulsed.
Closer, closer the knocking came. The three-legged doggy was heading for the kitchen.
Now there was only one way out.
At the rear of the kitchen was a downstairs toilet. Annie, dear Annie, had used it all the time, rather than climb the stairs to the modern one. A couple of years ago, when the daft old darling had locked herself out, Ralph had managed to w
riggle through the narrow casement window which Annie left ajar for that extra bit of freshness. What could be wriggled in through could be wriggled out of. But Ralph was bigger and wider now. Oh what a dreadful choice: have his ankles bitten by a mutant dog and his ear wax collected and his toenails thrown into a jar in the cellar – or try that window?
He tried that window.
But not before he’d closed the toilet door.
Quick-thinking, that. Knocker could bark or scratch at a door, but he wasn’t able to open a door. Ralph was pretty certain of that.
He stood on the seat and opened the window, punching it out until its hinges groaned, wedging it in place with its metal handle. All he had to do now was climb onto the cistern, get his body through the gap and wriggle his bum like an insane halibut. He raised his foot, just as Knocker thudded into the toilet door. So great was the throb of wood that Ralph missed his footing and almost struck his head against the window recess. He put out a hand to steady himself and managed to rip three or four sheets of newspaper off a hook on the wall. No toilet roll for the great Jack Bilt. No velvety, double-strength softness for him. Good old-fashioned, inky newsprint. Ralph scrunched it into his fist. If his fright level rose much higher than this, he could yet be needing a supply of paper.
But he made it through at the next attempt, greased by a fear that spread his tummy flatter than his mother’s ironing board. He raced down the garden, past the spreading blackberry brambles and scrambled over the crumbling wall.
Sanctuary. He slid into a sitting position, put his head between his knees and breathed a huge sigh.
And there he stayed for another five minutes, until the tickle of an ant running over his hand made him open his eyes once more. He smiled at the insect, which immediately disappeared into the folds of the paper in his fist. Worried that it might become lost and squashed, Ralph opened the paper and shook the ant out. That was when he noticed the leading article. A story about a scientist gone missing. A frizzy-haired professor who, like the whistling plumber Tom Jenks, had completely and utterly vanished one day.