Angel Boy (6 page)

Ten dollar bills!
Suddenly Leonard realised that he still had one.

He'd left the collecting plate on a stone seat in the fort entrance-way, but he still had the money. It would get him a taxi home if he managed to get out of here! He felt it crinkle in his top pocket. As for the cedies in his shorts, they wouldn't even get him a bag of plantain chips – which made him realise how hungry he was. His stomach rolled emptily and he was startled by its loudness. He was thirsty, too, but like a mouse he was going to have to lie low until later.

The fort was dark. There were offices here, and a museum, but not a chink of light was to be seen. If there was a caretaker, he or she probably lived down in the town. Leonard had the feeling that he was all alone..

He had to be patient, though. As the heat of the day went out of the timbers, the woodwork started to creak; and every creak sounded like a stealthy footstep…The street kids? Could one of them have wormed into the fort and right now
be prowling the place looking for ‘Angel Boy'? Leonard's eyes were as big as a civet cat's, his ears as sensitive as a radio telescope as he held his breath to listen and moved the curtain to look around. Who else was in this place?

He stayed where he was – and sitting there, hunched and hiding in the church recess, another scary thought seeped into Leonard's mind.
Slaves. Ghosts. The spirits of the people who had been locked up in the fort to die in the condemned cell
. In his head he saw the sculpted skull above the cell's entrance, and he imagined its hollow sockets staring through the dark of the night, even through the walls…

He believed in Jesus, and the badge on his school shirt said he believed in the Holy Ghost. But what about
people
ghosts? What about those forebears who had died metres away from where he sat? Were their spirits free at night to escape from that locked dungeon of death?

He had to get out of here!

Carefully, he pushed the recess curtain aside.
It squeaked on its rail, made enough noise to wake a million spirits – but he pushed himself through, and out he came into the vaulted air of the nave. He could see better here – there was a moon. It filtered in through the glass, and let him see his way to the church door.

Please God it wasn't locked!
And it wasn't. A turn on the ring handle and he stepped out into the moon-wash of the courtyard. He kept his eyes away from the dungeons and the condemned cell, and to bring good luck he crossed himself the way the Catholics do, before running under the archway to the fort entrance. There was just a chance that it was only bolted from the inside, and he could slide the bolts.

Some chance! As he walked towards it, squinting his eyes now that he was out of the moonshine again, he saw the big entrance door with security locks as well as bolts. He tried it just in case – and as he looked through the crack, his body froze. Outside sat a street kid, the leader, the tribal-cut daddy. His head lifted from
his chest as the door rattled.

Oh, no!

Leonard scuttled away from the door.
They were waiting for him! They knew he was still in here!
He turned and ran back into the courtyard. His stomach rolled with fear. He ran beyond the courtyard on to the battlements where cannon balls were heaped behind a line of black cannons, pointing out to sea. He went to the ramparts and stared down. And there on the rocks beneath him were two more street kids, crouching and staring silently up at him. His stomach seemed to eat his heart.

Leonard Boameh had never felt so alone in his life. Shivering on the ramparts of Elmina Castle, he looked at the heavens – but he didn't see God; he saw the same stars and moon that are forever blind to human suffering. And he crumpled. He collapsed there on the worn flagstones, and sobbed.

But there was another exit from this place!
There was the Door of No Return! Could that be
opened from the inside without a key? And would the patrolling street kids be watching it? He pulled himself up from the flagstones and made his way, stooping, to the infamous door, pressing himself tight against the wall. He stared at the doorway. Its shape was hard to see against the moonlight sea, but there it was, firmly closed, its stunted bars letting just a glimmer of light in – and so small that only a cat could get through.

There was no street kid beyond it, up at this level. There might be one waiting below – but for now, it was safe to try the door.

It was locked. Of course it was locked. And although Leonard tried his head for size – because where a head and shoulders can go, don't they say the body can follow? – there was no way that even a skinny kid could get out through here.

He stood back. This way was hopeless, too; which meant there would be only one time to get out, and that was when people were around. Tomorrow. But how could he do that, with the
fort guarded by the street kids? Even if he jumped from the battlements without breaking his legs or his neck, they would get him. He sank down on his haunches as he realised that these kidnappers were not going to give up on him. That rotten ten dollar bill had proved that he was a brother worth having…

L
eonard spent the night behind the pyramid of cannonballs furthest from the fort entrance. Desperate to keep awake, he leant uncomfortably against them and tried to work out what to do. His one big hope would be that the young woman guide would be on duty the next day. She would listen and she would help him. If that didn't work, he could try walking out of the fort with the visitors and dodging the waiting street kids, or persuade tourists of the trouble he was in. But would they be able to listen to him if the short-fuse guide was around? There was one
other skinny hope – that a different guide altogether would be on duty tomorrow – but he was just going to have to find out.

Next morning, the sun woke the seabirds first, terns
krik-krikking
in the distance, and the gulls screeching down where the fishing boats came in. Then light, rather than warmth, woke Leonard, who had slid into a fitful sleep despite himself. He stretched, remembered with a slam of his hopes where he was, then shut his eyes again so as not to look at the light coming straight at him. And as he opened his eyes to stare at the shadowed ramparts, he saw the sun's after-image on his retina almost as clearly as the sun itself, blinding him to the stonework before him.

And suddenly he had an idea. Where had that retina thing happened before? Not long ago. Where had he been blinded for a while, and what had he seen instead? It was where there were
bars, a pattern of bright bars in a rectangle.

His hyped-up brain quickly gave him the answer. It had been at the Door of No Return, where the light through the bars that first day had been so intense that he hadn't seen the two backpackers standing against the walls beside it.

So couldn't someone else standing there be invisible too – until they could mingle in with the rest of the group? Couldn't he make himself invisible for a vital few moments?

Yes! That's what he could do! If he could keep himself unnoticed and uncounted until that gate-door was opened, he could run out and get down to the beach.

So long as no street kids were still waiting for him!

But it was his best chance – although Leonard knew that wasn't saying much; not much at all.

Stephen Boameh had spent a day fruitlessly searching for his son; and on the second morning
he was up at dawn to check the quarries and the roadworks again. But he saw nobody new, just the same overseers who had shouted him away the previous day.

He telephoned the hospitals, and he telephoned the police; he telephoned the Blessed Wisdom Primary School, and he telephoned the homes of the friends from Leonard's school whose numbers he could find. But he drew the same blanks as before. Nobody had heard anything about his boy.

Nana wasn't singing hymns today. She hadn't been singing them the day before, either. Instead, she was praying. Her eyes when they were open were on the telephone; and her eyes when they were closed were on the picture of Jesus that she carried in her head – with him saying, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me.'

Every time the telephone rang she jumped like someone scalded. But there was no news. And as the first day and night ran into the second day and night, and the third morning dawned,
her thoughts and those of Leonard's father began to take a sinister turn.

Was Leonard never to be heard of again?

Leonard waited silently against the wall by the doorway. From where he was standing, everything was bright and focused in the light coming through the bars of the Door of No Return. But his memory and his senses told him that it wasn't the same the other way round. For a while he would be invisible to the visitors.

As he heard the first party coming round the fort, the voice told him the identity of the guide. It was the big man who had tried to grab him the day before. Leonard's pleasant young woman had let him down: she wasn't at work today; and his skin-thin hope shrivelled.

He was now standing where the deepest shadow seemed to be; near enough to the door for the contrast to be strong – bright sunshine
and deep darkness – but not so close that the light spilled on to his body. He stood, and he waited; he knew from before that once the tourist party was in the courtyard, it would be about fifteen minutes before they reached him, before all their eyes were staring at that terrible door. He stood as still as he could. And he wondered if his school shirt might be too bright, even in the darkness; so he took it off. He held it behind him, and he waited, and waited…

At last they came.

‘Here we're comin' to the in-famous Door of No Return…' This man didn't have the quiet, reverent sympathy of the young woman.

‘Jus' down by here…'

It was a good-sized group, about fifteen of them, a mixed pick-up from the entrance. They came shuffling and focusing their cameras into the small space – a squeeze for camera-carrying tourists, but big enough in its day for slave-stripping and branding.