The Turnarounders and the Arbuckle Rescue (16 page)

‘We have to be careful, though,’ said Seth.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Alfie. ‘Act normal. Be cagey. Don’t do anything not 1939ish!

‘That,’ said Leo ‘But I think he meant being careful round the Falls!’

Valen snorted. ‘You wouldn’t want to fall through one into another time, now would you? That would be really stupid!’

‘Alright,’ said Alfie, annoyed. ‘I get it!’

‘Bearing in mind what Ambrose said – about us having an affinity with Time and all that. I think it would be best if we didn’t go near any alone,’ Seth suggested.

‘Agreed,’ said Ralf. ‘We work in pairs or threes and systematically check the places where each Fall appeared. Look for any signs. Weird shadows. Strange noises. All that stuff…’

They shared out the Falls they knew of and arranged to meet again the next day.

‘We also need a plan for the long term,’ said Seth, thoughtfully. ‘Until I can figure out how these things work I think we should check them every day.
And check them at different times. Maybe they only appear at certain times of day?’

‘If anybody finds anything or there’s a problem we should contact Valen,’ said Ralf. ‘She’s central.’

Her bedroom window faced the High Street and they’d all keep an eye on it. If she added another line of tape to the middle pane it would mean they’d found something and they would all meet as soon as possible on the Village Green.

‘In the meantime, I’ll try to work out if there’s any kind of logic to when and where the Falls appear,’ said Seth. ‘Maybe I was wrong before…maybe there’s a chance… a very slim chance…’ He pushed his glasses back on his nose and examined the map, frowning. ‘There must be a pattern,’ he said. ‘We just have to find it.’

CHAPTER ELEVEN

King Crossed

The next day, Leo and Valen got off the train at Dark Ferry Station and headed off to their separate schools. Ralf and Seth stayed on until Short Face Cross, annoyed that they would have to get through a whole day before continuing their search for Time Falls. School promised to be nothing more than a string of irritations that would distract them from what they really wanted to think about and the day immediately lived up to expectations. Seth was pounced upon by Winters to run an errand before he’d even made it across the quadrangle and Ralf went through the front doors alone.

Unusually, at a time when most Crispin’s boys should be hurrying to chapel, there was a group of pupils hanging round the main notice board chattering excitedly. Ralf waited until the fifth formers drifted off and then elbowed his way to the front to take a look. In the centre of the board was a large, canary yellow, notice:

‘DO YOUR BIT!’

Grand Fund Raising Event for a new Lifeboat.

£600 needed.

Raffle to be held. Grand Prize Draw December 21st.

All monies collected will be donated to a central fund; however, the team that raises the most will have the honour of naming the Lifeboat.

Underneath this notice was a smaller note in the familiar fine handwriting of the Headmaster:

St. Crispin’s has a long and glorious history of partnership with the Armed Forces and many pupils have friends and relations who are currently serving this country in uniform. I know you will recognise the importance of fund raising events such as this, as part of the greater war effort and I expect this undertaking to be viewed as part of the school tradition of faithful and selfless service. To that end, I have registered a ‘School Team’ and very much look forward to the launch of King’s Hadow’s new lifeboat, which I confidently predict will be named ‘The Crispin’.

Good Luck to all Crispin’s Boys!

M. S. Sinclair.

Merits for each ticket sold. Upper and Lower school Prizes.

Service Award and Special Mention to the pupil who sells the most.

Ralf felt a presence at his shoulder. It was King,

‘All those raffle tickets to sell,’ the tall boy said. ‘My father’s friends will buy mine, of course, but who will buy any off you, I wonder?’ He strode off whistling.

Ralf walked to class, bristling. King was such a self-satisfied little toe-rag and he knew exactly how to make Ralf feel small. What he wouldn’t give to see that arrogant smile wiped off his face once and for all? He spent morning prayers and most of his Algebra lesson muttering to himself and thinking up imaginative but unlikely ways to achieve this aim but, after kicking a ball around with Will Tomkins (who’d apparently forgiven Ralf for saving his life and was the only other village boy in the lower school), he felt much better.

By the end of the day, he’d all but forgotten the conversation. He was too focused on their forthcoming search for Falls.

As arranged, the five met on the Village Green. Leo and Valen slipped off to snoop around the church and Ralf, Seth and Alfie hurried along the lane towards Sparra’s Pond. Seth was especially keen to see for himself the place where the mysterious shadows had appeared. He rushed ahead of the other two, throwing questions over his shoulder at Ralf and a beleaguered looking Alfie, who was pulling faces as he trotted to keep up.

The pond, when they got there, was smooth as black glass. Not a breath of wind touched the sheltered spot and the water looked deep and forbidding, even in the bright afternoon sunshine. The three boys stopped at the edge and gazed across the water to the shade of Tarzy Wood on the opposite bank.

‘So how do you want to do this?’ Ralf asked, trying to make his voice sound matter-of-fact. He was feeling incredibly nervous. Despite Seth’s insistence that they could only have been caused by a Time Fall, the memory of the shadows tugged at the back of his mind. Their sheer wrongness troubled him. There was something else too. If they did, in the face of his gut feeling, find a way home here today, he wasn’t at all sure how he would feel about it. Somehow, it just felt too soon to say goodbye.

‘I think we each cover a third of the area around the pond, looking closely for all those signs Ambrose told us about,’ Seth said. He was already dumping his gas mask box and satchel at the base of a tree.

‘Split up?’ said Alfie, resigned. ‘Yeah, man, ‘cos that’s always a great idea in the movies. I’ll get eaten by one of those shadows and you won’t even notice!’

‘Just stay within sight, okay?’ Ralf added his gas mask and bag to Seth’s and set off, at a slow walk, clockwise round the pond. Seth strode round to the other side and started to slowly retrace his steps. After a brief hesitation, Alfie turned his eyes from the other two to the ground and began to pace anti-clockwise.

They took it slowly. The sun dipped in the sky and normal, afternoon shadows began to pool at the base of the far bank where Seth was searching, under patches of reeds and the first line of trees.

‘Don’t you think it’s weird?’ Alfie’s voice floated strangely across the water.

‘What?’ Ralf snapped. The tension was really getting to him.

‘The quiet?’ said Alfie timidly.

Ralf stopped. He’d been about to say that it was always quiet there but Seth had stopped too, his head cocked, brows furrowed. ‘No insect noises,’ he said.

‘No ducks, either,’ said Alfie.

‘No birds at all.’ Seth’s voice was little more than a whisper.

Ralf whirled around searching, but the trees and sky above were empty. He took a shaky step towards the pond and peered down into the water. ‘Can’t see any fish,’ he said. ‘No frogs or tadpoles. Nothing!’ He was aware that his heart had picked up a pace and, for a second, thought the others must be able to hear it. There was no other sound to cover it.

‘Keep looking,’ said Ralf, steeling himself. ‘We’ve nearly done the circuit. Five more minutes.’

They resumed their plodding, eyes to the ground and, as he searched, Ralf made a conscious effort to calm himself. He’d only gone another couple of yards when Seth called.

‘Here!’

Pinpricks did a vigorous tap dance on the back of Ralf’s neck as he sprinted to Seth’s side. He was joined a second later by Alfie.

‘There wasn’t anything like this where we came through, was there?’ said Seth.

Ralf shook his head, unable to speak. What could have caused this? What the heck had been on the other side of this Fall? Alfie made a soft little whimpering sound in the back of his throat. They stared at Seth’s discovery.

In the long grass, edges sharply defined against the lush green, was a rectangular shaped patch about six inches across and a foot long. Everything within the rectangle was scorched and black as if marked by a giant brand. At one end of the shape lay the pitiful body of a field mouse, charred and crisp, frozen for eternity in a desperate, doomed leap to get away.

The dead mouse scuttled in and out of Ralf’s head long after they’d left the pond and returned to their own houses. He kept seeing its charred remains the
next morning too and dreaded the imminent school day more than ever because he just didn’t think he’d be able to concentrate.

He felt a bit better after the noisy train ride, especially when Leo and Valen reported they’d found nothing in church. And, surprisingly, felt better still when he got to school because King was not in Prayers. Following the herd of boys through the main foyer after Chapel he was amused to see his former friend sitting with Tank outside the Headmaster’s office. Could it be that Crispin’s most popular boy was in trouble? Ralf smiled all the way to English. With King out of circulation he might be able to relax in Winters’ History lesson after lunch. If he was really lucky he might not have to see King’s conceited face for the rest of the day.

Unfortunately, true to form, Ralf was not lucky. He was ten minutes into his History lesson (and actually quite enjoying it) when the door opened. King marched into the room holding a clipboard and pencil. Tank followed him, straining under the weight of a gigantic box.

‘Raffle tickets, sir!’ King announced importantly.

Ralf and Seth exchanged looks of disgust.

Mr Winters turned from the blackboard. ‘And how did you come upon this honour, Julian?’

‘Oh, I volunteered, sir,’ said King, hugging his clipboard, ‘– to be Lower School Monitor, I mean. I thought it was rather important.’

‘Nothing to do with missing my lesson, then?’

King was a picture of innocence. ‘No sir!’

Even Winters’ enormous moustache couldn’t hide his smirk of disbelief.  He sighed and threw his chalk on the desk.

‘Right. Pens down, boys. Listen to Kingston-Hawke.’ He perched on the edge of his desk and looked at King expectantly. ‘Well? What’s the procedure?’

‘Well, it’s quite simple, sir –’

‘Oh, good,’ said Winters drily, ‘then even I should be able to understand it.’

‘Er, yes – well  – each boy takes his tickets and I write down the name and the ticket numbers here.’ He tapped his clipboard with the pencil.

‘You heard him, lads. We’re talking selfless service here and the gratitude of the Headmaster. What’ll you have, Alloway?’

Charles Alloway, in the front row and, therefore, first to have to commit himself, looked like a deer caught in headlights.

‘I’ll take ten sir,’ he stammered eventually.

‘It’s a minimum of thirty, sir,’ said King.

‘Thirty tickets!’ Winters exclaimed. ‘That’s a bit steep isn’t it?’

‘It’s not that many, sir. I’ve got fifty,’ he said proudly. ‘And it is for a very good cause.’

‘But thirty tickets! Whose idea was that? ‘

‘Well, sir, actually –’

‘Yours?’ Winters asked, sternly. ‘Got your eye on the lower school prize, have you? Really, Julian...’

King coloured at the use of his first name but said nothing.

Winters shook his head then turned to the class. ‘Look here, everyone. Take as many tickets as you think you can reasonably sell in the time you have available to you. I shan’t have you ducking out of prep to do this –’ he glanced at King, ‘– however good the cause.’

King wasn’t pleased. The tall boy’s lips, Ralf noticed, looked quite bloodless.

‘It’s quite all right, sir,’ Alloway said suddenly and with a nervous glance at King. ‘I’ll take the thirty.’ His beady black eyes would not meet Winters’. ‘After all, King’s Hadow does need a lifeboat.’

Winters waved King on, resigned.

Paul Aston, next on the list, gave King a conspiratorial smile and signed up for thirty tickets. Sallow faced Stephen Hills also took thirty, as did Philip Ward and Ross Childs. By the time King got to the second row the class was talking animatedly about how and to whom they’d sell and a brave Neil Benson raised the stakes by taking forty.

‘That’s the spirit!’ King called, exultantly.

Ralf grimaced. The thing about King was that he was liked. Ralf couldn’t understand why so many of the boys looked up to him but they did. There seemed to be a competition going on to see who could impress him most.

‘This could get interesting,’ said Seth next to him.

Ralf nodded glumly.

By the time King got to the back row, the class had reached fever pitch and were falling over themselves in their efforts to outdo each other. Peter
Mallison, a pimply boy with a bad case of body odour looked determined.

‘I’ll take fifty,’ he said rashly.

‘Well done, you!’ said King with a triumphant smile. The class cheered and several boys came across the room to pat Mallison on the back. Ralf wondered whether any of them had even spoken to him before.

Tank slowly counted out the stack of tickets on to the desk. Then it was Seth’s turn. King stood stony faced next to him.

‘Well, Goldberg?’

‘Could I have five, please?’ Seth asked, with a faint smile. ‘I think I know enough people now to be able to sell that many.’

Without even looking at him, Ralf could tell King was furious. The temperature in the room seemed to have dropped a couple of degrees. Sure enough, when Ralf looked up he saw King staring at Seth with pure hatred.

Winters didn’t notice. He gave Seth a reassuring smile and turned to Ralf.

‘No heroics, now Osborne,’ he said.

‘How many?’ King asked stonily.

Ralf swallowed. How had this managed to turn into such a big thing? He couldn’t waste time selling raffle tickets now. He had other things to do. Selling thirty of the stupid things would be almost impossible. And even if he could, he couldn’t leave Seth isolated as the only boy not taking the full quota. Shaking off the feeling of foreboding that gnawed at him, he took a deep breath.

‘I’ll take five too.’

King was scornful. ‘Typical!’

Winters, however, was having none of it. ‘Most of the King’s Hadow adult male population is gone, Julian, did you know that? And do you know where they have gone?’ He glared at King. ‘They’ve gone to war! And to those villagers that remain, whatever their age, they have left their responsibilities. Unless I am very much mistaken, Osborne will be back on the boats this week now that the coastal defences are finished.’