The Hidden Boy Read online

  The Hidden Boy

  Jon Berkeley

  Here’s to Ray,

  Who left unexpectedly

  Having exceeded his brief as a human being

  by a substantial margin.

  Contents

  Bontoc

  Late

  Gone

  Listening

  Squeeze

  Lifetime

  Freezalizer

  Here

  Arkadi

  Tattoo

  Bees

  Fire

  Quorum

  Maize

  Sneaking

  Books

  Dust

  Dreaming

  Silence

  Key

  Boat

  Gifted

  Perched

  Trigger

  Swarm

  Head

  Question

  About the Author

  Other Books by Jon Berkeley

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Bontoc

  When Bea Flint opened the front door, just a few days before her little brother imploded, she found a stocky man in a sea captain’s uniform waiting on the doormat. His cheeks were flamingo pink, and a gray beard fringed his chin. He stuck out his hand abruptly and smiled.

  “Captain Bontoc,” he said. He looked as if he had just stepped off a packet of frozen cod.

  “Oh,” said Bea. She could not remember hearing the doorbell ring, but she supposed it must have. She kept her hands by her sides. “Are you looking for someone?” she said.

  “Aye,” said Captain Bontoc. “I’m looking for a Mrs. Flint. Or possibly a Mr. Flint.”

  “We have one of each,” said Bea. “Which would you prefer?”

  The captain looked slightly sheepish. “Not absolutely sure, missy. Somebody named Flint bought a raffle ticket in aid of the Salty Dogs Retirement Fund, but the ticket got a bit wet, so it’s hard to read. I’m here to deliver the prize.”

  “What did we win?” asked Ma from over Bea’s shoulder.

  “You’ll be Mrs. Flint,” said Captain Bontoc, removing his cap. He held out the ticket stub. “The name’s a bit blurred, but you can still make out the address. Somebody here is the lucky winner of a Blue Moon Once-in-a-Lifetime Adventure Holiday.”

  Ma turned the ticket over in her tattooed hands. “I don’t remember buying this,” she said.

  “Maybe Pa bought it,” said Bea.

  “Never mind who bought it,” said Granny Delphine from the narrow hallway. There were six people living in the Flints’ cramped apartment, and a crowd could develop quickly. Granny Delphine had round glasses that gave her the look of an owl in search of its supper. “Let’s have the details, if you please, young man,” she said.

  “Right away,” said the captain hastily, and he produced a small brochure from an inside pocket. “You’ll find it all in here,” he said. “The tour leaves from the Blue Moon office on Wednesday at eleven P.M. sharp. Groups of seven only. No pets, nontransferable, no cash prizes.”

  “How long is the holiday?” asked Ma, taking the brochure from the captain.

  “All the details are in the brochure,” said Captain Bontoc. “It’ll be the trip of a lifetime!” He replaced his hat and backed toward the stairs. “I must be off, if you’ll excuse me. Got some caulking to do.”

  In the days that followed Captain Bontoc’s unexpected visit, the brochure he had left seemed to travel around the apartment of its own accord. One day it would be wedged between the damp-wrinkled magazines in the bathroom, the next day perched on the edge of the kitchen table waiting to be swept off as someone squeezed past. Everyone in the Flint family read it at least twice, except Theo. He just looked at the pictures.

  The brochure came to rest beside Granny Delphine as she dozed in her armchair on the evening of their departure. Bea was searching for her binoculars when she spotted it, and for what must have been the tenth time she picked it up and looked closely at the picture on the cover. The words BLUE MOON ONCE-IN-A-LIFETIME ADVENTURE HOLIDAYS curled across the sky in large yellow letters, and the closer you looked at it the more adventure you could see. In the foreground was a tree with many trunks and broad branches radiating outward like spokes. A banyan tree, said Bea to herself. She was more often to be found reading encyclopedias than anything else, and she knew about such things.

  There was a platform built in the tree, and a tent pitched on the platform, and a large family who appeared to be having the best time you could possibly have in a tree, or anywhere else for that matter. They were swinging from ropes, they were picking enormous fruit, they were sliding down the sloping roots and calling to one another with their hands cupped around their mouths, the way people do only in pictures. A woman in a safari suit busied herself at a cooking fire, smiling like a dentist’s assistant. A saucer-eyed monkey peeped from between the banyan leaves, and a striped snout could just be seen in the shadows among the roots. Tall mountains stood like crooked pegs in the distance.

  Bea’s eyes returned to the base of the tree. There was not much she didn’t know about animals, yet the creature snuffling among the tree roots was strangely unfamiliar. It looked like a miniature pig with zebra stripes, except that zebra stripes were seldom bright green, as these were. The details were frustratingly small. Bea glanced at her sleeping grandmother, then at the old lady’s round spectacles, resting next to her knotted hand on the arm of the chair. Bea hesitated for a moment, then picked them up and placed them quickly on her nose.

  The springy wire arms of the glasses curled around her ears like live things, and she sat back on her heels, startled. The picture on the brochure seemed to leap toward her. She could see now that it was swarming with life. There was an animal behind almost every leaf on the tree, and the air hummed with fat honeybees. The smoke from the campfire billowed into the sky, and in the far distance great birds hovered over the mountains.

  Something was missing from the picture too, but it took her a moment to realize what it was. The small boy who had been swinging from the branches when she first examined it was nowhere to be seen. Bea turned the brochure over, thinking that she must have seen him on the back cover, but he was not there, either.

  A muffled snort made her look up quickly at her grandmother. Granny Delphine herself appeared different through the glasses. Her expression was sharper, and her nose curved like a beak. A network of wrinkles traced the contours of her face like a minutely detailed map. Bea was overtaken by a panicky feeling that she was seeing more than she was meant to. She tried to unhook the glasses from her ears, but their curling arms had tangled themselves in her hair. Granny Delphine was rubbing her eyes with her fingertips. Bea managed to free the spectacles just in time, replacing them on the arm of the chair as the old lady opened her eyes.

  “I was…just looking at the brochure,” said Bea quickly.

  “I didn’t ask what you were doing, child,” said Granny Delphine. She gave Bea a suspicious look. “Why don’t you go and help your mother?”

  Bea got up and hurried into the kitchen, where her mother was rummaging through the drawers, looking for plastic cutlery.

  Ma glanced at the brochure that Bea still clutched in her hand. “I still think there could be more information,” she said with a frown.

  “There’s enough,” said Bea, a little too quickly. “It wouldn’t be an adventure if we knew what to expect, would it?”

  Ma took the brochure. “‘Strictly groups of seven. No pets,’” she read again. “Why seven?”

  “I’m bringing Nails,” said Theo from the corner.

  “You can’t bring Nails,” said Ma. “It says no pets.”

  “We need seven people,” said Theo, “and we only have six
.” His voice whistled through the gap where his two front teeth had been.

  “Nails is a meerkat,” said Ma. “Meerkats aren’t people.”

  “Mine is,” said Theo. A stubborn look came over his face, and he disappeared into his bedroom.

  Granny Delphine appeared at the door of the kitchen. “What’s the holdup?” she said, and everyone jumped slightly and tried to look busy. “It’s quarter to ten,” said Granny Delphine, who never wore a watch but always knew the time. Her glasses had returned to their familiar perch on her nose, and her magnified eyes swept the room like spotlights. “The tour leaves at eleven, and if the brochure says we need seven people then we need seven people.”

  “I’m sure they’ll take six of us,” said Ma.

  “I’m sure they won’t,” said Granny Delphine.

  “Anyway, we are seven,” said Bea, “if you count Phoebe.”

  “So we are,” said Granny Delphine. “Run next door and get her; there’s a good girl. Tell her we’re leaving in ten minutes.”

  “We can’t bring the neighbors’ daughter just to make up the numbers,” said Ma, as the door slammed after Bea.

  Granny Delphine fixed Ma with a hard stare. “That child’s parents have been playing poker for eleven straight days,” she said. “They’ve lost their car, their couch and their cat. What do you think they’ll bet next?”

  Ma looked at Granny Delphine with a shocked expression. “They wouldn’t!” she said.

  “They can’t if she comes with us,” said Granny Delphine. She folded her arms crisply to close the subject. “Is the van packed?” she said.

  The van was not packed, but once Granny Delphine had asked the question it almost packed itself. Pa thundered down the wooden stairs two at a time, a suitcase over each shoulder. Bea, who always packed days in advance, disappeared into Theo’s room to make sure he had everything he needed in his backpack. Gabby ticktocked into the kitchen and began making a skyscraper of sandwiches from everything that remained in the fridge, including the frost.

  Gabby was thin and unsmiling, with short red hair that never seemed to grow. She had been in the apartment when they moved in, and since she had nowhere else to go she had never left. She moved like a clockwork toy, and she never uttered a word. Between her shoulder blades she had an imaginary key, which needed winding twice a day or she would come to a complete standstill.

  Before ten minutes had passed, Granny Delphine was trotting down the stairs like a silver-haired sheepdog, driving the stragglers before her. She carried a small crocodile-skin case inscribed with her name in silver letters: MRS. D. WALKER. The family Flint emerged onto the pavement under a darkening sky and began to jigsaw themselves into the van wherever they could find space among the cases and bags.

  Picture for a moment the passenger list of that rust-spotted vehicle. There was Pa, also known as Bald Mountain, wedged into the driver’s seat and drumming his fingers on the wheel. Beside him sat Theo, as small as Pa was big, holding on his knee an army camouflage backpack that twitched suspiciously. Next to him was Ma, who was trying to remember what she had forgotten to pack. In the middle row Granny Delphine sat like an alert owl, and Gabby wrote in a small green notebook with a silver pen, her elbow resting on a pile of sandwiches. In the back of the van Bea settled herself among the sleeping bags while they waited for Phoebe to appear. She wondered what the wilderness would be like. She pictured herself surrounded by teeming wildlife with no fear of mankind, like the picture on the brochure.

  “Did you bring the map?” asked Ma.

  “No need,” said Bald Mountain. “The bus leaves from the Blue Moon office on the canal docks. I know those docks like the back of my hand.”

  Theo looked at the back of Pa’s hand and wondered what he meant. It was decorated with a tattoo that Ma had put there before even Bea was born, when Pa still rode with the Flying Rascals Motorcycle Club and Ma was the busiest tattoo artist in town. The tattoo showed a burning bridge with curling tongues of flame that licked around Pa’s wrist. It did not look like a map of any kind to Theo.

  In the back of the van Bea was also thinking of that tattoo. The thought of the burning bridge gave her a sudden queasy feeling as she squirmed among the sleeping bags. She remembered how strange the picture on the brochure had looked through Granny Delphine’s spectacles, and pushed down a guilty feeling that was rising in her chest.

  And Phoebe Lu, the neighbors’ daughter? She took the last six stairs at a flying leap, touching down briefly on the doorstep before launching herself out of the door like a kangaroo. She had short black hair, and one brown arm and one white one, having just had her plaster cast removed. She was fearless and thin, and she would have been even thinner if she had not eaten dinner with the Flint family every day, as her parents were far too caught up in the flip of a card or the tumble of dice to worry about feeding their daughter.

  “In the back, Phoebe, quickly,” called Granny Delphine, “and pull the door after you. There’s no time to lose.” The clouds broke as the van pulled away from the curb, and a warm rain began to fall. Granny Delphine stared straight ahead, not wanting to take a last look at the apartment. She knew she would probably never see it again, and she was afraid someone would spot the tears in her eyes.

  Late

  Shortly after the Flint family had left their apartment for the canal docks, two cars appeared from the other end of the street and drove at breakneck speed along the wet road. You could tell at once they were Gummint cars. They were painted gray with pink doors, and each one contained four men. They pulled up at the door of the apartment building and their hand brakes went skrunk in unison. Their occupants piled out and hurried up the wooden stairs in single file. They crowded onto the landing outside the Flints’ door without a word. One of them, a man with dark glasses and a small, prim mouth, reached out and knocked sharply on the door.

  The Gummint men waited for a reply, eight of them in suits and ties, sweating in the heat of the summer rainstorm. The man with the dark glasses checked the address in a small notebook and looked up again at the silent door. He pursed his lips. “They’ve gone,” he said. He stepped to one side, and another man took out a fat pistol and aimed it at the lock. There was a loud bang and a puff of smoke, and the splintered door swung slowly open.

  The men swarmed into the apartment and began to take it apart like ants dismantling a cockroach. They upended drawers and ransacked cupboards and frowned into the empty fridge. They scattered books and rummaged through magazines. They emptied all the wardrobes except for Theo’s, which featured toxic-sock defenses that even their crack search methods could not overcome. They beheaded the flowers and shredded the curtains and disemboweled the sofa. They shattered the lightbulbs and tore up the floorboards and punched pictures from their frames, but whatever they were looking for was nowhere to be found. They emerged disgruntled onto the landing, with sweat-stained armpits and pillow feathers pasted to their greasy foreheads.

  A woman waited for them outside the next-door apartment, wearing a housecoat and pink bedroom slippers. She had straggly blond hair and bags under her eyes. “Are you from the Gummint?” she asked, as though they could have been anyone else.

  “Maybe,” said the man with the dark glasses.

  “They’ve taken my daughter, Phoebe.” The woman sniffed loudly. “You’d better get after them, as soon as you’ve given us the reward money.”

  Dark Glasses consulted his notebook. “Mr. Lu?” he said.

  “He’s my husband,” said the woman.

  “He left it a bit late to call us,” said Dark Glasses. “I’m afraid you might never see your daughter again.”

  Mrs. Lu’s eyes opened wide and she blew out a jet of smoke. “What do you mean, never?” she said. “It’s your job to track them down, isn’t it?”

  “Rest assured that we’ll do everything we can,” said the Gummint man, putting away his notebook.

  “Would,” muttered the man with the pistol.

  “That’s r
ight,” said Dark Glasses. “We would do everything we could, assuming we were from the Gummint.”

  “Which we may or may not be,” added the other man, adjusting his tie.

  “And the reward?” said Mrs. Lu. She stubbed out her cigarette on the doorjamb.

  “You’ll get that through the usual channels,” said the Gummint man.

  Mrs. Lu glanced back into the gloom of her apartment, where half a dozen players sat around a card table, belching smoke and stacking their chips. “But we need it now!” she said.

  Dark Glasses shook his head. “Takes six to eight weeks, I’m afraid.”

  The woman’s shoulders slumped and she turned to go back inside. There was a pizza crust stuck to her backside. Before she closed the door she hesitated, and turned back to the Gummint men. “Would any of you men like to buy a stove?” she said.

  Gone

  The Flint family’s van rattled its way along the docks, following the glint of the rails that were set into the cobbles. The rain had dwindled to nothing and the sky was turning a deep indigo. Phoebe, who had a fascination with anagrams and could produce them with bewildering speed, was reeling off anagrams of Bea’s name. “Fable tin.” She laughed. “Bean lift. Final bet.” She stopped after this last one, and her face grew thoughtful.

  “Did you ask your mother to feed Theo’s meerkat, Phoebe?” called Ma.

  “Mm-hmm,” said Phoebe.

  “She’ll feed it to her dog,” muttered Pa.

  “I left out enough food to last him a couple of days anyway,” said Ma, unaware that at that very moment a Gummint man with a surgical glove was rummaging for clues in the meerkat’s bowl.