The Secret of the Indian (The Indian in the Cupboard)

by Lynne Reid Banks

  “After what I’ve been through in the past forty-eight hours, I’ll believe anything!” she said fervently.

  He explained things as well as he could. She listened intently and asked a couple of questions.

  “You say any article or figure made of plastic is affected?”

  “Yes.”

  “And objects that might be concealed on the person—my hypodermic syringe, for example, and other things I brought in my pocket from St. Thomas’s—”

  “Yes, they’re made real, provided the person had them on him before he was—brought.”

  “Well! Why can’t you get hold of some plastic doctors and put them in your allegedly magic cupboard? Only you must make sure they have some equipment—surgical instruments and so forth.”

  “But all the shops are shut! How can I—”

  Suddenly Omri remembered. Two nights ago he had gone to see Patrick at his aunt’s house, and they had tried to borrow Tamsin’s new box of plastic figures, only she’d caught them at it and grabbed it back. Omri had just managed to hold on to the figure that turned out to be Matron. But there had been others in the set—including a surgeon at an operating table.

  He stretched out his foot and nudged Patrick awake.

  “Patrick! Listen. There’s another Indian dead. And Matron says, if we don’t find a proper doctor, more will die.”

  Patrick scrambled to his feet, rubbing his hair.

  “How can we get any new ones on Sunday?”

  “What about the ones Tamsin has?”

  “What are you saying? That I should go back to Auntie’s and nick them when Tamsin isn’t looking?”

  “It’s only borrowing.”

  “Not when the owner doesn’t know or agree! Not when the owner’s my little creep of a cousin! She’d have my guts for garters.”

  Omri said with a note of desperation, “Well, what are we going to do, then? This is a real emergency!” Suddenly he had an idea. “Why don’t you try buying them off her?”

  “It might work. Have you got any dosh?”

  “Not a penny, we spent it all on the Indian braves. Maybe Dad’ll lend me a couple of quid.”

  Omri’s dad did better than that. He gave him five pounds, and not just till pay day. “You’ve earned it. Here’s one for Patrick, too.”

  So there was no problem about money.

  At breakfast, hastily eaten, the boys sneaked some crispy bits of bacon and quite a few Crunchy Nutflakes into their pockets, and Omri astonished his mother by asking for a mug of tea instead of milk. Matron couldn’t cope without her tea.

  “I thought you hated tea!”

  “I’m coming around to it.”

  “You’ll be hitting the scotch next,” commented his father from behind his Sunday paper.

  Patrick nudged Omri. When whisky was mentioned, there was just one person who came to mind. Halfway back up the stairs, Patrick whispered, “Let’s bring Boone back to life right now, before I leave!”

  At that moment the doorbell rang.

  Omri went back down and opened the door. Then he gasped. Outside stood Tamsin. Of all people!

  How could it be? She’d broken her leg!

  Omri looked again. It wasn’t Tamsin, it was Emma.

  Emma was Tamsin’s twin sister. She was the spitting image of Tamsin, and yet she was wholly different. As far as Omri could remember, she was quite a decent sort of girl.

  “Hallo, Omri,” she said. “Can I see Patrick?”

  Patrick dragged himself reluctantly down into the hall. Omri stood aside, waiting. He could feel himself tensing all over for fear there was a car outside waiting to cart Patrick away.

  “Hi, Em. How’s it going?” said Patrick carelessly.

  “Okay. Tam’s leg’s in a cast and she’s better. Your mum sent me to find you. She wants you home now, so you’re to come back with me.”

  “Right now?”

  “Yes.”

  “I—I can’t come now!”

  “Why not?”

  Patrick dithered helplessly, trying to think of some excuse.

  “How are we supposed to get back?”

  “On the train, of course,” said Emma. “Come on.” Omri said, “Did you come here on the train?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “And you walked up the road to here, from the station?”

  “Yes.”

  Omri thought of the skinheads. It was Sunday—even the few who went to school or had jobs were free and on the prowl on Sundays. He himself never walked down Hovel Road on Sundays if he could possibly help it.

  “Did you meet anyone?”

  She shrugged. “A few boys. Hanging around. Real creeps, gross. I took no notice of them.”

  Omri shivered. But then he remembered. There was a pretty good chance he didn’t have to be scared of that gang anymore. He put his hand in his jeans pocket and fingered the little penlight the smallest of the burglars had dropped the night before.

  As he touched it, he felt something else. It was the key. A sudden flash of inspiration came to him, stiffening his whole body like a bolt of electricity.

  “Emma,” he said in a queer sort of voice, “would you mind if I had a private chat with Patrick before he—er—goes?”

  She looked from one of them to the other. “What’s the secret?”

  They both flushed.

  “Wait here, okay?” Omri gabbled, and he pulled Patrick into the living room and closed the door.

  “You’ve got to get out of going home,” Omri said. “I can’t cope without you.”

  “What can I do? Break my leg?”

  “Well … if you had the bottle for it, you could throw yourself down the stairs … probably do yourself some serious enough injury—”

  “Thanks!”

  “But I wasn’t thinking of that. Tell Emma you’ve left something upstairs. We’ll go up to my room and you can get in the chest with Boone’s figure and I can send you back to his time.”

  5

  Patrick Goes Back

  PATRICK’S FACE WAS BLANK for a moment, and Omri thought, He’s scared, and who can blame him! But then he saw it wasn’t that at all. Patrick simply hadn’t been able to grasp the idea at first.

  When he did grasp it, not just his face but his whole body seemed to light up with excitement.

  “Wow,” he said simply.

  “You mean you’ll do it?”

  “Are you kidding? Go back to real cowboy time, cowboy country? See Boone full-size? Lead me to it! Let’s go!”

  He bounded out of the living room and was halfway up the stairs before Omri had gathered his wits to follow. As he came into the hall, he noticed Emma standing much closer to the living room door than she had been before. Patrick had nearly bowled her over as he emerged.

  A suspicion struck Omri.

  “Were you listening?”

  “Yes,” she said at once. “But I didn’t understand what you were talking about.”

  “Ah,” said Omri with relief. It crossed his mind that she was a very straightforward girl, at least—Tamsin wouldn’t have admitted eavesdropping like that. Not many people would.

  He gave Emma a closer look. She was a year younger than he was—which was why he had hardly noticed her at school; somehow you only noticed your contemporaries or people ahead of you. But she’d been more or less around for most of his life. Odd that he’d never really looked at her before. Now he saw that she was quite nice looking in a fair, snubby-faced way. She had freckles and large eyes, and was dressed in sensible jeans and a blue parka. She had her hands deep in her pockets and was gazing at him expectantly.

  “What were you talking about in there?”

  “Private,” said Omri. He glanced up the stairs. Patrick could already be heard thudding up the last flight, to Omri’s attic bedroom.

  “Where’s Patrick gone?”

  “Er—up to get his pajamas and stuff.”

  “But he didn’t take any last night, he just dashed out.”

  “Oh
. Well—anyway he’s—gone up,” said Omri feebly, making a move to follow him.

  Emma followed at his heels. He paused on the second step.

  “Can you wait down here?”

  “Why?”

  “We’ll be—right down.”

  “Can’t I see your room? You saw mine,” she said. “Last night when you came to our house. Mum moved Tam and me out so Patrick could have it.”

  “Well …”

  From above came Patrick’s impatient voice. “Come on, Omri! Don’t hang about!”

  “You wait in the living room,” Omri said decisively. He turned away from her and ran upstairs.

  In his room he found Patrick already climbing into the seaman’s chest.

  “Go on, I’m ready! Send me!”

  But Omri, having come up with this amazing idea, was already having second thoughts.

  “Listen, how’ll I explain where you’ve gone?”

  “Don’t. Get rid of Emma somehow, make her go home, and you can tell your parents I went with her.”

  “But what happens when Emma gets back to her place without you?”

  “It’ll be too late then! I’ll just have vanished!” He grinned all over his face with glee.

  “No, you won’t. You’ll be in the chest—your body will. What if they start looking for you?”

  “Listen, this was your idea, and a fantastic one! Stop making problems. Pile all your junk on top of the chest like before—they’ll never think to look there.”

  “But your mum will be dead worried! She’s sure to ring up. Then Emma will say one thing and I’ll say another—”

  Patrick had been crouching in the chest, looking up at him. Now, suddenly, he stood up. His face had changed. He looked quite fierce.

  “I want to go back with Boone,” he said. “I’ve made up my mind. And I don’t want you bringing me back after ten minutes, either. You had your adventure in the Indian village. I know you had a rough time, but you saw it, you saw the battle, you experienced it. Now it’s my turn, and I don’t want to hear any of your feeble objections. Just put the key in the lock and turn it, will you? I’m the one who’s taking the risk. All you’re asked to do is stall everybody for a few days.”

  Omri’s mouth dropped open.

  “A few days?”

  “It’s hardly worth going for less than that!” Patrick retorted.

  That he would stay away for longer than a few hours had not been any part of Omri’s—as he now saw it—idiotic idea.

  “But it could be dangerous! What if—”

  Patrick made a move as if to get out of the chest. “Are you going to do it, or am I going to have to bash you?” he growled.

  Omri was not afraid of him. They were evenly matched. He stood his ground.

  “You don’t have to use skinhead tactics,” he said. Patrick looked sheepish.

  “Sorry. You’re always trying to hold me back from doing what I want to. Listen. We’d better decide beforehand when you’re going to bring me back. Time works the same at both ends. So let’s say—a week from today.”

  “You’re completely round the twist,” said Omri. “A week! Anyone’d think you were going on holiday! All right, lie down. I’ll send you. But don’t get too comfortable in Texas, because you’ll be back before you know it, if I get into any trouble about you, which I’m bound to.”

  Patrick stared at him for a moment, then slowly took the small figure of Boone out of his pocket. Omri reached out and touched it. He wanted to touch Patrick—shake hands with him or something—but he didn’t know how to do it, quite. So he touched Boone instead and said, “Say hello to him for me and tell him—tell him to take good care of you.”

  Patrick curled up in the bottom of the chest. Omri, feeling quite calm now that the decision was made, closed the lid. He took the key out of his pocket and stuck it in the lock on the chest. For a moment it hung there, its red satin ribbon hanging from its fancy top. Then Omri turned it firmly.

  At that moment he heard a small, shrill voice nearby.

  “What Pat-Rick do? Why move longhouse? Very bad, move sick men, make fear, make wound worse!”

  Omri spun around. In order to open the chest, Patrick had lifted the seed tray with its precious miniature complement of Indians, healthy, injured, and dead, onto Omri’s desk underneath his raised bunk bed. Omri had, for the moment, quite forgotten them. Now he saw Little Bear standing at the edge of the tray, his arms folded, and his face, lit by Omri’s desk lamp, a mask of reproach.

  “What Pat-Rick do in box?”

  Omri crouched till his face was level with Little Bear’s.

  “Little Bear, Patrick’s gone. We agreed he should go back to Boone’s time. He’s going to stay there for a while. So if there’s anything you need, you’ll have to ask me.”

  “I ask, you not fear,” said Little Bear promptly.

  Omri suppressed a sigh. There wouldn’t be much of the “ask” about it, if he knew Little Bear.

  “Start with food. Wife must feed son. Need good food, keep up strength.”

  “Oh—of course! Sorry, I almost forgot.”

  Omri reached into his pocket and brought out his collection of cornflakes, bits of bacon and toast, which he’d thoughtfully wrapped in a paper napkin. Of course he’d left the mug of tea downstairs. He’d have to go and get it. Meanwhile there was enough food to be getting on with for all of them.

  Little Bear looked at the spread, sampled a chunk of crispy bacon fat, and grunted with grudging approval. But then he straightened up, his face once more a mask of seriousness.

  “Not leave dead brave long time,” Little Bear said. “Send back. Own people find, know what do, obey custom for dead.”

  “Yes,” said Omri. “That’s what we thought. When?”

  “Ry-taway,” said Little Bear, who was beginning to pick up some English expressions.

  “We’ll put them in the cupboard,” said Omri. He felt the cupboard was the right time vehicle for the little people, the chest for him and Patrick.

  The logistics of the thing were solved by Omri’s putting his left hand palm upward on the soil in the seed tray while Little Bear and three healthy Indians carefully and reverently lifted the corpses, still covered with bloodstained cloths, onto it. Omri shuddered as he felt their body weight, the coldness of death against his skin. Then the “burial party” of four climbed onto Omri’s hand and he slowly moved to the cupboard, which stood on the low table in the middle of his room.

  He opened the door. Two Indians climbed off his hand and over the bottom edge of the cupboard, and the other two lifted the bodies one by one and handed them to the Indians, who then laid them on the floor of the metal cupboard.

  Omri reached over and took the key from the lock of the chest and inserted it into the keyhole of the cupboard. The “burial party” climbed out and stood in a line, looking at their dead comrades in silence.

  “Little Bear,” said Omri, “what about if you all go back now? There’s nothing to hang around here for, and there’s a lot to do, rebuilding your village. I’m sure Bright Stars would like to take the baby back and get on with her life.”

  Little Bear turned to him, scowling with thought.

  “Good,” he said. “Go back soon ry-taway. First you send dead, then take out plass-tick.”

  Omri closed the door, turned the key, and after a moment turned it back, opened the door, and removed the nine plastic figures. He knew they were no use anymore—the people belonging to them were gone. He certainly wouldn’t ever want to play with them. After a second’s thought, he took a piece of white writing paper and, piling them onto it, folded the edges carefully around them.

  “I’ll bury them,” he said to Little Bear. “That’s our custom with dead people.”

  Little Bear nodded grimly. “Good. First we do dance, ask Great Spirit bring safe to ancestors.”

  Matron had come out of the longhouse, serving as a sort of field hospital for the injured Indians, and watched the removal of the
dead. Now she called Omri over.

  “I’m very much relieved that you’ve dealt with that matter,” she said in her brisk way. “Now. Having disposed of the dead, do you think you could give your urgent attention to the problem of those who are still alive?”

  Omri felt a little jolt in his chest. Now that Patrick had abandoned him, he must solve by himself the pressing problem of getting the medical team.

  “Matron, look,” he said, thinking aloud more than anything else, “it’s Sunday. Can’t go to the shops. We … that is, I thought I’d try to get some help from a friend who has plastic figures. Not exactly a friend. She’s Patrick’s cousin—”

  “Who, me?”

  The jolt Omri had felt before was nothing to the explosive leap his heart gave at the sound of that voice.

  He spun around from his ill-balanced crouch, falling over backward, and sat gaping at the figure of Emma in the open doorway.

  6

  A New Insider

  EMMA! WHAT—WHAT—what are you doing there?”

  But it was only too obvious what she was doing. She was looking. And listening. The only question left was, how much had she seen and heard?

  In a forlorn and desperate hope, Omri swiveled his eyes sideways, trying to see what was visible from her angle. Before, when he’d been crouching in front of the desk, he had blocked her view of the seed tray. Now that he was on the floor, everything was in plain sight. Matron’s little figure, standing, arms akimbo, on the edge of the seed tray. Little Bear’s pony, grazing in the miniature paddock Patrick had made. Several tiny Indians, busy about the area, rebuilding last night’s fire from the unburned ends of matchsticks and twigs. And the longhouse, rising from the ground in all its minute, handmade magnificence.

  But Emma was not looking as far as that. On the low table that stood between her and Omri was the cupboard, and the five Indians. They were chanting and doing a slow dance around the white paper packet. It was upon them, Omri saw, that Emma’s eyes were riveted.