by Ben Miller
‘Oh, yes, please,’ he said, and walked to the front of the class. Miss Balogun picked up the Handy Helper crown from her desk and placed it on Harrison’s head. It fitted perfectly.
‘Right, well, for starters could you please go to the cupboard and take out the geography textbooks?’ asked Miss Balogun. ‘We’re going to learn about waste management, and then we’re going to have a test on it.’
‘Oh!’ moaned all the children. Geography was not their favourite subject.
‘Perhaps everyone would rather do French instead?’ asked Miss Balogun, knowing full well that French was the only subject worse than geography.
‘Geography!’ came the reply.
‘Geography it is, then,’ said Miss Balogun, handing Harrison the key to the store cupboard.
‘But . . .’ said Harrison. ‘But . . .’
He was starting to feel extremely anxious. He hated tests!
‘Yes, Harrison?’ asked Miss Balogun.
‘I-I’m,’ stuttered Harrison, trying really hard not to lose his cool.
‘I DON’T WANT TO DO A TEST!’ was what he wanted to shout, closely followed by, ‘GO AND GET THE BOOKS YOURSELF!’ But he figured that might get him into all sorts of trouble.
He caught sight of the black hole, peeping out from behind his desk.
Of course! He didn’t need to lose his temper! He could use the black hole instead!
‘I’LL GO AND DO THAT FOR YOU RIGHT NOW!’ he said in a bit of a shouty voice, because he was still quite worked up.
‘Right,’ said Miss Balogun, slightly confused as to why Harrison was speaking so loudly. ‘Thank you.’
As calmly as he could, Harrison walked past his desk, making sure to pick up his black hole, and out to the cupboard in the corridor.
Just a few seconds later, he returned.
‘Um, Miss Balogun?’ he said.
‘Yes?’ she replied.
‘All the books have gone. All that’s left in the cupboard are the games.’
‘What?’ asked Miss Balogun, and went with Harrison to look for herself.
Sure enough, every shelf of the book cupboard was empty. Not only were there no geography textbooks, but all the other books had gone too! All that was left was a pile of board games, kept there for the last day of school.
‘That’s very odd,’ said Miss Balogun. ‘I’m sure they were here yesterday.’ She frowned. First a disappearing swimming pool and now this. She felt like she needed a long lie down.
‘It’s a mystery,’ said Harrison, trying hard not to smile or glance at his black hole, in case he gave himself away. Inside, of course, he was fizzing with delight! He didn’t need to lose his temper ever again to get his own way! This was great!
‘Excuse me, everyone,’ said Miss Balogun, when they were back in the classroom. ‘All our books seem to have . . . gone missing, so while I go to the office to try and track them down and to ask about Hector, I suggest you occupy yourselves with these.’
She held up the pile of board games and the children shrieked for joy!
That afternoon was one of the best of Harrison’s life, right up there with his trip to the Science Museum and his visit to the safari park. By the time afternoon break arrived, all the children in his class were so grateful that Harrison had somehow managed to ‘lose’ all the school books and given them an afternoon off, that every single one of them gave him their biscuit as a thank you.
When he added his own extra biscuit for being Handy Helper, he nearly had an entire packet! He had to ask for an extra glass of milk so that he could finish them all off. And what was even better was there was no Hector Broom to ruin it all by pushing him around or threatening him with his dastardly elastic band.
After school, as he walked home with his mother and Lana, it occurred to Harrison that he wouldn’t have to put up with any of the things that made him cross or scared or worried ever again. Anything he didn’t like could just disappear into the black hole. Poof! This was going to be brilliant!
He was so wrapped up in happy thoughts of making all the sprouts in the world disappear that he didn’t notice he was dawdling way behind Lana and his mother, and when Mr Hardwick tapped him on the shoulder it took him a while to return to reality.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve seen her, have you, Harrison?’ Mr Hardwick asked. In his hand was a leaflet with a photo of Blue on it. It read:
‘I’m going to put these on all the trees in the lane, and all the lamp posts in the village,’ explained Mr Hardwick. ‘Blue’s out there somewhere, I know she is.’ Mr Hardwick’s eyes were red, as if he had been crying, and Harrison suddenly felt very sorry for him.
He felt a pang of guilt. Blue had always seemed so terrifying to him; he hadn’t really thought about how fond Mr and Mrs Hardwick must be of their dog. Perhaps he should tell Mr Hardwick the truth? After all, it wasn’t like he had meant to send Blue into the nothingness of his black hole, it was an accident.
Harrison took a deep breath. It was time to tell Mr Hardwick what had really happend.
‘Erm . . .’ he said, trying to find the words. ‘Mr Hardwick?’
‘You’ve seen Blue!’ exclaimed Mr Hardwick. ‘Have you, Harrison? Have you?’
‘Well . . . you see . . . she’s in here,’ said Harrison, pointing at the black hole tied to his wrist.
‘In your balloon?’ Mr Hardwick asked, looking confused.
‘It’s not actually a balloon,’ explained Harrison. ‘It’s a black hole. I was given it at a birthday party.’
Mr Hardwick looked even more confused and took a step towards the black hole to have a closer look.
‘Don’t touch it!’ exclaimed Harrison. ‘Or you’ll get sucked inside.’
‘Right,’ said Mr Hardwick, in a way that made it very clear he hadn’t the faintest idea what Harrison was talking about.
Harrison took another deep breath.
‘Blue jumped inside when I wasn’t looking,’ he said. ‘And she hasn’t come back out.’
There was a long silence while Harrison waited for Mr Hardwick to get really cross and start shouting at him. Instead, Mr Hardwick’s eyes filled with tears.
‘Thank you, Harrison,’ he said. ‘I keep Blue right here, in my heart. But you . . .’ He ruffled Harrison’s hair. ‘You can keep her in your balloon.’
‘That’s not really what I meant—’ began Harrison.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Mr Hardwick. ‘I meant to say: you can keep her in your black hole.’
And with that, he trudged off down the hill with his leaflets, leaving Harrison feeling very guilty indeed.
As Harrison walked up the path, he glanced over at the Hardwicks’ front garden. Blue would usually be there, barking through the gaps in the fence. Was it true that once something fell into a black hole, it could never escape? Did that mean Blue was gone for ever?
Later that evening, Harrison felt even guiltier. Because while they were eating dinner (Lana gobbling her gammon and peas with gusto, while Harrison shoved his into his black hole), the phone rang.
‘Really?’ Harrison’s father asked whoever was on the other end of the line. ‘I’ll certainly ask him. One moment.’
He put his hand over the mouthpiece.
‘Harrison?’
Harrison looked up, wide-eyed. For a moment he thought he had been caught getting rid of his food.
‘It’s Hector Broom’s mother. She says Hector didn’t come home from school. Everyone’s out looking for him. Have you seen him?’
Harrison looked at his black hole, then back at his father.
‘Well?’ asked his father.
Harrison didn’t want to lie, but he was too scared to tell the truth and, besides, when he’d tried to come clean earlier to Mr Hardwick, he hadn’t believed him anyway. ‘Not since lunchtime,’ he said eventually. Which wasn’t exactly a lie, but wasn’t exactly the truth either.
He looked back at his now-empty plate. Having a black hole had been very useful and quite fun, but it t
urned out that disappearing things wasn’t as simple as he’d thought . . .
That night, try as he might, Harrison simply couldn’t sleep. And when he finally did, he had a terrible nightmare. He was by some roadworks when a black-and-white dog with Hector Broom’s face appeared and jumped up at him. Harrison ducked, and the creature sailed right over his head and into a cement mixer. By the time they got the animal out, the cement had set, freezing its furry body mid-leap, with just Hector’s face peeping out, and his mother had to feed him through a straw until a vet arrived with a chisel—
Harrison woke with a start. The black hole was tied to the end of his bed, just as it had been the night before, and now that it had digested a swimming pool, Hector Broom, an entire cupboard of school books and all of the food that Harrison hated, it was bigger than ever. As Harrison lay in bed, looking at it and thinking of poor Blue covered in cement, he had a Moment of Clarity. He knew what he had to do: he had to go to Shelley’s grandmother’s house, find Shelley and ask her how to get Blue and Hector back.
He got himself dressed double-quick, untied the black hole and tiptoed out onto the landing. His parents’ bedroom door was closed, so they must still be asleep. That’s a good thing, he thought. If they saw him sneaking out this early, they might ask him some difficult questions.
Once downstairs, he found a pencil and a piece of paper and wrote:
Satisfied, Harrison folded the note and left it in the middle of the kitchen table where he could be sure his parents would see it. Going out on his own was against the rules, but if he was back before his parents woke up, they need never know. And, if they did wake up and found him gone, the note, he reasoned, would stop them worrying.
He pulled his jacket off the peg, squeezed his feet into his wellies, tied the black hole safely to his left wrist and stepped outside into the cold early-morning air.
The lane was empty and he saw, to his horror, that every tree was pasted with one of Mr Hardwick’s leaflets. Wherever he looked, Blue’s face stared back at him. Feeling guiltier than ever, he hurried down the hill to a little crooked house opposite the village school.
He unhitched the weather-beaten gate, crunched up the little gravel path to the purple front door, and lifted himself onto his tiptoes so that he could reach the brass door knocker.
There was no answer, so he knocked again. All the curtains were shut.
‘Shelley!’ he called through the letterbox, which he noticed was decorated with a snake swallowing its own tail. ‘Shelley!’ There was no answer. He was about to give up when one of the upper windows opened, and Shelley’s grandmother popped her head through the curtains.
‘Ssssshhhh!’ she said, in a voice that Harrison thought was quite loud for someone asking him to be quiet. ‘Don’t you know what time it is?’
‘I can’t “sssshhh”,’ said Harrison. ‘I need to speak to Shelley.’
‘She’s not home.’
‘Where is she?’ asked Harrison.
Shelley’s grandmother looked at one of her three wristwatches. ‘Probably halfway across the Atlantic Ocean,’ she said.
‘It’s an emergency,’ said Harrison, holding up the black hole. ‘Something terrible has happened!’
Shelley’s grandmother frowned. ‘You’d better come inside.’
It would be good for the sake of our story to say that seconds later the front door opened and Shelley’s grandmother and Harrison continued their conversation, but sadly that wouldn’t be entirely true. Instead, there was a Very Long Time When Nothing Much Happened At All. There was no sound from inside the house, and nothing for Harrison to do except wait. A postman strolled past with a sack of letters on a trolley, a woman walked down the street with her dog and the sun grew so hot that Harrison wished he hadn’t worn his jacket.
He was beginning to wonder whether Shelley’s grandmother had forgotten all about him, when he heard a clicking and whirring sound on the other side of the door. He peeked through the letterbox. Inside, he could just make out Shelley’s grandmother’s feet coming down the stairs on a very slow-moving stairlift. It felt wrong to watch someone when they couldn’t see him, so Harrison closed the letterbox and waited patiently for the door to open.
It didn’t. The postman worked his way up the other side of the street, the woman returned with her dog and Harrison took off his jacket. He took another peep through the letterbox. Shelley’s grandmother’s feet had made some progress, but they were still coming Very Slowly down the hall. Finally, just when Harrison was wondering whether he should come back after lunch, the door opened.
If Harrison had thought the letterbox on the door was strange, the inside of the house was even stranger. For a start, all the curtains were closed, and the only light was cast from old-fashioned oil lamps. And, from every direction, there came the sound of ticking. Harrison followed Shelley’s grandmother down the hall to the sitting room and saw that every wall, shelf, table top and cubbyhole was home to some sort of clock: digital clocks, wind-up clocks, pendulum clocks, bedside clocks, carriage clocks, cuckoo clocks, alarm clocks, grandfather clocks and maritime clocks, all of them clicking and whirring impatiently.
‘Sit,’ said Shelley’s grandmother, indicating a footstool.
‘Thank you,’ replied Harrison. ‘Why do you have so many clocks?’ he asked as he perched on the stool, keeping a careful hold of the black hole in case it accidentally swallowed something it shouldn’t.
‘Well, you see, I have a very important appointment and I don’t want to miss it,’ said Shelley’s grandmother as she shuffled towards an armchair and sat down stiffly.
‘What kind of appointment?’ Harrison asked.
‘An Appointment With Destiny,’ said the old lady mysteriously. ‘Now, you say there’s a problem with your black hole?’ she said, clearly wanting to change the subject.
‘Yes,’ said Harrison. ‘Someone fell into it. And I need to know how to get them out.’
‘Who, exactly?’
‘Blue. She’s my next-door neighbour’s dog. And a boy called Hector Broom, from my school. So, I really need Shelley’s help. When is she coming back?’
The clocks seemed to tick a little louder, as if to emphasise the long pause that followed.
‘Maybe never,’ said the old lady. ‘She’s gone to South America. To the Very Large Telescope in Chile. It’s on top of a mountain, where there are no clouds and the sky is the brightest and clearest on Earth. It’s the best place in the world to be an astronomer. She’s hoping they’ll give her a job.’
‘But how am I going to get Hector Broom and Blue out without Shelley?’
‘There are three things you have to know about a black hole,’ announced the old lady. ‘Firstly, a black hole is black.’
‘Right,’ said Harrison, nodding. That one seemed quite obvious, if he was honest.
‘Secondly, anything that touches it is pulled inside.’
‘Yes,’ said Harrison. He’d already seen that in action.
‘And, thirdly,’ continued the old lady, ‘once something is inside it can never come out. Unless . . .’
‘Unless what?’ asked Harrison.
The old lady was quiet for a moment, as if she was deciding whether to trust Harrison with one of her deepest secrets.
‘I think you had better come with me,’ she said finally.
Harrison helped her to her feet. That part of their meeting took almost as long as everything else put together, but it’s not directly relevant to our story, so I won’t bore you with the detail. It wasn’t pretty and included a very awkward moment where Harrison’s head was used by the old lady as a sort of leaning post, and another one where she somehow ended up sitting on top of him on the floor. But, eventually, through luck, perseverance and brute strength, they found themselves out of the sitting room and back in the hallway, edging their way towards a large green door.
‘This,’ said Shelley’s grandmother, ‘is my life’s work.’
The green door swung open and Ha
rrison’s eyes widened in excitement. This was not at all what he had been expecting. It was an enormous laboratory! The walls were crowded with glass pipes and flasks, in which strange mixtures bubbled and effervesced. Giant metal stars hung from the ceiling, with sparks flying between them. And sitting right in the middle of it all was the most extraordinary-looking machine.
Its main component was a colossal brass ring, big enough to drive a car through. Surrounding the ring were twenty or so giant lasers, their bright blue beams focused on a single point at its centre, which was pulsing white. The lasers were surrounded by a tangle of wires, steel pipes and pumps, and the whole crazy contraption was sitting on an enormous circular platform, which was connected by a series of cogs and pulleys to an old bicycle.
Harrison looked at Shelley’s grandmother in surprise.
‘What does that do?’ he asked.
‘It makes black holes,’ said Shelley’s grandmother. ‘Or, at least, I hope it does. I haven’t quite perfected my technique.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Harrison. ‘Shelley gave me this black hole, so she must know how to make them. Why don’t you just ask her to show you?’
‘Good question,’ she said, smiling brightly. ‘But, no, I’m afraid that wouldn’t work. I need to discover them all by myself. Let’s forget about the machine for a minute, while we go back to basics.’ She pointed to a multicoloured globe which was sitting on one of the workbenches. ‘Do you know what this is?’
Harrison nodded. ‘It’s Earth.’
‘Exactly. Here’s you and me, in England, and here –’ she said, spinning the globe – ‘across the Atlantic Ocean, is the Atacama Desert, where Shelley will shortly be. Now, we’re all stuck to the Earth, aren’t we?’
‘Are we?’ asked Harrison, checking the soles of his shoes.
‘Yes,’ said Shelley’s grandmother. ‘Because of gravity. People can jump a little bit off the ground, but they can’t get off completely. But do you know what can?’
‘Rockets?’ Harrison suggested.
‘Right. Rockets are powerful enough to fly from Earth. What else?’
