The Mystery of the Cupboard

by Lynne Reid Banks

  “What bank?” he asked, as if he were somewhere else.

  “The bank, Dad. Your bank. The bank where my package is.”

  “Ah. That bank. I thought you meant, the one whereon the wild thyme grows.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Never mind. I thought that package was supposed to be kept until your death or something, wasn’t that the idea?”

  “It was the idea, but I’ve changed my mind.”

  “What’s in there, Omri? I’m burning with curiosity.”

  “It’s a secret, Dad.”

  “Oh, okay. Well. There’s no problem about it. We’ll go in a bit later, eh? I can’t leave this now.”

  Frustrated, Omri drifted away. The studio was in the yard, which was dotted with hens. The five chicks that had been new when they arrived were now half-grown. They seemed to be running around squeaking rather frantically. There was no sign of their mother.

  He wandered idly into the barn to look for her. She was there, pecking away, perfectly silent now although until yesterday she had kept up a constant gentle clucking to call the chicks to her. Now she was lying low, not doing anything to let them know where she was. Nature, thought Omri. Hens knew the right time to leave their children to get on with it on their own… Did human mothers do that? Would his mother run off and ‘hide in the barn’ one day when the three of them got big and she’d had enough of looking after them?

  He was just wandering out again when he heard something. It was a squeaking noise not unlike the one the chicks made. Were there more chicks that he didn’t know about?

  If so, they were high up, over his head somewhere. He climbed a wooden ladder fixed to the back wall, to a kind of hayloft that was no more than a few boards laid across the rafters. His father had forbidden them to go up there because he said the boards weren’t safe. But there was a hole like a trapdoor where the ladder went, and Omri put his head through that, looking for the source of the squeaking.

  His eyes roved the dusty space between the boards and the roof. There was no hay here now except a few scraps in a dark corner where the sloping roof and the boards met. The squeaking was coming from there.

  If it was chicks, if some daft hen had made her nest up here, they might be killed falling off. There was no sign of a bird anyway. Maybe it was rats? Did rats squeak? Of course they did, but something told Omri it wasn’t rats. Now he was nearer, the squeaking sounded more like — well, mewing.

  A dead hope revived itself as Omri crawled cautiously along the boards and reached into the little heap of old hay. His fingers touched fur, warm moving balls of it. He heaved himself closer on his elbows. The boards sagged ominously, but he wasn’t aware of it.

  There were five kittens, by no means newborn, two black and three black-and-white. One half of their parentage, at least, was quite obvious.

  Some deep knot that had been half forgotten in the pit of Omri’s stomach came gently untied. He drew a deep breath and let it out on a silent, joyous laugh.

  “You fiend, Kits,” he said aloud. “Where are you?”

  He lay in ambush for twenty minutes. Then she appeared, cautiously, through the ladder opening. She had always loved climbing ladders. She stopped dead when she saw him. He didn’t move. Just stared at her. If she’d really gone feral, she might pretend not to know him, might run, abandon her kittens even. Or perhaps she’d fly at him to protect them…

  But no. She walked daintily towards him along one board in the semi-darkness, head up, ignoring him, straight past and into the nest, where the squeaking reached a crescendo until she lay down in a languid crescent shape and the kittens fastened themselves to her.

  She lay there staring at Omri through sleepy eyes, as if mocking him. If cats could look smug, she would have.

  “You little beast,” said Omri. “You’re not feral! You just ran off to punish us, and then you crept up here to be private for having your kittens.” She came back for her milk every night, she’d learnt to hunt rabbits and keep out of sight, and now she was independent. She didn’t need him any more.

  But that didn’t make him love her less. He longed to stroke her, but she had a certain look that told him he’d better not. He felt wildly happy. He backed along the boards and down the ladder. Then he raced across the yard and the lane to the house.

  “Kitsa’s okay, I’ve found her!” he shouted as he burst into the house.

  Everyone in the family was pleased. Tony and Patrick were quite excited.

  “Good old Kitsa. Can we see the kittens?”

  “Well - I don’t want to disturb her. We can’t all go up there at once. Just one at a time, okay?”

  Tony and Gillon went up one after the other, had a peep, and came down again. Then Patrick went up, with Omri behind him.

  “When are you going to the you-know-where?” Patrick whispered as he went through the opening.

  “As soon as Dad’s ready to take me,” Omri said.

  “Can’t wait! Where are these little Kitsa-cats then? Oh, I see — I’ll just—”

  It all happened remarkably quickly. As Patrick (who was bigger than any of the other boys) put his weight along the boards, they gave a short creak and sagged sharply under his weight, and before he could grab hold of anything, there was a very loud crack and he vanished in a cloud of hay and wood dust.

  Omri was to feel pangs of guilt later because his first thought was for Kitsa’s nest. But she had made it where the boards rested on a cross rafter, and apart from the end of one of the boards jerking a few inches upward as it broke in the middle, the kittens were undisturbed — though Kitsa instinctively leapt aside.

  Patrick, however, was not so lucky.

  He landed first on Tony, who was directly underneath. This broke his fall. Nevertheless he lay stunned on the concrete floor.

  “He’s dead! Is he dead? He’s dead!” was Gillon’s first reaction.

  “Ow! Shoot! My head!” moaned Tony (only he didn’t say ‘shoot’).

  Omri jumped down the ladder and without wasting time looking at Patrick, belted across the yard to his father’s studio.

  “Dad! Dad! Patrick’s fallen, he’s hurt!” he yelled.

  An hour later Patrick was in a hospital bed after having a broken arm set. He had to stay in for head X-rays. He was awake, but dozy. Not all that dozy, though.

  “Don’t mind me,” he said to Omri. “Get it. Then come and tell me everything.”

  “I’ll bring the cashbox here tomorrow,” said Omri.

  “No,” said Patrick. “Don’t bring it here. Too dangerous.”

  “What do you mean, dangerous?”

  “Well, haven’t you thought? The chest worked just like the cupboard. If the cashbox is the same, and it has got little people in it, when you open it with the magic key, you’ll bring them to life.”

  On the way home, Omri sat in the back of the car, frowning, full of this new thought. The contents of the cashbox were wrapped. He would have to act quickly or the little people might suffocate when he unlocked the box. If they were there at all.

  In the past, Omri had usually been careful to bring to life only one little person at a time, and only when he had great need of them, like Matron, for instance, when Little Bull was injured. There had always been the problem of explaining to them why they were here, why they were small, and so on — no easy task. Some thought they must be drunk, some, dreaming, some — Little Bull, his American Indian, for instance — that Omri was a spirit. Later, they got used to the strange situation.

  Well. At least these little people of Jessica Charlotte’s had been ‘brought’ before. No explanations would be necessary. But they might be anybody, from any time, and there were almost certainly several of them, who, the moment he turned the key, would all come to life at once.

  14

  The Cupboard

  The woman at the bank said it would take time to find the parcel and get it to the counter. She asked them to come back later.

  “Fine—” began Omri’s fat
her, but Omri interrupted.

  “If we went away for say, half an hour, and then came back, would you have it ready?” he asked.

  “Omri, they’re busy, we could easily—”

  “I want it today, Dad!”

  His father shrugged. The woman smiled and said, “That’ll be all right.”

  Omri and his dad walked out into the village square. There was a sort of little house — just a roof on four stone pillars — in the middle, where you could sit. This was nicknamed Georgina after the woman whose memorial it was.

  They bought ice creams and went and sat in Georgina. Omri’s father was in a thoughtful mood.

  “I’m not trying to pry, Omri, you know that’s not my style. But… Well. Where did you get to on Sunday, for instance? You never even showed up for lunch.”

  “I told you, Dad. I went to talk to the old thatcher.”

  “For three hours?”

  “Yeah, well. He was very—”

  “Interesting. You said so. I think all craftsmen are interesting. They’re not necessarily three hours’-worth of interesting, though, unless you’re in their line of business.”

  Omri said nothing. The Urge was coming over him. His father was very special to him. It was true he didn’t pry. Unlike his mother, who, quite frankly, couldn’t keep her mouth shut, you could trust him with anything. Almost… It would be so - so wonderful, such a relief, to tell his father everything, and get his advice.

  But quite suddenly Omri knew what advice he would give on the present matter.

  He could almost hear him saying it. “Leave well alone, Omri. There’s absolutely no reason to bring these people to life. Except curiosity. Think of all the problems you’ve had in the past. Think of the damage you’ve caused. People have died because you meddled. Haven’t you learnt anything from all that? I know it’s a temptation, but… Leave well alone, why don’t you?”

  Omri bit his lips, clamping back the words that would unstopper the source of the secret and let it all pour out of him.

  Perhaps he could just tell about the notebook. He made a lightning review of its contents. No. Hopeless. It gave the whole game away. His father would put two and two together with the time Mr Johnson, just before the Big Storm, brought Omri home from school and announced, to his parents and to Patrick’s mother, that he’d once seen two miniature people with his own eyes. Then the roof had literally fallen in and Mr Johnson went a bit barmy after a branch hit him on the head, and obviously nobody thought about the business of the little people again.

  But just as Omri’s prize-winning story had made Mr Johnson realize that he hadn’t been imagining things, so Jessica Charlotte’s story might cast a new light on Mr Johnson’s. That, and the cupboard, and the key, and all the funny goings-on Omri’s father must have noticed last year and the year before, and not thought too much about - then. Now he would, it would all make sense, well, a sort of crazy sense. He would begin to believe it, and Omri might just as well forget about secrecy. It would all come out.

  Well, and why not? It was all over now.

  No, it wasn’t.

  Because he wasn’t going to take the advice his father would certainly have given him if he had told (and if — a big IF — he could have convinced him it was all true). He couldn’t. He was going to break his own strict promise to himself and get out the key and the cupboard and start it all up again.

  Not with Little Bull, Boone, and the others. Of course not. They’d been through quite enough, thanks to the magic. But just to see what was in the cashbox. Just to - finish the story.

  Half an hour seemed to Omri to stretch to eternity. But at last it was time. The woman at the bank raised one of the grilles and handed Omri the big oblong parcel, carefully wrapped in brown paper, flaps stuck down with brown sticky tape and the whole tied tightly with string.

  “You certainly didn’t mean anyone to have a sly peep, I see,” his father remarked as he signed a receipt.

  Omri was holding the paper-swathed cupboard in his arms. Even wrapped, it had a magic feel to it. He couldn’t have explained what a huge wave of excitement washed over him as he felt it again in his possession. He wondered fleetingly if people who did drugs felt like this. He felt it wasn’t good to be so hung up on something, to get such a charge from it, to be dependent — to be unable to resist what you knew you shouldn’t do.

  “That’s part of the bad part of the magic,” he thought. “Frederick’s part. His — his obsession.” But realizing this didn’t stop him feeling the way he felt as they walked out of the bank to the car. That he couldn’t wait to be alone with it, to make it work again.

  They drove home in silence. Omri held the parcel on his knee. He didn’t realize he was tapping impatiently on the top of it with his fingernail, making a muffled metallic clicking, until his father suddenly said, “I know what it is.”

  Omri froze.

  “I must be stupid,” said his father. “The shape alone — I recognize it. It’s that cupboard you wrote the story about. The one Gillon gave you for your birthday two years ago.”

  Omri’s mouth went dry. He couldn’t have spoken even if he’d had anything useful to say.

  His father’s profile was frowning. Omri could almost hear his brain ticking away, working things out.

  That damned story - The Plastic Indian! Omri’d written the whole thing for a competition, they’d all read it, he’d received a prize for it. It was the story that had triggered a memory in Mr Johnson’s brain and convinced him at last that he had really seen Little Bull and Boone in Patrick’s hand that day… Could the fact that Omri had done something as solemn as putting the cupboard (easily recognizable in its wrapping — he could see that now!) into the bank vault tip his father off in the same way, that his prize-winning story was based on the truth?

  But no. Even though his father was an artist, he was basically a rational man who automatically rejected anything his senses didn’t tell him was true. He, unlike Mr Johnson, had never seen the little people. Omri saw his father shake himself free of his incredible thought, take a deep breath, and begin to whistle carelessly. He had put it away from him. Omri sighed too, and held the parcel closer.

  As soon as they got home, Omri bolted into the house, up to his room (through Gillon’s, fortunately empty - he and Tony had gone down to the river), where he blocked the door and tore the wrappings off like a madman. The decent thing would be to wait for Patrick, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t wait! The excitement was rising to a new pitch inside him.

  The cupboard, white and shiny with its new mirror and coat of paint, stood in the wreckage of the brown paper looking somehow like a tiny building rising out of mounds of rubble and earth. Omri opened the door, ran his hand over the shelf, and then reached into the bottom and reverently picked up the envelope in which he had sealed the key.

  He tore it open and drew the key out by its twisted and faded bit of red satin ribbon.

  He could see now that it was not silver, but lead. It was too heavy to be silver. And lead was soft. The sticking-out bits of the key that actually worked locks were getting a bit worn. As he examined them, it occurred to Omri that lead was the wrong metal to make a key from. If one used it too often… But on the other hand, perhaps its softness, its flexibility, was why it worked on a lot of different locks. Or, was that just the magic?

  Would it work on the cashbox?

  Omri fetched it from under his bed. It had got a little dusty. He rubbed it shiny with a stray sock. It was painted black, with gold and red lines, and the red blob of sealing wax in the middle of the lid gave it a bizarre look.

  “Now,” thought Omri. He felt breathless with suspense. “I must act quickly. Lid up at once, ignore the earrings, just go for the little people in their wrappings. Who will they be? How will they be?” And a vagrant memory of a line in an old film he’d seen quite recently on TV came back to him: Buried how long? It was said to an old, old man in a prison cell. He’d forgotten his answer, but it wasn’t thirty years
.

  Of course they hadn’t been ‘buried’, they’d been living their lives somewhere else.

  But thirty years! It was a long time.

  No good thinking any more. If you’re going to do it, do it.

  He put the key in the lock and turned it. The lid sprang open.

  15

  In the Cashbox

  Just as he’d expected, a number of finger-sized parcels lay in the bottom — five of them. The wrappings on all but one were small folded ladies’ handkerchiefs that had been white. They were a stained beige now - some air and damp must have got in after all.

  Losing no time, Omri swiftly picked up the first parcel. He unrolled it, quickly but carefully. It was like unrolling a tiny rug that had someone in the middle.

  The figure inside it sat up slowly, shaking its head between its bent knees. It was a man and he had white hair. Omri took time to notice no more than this. He was already unrolling the second, and the third.

  The fourth roll had nobody in it.

  He felt that as soon as he picked it up. When he unrolled it he found it empty, except for some items of uniform. He knew what that meant. It had been the same with Tommy. The wearer had been a soldier who, since the last time he was brought, had died in action in his own time. Omri noticed the uniform was not khaki but red and blue — some older army era. Anyway, there was no point wasting time on that now.

  He didn’t bother, either, with the last little package. Unlike the others, it was carelessly wrapped in a twist of brown paper and must hold the earrings. Time for that later. He turned back to the others.

  The first thing he noticed was that two of them were men, and one was a woman.

  The man Omri had unrolled first was just getting stiffly to his feet in the midst of the crumpled, lace-edged handkerchief. He was wearing rather heavy looking dark blue trousers, a shirt without a collar, a wide leather belt, and braces over his shoulders. He wore slippers on his feet and his snowy hair was tousled as if he’d been woken from a nap. He was holding a tiny newspaper.