The Black Book

by George Shadow

  * * *

  “Where are we?” Stephanie wondered.

  Some shirtless Africans were working behind them in a kind of plantation and two European men were supervising this work.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Matthew said, turning back to the precious sheet of ancient paper in his hand. They were dressed like the Europeans, but this didn’t matter as well.

  “Now what?” Stephanie asked.

  “We move forward,” Matthew told her. Holding her hand, he placed his thumb on his name and grimaced with the slight pain as they disappeared.

  One of the African slaves looked up to where the children once stood, but quickly returned to his work when both Spanish farmers angrily started towards him.

  The Spanish farmers spotted the clothes Matthew and Stephanie had left behind, however, and ordered a freckled lad, who had just appeared from a nearby house, to remove them and tell the negro maid to peg down any other clothes she was washing.

  Meanwhile, brother and sister had appeared exactly where they stood before in the coal house and the imprisoned kids here scampered away to safety.

  These children were completely perplexed by the whole affair, but Matthew, himself, was pleased with it, as well as the fact that he was still holding the presently smoldering piece of vital paper. “Now, to try our luck,” he said and pressed his little finger on his name again, while Stephanie still held him.

  They appeared in India before the Taj Mahal.

  “Not good,” Matthew said, shaking his head. He used his right index finger this time.

  Both kids appeared at home in their living room.

  Mom came in with her shopping, humming a tune and the children startled her as they scurried out the main door. “Where’re you two off to?” she wondered, carefully holding on to her shopping bags. “Stephanie, remember your ballet class today! Have you seen Nora?”

  “Ballet class?” Matthew asked Stephanie as they ran. He looked at the date on his watch and was glad he was still with it. “It is just Saturday! She hasn’t missed us! Mom doesn’t know!”

  “I wonder how many hours we’ve gone,” his sister remarked. “Where’re we going?”

  “To find Nora.”

  Outside, Sleepy Lake looked calm. There wasn’t any disquiet or chaos.

  “Well, what did we expect?” Matthew asked himself, looking around him as they moved towards a major street.

  “There’s Anderson,” Stephanie spotted, and ran across the road with her foster brother to meet the African-American, who rode his bicycle.

  “Anderson!” Matthew called out.

  “Hi, Matt! Whatz up?” Anderson greeted, braking. “Hello, Steph.” Obviously, his bicycle now had new brakes.

  “You know my sister, Nora?” Matthew asked Anderson, coming to a halt before him. “The one I told you about in school?”

  “Yeah—Louis Vuitton? I know she drives a cool BM. What about her?”

  “Have you seen her lately?” The fact that Anderson was friendly didn’t elude Matthew.

  “Think so . . . ,” Anderson said, looking back at the road he’d come from. “Saw her near the mall with a tall guy. They were in a hurry, you know, and I thought this a bit odd, really.”

  “Do you know where they were headed?”

  “What was he wearing?” Stephanie asked.

  “A . . . black trench coat? I think they were going to the station, and at some point, I thought your sister wanted to pass a message with her eyes to a passerby—you know she doesn’t know me—but the man won’t let her. Who is he? What’s happening?”

  The two started speaking at once.

  “It’s the book, Anderson,” Stephanie began.

  “The man’s name is Marcos, Anderson,” Matthew began.

  “You won’t know him, but he took the book from us and wants to rule the world with it! He’s got magical powers and . . .”

  “. . . is starting from our president,” Matthew concluded.

  “. . . has taken Nora with him,” Stephanie concluded.

  “Could you guys . . . rewind?” Anderson pleaded.

  “The man’s called Marcos,” Matthew slowly repeated. “You won’t know him, but he took the book from us and wants to rule the world with it! He’s got Nora and . . .”

  “Is this a movie or what?” Anderson intruded. “Which magic book are you talking about?”

  Matthew stared at Anderson.

  Stephanie had an ‘o’ below her nose. “Don’t you know about the book?” she finally managed to ask Anderson.

  “A school one or what? I’ve got so many, you know,” he said.

  ‘Of course, Anderson doesn’t know! He doesn’t know about the book!’ Matthew thought. “Anderson doesn’t know what happened to him,” he happily murmured. “He won’t tell anyone.”

  “Dude, wake up,” Anderson said, laughing and shoving Matthew playfully. “This is eight in the morning! You shouldn’t be joking around by this time of the day! See you on Monday.” And he rode off.

  “That saves us some trouble,” Matthew said as they watched the bicycle recede.

  “How?”

  “He won’t tell anyone.”

  “He won’t need to if we don’t find Marcos soon enough,” Stephanie said.

  “And hope the others don’t know as well,” Matthew agreed as they started towards the road leading to the bridge. “There’s Barbara and Mary Ann and Peter and Leonard and Yung Ji . . .” he counted out with his fingers, “. . . and Nora.”

  “And Fat George and Rupert,” Stephanie added. “We haven’t saved them yet, remember?”

  “We need the book to do that.”

  The two children flagged down a cab when they got to the main road.

  “The mall,” Matthew directed the driver and slipped in beside Stephanie. He knew it was possible some of the returned kids would know what had happened to them and would take it as a real-life experience. It was also possible, just as Anderson had reacted with ignorance to the whole nightmare, that some may not remember. “It’s all muddled up,” he muttered, staring out of the window with his hands on his chin as the car took on the bridge.

  “What?” Stephanie asked.

  Matthew tried to explain. “Anderson can’t remember anything, though we told him before he left Africa, and Mary Ann may just see it all as a bad dream and still appreciate our ‘kidnapping’ her as real, even though we never told her anything.” His sister looked even more confused. “They may or may not know about this just as they did or didn’t know about it when we met them in the past as other people! I just hope they tell no one any dreams or make a fuss about any funny stories! I won’t like to visit Sergeant Bradley again.”

  Stephanie was holding her head.

  The taxi stopped beside the paved front yard of a splendid glass structure several blocks wide. The town mall was at its busiest, but the children were not there to window-shop or anything. The local train station was situated across the road from the mall and this was their destination.

  “Excuse me, sir,” Matthew began when they met the old stationmaster coming out of his office.

  Mr. Wells knew Mr. Quentin well enough and was a friend of his children. “What can I do for you, my dears?” he asked.

  “We would like to know when the next train leaves for the city,” Matthew replied.

  “I hope you two aren’t running away from home, are you?”

  “No way, sir! It’s just for our . . . homework,” Matthew lied, turning to his companion, who nodded in connivance.

  “Well, you’re late, kids,” Mr. Wells informed them, wondering what kind of homework they were dealing with. “It just left like thirty minutes ago.”

  “There’s. . . . There’s no other one?”

  “Of course there is, it’s around twelve p.m.,” the old stationmaster answered. “Now, I’ve got some work to do, if you’ll excuse me, children.”

  “What’s the whole point in this?” Stephanie asked Matthew when the stationmaster
had gone.

  “Since Anderson saw Nora here, Marcos must’ve been thinking of taking a train to the city, where they can get a flight to Washington,” Matthew replied.

  “To see the president?” Stephanie asked, bewildered. “Why can’t they just write his name in the book? That’s . . . easier?”

  Matthew shook his head and took his sister’s hand as he started leaving. “That won’t work. Remember Marcos said you must personally meet the name owner before anything can happen. So he must find a way to meet the president before he can do what he wants to do with his name.”

  “Where’re we going?”

  “To buy tickets.”

  “But you don’t have cash,” Stephanie protested.

  “How did I pay for the taxi?”

  The station had a sizeable lounge into which they now hurried. Inside, two flat TV screens faced travelers on opposing walls lined with exotic flowers, and as the children waited in line for their turn, Matthew’s attention was drawn to a boy’s picture on one of the screens. “They still think he’s missing,” he told Stephanie, who was looking at the other telly.

  “Who?”

  “Fat George?”

  “They’re right to think so,” she remarked. “You should be worried about this, though,” and she directed his gaze to the other screen on the opposite wall. Channel 5 was trying to pinpoint the president’s whereabouts.

  “Marcos.”