by David Parkin
And so Lauren learned the secret of the nose. Christopher started at the beginning and told the entire story. He told Lauren about finding Little Big Nose stuck to Arnold’s face, he told her about all the slug sayings and riddles and about Doctor Skinner’s mansion.
“In fact, you met the doctor and Little Big Nose at the library!”
“I remember Doctor Skinner, but I don’t remember any nose…”
“He was stuck to my face. He came out with us on Halloween as well.”
Lauren sat on the bed and sighed. “Christopher, I’m finding all of this very hard to believe … it just sounds so … so crazy.”
“I knew it,” said Christopher. “You think it’s just me being odd, you think I’m making this up.”
“I didn’t say that.”
Christopher got up and stalked from the room, banging the door. Seconds later the door flew open and Christopher appeared brandishing the lifeless Scuttler. He held it up in front of Lauren’s face.
“Christopher, please don’t, it’s horrible…”
“If all this is in my imagination,” said Christopher, waving the hand in front of her. “Then how do you explain this?”
“Okay … okay, I believe you. Just please put it down. CHRISTOPHER!”
Christopher dropped Scuttler to the floor and stared out of the window.
“I’ve got to help Little Big Nose,” he said quietly. “Doctor Skinner’s going to cut him up into tiny bits, I know he is…”
“But Christopher what can you do?”
“I’m going to have to go over there, tonight, after bedtime.” He looked Lauren in the eye. “And you’re going to cover for me. If Mum finds out I’m not here, just tell her I’ve gone camping or something…”
“Christopher…”
“You’re smart, you’ll think of something.”
“But it could be dangerous and it’s going to be dark,” pleaded Lauren.
“It’s a full moon tonight, that should give me enough light to find my way around.”
“I don’t think you should go…” Lauren got slowly from the bed and walked over to her brother. “Maybe we should tell Mum.”
“She won’t believe us. And even if she did, what could she do?”
A single tear fell down Lauren’s cheek.
“Oh Lauren…” Christopher gave his sister’s arm an awkward little rub. “I’ll be fine, I promise. It’s just … I’ve got to do something. Little Big Nose is my friend, and if you’re not there for your friends when they need you, then you’re not any kind of friend at all.”
“I know. But there must be another way…”
“No,” said Christopher firmly. “If I don’t do something soon, then Little Big Nose is in big trouble.”
He looked toward the black clouds that smothered the sky. Tiny shards of icy snow swirled down from the darkness. “There’s nothing else for it. I’ve got to go to Skinner’s mansion.”
The Trail Through the Snow
Christopher looked up at the wall and shivered. Things were not going well.
When he left the house he had been far too eager to get going, and he hadn’t thought twice about the layer of snow on the ground or the chill in the air. After ten minutes on the road, his bike had skidded on some ice. He grazed his knee, and his hands had been far too cold to fix the disconnected gears. He hid his bike in a nearby hedge, and had to walk the rest of the way, only to find Doctor Skinner’s gates locked. He trudged halfway round the doctor’s land, but he couldn’t see any way under or over the tall wall that protected it. His shoes were soaking, his hands were red raw and every inch of him was cold.
He stumbled to a halt and watched heavy black clouds sweep overhead, blotting out the stars and the full moon.
“Typical me…” he mumbled.
He’d blundered into his rescue mission full of friendship and bravery, but didn’t have any plans of how to get into the mansion and save his friend.
He stared into the blackness of the night and felt utterly alone.
Two green eyes stared back.
Christopher’s whole body stiffened.
A damp muzzle sniffed the air and a paw rose tentatively from the ground.
Christopher stood as still as possible.
The paw sunk into a crust of snow and a thick auburn tail swished restlessly from side to side.
For a moment Christopher forgot where he was and the terrible cold, and was once again just a boy, a boy who adored animals.
The fox surveyed him with shining eyes. She was obviously old, with a few scars and greying fur, but the sight of her, stark and brilliant against the snow, took Christopher’s breath away.
They looked at each other.
Her ears twitched, and Christopher was sure she could hear his heart pounding.
She made the first move. Never once taking her eyes from the boy, the fox dipped her head and sniffed the snow.
Christopher’s thoughts returned to the matter in hand. If only he could talk to her, like Little Big Nose, and explain … she could help.
He took a furtive step toward her.
“Hello there…” Before he could say any more, the fox flinched backwards and hastily loped away.
Christopher’s shoulders slumped.
“Stupid idea anyway,” he said. “Can’t say I blame you either. What have humans ever done for foxes?”
He crouched down in the snow and put his head in his hands.
He looked mournfully at the fox’s tracks and wished he could ask Little Big Nose what to do.
Then he frowned.
Then he smiled.
The fox’s tracks headed away from him … but they also headed towards Doctor Skinner’s perimeter wall.
Christopher jumped to his feet.
“She might help me yet…”
He set off, hot on the fox’s trail.
Eyeballs, feet, toes, teeth, elbows, ears, belly buttons and knees spun past over and over again, their shapes and smells distorted, thundering by with sickening speed. Like a sprawling lifeless creature, each specimen blurred into the next, pale hands reached out to nothing and countless mouths opened to empty screams.
Little Big Nose could no longer tell one smell from the next. As he spun round and round, the different odours of the laboratory flashed by so quickly that he felt dizzy and ill.
“Had enough yet?” Doctor Skinner turned up the speed on the centrifuge and giggled. “Scream if you want to go faster!”
Little Big Nose was strapped, nostrils outwards, to the middle of the machine. Like a high-speed roundabout, the centrifuge spun at such an incredibly fast rate that if he hadn’t been fastened down, the nose would have been thrown off long ago. As it was, the force of the spinning machine sucked all the snot from his nostrils, which ran into the beakers and test tubes that were attached to the edge of the device. He felt as if his life was being slowly drained away.
Doctor Skinner reached down and flicked a switch.
“I think you’ve had enough for now.” The centrifuge slowly wound down to a halt.
The Doctor unhooked a beaker filled with dark green snot and held it up to the light.
“This should be interesting.”
Little Big Nose wheezed desperately. With what was left of his strength he opened his nostril and cried out a slug distress call.
“What’s that infernal racket you keep making?” asked Doctor Skinner as he raised a thick magnifying glass to his eye.
“A message for my friends,” said the nose.
“Ah … friends…” chuckled the doctor. “Never really had much call for them. Don’t have time you see, too busy being a genius.”
“Even a genius needs friends…”
“Not me,” said Skinner a
s he inspected the mucus.
Little Big Nose felt so empty and drained that he just wanted to sleep. He knew instinctively, however, that it was a bad idea. He must keep talking, it would keep him awake and it might buy him some time.
“What do you want?” he asked weakly.
“Well,” replied the doctor, ever eager to follow up a question about his work. “I want to know why you’re alive.”
“I’m alive because my mother and Christopher both saved me when I was alone and helpless.”
“That’s very charming,” replied the doctor. “But my research will be of a more scientific nature.”
Skinner pulled out a microscope and placed the beaker of goo underneath the long lens.
“A long time ago, my father taught me a valuable lesson,” continued the doctor as he fiddled with the focus. “He taught it to me over and over again as it happens, but it was a lesson worth learning and I am eternally grateful to him.”
“And where is your father now?” asked Little Big Nose.
Doctor Skinner ignored the question.
“My father taught me that all living things, even us humans are no more or less than very well-made machines. And one day we will understand everything there is to know about animals and humans, by using science and science alone.”
“I hope that isn’t so…” said the nose. “I’d like to think life has a little more magic to it than that.”
“It doesn’t, I’m afraid,” said Skinner. “No … we’re all machines, whether you like it or not.”
The doctor paused thoughtfully. “And it is this realisation that has been the inspiration for all my devices. If humans and technology are basically machines then why not mix the two?”
“But the part of the me that is alive,” said Little Big Nose. “The part of me that hopes and feels … that isn’t a machine.”
The doctor snorted.
The nose continued, “And you won’t discover what it is by examining a test tube of mucus.”
“You’d better hope I can,” said the doctor in a cold voice. He reached into a drawer and pulled out a long shining scalpel. “Because if I can’t … I will have to cut you open to find out.”
The tracks led to a corner of the wall where a few bricks had fallen away. Beneath these bricks was a dirt path dug into the earth and worn smooth by years of use by generations of foxes.
Christopher took the rucksack off his back and thrust it through the hole. After a moment or two of kicking the snow away from the entrance to the tunnel, he got onto his hands and knees and began to scramble through.
There was more snow built up on the other side of the wall, so Christopher had to thrust it away with his freezing hands. He grabbed the roots of a nearby tree and pulled.
Nothing.
He tugged again, but didn’t move an inch. He tried to wriggle out the way he had come but found he couldn’t move backwards either. He was stuck tight.
“This isn’t good.”
He attempted to dig his elbows into the ground, but it was hard and icy. He held his breath and heaved.
Panic crept up his neck and itched into his mouth.
In a mad burst of energy he thrashed about in the snow, kicking his feet and beating the wall with his fists. He gritted his teeth and pushed against the stone as hard as he could, hot steam rising from his face.
Still nothing.
“Help!” The cry rose to his throat before he had time to control it. It echoed amongst the leafless trees and then faded into the night.
An owl watched him with cold eyes. It blinked, shook its feathers and then took to the air, swooping silently away.
Numbness was beginning to spread through his toes and fingers. If he didn’t get out soon he was going to freeze to death.
“Help!” he yelled at the top of his voice. “Help … somebody … anybody … please … help!”
“Shhh, be quiet,” a harsh whispered voice came from the other side of the wall.
Christopher felt a pair of small hands grab him by the ankles.
“Just relax and I’ll try my best to push you through.”
Before Christopher could say anything the hands started pushing and he was moving. He grabbed at the tree trunk, pulled himself clear and flopped on to the snow, panting heavily.
A woolly hat edged by ginger hair appeared at the hole. Lauren looked up at her brother with red cheeks and sparkling eyes.
“I knew you’d need my help sooner or later.” She held out a gloved hand. “Don’t just sit there, give me a pull.”
Christopher reached down and heaved his sister through the hole and on to her feet.
“What are you doing here?”
“I followed you.”
“I told you to stay at home!”
“I was worried,” said Lauren.
“I don’t care if you were worried, this could be dangerous!”
“You would have been stuck there all night!”
“I wouldn’t have … I had it all under control … I was going to…” Christopher tailed off and then looked down at his hand with a huge scowl on his face.
Lauren followed his gaze.
“Oh right … sorry”. She hadn’t even noticed that she was still holding his hand. She let go and hung her head.
“I just do it by accident some times … I don’t…” she began to try to explain but then stopped when she noticed her brother’s hands. “LOOK AT YOUR FINGERS! They’re red raw!”
Christopher tucked them under his armpits, “I’m all right.”
“Didn’t you bring any gloves?” Looking at Lauren in her mittens, hat, wellies and scarf, Christopher did feel a bit underprepared … and very cold.
“Isn’t there anything in your rucksack?” she asked. “What did you bring?”
Christopher paused and then muttered something.
“What?” said Lauren.
“MY SPY KIT, OKAY?” shouted Christopher.
“Spy kit?” Lauren couldn’t suppress her giggle. “What for?”
“It’s got all sorts of useful stuff!” Christopher delved into his bag. “Look, erm … binoculars … invisible ink pen…”
“Very useful.”
“A compass. I don’t think that works anymore but…”
“No gloves though.”
“Walkie-talkies!” said Christopher triumphantly, holding up one of the set. “Little radios so we can talk to each other. Very handy seeing as Mum won’t let us have phones till we’re older. You never know when you might need these!”
“But you didn’t bring any gloves…”
“No…”
“Or any food.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“That’s a shame.” Lauren reached down through the hole in the wall and pulled out a rucksack of her own. “Because I brought along some chocolate.” As soon as she’d taken the bar from the front pouch Christopher snatched it, ripped off the wrapper and devoured the whole thing in two mouthfuls.
“Now something for those hands, give me that…” Lauren took the walkie-talkie from Christopher and handed him two bright pink gloves.
“I’m not wearing these,” said Christopher but put the gloves on away. Lauren wrapped a scarf around his neck and put a bobble hat on his head.
“That’s better,” she said, standing back to survey her work.
“Whoever embarked on a daring rescue mission looking like this?” said Christopher as he turned and strode out across the snow. “And another thing,” he called over his shoulder. “If anything bad happens to you, remember whose idea it was to follow me.”
As they walked on, a host of eyelids opened high above them. In the uppermost reaches of Doctor Skinner’s wood, amongst the tallest branches, perched a hoard of d
arkly glistening spheres. As the children weaved through the trees a hundred red pupils followed them with lifeless precision. Then the eyeballs began to gently buzz as, one by one, their antennas slowly rose into the air.
“What am I missing?” The doctor sent the microscope clattering to the floor. “I was sure your mucus would hold the answer.”
“Maybe you’re looking in the wrong places,” said Little Big Nose.
“You know what?” replied Skinner. “I think I’m going to enjoy dissecting you.”
“INTRUDERS! INTRUDERS!” A mouth that was mounted on to a wall began shouting loudly. “WARNING! INTRUDERS!”
Monitors crackled, and Little Big Nose snorted with joy when Christopher and Lauren walked into shot.
The doctor stalked over to his security terminal. “How did they get in?”
“I knew my friends would come,” said the nose.
“They won’t be here long though,” growled the doctor. “I can assure you of that!”
He furiously grabbed at levers and flicked switches.
“I have a device designed specifically for trespassers. And your friends are not going to like it!”
The Mechanical Beast
“Wait!”
Christopher threw his arms into the air. “What is it now?”
Lauren stood a few yards behind him with a look of concentration on her face.
“Come on!” said Christopher. “We haven’t got time to be resting every few minutes.”
“Will you just be quiet!” The sharpness in her voice stopped him dead. “Can you hear that?”
Christopher listened. The wind moaned through the trees, but there was nothing else.
“I can’t hear anything,” he said. “You’re just imaginings things … can we get going now, please?”
Lauren reached down, cleared a patch in the snow and held her hand flat against the ground.
“What are you doing?”
“Sshhh!”
The winter soil throbbed against her fingers.
She pushed down harder. A drum roll of muffled thuds rumbled through the earth.
