The Challenge

by Tom Hoyle

  ‘Come on, Blakey,’ I heard Darren say in the near distance. ‘We just want to have a laugh. It’s only a joke.’

  For a dreadful moment, I thought Blake was going to jump. He turned and looked at the drop a couple of times.

  ‘If you lay a hand on me,’ he said in his usual nasally tones, ‘I’ll go straight to the police . . . and Mr Morris.’ Mr Morris was our no-nonsense Headmaster – this was an appeal to authority Blake had made many times before.

  ‘Don’t be such a tosser,’ Darren said. Then much louder: ‘Guys, I’ve found him.’

  The only nearby sound was the cracking of twigs as Mark and I edged closer.

  Darren shouted again: ‘Guys, I’m over here. Guys?’ I saw the pale circle of Darren’s face as he turned around.

  ‘Leave him alone,’ I said. It was the first time I’d properly stood up to Darren.

  ‘Benny? Yeah? Yeah?’ His hands were already fists. ‘And what are you going to do about it?’ His laugh came out as a giggle. ‘Your new best friends aren’t here to help you now.’

  ‘Just come back to the party, Darren.’ It was Mark’s low voice.

  After years of practice, Darren knew how to be slippery, and he immediately adjusted to Mark’s arrival.

  ‘That’s what I’m trying to do, but Blakey legged it like a complete knob. What’s wrong with trying to help someone? Don’t start picking on me just because you’re Head Boy. You’re not Head Boy here.’ Darren swore as he tripped over a root and caught a branch under his chin. ‘You should stay away from me,’ he called over his shoulder a few seconds later. ‘I want to know what you’re up to in this forest anyway, Benny. Looking for something? I’ve heard about people like you.’ And he walked back towards the house.

  It wasn’t easy to get Blake to return to the party, but I reluctantly accepted it would have been impossible without Mark’s intervention.

  ‘Aren’t you guys into magic?’ Mark asked patronizingly – as if the gap between us was years rather than months. ‘Blake, why don’t you come in and see Ben do some tricks? Maybe you can do one yourself?’

  Blake initially insisted that he should ring home – ‘That’s what I’ve been told to do if there’s any trouble’ – but the promise of magic finally deterred him, though not without many hints of I told you so. I was keen to do some tricks because Mark would bring Caroline, and she would be impressed by what had happened, given that I was the first to run after Darren, and Mark had actually run after me, which wasn’t nearly as brave.

  We returned to find Darren surrounded. ‘We went off into the woods to try to help this idiot,’ he said, pointing at Blake, ‘and now Chrisso and Chalkie have disappeared.’ I hoped that his caveman friends had fallen into a ditch.

  ‘Would you like us to look again?’ asked Jack. ‘They might have gone further than we thought.’

  A bizarre quarter of an hour followed, during which members of the party drunkenly wandered in and out of the woods with the pretence of looking for the lost pair. Couples went off together and sometimes took suspiciously long to return.

  Ethan shrugged and turned back to the house, but I also went looking, using the torch on my phone. It was hard to judge distances, but I went further than anyone else, higher up the slope, and found a track that had been driven on, presumably by the Land Rover. I later discovered that my theory was right: a track snaked behind the house and out into the forest, through the trees to the right of Timberline if you were looking across the river from Compton Village.

  I went far beyond where it was likely Darren’s friends had wandered. The sound of the party didn’t reach this part of the woods. After three or four bends in the track, I knew I was being stupid, but in the distant gloom I could see a splitting of the tracks. I shone the torch behind me (nothing), then pushed the beam into my leg for a second (total black in all directions).

  I don’t know why I went so far – perhaps I subconsciously knew that there was something to be found? To the right, off the main track, there was a large shed, the size of a double garage. A chain and padlock were wound tightly round the handles.

  Almost immediately, I heard something approaching behind me, fast. My head instinctively turned into the darkness, and by the time the torch pointed in the right direction I caught the blur of a Twin approaching. For a moment I thought he was going to rugby tackle me, and I flinched, but he slid to a stop.

  ‘Ben, have you got lost?’

  ‘No, I was just looking, and the track kept on going, and . . .’ I felt like a complete idiot.

  ‘Let’s get back,’ said Sam. ‘Let’s see if those two morons have been found.’

  The wooden building slipped back into darkness and silence.

  My phone’s torch dimly lit the track for both of us. We wandered back to the others, talking about the area and how much we liked it. I explained about my phobia of water, and how strange it was that I had lived the past six years next to millions and millions of gallons of something that frightened me.

  ‘How did you come to move here?’ I asked.

  ‘Timberline has been in the family for some time,’ said Sam. ‘But we’re now here permanently.’

  ‘So you know the area?’

  ‘Yeah – a bit.’

  He didn’t actually lie.

  ‘Actually, I wondered if I recognized your father,’ I said.

  ‘Maybe in a car going through Compton? Though we usually drive in the other way,’ Sam suggested. From the main road at the top of the Lake, it would be quicker to go down the right-hand side of Lake Hintersea, rather than through Compton Village.

  In a car? No, I thought, that’s not it. But I couldn’t work out where . . . I had seen his face before. Close up, maybe on television . . .

  I wondered about their previous school – they had hardly spoken about anything to do with their past. It slipped out in one lesson that they understood Latin, which wasn’t taught anywhere I knew. ‘Which school were you at in London?’ I asked.

  The noise of the party was slowly returning.

  ‘I don’t mind you knowing anything – but don’t want anyone else to know.’ Sam smiled and nodded as if this was a significant fact. ‘We were at a boarding school just outside London,’ he murmured. ‘But we definitely prefer Wordsworth.’ I didn’t care that they had been somewhere posh. I didn’t ask why they had moved, and I didn’t ask any more questions. They had never mentioned old friends or anything about their life before Wordsworth.

  Almost as soon as we returned, Darren’s accomplices stumbled out of the woods, first the ratty one, then the ape. Everyone gathered to look. Both appeared to have run into trees or ditches, but they claimed to have been attacked. One had a bruise on his shoulder; the other was bleeding.

  ‘One of you little turds was playing with us, man!’ said the smaller one. ‘When I find out who, I’ll smash your skull!’ ape-man threatened to no one in particular.

  I know what you’re thinking. The Twins somehow did it. I still don’t see how they could have. There was so little time. They would have had to find them and beat them up, all without being noticed – even by their victims – who weren’t together at the time. But if anyone could have done it, it was Sam and Jack. In any case, someone, or something, did.

  ‘You’re a couple of thick and clumsy idiots,’ said Mark.

  ‘I didn’t . . . Someone . . . in the darkness . . .’ rat-face started.

  ‘He had a stick . . .’ said ape, sensing that his story was doubted. He turned to Darren for support. ‘I’ve had enough of this shitty little party.’

  Darren shrugged. He was staying, unfortunately.

  As they stormed off, slightly shoving me as they went, I heard one say, ‘I couldn’t see his face.’ Then there was the sound of a glass bottle exploding against a wall.

  ‘If you go down to the woods today, be sure of a big surprise,’ said Sam.

  Everyone chuckled.

  ‘Hey, it is Halloween!’ said Jack.

  More l
aughter. But no one went into the forest any more.

  Sam addressed everyone: ‘And now inside for the big show. Let’s go!’

  I ambled inside with everyone else, and it was only as I entered the conservatory that Jack said, ‘You’re on. We know you’ll amaze everyone.’

  ‘What? Right now?’ Fear and excitement fought for control of my brain. ‘You must be kidding!’

  Jack introduced me as ‘The Next David Blaine’ and Sam threw me a pack of cards, which I dropped. About five people, including Caroline, clapped; most jeered, including Darren. I regretted not having a chance to prepare the pack in advance.

  I had rehearsed the patter a thousand times in front of the mirror at home so went on to autopilot with Ethan, my first volunteer: ‘Go on, pick a card . . . Good choice . . . Hold it up for everyone else but don’t let me see it . . . Put it back, anywhere you like . . . Let me give the pack a really good shuffle.’ All of the time I was cutting and shuffling the pack. All false shuffles, of course. The real skill is to keep track of a card and then make it appear when you want.

  ‘And . . . is this your card?’ I had thrown three cards on to the table and turned over the middle one.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Ethan, ‘that’s it. How the hell did you do that, man?’

  ‘It’s a set-up,’ someone yelled from the back.

  ‘OK, step forward,’ I said, offering the pack to the guy who had heckled. ‘Look at the cards, count the cards, examine the cards – muddle them up as much as you like. And then pick one. Don’t let me see it.’

  Of course, I didn’t have to see the card, just keep track of it in the pack again. I put my fingers to my forehead as if to focus my magical powers.

  ‘Now I’m going to lose it inside the deck by giving it a really good shuffle, mixing it up, making it random.’ The pack went backwards and forwards between my hands, apparently being shuffled. ‘Come closer,’ I said, ‘so that you can see I’m not cheating.’ The crowd – my crowd – edged forward.

  I tapped the pack on the table. ‘I have no idea what your card is,’ I said. ‘But maybe the pack knows.’ And when I spread the deck out on the table, just after the middle there was one card face up – the card he’d chosen.

  There was a cheer. After that, even a quick fancy shuffle brought applause; they roared when I sent the cards through the air from one hand to the other.

  I did a couple more tricks but I didn’t want to start boring them.

  ‘And now, ladies and gentlemen, my final trick. I will do something that the greats of magic have never achieved. The Great Lafayette, Derren Brown – none of them can do this, at least, not at sixteen years old.’ It was like a real magic show. ‘I will identify an object chosen while I’m out of the room.’ I scanned the audience. ‘For this, I need a volunteer.’

  A lot of hands went up, but I had to pick Blake. He knew the trick; he knew how to play along as my stooge.

  Blake helped by putting his hand up, but then someone suggested Sam and Jack, and a chant started: ‘Sam and Jack! Sam and Jack!’ Soon everyone joined in, apart from Blake, who understood that I was getting into trouble. Without someone who knew the code that guided me to what had been chosen, I was going to look a complete idiot after all.

  Despite this, I went ahead, desperately thinking of a way out. After I left the room (Head Boy Mark volunteered for the role of ‘reliable witness’ to make sure I didn’t peek), an obscure object was chosen in silence. ‘Don’t look at the object,’ I said when I returned, frantically praying that Blake would look straight at it, but he shrugged and screwed up his face: the object was so obscure that I’d never get it by chance.

  ‘And don’t even think about it – that helps me!’ I said, looking at Ethan, desperately hoping that he would give me a clue, but he was oblivious to the fact that I was looking for one. ‘Ethan – I can also read your perverted thoughts!’ I still had the entire room under my control, but knew that embarrassment was near.

  ‘Let’s hear it for Ben!’ said Sam. Everyone cheered and the Twins came over and shook my hand theatrically.

  ‘The pressure’s back on,’ said Jack.

  Silence returned.

  I made a great play of considering objects that were ‘cold’, and then ones that were slightly warmer and closer.

  Finally, complaining about the heat, I tipped out the pack and ran my hands over the upturned cards. ‘Ouch – this one burns me,’ I said, and lifted up the King of Hearts.

  The room erupted into cheers. Darren shouted: ‘Lucky, lucky bastard!’

  ‘Thank you ladies and gentlemen,’ I said. Now, that’s real magic!’

  Blake came over. ‘I can’t believe I’ve seen real magic for the first time,’ he said. ‘How did you get away with that?’

  Sam’s handshake, the crowd behind him, and the words ‘Caroline’s suit’; then Jack with ‘King’. I was never sure why they didn’t just tell me outright. Maybe they wanted an extra layer of mystery to show that we were in the same club; maybe they were genuinely worried about being overheard – I tried it in the mirror the next day, and you don’t have to move your lips to say those words.

  ‘Magicians must have some secrets,’ I said. But The Twins had been the real magicians. Without them, I wouldn’t have had the faintest idea what to find.

  If an evening had ever changed my life for the better, this was it. Lots of people I’d never spoken to came over and slapped me on the back.

  Over the noise, Jack shouted, ‘There’s plenty still to drink!’ and slowly everyone dispersed.

  Perhaps an hour later, The Twins encouraged everyone to the front of the house for the fireworks. I went forward with Ethan and Anna and we stood at the top of the sixty-foot cliff. I just about restrained myself from telling them about the abseiling.

  ‘I love fireworks,’ drawled Ethan. ‘I love the ooh and the ahhhh, man. I love the whizz and the bang. Do you like a whizz and a bang, Anna?’

  I liked Anna. She wasn’t intimidated by anyone, and Ethan would never normally have been cheeky with her. ‘If your little sparkler comes anywhere near me, I’ll snap it in half,’ she said.

  At that moment, a firework shot up from the bottom of the cliff, seeming to pass just in front of our noses, and then shattered in the sky above us. After four small zippy ones, there was another rocket that exploded twice and lit up the mountainside. Then nothing. Ethan started to clap ironically and whispered to me that it wasn’t exactly New Year’s Eve on the Thames. Anna turned away. A few others muttered. For a party so fancy in other ways, it’d been a poor display.

  ‘Better than nothing,’ I said, determined to be loyal to The Twins.

  Suddenly a firework soared up from Cormorant Holm, the island that was roughly in the middle of the Lake between Timberline and Compton Village. It was a clump of trees and knotty grass surrounded by boulders with a ‘Private Property – Strictly No Mooring’ sign on the side. I had rowed past with Will a few times when we were little, before my accident, but had never gone further than knocking Mrs Winter’s rowing boat against the rocks. Will used to race his dad out to it, round it and back in their small yachts.

  There was another firework, and another. Soon there were dozens, and the sky was a riot of colours reflected in the shimmering mirror of the lake. Red, pink, yellow and blue fell like exploding flowers. For a finale, a burst flew up from Cormorant Holm at the same time that others shot past us from the bottom of the cliff.

  Silence.

  Then we cheered.

  ‘Man, that is the coolest thing that has ever happened in this dark corner of the universe,’ said Ethan.

  The Twins were besieged with compliments and questions. ‘That was amazing!’ – ‘Who let them off?’ – ‘How did they get on the island?’ – ‘Do you do this sort of thing often?’

  I said the same things.

  It emerged that Cormorant Holm belonged to Timberline, and that The Twins’ parents had arranged for the display.

  ‘We’re just rea
lly happy that everyone has been so great to us,’ said Sam and Jack repeatedly.

  In all of this I didn’t hear anyone apart from Darren complain about them being poncey rich kids. Given the fireworks, magnificent house, abundant food and drink, people could easily have been antagonized rather than hooked. But The Twins wore tatty trainers and slightly frayed jeans and were content not to have the last word. ‘You’ve got me there,’ they might say, or ‘I lose – how could I be such an idiot?’ I didn’t just admire them; I was in awe.

  Later in the evening, after most people drifted away, I ended up with about ten others in the conservatory, the scene of my earlier success, arms outstretched over seats. Jack stood behind the others and nodded his head slightly to one side, very subtly indicating the door. I said something about needing the toilet and followed him out. But instead of going left, we turned right into an old-fashioned study.

  Jack locked the door. The room was lined in dark wood with traditional landscape paintings of Lake Hintersea to the left and rows of books behind the desk.

  ‘What’s going on, mate?’ I asked.

  ‘I think we’ve a Challenge of bringing Mark “I’m-too-sexy-for-your-party” Roberts down a bit. Besides, he’s with your girl,’ said Jack.

  Drinking a few beers had shifted the boundaries of common sense in my brain. ‘Yeah – he’s been annoying me all evening,’ I said. He had been poking his nose in where it really wasn’t wanted, interfering when I was helping Blake, annoying me with heavy policing of what was my magic performance.

  Jack produced a small blue and white packet with Ex-Lax written on it: Stimulant Laxative.

  ‘These will produce an explosion of turd. Are you on?’

  I smiled.

  ‘The best Challenges are the ones that bring justice,’ said Jack.

  ‘Yeah, I’m in,’ I said, showing Jack two fists in celebration and then slapping his hand in a high-five.

  ‘The little shit will be streaming with shit before he knows it,’ whispered Jack as he draped his arm round my shoulder.

  ‘But how do we get him to swallow them?’ I asked.