The Secret Stealer

by Jess Webster

  “Do it just like I told you,” Domenic whispered. “Put your hand over her eyes, find the secret in her mind and draw it out. Then bring it towards you, so it will be yours.”

  James considered the predicament before him. On the one hand, Georgia wasn’t a very nice girl. On the other hand, James had discovered a very good reason for her behaviour.

  Her face was so serene, in these differing shades of moonlight. Once the sun rose she’d be under the curse of consciousness and she’d be punching and kicking everything in sight. But somehow James couldn’t bring himself to place his hand over her eyes and do the deed. Not even for revenge. She’d embarrassed him horribly by punching him down on the first day of school this year. But even so…

  “I can’t do it,” James said.

  “What you do mean you can’t do it?” Domenic spluttered. “What’s the matter with you? Don’t you want to go home to be with your family?”

  “But it just seems so… wrong.”

  “What’s the difference between this and misbehaving in class?” Domenic asked, his expression wry. “Both are wrong by definition.”

  “Yes, but it seems like a different kind of wrong, doesn’t it?”

  “Don’t you want to go home? What about your parents?”

  James thought it very discomfiting that Domenic had taken hold of this particular secret, even if it was to help him. It made him feel peculiarly naked.

  “This way it won’t involve your Nurse friend…” Domenic said in that irritating, suggestive, sing-song voice adults often employ when attempting to bribe or manipulate youngsters. James recognised the tone immediately and though he did not like it, he was forced to concede that Domenic Mancini had a point. Domenic continued, “She, and she alone, is responsible for those notes. If you use those secrets, your Miss Nurse-Woman–”

  “Miss Mason-Smith!” James said, with a sudden flash of vehemence.

  “Miss Mason-Smith will almost surely be fired.”

  James knew he was right. This was the only way. And yet something, something very potent, held him back. Eventually he said, “Give me a day to think about it. Meet me at the flagpole at sunset tomorrow night.”

  Domenic Mancini threw his arms up, uttered a curse of frustration and disappeared through the wall with a very grouchy, “Fine!”

  Miss Mason-Smith slept very badly that night. She awoke at least four times that she could recall and, she was sure, many more times that she could not (judging from the dark circles she observed beneath her eyes the next morning, and the way her mouth and eyes felt as if they were stuffed with cotton balls).

  As soon as she was dressed she hurried over to the boys’ dorm. She tried knocking, but to no avail.

  “James? Are you in there?”

  Eventually she entered without permission. The bed was unmade. James’ uniform was slung over the back of the chair beside his desk.

  Esther told herself to breathe calmly, but telling herself such things was of no use to her just at present. She felt beyond the point of self-induced calm. She would have to go to the Headmistress, for it appeared to her that James Winchester IV had run away from Westcott School for Boys and Girls. His fate, beyond this, was anyone’s guess. Two fat tears welled up quickly and rolled down her cheeks. She knew she wasn’t supposed to become so attached to any one student, but James was just so small and scared and sweet…

  As Esther left James’ room she walked alone through the silence of the dorm hallway. The cheery morning light made her angry. A small boy was missing, and the sun had the gall to be shining! She knew this thought was an irrational one; nevertheless it made her angry. And – a remarkable trait of the female sex – a woman may go from a puddle of tears into a swift, efficient, methodical machine in a matter of moments, if only a small amount of anger is introduced to the equation. Had anyone been present to witness her walk, they might have seen a remarkable change in her between one end of the hallway and the other: she eventually came to breathe slowly, deeply; her shoulders lifted and her step became quick. Anger was transforming her – from a girl in tears to a woman on a mission.

  James, meanwhile, did not return to his room, instead spending most of that night and the following day in the sky above the school, frowning down upon the castle-like structure, contemplating the conundrum before him.

  Had James truly been observing the spectacle below he might have noticed that all the teachers in the school (coordinated by Miss Mason-Smith) seemed to have banded together to form some sort of search party, which swiftly and methodically combed the school buildings and grounds. The children were not even allowed out for recess or lunch that day; they were to stay in their rooms and do their homework. Had he been paying attention, he also might have noticed the police car that crawled up to the school and emptied its passengers. But, as it happened, a very pretty cloud was forming nearby during that 90 minute period, so James’ attention and thoughts were completely occupied. It was truly fascinating, the way that white swirling vapour appeared out of nowhere to amass upon itself. Indeed, those 90 minutes were as 90 seconds to James, and as 90 hours – time seemed to have lost all meaning to him.

  It was true that he was, either way, going to steal secrets. It was also true that Domenic’s method would not get Miss Mason-Smith in any sort of trouble. And so James came to the conclusion, late that afternoon, that he must accept Domenic’s help.

  Approximately ten minutes before sunset James Winchester IV began his descent to the flagpole, to await Domenic Mancini’s return. Halfway down, as a bolt of lightning, a particular thought struck him. He had been able to see all the children’s secrets – the secrets of anybody and everybody (excluding Domenic, of course). Why, then, had he not seen Miss Mason-Smith’s secrets, when he had spoken to her the day before? And for that matter, Domenic had told him he was invisible. How, then, could Miss Mason-Smith have seen him? Could she see secrets too? Was she like Domenic?

  Greatly disturbed by these thoughts, James descended both in mood and in altitude.

  A similarly abrupt and shocking thought hit Nurse Esther as she was walking back to her room that evening. Her day had been incredibly long, defeating and irritating; and the lateness of the realisation struck her like a slap to the cheek.

  “Idiot!” she hissed at herself and began to sprint back to the infirmary. “Sleepwalking, he said,” she continued. “Following a man in a suit, he said. Unable to speak. Oh goodness gracious me, how could I have missed it?”

  Esther, by now, had reached her desk. The infirmary was cold and dark in the evening, and more than slightly creepy. Just beyond the infirmary window was a lank, skeletal tree that never seemed to have been alive in all Esther’s memory. It scraped at the windows in a breeze and groaned heavily in high wind. Just now it was rasping away at the glass. But the moment Esther glared at it, it became still. “Much better.” She nodded to the tree and sat at her chair.

  Esther ran her fingers along the right side of her desk, just below the desktop. She was not (as appearances may have suggested) fumbling about in the dark. Every movement she made was rehearsed; purposeful. She let her fingers trace downwards from the front right edge of the desk until her arm was fully extended, and then brought her fingers back up, tracing an anticlockwise spiral, leaving a faint trail of fluorescence beneath her fingers. Reaching the centre of the spiral, she pushed lightly into the wood. As the fibres yielded to her touch, the sound of clunking gears broke the silence, and, with a dull click, a section of the desktop flicked up to reveal a hidden recess. From this she withdrew a book, ancient and ragged and seeming to hum in her hands. Slowly, reverently, she opened it and turned to the last page of text. Two names glowed in blood-red light. Domenic Mancini was the first, and the second: James Winchester IV.

  She let out a momentary growl. “I am going to kill her!” she hissed. Armed with her last shred of resolve[26], she returned the book to its hiding place, hurriedly typed and printed a letter to Headmistress Gerson-Clay requesting indefinit
e stress leave, and screeched away from Westcott School for Boys and Girls in her little green Morris Mini Minor[27].

  James noticed by the dwindling light that sunset had passed. Domenic had not appeared. This was yet another point against Mr Mancini: James did not like people who arrived late. They upset his mother. If Yvette Winchester had been present she would not have been impressed. Little James felt a growing sense of unease, which was worsened by the long shadows of the tree-line that quivered on the grass before him, forming ephemeral monsters that lunged and retreated with the breaths of the wind.

  Around the corner of the dorm building then walked a feminine figure; upright, determined, somehow intolerant. Closer she came, and the moments between there and here seemed somehow lost on James, until suddenly the woman was standing before him. Puzzled by her appearance, James whispered, “Miss Mason-Smith?”

  “No, boy, my name is Blythe Pritchard,” she replied, her eyes narrowed.

  “But…” James was thoroughly bewildered. “But you look like Miss Mason-Smith, only your hair is done differently, and you’re wearing much too much make up[28] , and your face looks a little different today. But I’m sure you must be Miss Mason-Smith.”

  The woman gave James a withering look, and he felt like sinking into the dirt and out of her sight. “I do not think it is too much to ask of a new acquaintance to accept that my name is what it is.” After another moment she added scathingly, “My name is Blythe Pritchard.”

  She did not sound at all like Miss Mason-Smith, James admitted silently. Miss Mason-Smith always spoke quietly and kindly, and never made him feel silly. And Miss Mason-Smith’s was a subtle beauty that was amplified through her kind nature, and through a complete lack of vanity – she was elegant without meaning to be so, without even knowing. This woman, James thought to himself, seemed the type who was well pleased with herself and her appearance. Still…

  “I see that you are not going to introduce yourself,” she said, and James felt a little embarrassed, “but I assume that you must be James Winchester.”

  “Yes, I’m James,” he replied warily. “Where’s Mr Mancini?”

  “Domenic Mancini is not coming, James.”

  “But we were going to meet here at sunset.”

  “As you can see, sunset has passed and he is not here.”

  James looked around. Domenic certainly wasn’t in sight, but that did not mean he wasn’t coming. “He might still come.”

  The woman sighed. “James…”

  Sighing is a bad sign, James thought.

  “I don’t think you quite grasp the gravity of your current situation,” she said.

  James stared rather blankly at her.

  Her features softened for one second, but hardened the moment she resumed speaking. “Domenic Mancini never intended to help you make your parents love each other again.”

  Did the whole world know his secret now? James thought desperately. “Then what was he doing?” he asked.

  “He stole your secret so that his curse, the curse of the Secret Stealer, might be placed upon you.”

  “But Mr Mancini told me he had to steal my secret so he could lend me his powers.”

  “Of course he would say that, James. He was taking advantage of you. Now, unless you come with me and get your secret back, you will stay invisible, untouchable, for the rest of eternity. You’ll be a ghost, and the only things you will be able to touch are secrets.”

  Of course, objections immediately sprang up in James’ mind about the way the woman had classified his situation – his first thought, like that of any nine-year-old boy, was how could invisibility be a curse? Invisibility is the ultimate power! You could shout and scream at people and they would never know! You could spy on people without fear of capture! And here is where the logical processes of your average nine-year-old boy would have stopped. Invisibility is infinitely cool, and that is the end of the matter.

  But James’ was a mind unlike that of his peers; due to his love of reasoning he tended to follow a train of thought much further than other children, and though half the time this led to disastrously incorrect suppositions, it must be said that the other half of the time James actually reached quite logical and correct conclusions. This was one of the latter times. James had often pictured himself screaming and yelling and punching Andrew Harrison VI, and the imagining in itself was enough to help him endure the bullying – the knowledge that one day he could (and in all probability would) lose his temper, and that Andrew would be so shocked by all the noise that he would run away scared[29] . And yet, James now thought, what would be the point of yelling at someone if they could not hear you? Being ghost-like might be entertaining for a short time – to yell and scream all you liked without fear of reprisal – but the lack of response would eventually become tiresome, and he would surely go mad[30] .

  And yet… still… there was that tight, nasty clenching feeling, somewhere between his throat and his stomach, and an odd urge to cry. How could he have let Mr Mancini away with his deepest secret? All those moments when he’d felt that hint, that apprehension, about Domenic, but had blindly ignored it because of the promised help. James felt like a little idiot – a stupid boy, fooled by a man in a nice suit and shiny shoes. He knew he should never have trusted someone who regularly wore a top hat when there were no costume parties nearby. But except for her uncanny similarity to Miss Mason-Smith (which she flatly denied) this lady looked normal enough. She wasn’t wearing a top hat – at least that was a good sign. And she wanted to help James get his secret back. That was a good sign too.

  “Why do you want to help me?” James asked.

  She did not appear to appreciate being questioned. “Does it matter?”

  “Well Mr Mancini said he wanted to help me, when all he really wanted to do was steal my secret and curse me.”

  “I see your point,” the lady conceded, her lips pressed into a thin smile that somehow lacked warmth, but not sympathy for the poor, lost, pyjama-clad boy before her. At last she said, “The truth is, James, it’s my job to help you. Ideally I should have stopped Domenic from stealing your secret in the first place, but he’s very slippery, and I’m sorry, I’ve failed you in this respect. So now there’s nothing to be done but to follow him back to his hideout and steal your secret back. I’ll tell you more on the way, but we really must be going. We have a plane to catch.”

  “Alright,” James said reluctantly. What else was there to do? He was invisible and untouchable, so she could not hurt him. How much worse could his situation get, anyway?

  And so it was that on a cool springtime eve, just as the last light of day slid away behind the horizon, James Winchester IV left the Westcott School for Boys and Girls, to retrieve his deepest secret from the slippery man with the shiny shoes. James did not look back at Westcott. He doubted any of his classmates would even notice that he’d gone. Except for maybe Adrian Seltzer III. But that was only because Andrew Harrison VI would start beating him up in the absence of James.

  One should NEVER be pretentious…

  at least not around Sebastian Pritchard, the head of the APPO[31] .

  Sebastian Pritchard was, in essence, a strange little fellow. He was about the closest thing to a leprechaun in the human race – small, quick, devious, sly, and at times even a little scary. He delighted in professing opinions that were not his own, but were, rather, the opposite of those he believed his company to possess. If he thought his company sweet and innocent, he would feign vulgarity and cruelty. If he thought his company not religious, he would outline loudly and forcefully as many reasons as he could summon why they would end up in Hell with Lucifer’s demons.

  To illustrate: Sebastian had once said to a guest, “You drive a car? Think of all those noxious gases you’re pumping into the atmosphere, just so you can get to the local shop quicker. You’re killing the world! For that, God will send you to hell! I’m going to heaven because I ride a bicycle everywhere, made out of recycled soft-drink cans.”
>
  As you may guess, Sebastian Pritchard did not often entertain the same visitor more than once. Usually his guests found some excuse to leave early and Sebastian would chuckle, congratulating himself on his ability to repel company with such efficiency (‘Suckers!’). One minute and thirty-four seconds was his all-time record. A husband, wife and their newborn baby had visited him, and Sebastian almost immediately began to express his admiration for the savage cannibalistic cultures found deep in the Anatoli rainforest, whilst eyeing their new child in a way that the parents did not quite like. Of course he was not being serious, but only you, I and Sebastian know that[32]. How Sebastian Pritchard had managed to produce two relatively sane and well-balanced daughters is a matter of utter mystery, but the fact remained that he had, and that since the death of his wife some years before, it was the company of these two, and these two alone, that he craved.

  So here he was, on a lovely, crisp evening at Pritchard Manor, having successfully pick-pocketed a packet of chewing-gum, a set of keys, a 20c coin, a pocket-knife and a small rodent[33] from his domestic helpers. He was in fine spirits, and that usually made him feel like doing something truly devious. He could go next-door and take all the hand-brakes off his pretentious neighbours’ pretentious cars and watch them roll down their pretentious driveway until they hit that pretentiously manicured row of pines on their pretentious front lawn and burst into flames – flames that would somehow also manage to be pretentious. Pretentious bastards, he thought to himself, scowling violently.

  But as it happened, circumstance would prevent his current APPO plan from coming to fruition (on that day, at least). As he sat at his desk in his musty, dim study, carefully sharpening the dulled edge of a sword-shaped letter-opener, in walked his daughter.

  “Esther will be here soon, wanting to know my current address,” she said, not wasting time on pleasantries. “Do not, under any circumstances, give it to her.”