The 58th Keeper

by R. G. Bullet

  Wagstaff squealed, falling to the ground as if someone had knocked him in the back of the knees. “Hellllp!” He moved across the concrete floor like a disturbed sea lion, thumping his head on the radiator.

  Archy choked back a laugh and said in a ghoulishly slow voice. “We’re…watching…you, Wagstaff!”

  Wagstaff shot a look into the empty aisle. His eyes were so wide they seemed to take up half of his face.

  “Don’t kill me! D-d-d-don’t kill me!” He backed away on his rear.

  Archy nearly burst with laughter, gasping noisily for air. Wagstaff pulled himself up by the radiator and bolted through the doors.

  Chapter 9

  Keeper’s Log

  Archy placed the rug back in his tuck box and locked it, double-checking to see if it was secure. He yanked his schedule from his pocket and ran his finger down the column to see where he was supposed to be. Geography. Room 17C.

  Mr. Woods, the geography teacher, was just entering the classroom when Archy ducked in after him and slid behind his desk. He was flushed from the sprint up the corridor, and out of breath. No one seemed to notice, except for Vincent, who sat a couple of desks away.

  “Where were you?” Vincent hissed.

  Archy wondered how he could tell Vincent that he’d just had the most unbelievable experience in his whole life, and that Wagstaff probably had just had the worst.

  “Tonight,” Archy mouthed, his eyes sparkling.

  Archy decided to skip lunch. It was the easiest part of the day to go missing at Rushburys. He raced down to the tuck room and found other boys there with exactly the same idea. Instead of getting the rug out in front of them he took the black book and locked himself in a small music room. He sat on the floor with his back to the wall and began flipping through the tattered pages.

  The different authors referred to the book as The Keeper’s Log, and some of its entries were dated hundreds of years earlier. The pages were fragile, crinkly, and yellowed, like parchment. Archy counted fifty-seven different authors in total. Throughout the book he came across deftly drawn sketches showing how to maneuver the rug. Forward, reverse, up, down, sideways, diagonal, and fast and slow turns were covered. It didn’t take him long to know that he needed more space to move around if he were ever going to master its use.

  Then he read an ominous section:

  “Always keep the rug away from water. Otherwise its full powers are rendered useless, and will attract the Kurul like a vampire to blood.”

  It unnerved him to read the hastily scribbled notes in the margins—references to the Kurul, the same word Alturus had mentioned on the beach and in the letter.

  An author who signed the page Keeper 52 and dated it 1797 had written in Italian but the translation underneath read:

  “…a dangerous occurrence tonight. The rains caught me off guard. I took cover in a public house. Within an hour I observed the presence of the Kurul—Good fortune that I fashioned a hasty exit. We must exercise great caution in inclement weather…”

  There were entries from other Keepers.

  “…this Shroud, a thornless rose beyond the realms of worth whilst I venture betwix’t three corners of our earth.” Keeper 46

  “…Paris, 1856. The smog is overwhelming—a constant haze. I can advise a lower traverse up and down the Seine to accommodate the insufferable air.” Keeper 53

  Without knowing the background of the rug or the Keepers it just stirred up more questions in Archy. He remembered that the rug was a little damp when he first got it and hoped its powers weren’t weakened at all. Why do they call it the Shroud? Who were they? And who or what were SOTS? And many of the pages were headed with the word: TimeQuest.

  If he was going to learn to master the rug, Archy thought, he would have to get out in a wide-open area. So he made up his mind to take it outside that night.

  It wouldn’t be easy getting out. His first obstacle was to map out details of the non-creaking floorboards in his dormitory. This would help him step along the upper landings and to get down to the rug in the tuck room undetected.

  Stuffing the book under his shirt, he made his way back up to the dormitories and began to test the layout of the floors. To avoid the squeaking, aged, wooden floorboards, he needed to make a detour, zigzagging around the room using considerable stealth. A few of the old floorboards creaked loudly as he stood on them and others groaned as he lifted his foot off. The sequence was tough, but if he could make it outside without waking anyone then he could easily get out of the school building and begin to test the rug. On the other hand, if he made a single noise he would have broken the one rule no one ever dare break—being out of bounds after lights out. The consequence would last a lifetime.

  Twenty minutes later he had a map completed and had retraced his route enough times to have it memorized. Another trip down to the kitchen to steal vegetable oil for the creaking door and he was set.

  He knew that Matron Overly would be the only difficult obstacle left to dodge. She was a little scrawny but was deceptively feisty. She had black hair, which had a single silver streak running through the middle, rather like a badger. She had bushy black eyebrows and always wore a navy blue apron with a red cross on it. Her face was continuously stern, but what mesmerized the boys of Rushburys was the size of her feet. Archy often heard her slip-slapping through the corridors during her nightly patrols. Tonight he had to distract her long enough so he could get out unnoticed…

  Chapter 10

  Vindictive Vincent

  Vincent caught up with Archy during dinner, where Wagstaff was regaling everyone with details about the haunted tuck room. Archy sat at the other end of the table, listening in and loving every second.

  “You’ve had that sick smile on your face all day,” said Vincent, squeezing in beside him with a tray piled high. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on now?”

  “Just a sec, he’s getting to the good part,” said Archy, catching the tail end of Wagstaff’s account.

  “…so I made a crucifix, like this, with my fingers,” said Wagstaff, making a show of crossing his two puffy index fingers in front of everyone. “It was so close I could smell its breath. It smelled like…like rotting cabbage! After that, it started groaning but I held my ground. Then everything kinda stopped. I searched around the place but it had gone. I scared it away.” A small crowd of boys hung on his every word.

  Then one of the juniors made the mistake of asking Wagstaff what he was doing down in the tuck room during lessons.

  “Listen, I’m a prefect. Somebody’s stealing our stuff. I have to take care of the place. Some of my things have been taken too, you know,” he said indignantly.

  “Are you going back down there tonight or are you scared?” the junior asked.

  “No! This is serious. There’s something evil down there. You’d better keep out. I’m warning you—all of you!” The reaction was electric and the boys started to talk excitedly, arranging to go down in groups.

  Word of the haunted tuck room spread quickly and soon the whole dining hall was abuzz. Archy was just about to explain everything to Vincent when Mr. Elms, at the other end of the dining hall, slammed his hands down on the table. There was far too much noise for his liking and he told one of the teachers to get up and ring the bell for silence. For the remainder of dinner only the clattering of knives and forks on the plates filled the cavernous room.

  Because Wagstaff had stirred everyone into a frenzy, Archy knew it would be nearly impossible to go down to the tuck room now and show Vincent the rug, so he decided to keep out of the way for the time being. He pushed open the doors of the recreation room, a large, high-ceilinged room with tatty leather couches and wobbly chairs, where some of the boys were tinkering with new gadgets, playing chess, or just chatting. A boy wheeled in two trays right behind Archy. One had several pots of warm tea and another (just for prefects), had a jug of hot chocolate and plates of biscuits.

  Archy found Vincent already sprawled on one of t
he couches watching a Second World War movie with half a dozen other boys.

  “Hey, at last. Now tell me where’ve you been?” asked Vincent.

  Archy sat on the arm of the couch. “This isn’t the place,” he said quietly.

  “Oh come on. What are you up to?” Vincent persisted.

  “I can’t tell you,” said Archy.

  “Okay!” said Vincent in an irritable tone. “I get the idea.” He bounced his leg up and down with frustration.

  “Wait, Vincent. I just can’t say anything right now because it’s just so, so unbelievable.” Archy slid down the arm to the seat. “I’ve got this well—it’s crazy, but I can’t tell you just yet.”

  “No, Nooo, Nooo—I’ve got it. You don’t have to explain a thing, not-a-thing. Clear,” said Vincent crossly. He turned his back on Archy and started chatting with Jude, the boy next to him, whose arm was wrapped in a sling. “Get that playing rugby did you?” said Vincent, drumming his fingers on the back of the couch.

  Jude stopped watching the film and placed his mug of tea down. “No, actually,” he said snobbishly, “I fell off my bike, a GLX racer with 22 gears and titanium frame. I got it for my birthday. I was going down this hill, and I didn’t know brakes were on the wrong side because the people at the shop—”

  “Good, good,” said Vincent dismissively. “That’s just great.”

  “What do you mean it’s great? I broke my arm in three places.”

  “Fine by me,” said Vincent, his mood getting cloudier. “Do you think I really care? Huh?”

  Jude turned pink with anger. “You’re in Jason’s dorm, near the radiator, aren’t you? Isn’t your dad that guy from the magazine?” he blurted.

  Archy noticed the muscles around Vincent’s jaw flexing and his hands curl up into a fist. Somebody grabbed the remote from the TV and pressed the mute button, and they were blanketed in silence for a second till Jude continued. “If he’s one of the richest men in England why don’t you have a decent watch or any games? I don’t believe it personally.” His head jutted in Archy’s direction. “Birds of a feather, right.”

  Vincent’s head dropped till his chin was nearly on his chest and looked back at the boy with a tight smile. Archy thought that if Vincent meant his look to appear like a threat it didn’t have much effect at all.

  Jude was relentless. “You’re a fake. People say you haven’t even got a decent bike and that he’s not your real dad, ´cause no one would treat their real son like that.”

  Archy leapt to his feet, grabbing Vincent’s arm and shoving him off to the other side of the room before a fight broke out. The commotion fizzled the volume came back on the TV, and the boys returned to doing whatever they were doing.

  Vincent flashed a wild stare. “Can you believe that idiot?” He puffed, seeming to forget his beef with Archy. “If he didn’t have a broken arm I’d—”

  “Vince,” Archy said, wearing a serious face.

  “What?”

  “We’re going to leave the school grounds tonight.”

  Vincent jolted back as if he had icy water thrown at him. “Are you mental? Leave the grounds? You trying to run away again? Elms will fry you alive.”

  “Shh! We’re not going to get caught. I have a plan!” Archy patted his pocket with the map of the floorboards, his face still deadly serious.

  “WE! This plan doesn’t involve… ME, does it?”

  “Of course it does. All we need to do is find a way to distract Matron Overly. Let’s synchronize our watches and at 10:15 tonight, meet up on the landing and then we head down to the tuck room. You’ve got to see this!” Archy’s eyes glinted with excitement.

  “The tuck room after lights out? Distract Overly? Out in the open on the landing? You ARE JOKING, right? You’ve got more chance of getting my dad to get me a motorbike.”

  Archy pulled him closer. “You wanted to know where I was, right?”

  Vincent nodded.

  “You know how Overly prowls the corridors looking for prey.” He lowered his voice. “We need to know where she is so we can get past her. I promise that this thing is so amazing it’ll make your brains explode.”

  “You’re going to have to do better than that, Archy.”

  “Okay, how about this. Imagine you had could go anywhere at any time without ever being caught.”

  Vincent squinted with peaking interest. “You found a secret passage?”

  “No, better!”

  Archy watched as a range of emotions showed on Vincent’s face. He guessed Vincent was trying to construct a decent excuse not to do it. Getting caught by Matron Overly was only slightly better than getting caught by Mr. Elms himself.

  Archy could see Vincent’s gaze darting around the room. Just then everyone started shuffling nervously, pulling out books and pretending to study.

  “What’s going on?” said Archy.

  He swung around to see that Wagstaff had entered and was busily raiding the prefect’s trolley, piling biscuits into his pockets until they bulged.

  “You’ve got to start reading the rules,” said Vincent. “This period is called pre-study now. No games allowed, anywhere.”

  Wagstaff spotted one of the boys trying to hide a game under a cushion and snatched it away from him.

  “Okay, Archy I’ll risk it,” said Vincent, with one eye on Wagstaff. “If it’s that good, and if you need a distraction, I’ve got an idea.”

  Vincent walked over to Jude on the sofa, sat down beside him and started talking quietly, so quietly that Archy couldn’t hear a word. Their heads were silhouetted against the sliver of the TV screen and Archy noticed Vincent pat Jude on the shoulder, and to Archy’s astonishment they shook hands. Vincent returned with a proud look on his face.

  “Don’t ask,” said Vincent, before Archy could open his mouth.

  Chapter 11

  First Run

  Shortly before lights out Archy began to have serious doubts about the escape. Maybe he’d pushed it too far, he thought. There had to be an easier way to find out how the rug worked. If he and Vincent were caught outside of their dormitories they’d be sent to Mr. Elms and receive a punishment beyond his imagination.

  Archy threw the sheets aside to get up. He had to tell Vincent that he wanted to call it off, but just as he sat up the automated lighting system plunged the dormitory into darkness. Now it was too late. Soon Vincent would be coming from his dormitory, waiting to meet up with him on the landing. Archy lay back uneasily.

  The heating system shut down with a clank, and Archy could hear the radiators creak and groan as they cooled. He pulled the coarse blanket up under his chin and listened to the usual nighttime chatter before the boys fell asleep. Someone on the opposite side of the dormitory was bragging about his family’s villa on a distant, tropical island. He was interrupted by a very loud, vulgar noise from nearby, followed by an even louder noise from Miller, the dormitory prefect.

  “SHUT UP! ALL OF YOU,” he called, reaching for his flashlight and shining it in the direction of the noise. “I know it’s you, Henrik.”

  “I’m sorry, Miller,” said a boy with a mischievous Welsh accent, “I must’ve eaten something bad.” Laughter rippled around the room.

  “You can go to Matron then, can’t you?”

  That had an immediate effect and the room fell silent. Twenty minutes passed, during which time Archy noticed the twin shadows of Matron Overly’s feet as they appeared under the dormitory door on one of her random patrols. He could see her in his mind’s eye, placing her stethoscope against the door. When the shadows left, he checked his luminous watch under the sheets: 9:43 p.m. Ten minutes later he slipped out from the sheets and made his move.

  The first few steps were tougher than he thought. He tried to mask the sound of his movements by making them coincide with other noises. He stepped only when someone rustled around in their bed or coughed. Getting past the window was complicated, and he had to crouch down so the outside spotlights wouldn’t silhouette him. With tw
itching muscles from the effort of holding steady, he finally reached the dormitory door and managed to open and close it behind him without a sound.

  Archy released a long, silent sigh. The corridor was quiet. A solitary chink of yellow light from under the sick room door pierced the gloom and allowed him to see where he was. He knew that if he could just get past that door, it would make it a little easier.

  He made his way stealthily across to the bathrooms to take cover. There he waited until his lighted dial flashed a silent alarm, and at that exact moment he heard voices. Vincent and Jude walked past the bathroom entrance dressed in their pyjamas.

  Archy heard tapping on a door, then murmuring sounds, and after a short while he saw Vincent wandering back up the corridor.

  “Ssst, over here.” Archy waved the glowing watch dial in the air and soon Vincent appeared. Archy pulled at the arm of Vincent’s pyjamas, and together they tiptoed along the corridor to get past the sick room. They could hear Matron Overly’s grating voice filter through the closed door. “This seems very serious, young man,” she said. “Possibly a virus, or even dysentery. You need to take—”

  The floorboard where Archy stood creaked and he froze to the spot. Matron Overly paused mid-sentence. Archy and Vincent stopped breathing. Then a cabinet door rattled open. “…a complete dose of Dr. Helmut Krankheit’s Liver Salts,” she continued.

  Archy and Vincent could hear Jude give a loud moan. “Liver salts, Matron! I thought you’d give me a cola. I—I think I’m feeling better, Matron, honestly.”

  “A cola! What nonsense, child. Drink this! On the hour, every hour and this time tomorrow you’ll be sprightly rightly.”

  Vincent shifted slightly. The floorboard under him squeaked, and before Archy could stop him, Vincent had darted off down the dark corridor in the direction of the stairs. Archy dashed after him. By the time he got to the end of the landing Vincent had vanished into the blackness of the main hall.