Felix and the Red Rats

by James Norcliffe

  * * *

  Shortly after David’s great uncle Felix comes to visit, everything seems to be turning red – rats, cats, hair, people!

  Has Uncle Felix caused this mayhem? Or does it have more to do with the strange land of Axillaris, the setting of Uncle Felix’s fantasy stories?

  Felix and the Red Rats is where fantasy and reality collide, a story filled with mystery, magic and riddles.

  * * *

  For Jules Macsen Wendelken Norcliffe

  * * *

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1: Felix and the Red Rats

  Chapter 1: Into Axillaris

  Chapter 2: Felix and the Red Rats

  Chapter 2: Into Axillaris

  Chapter 3: Felix and the Red Rats

  Chapter 3: Into Axillaris

  Chapter 4: Felix and the Red Rats

  Chapter 4: Into Axillaris

  Chapter 5: Felix and the Red Rats

  Chapter 5: Into Axillaris

  Chapter 6: Felix and the Red Rats

  Chapter 6: Into Axillaris

  Chapter 7: Felix and the Red Rats

  Chapter 7: Into Axillaris

  Chapter 8: Felix and the Red Rats

  Chapter 8: Into Axillaris

  Chapter 9: Felix and the Red Rats

  Also by James Norcliffe

  About the author

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  Great Uncle Felix

  ‘But why?’ demanded Martha.

  ‘He’s such a weirdo,’ said Gray.

  ‘He’s such a fake,’ said Martha.

  I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t upset that Mum’s uncle was coming to stay. I was younger and I’d only met him once before and, to tell the truth, I’d kind of liked him. He was different, sure, but there’s nothing wrong with different really.

  Gray and Martha might have known him better, but I doubted it. Once they got their teeth into something, they wouldn’t let it alone. They were like puppies. Selfish, whiny puppies.

  ‘Anyway, Felix is such a stupid name,’ said Martha.

  ‘More like the name you’d give a cat,’ said Gray.

  ‘Or a can of cat food,’ added Martha. ‘How’d he get a name like Felix, anyway?’

  ‘My grandmother gave it to him, I suppose,’ said our mother, mildly. ‘Would you like to have a go at her, too?’

  ‘Why would I? I never knew her. She died years ago.’

  ‘And you don’t really know Uncle Felix, either,’ said our mother. ‘If you did, you wouldn’t be going on and on like …’

  I wanted to say spoilt puppies, but knew that wouldn’t have been a smart move. Especially because I knew the problem wasn’t Great Uncle Felix: the problem was really me. Because of Uncle Felix’s visit, Gray was going to have to move out of his bedroom and sleep on a mattress on the floor of my room. He was not happy about this and, of course, blamed me.

  ‘It’ll just be for a few days,’ said my mother. ‘He’s only coming because of the book festival. He’ll only be here to sleep and have the odd meal and breakfast and things.’

  ‘And my room,’ said Gray.

  ‘And your room,’ said Mum. ‘And really, Gray, this is all getting a little tiresome. Do you think you could get over it, please?’

  Gray didn’t reply to her. Instead, he wheeled around at me and said, ‘What are you laughing at, wimp?’

  There wasn’t much point in saying I wasn’t laughing, even though I wasn’t laughing. So I just shrugged and mumbled, ‘Nothing …’

  I shouldn’t have worried anyway, for Mum said ‘Gray!’, in a way that really meant I am getting seriously fed up with you, young man, and any more of this and you’ll be grounded for approximately thirteen unlucky years.

  Mum can fit a lot of meaning into a single word when she feels like it.

  Great Uncle Felix was the most famous member of our family. Actually, it would be fairer to say he was the only famous member of our family, and even then he wasn’t that famous. Years ago he’d written a number of books for kids. They were all about a strange world called Axillaris where this boy and girl had bizarre adventures. Interestingly enough, the boy in the books was named Felix too. That had been enough to put the twins off both the books and their author.

  ‘What a bighead to name your hero after yourself! Talk about starring in your own movie!’ Gray had scoffed.

  ‘Egomaniac!’ added Martha.

  ‘What’s an egomaniac?’ I asked.

  ‘A bighead, little head!’ said Gray.

  I didn’t care. I liked the books and I liked the Felix in the books. He wasn’t a bighead or an egomaniac or whatever. He was just an ordinary kid having crazy adventures in a really weird place with really weird people and creatures all about him. He was a bit old-fashioned, I suppose, because Uncle Felix had written the books when he was just a young man and now he was really old with white hair and liver spots and fat veins on his hands.

  I don’t think the twins had ever read the books, anyway. They didn’t like reading. Gray liked to hang out with his loser mates and Martha spent most of her time on her lap top and phone.

  Great Uncle Felix had stayed with us once before when the twins were about my age — that is, about four years ago. I couldn’t remember ever meeting him before that. If I had, I’m sure I would have remembered.

  He was tall and a bit stooped and he had a droopy white moustache. He was a little deaf, I think, because he sometimes didn’t hear you or seemed not to. It could have been because he often had a faraway expression on his face as if he were somewhere else. I know Mum liked him. I think she was pretty proud of the connection. I think Dad liked him, although you couldn’t always tell with Dad. I never heard him say anything mean about Uncle Felix, though, so he probably did. Like him, that is.

  So why did Gray call him a weirdo, and why did Martha think he was a fake?

  I suppose it was because Uncle Felix was different. He dressed differently, for one thing. He was the only person I knew outside of comic books and cartoons who wore a bow tie. It wasn’t even a decent bow tie; it was a floppy kind of bow tie that drooped like his moustache. And he wore a coloured waistcoat under his jacket. To me, all of this made him a bit like a storybook character, which was perfectly okay because he was a storybook writer. But to Gray it just meant he was a weirdo. Gray was like that.

  Gray was mean, too.

  He shifted into my bedroom on the Thursday night. Uncle Felix hadn’t arrived as he was flying in on a late plane and Dad would go to the airport to bring him home. Finally realising he wouldn’t be able to resist Mum’s increasingly irritated reminders of the need to make the move, Gray dragged a spare mattress from the garage up the passage and dumped it grumpily in the middle of the floor of my small bedroom.

  ‘Just thought I’d remind you, pencil-bum, that you’ve got the mattress and I’ve got the bed,’ he announced, puffing a little with the exertion.

  ‘But, Mum said …’ I protested.

  ‘So?’ he said, and left.

  There wasn’t much I could do about it. An appeal to Mum might have won me my bed back, but would also guarantee me a month or so of horse-bites and rabbit-punches, so I bit back what I would have really liked to say and wandered off to the heating cupboard to find some spare sheets and blankets. The chances of Gray actually making up a bed for me were as good as him winning a gold medal at the Nice Guy Olympics.

  On my way down the passage I had to stand to one side to let him pass as he made his way back to my room, carefully carrying his old birdcage with Simon and Garfunkel crouched nervously inside. S & G were the two white rats he’d been asked to take home from a lab at his school because of
the school holidays. They were the only creatures I’d ever known Gray to show any real affection for. I wanted to ask him where he thought he was taking them, but (a) it was obvious and (b) it wouldn’t have been smart, especially in Gray’s present mood, which was even more toxic than usual.

  It was best to leave him to it. It was far too soon for bed. I thought the best thing to do in the circumstances would be to find somewhere out of the way with a book, and what better book than one of Uncle Felix’s.

  When she was a girl, Mum had been given every one of Great Uncle Felix’s books as they’d come out. I loved them. They were the sort of books you could read over and over, and, as Great Uncle Felix himself was arriving later, I figured it would be fun to read one again.

  Better still, the books were kept on a shelf in Mum and Dad’s bedroom and I was sure she wouldn’t mind my reading one on the settee in there.

  ‘Which one?’ she asked.

  ‘Into Axillaris,’ I said.

  Mum grinned. ‘I’m so glad you like that one, David. It’s one of my favourites, too.’

  Into Axillaris was the first in Uncle Felix’s Axillaris series. I really liked weird stories and this one was deliciously weird.

  ‘Can I use your room?’

  ‘Of course. We’ll be eating late tonight because of your uncle. You can stay here until he arrives if you like.’

  I grinned then. ‘Might do that,’ I said. ‘Thanks, Mum.’

  Five mistakes

  The first mistake was thinking it would be easy to get Bella’s diary back.

  ‘Simple,’ Felix said. ‘The gang will be at rugby practice. If we get to their clubhouse straight after school we’ll have a good hour before they’re free.’

  The clubhouse was a disused scout hall near the top of the hill not far from Mt Hector School.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Bella doubtfully. ‘I mean, we don’t even know that they would have hidden the diary there.’

  ‘Of course they would,’ said Felix. ‘Where else would they have hidden it?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Bella, ‘off the top of my head, approximately a thousand other places.’

  Felix glanced over his shoulder. They were not all that far behind him.

  Furiously then he increased speed, running in great striding leaps even though the narrow downhill road was so steep he should have been much more cautious. Bella had got away well before him, but he was gaining on her quickly.

  Even more quickly, though, the Heberson gang were gaining on him. How foolish he had been to think he and Bella could have broken into their HQ to get Bella’s diary back and get away with it. This was the second mistake. In the event, they almost had got away with it. At least Bella had her diary. He could see it now clutched in her right hand as she careered down the hill.

  He had just been closing the door behind them when he heard Bella gasp, ‘Oh, no. Here they are. They’re coming!’

  He looked around. There they were: Dusty Heberson, the leader; his horrible little sister, Myrtle; Moonface Morgan and Willy Laws. The gang saw them almost at once and broke into a run.

  ‘We’re out of here!’ he shouted to Bella.

  It was hopeless. Although they’d had a head start, they could not outrun the Hebersons. Each moment the gang was getting closer, yelling more loudly …

  Just ahead was a longer stretch between corners. Felix ran even more recklessly and managed to catch up with Bella.

  ‘Time for Plan B!’ he cried. ‘We can’t outpace them!’

  ‘What’s Plan B?’ she puffed, glancing at him briefly and almost losing control and lurching over.

  ‘Your call,’ Felix panted. ‘But make it quick and make it good!’

  ‘My hero!’ muttered Bella.

  No Plan B: mistake number three.

  Just ahead there was another bend and then a succession of sharp zigzags between trees. But it was hopeless. The banks on either side — uphill and downhill — were too steep. The others were so close behind now they could hear their galloping footsteps and muffled shouting.

  All at once, surprising even Felix, Bella veered to the downhill side and leapt on to a narrow path that had been cut into the side of the hill and angled down into pine trees. It was the shortcut that linked the road they were on with another road lower down the hill.

  Half-stumbling, half-sliding on the slippery pine needles littering the track, Felix chased after Bella, his chest thumping just this side of a stitch, and trying desperately not to gasp for air so noisily. Felix hoped this manoeuvre would have fooled the gang and they would split up to chase up different possibilities. Whatever, for the moment Bella and Felix were relatively safe.

  Felix grabbed at the trunk of a narrow tree to help swing around the next sharp bend, to find Bella had stopped and was lying back against a grassy bank beside the track. She immediately put a finger against her lips.

  ‘Shh!’

  Felix grinned and nodded. He had no intention of shouting. He collapsed beside her to catch his breath.

  ‘What do you reckon?’ he whispered.

  Bella strained to listen.

  There was nothing to hear, apart from the wind in the trees and the distant yodel of a magpie.

  ‘They obviously don’t know we’re down here,’ she whispered. ‘They must have raced right past the path.’

  ‘So we’re safe …’

  ‘For the moment,’ said Bella. ‘But they’ll work out soon enough we’re not on the road.’

  Felix glanced around.

  ‘This track links up to Mt Hector Road,’ he said. ‘We can get home that way and the others will never know where we are.’

  ‘You sure?’ asked Bella.

  Felix nodded.

  ‘Well, as long as there’s only one track, we can hardly get lost.’

  ‘Right,’ said Felix. ‘Let’s do it.’

  This was the fourth mistake.

  They hurried down the track, with Bella in front.

  All at once they came upon a small structure just off the path and surrounded by pine trees. It had a rusted iron roof with pine needles gathered in bundles in its spouting, and it had grey plastered concrete walls. Felix remembered it from the other times he had used this track as a shortcut. He’d never really investigated it, but imagined it had something to do with the water works. It was some sort of utility building with a solid-looking door, but no windows.

  Bella stopped and glanced at Felix.

  ‘How about Plan C?’

  ‘Plan C?’

  ‘We hide in there until it’s safer?’

  Felix was dubious. When would it be safer? The Hebersons would be after them for days, now, possibly weeks. Even if they managed to avoid them until they reached home, there would still be school and the Hebersons tomorrow — and the next day, and the next.

  ‘It’s probably locked,’ he said.

  Bella strode towards the door and inspected it.

  ‘There’s a padlock,’ she said, ‘but it hasn’t been pressed home, the thingy’s free.’

  ‘Hasp.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The thingy’s called a hasp.’

  Bella wasn’t really interested in what it was called. She twisted the hasp back and eased it off the latch. Dropping the padlock on to the ground, she twisted at the door handle. The door pulled open and Bella, glancing over her shoulder, said, ‘You coming?’

  Felix looked back up the track. It was still quiet. He didn’t move. ‘I think we’re wasting time,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t be such a fraidy cat,’ said Bella, peering into the gloom of the building.

  ‘I’m not!’

  ‘Well come on, then,’ insisted Bella, stepping inside the building.

  Felix shrugged. Bella was quite determined to enter the building. After one last glance over his shoulder, he turned and hurried after her.

  This was, of course, the fifth mistake.

  ‘Quick,’ said Bella. ‘Shut the door!’

  ‘Why?’ asked Felix.<
br />
  ‘Because Dusty Heberson or Moonface or some other idiot could come running down the track and see the door open. If they do, we’ll be sitting ducks!’

  ‘We’ll be sitting ducks, anyway,’ grumbled Felix.

  ‘Do it!’ insisted Bella.

  ‘Okay, okay. Keep your shirt on!’

  Felix pulled the door behind him and immediately the room was plunged into darkness, a darkness all the more disturbing because before pulling the door to, he had not had time to get any sense of what was inside the room. There was no window, that was obvious, but whatever else was in the room he could only guess at. He could not be sure but there was a smell that seemed to be of old oil and sackcloth. Perhaps there was machinery of some sort. He blinked against the darkness and reached into space.

  ‘Where are you?’ he whispered. He had no idea why he whispered. It just seemed appropriate somehow.

  ‘Here,’ Bella replied.

  Suddenly, Felix felt a hand touch his face. He reached up and grabbed it.

  ‘This is not a good idea,’ he said, still whispering. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  ‘Nobody knows we’re here,’ said Bella equally softly. ‘Not scared of the dark, are you?’

  Felix was a little, but didn’t dare admit it. But it wasn’t the dark — it was just that he couldn’t get the idea of the stupid ostrich out of his head, the ostrich who buried his head in the sand to escape his enemies. Wasn’t that what they had just done? Buried themselves in darkness in the hope that they wouldn’t be seen?

  Perhaps Bella was having similar thoughts.

  ‘We should get away from the door,’ she said, ‘in case somebody opens it …’

  Felix suddenly remembered the padlock that Bella had dropped on the ground.

  ‘We should really get out of here,’ he said. ‘Somebody could see that padlock and lock us in.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They wouldn’t even need the padlock,’ Felix added grimly. ‘They could just push the bolt home …’