Darwen Arkwright and the Insidious Bleck

by A. J. Hartley

  The students had gone quiet again, some of them thrilled, others clearly terrified. The teachers were quiet too.

  “It’s because of stuff like this,” whispered Mad to Naia, “that my parents left India.” Darwen, who had grown up in a little town where there were no dangerous animals of any kind, tried to give her an encouraging smile, but his heart wasn’t in it.

  “Tomorrow we will go on our first hike in the jungle,” said Jorge. “We will not disturb the forest. Take only pictures and leave only footprints. It is very important that you dress appropriately and do exactly as I say.”

  No one said a word, and for a moment there was no sound but the noise of the distant surf on the beach.

  “I have posted a list of what you should wear tomorrow on the notice board, and you should study that before you go to bed. There is a battery-operated lantern for each tent. Turn it on by twisting this part,” he said, demonstrating on a small handheld lamp that produced a bluish glow. “We recharge them during the day. Breakfast is at five thirty. We leave at six—without you, if you are not ready. Get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow will be . . . quite strenuous.”

  Barry Fails turned, muttering to Chip.

  “It means hard, Usually,” said Chip. “He’s saying tomorrow is going to suck.”

  “No,” said Jorge, beaming. “Tomorrow will be glorious: a day to remember for the rest of your lives. I can’t promise we will see any wildlife, because this is a jungle, not a zoo, but I think it will be a very special day for all of you.”

  And with that he bade them good night. The students broke into huddling groups, some of which went immediately to consult the notice board. There was an air of quiet panic, touched here and there with excitement.

  “No flip-flops!” wailed Melissa Young, studying the notice in disbelief. “What am I going to wear?!”

  “Time for bed, I guess,” said Rich.

  “In a moment,” said Mr. Peregrine, who had appeared beside them with a mug of what looked like tea. “I’d like a quick word.”

  “Good,” said Darwen, who wasn’t remotely sleepy, “I wanted to ask where—”

  “I’ll check the notice,” said Rich. “Come on, Gabriel,” he added, giving Darwen a significant look. Darwen nodded gratefully, then turned to the teacher.

  “So,” he said, “where do I start?”

  “Tonight,” said Mr. Peregrine, “you don’t. You rest. Tomorrow—”

  “Tomorrow?!” Darwen exclaimed. “I’ve come all this way. Luis was taken weeks ago. . . .”

  “Darwen,” said Mr. Peregrine, his voice gentle, “your mission is to find the tear in the barrier between worlds so that we can mend it. If we chance to find the missing child in the process, of course we will try to rescue him, but we have only one week, much of it taken up with schoolwork and excursions. You need to make progress quickly.”

  “But how?” asked Darwen. “How am I supposed to find a patch of jungle I saw for a few seconds weeks ago?”

  “The Guardians trust your gifts as a mirroculist,” said Mr. Peregrine, lowering his voice as he turned to face him. “Tomorrow’s hike will take you through part of the region where we think breaches have opened.”

  “Portals,” Darwen said.

  “‘Portals’ suggests someone is controlling them,” said Mr. Peregrine. “This is just a tear in the fabric separating us from Silbrica. Tomorrow during the day you can do little more than observe, but in the evening you will cross over.”

  Darwen’s heart leaped.

  “You know where there’s a portal?!” he exclaimed.

  “Let’s just say that I think I can get you in,” he said, winking. “Come to my tent first thing in the morning. I have something for you.”

  “What is it?” asked Darwen.

  “Patience, my boy, patience,” said Mr. Peregrine with a chuckle. “Trust me: you are going to like it.”

  Darwen nodded, then asked the question that had been nagging at him ever since he and his classmates had begun trudging through the jungle: “So we really are all here because of me—the whole class, I mean—so that I can wander around the jungle looking for holes in the fabric of reality?”

  “And,” said Mr. Peregrine with a twinkle in his eye, “for the excellent pineapple.”

  With that he left Darwen to his thoughts, but as he rose, Darwen’s gaze flashed across the dining shelter and settled on Nathan Cloten, who was watching him with a suspicious look on his face. Darwen turned hurriedly away. He had felt responsible for saving Luis and his brother before, but as he scanned the dark ground for venomous snakes and who knew what else, he felt a burden as heavy as all of Princess Clarkson’s excess luggage strapped to his back.

  We’re here because of me, he thought. So anything that happens from here on out is . . . my fault.

  “Ready to head back?” said Rich, interrupting Darwen’s realization. He nodded in Gabriel’s direction to indicate that they weren’t yet alone. The skinny boy was loitering behind Rich, looking lost.

  “Uh, sure,” Darwen muttered.

  “Not sure about these lanterns,” said Rich, peering at the one in his hand. “We’ll have to stick pretty close together.”

  “What does the list say?”

  “Pretty much what you would expect,” said Rich. “Strong shoes or boots that you don’t mind getting wet and muddy. Actually the main gist is that you should expect everything you wear to get wet and muddy.”

  “Perfect,” said Darwen. “How’s Gabriel?”

  “Okay, I guess,” said Rich. “Doesn’t say much. Probably a bit freaked out by all this.”

  “Imagine that,” said Darwen dryly.

  The three boys wandered down toward the tents, got their toiletries, and came back up past the dining shelter to the washrooms. The toad that Darwen had seen earlier was still there, squatting fat and watchful by one of the toilets, his presence ensuring that his stall stayed off-limits to the students from Hillside.

  Darwen was brushing his teeth when an immense and shiny brown cockroach scurried across the floor. One of the girls screamed.

  “Just like back home,” said Rich. “Outside, I mean. Not in the house. Not usually.”

  Darwen grinned and went back to cleaning his teeth, but as he did so he caught a flash of color in the mirror and a face over his shoulder—and a strange one at that. He spun around.

  There was no one there.

  “What?” said Rich.

  “Nothing,” said Darwen instinctively. He had imagined it. Still, it was a strange thing to have imagined.

  The face had been pink and shiny, like a mask or a doll. It was tipped at an odd angle, like the person was leaning back and to the side. Its eyes were round, bulging, and glassy, and its mouth was wide open and dark inside, as if frozen midway through a wild and maniacal laugh. Darwen wasn’t sure why, but he knew the laugh would be terrible, as if he had heard it before.

  He shuddered, staring at his expression in the mirror.

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Rich remarked, toothbrush held perfectly still in one hand.

  “Thought something was behind me,” said Darwen, checking again. “Must have been a trick of the light.”

  “But”—Rich looked around and then whispered—“the sun has just gone down. Maybe the mirror is . . .”

  “I don’t think so,” said Darwen, studying it. “It’s just a regular mirror. Or it is now.”

  By the time they were done, it was truly dark, the kind of darkness Darwen had rarely experienced, having spent his life in cities and densely populated towns. It reminded him of being inside the Shade: a thick, almost liquid blackness that obliterated everything outside the meager glow of the lantern. Darwen, Rich, and Gabriel squeezed inside the tiny circle of bluish light and inched their way back along the path
toward their tent. Rich kept his arms rigidly at his sides, so that he wouldn’t accidentally brush against any of the vegetation, which seemed to breathe musky perfumes at them from the hot night. All around them insects chirped and frogs called with strange, unearthly voices.

  The boys took their shoes off on the little platform outside the tent proper and then crawled into bed, saying nothing, oppressed by the darkness and the sounds of the jungle. Darwen lay there, eyes open, listening for whatever might be moving close by, wondering if he would dare to go back out into the darkness if he needed to pee. He thought of the washrooms and the mirror, the laughing face. He rolled over, trying to push the idea away and focus instead on getting some rest so he would be ready to begin their mission. It was hours before he got to sleep.

  The sound that woke him could only come from Silbrica: a repeated roaring bark, as deep and potent as a lion’s roar and so terrifyingly loud that it sounded like it was right next to the tent. Darwen sat up, but it was still dark, and he could see nothing.

  “What the chuff is that?” he hissed.

  The sound paused for a second, then rolled up again, swelling in volume.

  URRRR . . . RAGH! AGH! AGH! AGH!

  “We gotta get out of here!” muttered Rich. “Whatever it is, it’s right outside.”

  “So you wanna go out there and meet it?” Darwen shot back. “Where’s the lantern?”

  “Here, but all that will do is give it light to eat by,” said Rich. “Try this.”

  Darwen felt something digging him in the ribs. He took it. It was a heavy flashlight at least eighteen inches long.

  “What are you giving it to me for?” hissed Darwen.

  “So you can see what it is when you go outside!”

  “You’re the one who wanted to go out!”

  “Shhh,” said Gabriel suddenly. “I think it’s gone.”

  The three boys grew very still, listening hard. Darwen thought he could hear sobbing from one of the other tents. Then, just as the night seemed to have quieted at last, it began again.

  URRRR . . . RAGH! AGH! AGH! AGH!

  And this time there were more answering cries from all over the camp. Whatever was making the noise, there were several of them. Darwen’s eyes were wide, though he could see nothing, and suddenly he had to know. He threw off the single sheet he was lying under and blundered out into the night, snapping on the flashlight as he slipped into his shoes. The deafening cry came again. He shone the beam of the flashlight around a tree until he located the source.

  Something was crouching in the branches, a squat, heavy body and long powerful limbs covered with hair. He adjusted the beam and found a small black face with deep brown eyes and a heavy pouch-like wattle around its neck. He remembered the pictures in Rich’s wildlife field guide and found himself laughing, first with relief, then with a kind of delighted joy.

  It was a howler monkey. The trees above the dining shelter were full of them, and their great booming chorus rang out like an artillery bombardment.

  Well, thought Darwen, fat chance of going back to sleep now.

  He yawned and stretched, then stuck his head back into the tent to grab his toiletries.

  “Is it a jaguar?” whispered Rich.

  “Three of them,” said Darwen. “And they look really hungry.”

  As Darwen walked away, he heard Rich sigh, “Hilarious,” through the tent. Amazingly, Gabriel was already snoring.

  The darkness had softened fractionally, and out over the ocean Darwen could see the pink of dawn, but he still couldn’t follow the path up to the washrooms without the flashlight. Bugs scattered as the beam advanced, some of them huge, not just roaches, but grasshoppers and mantises and centipedes with six-inch segmented bodies that shone hard in the flashlight. Twice Darwen stopped to give the insects a chance to get out of the way, and he started to wonder if he should have stayed in the tent until sunup.

  The howler monkeys had gone quiet, but from time to time Darwen heard a soft thunk. Scanning the trees with his flashlight, he saw that the monkeys were nibbling on small round fruit and dropping the cores onto the shelter’s tin roof as they finished eating. He grinned to himself as he watched them, fastening the beam of his flashlight on one and watching as it ate nonchalantly, looking around like a man finishing breakfast and considering what kind of weather the day would bring. And then, quite suddenly, there was something else up there in the tree, a large catlike face that flashed into view, fangs bared.

  The monkey dropped from its perch, swinging and barking at the top of its considerable voice, setting the other howlers off so that in a second the entire camp area was alive with their booming calls. But this was no monkey dawn chorus. It was full of fear and panic. If these were cattle or horses, thought Darwen, they would be stampeding.

  Something was after them, something Darwen had caught in his flashlight just before it could pounce. He swept the flashlight beam over the tree and caught a flash of movement, of something larger than the howlers, almost as big as Darwen, but moving as the monkeys did, loping from branch to branch on long arms. He tried to follow it, but it was too agile, too fast, and in a moment it had gone completely.

  What on earth . . . ?

  He thought of the face he had seen, which he had thought was dark and catlike, but that couldn’t be right, not considering the way it had moved. He stood quite still as the howlers fled into the forest inland, their cries fading with them, and he realized he didn’t want to go up to the dark washrooms alone. He turned and headed back to the tent.

  “Rich,” said Darwen as he stuck his head inside. “Wake up.”

  “Wha’?” groaned Rich, rubbing his eyes. “Dude, it’s still dark.”

  “It’s dawn,” said Darwen. “We have to go see Mr. Peregrine.”

  Rich grumbled, but he came out onto the platform, peering carefully into his shoes before putting them on.

  “You know what time I got to sleep?” he said gruffly.

  “No,” said Darwen.

  “Neither do I, but it was late. I kept thinking there was something alive in the tent with me.”

  “There was,” said Darwen. “Me and Gabriel.”

  “I mean bugs or . . .” he faltered.

  “Snakes?”

  Rich shrugged and looked away.

  Darwen told him everything he had seen: the monkeys’ terrified flight and the curious creature stalking them in the trees. Rich was impressed, but not in the way Darwen had hoped.

  “Man, you are so lucky!” said Rich. “I wonder what it was. A jaguarondi, maybe, or a margay. There are six different cat species in Costa Rica, you know. I am so jealous. First day and you’ve already seen a wild cat.”

  “But it moved like a monkey.”

  “That must have been something different. Probably one of the howlers.”

  “It was bigger than the howlers,” said Darwen. “I’m sure.”

  “Well,” said Rich, shrugging. “You’ll have to ask Jorge on the walk. He probably sees them all the time.” Then he added wistfully, “I hope the howlers come every morning. I’d love to get a good look at them.”

  “I might prefer an extra hour’s sleep,” said Darwen, rubbing his eyes. “I’m barely awake enough to stand. I hope this hike isn’t hard work.”

  “Well, way to jinx it,” said Rich as they reached Mr. Peregrine’s tent.

  “Sleep well?” asked Mr. Peregrine brightly.

  “Not really,” said Darwen, sniffing the air. The tent smelled slightly sour, like spilled vinegar.

  “Oh dear,” said Mr. Peregrine without a trace of remorse. “I slept like a top. Good morning, Richard. Now it goes without saying that what I am about to give you must remain strictly secret.”

  “What about Alex?” asked Darwen.

  Mr. Peregrine blinked,
then smoothed his hair with the back of his wrist like a cat grooming itself.

  “Of course, you can take Miss O’Connor into your confidence,” said Mr. Peregrine, as if this was a given, “but no one else, yes?”

  He produced a tubular leather case about two feet long and fastened with buckled straps. Smiling, he presented it to Darwen and inclined his head as if he was bowing.

  “What is it?” asked Darwen.

  “Open the carrier and see.”

  Darwen undid the straps, popped the cap off the tube, and slid out four telescopic brass rods, like the parts of a tripod or the poles of a tent. They were designed to snap together to form a square, which could then be pressed into soft ground so it would stand upright. Two small devices were clamped to the uprights. One was a contraption of cogs and sprockets not unlike the screen device Darwen had used to protect himself from the eyes of the gnashers and scrobblers until it had been broken during their attempted invasion on Halloween. The other was a glass-fronted gauge displaying five numbers, with brass wheels on the side by which those numbers might be adjusted.

  “It’s already been set,” said Mr. Peregrine, “so don’t alter the dial.”

  “It’s a gate,” said Rich.

  “Precisely so, Mr. Haggerty,” said Mr. Peregrine, clapping with boyish delight. “A portable portal, and one that can be set to connect with a number of different Silbrican loci. Very rare and very expensive. You must be careful with it.”

  “And it will get me to Luis?” gasped Darwen, not bothering to conceal his excitement.

  “Ah, the missing boy,” he said. “Well, it will get you to Silbrica, indubitably. But it must be used in secret, and that means where no one will stumble upon it while you are inside, not just when you are coming and going. If the gate were interfered with while you were in Silbrica, you might not be able to use it to return. And, of course,” Mr. Peregrine concluded, “it can only be used after sundown.”