Darwen Arkwright and the Insidious Bleck

by A. J. Hartley

  “Well?” said Rich. It was the first word he had said all evening, and Darwen and Alex just stared at him. They were sitting at the long tables in the shelter, watching the other kids as they filed back and forth from the washrooms and headed to bed.

  “Well what?” said Darwen.

  “Don’t we have something to do?” said Rich in a low voice, his eyes loaded with meaning.

  “You mean . . . where Mr. Peregrine said we should go?” said Darwen.

  “Obviously,” said Rich.

  “We thought you . . .” Darwen couldn’t think of how to end the sentence.

  “He thought you were mad at everyone and wouldn’t want to go,” said Alex in a matter-of-fact voice.

  “What?” said Rich. “Darwen, you aren’t the only one who wants to save Luis, you know. I was upset about . . . It has nothing to do with this. So. Now?”

  “Er . . . great,” said Darwen. “Yes. We can set the portal up in the trees behind the dining shelter. No one will see it there.”

  Rich nodded.

  “You want me to get it from the tent?” he said.

  “Sure,” Darwen said. “Meet us by the sinks in ten minutes. We’ll wait for everyone else to go to bed and then sneak around the back and into the woods. Bring your flashlight.”

  “Okay,” said Rich, and for a moment he looked cheerful again, but as he half turned to leave, he seemed to think better of it and stopped. “Were you two going to go without me?” he asked.

  “No,” they both said at once.

  “We hadn’t even talked about it,” said Darwen, conscious that while that was true, he and Alex might well have gone to Silbrica by themselves had Rich not spoken up.

  Rich nodded but looked unconvinced.

  As he walked away, Alex shrugged.

  “Come on,” she said. “Sumners is giving us the stink eye.”

  It was true. They were the last students still sitting at the tables, and the math teacher was watching them suspiciously. They got up and made their way to the bathrooms, Alex pausing to smile at Mr. Sumners and wish him “a very good night’s sleep” along the way.

  Sumners watched their backs as they walked away, but then said something that stopped them in their tracks. “What on earth, Mr. Haggerty, are you carrying?”

  Darwen and Alex wheeled around to see Rich carrying the long leather tube containing the portable portal. He was staring at the math teacher, pale, his eyes wide open in what Alex called his “deer in the headlights” look. They were about to go back toward him when he spoke.

  “Toiletries, sir,” he said.

  “In that thing?” said Sumners with undisguised disbelief.

  “Special travel pouch, sir,” said Rich, improvising. “Toothbrush, soap rod, vacuum-packed towel, all in a handy space-saving container. My dad got it from a late-night TV ad.”

  “Did he indeed?” said Mr. Sumners, peering at the leather case. “There’s a towel in there?”

  “Not a hand towel,” said Rich. “A bath towel. There’s a plunger on the bottom that sucks all the air out.”

  “Huh,” said Sumners, who looked like someone had sucked all the air out of him. “Well, get a move on, boy. Everyone else is already in bed.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Rich. “Thank you, sir.”

  He came up the path grinning.

  “Not bad,” muttered Alex. “I’m not sure about ‘soap rod,’ but the plunger-on-the-bottom thing was a nice touch.”

  “It’s a good thing he didn’t ask to see it,” said Rich.

  “Oh, come on,” said Alex. “If there’s no risk, there’s no fun. Meet me here in five minutes. Gotta pee.”

  Rich’s eyes met Darwen’s, and they grinned at each other. Darwen found himself looking at one of the mirrors over the sink and, remembering the unsettling impression of the laughing face over his shoulder, looked quickly away.

  “I wish Mr. Peregrine had some more specific plans,” he muttered. “I mean whatever killed that tapir—”

  “Hey, guys, whatcha doin’?”

  It was Gabriel, still in his cap with the veil.

  “Oh,” said Darwen. “Hi, Gabriel. We’re just . . . you know . . . getting ready for bed.”

  “Where are your toothbrushes?”

  “Already cleaned our teeth,” said Darwen, smiling awkwardly. “We’re just . . .”

  “Going to sneak out to see the stars,” said Rich. “I’m a bit of an amateur astronomer.”

  “Oh,” said Gabriel. “Cool. Is that your telescope?”

  “Yeah,” said Rich.

  “Can I have a look?”

  “Well, it’s kind of . . . expensive and I don’t really . . .”

  “Please,” said Gabriel. “I won’t break it. Promise.”

  “Sorry,” Darwen said. “Astronomy club rules. Members only.”

  “And the members are you two and Alex O’Connor, right?” said Gabriel, looking crestfallen.

  “No,” said Rich. But at that moment Alex emerged from the washrooms, and Gabriel’s expression hardened.

  “Oh, Alex,” said Rich. “I thought you said, er, Melissa.”

  “If you don’t want to be my friend,” said Gabriel, “you could just say so. There’s no need to lie.”

  “It’s not that, Gabriel, really,” Rich protested, but the skinny boy was already walking away.

  “Nice save,” said Alex. “I thought you said Melissa. Very convincing.”

  “Oh, shut up,” said Rich.

  “Well,” said Darwen as Gabriel disappeared. “We’d better get on with it. Has Sumners gone?”

  “Looks like,” said Alex.

  They set off around the back of the washrooms and into the trees behind the dining shelter, following Rich’s flashlight.

  “Do we really need that?” whispered Darwen. “Someone might see.”

  “I’ll take getting caught over stepping on a bushmaster, thanks,” said Rich.

  They inched further into the woods.

  “Gotta say,” said Alex. “Not a fan of those washrooms. I don’t know if it’s the lizards and toads, but I always feel like I’m being watched. Naia and Mad think they’re haunted.”

  “By what?” said Rich. “The ghost of a howler monkey?”

  Darwen stopped walking.

  “How about here?” he said.

  Rich handed him the leather package, and they set about snapping the brass frame together. Though the rods did extend some, the portal was still only about a yard square.

  “We’ll have to go through one at a time,” said Darwen as he snapped the dial with the locus number to one upright and pushed it into the soft earth.

  “How?” asked Alex. “We won’t even be able to see through if we’re not touching you.”

  “I’ll reach back through for you,” said Darwen. He was winding the watch-like device on the other upright. “Ready?” he said. When they nodded, he pressed the button on the side.

  There was a soft whoosh and a crackle, then the air framed by the portal flickered before stabilizing into the tiny window of a brick building.

  “Weird,” said Darwen.

  “What’s weird?” said Alex, who couldn’t see. She snatched at his hand.

  “Oh,” said Darwen. “Sorry.”

  He took Rich’s hand too, and the three of them stared through the portal in amazement. It had to be one of the strangest things Darwen had ever seen: a cracked and dirty window frame with a brick surround sitting in a dark Costa Rican jungle. “Maybe it connects to that central machine you told us about,” said Alex.

  “Only one way to find out,” Darwen answered. “I’ll have to let go of your hands while I get the window open, but I’ll stick my hand back out for you, so don’t go anywhere.”
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br />   “And don’t you go on without us,” said Alex. “The Peregrine Pact, remember? It’s not just you.”

  “I know,” Darwen answered, irritable.

  He released them, stepped up to the slender brass frame, and reached in. The air buckled slightly, but then his fingertips found the hard surface of the window glass. He pushed, but nothing happened, so he reached for the wooden frame and lifted. The window slid up easily, though the opening was still only about a foot and a half wide.

  Darwen grabbed the ledge and pulled himself in, realizing as he did so that the window was several feet up. Below him was a cracked porcelain sink marked with brown water stains. He climbed down headfirst, bracing himself against a brass tap, crawling into the sink itself, and finally jumping onto an uneven tiled floor.

  It was a bathroom. Old and badly in need of repair and redecoration, but a bathroom nonetheless.

  “Weird,” he said again.

  He used a wooden laundry hamper to climb back onto the sink, and from there he reached through. He felt Alex grab his hand, and he pulled until her head was through and she could see what she was doing. Then he did the same for Rich.

  “Hey,” said Alex. “Our very own bathroom! And not a lizard in sight.”

  The house—if that was what it was—felt cool and smelled musty. One thing was certain: they weren’t in the jungle anymore.

  “This is awesome,” said Alex. “Before, we went into Silbrica to see exotic, weird stuff, right? To get a break from boring old reality. Now we go to Silbrica to use a decent bathroom, maybe watch some television, and generally get away from the weird, exotic stuff all around us!”

  Darwen opened the bathroom door and stepped out onto a narrow landing. It was a house, and a small one at that. There were wall-mounted gas lamps that glowed bluish, though several of them didn’t work. What light there was showed peeling textured wallpaper spotted with mold and a carpet gray with dust. Darwen doubted they’d be sneaking in here to watch television.

  They were, apparently, upstairs. There were two scratched doors on one side of the hallway—bedrooms, presumably—and a narrow staircase to their left, which went down in three angular turns.

  “This place feels . . . I don’t know,” said Alex. “Familiar. Like I’ve been here before, or dreamed about it.”

  Darwen felt the same way, but he couldn’t think of when he might have been here. It reminded Darwen of the old terraced houses in Lancashire, but one that had been derelict for years. There were no signs of portals or the elegant machinery he was used to in Silbrica.

  He pushed open the closest door and saw what he had almost expected: a dim room with a bay window, a moldy-looking bed, and a wardrobe with its doors hanging open. He stepped inside, and the floor creaked beneath him. He pulled the curtains open. Outside he saw trees, their branches brushing up against the house, and again he had that odd feeling that this wasn’t the first time he had been there. He rejoined the others.

  “Downstairs, I suppose,” he said, leading the way. There was something about the stair carpet that seemed familiar too, as did the wallpaper at the bottom. He frowned and looked at Alex, who had the same expression on her face. Rich, by contrast, looked merely interested.

  “What?” he said.

  “This place doesn’t ring any bells?” asked Alex.

  “Nope,” said Rich. “Never been anywhere like it in my life.”

  “Shhh,” said Alex. “Listen.”

  They all became still, and Darwen could hear it too, a faint clicking and chittering that seemed to be coming from somewhere down the hall.

  Machinery?

  It was possible, he supposed, but it didn’t sound quite right somehow, and he could feel the hairs on his arms and neck starting to stand up, like his body remembered something his brain didn’t.

  Alex pushed past him, down the hall and into a kitchen. Darwen followed with Rich trailing behind him, but then Alex became quite still, blocking the door. Darwen gave her a shove, and she turned. Her expression stopped the two boys cold.

  “I know where we are!” she hissed.

  Darwen had never seen her look so scared.

  The chittering had grown louder. Darwen turned toward it and saw another half-open doorway into a tiny lounge with a fireplace and a table with the shattered remains of an old tea set . . . and a floor littered with pale balloon-like objects that Darwen instantly knew were eggs. Maggots, three feet long, milky white but with black pincer mouths, covered the rotting furniture, and over in the corner were five huge, shiny insects, all as big as he was.

  The Jenkinses.

  That was what they had been called when Darwen had last seen them: huge, horrible insect creatures disguised as an elderly couple whose bodies they wore like flesh suits. But it couldn’t be. At least one of the Jenkinses had been killed by the train months ago. But there they were, and now Darwen knew why the house had seemed both familiar and unfamiliar. He had, after all, not been upstairs last time.

  They looked like giant mantises, though they were the hard and shiny black of beetles, and they had large, compound eyes like flies. They were, perhaps, a little smaller than the two that had disguised themselves as the Jenkinses, but that made them no less repulsive or dangerous—and last time Darwen and his friends had only escaped because of the screen device he had broken at Halloween.

  His first instinct was to make for the front door, but that wouldn’t get them back to the jungle camp. “Back upstairs!” he gasped.

  The insects responded as if they hadn’t known he was there. Their whip-like antennae flicked toward him, and their mouthparts opened, drooling. Then they moved, a sudden scuttling, one across the egg-strewn floor, one up and over the ceiling, a third diagonally across the wall.

  They were fast. Much faster than the Jenkinses had been.

  Rich cried out. Alex just stared, hands clasped over her mouth. Darwen pushed both of them back into the kitchen. As he did so, Rich slipped on some nameless slime on the tiles, knocking Alex onto her back. He slumped heavily against the wall, splitting the rotten plaster open, and out of the wall cavity fell two huge pale maggots, both at least a yard long, one landing wetly in Alex’s lap.

  She screamed, thrusting it wildly from her, eyes shut against the horror of it. Rich rolled to one side as the other one arched its back and pulsed toward him, its black horny lips gaping.

  Darwen looked wildly around for a weapon and, finding a heavy saucepan, he snatched it up and flung it at the maggot. The pan bounced off the creature’s rubbery body, went straight up into the air, and came down handle first. With a soft splosh, it impaled the maggot, and the creature began to whip back and forth, emitting a thin and awful scream.

  For a moment Darwen was frozen with horror—aware that two of the mantis creatures were approaching fast but somehow unable to run away. One of them glared at him, its mouthparts uncoiling, and then it sprang. It shot through the air with astonishing speed, its clawed feet splayed, and then something happened. There was a flash and a pop like a firework, and the insect fell heavily, smoking as it slid lifeless across the floor. Darwen turned back toward the front of the house. Silhouetted in the open doorway like an Old West gunfighter was a tiny animal cradling a smoking weapon on which glowed a pinprick of amber light. It stepped into the light of the hallway, and Darwen recognized the dark, stoat-like form.

  Weazen!

  “Evening,” he growled as he fired at the other mantis, which ducked and weaved as a cabinet of moldy crockery exploded behind it. He spit to the side, then fired again. “Can’t hold ’em off for long. I suggest you do a runner, mate.”

  Darwen dragged Alex to her feet as Rich ran back through to the staircase. Behind him, he could hear the click of insect feet and the crack of Weazen’s blaster. As they got into the hallway, Darwen glanced back through the kitchen door. At first the
re was nothing, and then the head of the first creature appeared upside down on the door’s lintel above him. He ran, and it came after him, scrabbling across the ceiling.

  Rich and Alex pounded up the stairs. Darwen was momentarily sure that the steps would be rotten too, that they would fall through into some appalling maggoty nest, but they managed to successfully reach the top and bolt across the landing to the bathroom. Darwen gave chase and was almost at the top of the stairs when he felt something snag in his hair.

  His hand brushed at it automatically, but he felt the stick-like insect leg, and his revulsion gave him a new burst of speed, breaking the connection. He flew up the last three steps and down to the bathroom, slamming the door behind him on the first of the three insects.

  “Lock it!” Alex screamed.

  Darwen snapped the little brass bolt home, but he knew that wouldn’t hold them. Through the door, he could hear the sounds of their clicking beaks and scratching claws as they groped and fumbled, desperate to gain entry. “Curtain rod!” he yelled, putting his shoulder against the door as it shuddered under the weight of the insect assault.

  Rich climbed onto the edge of the bath and lifted the brass shower rod down. Together they tried to brace it between the foot of the toilet and the handle of the door. The insects were pushing harder, and one of the door’s thin panels had started to bulge and crack around the edges. Darwen heard the distant zap and crack of Weazen’s weapon, but he knew there were too many of the insect monsters for the Peace Hunter to handle alone. For a moment he hesitated, wondering if he should head back.