Darwen Arkwright and the Insidious Bleck

by A. J. Hartley

  “Help Alex!” shouted Rich, taking up position with Darwen at the door. “She can’t get out without you. Now, Darwen!”

  Darwen stepped away, and the door quivered for a terrible second until Rich could take his place. Darwen took Alex’s hand, helped her onto the sink, and kept hold until she was up and through the window.

  “Now you,” he said to Rich.

  “The door’s not going to hold,” Rich answered.

  As if to punctuate the point, the loose panel in the top left-hand side popped right out, and something long and clawed reached in.

  There was a cabinet under the sink. Darwen dropped and opened it, hoping vaguely for bug spray. There wasn’t any. There was, however, a glass bottle of bath salts. He grabbed it, swinging it hard at the insect leg that was reaching for Rich. The leg was snatched back, and in that instant Rich made a run for it, Darwen seizing his hand as he clambered onto the sink.

  Darwen vaulted up after him, pushing him through the window as the bathroom door flew open and crashed against the wall. One of the shiny bugs skittered in on the tiled floor, another on the ceiling.

  Darwen shoved Rich through and leaped for the window frame, grabbing and pulling in one motion. Something snatched at his feet and he kicked wildly, connecting with what he thought was a giant insect head, propelling himself the rest of the way through.

  Rich and Alex grabbed his arms and pulled him through into the dark of the jungle. For a moment he felt the sudden warmth of the night, and then Alex was screaming, and he turned to see the first of the insects clambering through after him. Rich leaped backward, but Alex picked up a rock and smacked the windup contraption on the side.

  The first insect was halfway through when she hit the device a second time. There was a shrill scream as the portal failed and the mantis’s head was lopped neatly off. Alex hit the gate once more for good measure, and the slim brass frame buckled and snapped.

  She turned on Darwen, and her face was wild, her breath coming in great surging gasps.

  “Let’s NEVER go there again,” she shouted. “Okay?”

  Darwen sank to the moist earth, panting.

  “It may be the blind, screaming terror of the giant homicidal bugs talking,” said Rich in a dazed voice, “but were our lives just saved by a ferret with a rocket launcher?”

  Mr. Peregrine flexed the bent and ruined remains of the portable portal in the morning sun. Repair was, quite clearly, out of the question.

  “Couldn’t you have just dismantled it?” he asked, sounding forlorn.

  “There wasn’t time,” said Alex.

  Rich and Darwen eyed each other sheepishly. Taking the gate apart now seemed the obvious thing to have done.

  “Right,” said Mr. Peregrine, weighing the shattered remains like they had been a family heirloom. “Well, this presents a difficulty,” he said. “Unless we can find the original breach, we have no way of getting into Silbrica from here.”

  “That’s your concern?” said Alex. “Do I have to point out that this is the second time you’ve sent me to that house and its charming inhabitants?”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Peregrine, thoughtful. “Terribly sorry. You are sure these creatures were the same as the Jenkinses?”

  “Er . . . yeah,” said Alex. “Giant man-eating bugs in people suits tend to stick in your mind like they’re tattooed on the back of your eyelids, so yeah, I’m pretty sure.”

  “Quite,” said Mr. Peregrine, and for a moment he looked miles away, but not vague, as he often looked. His brain was working a mile a minute, and his eyes had a narrow, fixed quality.

  “Still here,” said Alex.

  “What?” said Mr. Peregrine, coming out of his reverie with a start. “Yes. Well, as I say, sorry about that. I suppose the equipment malfunctioned. Most unusual.”

  “Malfunctioned?” said Darwen. “It was tampered with. Someone changed the setting to send us there.”

  “No one has had access to it except us,” said Mr. Peregrine.

  “It was in the tent all day yesterday,” said Rich. “Anyone could have gone in and messed with it.”

  “A person?” said Alex. “You know, Nathan Cloten and Chip Whittley act like they didn’t see anything unusual back at Halloween, but what if they did? What if they are spying on us?”

  “What about this Peace Hunter?” said Mr. Peregrine. “His arrival sounds most suspicious.”

  “Weazen helped us escape,” said Darwen. He didn’t know for sure if the little creature had made it out alive, and the sense of responsibility weighed on him like cold, wet clothes.

  “Or he came to catch you and found you already in a fight,” the teacher mused.

  “No way,” said Alex. “I only got a glimpse of him, but he’s way too cute and fuzzy to be working for the Bleck. I hope he got out okay.”

  “No one,” said Mr. Peregrine, “is working for the Bleck! It is an animal. Nothing more. You must not invent things to worry about. You have classes to focus on as well as the breaches.”

  “But what about Luis?” Darwen sputtered.

  “I don’t see what you can do to help him.” Mr. Peregrine sighed. “For now, keep your eyes open and do try to enjoy yourselves. This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

  Darwen looked away, but Alex nodded for him.

  And, as it turned out, they did enjoy the day.

  For one thing, the boat ride was better—most of the way, at least. They followed the same course as they had the previous day, but the water was calmer, and Darwen’s nausea didn’t kick in until they started veering out toward the flat-topped island. He, Alex, and Rich had agreed that their top priority now was finding another way back into Silbrica. Darwen didn’t know how they were going to do it, but knowing that his friends agreed with him made him feel better.

  They pulled into a rocky bay, and Jorge talked about safety issues while the driver handed out snorkels, masks, fins, and life vests. “We stay in this area here,” said Jorge, pointing. “The current will push you, but if you drift too far, we will come get you in the boat. The rocks are sharp, so pay attentions, and be alert. If you see a shark bigger than this”—he held his hands about three feet apart—“shout.”

  “Are we likely to?” asked Simon Agu, staring.

  Jorge shrugged. “Probably not, but if you do, they will most likely be white-tipped reef sharks. Not dangerous.” He looked at the sky. “Not at this time of day.”

  Darwen watched the students exchanging the now familiar mixture of uneasy glances and thrills of excitement. Gabriel was first in, casting aside his cap with the absurd veil and looking more at home than they had ever seen him. He dove straight down, blew out a fountain of seawater from his mouth, and laughed out loud.

  “Wow!” said Alex, climbing awkwardly over the side. “He’s coming out of his shell.”

  Only Mr. Peregrine, still clad in his chest-high waders, showed no sign of actually getting ready to swim.

  “You’re not going in?” Rich asked him.

  Mr. Peregrine shook his head. “Not much of a swimmer,” he said.

  “You can just float about,” said Rich. “See? We’ve got life jackets and everything. It’s quite safe. I’ll keep an eye on you.”

  Mr. Peregrine shook his head again. His usual pallor had developed a greenish tinge. “I don’t like water,” he whispered, wincing away from a few drops on the side of the boat like they were acid.

  “I thought only Darwen and Mr. Sumners got seasick,” Rich answered.

  “I don’t mind being on it,” said Mr. Peregrine, regarding the water carefully. “I just don’t like being in it.” Then, gathering some semblance of composure, he added, “Wasn’t exactly much opportunity to practice my swimming while I was running the shop, unfortunately.”

  “Oh,” said Rich. He gave an a
pologetic shrug, put on his mask, and tipped awkwardly backward out of the boat. He hit the water with a loud, slapping splash, but came up grinning, both thumbs up. Darwen met Mr. Peregrine’s anxious eyes. They were alone except for Jorge, who had extended his hand toward Darwen.

  “You sure you won’t come?” said Darwen to Mr. Peregrine.

  “You go ahead,” said the teacher. “Maybe I’ll come in later.”

  They both knew this wasn’t true, but Darwen nodded anyway, then inched into position, arms outstretched for balance.

  Jorge sat him on the edge of the boat, back to the water, and checked his mask. “Ready?” said the guide.

  Darwen nodded, and Jorge gave him a gentle nudge backward.

  Darwen hit the water with his shoulders, but it didn’t hurt, and though the life jacket felt hot and constraining, he was glad to get out of the bobbing boat. As the others started to swim about, he took a moment to float quietly by himself, fiddling with his mask, while his seasickness passed. He was still waiting when Rich burst from the surface.

  “Hot dang!” he shouted. “I saw a parrot fish. Right in front of my face! I could have touched it. A real wild parrot fish!”

  Soon everyone but Darwen was popping up laughing and whooping with delight, swapping tales of what they were seeing under the bright blue water. Hating to feel so left out, Darwen bit down on the snorkel’s mouthpiece and dove.

  His queasiness was forgotten the moment he went under. The world beneath the water was glorious. He was surrounded by schools of exotic fish so brilliantly colored that it was like being inside an aquarium. The rocks below him gathered and thrust in strange swollen formations like the landscape of an alien planet. Delicate corals of white and pink bloomed in shafts of bluish light.

  And among it all moved the fish. Darwen saw dozens, perhaps hundreds, right away, silver shoals moving as one and bright, beautiful individuals for which he had no name. He gasped in wonder at it and found himself, like the others, laughing privately with delight as something roughly the size and shape of an American football idled past—a puffer fish, he thought it was called. For a moment he understood perfectly Rich’s outrage at Scarlett and anything she might do to destroy the beauty of this place.

  He broke the surface and found Jorge floating close by.

  “Good?” said the guide.

  “Chuffin’ brilliant!” said Darwen, and he went back under, taking a deep breath this time so that he could dive. He swam deep into a rock crevice alive with orange fish, swimming down until the pressure in his ears began to hurt. He rolled easily onto his back and floated to the surface, past what he took to be an angelfish with a long dorsal fin that trailed after it like a ribbon of white and gold. At the surface, he blew the water from his snorkel and whooped with delight.

  It was a perfect morning. Apart from Mr. Peregrine, who never made it into the water, the mood at the ranger station on the beach where they landed for lunch was exuberant. Even Nathan and Chip had forgotten to be sour about the “nature” for which they were generally so disdainful, and Princess Clarkson had stopped whining about the conditions of their accommodations. She ran her fingers through her golden hair and blithely declared that it would dry in the sun “just fine.”

  They ate peanut butter sandwiches at wooden tables under the shade of the cliffs that lined the beach and watched a huge and spiny black iguana scaling the rocks.

  “It’s like something out of Jurassic Park!” exclaimed Barry, and, for once, Darwen thought he was right. It was odd, he thought, that after all the strange things he had seen on the other side of the mirror, a part of the real world could only be compared to movies.

  The sandwiches were dry, but no one complained, engrossed as they were in swapping tales of what they had seen in the water. Simon and Carlos had seen a sea turtle, while Melissa and Genevieve had spotted a jellyfish, and Chip had seen what he claimed was a moray eel.

  “It was green,” he said, “with these little beady eyes, and it had its mouth open so you could see its teeth, like little knives in a row.”

  Each story produced another rush of excitement and pleasure.

  “So,” said Mr. Peregrine, now out of his waders, as they packed their trash to take back in the boats, “how am I doing?”

  “Great,” said Darwen. “Best school trip ever.”

  “This afternoon I fancy you might learn something more directly connected to your mission,” said the old man in a low voice. “I am confident that you and Mr. Haggerty will find it especially compelling.”

  Darwen felt his pulse quicken. It was about time.

  “Students!” called Miss Harvey. “Everyone with their walking shoes on in single file in front of me in two minutes.”

  “We’re not going back into the ocean?” called Naia with cartoon dismay.

  “Not just yet. Mr. Peregrine and Mr. Iverson have something to show us before we do any more snorkeling.”

  Someone groaned.

  “This is not a holiday,” Miss Harvey reminded them. “It is a school outing. We are here to learn, to immerse ourselves in that which we do not know in order to emerge enriched by the experience. Now, Hillside. Quick march.”

  And they began to trudge up the winding slope that climbed inland from the beach, wending their way through cactus scrub and heavy-leafed rainforest shrubs. Lizards skittered in the underbrush, and Jorge gave another of his favorite warnings to pay attentions to the nature, if only because some of it might kill them if they didn’t.

  The trail was easy to follow, and in ten minutes they reached a partially open area in the woods where the leaf litter had been swept and a square of topsoil carefully removed.

  “It’s a dig!” exclaimed Rich, picking up a trowel from a box of tools.

  “The Caño Island archaeological site,” agreed Mr. Iverson, beaming at Rich. “Right up your alley, I think, Mr. Haggerty.”

  “Archaeology?” groaned Mad. “I wanna go back and see the fish.”

  “Hey, check it out,” called Barry. “Cannonballs.”

  For the briefest of moments, Darwen thought he was right. The forest floor and the area around the dig itself was scattered with stone balls of varying sizes, several of them as big as large pumpkins. Darwen’s gaze moved from them to Rich, but his friend’s eyes were fixed on Mr. Iverson, who had crouched to consider one of the spheres. It was about the size of a baseball, and though it was greenish with lichen, it was clearly identical to those Darwen had thrown at the monster that took Luis. The science teacher turned quickly and gave Mr. Peregrine a probing look.

  “These are the famous stone spheres,” said Miss Martinez. “They are found only here and on the mainland close by. They are about a thousand years old, perhaps more, carved by the ancient people who lived here long before Columbus came. Their precise function is uncertain, but they seem to have been used to mark special places and events in the ritual life of the tribe. This is a graveyard.”

  “Cool,” said Carlos.

  And if this wasn’t the exact spot from which Luis was taken, thought Darwen, then it was somewhere very like this and very close. There was a portal to Silbrica around here. There had to be.

  “Since he has been assisting the archaeologists, Jorge will explain the excavation,” continued Miss Martinez. “Afterward, he will answer questions, so start to think about what you’d like to know. Quietly, Mr. Fails.”

  As Chip and Barry elbowed each other, the guide began to talk. “The Caño Island site where you stand has been used by people for many centuries, though we do not believe they lived here,” he said. “Perhaps they came here only to bury their dead.”

  “Is the island haunted?” asked Barry.

  “Questions later, Mr. Fails,” said Miss Martinez firmly.

  “I am sure that the people who used to come here thought the place special,”
said Jorge, by way of an answer, “and, yes, I’m sure they had all kinds of stories about the island’s function as a cemetery. Recently a discovery was made here at Caño. In addition to the stone balls, we found metates—a kind of stone slab for grinding corn—and several of these.”

  From his pocket he drew a clear plastic box with something yellow inside. It looked like a tiny figure, strangely shaped but roughly apelike.

  “Is that gold?” exclaimed Princess Clarkson.

  “Yes,” said Jorge, shifting as the students crowded in closer. “I will pass it around, but handle it carefully, and do not open the box.”

  As the students cooed over the gold figurine, Darwen turned his attention back to Mr. Iverson, who had moved quietly over to Mr. Peregrine and had started to speak in a low, urgent voice touched with something—accusation or suspicion—that Darwen had never heard from him before.

  “That sphere is like the one you brought to class,” he hissed. “No. Not like. It’s the same. Identical. Where did you get it?”

  “Oh, you know,” said Mr. Peregrine airily. “You tend to acquire things in your travels.”

  “You tend to acquire things?” whispered Mr. Iverson, so that Darwen had to strain to hear over the babble of questions being directed at Jorge. “How do you acquire an ancient and valuable artifact like this and then toss it around at school like it’s no more than a punctured soccer ball? Did you know what it was? Is there something about this trip that you haven’t told the other staff?”

  Before Mr. Peregrine could answer, Mr. Iverson caught sight of Darwen watching him. Listening. The science teacher gave Darwen a long, level stare. Flushing, Darwen turned quickly away. At the same moment, Rich nudged him. It was his turn to look at the gold figurine.

  Darwen considered it carefully through the magnifying glass that came with it, at first just so that he wouldn’t have to look at Mr. Iverson, who he sensed was still watching him, but then with real interest. The tiny statue was indeed apelike, long limbed and hunched, but the head was that of a jaguar, and the paws showed long, savage-looking claws. Though the figurine was only a couple of inches long, its feet were finely modeled and showed birdlike talons, one extending backward, three more going forward, the middle one of which was considerably longer than the others.