Jenny Nimmo - Charlie Bone and the Shadow of Badlock

‘I’m sorry, I don’t think my parents can help,’ Benjamin apologised.

‘I’m pretty sure they can’t.’ Maisie turned away and led Benjamin down a dim passage. ‘This is one of those disappearances that normal people couldn’t hope to solve.’

‘But I’m normal,’ Benjamin reminded her.

Maisie sighed. ‘Well, I know. But you’re a friend, and you could get one of the others: the endowed ones – or whatever they call themselves.’

‘Children of the Red King,’ Benjamin said quietly.

They had reached the cellar door, which stood wide open. Maisie beckoned to Benjamin and pointed into the cellar. Benjamin looked down into the murky underground room. Maisie nodded encouragingly. Benjamin didn’t like cellars, nor did Runner Bean. The big dog began to whine.

‘Do I have to?’ Benjamin asked.

‘It’s down there,’ said Maisie in a hushed voice.

‘What is?’

‘The painting, dear.’

Benjamin uttered a very slow ‘Ooooh’ as he realised that Charlie must be travelling. ‘He hasn’t really disappeared then.’

‘This time he has,’ said Maisie solemnly.

Benjamin stared into the cellar. He descended three, four steps until he could see the whole room. A dim light, hanging from the ceiling, showed him a disused cupboard, broken chairs, curtain poles, piles of newspapers and magazines and large black plastic bags filled with bulging objects. And then he saw the painting. It was standing against one of the walls, beside an old rolled-up mattress.

A small shadow flickered over it, and Benjamin saw that a white moth was hovering round the light bulb. All at once, the moth swung away and vanished. Benjamin went to the bottom of the steps and walked over to the painting. Runner Bean scrabbled down after him. He was panting very heavily and occasionally emitted a nervous whine.

The painting gave Benjamin the shivers. He was, as Maisie had admitted, a normal boy, so he experienced none of the insistent tugs that Charlie had felt, nor did he feel or hear the moaning Badlock winds. He did, however, get the impression that the almost photographic reality of the painting showed a place that had not been imagined but copied faithfully. It existed. Or did, once. With its dark towers, sunless sky and looming mountains it was certainly a hostile, sinister country.

There was a green scrawl in the bottom right-hand corner of the painting. ‘ Badlock .’ If Badlock really was a place, it was not somewhere that Benjamin would have wanted to visit. So why did Charlie ‘go in’? It was deserted and, as far as Benjamin could remember, Charlie had always needed first to hear a voice, and then to focus on a face, before he entered a picture. And in all the time Benjamin had known about his friend’s endowment, Charlie had never actually disappeared. His physical presence had always remained in the present, while his mind roamed the world behind the pictures.

‘What d’you think’s going on, Ben?’ asked Maisie from the top of the steps.

Benjamin shook his head. ‘Don’t know, Mrs Jones. Where’s Charlie’s uncle?’

‘Paton? Bookshop,’ said Maisie. ‘Where else?’

‘Think I’ll go over there. Mr Yewbeam will know what to do.’ Benjamin turned towards the steps.

Runner Bean didn’t follow his master, but stood before the painting in an odd attitude, his head on one side, as though he were listening to something. He gave a low, mournful howl. And then, before Benjamin’s very eyes, the yellow dog became a smaller, paler version of himself.

‘Runner?’ Benjamin leapt towards his dog. He touched the tip of Runner Bean’s tail, which was standing out, as stiff as a broom, but in less than a second the tail had melted away and with it the whole of Benjamin’s beloved dog.

Benjamin shrieked, ‘RUNNER!’ just as the front door slammed.

‘Oh, my giddy aunt!’ Maisie clapped a hand over her mouth.

She was roughly pushed aside by Grandma Bone, who had suddenly appeared beside her.

‘What on earth is going on?’ demanded Grandma Bone.

Benjamin stared up at the two woman. Maisie was shaking her head, her eyes were very wide and her eyebrows were working furiously up and down. She seemed to be warning him. Distraught as he was, Benjamin began to think, fast. It was always understood by Charlie and himself that Grandma Bone must know absolutely nothing about what went on, especially if it had anything at all to do with Charlie’s travelling.

Grandma Bone had caught sight of Maisie’s eyebrow-wriggling. ‘What’s the matter with you, woman?’ she snarled.

‘ Surprise ,’ said Maisie. ‘So surprised. Thought we heard a rat, didn’t we, Benjamin?’

Benjamin nodded vehemently.

‘ I thought I heard a bark.’ Grandma Bone glared suspiciously at Benjamin. ‘Where’s your dog?’

‘He . . . he didn’t come with me today,’ said Benjamin, almost choking with distress. Could Grandma Bone see the unwrapped painting from where she stood? He didn’t think so.

‘Unusual. Not to bring your dog. Thought it was your shadow?’ The tall woman turned on her heel and walked away, adding, ‘I’d come out of that cellar if I were you. It’s more than likely the rats’ll get you. Where’s Charlie, by the way?’

‘Gone to the bookshop,’ Maisie said quickly. ‘And that’s just where Benjamin’s going, isn’t it, Ben?’

‘Er – yes.’

Benjamin dragged himself regretfully up the cellar steps. He felt that he was betraying Runner Bean, leaving him trapped inside the awful painting. But what else could he do? Charlie’s Uncle Paton would provide an answer. He usually knew what to do when things went wrong.

Maisie saw Benjamin to the door. ‘Take care, dear,’ she said. ‘I don’t like to think of you alone in the city, without your dog.’

‘I am eleven,’ Benjamin reminded her. ‘See you later, Mrs Jones.’

‘I hope so, dear.’ Maisie closed the door.

Benjamin had taken only a few steps up the road when he became acutely aware that part of him was missing. The dog part. He’d been without Runner Bean before, when his parents took him to Hong Kong. But this was different. This was in a city where almost nothing was ordinary. Without warning, people could suddenly disappear, street lights could explode, snow could fall in summer.

Ingledew’s Bookshop wasn’t far from Filbert Street, but today it felt as though there was a huge chasm between Benjamin and safety. He was halfway down the High Street when he saw two children on the other side of the road. Joshua Tilpin, a small, untidy, sullen-looking boy, shambled beside his taller companion, a boy with a pale greenish complexion and an odd lurching walk. Dagbert-the-Drowner.

Pretending he hadn’t seen them, Benjamin walked nonchalantly on, but from the corner of his eye, he saw Dagbert nudge Joshua and point across the road.

Benjamin lost his nerve. Instead of continuing up the road, he darted into a side street. For a few minutes he stood in the shadows, watching the two boys. He was being silly, he told himself. Why should he be afraid of two boys from Charlie’s school? He hardly knew them. All the same, they gave him the creeps. Joshua had a reputation for making people do things against their will; not hypnotism, exactly; they called it magnetism. As for Dagbert, he drowned people. Recently, he’d tried to drown Charlie in the river.

Glancing up the street behind him, Benjamin was relieved to find that he knew where he was. He began to run.

‘What’s up, Benjamin Brown?’ called a voice. ‘Lost your dog?’

Benjamin didn’t look back. Joshua and Dagbert must have raced across the road and followed him.

‘You’re not frightened of us, little Ben, are you?’ Dagbert shouted. ‘Where’s Charlie?’