The Calder Game Read online

  A police officer standing in the back of the room stepped forward and touched Miss Knowsley on the shoulder. “With all due respect, ma’am, the boy. We need to ask him about the boy.”

  “Oh, yes, the boy,” Miss Knowsley fluttered, getting up from her chair. The officer sat down and leaned toward the man in the bed.

  “Ever seen a boy by the name of Calder Pillay? Can you tell us where he is?” the officer asked loudly.

  Art Wish opened one eye. Everyone held their breath. The lid slid closed, as if without the eyeball’s consent. “Fall,” he said again, both eyes shut.

  “Falls.” The word was barely a whisper.

  Miss Knowsley heard the final ‘s’ and looked sharply at him. “Was that fallsss, Artie?”

  “Maybe it was ‘false,’ ma’am,” the police officer ventured.

  “Oh, don’t confuse things!” Miss Knowsley said irritably. “I know my Artie!”

  A purring snore came from the bed; Arthur Wish was fast asleep.

  After her visit to the hospital, Posy Knowsley began to think. What had Art been trying to tell them?

  Fall, and then falls … Of course, he might have been trying to tell them that he’d fallen, but why struggle to say that? And why the ‘s’? Falls … there was only one set of falls near Woodstock, and that was the Grand Cascade.

  When she got back to her kitchen, Miss Knowsley made herself a cup of tea. She tsk-tsked to herself about the fact that Pummy was still out, and then she began to think, stirring her sugar around and around, faster and faster, until the tea was stone cold.

  She remembered something she hadn’t thought about in decades.

  When Art had visited Woodstock as a boy, he’d spent hours in Blenheim Park. After the sad horrors of growing up in a large American city — she couldn’t even imagine, not even for a second — she understood that the freedom was delicious.

  He’d loved the fishing, and loved playing on the rocks at the end of the lake. One day, after weeks of going to the Cascade on his own, an older man, a Woodstock local, had beckoned to him. Art had hurried over.

  “Secrets around here, my boy,” the fisherman had said. “Secrets of a fabulous nature.” Art had later repeated those very words to his aunt.

  And then the man had gone on to tell Art that one of the dukes of Marlborough, over two centuries earlier, had had a magical platform constructed in the falls. An ambitious engineering feat, this room-like ledge had eventually collapsed back into the tumble of rocks. The question was, had it disappeared entirely or was there still, somewhere in the falls, a hidden space?

  Miss Knowsley now wondered whether Art had told the boy the story of the secret platform. They could have gone to the falls and … what? If the boy had fallen down some crack, he should have been able to get out. The Glyme wasn’t terribly deep or wide there, and the current was slow. What could possibly have happened to him? And why else would Art be saying it? Did Art know some other secret about Blenheim that he’d never told his aunt?

  Miss Knowsley’s thoughts swirled around and around with her teaspoon.

  A pity she couldn’t talk with neighbors at this hour. But then again, she’d already done a bit too much of that. No, the person to speak with would be returning to the house, and soon.

  When Walter Pillay opened the front door that night, Miss Knowsley was waiting for him. Her cheeks were pink, and she was rubbing her hands, rubbing them so quickly that they looked like a flurry of knuckles and veins.

  “Quick, we need to go!” she said.

  As Tommy dropped over the top of the wall into pitch blackness, it occurred to him that he might be falling into a deep hole, or worse — onto rock. If he was hurt, no one knew where he was. Not one soul. Well, he thought grimly as he crashed into a bush, that makes three of us. Three kids, lost in an ancient hunting ground. He stood up, rubbing a sore knee. At least he’d escaped from the graveyard. But did mazes have ghosts? Tommy shook his head, trying not to let his imagination go wild. Wild. Tonight the word sounded very real, almost like a wail.

  His coin! He reached into his pocket, and there it was — small, round, reassuringly warm. He squeezed it tight in his palm, thinking suddenly about Calder and his pentominoes. His coin was for luck. Were Calder’s pentominoes, also? He was growing more like both Calder and Petra with every passing hour: first noticing a meaning behind the numbers on his coin, then spotting the multiples of five, and now hearing the word wild as if with new ears.

  Petra would understand how the coin worked, and that it held powers. Tommy decided he’d never sell it for money if he kept it, not now. Petra would respect that decision. It could be his talisman. Tommy remembered Ms. Hussey talking about a classroom lucky stone, a round stone with two rings that crossed. That made him think of the crossed Is in WISH-WISH. He squeezed his coin, and wished with all his might.

  He was standing in a deep pocket of woods, and the wind had risen overhead. Branches whipped and cracked, and Tommy didn’t think he’d ever heard anything so lonely.

  Walk away from the wall, he found himself thinking. Walk away. The woods will end, and you’ll be able to see where you are. There was no reason to pull out the map in his back pocket. He wouldn’t be able to see a thing. He’d find his way to the maze, no problem. Petra must be so frightened, by herself in the park all this time. Why hadn’t they planned for something going wrong before she went over? It was the first stupid thing they’d done together, and for some reason that cheered him up.

  He began to walk, moving between huge trees. He’d count each step. One hand stayed deep in his pocket, clutching his coin.

  Eight, nine, ten — whang! A branch he stepped on snapped up and knocked him off his feet. He was on the ground. His pants were snagged, and one leg pinned beneath him. Something had bitten his elbow. Could he have stumbled into an old animal trap? Cautiously, he wiggled his arms and legs.

  At that moment, he heard heavy footsteps crunching over branches and brush, the steps of a large man. Tommy froze, his eyes huge.

  Crunch, crunch. The steps came closer. He lay absolutely still, listening to raspy breathing. Whoever belonged to the steps was listening, too. Crunch, crunch … then a sharp snap and a low growl.

  Was this human? Tommy’s mind was racing. Were there bears in this part of England? Or a lunatic who had been shut up in the palace for years and just came out at night? Tommy closed his eyes as tightly as he could, as if to make himself vanish. He squeezed his coin. I wish, he thought to himself. I wish.

  Crunch, crunch, crunch … The steps were headed away. Tommy lay still as long as he dared. He listened to the branches sighing overhead and the distant squeaking of something that sounded like a huge wheelbarrow. What if he’d broken some centuries-old rule by trundling through the graveyard at night, and an angry ghost now was pushing his wheelbarrow into the park, looking for him? Anything seemed possible.

  Other things were moving around in the park that night, no question about that. Other things besides two kids from Chicago.

  Tommy got slowly to his knees.

  Petra had fallen over a low fence and was lying on her face inside the Kitchen Garden. She opened one eye.

  No one in sight. She’d tripped. Was someone behind her? Should she move?

  Then she realized she was looking into a tiny window, on a tiny house. Next to it was a small stone church. Had she become a giant, like the storybook Alice? Suddenly, the thought felt funny, and funny felt safe. She lifted her head, looking to see what had hit her in the face.

  Ivy! Just a runaway clump of ivy, hanging down from the wall. Relief flooded in, and she sat up.

  She was next to the model town she’d seen earlier today, when she and Tommy had been fighting. She half expected to see tiny people walking between the houses — nothing felt impossible now. But there was only the sighing of the wind outside the walls of the garden, the wind mixed with deep drifts of shadow, and the high, pitch-black bushes of the maze. A giant, empty world towering over a small, des
erted one.

  Where should she wait? She knew Tommy was coming; she just hoped he’d be fast, very fast. And then she heard a voice humming, and a man’s cough, and the squeak-squeak sound of a bicycle. Or was it two?

  The sounds came closer. Could it be the police? On bicycles, and at night? If so, should she give herself up?

  The squeaking stopped, and Petra heard a dull thud, a grunt, and another thud, as if two people were fighting. Then she heard someone breathe, “Idiot!” as if both surprised and angry.

  Later, Petra didn’t remember thinking at all. Her feet carried her lightly, as quick as the night wind, across the garden.

  She slipped into the dark entrance to the maze.

  Two of the five men who had stolen the Calder sculpture were old friends, and both knew that the caper had only just begun.

  When they’d abandoned the truck on the outskirts of Woodstock, everyone had agreed that it had been a crazy dream, to think they could sell that monstrous thing and get away with it.

  The two friends had managed a few seconds alone together, at the back of the truck. In that time, one mouthed the word reward to the other, and both jerked their heads toward Blenheim Park. There was sure to be a tasty thank-you offered by the police for the return of this sculpture.

  Half an hour after the five had split up and walked in different directions, the two men were back outside the truck, carefully loading the Minotaur onto a hay wagon.

  The sculpture was very heavy, but the two were masons and knew how to handle weight. They managed to tip and roll and tug until the sculpture was balanced on top of the old boards. Next they tied a large plastic covering over the top, one that said THAMES VALLEY POLICE — DO NOT DISTURB. The letters crumpled as the men lashed their load down with strips of police tape, wrapping it around and around with quick, expert strokes.

  “That’s it. That’ll slow the questions, anyway!” the smaller man panted.

  The larger man nodded and spat. “More useful here than in covering that infernal graffiti and roping off the square! The stupidity of the police! As if graffiti could tell them anything! Wishes, my foot!”

  “Wind’s come up,” the first man said.

  “Move along then, not a moment to spare, let’s head for the Hensington Gate.” The big man rubbed his hands together, as if looking forward to a sporting event. “Here’s how it’ll go: We’ll pull off on the side and toss a fistful of pebbles at the guard on duty. He’ll look around with his torch, we’ll give him a treacly knock on the noggin, and in we go. Nothing serious!”

  The other man chuckled, then added, “Mere bagging expedition, that’s all! Nothing to it!”

  The two set off, pulling the wagon as if they were oxen, the largest man in front. It rolled slowly along the main road, dragging a sinister, lumpy shadow over the old walls of the park.

  “Be able to get Georgie off to a proper school,” the big one grunted. The load was so heavy that, as he pulled, his neck vanished between his shoulders, making him look more like a beast than a man.

  “No counting eggs yet,” the other cautioned.

  “Who’s counting eggs?”

  “You!”

  The men stopped, gasping for breath, and shared a swig of whiskey. They pulled the wagon into the bushes by the main gate to Blenheim, and all went so smoothly that it felt like a miracle: no passing traffic, no bicycles coming home late from the pub, no dogs.

  The guard was a police officer stationed inside a police car, and he was fast asleep.

  “His lucky break,” the big man growled.

  Without another word, they trundled at top speed around the police car and into the park. The officer slept on. Pulling as hard as possible, the two hustled their weird-looking load down the long, straight road to the palace and up onto the old stone bridge that spanned the end of the River Glyme.

  The plan was this: If police appeared suddenly, they’d throw up their hands and explain that they were just trying to get the sculpture to a safe spot, that they’d discovered it on the hay wagon. They might still be able to collect a reward.

  And if they could do it, if they weren’t interrupted, they would unload the sculpture on the top of the bridge, in all its glory, and then roll the wagon down the bank and into the lake, where it would vanish without a ripple. They’d then stuff the police tarpaulin and tape under a bush, sit down by the sculpture, and wait for morning.

  The story was that they’d just entered the park to fish — something people in the town often did without permission, and no one really minded — and found the Minotaur. They didn’t feel they could leave it, didn’t have a cell phone, and were guarding this great piece of art until the police arrived.

  After all, they were good citizens, everyone knew that, and had ancestors who had served many a king. In doing their duty by Woodstock — and wasn’t that what they were doing? — they might soon be heroes, perhaps even rich ones.

  Tommy heard the splash. It was the sound of a meteor falling out of the sky, a huge slap of a splash. Now there was shouting in the distance. He began to run between trees, already frightened that someone could have thrown Petra off the bridge. Or was it Calder? Petra could swim, but Calder wasn’t famous for liking it; he was too skinny and always shivered.

  As Tommy ran, he realized that no, this was not the small splash of a person, or even two people. But a car? Maybe a police car had gone in.

  He burst out of the woods on to the edge of a field. In the distance, maybe a quarter-mile away, was the famous Vanbrugh Bridge, the big one that led to Rosamund’s Well. Police cars approached from either side, and dark figures seemed to be running toward the bridge from the direction of town. Flashlights bobbed. Headlights shone.

  There was no sign that anything gigantic had just fallen, no sign except a curling arc of water, a wave that was rolling toward the Cascade and the River Glyme.

  Pummy, at the sound of the splash, had dashed under cover in the woods. He peered out as the wave rolled over the rock he’d been sitting on. The water swirled through pools and around boulders, cresting into foam and bubbles as it reached the edge of the falls.

  After the wave had passed, something small and smooth gleamed on top of Pummy’s rock. It was a piece of broken plastic, a piece about the size of a cracker. Even by starlight, it was easy to see the color.

  Yellow. The piece of plastic was yellow.

  Petra, inside the maze and behind the high brick walls of the Kitchen Garden, heard nothing. She promised herself, as she crept toward the turn ahead, that she would memorize her path. She’d remember, and then she could escape quickly.

  She stopped and listened; whoever had been outside the walls was either gone, or … or … the thought was too scary. Why would any adult run silently across the grass and then enter this maze in the middle of the night?

  Only a crazy person would do such a thing. A crazy person. Who had hit Arthur Wish on the head? And who had made Calder disappear? The dark thoughts rose in Petra’s mind like a line of bubbles in a fish tank, bubbles that were hard to stop.

  As Petra walked slowly, thinking right-left-two rights-now left, she told herself firmly to focus, not to think about anything but the next step.

  Each … next … step.

  Step.

  Step.

  She tried to force her mind back into the dark channels of space, pretending she was walking through a pentomino maze that Calder had designed. After all, wasn’t a maze supposed to be about finding as well as losing? Wasn’t it supposed to be fair?

  She turned a corner, starting bravely down a path she couldn’t yet see. Hadn’t she read somewhere that a maze symbolizes what life is about? It’s a journey filled with choice and surprise, lefts and rights, and finally an unseen end. She was inside a symbol made of symbols, what an idea! Petra shivered. Calder would enjoy the clean way one concept fit inside the other, but then he’d never been in this maze at night and alone.

  Or had he? And what was that?

  Petra
heard something moving ever so softly and slowly, something walking on a path that ran parallel to the one she was on. No, she told herself firmly. The wind was still rising, and it was only air pouring through one of these green channels, a stiff breeze ruffling the bushes. And then she heard the snapping of a twig, followed by another.

  She froze, her heart pounding. Should she go back? Forward? Suddenly, the lefts and the rights jumbled and spilled, rolling this way and that in her mind. Left-right-right-left — the words had become nonsense, like signposts in a nightmare. Why had she run into the maze? Now she was trapped. Trapped.

  Fighting panic, Petra held on to her friends. Tommy was also in the park alone, and he wouldn’t panic. At least, he’d pretend not to. And what would Calder be thinking? He’d be puzzling and rearranging in order to calm himself. Trapped, trapped … Suddenly, Petra saw the letters of her name hidden in the word. Horrible! No, she thought, trapped is no place to find your name, and being inside a maze made of symbols doesn’t help, not even one bit.

  This was real, not a game, and it felt ugly: Whoever was in the maze with her could catch her, and no one would even see them struggling. She didn’t stand a chance.

  Petra’s legs crumpled, and she sank down in the middle of the path. Where was Tommy? Maybe he’d never even found her note. She half rolled, half crawled under a nearby bush, squashing herself beneath the lowest branches. She pressed her head as close to the trunk as she could. Wish … wish … if only.

  Two of the three kids were curled into a crescent at that moment, and two — but not the same two — were wishing, as if Art Wish’s name and the yellow WISH-WISH stencil had opened up a new set of rules.

  That same evening, Mrs. Sharpe made a discovery.

  She had visited the Woodstock library and taken out a number of books about the geography and history of Blenheim Park. In every spare moment over the last day and a half, she’d been reading and thinking and sifting ideas.