The Owner of the Crown: 2. Saliman Attacks – Opening Chapters

1

REGAINING CONSCIOUSNESS

EVENTUALLY, AFTER WHAT seemed a long time, Dr Pearson found himself dizzily starting to regain consciousness.

He was lying curled up on the hard oak wooden floorboards of his classroom. That much he could tell.

A clammy sickness had gripped his wretched body, and he felt as if he was going to throw up at any moment.

He couldn’t hear a thing, not even the moans of pain he felt escaping his throat. He was reminded a little bit of his London Underground dream experience, where he had considered the possibility of being dead after experiencing a flash of blinding white light. This time though, he had no doubt he was alive because of the sickness he felt. Perhaps that dream experience was designed to enable him to come quickly to terms with his present state of affairs.

Impressive, he thought, as he considered the depth and genius of the preparation he had been given.

His eyelids were shut, or so he believed, as he could not see a thing. He had to get them open. He would have opened them with his hands, but they were numb and immobile. After a great effort, he finally managed to flutter open his eyelids, but it made little difference because he still couldn’t see anything except a deep blackness. The explosion had blinded him.

Sickness …

Silence …

Darkness …

Eventually, with a sore head that felt as heavy as a medicine ball, he struggled upright into a cross-legged sitting position. He felt his protesting grimaces of pain empty as a silence into a black void.

It took a few minutes, but at last he managed to struggle up onto a nearby chair.

There he sat, at a table in the second row of four near the window. As his feelings of sickness subsided and as he could feel no serious injuries, he gathered his confused thoughts. Although he was deaf and blind, he could at least recall the events that led to his sorry condition.

What did it all mean?

What sort of missile could have moved in such a complicated way?

How did the Gold Ball propel itself in the air, and exactly what sort of object was it?

Dr Pearson knew there were weapons known as smart bombs and intelligent missiles that were pretty sophisticated as humanity marched just past the first quarter of the twenty-first century, but both the objects he had recently witnessed seemed ridiculously more advanced than these did. No doubt, these weapons were not of his Upper Earth. He recalled the technology of the Angels he had met, particularly their halos, and it seemed the weapons he had witnessed relied on technologies from the same roots.

In terms of the allegory he witnessed in the Theatre of Dreams film, the dazzling straggling white lightning bolt that had knocked him and his pupils unconscious was undoubtedly representative of the white straggling veins of light that had come from the direction of the sun and knocked unconscious his Orcress representations, as well as the Erica and Katie Ashbarten counterparts and the Seven Rainbow Warriors of Doom (Saliman’s representation). He knew that in that allegory he had trampled upon the Seven Rainbow Warriors of Doom prior to the knockout event. This meant he should have been outside the school building protecting Erica and Katie. However, the allegory had moved on. All he could do was wait for an opportunity for the allegory to maybe realign itself with his reality.

He banged his fists on the table in frustration at his current plight. He was not often confused. But at least he was alive.

No sooner had he thought this than he realised others might not have been so lucky.

As luck would have it, just at that moment, his vision started to return … and a ringing brewed up in his ears, but that was all he could hear.

Out of a blurry mishmash of colour, classroom images focused with crystal clarity …

All the pupils, the six of them, lay lifeless on the floor like so many bombed soldiers: Nicola Berlin, Molly Treddington, Hannah Trelawny, Alana Crimer, Melanie Grafton and last but not least, Martin Hardcastle.

Dr Pearson rushed to their aid.

Thankfully, they were all breathing.

Quickly and carefully, he put them all in what is known as the Recovery Position. Finally one of the National Education Authority’s courses, First Aid in Emergency Circumstances, had come in handy for once. It didn’t take very long because most of the pupils were close to the recovery position anyway. Except for Nicola (who managed to end up unconscious while on her hands and knees with a chair covering her head) and Hannah (who had somehow managed to grasp her magazine which she was holding close to her chest, protecting her pop idol, no doubt).

Thankfully, his hearing came back, but he still had some lingering ringing left in his ears.

He never thought he’d see the day when his hard-core madcap Geordies would be so quiet. Nevertheless, he somehow knew they were just sleeping volcanoes waiting to erupt with their Geordie misbehaviour, charm and humour.

“HMM … ALL DEAF AND BLIND. WELL, TWO OUT OF THREE AIN’T BAD!” Dr Pearson shouted all this as loud as he could because he knew they couldn’t hear him. It felt good to hear a voice again, even if it was only his own.

He watched with concern and then relief as, one by one, the pupils regained consciousness.

“Better help them up onto their chairs. Give them the impetus to recover fully. It worked for me.” He started the precarious job of helping them up onto their chairs. He was surprised that being deaf and blind had not particularly handicapped the banter of the Geordie pupils.

“Eeee!” cried Molly, her hair more wild and scraggily than he could ever remember. “I can’t see nowt, man. I can’t even hear myself.” She said all of this while Dr Pearson helped her to her chair. He even managed to place her Troy Hunter photocard in her hand. “Eeee, feels like my Troy Hunter card. Hey, Nicola, if you can hear me and my words are coming out properly, you better not have drawn a moustache on Troy Hunter’s face.” Molly then sat stock-still as if she was expecting to hear a cheeky reply. “Eeee, still nothing, man.”

Dr Pearson found Martin and Alana easy to help onto their chairs.

Hannah proved more difficult because she wouldn’t let go of her teen magazine. “No one gets their paws on my Kirk Mason. Get your own magazine. I know it’s you, Nicola.” Dr Pearson lifted her by her elbows onto her chair. “Eeee, but you’re strong, mind. You’ve started on yer hormone pills on the quiet, haven’t ye?”

Melanie didn’t weigh much and Dr Pearson lifted her with ease, placing her on her chair in a single swoop.

“I must be deed, man,” mumbled Melanie with vacant pale-green blinded eyes. “I’ve floated off to somewhere … I think I’ll get on quite well here … wherever I am …?”

Last, and certainly not least—Nicola!

“Eeee, man!” shouted Nicola. “I can’t see anything. Not a single sunbeam. Nowt.” At this point, Dr Pearson started lifting her up to her chair. “Hey! Gerroff, man. Eeee, some idiot’s trying to lift me up, man. Where am I anyway? Molly, can you hear me, ‘cause I can’t.”

Thankfully, within minutes, they all quickly regained their vision. Being a teacher, Dr Pearson wrote down on the whiteboard all the things that the children would experience and assured them their feelings of sickness would soon pass and that their hearing would come back after some ringing in their ears. His last point read:

“PLEASE REMEMBER THAT ALTHOUGH YOU CANNOT HEAR YOURSELVES, I CAN HEAR EVERYTHING YOU SAY!”

If he thought this last warning point would quieten them down, he was wrong.

A barrage of jovial noisy insults instantly flew towards him. The pupils obviously decided if they couldn’t hear themselves, they could get away with shouting anything they wanted.

Nevertheless, he continued to do his best to assure them with his Count Dracula smiles and amateur-dramatic styled hand signals that everything would soon be all right.

He checked his class computer. It switched on, but the software was not working. He checked his moby and noticed it did not pick up any wireless connections, and none of the apps were working. He pressed a factory re-set button. The non-wireless apps worked, but nothing else because he still couldn’t get wireless connections. His moby would be useless for messaging of any kind, including telephoning.

Suddenly …

“Eeee, man. I can hear myself now,” said Nicola cheerfully. “Dr Pearson, man, where’s that ringing noise coming from?”

“Your head.”

“What’s wrang with ma heed?” Nicola started to push pieces of her face around.

“No, no, no, you misunderstand me, young lady. I mean, the ringing is coming from inside your head. It’s because your ears will have suffered a small amount of temporary damage from the noise of the explosion. It’s all explained on the whiteboard.” Dr Pearson pointed back at the whiteboard behind him to the relevant lines of explanation.

“Eeee, that’s terrible, man.”

Dr Pearson walked up to Nicola’s desk. He tried to ignore her ridiculous attempts to inform Molly about her hearing recently coming back. This wasn’t easy to do, as Nicola was using an original, though quite ridiculous, sequence of hand signals that, for some reason, she had to conduct with her head turned upside down. He wanted to ask her a question before the other pupils got their hearing back.

“Is it true your great-grandmother shared a single bed with three of her sisters when she was your age?”

“What a silly question!”

“Why?”

 

2

THE PINK MIST

“BECAUSE I TOLD you and that other idiot Captain Palmer that last night in the Siliconian tunnel.”

Dr Pearson grimaced. If Nicola could remember the film in the Theatre of Dreams and spill the beans, Saliman would surely take advantage. He only hoped that Agatha Cookson was right to put so much responsibility on Nicola. At least in the film Nicola had helped to hinder Saliman’s allegoric form, especially with her hilarious marching style on the wooden bridge that spanned the River of Death.

“And of course, you remember your adventure on the planet Mirvad, I take it?”

“Of course I do. The coloured balls in the Falling Tower, and all that. Way aye, man.”

“Did you tell Molly about any of this?”

“Na. I divin’t want to worry her, do I?”

“No. That’s quite right. Best not to tell her until the time is right. Things must be frightening enough for her as it is.”

“And she’ll only blather about it to everyone else, man.”

“Exactly.”

“Anyway, man, it’s not as frightening for us because we saw the film in the dream. We’re sort of prepared, see. I’m still a bit frightened though. I thought the film dream was just a one-off silly dream, but then I had the planet Mirvad dream with you and that blue scaly-faced nutter Zircon in it. He even asked me what I thought Hell was. Remember? What a nutjob. Still, bearing in mind the Theatre of Dreams film, I can see that at least I’m going to be doing something exciting with my life, man—even if my life might end up shorter than my height.” Nicola gave a gormless sideways grin and finished with a single nod of her head.

“Yes, Nicola. But you do recall that the Theatre of Dreams film should be kept a secret from the other pupils?”

“Divin’t worry yer heed, man. I’m not as stupid as I look, y’kna,” Nicola then collapsed into a fit of her inimitable hooty giggles before struggling to add, “Which is just as well.”

Dr Pearson didn’t know what to say to that, so he turned his attention to current matters. “Erm, I think you had better attend to your friend. I think her hearing’s coming back. Mention anything else, but please, not the dream, especially the film in the dream. Don’t mention it to anyone, even me … unless you have to. Have you got that?”

“Why aye. I’ve already said I’m not stupid, man,” protested Nicola, despite the fact that she was doing up her blazer buttons one button out of order. And when she reached the top button … “Eeee, where’s my top buttonhole gone?”

“Eeee,” said Molly, “what a strange carry on. At least my hearing’s back. What was all that white stuff aboot, and that big bang?”

“Divin’t worry yer heed, pet,” reassured Nicola. “Dr Pearson will soon sort this out. He’ll tell us what to do. He’s responsible, man. He’s tha Crosser. He’s released the evil energy as well as the good. Hopefully the Gold Ball was good and the red giant bullet was evil. So we’re winning at the moment.”

“What! Dr Pearson? The Crosser?” Molly gave Dr Pearson an astonished look, causing her close together eyes to move apart slightly. For a fleeting moment, Dr Pearson could see that she did at least have the potential to not be so unattractive.

“Why aye, man,” insisted Nicola. “He jumped through the gap in the Old Railway Line railings for the one hundredth time yesterday morning. That’s why everyone was off their heeds yesterday.”

“Oh,” said Molly. She turned to Dr Pearson. “Are you really the Crosser?”

“Well, I did venture through the gap in the Old Railway Line railings for the one hundredth time yesterday morning, as Nicola said. I suppose Erica Ashbarten must have told her. Erica was keeping a record on me, and she watched me complete my one hundred crossings yesterday. Or she deduced it … hmm, never mind.”

Dr Pearson had been about to say that Nicola might have deduced it from the Theatre of Dreams film where Erica had crossed off the number 100 when Orcress leapt through the hedgerow fence, but he realised how foolish that would have been. To think he was worried about Nicola spilling the beans, and he nearly did it himself just a few minutes later.

“So Saliman, the Red Man, must be loose?” questioned Molly. All the pupils were very familiar with the Tale of the Old Railway Line Curse, especially as they believed the Golden Woman regularly haunted their school.

“We don’t know for sure,” said Dr Pearson. “He might still be constrained by Agatha Cookson, the Golden Woman. Or even by Queen Suzama.”

“Ah, yes,” said Molly. “I forgot about them.”

“Yes, now don’t worry; I’m sure everything will be all right. Even if there is a Saliman on the loose, the government will sort him out. He can’t be that powerful.”

Dr Pearson turned to Nicola and spoke to her in an undertone.

“I don’t think you should tell too much to Molly. It’s all a bit frightening, you know.”

“Divin’t worry yer heed, Dr Pearson, man,” replied Nicola at the top of her squeaky voice. “I guarantee you I won’t be telling her anything about what happened in the Theatre of Dreams. The Golden Woman wouldn’t want that, would she? Nudge, nudge, know what I mean.” Nicola then gave Dr Pearson an exaggerated wink, which was quite difficult for her to do considering she had such sleepy-looking eyes.

“Erm … yes, quite. You two best keep the Crosser business under wraps for now. We don’t want to worry the others unnecessarily.”

“What does ‘under wraps’ mean?” asked Molly.

“It means keep things quiet for now,” said Dr Pearson.

“What’s the ‘Theatre of Dreams’ all about?” said Molly to Nicola.

“Nothing really. It’s a sort of silly joke.” Nicola whipped out a small mirror from her blazer and palmed it to Molly. “Here, I think you better check your eyelashes … I think the explosion has blown one of your eyelash hairs off. The 14th from the left on your right eyelash.”

Molly took to examining her eyelashes carefully while Nicola gave Dr Pearson another sleepy-looking, exaggerated wink.

Dr Pearson raised an eyebrow, pleasantly surprised at Nicola’s inspired diversionary tactic. Agatha Cookson’s hint that she might be cleverer than she appears seemed, for once, a possibility. He almost resorted to giving Nicola a thumbs-up hand gesture, but he decided it wasn’t appropriate to fraternise with the natives, as the National Education Authority might be recording. Though he wasn’t sure he cared that much anymore.

So there they were, Dr Pearson and six of his pupils in their registration classroom, which, although had shaken violently during the explosion, looked exactly as it had always done with no noticeable signs of major damage.

Everyone had recovered now, with only a small amount of ringing in their ears left as evidence that they had all been knocked unconscious by a loud dazzling explosion.

The pupils started to complain that their moby devices didn’t work properly. Dr Pearson helped them find their factory re-set buttons, which helped; nevertheless, every moby failed to make a wireless connection …

“Send me a Tuber, Hannah,” said Martin, donning his media glasses.

Hannah tapped out codes on her moby’s touch-sensitive surface. But all she got for her efforts was error messages. She shook her head.

“Nothing’s working,” said Martin disappointedly.

“Nothing!” exclaimed Molly. “Eeee, lad. That’s outrageous, man.”

“Eeee, I can’t even do a local air text to Molly,” complained Nicola.

Dr Pearson tried to appease the pupils. “Never mind, we’ll soon sort the wireless problems out. At least you can play single-user games.”

“They’re boring, man,” said Hannah, tossing her moby across her desk.

Minutes later, Dr Pearson was trying to reassure a crying Alana that everything would be all right. She was crying because Molly had told her he was the Crosser at her first opportunity despite him expressly having told her not to.

Meanwhile, Molly slipped quietly and guiltily out of Dr Pearson’s view and wandered over to the classroom’s windows …

“Eeee! Looka! Look at that!” Molly pointed through a window, not up at the sky, but downwards.

The five chairs of the other seated pupils screeched as they pushed them back across the oak floorboards and scrambled to the windows. Dr Pearson joined them.

Looking down from behind the windows, they could all see that outside there was a strange pink foggy substance covering the ground outside the windows, for as far as the eye could see.

On close inspection, the mist formed a five or six inch thick carpet of pink at ground level, and appeared to roll and swirl in random directions, bubbling and boiling, jumbling and roiling hypnotically. It was a thick foggy mist, something like a liquid candyfloss in texture.

“Eeee!” gasped Nicola, as she observed the ever-changing weaving patterns, currents and eddies, of the Pink Mist beneath the windows outside.

“It reminds me of thunderstorm clouds loaded with lightning,” said Martin.

“But it’s pink and on the ground?” complained Hannah incredulously. “Thunderstorm clouds are black and in the sky.”

“Well,” explained Martin, “it doesn’t look the same in terms of looks, but it makes me feel that it’s alive—which it is, isn’t it? It’s pretty eerie, I’d say? I bet it’s poisonous. Or to put it another way—I wouldn’t expect a person to walk through it.”

“You imply it’s alive, Martin, but does everyone in the class know what it might be?” asked Dr Pearson, ever the teacher.

“Yes,” said Martin on behalf of the pupils, “it’s the Pink Mist from the Tale of the Old Railway Line Curse. It’s Saliman, the Red Man in his gaseous-type form.”

“Well done, Martin. That’s right. Good word that, ‘gaseous’. Well done indeed.”

Hannah added, “It’s what becomes of an eight feet hulking red-skinned black hairy body when it loses its solidness.”

“Yes, Hannah, that’s correct. ‘Solidness’, quite a good word to use.”

“I liked ‘hulking’ best myself, man,” said Hannah.

“Oh yes,” said Dr Pearson, “that was an excellent word too.”

“Aye. The Pink Mist is Saliman turned into smoke,” Nicola’s raised left eyebrow gave the impression she had decided to impress Dr Pearson and her classmates, as she hated being left out of anything. Unfortunately her comment was barely acknowledged.

“Eeee!” she protested. “What aboot my great word, man?” She jumped up and down, tugging violently at a sleeve of Dr Pearson’s tweed jacket.

“Huh?” said Martin, trying not to laugh. “What great word?”

“‘Smoke’, man,” said Nicola.

“‘Smoke’? You must be mad. That’s just an ordinary word.” Martin looked flabbergasted.

“But I could have said ‘thick air’ though,” said Nicola, looking frustrated.

Martin sniggered. “What a blathering idiot.”

Molly patted Nicola on the head encouragingly. “‘Smurk’, that’s a good one, man. Divin’t let Martin get to you. He’s just a—”

“Yes,” interrupted Dr Pearson quickly. “‘Smoke’ is much better than ‘thick air’. Well done, Nicola.” Then before Martin could add another antagonistic remark, he added, “You’re all very clever this morning. Well done.”

Dr Pearson momentarily looked pleased as he made eye contact with all the pupils. But it was a concerned, resigned face that turned away from the pupils and stared down at the pinkness. This was just the beginning of the mission to find the crown and its gems and return them to Queen Suzama in Heartbind, and so far it was not going very well. He had crossed the railway gap one hundred times, where Agatha Cookson had disappeared all those years ago on Tuesday, July 7th, 1942, and look where it had got him. He was the Crosser.

“Dr Pearson,” said Alana, always the pessimist, “I don’t like the look of the Pink Mist. It’s evil.”

“Yes,” said Martin, “but it’s quite interesting, isn’t it? No other substance behaves like that. Does it, Dr Pearson?”

“No, it certainly does not.”

“Typical men,” said Hannah, running a hand through her long blond hair, “finding something evil interesting. I divin’t kna.”

Molly wafted her hand down at the Pink Mist behind the relative safety of the window, shouting, “Hadaway, man—shoo! Gan on!”

Dr Pearson noticed Melanie was completely silent and looked particularly upset at seeing the pink foggy vista, even more so than Alana. She hadn’t spoken a word since she had regained consciousness and only nodded timidly to confirm that her hearing had come back. She was her usual ghostly self, except without her happy-go-lucky attitude. He would have to keep an eye out for her.

 

3

THE DISAPPEARANCE MYSTERY

THE PINK MIST did not seem to be increasing in height or changing in its basic behaviour, but it still looked very scary, creepy and crawly. Dr Pearson decided to close the maroon heavy-cotton curtains so the pupils could take their minds off it, and so he could think.

In doing so, he became aware the classroom lights were on. As his computer had switched on earlier, even if the software didn’t work, and as all the lights worked too, he realised there was electricity probably throughout the school. Also, fortunately, the windows seemed to be intact, and the classroom showed little damage except for a few fallen pieces of work from the classroom displays. Perhaps then, there was no damage to the rest of the school from the explosion.

“Right, it’s time to sort this situation out. I’ll just check out the corridor. There’s bound to be something going on there by now.”

He took a quick look out into the corridor …

It was empty …

He strained his ears for any signs of life, but all he could hear was a rapidly subsiding ringing inside his head.

He called back to the pupils, “There’s no one in the corridor. They must all be elsewhere.”

He quickly thought of what to do next.

“All right, I will go to another classroom and see what’s going on. I’ll be back in a few ticks, so you lot stay in here and don’t move, please,” said Dr Pearson, trying his best to reassure the pupils.

He closed the classroom door after himself and darted straight across the tough carpeted corridor for Mrs Catherine Donnelly’s classroom, which was directly opposite his own.

But the room, the Biology Lab (room Number 13), was empty …

Dr Pearson stood scratching his head at the rows of empty lab benches. There were steel-framed, dark-grey-coloured, plastic chairs with pupils’ coats on them. Bags were littered on the floor and a few were scattered on the benches, along with some school diaries and the odd pencil case. But what had happened to the Year 8 pupils of Class 8CD who usually registered in the room? It reminded him of the famous Marie Celeste disappearance mystery, the greatest maritime mystery of all time, in which a double-masted merchant ship was found on December 4th 1872, in the Atlantic Ocean, apparently abandoned. The personal belongings and even valuables of the passengers and crew were left in place completely untouched. There were even meals left unfinished. It was as if everyone on board had simply vanished into thin air at the same instant. Dr Pearson felt he was gazing at a similar scene.

He wondered if perhaps the class had possibly gone to their next lesson early—but surely they would have brought their bags. They must have gone somewhere. But where?

“Curious or what?” questioned Dr Pearson out aloud to the silent Biology Lab. He then hurried urgently through to the back of the room and into a storeroom containing Biology teaching equipment. It was empty. It had another door. This would open into the Staff Room (which didn’t have a room number).

He opened the door and stepped into the Staff Room …

Again—empty!

“Blimey … Where the hell is everybody?”

He tried the Staff Room landline phone but its earpiece speaker presented his ears with a no-dialling continuous tone, and no matter what numbers he pressed, all he could hear was that no-dialling tone. He noticed the dishwasher was still completing its early morning routine.

He noticed that the comfy brown leather armchair where Mr Jameson always sat had Mr Jameson’s moby lying on its seat. That was unusual, as Mr Jameson guarded his moby with his life.

“Curiouser and curiouser?” mumbled Dr Pearson with a raised eyebrow. The idea of pocketing this moby crossed Dr Pearson’s mind, particularly considering the incriminating information it was bound to contain; however, he decided against it just in case it had been left there as a trap. But he couldn’t just leave it on the armchair, so he decided to quickly put it away in a drawer under the landline telephone table.

“Oh dear,” he said in a loud voice as he picked the moby up, “Mr Jameson has dropped his moby. I’ll just put it away for safekeeping in the telephone drawer.”

He did just that and then raced out of the Staff Room back into the corridor. He raced to the right and after passing the Upper Floor pupils’ toilets, he checked out the Library (room Number 12), a large room that stood at the end of the corridor.

Empty! Books were scattered around on the floor. It was as if the pupils using the Library had dropped their books and rushed out of the room, or could it be they may have actually vanished?

Next, he dashed into the room whose door was on the right of the Library’s entrance. It was a room on the same side of the corridor as his Number 8 class room. It was the ICT Room (room Number 11) where he taught some of his ICT-centred maths lessons.

And …

Charging quickly around the new hover screen computer displays, he saw bags, books, and pencil cases, but none of their owners.

Empty!

He couldn’t help thinking that somehow all the occupants of all the rooms he had searched had done a Marie Celeste and vanished into thin air. But then he gathered his scruples and realised that maybe the fire alarm had gone off following the explosion and all the classes had evacuated the building. But if that was true, why were he and six of his pupils left unconscious on their classroom floor? Possibly, it might be because they were connected to the gold ball with white straggling bolts of light.

Anyway, heading back along the corridor of the Upper Floor in the direction of his own registration classroom, he bundled desperately into the General Teaching room, Mrs Wendy Davenport’s 7WD registration classroom (room Number 10) …

Empty!

Next along the corridor was the room next to his registration classroom, Miss Susan Alcott’s Art Room (room Number 9), in which she registers Class 8SA …

Empty!

Finally, skipping quickly past his own Maths and registration classroom (room Number 8), he checked out the last of the classrooms on the Upper Floor. This was Mr Jameson’s history room (room Number 7), where no one was registered because Mr Jameson, being the Deputy Headteacher, had demanded not to have a registration class. He had claimed he was too busy, although he seemed to spend the time reading the news on his moby in the Staff Room.

And …

Not a sausage …

No sign of Life at all …

Empty!

“Oh my,” muttered Dr Pearson quietly.

There was only one other room left to check on the Upper Floor and that was the Headteacher, Mrs Damara’s office …

Empty!

Her expensive, ankle-length fur coat was hanging on a coat peg. If she had vacated the building on hearing a fire alarm, wouldn’t she have taken her coat, as she was never seen without it outside the building? What’s more, why had none of the pupils grabbed their coats?

“Curiouser and curiouser, and indeed curiouser?” he mumbled inquisitorially.

He wondered if the rooms Numbers 1 to 6, located on the Ground Floor, had suffered the same fate.

He was beginning to panic and half-expected his own classroom to be suddenly mysteriously empty …

However, as he swept back into his registration classroom, he was relieved to see the six pupils huddled around two desks they had pushed together.

Martin and Hannah were comforting Alana, who seemed very frightened. Melanie was just sitting close to the other girls, but she wasn’t joining in any conversations anytime soon. Hannah seemed to be getting fed up with the whole thing, and was glancing at her teen magazine. However, her darkening grey-black eyes betrayed thoughts that were full of worry and foreboding. Molly and Nicola were blathering away to each other about their beloved Toon (Newcastle United Football Club).

“We’ll definitely win the Premiership this year,” said Nicola.

“But we’re second from bottom, man,” argued Molly.

“Ah, aye, but what if all the other teams go into administration?” said Nicola earnestly.

“What for? They can’t all go bankrupt, can they?”

“Na. But they could get done for things like selling poisonous pies. Or let’s say, illegal gambling on the time of the first throw-in.”

“What, all those teams?”

“Well, how else will the Toon ever win the Premiership?” Nicola looked perplexed.

“Well,” said Molly, “maybe they could get a rich multi-billionaire to buy the club and buy all the best players in the world for next season? That’s what other clubs do.”

Dr Pearson decided to interrupt Nicola and Molly’s Toon conversation.

“Er … listen up, class, please!” said Dr Pearson as authoritatively as he could.

The pupils looked up to Dr Pearson, but they still carried on speaking to one another under their breaths (except for the silent Melanie).

“I’ve actually searched the whole of the Upper Floor, even the Staff Room, Library and Mrs Damara’s office. The entire Upper Floor is empty of pupils and staff.”

The pupils went silent. Molly put her hand up, which was unusual, as like most Statesville Community School pupils, she usually just shouted out a “clever” remark or any question that came to mind.

“Yes, Molly?” asked Dr Pearson.

“What aboot the toilets, man?”

There were a few sniggers at this question and its implications.

“Erm, I didn’t check them, but I couldn’t hear anyone in them.”

“Maybe they was holding one in, man,” said Nicola cheekily. “They might have heard someone listening outside the door and was scared they’d hear a right auld depth charge!”

This brought an explosion of laughter from the pupils—even Melanie managed a smile.

“Most amusing, Miss Berlin,” said Dr Pearson, “On the reasonable assumption that the entire floor is empty bar ourselves, I think perhaps the others evacuated the building on hearing a fire alarm following the explosion. But if they did, they left their coats and bags.”

“Are you sure the explosion hasn’t just evaporated them?” suggested Martin morbidly.

“I don’t think so,” said Dr Pearson in an assuring way. “Surely their coats would not have been left along with their bags, if that was the case. Although, I didn’t see any sign of any school uniforms.”

“What was that ship where everybody just vanished and their dinners were left steaming on their plates?” said Hannah, who liked history despite Mr Jameson teaching her it.

“That was the Marie Celeste, wasn’t it, Dr Pearson?” said Martin.

“It was. Well done, Martin. And well done, Hannah, for thinking of that ship. The cargo of the ship was untouched and everything was in place, even the valuables and belongings of the passengers. The crew seemed to have vanished into thin air—just like the pupils and staff of the Upper Floor (except for us). The Marie Celeste incident was the first thing I thought of too.”

“Eeee, you little liar,” said Molly boldly. “Teachers can’t stand it if we think of something clever and interesting before them.”

“No, I really did think of it immediately,” pleaded Dr Pearson. “Remember though, I was bound to think of it. After all, it is the greatest disappearance mystery of all time.”

“What!” exclaimed Nicola. “Even greater than my jellybabies?”

“What on earth are you talking about?” Dr Pearson was stumped.

“Somebody took a bag of my jellybabies yesterday,” squeaked Nicola merrily. “That’s what I call a disappearance mystery, man. I’ll kill the daft clot what did it when I find out who they are?” Nicola then started staring with her sleepy eyes intently at Dr Pearson’s tweed jacket pockets accusingly.

“Sir?” asked Martin, sharpening one of his colouring pencils, pencils that he was taking out of his pencil case and laying out neatly on the desk in front of him with every pencil he sharpened.

“Yes, Martin.”

“Maybe what’s happened here in Statesville Community School today will become the greatest disappearance mystery of all time.”

“Yes. But only if they have truly disappeared.”

“They might be downstairs in the Assembly Hall,” said Martin. “That might be why they didn’t bring their coats.” Dr Pearson wondered if the pencils coming out of Martin’s pencil case would ever stop. Martin’s colouring pencils literally covered his desk … and still he was sharpening more.

“Dr Pearson,” said Alana, her face plastered with concern, “there’s a landline phone in the Staff Room. Did you try it, to get help?”

“Yes, I did. But I’m sorry to say the explosion must have affected the phone system. I could only get a no-dialling tone. But everything else is working. All the lights seem undamaged and working. The Staff Room dishwasher was still running through its early morning cycle.”

“Dishwasher?” shrieked Molly.

“Yes. We have one in the Staff Room.”

“Eeee,” said Hannah. “And our school can hardly afford new books and things. We’ve got to share mangy auld books, graffitied with unmentionables, missing many a page. And you’ve got a dishwasher in the Staff Room! Eeee, that’s terrible, man.”

“It was Mr Jameson who used the school funds to buy it. No one else wanted it. The rest of the staff wanted to get some new maths and English books.”

“That’s shocking, Dr Pearson, man,” added Molly.

Dr Pearson noticed that Melanie, as far as he knew, had still not spoken a word since she had regained consciousness. He had only seen her mouthing silent words when she looked down at the Pink Mist.

“All right,” began Dr Pearson positively, “I suggest we all go down to the Ground Floor and see if we can find the missing staff and pupils. If we don’t get on with things we’ll be stuck in an eternal inertia.”

“Eeee, what’s all that aboot, man?” said Nicola, sounding like a worn-out museum piece squeezebox. “An eternal what?”

“Divin’t mind, pet,” said Molly. “It’s just rubbish. Auld teacher blather.”

“I bet that’s one of the subjects they learn at universally when they is training to be teachers,” said Nicola.

“What subject is that exactly?” asked Molly, ignoring the fact that Nicola had obviously mixed up the word ‘universally’ with ‘university’ and that her grammar left something to be desired.

“Blatherology.”

Nicola looked extremely happy with her witty remark as she collapsed into one of her inimitable fits of hooty giggles. It would be a shame for anyone to put her down for this one, especially a fellow pupil. But …

“The word’s ‘university’ not ‘universally’,” said Martin, who having finished sharpening his last colouring pencil, was patting them into neat columns in front of him on his desk.

“I kna that, ye daft pea-brain ye,” instantly snapped Nicola squeakily, her shaking body bouncing violently up and down within punching distance of Martin. She wasn’t finished though. “You’d get the ends of your words wrang too if you was secretly sucking on a jellybaby,” she screamed. And suddenly, out of her mouth accompanied with a spray of saliva fired a spinning green well-sucked jellybaby. Martin only just managed to fend the offending soaking wet gelatin missile away from his face in time.

“Sir, sir,” complained Martin, “she’s eating sweets in class!”

“No I am NOT!” screeched the diminutive, three foot two inch Nicola, jumping onto her desk as if to make her message all the clearer. “I’m SUCKING sweets in class, ye divvie-brained boy!”

Then she scurried a few feet across the huddled desktops from her desktop to Martin’s, and kicked at his colouring pencils, sending them flying towards his face in an explosion of wood and colour. She was a hissing, spitting berserker; a rabid schoolgirl insane with fury.

“Gan on, Nicola, man,” said Molly jovially, cheering Nicola on and banging her fists in a drum roll on her desk as noisily as she possibly could.

“Sir?” complained Martin, standing up, pushing his chair to the side and backing away from his desk with his arms spread wide in askance, with two of his colouring pencils still lodged in his short black hair. “She can’t get away with all that!”

 

4

FURTHER EXPLORATION

“ALL RIGHT, ALL RIGHT,” said Dr Pearson. “Everyone calm down please. Things are bad enough as it is. Nicola, get down from that desk now! And be thankful I don’t give you a detention. If it wasn’t for these peculiarly unprecedented circumstances, you would never be able to behave like that without a negative reward from our school’s Positive Discipline system.”

“Eeee, more blatherology,” said Nicola, but she jumped down onto a chair, then onto the floor as quickly as possible, no doubt happy to have avoided any punishment.

“Right,” said Dr Pearson. “Off we go then … leave all your bags and books here. I somehow don’t think there’ll be anyone around to put their mitts on anything.”

“Come on, Molly, let’s gan on oot of here, man,” said Nicola.

Martin slowly shook his head at Nicola in a combination of resentment and amusement. He knew she couldn’t help being such a volatile, silly person and felt sorry for her at times, but he did not enjoy being the subject of her verbal and physical ferocity. In reply, she gave him a single nod of her head and a wicked lop-sided grin.

So down the stairs in a closely packed mob headed by Dr Pearson, they scuttled …

They searched the Assembly Hall, the six teaching rooms (rooms Numbers 1 to 6), the Sports Changing Rooms and cloakrooms, some utility rooms, and finally, the School Office. And having completely explored the whole main school Ground Floor they concluded they were completely alone. Ominously, all the landline phones they found only sounded out a no-dialling tone.

They couldn’t hear a sound from outside despite the school’s main building being merely twenty yards or so from the busy Plessey Road. And from any window or glass-paned building exit door they couldn’t see anything beyond the boundary of the school because it was ringed by a twenty feet high bank of Pink Mist.

It was as if the mist was imprisoning the school, and there was no explanation as to why the bank of Pink Mist on the school’s boundary did not simply roll over the carpet of Pink Mist on the school grounds and swamp the school. There had to be an unseen force holding it back. Apart from the pinkness, it was quite a clear day with the sun shining brightly in the clear ice-blue sky above. Nevertheless, it was still freezing cold as Nicola realised when she pressed her nose against the pane of one of the doors as she peered down with a pair of sleepy-looking eyes at the uncanny Pink Mist swirling and roiling hypnotically on the grounds outside.

“Dr Pearson, why doesn’t the Pink Mist spill in under the door?” asked Martin as they all stood by the main building’s entrance door.

“I don’t know. If it were ordinary gas of some kind, it would definitely sweep in under the door … I mean there’s quite a gap under it, isn’t there. There’s no evidence of it coming into the building through any means. I think some force must be stopping it. I would say it’s probably the same force that is holding most of it back at the school boundaries.”

“It must be the Golden Woman that’s controlling the Red Man,” said Hannah.

“I agree that it’s something like that,” said Dr Pearson. “Remember, in the Tale of the Old Railway Line Curse, there was part of the story where Agatha Cookson, the Golden Woman reduced Saliman, the Red Man, to a controlled simmering Pink Mist before making the mist evaporate or sink beneath the ground, to stay there more or less harmlessly. But Agatha Cookson was herself controlled by a powerful force called Queen Suzama.”

“But now Saliman must be free, even if he is being controlled at the moment,” said Martin. “And that means someone has crossed the Old Railway Line gap a hundred times!”

“Er … yes,” said Dr Pearson sheepishly. Martin had pointed out the obvious, something Nicola and Molly already knew.

“I wonder who the Crosser is?” said Martin. “Perhaps the Crosser will get us out of the situation? He’s bound to be some sort of hero figure, isn’t he, Dr Pearson?”

“The Crosser might be a she. Why have you assumed the Crosser is a he?” complained Hannah.

Dr Pearson could see Molly was about to spill the beans that he, Dr Pearson, was the Crosser. So he decided to own up. She had already told Alana.

“Erm … it’s not a she … it’s a he.”

“How do you know?” said a disgruntled Hannah.

“Because it’s him,” chirped Molly, pointing at Dr Pearson. She raised her hand to her mouth and giggled.

“Dr Pearson, surely you can’t be the Crosser, can you?” questioned an alarmed Martin.

Martin, Hannah and Melanie looked mortified even though they had heard about the strange messages yesterday suggesting he might be the Crosser. They knew Helen Faith had spoken some nonsense about a message from the Golden Woman to Dr Pearson telling him to be ready, as he was the Crosser. Nevertheless, they thought it was a hilarious joke. Just another outrageous act on a day of outrageous acts.

“I’m the Crosser, I’m afraid.” Dr Pearson tried his best to look unflustered.

“Oh, I get it,” said Hannah. “You’ve been pretending to be a divvie Southerner, but you’re really a superhero. You fooled us all. Bit like Superman pretends to be the divvie Clark Kent.”

“Aye,” added Alana, “who would have thought a past-his-sell-by-date uninspiring maths teacher would be a superhero?”

“Well … look … I’m not a superhero, I’m afraid,” said a flustered Dr Pearson. “I just happened to take a shortcut most mornings through the gap in the Old Railway Line railways.”

“But the Curse!” said a flabbergasted Hannah, mystified. Her brow knotted up angrily.

“I thought it was just a nonsense local tale,” admitted Dr Pearson.

Just when Dr Pearson was under the most intense psychological pressure, Nicola surprisingly came to his aid.

“Eeee, never mind. That Queen Suzama who possessed Mrs Cookson is very powerful … and she must be brainy, man. She wouldn’t let just any auld person use her portal through the railings, would she? Why aye, mark my squeaky little words, Dr Pearson will see us alreet.”

“Huh?” exclaimed Martin, looking surprised at the words of the diminutive Nicola. “Well, whatever. Anyway, if he is the Crosser, then we can’t change it, can we? I think we should just accept the way things are and get on with it.”

“Aye,” agreed Molly, after Nicola had prodded her.

“Okay, Dr Pearson,” said Martin, “what should be done next?”

Dr Pearson looked out through the glass panes of the main building’s entrance door …

“I don’t think we should leave the building and search the out buildings of the school because the Pink Mist might be poisonous or at the very least highly dangerous. Let’s go back to our registration classroom first. I’ll decide what to do from there.”

“We can check the toilets up there first, can’t we?” suggested Martin.

“Righto,” said Dr Pearson. “Martin, you can check the Boys. You girls check the Girls. And I’ll check the Staff Room toilets.”

Off they trudged back up to the Upper Floor.

Having found the toilets to be devoid of humanity, Dr Pearson and his pupils eventually found themselves back in their Number 8 classroom. Martin was sitting next to Melanie and doing his best to say sensible things, and kept telling all the girls that everything would be all right, but his distracted brown eyes did not seem as certain as his words.

“Things divin’t look too hopeful, Dr Pearson,” said Hannah, peeping over the top of her teen magazine. “What with those strange flying objects, the explosion, the Pink Mist, everyone vanishing into thin air, and no landline phones or wireless mobile communications. And not to forget, we’re trapped in the school by the Pink Mist.”

“True, but look on the bright side of things, I didn’t find any injured staff or pupils or”—he nearly said “dead pupils” but stopped himself just in time—“yes or, erm … misbehaving pupils. And there’s electricity. And the heating’s still on.”

“It’s too hot now,” complained Hannah, puffing out her large cheeks and flicking back her long blond hair. She looked like a bothered frog sweltering in the desert sun. “Can’t we open the windows?”

“I don’t think we should give the Pink Mist any encouragement. Best to keep the windows closed for now,” said Dr Pearson.

“Why does it always get so hot in our school? I thought humanity was supposed to be technologically advanced?” Hannah looked irritated as she lazily flicked over a page of her magazine.

“The heating always becomes uncomfortably hot because of all the Victorian hot-water pipes,” said Dr Pearson. “Victorians always overdid things. Just look at all the rivets in the steel frameworks of their mainline railway stations. I know they’re encased in Plasticform these days, but they didn’t use to be, you know.”

“What are we doing with Victorian heating in this day and age?” asked Alana.

“It’s the government’s fault,” said Martin. “They don’t care about our town. That’s why our school’s so bad when it comes to behaviour and exam results. We need anarchy, don’t we, Dr Pearson?”

“Who knows? I know there are theories about governments running on anarchist principles. You might think if everyone were free, each would take on his or her roles responsibly, and that everything would be fair. Well, I’m not so sure everyone is as honest and responsible as you think, Martin. Perhaps that’s what this whole madness is all about: Freedom.”

“What?” said a puzzled-looking Molly.

“Never mind,” said Dr Pearson.

“We was ganin to Fizz ye, man,’ said Molly, allowing her uncomfortably close together eyes to go boss-eyed, her way of emphasising a point. Somehow the iris of her eyes seemed to almost disappear behind the bridge of her nose.

“‘Fizz’ me? I don’t know what that means,” said Dr Pearson.

“Well, man,” began answering Molly. “I’m not surprised. We made it all up see.” Her eyes, gratefully, returned to the centre of her sockets. It was bad enough her eyes being so close together, but to exaggerate the condition by bringing her eyeballs even closer together was difficult to comprehend for a girl who aspired to being a supermodel and beautiful actress, no matter how impossible such an aspiration seemed likely to be achieved.

“Yeah, it’s a classic,” added Hannah gleefully. And she managed to outdo Molly in the eyeball gymnastics department. She allowed her right eyeball to wander off independently of her left eyeball towards the outer rim of her eye socket and then do a complete orbit. Then she repeated the feat with her left eyeball. Her favourite party trick. Perhaps such independent control of her eye muscles partly explained her incredible eyesight.

“I must say, Hannah,” said Dr Pearson, “your eyeball control is highly impressive. Such an exquisite and incredible exotropic, estropic and hypertropic eyeball control.”

“Eeee, what’s he ganin on aboot, man?’ said Molly.

“It’s just the biological way of saying that I’m impressed with Hannah’s ability to move her eyeballs independently anywhere she pleases.”

“Melanie’s much better though,” remarked Martin.

“Oh yes, that’s very true,” agreed Dr Pearson. For, amazingly, Hannah could not compete with Melanie in the wandering eyeball department. Melanie could do all that Hannah could do and allow her eyeballs to vibrate while going in and out of focus.

A smile crept on Melanie’s face, chuffed at such praise. And in response, she allowed her eyeballs to wander rapidly in random directions before vibrating them and focusing and unfocusing them to a standstill.

“Now that’s what you call eyeball control, sir,” said Martin.

“Melanie, you should go on The World Wide Talent Show with a talent like that,” said Hannah.

“Aye,” agreed Molly. “You could let your eyes dance to some pop music. That could be quite entertaining, man.”

“Alreet. Alreet. I’ll send the forms off when we get oot of this strange situation,” said Melanie with a smile, who at last had spoken for the first time since the explosion. And this brought a smile of relief to everyone’s face—and a friendly pat on the back of Melanie’s shoulder from Martin.

Dr Pearson brought the conversation back on track.

“Okay, indulge me as to what this Fizzing is all about.”

“Alreet, man,” said Molly. “We do it to all new teachers and supply teachers. We started the enjoyable practice in our Primary School days.”

“Funny, but I’ve rarely seen supply teachers at this school. Perhaps, I suspect, it’s something to do with this Fizzing business. So come on, spill the beans.”

Molly set about telling Dr Pearson about a recent Fizzing incident. The other pupils had pleased looks on their faces, excited and proud that one of their favourite exploits was about to be told.

“Well, it all began when netty-breath features, I mean Mr Jameson, went to a conference that was something to do with how to teach Creation stories from different religions without causing offence.”

“Oh yes,” said Dr Pearson, “the National Education Authority’s New Religions Initiative. What a waste of time that was. Mr Jameson selected himself for that conference as it involved a lot of drinking and eating, and the sort of general misdemeanour we adults sometimes get up to—the sort Mr Jameson excels in.”

“Aye, well, anyway, as I was saying,” rejoined Molly, rolling her eyes dismissively. She wasn’t interested in such trivial adult misdemeanours. “This meant that we would be having a supply teacher for bigheaded netty-breath’s history lesson because he teaches history as well as religion, y’na. And we didn’t have religion on that day.”

“Sir,” said Martin, “the only God Mr Jameson believes in is the one he sees in the mirror.”

This brought a communal laugh among the other pupils.

“Well,” said Dr Pearson, “I really can’t comment on such an observation. It would be unprofessional.”

“Aye,” said Molly, “but we kna you think it’s true.”

“Well, never mind all that now,” said Dr Pearson to Molly, “just get on with explaining this Fizz business.”

And so Molly started to reveal what it meant to Fizz somebody. She started describing the hilarious Fizzing of the supply teacher, Mr Lampton, who made the mistake of turning up at Statesville Community School expecting to teach Mr Jameson’s classes for a day …