William looked, and seemed to spot the arrow, almost a metre in length, which Jan had already fixed to the rocky hillside. He nodded.
‘Follow all the arrows you see down there, William — and when they come to an end, that’s where you hide. I think there’s a fantastic hiding place there. Do you understand?’
The boy nodded again, and Jan placed a hand on his head.
‘You won’t need this,’ he said, taking off the yellow woolly hat. ‘We’ll put it in your pocket.’ Jan pretended to tuck William’s hat into his pocket, but it was just a trick — in fact it stayed hidden in his clenched fist. ‘Off you go!’
William turned and ran, scampering through the forest as fast as he could, just like the other boys — but in a completely different direction.
Jan stood up and watched him go. William had reached the first arrow and set off along the ravine, without any hesitation.
The forest was silent, but Jan felt as if he were standing in the eye of a hurricane. So many things could go wrong — a chaotic maelstrom of risks and potential misjudgements whirled around him.
Calm down, said an inner voice. Just stick to the plan.
He could hear the sound of drums. They were beating inside his head, beating and beating.
He took a deep breath. ‘Stay in your hiding places!’ he shouted. ‘I’m coming, ready or not!’
That wasn’t true. Jan didn’t set off to search for the eight boys who had hidden themselves; instead he made his way through the undergrowth towards the ravine, where the ninth boy had disappeared.
William.
Jan broke into a run.
19
The main entrance to Jan’s apartment block locks automatically at eight o’clock every evening; after that you need a key or an entry code to get in.
He has been back from work for a couple of hours by this stage; he has had dinner and settled down at the kitchen table with the picture books from the Dell in front of him. He has finished the first book, The Animal Lady; he has improved the illustrations and coloured them in. He wonders what Rami would think of the result.
He has made a start on the next book, Viveca’s House of Stone. He is thinking about how to fill in the faint pencil drawings as he reads through the text.
Once upon a time there was an old woman who woke up one morning. What? What? What? she thought, because she was actually lying in a wooden coffin. She wasn’t very strong, but she managed to lift up the lid and peep out. The room in which she found herself was big, with stone walls and a stone floor.
She shouted ‘Hello?’ into the silence, but no one answered.
She knew only one thing: Viveca. Her name was Viveca.
Jan reads the page twice, then begins to ink in the drawing. Viveca is a skinny woman with big eyes. Her head is sticking up out of a coffin.
It was several days before Viveca felt strong enough to get out of the coffin. Ooh. Aah. Aha! When she finally managed to push off the lid and get up, she saw a shabby dog basket on the floor beside her.
There was a label on the basket that said BLANKER, and in the bottom was a pile of grey dust and an empty dog collar. The dust was in the shape of a dog lying down.
Jan notices that the name Blanker is in this book too, just as it was in The Animal Lady.
He reads on, captivated by the story, as he goes over the thin pencil lines.
Eventually Viveca was able to leave the bedroom; the room next door was huge, with beautiful furniture, but everything was old and very dusty. A white wooden clock was hanging on the wall by the staircase, but when she looked at it more closely, she saw that there was something wrong with the hands. Tock, tick. It was going backwards.
Viveca moved into a hallway; there was an outside door, but it wouldn’t open.
In another bedroom on the ground floor she found two more wooden coffins. They were neatly placed side by side, as if a married couple had decided to lie down in them. A man and a woman? No-no-no — Viveca didn’t want to lift the lids and look!
Next to the bedroom was a closed door, and when Viveca opened it she saw a steep staircase leading down into the darkness. Cautiously she made her way down the steps, and found herself in a cellar. On the earth floor she found a pile of yellow bones. The bones of a monster. Ugh. She quickly went back to her room.
The days passed.
Viveca waited. Waited and slept. Every morning when she woke up, she felt a little brighter. She felt stronger, and when she caught her reflection in the mirror, she looked younger. And the hands of the clock kept on moving backwards, and in the end Viveca began to suspect what was happening in this house of stone:
Time was moving backwards!
Viveca suddenly realized that she would just keep getting younger and younger, and if she waited long enough, her parents would come back to life, and so would Blanker, her dog. She wouldn’t be lonely any more.
But of course the same thing would happen to the big bones down in the cellar. Whatever it was, it would also come back to life.
Tock, tick, tock. The clock kept on going backwards.
One beautiful day Viveca woke up and looked at her hands, and saw that they were small and smooth. She was full of energy, and leapt out of bed. She had become a little girl again! She heard the sound of barking, and suddenly a golden-coloured retriever jumped up on to the bed and started licking her face. Blanker had woken up.
Her beloved Blanker!
Viveca was SO happy! She was no longer alone in the house of stone, and she hugged Blanker as tightly as she could.
But eventually she raised her head and listened. She could hear noises coming from the cellar. The clicking of bones.
Blanker growled. He ran over to the door and started barking. That wasn’t good! Because Viveca could hear the sound of something big and heavy that had started to move down there...
At that point Jan’s doorbell suddenly rings with a loud, cheerful tone. He gives a start and glances towards the hallway. Who’s there? Jan has spent eight hours with pre-school children, and he wants his peace and quiet.
The bell keeps on ringing. He quickly hides the picture book in one of the kitchen drawers, then answers the door.
‘Evening, Jan!’ A blond man is standing there smiling. It is Lars Rettig from Bill’s Bar, wearing his leather jacket. ‘Am I disturbing you?’
Jan feels as if he has been caught out somehow, but shakes his head. ‘No... no, it’s fine.’
‘Can I come in?’
‘Sure. For a while.’
The evening chill from the street still clings to Rettig’s jacket, and spreads through the hallway as he takes off his shoes and carries on into the living room. He has a carrier bag in one hand.
‘Sorry to push in... I didn’t want to stand out there drawing attention to myself.’ He looks at all the furniture and boxes piled up along the walls. ‘Wow, you’ve got plenty of rubbish.’
‘That’s not mine,’ Jan says quickly. ‘It’s a sublet.’
‘Right.’ Rettig sits down on the sofa, still looking around. ‘And you’ve got drums... Do you play?’