Campion's Choice

In most ways Hanston School felt like any other school. There was the ever-present, distant hum of activity. The corridors smelt of sweat and soap and polished floors. But, in one way, it was immediately different: the children moved around the building in silence. Maybe it was some kind of a school rule.

Jack stopped outside a classroom door, stood on tiptoe and peered into the room through a small glass window. The longer he watched the more he wanted to rub his eyes and make sure he was not seeing things.

His gaze moved from boy to girl. The children, who were all working alone, seemed to be doing more and more bizarre things.

In one corner a small boy sat in front of several frogs, watching the little green animals leap around and perform tricks like circus gymnasts. The frogs formed a pyramid. They did back flips and then they joined hands in a line to perform a strange, wave like, dance.

A couple of paces away from him, a blindfolded girl was standing in front of an odd collection of hovering objects: a ball, an egg, a feather, a small pot plant and a life sized stuffed crocodile. Every time she made the faintest hand movement the objects shifted and formed into new and strange patterns. In a weird way it reminded Jack of Gidean’s spectacular performance in Cambridge.

He had just decided to check out another class when he saw Tia. Her brow was creased with concentration as a tiny universe of fireworks appeared from nowhere and floated around her head. The fireworks popped, crackled and fizzed and then disappeared.

What made the whole thing even more amazing was that an adoring audience, a group of living animals - three hamsters, a rabbit, two chickens, a rat and a crowd of white mice - sat around Tia in a tight little circle, gazing at the girl with tiny, worshipful eyes.

When she glanced across the room and Jack caught her eye the animals, as if spooked by a fox, scampered away. Tia waved frantically and hurried over, opening the door and hugging him.

‘Isn’t this amazing!’

‘What?’

‘This whole place? Everything is incredible! I mean …. aliens! In Hanston! It’s brilliant.’

She hopped excitedly from foot to foot and clapped like a performing seal. Behind her Jack saw a boy wrapping himself in what looked like a coat of liquid metal.

‘Amazing? Incredible? Are you serious?’ He dragged her behind him down the corridor before turning to speak angrily.

‘We’ve been kidnapped. We’re being held prisoners, and you say it’s amazing?’

‘I don’t care.’

She pulled away and crossed her arms.

‘You don’t care?’

‘No. I think this is great. I like it here. And they said I can keep my coin for now. And this place is much better than school or being at home and having to look after a blind mum and babysit an annoying little brother.’

‘But your mum is great.’

‘Great? What do you know? We don’t have any money. We don’t have a TV. I have to do everything, because the only way we can get money is from my mum teaching piano lessons, all day and all night. I want to stay here forever. Anyway, they say that Gid will be coming here soon, so that should be really great.’

Defiantly, with hands on hips, she smiled a crooked, challenging smile.

Without warning Anax appeared, filling the narrow corridor and looming over the two children. Behind him four of his guards stood ready and behind them waited the unhappy looking Ursula. Jack heard more footsteps.

It was Liam escorted by two tall young men. With a nod of command Anax’s guards stepped forward.

‘We are going to The Manor now. You all have choices to make,’ Anax announced.

They filed through the village, Jack at the front with the guards and Liam and Tia tagging on at the end of the line.

They were taken to a room, in The Manor, called the Saloon. It had the same oversized dimensions as the breakfast room but it was much, much more grand. It had a ceiling painted in gold and silver flowers. Its walls were hung with tapestries. Ornate mirrors, sparkling plates and exotic vases cluttered every surface. There were three luxurious mustard coloured sofas, high backed, deep and comfortable. Jack sank into one of the cushions.

Anax stood alone, in front of a huge, carved, stone fireplace whilst Ursula perched nearby in a window seat. The group of guards spread around the room as Anax looked at the children.

‘You are a problem. I accept that this is not a problem of your making. It is simply your bad luck.’

He crouched down on his haunches and looked exhausted but his voice was rich and firm.

‘We cannot let you leave. I hope you can accept that.’

Jack shook his head in disbelief.

‘That’s fine with me,’ Liam said.

‘And me,’ Tia added.

Jack turned to them. He couldn’t believe his ears. Were they serious? They were happy to leave their family, and friends, and everything they knew? Liam seemed to guess what he was thinking.

‘What do I have to go back to? I hate school. I hate my family. I’m glad to leave.’

‘But you don’t even have a coin. Why are you here? Why isn’t Gidean here?’ Jack said and added, ‘Not that I want to see Gidean’s fat face, grinning all over the place, but he has a coin.’

‘Liam saw what we can do. He’s not stupid. He’s not a child. Gidean is a problem and we will deal with it,’ Anax answered and stood tall again, as if that were the end of this audience. Jack pointed at Liam, his face turned red with rage.

’Liam’s not a child? Does that mean I am a child!’

Jack stood up, blind with fur and the sofa behind him burst into flames. He was astonished to discover that he was holding what felt like a bar of white-hot light. With a swift stroke he swung at Anax. The shaft of energy missed but cut cleanly through the massive fireplace.

Anax immediately bent down to the rubble and lifted a slab of broken stone the size of a grand piano high above his head. From there he could crush Jack with one blow.

The Dadster appeared and stood between Jack and Anax, glowing, surrounded by the same weird light.

‘What now?’ Jack’s dad said. He had a quizzical look on his face but that turned to horror as Anax hurled the stone. The stone struck the Dadster.

‘Dad!’ Jack screamed.

The rock exploded like a bursting sun. The blast threw Anax across the room. Broken pieces of fireplace disappeared in a fog of tiny fragments.

Peering through the cloud of dust Jack was just about to reach out a hand to the glowing Dadster when he felt something touch his shoulder. He turned to see Ursula holding a little metal rod just like the one they used when he was kidnapped.

‘Not again,’ he groaned.

The world softened and dissolved. It was the same feeling of falling, dropping like a stone into an infinitely deep well of darkness.

When he woke this time it felt like someone had filled his head with wet sand.

‘Uggggh,’ he mumbled.

Opening his eyes he saw a young girl sitting at the end of the bed.

‘Don’t hurt us, please. We are Crow,’ she said timidly.

He was in a very ordinary bedroom, the kind of room that looked like a typical ‘guest’ bedroom, a place filled with dumped household objects. The young girl moved nervously around, keeping him at a good distance.

‘Your name is Crow?’ he asked.

The words seemed to frighten her so he waited patiently for the girl’s reply. Once when the Dadster brought home a runaway cat it acted like this: timid, blinking, frightened of its own shadow. But that was a kitten. Still, maybe this kid was younger than she looked.

‘How ..old …are …you,’ Jack asked slowly, as if speaking to a hard of hearing three year old.

‘I’m eighty-two. No. That’s wrong. I’m twelve. No, wait, thirteen. Well, twelve or thirteen. One or the other. Sometimes, it’s so hard to be human,’ the girl said softly. She risked a tiny smile.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Petra. Petra Evans.’

‘I thought you said your name was Crow?’

Petra smiled a weak little smile and, as she did that, Jack could have sworn that her body went fuzzy around the edges. He rubbed his eyes.

‘Where am I?’ he asked.

‘You’re staying with us, now. There are four of us, in the house. Me, Michael, Mum and Dad. We are all Crow.’

‘Er .. this Crow thing … is it because your black?’

‘What?’

‘Are you called Crow because you have black skin? Like, would you call me, I don’t know, Snowy Owl, because my skin is white? I mean …. I’m not racist ..’ Jack stuttered in his confusion.

‘Some Crow are black, some are white. Like ordinary people,’ Petra smiled.

When she confidently edged closer there was no fuzziness now. His eyes must have been playing tricks. But why did she keep saying stuff about crows? Maybe there was something wrong with her.

‘What day is it?’ he asked.

‘Sunday. Sunday evening. You came here yesterday, just after I finished school. You were asleep then. It’s nine o’clock at night now,’ she said and screwed up her eyes as if trying to remember something before adding, ‘Oh yes. Will you please come down stairs and meet my parents?’

Opening her eyes she grinned. She looked really pleased with herself.

Petra’s father was in the living room, sitting in a large, flower-patterned armchair, smoking a pipe. He wore a dazzling blue, Caribbean, short-sleeved shirt and looked remarkably like his daughter. They had the same twinkling brown eyes, same puffed out cheeks and the same short cut, jet black hair. The only difference really, was that Mister Evans had a thin, weedy moustache.

It was clear from the sitting room that the Evans family was mad about the Sixties. Everything they owned was original and ancient, taken straight from the decade of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. The walls were pine-clad. On the floor were black and white tiles. It was like stepping back to 1963. There were plastic blow up chairs and huge multi-coloured beanbags everywhere. Jack almost stumbled as he walked across the thick, shag pile carpet.

Behind Mister Evans, on a wicker shelf, next to an orange cone covered fireplace, there were a lot of birthday cards. One or two had been altered. The altered ones said things like, ’Congratulations on being 240’ and ’240 Today’ or ’Enjoy being 240’.

‘Ah, Jack. Welcome to our house. It’s nice to meet you. My name’s Robert but you can call me Bob,’ Bob Evans said, his voice a gravelly bass. He held out his hand.

Jack shook the stubby little hand that went perfectly with the man’s stubby little body.

‘Nice to meet you, sir.’

‘Well, it must be past your bedtime so I’ll say goodnight.’

Bob sat down, tapped at the bowl of his pipe with a finger and grinned the same shy family grin. He struck a match and disappeared in a cloud of yellowy-blue smoke. By a rough calculation Jack thought that he must have been unconscious for over twenty-four hours.

‘Bed? Now? But I’m wide awake! I just woke up!’

‘Oh. Well, you can’t go to school now. It’s closed. I suppose you could come to work with me. I work at the Refuse Site, the rubbish dump up the road. If you get tired you could always have a nap there, in one of the store cupboards.’

Jack had to squint to see the man’s hazy figure through the growing fug of smoke.

‘Or I could just leave and go home?’ Jack offered.

Bob leapt out of his chair and barred the doorway. Jack heard a movement and looked up to see Petra running down the stairs followed by a boy. A serving hatch opened in the wall and a woman’s head appeared. Although it was impolite Jack stared at the woman who had the largest hairdo he had ever seen.

‘We .. we .. can’t let you .. leave..’ Bob faltered, his arms set wide and his brown eyes defiant.

Jack looked around at the Evans family. Bob was shaking. The woman, Jack assumed it was Mrs Evans, was round eyed with fear. She stood with her hands clenched as if bracing herself for a blow. The boy on the staircase stood straight to attention, shoulders back, tall and proud. His sister silently cried but she still stood stiffly ready to block Jack’s path to the front door.

Jack held up his hands.

‘It’s okay. No problem. I’m not going anywhere. I’ll just go up to my room.’

That didn’t seem to relax the Evans family.

‘And I’ll stay there and I won’t try to escape?’

Mrs Evans nodded and bowed her head. Petra’s brother, Michael turned on his heels and stamped back up the stairs. Bob stuck his pipe in his mouth, the wrong way up, and Jack watched as tobacco fell in clumps down the front of his exotic, flower-patterned, shirt. Petra wiped her eyes.

Wearily, Jack pushed past the sniffing little girl and trudged back upstairs to the spare bedroom.

It can’t have been more than ten minutes later when someone knocked on his door.

‘Come in,’ he said wearily.

Ursula entered carrying a steaming mug.

‘Hot chocolate and marshmallows?’ she said.

‘Is it drugged?’

‘No.’

He leant back and sipped the wonderful drink.

‘Everyone in this family is terrified of me. Why?’

‘Because they know that, if you try to leave, they have to kill you,’ Ursula said bluntly.

Jack choked on the drink.

‘What?’

‘They have orders to stop you leaving. You saw what happened in the Saloon at The Manor. You nearly destroyed that room. The family have orders to keep you here. Even if they have to kill you. Even if one, or all of them …. die. It’s their job.’

Jack couldn’t believe his ears.

‘But they hardly know me! You don’t just go around killing people like that.’

Ursula stayed silent. Jack snapped out questions.

‘Who ordered that? Did you? No? Of course not. It was Anax. Why is he leaving the dirty work to the Evans family? They seem like really nice people, not assassins.’

The old woman rounded her shoulders as if trying to balance a great weight on her back.

‘It’s complicated. But …. I see no reason why you shouldn’t be told. The family are Crow. They are expected to do this kind of work.’

’You call killing people work? What are the Evans family: the Alien Mafia? And why does everyone keep saying Crow?’

Ursula pulled up a chair.

‘You can’t be allowed to leave. That decision has been made.’

‘By Anax!’

Ursula held up a hand for him to listen.

‘No. That’s not how things work here. Anax’s voice is powerful and, some times, final. Not this time. There are other voices, and we are still talking, Jack. You have to trust me, you have to give us time.’

‘Give you how much time?’

‘I don’t know. Two, or three weeks. Maybe more, maybe less. You could take time to find out about us. I think we need each other.’

Jack considered the offer.

‘If I decided to stay …. and not escape .. what about my family? You said they won’t miss me. That’s crazy. Maybe alien kids can stay out for a few days, but that’s not how it works on Earth!’

Ursula smiled.

‘You saw the boy in your room, the night we came for you? Your double? He lives in your house now. He is you.’

‘What? Like a fake Jack?’

‘Yes.’

‘I have a French test tomorrow. Is Fake Jack any good at French?’

‘He’ll be as good as you,’ Ursula laughed.

The drink in his hands had started to cool so he took one last draught of the hot chocolate before rapping the mug down on the table.

‘I’ll stay. But keep Anax away from me. I’d say that he’s a coward and a bully.’

‘Then you would be wrong.’

‘But he was going to let Petra and her family die! That’s not fair.’

‘That’s his job.’

‘What, being a bloodthirsty maniac? I would never kill anyone.’

‘You tried to kill Anax.’

Ursula stood up and groaned as if all her joints were aching.

Jack wanted to argue but she was right. He had tried to kill Anax.

He was sure now that the ban liang picked up on his moods. What if he lost his temper again and another flaming chunk of energy suddenly appeared in his hands and someone like Petra got in the way?

He had to stay calm. Some times it pays to be patient.

‘It’s nearly ten at night and I’m wide awake. I’ll never get a wink of sleep. I’m going out to the dump with Bob.’

‘Is it bring an Earthling to work day?’ Ursula teased.

‘Very funny.’

After grabbing a jumper from a pile of clothes Jack waved goodbye and bounded down the stairs to find Bob. Through the living room windows he saw a full moon flooding the surrounding fields with light. It looked like it might be a nice night for a trip to the tip.