Mr Mahli's Shed Page 4

  ‘Hey!’ he called, ‘check this out!’ He held up a small piece of white paper. ‘It just landed on my head! It says “kel … cel … celestial serenity”. Molly! You’ve got one too!’ Molly reached up to the crown of her head and picked up the paper she found there.

  ‘Mine says, “Spiralling in the deep and silent darkness”!’ she exclaimed. The children looked up at the ceiling and were amazed to see – with the slow-motion mistiness of a dream – little pieces of paper floating down like snowflakes all around them.

  Soon the classroom was full of shouts of delight as the children read their paper flakes aloud and ran through them, holding out their arms and kicking the ones that had made it to the floor. Miss Terry took off her glasses and stared. Dylan had stopped glowing and sat with his arms on his bent knees, smiling like a child at the scene before him.

  ‘Where did they come from?’ people were shouting.

  ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Is it magic?’

  ‘Magic,’ repeated TB ‘yes, it’s certainly that.’

  Miss Terry closed her mouth (it was feeling a little dry as she’d been holding it open for some time now) and started to clap her hands and call to the children to sit down and calm down. But the noise was too great and the children didn’t really hear her. Suddenly Molly ran over to the board and stuck her paper as high up as she could reach.

  ‘It’s a poem!’ she shouted ‘look, I’ve started it. They’re little pieces of poem. I think we have to put them together.’

  The children started to move back towards their seats, their little bits of paper gathered in their hands like pirate treasure. Joseph was next to get the idea. He stuck his paper next to Molly’s. ‘Listen to this,’ he called and grandly read the beginning of the poem to the class. ‘Who’s next?’ he asked. ‘Miss Terry, this is brilliant.’

  Miss Terry stood up and began to speak but she was drowned out by Alys who ran to the board with a piece of paper she’d found on her shoulder.

  ‘Floating sphere of perfect symmetry,’ she blurted as she added the paper to the poem.

  ‘Woo-hoo!’ called TB and clapped his approval loudly.

  ‘Miss Terry,’ said TB, ‘this is the best poem lesson ever. Clap for Miss Terry everyone!’

  The class joined him in a muted round of applause. Miss Terry had never had a clap before. She’d never had anyone say her lesson was ‘the best’ before. She pursed her lips and nodded tightly.

  The class continued to build the poem. They kept reading it and adding to it and moving it about until the bell went for lunchtime. Miss Terry watched them go, then ran, out of the classroom, out of the school and all the way home to cwtch her old teddy under the bed covers for at least twelve hours.

  Thirteen

  When You Gotta Go…

  Alys and TB hadn’t enjoyed the fall-out from Dylan’s little tricks. The whole class had to stay in at playtime when Miss Terry failed to turn up the next day and rang the school to complain that her nerves weren’t up to it, and the head teacher had been called to give them a proper telling-off. Nobody could quite explain what had happened and this seemed to make the grown-ups even more cross. A couple of children had tried to tell Mrs Best about the floating pen and the books that moved by themselves but she had shaken her head and looked disappointed so they quickly stopped trying to tell her the truth.

  ‘Right, Dylan. That’s it. You’ve gotta go.’ TB had sneaked back at the end of school while Mrs Best was chatting to a parent.

  ‘Look, I know it wasn’t clever but I couldn’t just watch that old goat carry on like that,’ protested Dylan, ‘and you all had a good laugh didn’t you?’

  ‘No, I didn’t! I was too busy wondering what they’d do with you if they saw you,’ cried TB. ‘I thought they’d call in the vicar and do an exercise on you or something!’ Dylan frowned briefly then got it.

  ‘Exorcism you mean.’

  ‘Oh whatever, Dylan. The point is, you promised you’d be good and quiet and not get us into trouble and it’s all going pear-shaped. You have to go, Dylan. The school trip is over.’

  Dylan smiled at TB’s worried face and nodded gently. ‘All right boy, all right, I’ll go. You’re right and I’m wrong. Although you’re nine and I’m … God knows how old, I’ll defer to your inner wisdom and do as I’m told.’

  ‘Does that mean you’ll leave?’ TB just wanted to check, he found Dylan confusing sometimes.

  ‘I’ll go. I’ll leave this place tomorrow upon my word. I just need one more day here. I’ve got one more thing I want to try,’ Dylan stated.

  ‘What? What do you want to try? It’s not going to cause…’

  ‘Don’t worry, boy,’ Dylan whispered. ‘No one will know I’m here, I promise.’

  TB realised that Dylan was whispering because Mrs Best had come back into the classroom. He grabbed a couple of toilet rolls from the shelves, nodded briefly at Dylan and backed out of the door.

  There wasn’t a peep from Dylan the following day. Mrs Best had even played, ‘Who’s in the cupboard?’ with the class (a great but pretty pointless game in which someone goes out of the room whilst someone else hides in the cupboard and the first person has ten seconds to guess who’s hiding. It’s surprisingly exciting actually) and nobody had noticed anything weird about the cupboard.

  Alys had asked Mrs Best to help her find her lost jumper at the end of the day to give TB a clear go at fetching Dylan. TB waited until the classroom was empty then opened his backpack as wide as he could and called out to Dylan. There was no reply.

  TB dashed over to the cupboard and pushed open the door. His gaze was met with a Dylan-free space. There was no trace of his round body or his bookcase or the faint chill in the air. He was completely gone.

  Fourteen

  Mr Mahli’s Return

  It seemed as though the rest of the week whizzed by like a few days of birthdays. Although Alys and TB had searched the whole school, they hadn’t managed to find Dylan or any sign that he’d ever been there. Alys started to wonder if she’d dreamed the whole thing. It was only TB’s determined face that kept her looking.

  They’d been so busy, they’d almost forgotten about toilet duty and had been sternly told off by Danny Gerard after he’d been caught short Friday lunchtime. Alys had been to see Mrs Best about giving up toilet monitoring but Mrs Best had said that they ought to give it a proper try and they were setting a very good example and something about ‘work ethic’ that they hadn’t understood. In the end Alys had to agree that they’d keep it up at least until the end of term.

  It was whilst TB and Alys were collecting supplies from the cupboard that they decided they had to tell Mr Mahli that they’d lost Dylan when he came back the next day. ‘He might have an idea about where he’s gone,’ said Alys.

  ‘Yeah, maybe he’s done this kind of thing before,’ agreed TB. The children sighed and finished their jobs worrying about what Mr Mahli was going to say.

  It was windy and grey when TB knocked on Alys’ door the following morning. She came plodding down the stairs in her pyjamas when her mum called her; hair sticking up at the back like an abandoned birds’ nest. ‘I’m not feeling well TB, think I’ll just go back to bed. Come over later if you like, once you’ve, you know, talked to Mr M and that.’

  TB shook his head.

  ‘Oh no you don’t Al, you’re not leaving me to do this on my own. We both broke in, we both lost Dylan, we both have to tell Mr Mahli.’ TB seemed very definite about this and Alys found herself reluctantly reversing her steps.

  She was, as I’ve said before, the best nine-year-old girl ever after all, and she wasn’t really about to leave her friend to take all the blame. She came downstairs a minute later, wearing jeans and a Wales rugby top, a beanie pulled down over her birds’ nest hair and a smudge of toothpaste on her chin.

  ‘Let’s do it,’ she declared.

  Mr Mahli was overjoyed to see them; the garden was in excellent shape and he praised TB and Alys
for their professional-style care of the tomatoes. He’d enjoyed the swing TB had made too, and proudly showed them his mud-stained jacket which he’d gained from doing an ‘epic jump off the top’. The children wandered out into the garden with him and listened to his chatter and almost began to consider not telling him after all. Perhaps he wouldn’t notice Dylan had gone, or more likely, he’d think that he’d simply disappeared in a spooky, ghostly Dylany way.

  But whilst Mr Mahli was filling them in on India and the magical sights and sounds he’d seen, the children knew they had to be honest. He deserved to know the truth.

  ‘Mr M,’ began TB, ‘we’ve got something to tell you.’ Mr Mahli stopped talking and walking and turned towards TB. He recognised the seriousness in TB’s voice.

  ‘OK,’ he said, ‘shall we sit down on the bench?’ He led the children over to the most sheltered part of the garden where they cwtched up close on the wooden bench, out of the wind.

  TB didn’t quite know what to say, so he shuffled his feet around a bit and stared at the floor until Alys decided to take control.

  ‘We met Dylan,’ she announced. Mr Mahli raised his eyebrows but didn’t say anything. Alys thought she should go on. ‘We went into the shed and met Dylan. So we know all about him and … we…’

  ‘So you broke into my private shed?’ asked Mr Mahli. The children nodded. ‘The place I’d asked you never to go into; I trusted you not to go into.’ He let these words sink in for a minute before he continued. ‘There are some things you just can’t help yourselves to you know, you have to respect other people and their property and their privacy.’ The children nodded again. Alys looked as though she might cry.

  ‘We haven’t told anybody though Mr M. We haven’t said anything, I promise.’ TB looked earnestly into Mr Mahli’s warm brown eyes and was surprised to see them crinkle up in a smile.

  ‘Alright then, tell me all about it. You been keeping him company for me? I hope he hasn’t got you to buy him cigars!’ Alys laughed and launched into the story of how they’d managed to find the key and open the shed (although in this version she made herself sound a lot braver than she had actually been, TB thought).

  ‘But the thing is Mr Mahli…’ TB chipped in. ‘He was a bit restless in your shed. He really wanted a change of scene. He said he was … bored.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Mr Mahli. ‘He’s been happy in that shed for years. Certainly never mentioned any scene-changing!’

  ‘Well he did to us,’ said Alys, ‘and he somehow got us to take him on a trip.’

  ‘A trip?’ exclaimed Mr Mahli ‘Where? What kind of trip?’

  ‘We … took him to school,’ admitted TB.

  Mr Mahli fell off the bench.

  As the children helped him up by hooking their hands into his armpits, he bombarded them with questions. The children had no time to reply though, before Mr Mahli set off like a train of determination towards the shed.

  ‘Hang on!’ TB called after him. ‘He’s not there!’ Mr Mahli turned suddenly.

  ‘Not there? You haven’t gone and left him in school have you?’

  ‘Yes,’ squeaked Alys, ‘or we thought we had, but, well, he’s not there now either.’

  The children braced themselves for the explosion, but it never came. Instead Mr Mahli walked towards them very slowly and spoke very quietly (which was ten times more scary to be honest). ‘If he’s not there either, then where is he?’ TB did an audible cartoon gulp then whispered, ‘We lost him.’

  ‘You what?’ asked Mr Mahli quickly.

  ‘We … lost him,’ repeated TB.

  ‘He tricked us!’ Alys insisted. ‘He said he’d come home with us yesterday if we’d just let him stay for one more day. But we went to the cupboard to fetch him and there he was, gone! We’ve looked all over the school and everywhere between it and your shed and we still can’t find him.’

  ‘We think he might have just … disappeared,’ added TB. ‘You know, gone back to ghost land or wherever he came from.’

  The children waited for Mr Mahli to agree, to tell them that it was all going to be OK and that it wasn’t their fault. But he stayed silent for several minutes (which is a really long time when you’re waiting to find out if you’re in trouble or not). Finally he spoke. ‘We have to find him. He can’t have gone too far. How the devil did you get him out of the shed anyway?’

  ‘He got in my backpack,’ said TB. Mr Mahli looked at the bag.

  ‘How did he get in there? He’s not a slight man.’

  ‘No,’ confirmed TB, ‘but he managed to sort of squish himself up. He settled nicely in Mrs Best’s cupboard. Even made his den on the ceiling so he didn’t have to move anything around!’

  Mr Mahli didn’t look as impressed as TB thought he might have been. He chewed his bottom lip for a minute then breathed in deeply and pushed himself up off the bench.

  ‘Right. I’ll go and search for him. I have ninja blood in me you know, I will be stealth-like and sneaky and I’ll find that Dylan, you mark my words.’

  TB and Alys nodded, impressed.

  ‘Cool. I’ll come too,’ volunteered Alys. ‘I’ve got an epic ninja costume, all black with a balaclava! I’ll just go and…’

  ‘No no, Miss James,’ insisted Mr Mahli, ‘you go home. It’s starting to rain a bit so your mum might let you build that new Minecraft world. I’ll be fine and I’ll let you know if I find him.’

  If he had a cape Mr Mahli would have swung it dramatically. But he didn’t so he walked out of the garden sensibly, shutting the gate behind him.

  Fifteen

  Whatever’s Happened to Mrs Best?

  Monday morning saw a tired TB call for Alys to walk to school. They knocked on Mr Mahli’s door as they walked past but he told them there was still no sign of Dylan. They felt quite despondent as they made their way through the streets, and didn’t do their usual chattering about their latest Lego Technic invention or X Factor.

  When they arrived at school it seemed that Mrs Best had also been infected by a bleak mood. Unusually she snapped at Danny when he told her he’d forgotten his PE kit and she didn’t tell the children any funny stories about her weekend. The classroom was quiet and subdued all day and the children felt pretty glad to be going home at half past three.

  ‘TB,’ said Alys on the journey home, ‘did you notice Mrs Best’s eyes today?’ TB shook his head. ‘She looked mega-tired that’s all. I’ve never seen bags like that on her before.’

  ‘Maybe she’d had a tough weekend searching for a blooming irresponsible ghost or something!’ replied TB.

  ‘Aw, don’t worry about Dylan; I’m sure he’ll turn up soon. He’s bound to be missing Mr Mahli. Or his cigars at least.’ Alys smiled encouragingly at TB but he sniffed and looked away.

  ‘Dylan was just about the coolest thing that’s ever happened to me Al. We had a secret you know? We had this … this special job of looking after him and it was epic! When we knew we were going to be seeing Dylan in the shed or in Mrs Best’s cupboard I felt … I dunno … like the colours were brighter or something.’ TB blushed. ‘It sounds stupid, but I really liked Dylan, and talking to him made me feel so excited, like I could do anything. I’m gutted he’s gone Alys, I really am.’

  Alys reached over and took hold of TB’s hand. She completely understood because she felt just the same.

  As the class cleared up ready for their lunchtime the next day, Mrs Best sat at the desk with one hand supporting her chin. She didn’t ask for the best, most fabulous table. She didn’t chivvy them along with promises of house points or magical prizes from the magical box of magical prizes. In fact she just looked downright miserable.

  Gemma, who had been sitting at her desk, watching Mrs Best for a while, shot her hand up in the air.

  ‘Yes Gemma?’ asked Mrs Best.

  ‘Are you OK, Mrs Best?’ The class stopped tidying and fussing and turned to look at their teacher. She sat up straighter in her chair.

  ‘What do you m
ean Gemma? Of course I’m OK.’

  ‘It’s just … you haven’t been very happy so far this week and I’ve brought my homework in on time and Danny’s remembered the class rules all the time and so we don’t know … you know, what’s wrong with you.’

  Mrs Best smiled fondly at Gemma. ‘You are so sweet to notice that I’ve been a bit … well … rubbish. I hope I haven’t been too much of a battle-axe.’ The children waited for her to explain. Mrs Best sighed, stood up, walked round to the front of her desk and sat on it.

  ‘Look,’ she began, ‘it’s all very strange but something odd is happening to me and I just can’t sleep with worry.’ She looked as though she wasn’t sure whether to tell the children but then took a deep breath and carried on.

  ‘It all started last week. I went to bed one evening, in my tiger onesie of course, and I remembered I’d left the garden chair out. I always put it away at night so it doesn’t get damp. So I got up (my husband was already snoring, he’s a very heavy sleeper) to put it away. I went out the back door and picked up the chair to take to the shed at the bottom of my garden. It’s quite big folded up so I couldn’t really see where I was going. Anyway, I was right at the door of the shed when I tripped over something and fell on the grass, luckily on top of my chair. When I got up to look at what I’d tripped over I saw it was my lawnmower! Not only that but my plant pots and wheelbarrow and gardening tools were also on the floor around the shed!’

  Mrs Best paused for a minute and looked at the children. They all stared back, anxious to hear the end of the story. Alys and TB were the only ones looking at each other instead of Mrs Best, looks of incredulity on their faces.