Shadows in the Twilight

12

The next evening Joel followed the tracks left by the Black Panther.

It was a Shadow Beast that only Joel knew about.

The Black Panther lived in a cave under the railway bridge. Whenever a train went rattling over the bridge, you could hear the beast roar...

The day after Joel’s revenge on the Caviar Man he was the most attentive pupil in the whole class. Only once, when he remembered that Miss Nederström might have climbed over the fence while wearing her woolly long johns under her long skirt, did he start giggling. A storm of laughter was brewing up inside him, but Miss Nederström gave him a stern look before it broke out.

Joel did everything he could to be like all the others. He didn’t want to be noticed. He didn’t want to be a Miracle Man. Now he just wanted to be an ordinary pupil.

He had dinner with Sara in the evening. Trying hard to make it sound like no more than an off-hand question, he asked what the beer drinkers in the bar had been talking about that day.

‘Huh, I don’t listen to their chatter,’ said Sara. ‘I’d get earache if I did. It’s bad enough having aching feet after all that running around.’

‘But there must have been something they were all talking about,’ Joel insisted. He wanted to know.

And he got to know.

‘Apparently there was some idiot phoning lots of people in the middle of the night and waking them up,’ said Sara. ‘Nobody seems to know who did it, or how. But I suspect it was Asta at the Telegraph Office who’d drunk a bit too much port wine.’

Joel could feel himself blushing. So he hadn’t been dreaming after all! He really had been in the Telegraph Office during the night!

‘That sounds odd,’ he said casually, chewing a piece of veal chop.

‘Asta only talks,’ said Sara. ‘There’s nothing odd about that...’

Joel felt in very high spirits when he walked home. Now at last he could be normal again. He sat down at the kitchen table and wrote in the inside cover of his diary:

‘The Secret Society Lords of the Underworld has completed its mission. The Caviar Man has been defeated.’

That meant that the book was completely full.

He would have to buy a new diary. He’d be able to write in it about all the things that hadn’t happened yet!

I’ll soon be twelve, he thought as he stood in front of the cracked shaving mirror. Then there’ll only be three more years before I’m fifteen.

He thought he looked older. Older than the day before. His eyes weren’t quite so staring. His hair wasn’t quite as tousled.

‘I’ve been in the Underworld,’ he said to the mirror. ‘I’ve defeated the Caviar Man.’

Then he rushed off to Gertrud’s house. As he raced over the bridge like a railway engine, the Black Panther didn’t dare to roar. Who dares to roar at a man who has defeated the Caviar Man?

He paused to get his breath back when he came to Gertrud’s gate.

Now he would tell her everything. The whole story from start to finish. And he wasn’t frightened in the least. Gertrud would understand. She’d be bound to have a good laugh once she understood what it was all about. But she would be impressed by what he had done at the Telegraph Office.

Joel didn’t doubt for a moment. Gertrud was like that.

He looked up at the sky. Stars were twinkling like thousands of cats’ eyes. He almost felt dizzy at the thought of how many stars there were.

Could it really be true? That there are more stars than there are ants in an anthill?

It felt very special, almost solemn, that cold September night. The month would soon be over. It would never come back. Then it would be October, and the first heavy snow would start to fall.

Before it melted he would be twelve. Twelve years old. He had lived a whole clock face of years.

It felt strange. Solemn. As if he had almost caught up with the future...

He could hear Simon Windstorm’s lorry in the distance.

Then he went through the gate, through the door and told the whole story to Gertrud...