I awoke with a start. Someone was banging on my door, like an incensed bongo player locked out of her apartment.
"Patrick Lee! Wake up this instant!" It was Aunt Bea. She bludgeoned the door again. I half-expected it to splinter off its hinges: "Do you even know what time it is?"
I didn't have a clue. I didn't even know what day it was. The last thing I remembered was the barbed-ladder, and the trap door sliding shut with a bang. And that cackle as the lights went out. In Mum's room.
"Mum!" I cried, sitting bolt upright, my throat in my mouth.
"No," said Aunt Bea, rapping her knuckles, like she was conveying urgent orders in Morse Code. "Guess again."
"Is Mum all right?"
The rapping stopped. "Of course she is," said Aunt Bea. "I just dropped her at Doc Vassel's clinic. He's doing some more tests today."
I lay back down on the bed, and glanced over at my alarm clock, which hadn't gone off. 8.00 a.m. Eight in the morning. Monday morning. School started in thirty minutes!
"No more of the silent treatment, boy!" whispered Aunt Bea through the door. I recognised her tone: it was the one she used on City people who asked her directions for another town. The voice she used just before launching into lectures. "You spend too much time cooped up in your room, boy. It isn't healthy. I shouldn't have listened to your mother and let you eat dinner up here last night, studying or not."
Dinner last night? I looked around. A tray of half-eaten food - the remnants of the meatloaf - lay on top of the silver floor safe. I couldn't remember eating! It was like I'd been sleepwalking again, but with no memory at all of what I'd done or said (or not said).
I jumped out of bed and winced. Pain shot from the heel of my right foot, up the back of my leg. My head throbbed. Perhaps I'd slipped and blacked out after my paper run. But my reflection in the mirror on the back of my door told a different story. My pyjama arms stuck out of an ugly jumper. Dad's Christmas-light-chilli sweater vest! I'd even worn my slippers to bed. The sheets were filthy and caked in mud and worse from the tunnel's floor. Gently, I stepped out of the soiled slippers and swaddled them in my dirty blankets and sheets, throwing the filthy bundle into the wicker basket at the end of my bed. Just in time!
Aunt Bea barrelled into the room. The door flew open with such force that it almost caught my Aunt square in her round face on the rebound. Quicker than she looked, Aunt Bea jumped back, just evading the doorknob. Her horn-rimmed glasses sailed off her nose and bounced into her chest, tethered to the chain around her neck. "What are you doing in here, boy?" she demanded, as if expecting to catch me red-handed in the midst of a crime.
"I'm sick," I cried out, throwing in a couple of fake coughs for emphasis.
"I wasn't born yesterday," said Aunt Bea, squinting myopically. "Your Mum told me about the test. It's normal to be nervous. Shows you're ready to perform."
Perform? The maths test was this morning!
Aunt Bea shook her head with disapproval and went over to my desk to pick up the dinner tray. "Come on, boy," said Aunt Bea. "Why are you wearing that ridiculous outfit? Come on. Do you need me to help you?"
"No!" I shouted, pulling the sweater vest over my head and tossing it into the clothes-basket. Aunt Bea smiled and walked out of the room with the tray, like a flight attendant.
"Two minutes, downstairs," she said. "Or I'll come back and dress you myself.”
I kicked off my slippers, looking around wildly for a clean school uniform. "I'll be there in one minute. Start the ca-."
The words died on my tongue as I saw it. Atop the faded green card table, between the silver and bronze floor safes, lay a tiny model of Mum's trunk. The window behind it was open and the curtains flapped in the wind like the headless ghosts of two dancing nuns.
It might have been a trick of light or perspective, but as I edged closer, the trunk seemed to flatten out and darken. Carefully, I picked it up and flipped open its lid. A calculator! But not like any I'd seen before: heavier and less 'plasticky'. I turned it on and bashed in a few numbers on its faded orange keypad. It worked, though it seemed a little sluggish. I toggled it off, and closed the lid.
Before I could inspect the primitive workmanship further, Aunt Bea rapped on the door again. I jerked my hands away, nearly dropping the calculator.
"Quick sticks, boy," she said in her dangerous, quiet voice. "I've got a meeting in town today. I can drop you now or never. Scramble."
I tossed the calculator, a couple of pens and my new orange and white exercise book into my school bag. Then I grabbed a school shirt and trousers out of the closet and ran out of my bedroom, discarding my old clothes as I followed my impatient Aunt out to the car.