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Authors: Lissa Evans

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BOOK: Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms
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The next picture was of the interior of a train station, where there were yet more men in hats and women with gloves, as well as a great puff of steam bursting from the funnel of a train. In the background, just beside a large weighing machine, stood the small boy again, wearing long shorts and a jacket that was too big for him. His face was a little blurred, but it looked to Stuart as if he were sticking out his tongue at the camera. The caption read:
Beeton Railway Station. A thrilling hub of constant activity.

Stuart turned the page. The third picture showed an outdoor swimming pool. (
Water frolics for the merry masses
.) This time all the women were wearing identical one-piece black swimsuits with thick straps over the shoulders—and so were all the men. The little boy was there again, dressed in the same clothes as before. He was standing next to the turnstile at the entrance to the pool and was holding his nose as if about to jump into the water.

Stuart continued turning the pages. A movie theater came next, followed by a gas station, a fairground, and a bandstand. The boy was visible in every photograph, although he was often a little blurry, as if he’d had to run to get into the picture. Stuart had the feeling that the boy had been following the photographer around.

Between the fairground and the bandstand there was a blank double page—blank, that is, apart from a line of print:
Ancient and modern together: a young man encounters the past
.

Above it on the paper were a couple of brown, shiny marks. Stuart dabbed at them with a gloved finger and realized that they must be dried glue.

“Excuse me,” he said, returning the book to the counter. “I think there’s a photo missing.”

The man looked closely at the marks on the page. “You’re right.” He frowned. “It’s obviously fallen out somewhere. I’ll make a note and we can check the shelving area and call you if we find it.”

“My number’s changed,” said Stuart quickly, giving his new home phone number.

“And have you finished with the book?” asked the librarian.

“Yes, I suppose so.” Stuart took off the gloves and handed them back. After all the weirdness and excitement of the phone call, the book had been a puzzling disappointment.

“School project, was it?” asked the man.

“No, it was a bit of”—he searched around for an answer—“family history.”

“Horten,” said the man, nodding. “A real local name. There’ve been Hortens in the Beeton area since records began.”

“Oh, yes?” said Stuart politely.

“Blacksmiths, originally, and then locksmiths. Although in the mid-eighteenth century there was a politician in the family. You heard of Phineas Horten from East Nottinghamshire?”

Stuart shook his head.

“And then there was the Great Hortini, a Victorian entertainer whose real name was Horten. Heard of him? No? What about William Horten, the vicar who wrote the hymn ‘By Eden’s Bank I Walked a Mile’?”

Stuart shook his head yet again.

“Or, more recently, there was a magician who was beginning to get very famous when—”

“Tony Horten,” said Stuart quickly.

“That’s right,” said the man, with approval. “You’ve done some research then, I see. Though he was generally known by his stage name. You’re aware of it?”

Stuart shook his head.

The man smiled. “Teeny-Tiny,” he said. “Teeny-Tiny Tony Horten.”

CHAPTER 5

Stuart was so quiet on the way home from the library that even his father noticed. “Feeling indisposed?” Stuart’s father asked.

“Mmm,” said Stuart. Actually, he didn’t know how he felt. It had been the oddest day of his entire life. He glanced up at his father. “What did Great-Uncle Tony look like?” he asked.

“Well, he was dark-haired, I believe, and brown-eyed … and … er”—Stuart’s father hesitated for a moment—“not of exceptional stature.”

“Do you mean he was really quite short?” said Stuart.

“Rather below average height, I think, yes. There’s always been a considerable variation in the stature of the Horten male.”

“You mean some of them are tall and some of them are short.”

“That’s correct. Your great-uncle Tony’s brother Ray—
my
father, your grandfather—was over six feet tall. Whereas
his
father—
my
grandfather, that is—was … er … not so tall.”

“You mean he was really short too?”

“Yes.”

“So being really short runs in the family?”

“There is certainly some truth in that statement.”

“So you mean I could end up being as short as Great-Uncle Tony?” Stuart had always thought that when he reached the age of twelve or thirteen he’d start to shoot up. He’d just assumed it would happen. “Dad?” he pressed, when there was no reply. “Dad?”

There was more silence. And then for once, his father didn’t use an enormously long word, but simply patted him on the shoulder and said, “You’re a splendid chap, Stuart. We think the world of you.” Which was kind, but which didn’t really answer the question.

And when his mother got home (very late, as usual) Stuart asked her the same thing, and she got out a pencil and paper and medical textbooks, and gave him a twenty-five-minute lecture on the genetics of height. He didn’t understand much of it, but he understood the answer, when it eventually came.

It was “Yes.” Even though his mother was tall and his father was tall, it was possible that Stuart could end up as short as Great-Uncle Tony.
Teeny-Tiny
Great-Uncle Tony.

“And what are you going to do tomorrow?” asked his mother, trying to change the subject.

“Don’t know,” said Stuart.

The next day, he woke very early. He could hear his mother in the kitchen filling the tea kettle. He fell asleep again, and woke a second time to hear her softly closing the front door on her way to work. Everything went quiet for a moment. Then suddenly he heard the sound of running footsteps outside the house, followed by the snap of the mail slot and the slap of something landing on the mat.

He went downstairs. There was a flimsy newspaper lying on the floor of the hall. Right in the middle of the front page was a huge picture of Stuart. It showed him climbing over the gate of Great-Uncle Tony’s house, a furtive expression on his face. He stared down at it, horrified, and then slowly, slowly, he picked up the paper and began to read.

THE BEECH ROAD GUARDIAN

Special crime edition!!

New Neighbors

Number 20 Beech Road has seen the arrival of the Horten family. Extensive research has revealed Mrs. Horten to be a doctor, Mr. Horten to be someone who sits around reading things, and their son, Stuart Horten (10, but looks younger), to be a potential BURGLAR! Yes! A BURGLAR! Or a VANDAL! Only one day after moving into the neighborhood he was observed trying to break into a house on Filbert Way, and only the prompt action of our reporter prevented a MAJOR CRIME.

Read full story on page 2!!!!!

Stuart turned to page two.

HOW I FOILED THE FILBERT WAY BREAK-IN
By our photographic correspondent

It was a warm day and I had just taken a pleasant bike ride around the block, when I happened to glance at a derelict house on Filbert Way. Imagine my surprise when I recognized my new neighbor, Stuart Horten (10, but looks younger), climbing over the gate, obviously up to no good. He then tried to break through a side window, before—

Stuart couldn’t face reading any more. The article took up the whole of page two. Page three contained some unflattering photographs of his family, taken on the day they moved in.

Page four (the back page) was titled
“Other News,”
and was obviously copied from the local paper, as it was dull stuff about construction work and trash-emptying days. At the bottom was a small picture, captioned
Our ever-ready staff. April, May, and June Kingley
. Three identical, clever-looking faces stared up at him. Actually, they were not quite identical. One of them (was it April?) was wearing glasses.

There was a noise from upstairs—his father’s bedroom door opening—and Stuart hurriedly crumpled the newspaper into a ball. By the time his dad arrived in the kitchen, the paper was right at the bottom of the bin and Stuart was sitting eating a bowl of cornflakes.

“Ah, fully conscious, I see,” said his father. “Any plans for today?”

“Not really,” said Stuart.

“Another trip to the library?”

“Not yet, thanks,” said Stuart.

“Or how about the Beeton Museum? I was looking at a leaflet in the library.”

“I don’t think so,” said Stuart.

“It’s quite a good one, I understand,” his father told him. “With a collection of special interest for the numismatologist.”

Perhaps, thought Stuart, he ought to tattoo a question mark on his forehead and just point to it whenever his father spoke. “For the
what
?”

“For the coin collector.”

“Oh,” said Stuart. He thought suddenly of yesterday, of the coin that he’d put into the phone booth, of the phone mysteriously ringing, and all at once he knew exactly what his plans were for the day. He looked around and saw the other threepenny bits sitting in a neat pile on the windowsill.

“Dad?” he said. “Can I go for a bike ride?”

CHAPTER 6

He rode straight to the phone booth. As he locked up his bike he could feel himself getting nervous, his heart pounding, his breath shallow.
Would it happen a second time? Could it be possible?

There was no one inside the booth. Stuart pulled open the door and was hit by the awful smell again. Since yesterday someone had dropped a whole bag of french fries on the floor. He edged around the mess, waited until the door was closed and then took one of the threepenny bits from his pocket. It shone dully in the dim light.

“Okay,” said Stuart. “Let’s try it.”

He reached for the phone receiver.

It wasn’t there.

He looked around wildly. It wasn’t anywhere. Someone had taken it.

And there was something odd, too, about the slot for the money. It was white rather than black. He peered at it closely and saw that it had been stuffed full of chewing gum.

Well, then, that was that. Glumly, he pocketed the threepence again and pushed open the door.

There seemed no point in going straight back to his horrible new home, next to his horrible new neighbors. He unlocked his bike and cycled slowly through the town. He passed a park with a playground and an old bandstand. The bandstand looked vaguely familiar. He glanced down a side street and saw a crowd of people waiting in line outside an old movie theater; that too reminded him of something. It wasn’t until he saw the sign for the station that he realized he’d seen all of these places in the book of photographs in the library. The places were older now, and shabbier, but still recognizable.

He felt strange. He felt as if someone was trying very hard to tell him something, but he couldn’t quite catch the words. There was a bicycle rack outside the station, and he parked his bike. The main entrance was fenced off and displayed a sign saying
DANGER! HARD HAT AREA
, so Stuart followed an arrow around to the side of the building and entered through an arch beside the ticket office.

BOOK: Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms
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