The Amphiblets (9 page)

‘I’m well now,’ said Will angrily. ‘In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been well for the past few weeks.’

‘I suppose I kept putting it off.’ Peter shrugged awkwardly; aware he’d made a grave error.

‘I miss my brothers so much and now we don’t know where they are.’ Will stared into space at nothing in particular, as he recalled the good times he had shared with his siblings.

It was a long time before Peter managed to persuade Will to leave. Despite his grief, Will exclaimed in surprise as Peter jumped effortlessly from the high treehouse.

‘How did you do that?’ he gasped, following him down in the same fashion.

Peter rested his hands on the boy’s shoulders. ‘There are other things which I need to explain to you once we are home. Remind me when we get back, in case I forget.’

Will frowned. ‘You mean like a secret?’

Peter nodded. ‘The only other person that knows is Robert.’

As they walked past Will’s old home towards the car, curtains twitched and faces appeared at the window, watching them. They jumped into the car hoping no one had called the police.

‘I know I can never replace your father – ’

‘No, that would be impossible. He’s horrible.’ Will slammed the car door.

‘I have to agree with you,’ said Peter softly. ‘But I’m your guardian from now on. I’m here to care for you. My home is your home too.’

‘Thanks.’ Will’s head hung low and his eyes had lost their twinkle. ‘Especially as I’ve nowhere else to go.’

A pang of sympathy filled Peter as he glanced at the child sadly. No one deserves to be treated like this, he thought, especially since the child had done no wrong.

‘You won’t ever leave me, will you?’

Peter turned to Will and smiled. ‘No. I won’t. And that’s a promise.’

Will smiled but behind his sunglasses his eyes had lost their sparkle. It was going to take a long time to recover from his loss. But he was grateful for having Peter as his new guardian.

With the car engine roaring to life, they left the past behind them and began their journey back home together to start a new life.

As soon as they arrived home, Peter went into the kitchen with Will and poured the boy a glass of orange juice from the fridge. He also gave him a couple of biscuits, hoping he would be able to eat something on his delicate stomach. Then he left him, to go and find Robert who was ambling across the lawn with Shanks, after taking him for a walk.

Will stood from the table and gazed out of the window to where the two adults were talking. No doubt Peter was telling Robert what had happened. As if in confirmation of this, Will saw Peter hand Robert the letter. He groaned. The words in the letter were still tormenting him now.

‘How could the Professor do this to me?’ whispered Will, feeling completely humiliated. ‘Did I mean nothing to him?’

He remained staring into space and was no longer looking at the two men. Instead he had been transported back in time to when he and his two brothers had first built the tree house. They had been six years old when Will had first thought of the idea.

‘It’ll be brilliant!’ Will had said. ‘The tree house can be our playhouse.’

Riley, who didn’t like heights, had been the first one to object. ‘I don’t like the sound of it. Why can’t we build one on the ground?’

‘Because that would be
sooooo
boring!’ Will had complained.

‘Well, I think it’s a good idea to build a house in a tree,’ Ed had agreed.

It had been two against one. Although Riley had been upset at first and unable to help them build the hut because of his fear of heights, he came around to the idea and once the treehouse had been built he was happy to visit it as long as he didn’t look up or down when arriving or leaving. And it had been brilliant. It had been the one place where the boys could escape from the Professor to hold secret conversations.

‘William!’ Peter called.

Will turned round with a start; he hadn’t heard the two men enter the kitchen. They were watching him curiously.

‘I called you three times,’ said Peter. ‘What were you thinking?’

‘Nothing,’ replied Will.

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Robert. ‘It must have come as a terrible shock.’

Will nodded and bit his lip. He didn’t want to cry. He didn’t want them to know how hurt he felt that his father had cast him aside like a piece of rubbish – as if he’d never mattered to him in his entire life.

Feeling he would go mad if he didn’t change the subject, Will reminded Peter of their earlier conversation. ‘Didn’t you want to tell me something important?’

‘Ah, yes,’ said Peter, thinking it would be a way to distract and forget the awful incident. ‘First I want to show you my great-great-great grandfather’s paintings.’

Will nodded. He tried to be excited but it was like making a fire using wet wood. He had asked to see the paintings before but Peter had always been very reluctant and always found something else to do. Today was a different matter. Will wondered why Peter had the sudden change of heart. Was it because he was feeling sorry for him? Will decided it didn’t matter what the reason was. He was glad to have something else to occupy his mind.

He followed Peter to a door that led to a cupboard under the stairs. It was always locked; Will knew because he had often tried to open it. Peter pulled a brass key from his pocket and unlocked the door.

‘You keep his paintings under the stairs?’ Will frowned.

‘Yes, I do.’ Peter laughed. ‘It might sound ridiculous but there’s a reason for that.’

He opened the door and switched on a light. It appeared to be a small empty cupboard.

‘Come in and close the door, Will,’ requested Peter.

‘Will we both fit inside here?’

‘Yes, but only if you suck your stomach in!’

‘Ha, ha!’ Will replied sarcastically. He was already very slim; breathing in would achieve very little. Will didn’t like the cramped little room and felt the desire to leave at once. This was no art gallery.

Peter stroked his hand over the wall and a light appeared to shine from within it.

‘It’s checking my identity,’ explained Peter, ‘like a scanner.’

‘Awesome!’ Will was staring at the wall, wondering what it would do next. He no longer felt like leaving. This was much too interesting.

Suddenly a thin panel of numbers slid appeared in the wall, like a keyboard. Peter tapped the correct sequence of numbers into it and waited. Will had tried to memorise them but Peter’s gloved fingers had moved too fast. The panel slid back into the wall. A few seconds later, they heard a click. Then, to Will’s surprise, the wall in front of him turned into a heavy, metal door. Beyond the door a light revealed a set of steps leading downwards.

‘I’ll go first,’ said Peter.

So in suspense, Will followed Peter down the flight of narrow stairs. Where were they going? Were the paintings in some kind of vault, like in a bank? Once they were down the stairs they came to another door. Again Peter waved his hand over a particular section of the wall and another light shone from beneath the surface. As the door opened, the one behind them suddenly slammed shut. Will jumped.

‘Don’t worry, it does that for security,’ Peter reassured him.

As the door swung open, Will stood still with his breath caught in his throat. It was too dark to see anything. Then, as Peter turned on a switch, everything changed and became flooded in a beautiful golden light. They entered a magnificent room, probably the best in the entire mansion. Everything was sparkling and clean. Crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling, casting speckles of light everywhere as if they were dancing fairies. There were numerous paintings hanging on the walls, surrounded by golden frames. Most were taller than Will himself but he did spot some as small as the palm of his hand.

There were old pieces of furniture that were equally as impressive as the paintings. Peter watched with interest as Will made his way around the room before coming to rest in front of a magnificent portrait of a peculiar-looking man, with frog-like eyes. On closer inspection he noticed the man’s hands were webbed.

‘Hey, Peter!’ called Will. ‘This man looks like me.’

‘Yes, he does, doesn’t he?’ Peter agreed. ‘There’s a striking similarity between you both.’

‘Who is he?’

‘That’s my grandfather, Sir Ivan Pondweed.’

‘I thought you said earlier that he was your great-great-great grandfather,’ Will reminded him, noticing the date 1700 at the bottom of it. ‘But that can’t be possible, can it?’

Will stood for ages, staring at the painting of Sir Ivan Pondweed. As Peter made his own comparisons of Will to the man in the portrait, Will was doing the same with Peter.

‘How can you be related to him and not have the same problem?’ asked Will.

Peter smiled as Will’s excitement grew.

‘You’ve got the same colour hair though and the same shaped face. I don’t know about the eyes though,’ said Will, ‘because I’ve never seen yours.’

Since Peter suffered from sensitive eye and kept them covered, Will hadn’t been able to compare them but he knew without a doubt their eyes were not similar. They couldn’t be. Will’s condition was too rare. The Professor had known of only one other person who had suffered from this condition. What was his name now? Will tried to think of the name the Professor had mentioned. It took him only a moment before it struck him like a bolt of lightning. He was sure the Professor had said the name Ivan and that he was a famous artist.

‘Must be the same one!’ remarked Will, under his breath.

‘Pardon?’ asked Peter.

‘My dad – I mean Professor Snipes – once mentioned a man named Ivan who was a famous painter and had the same disorder as I have.’

‘Did he now? I suppose it depends on what you call a disorder,’ said Peter.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Will.

‘You have amazing gifts – not a genetic disorder.’

‘But that’s what the Professor always told us.’

‘Yes, but it isn’t true.’

Will went quiet as Peter began to explain. ‘No one knows where my grandfather came from,’ said Peter. ‘He had no birth certificate and therefore was never acknowledged at birth. I believe only one person knew the truth of his origins.’

‘Who?’ asked Will.

‘Remember the man in the drawing you saw, when you were running away from Shanks?’

Will nodded. ‘Professor Snipes lookalike?’

‘Yes. Well, I believe he experimented on my grandfather.’

‘How come?’ asked Will.

‘I have something I want you to read. I want you to bear in mind that there has never been any record of another person born like this in the whole of history. Not until Ivan was born.’ Peter paused. ‘And I believe you were created in exactly the same way,’ said Peter.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I think you should read this,’ said Peter, handing Will an extract from a document.

A young woman named Penny Bucksworth was found a few days ago after being missing for ten months. During that time it appears that she was kept in solitary confinement whilst undergoing a serious of hideous experiments, which lead to her becoming severely mutated. She now has webbed fingers and toes. She is also suffering from dehydration and malnutrition but is responding well to treatment. Her three children are missing and apparently have been born with the same condition. It appears that Penny’s children saved her more extreme deformity because the effects of the substance injected was evenly distributed between four bodies instead of concentrated in one.

Another three people, who were all kidnapped on the same night, have been identified and tests are currently being carried out to try and reverse the treatment they received. They have suffered terribly, experiencing a severe reaction to the mysterious substance that had been injected into their bodies.

The man responsible for this was known simply as The Professor. Despite the description Penny has given us, the man has so far escaped detection. It has been suggested that this is the same man who performed experiments on humans ten years ago.

Will was silent for a moment as he reread the passage. ‘Webbed fingers and toes,’ he said at last. ‘That’s what I have.’

‘Penny wasn’t born with it,’ said Peter. ‘Someone did this on purpose to her without her consent.’

‘That’s terrible! And it says she had three children.’

‘Yes, triplets,’ said Peter.

‘Triplets?’ Will gave this some consideration. ‘What happened to them?’

‘They were raised by the man who had experimented on their mother, believing he was their father.’

‘It mentioned a professor – the Professor!’ Will turned to Peter, horrified. ‘That was me and my brothers, wasn’t it?’

Peter nodded. ‘That’s why you are like this now.’

Will sank into a chair. ‘But that man in the painting, he wasn’t experimented on was he?’

‘I’m not entirely sure. The DNA was taken from his bones after his death and modified before being injected into humans. Professor Snipes was attempting to create another Ivan Pondweed. In doing so, he created something more. He didn’t have only one baby to experiment on – he had three. He called you the Amphiblets.’

Will felt sick. His brothers and he were the result of a scientific experiment. His father – or rather the Professor – had deliberately done this to them. It was sickening. The Professor was mad – insane. He had to be. What person in their right mind would do something as crazy as this?

‘So now I know what I am,’ said Will. ‘A freak.’

‘No! You’re not!’ said Peter, raising his voice. ‘You have been partly created from this man in front of you. He was everything that you and your brothers are. He had the photographic memory, he could paint and recall images and he was a fantastic brave acrobat. All you three boys have attributes of his.’

‘And my real parents? Are we anything like them?’

‘I’ve no idea. I never met them, although I did see a picture of your mother once. She had blonde hair like you.’

‘Do you still have her picture?’

‘I have a newspaper clipping somewhere,’ said Peter, rummaging on his desk. ‘Ah, here it is!’

He handed it over to Will who began to smile. ‘I know this woman!’

It was Peter’s turn to make a face. ‘You
know
her?’

‘Well, not exactly. Ed used to draw pictures of her all the time, only he didn’t know who she was. Any time he was upset he would draw her and hide the pictures away. The Professor hated him drawing images of her but now I know why. He didn’t want Ed to draw pictures of our mum, did he?’

‘No, I don’t suppose he did,’ said Peter.

‘She’s pretty. I always imagined her older. Will I ever get the chance to see her again?’

‘I hope so,’ replied Peter.

Will glanced at the portrait of Sir Ivan Pondweed and then at Peter. ‘I think you both look the same. Well, apart from the sunglasses.’

‘We are very similar,’ said Peter, who was about to take off his sunglasses when an alarm suddenly sounded. Peter dashed towards his desk and switched on the monitor. Using the computer mouse in front of him he checked the security camera from side to side until he found what he had been searching for. He could see four men dressed in black balaclavas hiding behind the hedges surrounding the garden.

‘What’s going on?’ asked Will.

‘Four men have broken into our property,’ said Peter, frustrated. ‘Damn it! I must warn Robert and tell him to come down here with you. Wait here!’ Before he left, he grabbed an earpiece and stuck it in his ear.

As soon as Peter had disappeared, Will followed after him. After all, Peter might need his help. He hid behind the chair in the hall as Peter went to find Robert.

‘Go and wait in the gallery!’ Peter told him. ‘Will’s there.’

‘Be careful, Peter,’ warned Robert, before rushing into the gallery where he called Will’s name several times. But the boy wasn’t there. He checked every hiding place. Where was he?

Meanwhile, Peter was poised at the front door, ready for action, while Robert observed what was happening on the computer monitor. Much to his horror, he saw a shadow lurking behind the chair. Had someone already broken into the house?

He put on a headphone with a mouthpiece attached to it.

‘Peter?’ said Robert.

‘Yes?’ came the reply.

‘Look behind you! Someone’s hiding behind the chair.’

Peter turned and slowly made his way towards the shadowy figure, crouched low in the corner of the hall. He pulled out a strange device from the belt of his trousers. It was long and thin, shaped like a pen. Peter then did the most extraordinary thing. He leapt high off the ground and fell straight on top of the intruder, except there was no intruder. Peter had landed on Will, pinning him to the floor beneath the heavy bulk of his body. Will, who was wearing a horrified impression, was startled.

‘I thought I told you to remain where you were!’ Peter was angry.

‘I’m sorry. I only wanted to help you.’ Will didn’t dare ask how Peter had managed to jump several feet in the air towards him. Or how he knew he was hiding behind the chair.

Peter picked himself off Will. ‘Are you hurt?’

‘No.’

‘I want you to go downstairs…’

Another message from Robert came through Peter’s earpiece, but Will couldn’t hear it.
‘They’re coming towards the house!’

‘Geez! I never had to worry about a kid before,’ Peter mumbled.

‘I can take care of myself!’ said Will feisty. He would prove to Peter that he wasn’t a burden. He leapt on to the wall and clamoured up it, travelling upside down across the ceiling, like a gigantic spider. ‘They won’t find me up here!’

Peter was anxious. He had never been in this situation before.

‘Four burglars are coming towards the door!’ indicated Robert.

Peter flattened himself against the wall beside the door. ‘Can’t you crawl into another room and hide?’

‘What? And miss all the action. No way!’ replied Will, stubbornly.

The door handle turned as slowly as the door opened. Peter had an idea but didn’t want Will to see him carry it out, for the boy mustn’t discover his true identity yet. It wouldn’t be fair. Peter was burgled about once a month and usually knew exactly how to deal with the intruders. But today was different because Will was there.

As soon as the first criminal entered the house, Peter took aim with the pen he was holding and jabbed it into the man’s shoulder. He pressed a button immediately and a shot of electric blue light flared from the end of the pen and the burglar dropped unconscious on the floor. As soon as the second man entered, Peter repeated the act and then there were two bodies lying on the ground.

‘What the –?’ came a whisper from outside.

The last two men entered the house holding guns, and Peter, who was used to dealing with this situation somewhat differently, was suddenly trapped as the two men aimed their guns directly at him.

Peter’s heart skipped a beat.

‘Now gentlemen,’ said Peter raising his hands, maintaining a calm impression, when inside he was panicking. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘We want the paintings!’ one of them demanded. ‘Now!’

‘Paintings?’ whispered Peter, frowning and wondering desperately how to escape this situation.

‘Yes, the paintings. We know two paintings were delivered here because we were the ones that had arranged it. We want them back!’

‘And what makes you so sure that I haven’t sold them yet?’ asked Peter.

‘Why would you have sold them when you have plenty of money?’

‘Yes, good point!’ remarked Peter, rather politely considering the two guns pointing directly at him.

Suddenly the men dashed forward and both guns were thrust hard into his chest.

‘Either you tell us or we shoot you. Either way you’ll be dead,’ threatened the man.

‘That doesn’t give me much of a choice now, does it?’ said Peter, stiffening when he heard Shanks’s bark from the kitchen.

The kitchen door swung open and Shanks ran towards Peter. One of the men turned around and shot at Shanks as he leapt into the air. The dog yelped and fell to the ground –lifeless!

Tears sprang to Will’s eyes. He was frightened. Shanks was dead! He had to do something or Peter could be next.

Summoning all his courage he swung off the ceiling and leapt towards the two men. Each foot made contact with the chest of each of the men. The force knocked them both to the ground. Peter’s eyes widened in admiration as Will landed safely beside him. But one of the men was back on his feet and aiming the gun at Will, staring in shock at the strange-looking boy. Peter dashed forward as the gun fired. He tried to block the bullet from hitting Will and cried as it struck his shoulder.

As he landed on the ground, his sunglasses fell off on to the floor. Suddenly the door under the stairs burst open and Robert was standing there with a gun.