Chapter
2
Focus-pocus,
show up
Tommy panicked. How was he going to
return home and tell their parents that Peter had disappeared? Mr. and Mrs.
Sunshine would never forgive him for having left his younger brother go out
alone at night.
The boy loved Peter so much that
when he was ten and his brother five, he nearly lost his life to save him.
They were playing in the tree house
that they built with their father in the branches of the cherry tree in the
yard. Of course, Mr. Sunshine did most things himself - he did not want the
children to get hurt in any way, but he allowed them to hold the hammer and
nails and carry the boxes of wood varnish. He was a good man and wanted to
develop in his children a sense of self-assurance and usefulness, so he kept
telling them what a great job they had done and in the end the boys were left
with the impression that they themselves had cut the boards and hammered the
nails –they felt proud of their work and when it was finished, with the
confidence of creators, they started to invite friends over in the house in the
branches of the cherry tree.
A wooden staircase winding around
the tree trunk took them upstairs.
It was nice on the top –you could
see the whole yard and neighborhood in front of you and a constant fragrance of
something green was oozing from the adjoining trees. When the cherry tree was
in bloom, the white blossoms were like snowflakes, which was something the boys
had never seen - in Sunnytown winter never came. When the cherries ripened, the
delicious fruits were a favorite snack for the two boys (they loved them even
better than the lollipops) and it was more often on Peter’s rather than Tommy’s
shirt that one could see sticky reddish spots because he ate the cherries in
his own way –clenching his teeth and constantly spraying around the cherry
juice, leaving sticky marks also on the branches, the walls of the tree house,
his own shirt and Tommy’s shirt, who did not blame him at all - he used to
laugh, ruffling the hair of his brother and challenging him in a contest of who
would eat more cherries...
One day, the house up the cherry
tree, was visited also by the neighborhood bully, who was otherwise a nice boy
really, but he so much loved to make mischief and enjoy the consequences that
everyone in that neighborhood and in a few adjacent neighborhoods had given up
any effort to change him because Sven often "toured" there with his
mischief, too.
Sven was older than the Sunshine
brothers - 13 years old, and had already made several semi-successful
attempts to become a man. He was lightinghand-rolled cigarettes that were not
very well made because Sven was a self-taught smoker and was holding his
cigarette in a somewhat weird and funny way - with the tip of the thumb and
forefinger of his right hand, and he was acting adult in front of the kids in
the neighborhood, explaining them how cool it was to smoke.
Peter and Tommy had no desire to
try smoking, but they admired Sven because they saw in him the grown-up boy,
almost a man, that they wanted to become as quickly as possible. Both were very
fond of their father - Mr. Sunshine, copying his actions and hoping that one
day, the sooner the better, they would turn into such great men like he was…
Sven was smoking that afternoon in
the tree house of the Sunshine brothers and was showing them how to blow smoke
in different ways and make all kinds of figures in the air. But it was not
always working out–he was often coughing, and the figures were quite distorted,
yet Tommy and Peter enjoyed watching him. Therefore, none of the three
noticedthat Sven’s previous cigarette was not well extinguished and had started
to smolder on the floor of the tree house –up on the cherry tree.
The fire flared up suddenly.
Sven, who was bigger and stronger,
was able to quickly jump up and get down from the tree. Tommy and Peter,
worried more about the house than about their own lives, tried to put out the
fire, stripping down their shirts and beginning to brandish them against the
flames. They looked like two little knights fighting with a fierymonster... But
the situation was not imaginary at all - the flames were real and they were
menacingly close to the children.
Tommy realized that the house could
not be saved and called out to Peter that they should be getting away from
there. In a typically childish manner, Peter would not believe they could so easily
lose their wooden castle, and stubbornly kept swinging his shirt against the
fire, even though the shirt was already pretty burnt and smoked. Tommy looked
down and saw the flames creeping also along the wooden staircase that led to
the rescue of the green meadow. There was no way down. He looked again and
quickly determined the height, decided there was nothing else to do, hugged his
brother and jumped from the cherry tree.
Both survived, but Tommy broke his
left arm with which he had tried to soften the fall - with his right arm he was
holding Peter firmly embraced.
Peter was unscathed.
Mr. and Mrs. Sunshine were not at
home that afternoon.
The neighbor, Mrs. Gertruda Ingemar,
had seen the fire and had immediately phoned the fire brigade. When the car
came, however, there was nothing left to save from the wooden house on top the
cherry tree, and the boys were sitting on the porch – holding tight to each
other and blackened all over by the smoke.
Seeing what was happening to the
boys, Mrs.Gertruda had called their mother, too. The old woman was amazed,
however, how confident Tommy was and what a strange smile he had on his face,
though his arm hung limp and it was clear that he was in great pain, and also
at how fragile Peter looked, who at this point could only find peace in the
arms of his elder brother. It was actually a semi-embrace because Tommy was
cradling him with his right arm only, which seemed glued to Peter, continuing
thus to protect his younger brother from the wounds that the outside world
could inflict on him.
The nurse who came with the
ambulance was also surprised by the fact that Tommy's arm was like glued to
Peter and she had to put a lot of effort to tear the brothers apart from each
other and offer first aid to Tommy over his broken left arm.
After this incident it would be
mild to say that Peter was grateful to his brother.
Peter became as if glued to Tommy
–he followed him around on his heels, trying to compensate for the difference
of five years between them, often showing maturity unusual for his age, he was
helping Tommy at home when they laid and cleared the table, when they had to
water the garden flowers or when Mr. Sunshine was preparing for the children of
the town a huge amount of sugar cockerels for the holidays and the two of them
arranged the colorful lollipops in a gift basket at the entrance of the
confectionary before opening the shop for their peers impatiently queuing
outside. Some children rightly envied them - Tommy and Peter always had
delicious sugar cockerels at hand, which they could lick and crunch at anytime.
Tommy’s left hand quickly
recovered.
Mrs. Sunshine was so upset by what
had happened that for several weeks she ditched her job as chief cashier in the
town bank and stayed home, but in front of the boys she betrayed no trace of
having cried, for several nights in a row, over Mr. Sunshine’s shoulder,
uttering out loud the terrible things about what could have happened if the
children were burned in the fire, or if both had been seriously hurt in the
jump from the tree. Elena Sunshine could not imagine life without her boys. And
the thought of some new trouble befalling them was making her not just
despondent but needlessly anxious–she was constantly on the alert, checking
whether she had forgotten the stove on or the iron on the ironing table, wiping
the floor several times per day, so that it would not be slippery, she even
checked the closet in the boys' room in case she had hidden there some time ago
any sharp objects which the children could lay their hands on...
Mrs. Sunshine was a believer. She
lit candles in the temple and in front of the icon in their home, she eagerly
pleaded with God to protect her boys, but sometimes she was afraid she was
actually committing a sin, by imagining all sorts of bad things that could
happen to them and by living in constant fear that the fate of every person is
predetermined and what is destined cannot be avoided.
While praying for her children’s
well-being, Elena Sunshine did not have even the slightest presentiment of what
fate had in store for Tommy and Peter. And this was to happen pretty soon.
On the night of the full moon, when
some obscure black shadow fell upon the moon and clouds slid to Sunnytown,
Peter vanished, sucked by the magical chest of the Black man who had settled
briefly in the outskirts of the town at the foot of the mountain. Tommy saw
nothing of what happened to his brother, but immediately realized that Peter
had been befallen by something very bad. Throughout the night and the following
days, the Dalmatian Jack could not find any peace, feeling guilty he was not
able to find a way to warn the Sunshine brothers of the black shadow and of the
Black man, but what can you do - dogs cannot speak...
Mr. Sunshine decided that the dog
was simply grief-stricken over the missing Peter and it did not even occur to
him that Jack might know more than a dog would typically know about mysterious
disappearances and magical chests...
*
* *
Jack had scented the sinister force
of the chest even outside and before Peter was sucked into the trap of the
magic of the Black man, for a moment the Dalmatian had tried to push the boy
away, but the power of the chest was much stronger than the dog’s force and the
lid quickly snapped shut over the younger of the Sunshine brothers.
At first, Peter did not feel a
thing, then he realized that he was collapsing into something so black and dark
that he could feel the darkness sticking to his bare knees and elbows. The fall
was long. But never once did he hit a sharp edge or bump on the walls of the
black tunnel. Inside, there was absolute silence. It was so quiet that he could
hear his heart pounding at an accelerated pace. Then at the end of the tunnel,
a light appeared, and continuing to fall, Peter wondered if what he saw was a
candle flame or a fire of hell...
The black tunnel ended abruptly.
But instead of falling somewhere and hitting the bottom of the black tube, the
boy suddenly flew out of the hole and landed softly in a meadow.
He did not realize at first that
this was a meadow. In the first seconds of "falling out" of the
tunnel, Peter was trying to understand how come, in that house, he was sucked
by the chest and began to fall down into something awfully black, and here he
suddenly came out of this "thing" like the cork of a champagne
bottle–as though at one end of the globe he had fallen, and just at the other
end of the same globe he had popped out. Why did he hit the bottom of the
tunnel but instead he had the feeling of being "shot" upon this
strange meadow?
It was strange because it was a
meadow like any other meadow, yet the grass was not green but gray. And it both
looked fresh, as far as gray can be fresh, yet it looked as if being
well-trodden.
The meadow was at the foot of a
high and steep, also gray mountain. The higher they climbed its slopes,
however, the blacker they became. Gray was turning into raven black, which
eventually merged with the darkness hanging over the mountain. Unlike
Sunnytown, apparently there was no sun here.
On top of the mountain, in the
darkness of the black clouds, soared an imposing black castle. The main tower
could not be seen, lost somewhere high above in the clouds, the gloom, the
blackness...
Black trees surrounded the small
meadow. Their branches were like burned and the leaves looked like petrified
coals. There were no birds. The Black forest looked more like a cemetery than a
forest. Only from the black hole in the ground from where Peter had popped out,
some inexplicable warm breeze was blowing.
Suddenly out of the black hole fell
a lonely robin, apparently having come from the other end of the earth - from
Sunnytown, and Peter wondered how the little bird had got into that house and
then into the chest of the Black man. He took the robin in his hands, stroking
its feathers, and hid it in his bosom.
Peter did not have much time to
wonder how the bird had fallen through the tunnel behind him. From the watch-towers
of the black castle came such an ominous sound of clarions, if these were
clarions at all, that Peter winced and covered the bird even better in his
bosom.
A black shadow began to descend
over the Black mountain. The Black man was flying through the air, as if there
was nothing unusual in this, and was heading straight to Peter and the robin...
*
* *
In Sunnytown Tommy could not sleep.
He was having nightmares for the
fourth night in a row. In his dreams, Tommy could hear Peter calling to him: "Tommy,
help me"... He was straining to detect where the voice of his brother
came from, seeking his face in the darkness of his sleep and being unable to
decipher it, he fingered the dungeon without loathing that he might put his
finger on a repulsive creature and without fear that he might get dirty in the
blackness of the nightmare.
He woke up covered with sweat and
in despair.
The following night Tommy again saw
his brother in his dream, but this time there was a picture in the dream –he
saw like on a movie screen what had happened to Peter at the abandoned house on
the outskirts of the town, he felt the coldness crossing Peter’s face when he
saw the Black man wrapping himself up in his black cloak, he felt the fear of
Tommy who was sucked into the magical chest and very tangibly felt some
disastrous doom, which seemed to have branded his brother from the moment the
lid of the chest had snapped over his head...
At the end of the dream he again
heard the same cry for help.
"Tommy, help me"...
It was two after midnight. Tommy
threw back the covers, got up and stared at the window. The darkness outside
was more dense and sticky than the darkness in the room. For the first time he
felt safer at home. For the first time he felt he did not want to go out.
But he had to leave.
He had to look for his brother in
the dark.
With a little flashlight in hand,
Tommy approached the house where Peter had disappeared. He went inside without
fear, but also without hope.
The rooms were still empty. There
was no trace of the Black man and his chest. The cobwebs on the ceiling had
multiplied.
Tommy felt cold as soon as he
entered the house. As if it was not an ordinary house but a freezer. The
residents of Sunnytown had never felt any coldness, at least as the most
elderly of them could recall. At least over the last 100 years. The image of a
freezer full of corpses ran madly through Tommy’s head and he shook it off in
panic. He did not want to think of his brother as dead. He believed that Peter
was still alive and, if faced with mortal danger only he, Tommy, could save
him. Just as he had then rescued him from the burning house on top the cherry
tree.
Tommy did not want to take Jack
with him that night, but the dog had not obeyed and had managed to get away
from the home of the Sunshines, although Tommy shut him in the kitchen to stop
him from following in his footsteps. The Dalmatian rushed into the house of the
black man as the shadow of darkness and at first startled Tommy, but the
well-intentioned dog growl quickly helped him get track of what was happening.
The boy stroked the dog's head and said to himself that Jack might actually be
useful to him –he might smell something...
The dog went around the house,
sniffing with his nostrils every corner, surrounding only a brighter spot on
the floor –the place of the magical chest of the black man that had engulfed
Peter. After having once fainted in the same place, Jack was now more cautious
and stayed away from the pale rectangle on the floor, which seemed to have
burned edges, but Tommy’s flashlight was not strong enough for a better view.
Tommy stood as if frozen in the
middle of the empty room, his thoughts were chasing each other in the search
for any trace of his missing brother. The feeling of being inside a freezer was
enhanced by staying in one place. He felt as if his feet would stick to the
floor and if the dog pushed him with his muzzle, he would crack like an ice
sculpture...
The dog also stopped still, yet not
absorbed in his thoughts as Tommy was, but because he felt something bad
approaching.
The black power of the magical
chest made Jack produce a shrill howl, which not only took Tommy out of his
stupor, but echoed as far as the center of Sunnytown.
Its residents, who were depressed
by the black clouds hanging over the city for a week, also could not sleep well
and their concern about the future was the most common topic of conversation in
Mr. McCool’s pub. Women imagined the horror of a day when the sun would never
rise above Sunnytown again and talked about this until late at night with their
friends over the phone, while the men were drinking their beers slowly, and
although it was long past midnight, they kept drinking at small sips, not
knowing whether they would be able to drink there tomorrow, as well.
Jack’s howlso startled some of them
that they choked, and Mr. McCool dropped the mug he was wiping and it shattered
into dozens of pieces.
Jack’s howldrove Tommy from the
stupor just in time for them both to see how the magical chest of the Black man
again materialized in the room.
The mysterious object appeared out
of nowhere and scared the dog who immediately ran outside and Tommy was gripped
by both fear and the desire to lift the lid and see if his brother was inside,
fighting with such furious force in his heart and mind that he felt his head
would almost explode and his heart would burst out.
"Stop!", Tommy
said to himself, trying to contain his overwhelming feelings. Action was
needed.
The boy thought that in order to be
able to bring his brother back home, he must apply the methods of the Black
man. So he took out of his pocket a stained pen that had left an ink mark on
the pocket, grabbed it with the fingers of his right hand and waved it in the
air. He looked like a little conjurer who was about to unravel the secrets of
the magician’s art.
Tommy swung the pen to the chest as
if it were a magic wand.
Nothing happened.
He swung again and whispered those
supposedly magic words in which he had really no belief: "Hocus-pocus-preparatus!"
Again, nothing happened.
Tommy finally got angry, threw away
the magic wand, which was just an ordinary pen,and touched the lid, knowing
immediately that this was all he had to do–he lifted the lid which offered no
resistance and opened the chest.
The chest was empty.
And Tommy was just on the verge of
kicking it in anger, when he heard a tweet that surprised him no less than the
magical appearance of the chest in the room. He turned on the flashlight and
saw in one corner two robins, frightened and seeking their mother...
*
* *
At the other end of the Earth, at
the foot of the Black mountain, Peter held the robin buried in his bosom,
looking boldly at the Black man who flew through the air, as if there was
nothing unusual, and floated toward him.
превод: Росица Петкова
