The Boy in the Box
And the eye in the sky
The helicopters started around ten at night and, rather than just passing over the town as usual, seemed to be moving in a grid pattern, searchlights scanning the top of the trees in the nearby woods.
Too cold outside for them to be tracking down an illegal rave. The wind was whistling around the eaves and, allied to the incessant thrashing of the chopper blades, the weather served to increase my paranoia. How quickly a sensible lockdown strategy was turning into a police state. I was glad the family had made it to the holiday home in warmer climes and less oppressive regulation.
I spoke with them daily, but had to stay behind to keep the book business ticking over. The one good thing about the lockdown was the boom in online sales. This was better than Christmas and we couldn’t afford to miss out.
At three in the morning I got a partial answer to the chopper mystery, with a hammering on the front door. A team of six militarised police, looking like they were about to break in if I didn’t answer sharpish. Had I seen anything or anyone in the road or the back garden? I bit my tongue rather than point out that they had woken me up, and shook my head. If I saw any movement on my property I was to ring 999 and on no account attempt to engage with whoever was out there.
The danger was implied rather than stated, but I remembered a few years back there was an actual murderer on the loose in these same streets and they could only rustle up a half-hearted drive past in a patrol car. What horror could merit this display of force and weaponry?
I knew the answer in my heart long before I found out anything for certain.
First, I have a little bit of a back-story in political agitation and I know that the state never reacts more violently than when its secrets are about to be disclosed. I was as sure as could be that whoever was on the run presented no physical danger to the populace, but could likely cause severe inconvenience or embarrassment to the authorities.
Second, the helicopters’ focus on Hatfield forest had me pulling up photos that I had taken while out for a hike. A high fence topped off with barbed wire barred the way to what the sign proclaimed to be a Ministry of Agriculture Research Centre.
The security measures were over the top, there is no such Ministry and, when I returned home, the centre didn’t feature in any Ordnance Survey map of the area.
Since we live at least fifty miles from the nearest prison I had a pretty good idea where the runner was escaping from.
I would have settled for a good conspiracy theory and soon forgot all about it, but the next morning I could see that my daughter’s bicycle had been carefully removed from the plastic storage box in the garden and was leaning up against the garage. I gently lifted the box lid and found Nemo curled up in a frightened ball in the corner.
Just to be clear, I never did get a name out of him. Nemo is just my nod at the vestiges of a classical education. My first impulse was to laugh, remembering the armed batallions who had been searching for this poor scrap of humanity.
This was quickly replaced by concern for his wellbeing. Below his jumpsuit I could see translucent skin barely covering protruding bones. I went for a blanket to wrap him and managed to get him indoors discreetly to sit at the kitchen table. He was offered free rein in the fridge, but all he would take was a drink of water.
He didn’t seem to understand what I was saying and he never ventured a word. Communication was impossible, until he started to mime drawing actions, and I brought him pencil and paper.
He drew two items, with such precision and skill that they left no doubt as to their meaning. A generic map, with height contours, rivers and landmarks, and a wristwatch. I tried to make sense of the map, but then tumbled to his meaning and brought him a large-scale real map of the area. And a watch.
He used his pencil to draw a cross on the map, around 20 miles from where we sat, and he set the watch to precisely 8pm. That was clearly his rendezvous or pickup point and time. Once he was sure that I understood he seemed to relax and focus on his water.
On a whim, I took out my phone and showed him a photo of the boundary of the “research establishment”. He shrank back in horror again, just as I’d first found him, so I closed the phone, made reassuring noises and pointed over and over at the map and watch. Whatever it took, I would get him to where he needed to be at the appointed time.
The family car has an oversized false bottom in the boot, under which is stored the spare tyre, jack and toolkit, none of which I had ever even seen before. Removing them all, there was just about space for him to squeeze in. Once the floor was back in place I loaded up all of the sacks of parcels which I had to take that day to the Post Office. As we drove out towards town, the usual police checkpoint was supplemented by more of the military chaps I had seen the night before. But the local copper vouched for me, as I made that same run on a daily basis, and we weren’t stopped again before reaching the crossroads Nemo had marked on the map.
This place was in the middle of a barren heath, despite being only a few miles from urban areas. And as a result of the lockdown not a car went by in the hours we were waiting for the meeting time.
With a quarter of an hour to go, Nemo went and sat on an ancient milestone at the crossroads. He was making it hard for me to choose the most satisfying explanation.
We have all seen Stranger Things, and I was alert throughout the day for any sign of paranormal tricks, but drew a complete blank. It was still possible that he was a “special” child being studied in the centre, and was escaping to meet with others of his kind.
If he was a time traveller, the milestone was a masterstroke, since it had been there for a hundred years and would probably survive another hundred, allowing some precision of co-ordinates in his retrieval.
On the other hand, I wasn’t ruling out Nemo being an alien visitor, in which case the heath behind the crossroads was the perfect landing spot.
But I was never going to find out. He put one hand onto his chest and then moved it across to my chest, in what I took to be a sign of gratitude. Then he gestured, without any possibility of misinterpretation, that I should leave.
I briefly considered parking out of sight and satisfying my curiosity about what became of him, but in the end I decided that my luck had held up remarkably well in my anti-establishment antics up to this point, and headed home without incident.
Micro-rebellions are becoming my speciality lately.
Many thanks for reading!
Who’d have thought it? Lockdown paranoia meets fiction.
More of each below.
