PROFESSOR DOODY AND THE VANISHING TOAST

Nelson’s eyes snapped open. Something was moving outside his tent. A hurried sort of shuffling against the stone floor. It wasn’t the shuffling that alarmed Nelson; it was the fact that it had stopped so suddenly and he had heard a faint but urgent whisper. It was silent again. Worryingly silent. Nelson blinked quickly, his eyelids the only part of him that was awake right now. His body was way behind. He felt as if he had been dropped from a great height and landed with a splat on the air mattress. The right side of his face was smooshed into the pillow with such force that his mouth was forced wide open and his jaw was all wonky and drooling like a bulldog about to be fed. There it was again. Shuffling, this time even closer to his tent. The paraffin lamps threw just enough light onto his tent to cast shadows of the pillars, but some of those shadows were on the move. Odd little shapes moving too quickly to be identified.

Nelson took a deep breath and was about to call out when his tent suddenly shook and a snakelike shape slid across the top of it. Nelson’s eyes widened in fear. Whatever it was, it was extremely long and very slithery. If this was a snake, it was long enough to be the kind that could eat a man whole and heavy enough to make the top of the tent bulge down toward Nelson’s face. The end of “the thing” whipped against the top of the tent as it dropped to the crypt floor with a thud, leaving the whole tent quivering with relief like orange Jell-O. “Get up,” Nelson urged his body, but his body was having none of it. For the first time ever Nelson understood why people say, “I slept like a log,” and unfortunately for him, his body was still very much in log-mode. There it was again. Frantic indiscernible whispers, shuffling feet, and the scrape of something large snaking its way all around Nelson’s tent. Fear made his heart pound faster. Nelson wanted to call out to his uncle, but all he managed to utter from his dry throat was the first syllable: “Unk!” Big mistake. Whatever had been slithering and whispering clearly heard Nelson’s weak little cry, and it stopped. For a moment there was complete silence. Then the tent twitched, and from the corner of his left eye Nelson could see the entrance zipper starting to move. Now he really wished he hadn’t called out. He should have just kept quiet and hoped it would go away. Whatever the thing was, it knew he was here and it wanted to get inside the tent! The zipper rose slowly at first and then stopped abruptly. There was a low growl and the tent shook so violently that Nelson thought his heart might explode with fear. The growling became louder and louder as the tent shook and shook and shook and suddenly the tent burst open.

“Graaaaaar—Ruddy zipper!” said the enormous face of Uncle Pogo, leaning in through the tent flaps. Nelson felt his fear burst like a dam and he was suddenly flooded with relief. The log-mode his body had been in instantly lifted and he was able to roll onto his back. “Didn’t wake you up, did I?” said Uncle Pogo.

“I thought it was…” croaked Nelson, but he decided not to finish his sentence. The idea of giant snakes and strange creatures surrounding his tent had quickly switched from terrifyingly real to utterly ridiculous.

“I’m just packing up. Fancy some brekkie?” asked Uncle Pogo with a jollity that indicated he expected only a positive answer. Nelson sat up and pushed his palms into his eye sockets for a good old rub while he contemplated this question. “I don’t really like Scotch eggs, Uncle Pogo.” He yawned apologetically.

“Just as well.” Pogo chuckled. “I ate yours last night. How about some toast?”

Toast. Even the sound of the word was delicious. Nelson’s stomach sent a very clear message straight to his brain, and the message was “Give me toast!”

“I’d love some,” said Nelson, and his uncle’s enormous head ducked back out of the tent. Nelson arched his back and stretched his arms out in front of him as far as they could go, turning his palms up as if he was trying to stop something coming toward him. It felt so good to stretch. If he had been a cat he would certainly be purring right now. Nelson had never felt so happy to be awake. That really had been a mega-sleep. He knew he’d had crazy dreams—he could still see the last few fragments of them in his head—but as soon as he tried to recall them in any detail they vanished. It didn’t matter; those dreams had somehow left him feeling good. He patted his chest and felt the unmistakable bump of Celeste’s pendant.

Just outside his tent, the toast was waiting for Nelson in a silver foil parcel. Upon unwrapping it, Nelson found the bread had clearly been toasted and buttered days ago, as it was now as cold and hard as a roof tile. Nelson sighed and decided it would be best if he left it on the floor and pretended not to have noticed it.

Uncle Pogo had packed up just about everything. Rolls of plastic were stacked next to his boxy homemade electronics equipment, and the elastic ropes that had tethered the tents were lying in a pile. Those must be the snakes, thought Nelson. What a silly mistake to have made. The shadows and shuffling he had heard must have been Uncle Pogo trying to pack up without waking him. Obviously.

“Pogo!” called out a voice from across the crypt. Nelson turned to see a short man, not much taller than he was, striding toward them. He wore an enormous knitted sweater that started under his chin in a turtleneck and went all the way down to his thighs. It was striped with every color you could think of and hung loosely over a pair of tight, ripped black jeans and clompy army boots that had been painted with odd little doodles like skulls and spirals. His green-tinted hair was probably about normal length but had been pushed up into the kind of Mohawk you can make yourself with shampoo when you’re having a bath, and it was clearly a while since he had dyed it because only the tips were green. “Over here, Doody!” shouted Pogo, and the man waved back without breaking his stride. It was Nelson he met first.

“Eh, are you Pogo’s nephew?” he said, with a West Country accent and a cheeky grin full of wonky teeth.

“Uh-huh,” was all Nelson could muster in reply.

“What’s your name then?”

“Nelson.”

“I’m Professor John Doodson, but everyone apart from my nan calls me Doody,” he said, shaking Nelson firmly by the hand.

“Okay, Doody,” replied Nelson, although it felt very odd to call someone by their nickname when you’d only just met them.

“I’m from the Museum of London and I tell yer, Nelson, you’re gonna be well famous, mate,” said Doody, letting go of his hand and softly punching his shoulder, but before Nelson had time to ask why he was going to be famous, his uncle bellowed from across the crypt. “Doody! Over here!”

*   *   *

Nelson always imagined professors to look like, well, professors: long white lab coat, glasses perched on the end of a thin nose, and really hairy eyebrows. He never imagined a professor could look as colorful as Doody, but after five minutes of listening to him talk about the history of the building and the significance of the room they had discovered last night, there was no doubt Doody was as smart as a fox and didn’t just know everything about the history of London, he loved it too.

“He was on a roll, that Christopher Wren. There he was, in the middle of building this massive cathedral, and still he’s got a million ideas buzzin’ around in his head like bees, and I reckon this room you found was his little secret place where he could test all his ideas out,” said Doody, helping Pogo to roll up his cables. “There’s stuff in there, under those sheets, that I’ve never seen before. Amazing-looking things, but I’ve got absolutely no idea what they do. I’m hoping old Mr. Wren wrote down what he was doing in some book or something, ’cause otherwise we’re gonna be playing the weirdest guessing game ever. Although, chances of anything still being readable after three hundred years in that room is pretty unlikely.” Doody’s phone rang with the fastest techno you have ever heard, and for a few beats he danced to the music before answering the call. “Y’allo, Doody speaking,” he said, and walked off to a corner of the crypt.

“You know who he is?” asked Pogo, with a nod of his head toward Doody.

“He said he was a professor at the Museum of London,” replied Nelson.

“No, before all of that. Blimey, I suppose you’re too young to remember. Well, Doody was not always a professor. Back in the nineties he was in that techno band Messiaz. They were massive. You must have heard ‘Peace Out’?” Nelson shook his head. “Really? I’ve downloaded his greatest hits into my leg. I’ll play them for you later. Anyway,” he continued as he pulled the drawstring closed on his sleeping bag and loaded it into a plastic crate with the rest of the gear, “Doody was the keyboard player. He was a nutcase. Used to do this crazy dance and end up diving into the crowd. Bonkers.” Pogo laughed at the memory of Doody performing. “The band split up years ago, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at him, would you? I mean, he looks as if he’s just about to go onstage.” Pogo had now reduced their entire camp into three plastic crates and two rolls of plastic sheeting. “I used to have all his records—must get him to sign ’em. You know, what you and I found is a pretty big deal, Nelson. I mean, who knew that fixing a leak would lead to this, eh?”

Doody finished his call by saying, “Laters, potaters!” in a very loud voice, and marched over to Nelson and Pogo. “The TV news guys are already on their way. Better smarten yourselves up, like. Yer gonna be famous, Nelson.”

Nelson didn’t know what to say. He knew he was supposed to feel excited about what Doody was saying, but he didn’t.

Pogo took a look at his nephew and responded on his behalf. “Listen, Doody, that might not be a good idea right now, him being on the news, I mean,” said Pogo with a carefulness Nelson hadn’t heard from him before. Doody listened as Pogo explained about Celeste’s disappearance and how Pogo was Nelson’s guardian until the family came home.

Doody frowned and shook his head. “You’re a brave little bloke,” he said. “And when all this with your sister is sorted out, I am personally gonna make sure that you, and not this great plum”— he pointed at Uncle Pogo—“are recognized as the genius who found Sir Christopher Wren’s secret laboratory. All right?”

Nelson nodded and smiled. Pogo and Doody were standing next to each other and looking at him like proud parents.

“Good,” said Doody. “That’ll impress yer mates, won’t it?”

“Yep,” said Nelson, although his brain was quick to remind him he had no mates to impress.

Uncle Pogo took one last look around the crypt and then went past Nelson to pick something off the floor. It was the foil package that had contained a slice of toast, only now it was completely empty and ripped to shreds.

“Ah, glad to see you finally ate something,” said Uncle Pogo, and scrunched the wrapper into his overalls pocket. They all began to walk out carrying the crates and plastic, but Nelson was looking all around the crypt.

“Where’s the toast?” he asked as if he was talking to a magician who had just tricked him, but Uncle Pogo merely patted Nelson’s stomach and said, “On its way to your guts by now, I imagine. Better get a wiggle on.” And the three of them began the long journey up from the crypt.

As Nelson climbed the stairs with his enormous backpack pulling at his shoulders and a large roll of plastic sheeting under each arm, he took one last look around. The black stone tomb, the tiled floor, and the bone-colored columns stood as they had stood for hundreds of years. It could have been a rat, he thought. There had been all those dead ones in the room he’d discovered last night. It was the logical explanation for the toast going missing, but it didn’t settle Nelson’s mind.