20

We end up sleeping in a church and I learn facts about pigs and shrimp

Fueled by just over ten chocolate amphibians each and on aching bowed legs due to three cases of serious saddle-bottom, Ben and I pushed the bikes through a field of sheep while Charlie kept trying to spot Sheila. Ben thought he had seen a building. After we stood on top of a gate for a better look, Charlie and I decided Ben might be right. We hoped that a building might mean people, or a phone, or a change of clothes at least.

In reality the building meant pews, a font, and an organ. We’d found a church in the middle of a field in the middle of nowhere.

“Three Saints Church,” Charlie read aloud.

The clock on the steeple told us it was five thirty. The day was disappearing, we were tired and seriously saddle-sore, so, like all good leaders, I made a decision. “Let’s see if we can stay here for the night. Get some rest and then start out again in the morning. What do you think?” I was worried about how they might react. After all, I was asking them to spend another night away from home and on the run from the Gaffer.

Charlie hugged me. He did not smell good, but I was so pleased he was okay with everything that I didn’t mention it and just breathed through my mouth.

“Fred, that sounds like a fantastic idea. My butt and that bike have fallen out big time.”

“I’m up for a rest,” Ben said and pushed the door open.

I followed him inside and called out, “Hello?” and crossed my fingers that there would be no answer.

My finger-crossing worked—the place was deserted. I felt the hairs on the back of my arms prickle under my Lycra. “It’s cold in here.”

“It is a little chilly,” Ben said, wrapping his cape around him. I wished I hadn’t lost my cool and stomped mine into the dirt.

I found a light switch and flicked it on. “Let’s take a look around.”

At the back of the church, near the door where we had come in, was a table covered in a white cloth. On it was a big leather-bound book that told the story of Three Saints Church.

I ran my finger along the writing. It was all twirly like Grams’s. “Says here Three Saints Church was built in 1766 in honor of three Welsh saints, Cian, Dynod, and Elvis—”

“Let me have a look.” Ben pushed in next to me. “There’s no way there was a Saint Elvis.”

I shoved him out of the way. “Whoever wrote this seemed to think there was. Now listen—Saint Cian was made a saint because he spoke nothing but the Lord’s words, day and night, for thirty years.”

“Bet he was popular,” Charlie said as he sat down in the last pew.

“Saint Dynod, well, he was a man of ample proportions. He was made a saint because he carried the villagers of Llampha to safety during the great flood.”

Charlie rested his chin on the back of the pew. “And Saint Elvis? What did he do?”

I skim-read Elvis’s entry because it was a huge passage that went on about the earth and soil and fertilization and seeds. “Basically, he was good at gardening.”

Charlie scoffed. “You can be a saint for being good at gardening?”

“Apparently so.”

“Why isn’t Mr. Bloom from that gardening show one then?”

“Well, maybe he will be when he’s dead,” Ben said.

I turned the page. “Hey, listen to this. The bodies of the Three Saints went missing from the crypt and were never found. When the bones were here, this church used to be a place of pilgrimage.”

“What’s ‘pilgrimage’ again?” Charlie asked.

I wasn’t sure, but I don’t like not knowing an answer, so I made an educated guess. “Something that pilgrims do?”

Charlie frowned. “Those tiny sardines?”

Ben laughed. “No, those are pilchards. Pilgrimage is when people go on a religious vacation. Like a resort but with more praying.”

“Exactly,” I said and continued reading. “When the Saints disappeared in the 1900s, so did the pilgrims. And the church kind of got forgotten about. That’s sad.”

“Poor church,” Charlie said, rubbing his pew.

Ben set off down the central aisle. “Come on, let’s go explore before Charlie forms too close a relationship with the furniture.”

At the far end was a table with a cross on it and a statue of Jesus. There were some steps up to the pulpit—that’s the place where the minister stands to talk at the congregation—and two rows of pews where the choir would sit. Charlie walked straight up the steps.

“What are you doing?” I said. “Only special people are allowed up there.”

Charlie grinned. “If Spiderman isn’t special, I don’t know who is.”

“No, seriously, don’t you have to be blessed by a priest or by God to be in that part of the church?”

“What do you think’s going to happen?”

“You could be smited.”

“What’s that?”

I wasn’t one hundred percent certain but said, “When God strikes you down.”

“With what?”

“I dunno, something from the sky, like a lightning bolt.”

Out of nowhere a really loud, deep sound filled the church and I thought we might be getting a firsthand example of what smiting was.

Charlie leaped down the steps and grabbed me. I tried to dodge out of the way—if he was being smited for trespassing on holy ground I didn’t want him dangling off me. But I was too slow, and he ended up clinging onto my back like a baby chimpanzee. I spun around furiously to try and get him off. I only stopped spinning when I heard Ben laughing.

“Look at you two!”

And then another sound reverberated through the church. Different this time—almost jolly. Definitely familiar.

Ben was sitting at the church organ, playing his fourth year piano piece, “The Entertainer.”

I peeled Charlie off me. “Ben, cut it out, someone will hear!”

“Chill out, Fred. Who’s going to complain—a load of sheep? There’s no one around for miles.” He switched to “Chopsticks” and flashed me his scrunchy-face smile. Which really wound me up.

“Just quit messing around. And it’s a flock, fluff-for-brains.”

“What?”

“It’s a flock of sheep. Not a load.”

“Whatever, Bo Peep.” He wagged his head from side to side and then said, “It’s a flock,” in this high-pitched voice that was supposed to sound like mine but didn’t.

He hammered the keys harder and shouted over to Charlie, “Two parts?”

And then there were two of them banging away. When Charlie said, “Again from the top,” I got mad and left them to it. While they messed around, I was going to be useful and explore the church.

Halfway through a very clunky version of “Old MacDonald” I found a door that led into a little room. It was probably where the priest or minister went to do his private praying. Inside was a desk, a closet, and a cabinet. After a thorough search I had found the following items:

1.A big box of communion wafers with a best-before date of August 1998

2.A pen with Jesus is all-write by me on the side

3.A box of matches

4.A massive candle

5.Twelve white robe things choirboys wear, which I have since learned are called cassocks.

I headed back into the main part of the church just as Ben and Charlie were claiming there was a pterodactyl on Old MacDonald’s farm. I was pretty pleased with my hoard.

“Look what I’ve got,” I shouted over “a rooooar-rooooar there.” “New clothes.” I held up three white robes. “While you two have been playing, I’ve been doing something useful.”

Charlie said, “You found some choirboys and stripped them?”

I sighed. “No. These robes were hanging up in a closet. Brilliant, huh?”

Ben didn’t look very impressed. “You want us to wear those?”

“Yes, I want us to wear those. We can’t risk the superhero costumes any longer. What if the Gaffer is looking for us?”

“Yeah but—”

“And I’m sorry, Charlie, but you stink.” It was a bit harsh, but it was true.

“You don’t exactly smell like Febreze either, dude.”

“So let’s change.”

I looked at them. It was so obvious that they knew I was right.

“Fine.” Ben pulled off the top half of his Batman outfit. “We should wash first.”

I had already thought of this but there was a problem. “I found a toilet and a sink at the back but when you turn on the faucet it makes a horrible groaning noise and this nasty brown water rushes out.”

“What about the font?” Ben said.

I wasn’t sure about that idea. “Holy water—can we use it? Isn’t that kind of powerful?”

“What do you think is going to happen? That you’ll sprout wings?”

“I don’t know how these religious things work,” I said.

The font was the most impressive part of the church. There was a plaque that said its water was pumped from a holy spring. That had to be top-grade holy water. But what I liked most was the statue of the Virgin Mary that rose from the base. Even though she was carved from stone, she had a kind face. She didn’t look like the sort who would mind us using the water to wash our armpits.

It felt good to peel off our costumes. Mine had gone crinkly in places. When I put on the cassock it felt like I was wearing a petal.

I twirled around. “Perfect—loose, comfortable, and yet still provides enough warmth.”

Ben only grunted. It wouldn’t have hurt him to show a little gratitude.

After we’d finished the rest of the Freddo Frogs and the communion wafers (which tasted like flying saucers without the flying bit), Charlie went to use the facilities. That’s a polite way of saying he needed to do a number two. Ben and I popped outside for a pee, which is trickier than you think in a cassock. The night sky was even more amazing than it had been in Barry. I pointed out the Milky Way. You can only see it in dark places. There’s too much light pollution in big cities, but in that churchyard in South Wales, we had an awesome view.

“Did you know that two million years ago, early man would have seen the light from a supermassive black hole in the Milky Way,” I said.

“What is a black hole?” Ben asked.

“It’s what left when a big star explodes. It sort of collapses in on itself and the gravity inside is mega and it becomes super powerful and sucks stuff into it.” I know this because for my tenth birthday Dad gave me a book called The Night Sky: 500 Amazing Facts. In the front he’d written, Amazing facts for my amazing son.

“The more I look, the more stars I see,” Ben said.

“Makes you feel small and insignificant, doesn’t it—all those stars, all that sky?”

“Don’t need to look at the stars to feel like that,” Ben said in a very small voice.

We went back inside, and while we waited for Charlie to finish doing his business, we took all the pew cushions into the little room and made this huge bed for us to sleep on. We turned out the lights and lit the big candle. Ben checked where the fire extinguisher was kept in case we experienced another incident like that on the boat.

I lay down and covered myself with one of the spare cassocks. I stretched back and closed my eyes. “This is actually pretty comfortable.”

“Better than my bed at home.” Ben commando-rolled next to me. “And the bonus is that there’s no Becky.”

“Is she really that bad?”

Ben didn’t answer to start with.

I opened one eye and watched his chest expand upward as he did this great big sigh.

“My dad doesn’t notice me when she’s around.”

“You should talk to him about it. Let him know how you feel.”

“It’s not like I haven’t tried. He makes all these promises about spending time together—just us—but it never happens.”

“Have you tried talking to Becky about it?”

“Are you kidding? She’s the problem.”

“If she’s the problem then maybe she’s the solution too.”

Ben propped himself up on his elbow and studied my face. “Fred, are you suggesting . . . because I have this plan . . . to get rid of—”

At that moment, I was fairly certain Ben was about to admit to plotting to kill Becky. “No, Ben! No! Murder is not the answer.”

He picked up a pew cushion and bashed me around the head with it. My eyes rattled like a pea on a spoon. Those things are much heavier than you realize.

“I don’t want to kill Becky, doofus.”

“That’s good to hear. But if you change your mind you could definitely use one of these cushions to whack her with. They’re like bricks.”

“I was thinking of a way to get rid of Dad’s money. I’m sure that’s all she’s interested in. When the money’s gone, she’ll follow.”

It seemed like sound enough reasoning.

“I can help you out with that if you want. I don’t mind spending all your dad’s cash. Think of it as a thank you for coming with me to find Alan Froggley.”

“You thought about what you’re going to say to him when we find him?”

“A little . . . A lot . . . Oh, I don’t know. Maybe something like, ‘Nice to meet you, I’m your son, Freddie’?”

“Are you worried how your other dad is going to feel? He’s a good guy, Mom says.”

“I am massively worried about how my dad’s going to feel. I don’t want to upset him. He is a good dad—the best. And I’m not trying to replace him or anything like that.”

“So why then?”

It was hard to put into words. “I don’t know anyone I’m related to. Not one person. If something happens to Dad, and chances are it will, I’m on my own. I can’t let that happen. I need more people. I need more family.”

“Nothing’s going to happen to your dad.”

“You can’t know that. People die, Ben. They die all the time.” It was a gloomy thing to say but it was the truth. I clenched my teeth together and tried to ignore the supermassive hole that was opening up inside me. I didn’t want to think about dying. Or dead people. Like Grams. Or Mom. I had to focus on finding Alan.

We sat in silence for a while.

And then Ben said, “Did you know it is a genuine fact that it is physically impossible for a pig to look up into the sky.”

I turned to him and said, “What?”

“I read it on a yogurt container once.” He looked over at the window. “Imagine never seeing the stars and then being slapped between some bread, lettuce, and tomato.”

It came out of nowhere, so I said, “What?” again.

“No matter how bad things get at least we’re not pigs. At least we can look up and see the stars.”

I was completely confused but I heard myself saying, “Yeah, at least we’re not pigs.”

“I don’t remember many facts—not like you. But that one kind of stuck with me. Thought you might like it to add to your collection.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

I don’t know whether it was because Ben’s fact had filled up a bit of the black hole inside me . . . Or maybe it was just because he was there . . . Or maybe I was just happy I wasn’t a pig . . . But whatever it was, I didn’t feel so hollow anymore.

And then he said, “Actually, I’ve thought of another. Did you know a shrimp’s heart is in its head?”

I laughed. “Really?” This was more brand-new information.

“Crazy, isn’t it?”

“Where are you getting all these from?”

“It was a four-pack of yogurt. Don’t remember the other two facts though. Was kind of blown away by the pig thing.”

They sounded like excellent yogurt containers. I made a mental note to put them on the shopping list when I got back home. I was about to ask the brand when Charlie burst into the room. He was drenched.

“Who said yogurt? I’m starving.”

He’d been gone so long I’d kind of forgotten about him. “Everything alright, Charlie?”

Ben snickered. “Your cassock’s gone a bit see-through. I can see your nipples.”

Charlie wrapped his arms around himself and blew a clump of damp hair out of his face. “No, Fred. Everything is not alright. Besides my deep soul-sapping hunger, I’ve had a slight situation in the toilet.”

This was not good. Charlie had a situation in the toilet in third year. The boys had to use the girls’ bathroom for the rest of the day until Dyno-Rod Drain Services arrived.

“It was probably those pear-and-potato turnovers. They were really heavy. Could sink a battleship. It was almost the size of a battleship.” He plopped himself down between us. “Had to use a broom handle in the end. I think that’s what broke the system.”

“The system?” I said.

“Yeah, the pipes at the back of the toilet. Don’t look so worried, it’s fixed now. The back pressure blew the taps off, but I found a little handle and when I turned it, the water stopped. But then it started again. So I wiggled it some more and I think that did the trick. I mean, it’s making some weird noises but there’s no major damage. Right—is there any?”

We looked at him blankly.

“Yogurt, I mean.”