Arthur Quinn and the World Serpent Read online

  ‘If it’s solid,’ said Joe, ‘there’s only one thing we can do. We start drilling again.’

  Although he didn’t want to admit it, Arthur was pleasantly surprised by Belmont School. The building itself was at least three times as large as his school back in Kerry and it was so new you could almost smell the paint. Ash explained that it had just opened that year; in previous years, during the construction work, they’d had to take classes in a variety of prefabs still situated behind the fancy new building.

  As Ash had promised, Arthur found himself liking Miss Keegan. The young teacher seemed genuinely excited to have a new pupil – ‘Another mind to mould,’ as she’d joked – and she let him sit next to Ash and Will in class. She wasn’t even annoyed when they’d wandered in almost fifteen minutes late thanks to the weird time skip and Will’s lazy stroll from the bus stop.

  ‘You’re late,’ she’d said.

  ‘No, we’re not,’ said Will.

  She laughed to herself as if what he’d said made perfect sense. ‘Of course you’re not.’

  Miss Keegan had strawberry blonde hair that fell in curls over her slender shoulders and she was wearing a floral dress that was probably too light for the icy October air outside. But she seemed not to mind as she strolled across the playground during break.

  The day passed blissfully quickly. The most interesting part was when Miss Keegan taught them about what the upcoming elections would mean to the country. ‘I like my pupils to keep up with current affairs,’ she’d explained to Arthur. She called that part of the class her News-Watch. He had no problem catching up with the class and Miss Keegan even agreed not to give them any homework (a suggestion from Will on account of them having a new class member). Before he knew it, Arthur was walking home with Ash and Max. He waved goodbye to them as he went into his new house. He’d just shut the door when the bell rang, so he opened it again.

  Max was waiting outside with his football offered up to Arthur. Ash stood at the end of the drive, smiling to herself.

  ‘Fancy a game?’ Max asked hopefully.

  ‘Well …’ Arthur said doubtfully. Max’s face dropped in disappointment. ‘As long as you promise to go easy on me,’ Arthur finished, taking the ball from him and running to the open grassy area in front of the houses.

  When Joe arrived home a few hours later, he was even more pleased than Max to see Arthur out playing. He pulled into the drive, left his work gear on the passenger seat and ran to join in.

  That night, as Joe and Arthur slept peacefully in one house and the Barry family slept in another, mist swirled around the green. By morning the mist would have left a fine frost on the grass, but now only a tall, stooped figure stood there. Dressed all in black, the dark man watched Arthur’s house, counting the minutes and biding his time. He could wait. He’d waited longer than a millennium already: what were a few more days?

  Chapter Four

  Arthur and Max’s kick-around quickly became something of a tradition. Every day after school, Max ran straight to the green, dropping his backpack en route, and kicked the ball he carried everywhere to Arthur. At first Arthur begrudgingly joined in, but by Friday evening he found himself looking forward to the game. Ash was usually their sole spectator and sometime referee, but on Friday she was joined on the sidelines by Will.

  Midway through the game, just as Max had scored his second goal, Will had come striding around the corner into the estate.

  ‘Hey man!’ he saluted Arthur as Max and Ash ran to meet him. Arthur picked up the ball that Max had let roll away and joined them at the side. Over the past few days, Arthur had grown to like Max and Ash more and more. He found he had lots in common with Ash: they were both interested in art, they liked the same bands (‘StinkPuppy is easily the best band in the world!’ Ash had enthused, going over her iTunes library) and they shared the same sense of humour (neither were averse to gags about bodily functions and both adored a certain British sitcom where the lead character was a man in women’s clothing). But while Arthur had hit it off with Ash, he just wanted to hit Will. Will was everything Arthur wasn’t: boastful and confident to the verge of cockiness, he had no problem speaking out in a group or being the centre of attention. He even spoke in a slightly accented twang, as if he wanted to be a character on American TV, which he probably did. He usually addressed Arthur as ‘man’ or ‘dude’ and sometimes even used ‘Artie’, which drove Arthur crazy.

  ‘Playing some footie there, Artie?’

  ‘Arthur. And yes, I am.’ He hoped Will would pick up on the irritation in his voice but he doubted it. Arthur found that Will was always too wrapped up in his own life to really notice others.

  ‘Will you play with us, Will?’ asked Max, excited.

  ‘I’m sure Will is far too busy to be –’ Arthur started.

  ‘It’s not really my game, football,’ Will interrupted, completely ignoring Arthur. ‘I’m more of a basketball man, myself. Nothing like shooting some hoops.’

  If this had been a cartoon instead of real life, a light bulb would have lit up over Arthur’s head right then.

  ‘Basketball?’ Arthur said. ‘Really? I play some basketball too.’ He didn’t add that he was more than a little good, having won All-Munster medals three times in his old school.

  ‘Cool. We should shoot some –’

  ‘How about tomorrow? It is the weekend.’

  ‘That sounds good, man.’

  Ash could sense the tension oozing from Arthur. ‘We have an old basketball ring in the garage. You can use that. But for now, why don’t you get back to the game? It’s getting late and Max is getting tired.’

  ‘I am not,’ protested Max with a yawn.

  Arthur was already running off with the ball. As he ran, Will shouted, ‘See you tomorrow, man!’

  ‘Looking forward to it. Man!’ replied Arthur, relishing the thought of putting a dent in Will’s cockiness.

  The game ended with Max winning 5–1. Arthur had been distracted. He had only one thing on his mind – beating Will the following day.

  The mid-morning October sun was uncommonly warm as Arthur crossed the estate to the Barrys’ house on Saturday, dribbling his basketball as he went. Joe had had to go into work again, despite working all through the week. ‘I still have a lot to catch up on,’ he’d explained on his way out a couple of hours previously.

  Ash opened the front door on Arthur’s first knock. She pulled the door towards her by hooking the handle with her elbows. Her hands were covered in orange gunk.

  ‘Pumpkin carving,’ she clarified and led him inside. Mrs Barry – whom Arthur hadn’t met yet – was out shopping, while Mr Barry was taking it easy in front of the widescreen TV in the living room. He looked like an overweight, middle-aged version of Max and he grunted a ‘hello’ to Arthur as he passed.

  In the kitchen, Stace was sitting at the breakfast table, glued to a laptop and updating her Facebook status. Bright orange pumpkin filling and seeds covered the other half of the table, where Max, in an apron, was kneeling on a chair carving a ghoulish face into his own pumpkin. He bit his bottom lip in deep concentration. Ash’s pumpkin was looking good; Arthur recognised it straight away as being based on Edvard Munch’s The Scream painting. They’d studied it in class in Kerry a few weeks ago.

  ‘Stace thinks she’s too cool now for pumpkin carving,’ Ash said, ‘so this one’s yours.’ She offered Arthur the last uncarved vegetable and a small carving knife. ‘Go wild.’

  Max helped Arthur hollow out the pumpkin with his bare hands – ‘It’s my favourite bit,’ he’d said, orange slime dripping between his fingers. For the next couple of hours, they couldn’t have been happier, carving monstrous faces into the pumpkins. Arthur was just appraising his work – an evil smiling face he half remembered from a dream – when the doorbell rang. Max ran to answer it and shouted back, ‘Will’s here!’

  And so the game begins, thought Arthur, as he started to clean up.

  They wheeled the basketball ring ou
t of the garage in no time and stood it in the empty driveway. Arthur was impressed: though rusty, missing the net and clearly underused, it was regulation height with a spring-loaded ring and NBA players from a few years ago printed on the backboard.

  Ash and Max sat on a low wall to watch and Arthur passed the ball to Will. ‘You’re up,’ he said.

  Will passed it back. ‘I’ll go easy on you.’

  ‘No need,’ Arthur said tersely. He passed it back with a little more force than necessary.

  Both his mother and father had played basketball in their younger years. In fact, they’d met outside the court after practice one night. Joe came out of the men’s changing room, Arthur’s mother left the ladies’ and it was love at first sight. Arthur also had a special place in his heart for the game and had even managed to nab Most Valuable Player three years running in the Under-14 Munster League. He really didn’t want Will to ‘go easy on him’. He wanted to beat him, but he also wanted a challenge.

  ‘All right. I won’t go easy on you,’ said Will. He launched the ball artfully over his head. It sailed smoothly through the ring. ‘As the French say, deux points.’

  The ball bounded into Arthur’s hands. He turned straight around and flicked the ball back into the net. ‘That’ll be deux points for me, too.’

  And that’s how the game continued. Arthur and Will matched each other point for point, basket for basket the whole way through. If Arthur managed to score a three-pointer, Will followed shortly with his own. They’d decided on ten minutes a side and when half-time came the score was thirty-two apiece. They took a two-minute break, leaning against the wall with Ash and Max.

  ‘Pumpkins, eh?’ said Will, nodding to the three carved pumpkins Max had set up in the porch. ‘I love the ghoul. And the smiling one is all right, I guess. The Scream is great. Edvard Munch, I take it?’ Ash nodded, blushing. ‘I love his work. It’s just all so –’

  ‘Right,’ Arthur broke in, heading back out onto the temporary court, ‘game on.’

  The second half continued in much the same way. It was clear to both players and spectators that Arthur and Will were almost equally matched in basketball terms. With less than a minute left in the game, the pressure was on for either boy to come out victorious. Ego-driven, Will made his first mistake.

  The ball was in Arthur’s possession. He ran to the three-point position and turned to the basket. Before he could even set up the shot, Will blocked him, slapping the ball out of his grip and knocking into him with the force. Arthur fell to the ground, toppling backwards out onto the road. His phone dropped out of his pocket and smashed open.

  ‘Foul!’ he cried defiantly, leaping to his feet.

  ‘Are you all right?’ asked Ash in concern. She picked up the pieces of his dead phone. ‘Your phone’s seen better days.’

  ‘I don’t care. I’m fine. Foul.’

  ‘Sorry, man. Didn’t mean it,’ said Will, retrieving the ball and handing it to Arthur. ‘Take your free shot.’

  Arthur accepted the ball and took his shot. The ball swooped right into the basket. He was now one point in the lead with twenty seconds left.

  The game quickly resumed. Before Arthur was aware of what was happening, Will had taken possession of the ball. He ran at the ring, jumped straight up into the air underneath it and slam dunked the ball into the basket. He even managed to touch the edge of the spring-loaded ring with his fingertips as he fell back to earth.

  Arthur stood aghast as Ash’s mobile-phone stopwatch beeped, signalling the end of the game.

  ‘Is that it?’ asked Will. He’d landed on his backside after the momentous score and was getting to his feet. ‘Who won? I wasn’t keeping score.’

  ‘You did,’ said Arthur. He sat on the wall, suddenly interested in his shoelaces.

  ‘I did?’

  ‘Yeah, 56–55. You won.’

  Will walked over and passed the ball to Max, who ran out and attempted his own slam dunk. Will put out his hand. ‘Good game.’

  Arthur, still looking down, said, ‘Yeah. Good game.’

  Will held his hand there for a moment longer. When Arthur didn’t accept it, he shoved it in his pocket. ‘Well, I’ll be off. See you on Monday.’

  ‘See you Monday, Will,’ said Ash. When he’d gone, she turned to Arthur. ‘Why didn’t you shake his hand? That was so rude!’

  Arthur looked up at her. He saw the disappointment in her face and then felt it inside himself. He was wrong and he knew it. But he couldn’t bring himself to admit to it out loud.

  ‘I don’t know why people like him so much,’ he said. ‘I’m going home.’

  As Arthur walked back to his house, he could barely hear Max and the sound of the basketball thumping against the backboard over the guilty thoughts in his own head.

  Chapter Five

  As he got ready for school on Monday morning, Arthur was glad the weekend was over. Following the game on Saturday, he’d spent the evening in his room, staring at his laptop, waiting for his Kerry friends to come online. They didn’t. He could imagine what they’d been doing: they’d probably gone into Killarney for a trip to the cinema or bowling. In fact, bowling was more likely this week. Sometimes they played in teams, but the teams would be uneven now with Arthur in Dublin, so they probably settled for solos. His screen remained blank all evening, Paul, Dave and Louise all marked as ‘offline’.

  After a week of eating take-away Indians, pizzas and burgers, Joe and Arthur finally went grocery shopping on Sunday. Being Joe’s only day off and with him not really ‘in the mood for cooking’, they ended up ordering a Chinese when they got home anyway. That evening, as Joe slept on the couch with a full stomach, Arthur had considered visiting Ash for company but still felt too ashamed to face her.

  So, leaving the house on Monday morning, he was surprised to find Ash waiting by herself at the end of his drive.

  ‘Hi,’ she said.

  ‘Hi.’ He approached her slowly. ‘I should apologise.’

  ‘You don’t need to apologise to me.’

  ‘Then I should apologise to Will.’

  ‘You should give him a chance. He can be a bit much at times but he’s great once you get to know him.’

  Arthur nodded. ‘I’ll make more of an effort.’

  She opened her backpack, took out his mobile phone and handed it to him.

  ‘You fixed it!’ he exclaimed in delight, seeing its screen light up.

  ‘Computers and electronics are my hobby. I’ve tweaked it as well so that you’ll never run out of credit.’

  ‘Wow! That’s amazing. Thanks a million, Ash!’

  Stace and Max were coming towards them from the direction of their house.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Ash. ‘We don’t want to be late another Monday.’

  The EarthKruncher 5000 drill had a seventy-foot-diameter conical point and could bore through half a mile of rock in just over a week. The concentric gorging swirls ended in a diamond-tipped point that was so sharp that no member of the drilling crew was permitted within ten feet of the drill without full body protection – hard hat, goggles and leather-lined gloves included – in case they tripped and fell near the non-revolving point.

  The point was revolving now, though, at approximately three thousand rotations per minute, and the noise was deafening as it approached the rock wall before it. Luckily for Joe and the other crew members watching from a safe distance, they each had a pair of foam plugs squeezed into their ears which took the noise level down to just an irritating drone. They could still feel the soundwaves, though, reverberating through their bones.

  As the drill started to dig into the rocky surface and a screech was added to the roar, somebody tapped Joe on the shoulder. It was Deirdre. She opened her mouth and shouted as loudly as her lungs would allow, but Joe still couldn’t hear a thing. He shook his head, pointing to his ears, then nodded towards the exit. She led him out of the tunnel, past the smaller excavators and the crewmen setting up more work lights.


  They came out into the sunlight, blinding after the darkness of the tunnel, and walked around to the top of the mound, away from the drill noise.

  Joe pulled out his earplugs. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Luke Moran wants to see you.’

  Luke Aloysius Moran was the millionaire CEO of Citi-Trak. From his appearances on several celebrity reality-TV shows and interviews in VIP magazine and on any chat show that would have him, the general population had a very clear idea of what he was like: brash, greedy, selfish and single-minded. It wasn’t far from the truth. Since Moran’s office had called Joe almost two weeks ago to offer him the job, he still hadn’t had the pleasure of meeting the man himself, although he doubted it would be much of a pleasure.

  ‘I’m busy. They’re starting under the mound now.’

  ‘I don’t think he’ll take “no” for an answer.’ From the serious and slightly scared expression on Deirdre’s face, Joe realised he’d better go and meet the formidable Mr Moran.

  ‘Trains,’ said Miss Keegan, spelling out the word on the blackboard. ‘Tee-rain-ss.’ She even drew a speeding locomotive underneath the word.

  Will was already in class when they arrived. So unlike him to be early, but then he probably didn’t want to have to face Arthur as much as Arthur didn’t want to face him.

  ‘Trains, Miss?’ asked Ciara O’Connor, the class swot, in the front row.

  ‘Trains,’ Miss Keegan repeated, turning back to the class. ‘News-Watch time. I thought we might look at the history of trains a bit this morning. Considering what’s been in the news a lot lately. Anyone?’

  A couple of hands shot up. Will answered without being prompted, ‘The new Metro.’ His eyes lit up when he said it.

  ‘Thank you, Will. The new Metro.’ She walked between their desks, handing out photocopies of a newspaper article all about the Metro. The photograph with the article showed the same computer-generated image of the finished Metro that hung in Joe’s Citi-Trak office. ‘And what can you tell me about it?’