Authors: Duncan Ball
Selby Santa (8 page)
Blake Romano lay on the floor struggling against the chains that tore at his wrists and ankles. Around him stood the soldiers of the Army of the Sword of Midas. They poked him with the muzzles of their Federboa 39E Special Issue Service weapons, their hideous laughter ringing in his ears.
Selby had almost finished reading
Escape Into Doom
. ‘I hate those guys!’ he thought, as he turned the second-last page. ‘They’re going to be really sorry when Blake gets free!’
General Fridas Monsolet stormed into the cell and raised his hand for silence.
‘You have finally run out of luck, Mr Romano,’ he said. ‘No one can stop us now.’
‘That’s what you think!’ Selby thought. ‘Blake is the smartest, bravest secret agent ever! He’s too smart for you!’
‘Evil like yours can never win,’ Blake spat through clenched teeth. ‘Sooner or later you will make a slip. And when you do, your days will be over.’
‘Do not make me laugh, Mr Romano,’ Monsolet sneered.
The nightmare of that day played itself out in Blake’s brain like a cheap movie: the kidnapping; the hijacking of the Supernova Star Fighter, the five-star hotel, swimming with Istvana, the gorgeous blonde double-agent; the bomb in the snack bar, the rescue of the kids from the daycare centre …
A sharp pain from the commander’s boot slamming into Blake’s ribs brought him out of his daydream.
‘Say your prayers!’ Monsolet barked. ‘Nobody has ever left this prison except in a wooden box.’
Blake Romano glanced up at Monsolet’s steely eyes and smiled.
‘There’s always a first time for
everything, birdbrain,’ he said.
Then, with the speed of lightning, Blake
‘Oh oh oh!’ Selby squealed in his brain. ‘I can’t wait to see what happens next! This is
soooo
exciting!’
As Selby’s eyes darted across to the right-hand page, he found himself gazing at the inside of the back cover of the book.
‘Oh no! The last page is missing! How am I supposed to know what happens in the end? It’s the last page of the last book of the whole series! I have to know if Blake Romano survives!’
Selby raced around the house, looking everywhere for the missing page.
‘Maybe I dropped it,’ he thought. ‘Where have I been since I started reading it? I haven’t been anywhere! I got it off the shelf in the
bookcase where Dr Trifle keeps all his old Blake Romano books and I read it right here.’
Selby lifted the lounge and then checked behind the curtains.
‘I can’t believe it,’ he thought. ‘I’ve just got to know what happens. Lionel O’Neill wouldn’t have let his main character die, I’m sure. But
Escape Into Doom
was his very last book. Maybe it’s the end of Blake Romano, too.’
Selby put the book back on the shelf.
‘I’ll make up my own ending,’ he thought. ‘I don’t want Blake to die, so maybe the last bit should be,
Then, with the speed of lightning, Blake lived happily ever after. The end.
No, that doesn’t sound right. How about,
Then, with the speed of lightning, Blake was shot by Fridas Monsolet and he dropped dead. The end.
No! No! I have to find out how the book really ends.’
Selby rang the Bogusville Library and then the Poshfield Library and even some other libraries in the city. None of them had any of Lionel O’Neill’s Blake Romano books. Then he rang a bookshop.
‘Lionel O’Neill?’ a woman said. ‘We don’t have any books by anyone of that name. Let me
check the computer. I’ll see if we can order a copy for you.’
‘He’s a fantastic author. He writes about Blake Romano, who is like this top super-special secret agent who gets captured by bad guys and he always gets away and that, but sometimes he gets hurt, but a lot of the bad guys get killed, and they’re really great books. I just have to get a copy of
Escape Into Doom
’cause I don’t know how it ends.’
‘I’m sorry,’ the woman said,‘but the books are out of print. They don’t make them any more.’
And that was that. No last page. No last book. No copies of the book in libraries. No copies in bookshops or even used ones on the internet. Selby did a search to see what he could find out about the author.
‘I can’t believe this,’ Selby thought. ‘Everything about him is secret. Nobody even knows what Lionel O’Neill looks like. He’s like a secret agent, just like Blake Romano.’
The days passed but Selby couldn’t get
Escape Into Doom
out of his head.
‘Okay, so Blake was chained to the floor and there were all these guys with guns. It would
have been impossible to get away. Of course, that’s what I thought before he escaped from all the crocodiles in
Fear Factor Zero
. I loved that book.’
Selby quickly found the book and opened it to the page about the escape.
The crocodile’s jaws came closer and closer to Blake’s legs, clicking like the sound of castanets on a hot day in Spain. Ebony Boyne sat safely behind the barrier, smiling as she filed her fingernails.
‘Sorry we couldn’t have another
breakfast together, Blake,’ she said. ‘I enjoyed your company.’
‘Likewise,’ Blake said. ‘But now some friends of mine would like to have you to lunch.’
There was a high-pitched squeal as Blake pressed the button on his Reptile Audio Psychic Stimulator. The crocs suddenly turned away from him, crashing through the barrier and grabbing the terrified woman in their jaws.
Blake slipped his hands free and dusted himself off to the screams of the double agent. He strolled calmly away.
‘See ya later, alligator,’ he said.
‘That was
soooo
cool!’ Selby thought. ‘But that was different because he knew ahead of time that Ebony and her mates were out to get him, so he was ready for them. He worked out that they all had fake names. Their first names had the same, exact letters as their last names, but scrambled around: Ebony Boyne, Andrew Warden, Daisy Sayid, Romeo Moore and Stony Tyson. That Blake guy is a genius! Hang on …’
Selby wrote LIONEL O’NEILL on a piece of paper.
‘Hey, Lionel and O’Neill have the same letters in them, too!’ he thought. ‘It can’t be the author’s real name! It’s a made-up name! I’m as smart as Blake Romano! Hmmm, I wonder if the author left any clues about his real name.’
Selby played around with the letters again.
‘No good,’ he thought. ‘I can’t make them spell another name. What if I try the same thing with the letters of Blake Romano’s name?’
Selby wrote the letters of Blake Romano’s name on scraps of paper and scrambled them around.
‘Let’s see now,’ Selby thought. ‘
Bloke oar man
? No.
Loan am broke
? No.
Learn ma book
? That’s good but it’s not a name either.
A bleak moron
? That’s what I feel like right now,’ Selby sighed, pushing the letters around again. ‘Wait! Here’s one:
Earl Bookman
! That could be the author’s real name!’
Once again, Selby searched the internet. Soon he found a short article from an old copy of the
Poshfield Post
. It read:
Mavis and Beauregard Bookman announce the retirement of their son, Captain Earl Bookman, after twenty years of special service overseas. He will be returning to live in Poshfield.
‘I reckon that’s him,’ Selby thought. ‘He was a top-secret special agent himself. That’s how he
knew about all that spy stuff. He came back to live in Poshfield and then he wrote all the Blake Romano books. I’ll get his address and write him a letter asking him how the book ends.’
Selby checked the phone book but there was no Earl Bookman. He rang the Poshfield post office and asked where Earl Bookman lived.
‘Sorry, but we can’t give out that information,’ someone told him.
‘Good,’ Selby thought. ‘They know but they won’t tell. That means he does live in Poshfield. Let’s see if the super-smart brain of Selby “Blake Romano”Trifle can find him.’
Selby remembered a scene in
The Serpent’s Claw
where Blake Romano set out to find the evil spymaster, Igor Mazurki. All he knew was that the man lived in the mountain town of Nonnesberg.
Blake wrote the address on the package: to Mr Igor Mazurki, Nonnesberg, and put it in the postbox outside the Nonnesberg post office. He parked his Nuvo-Reesh 6 Cam Sportsmaster in the laneway and waited. It wasn’t long before the postal van started on
its rounds with Blake following. Blake watched as the driver left the package in front of a deserted factory building.
‘Watch out, Igor,’ Blake said to himself. ‘I know where you live.’
‘Hey, what if I did that?’ Selby thought. ‘I could send a package and address it just to Earl Bookman, Poshfield. If he really does live in Poshfield, the post office will deliver it. I’ll follow the van and see where they take it. There’s only one problem: I don’t have a Nuvo-Reesh 6 Cam Sportsmaster and I can’t follow a van on foot because I’d never keep up.’
Selby thought for a minute.
‘Simple dimple — I’ll mail myself! I’ll put myself in a package and mail
me
to Earl Bookman!’
And so it was that a postman found a mysterious package with lots of holes in it on the steps of the Poshfield post office. It was addressed simply to ‘Earl Bookman, Poshfield’.
Soon Selby was bouncing along in a postal van and before long he’d been left in front of a house at the edge of the town. He was out of
the package in a flash and found himself at the gates of a huge house with a high wall around it. At the gate, he saw an intercom.
‘I knew it,’ Selby said. ‘Secret agents always have intercoms. I’ll talk to him through that and ask him how the book ends. Oops, there’s a security camera.’
Selby pushed the button on the intercom and then ducked out of sight.
After a while, a voice asked,‘Who’s there?’
‘You don’t know me,’ Selby called out, ‘but I love your Blake Romano books. I have a question. You don’t have to let me in or anything.’
‘How did you find me?’
‘I worked it out,’ Selby said. ‘The clue about your real name was in
Fear Factor Zero
and then there was something else that Blake did in
The Serpent’s Claw
.’
‘Who are you?’
‘Never mind about that. Just tell me what happens at the end of
Escape Into Doom
. The last page was missing from my book. I have to know if Blake dies and that. Oh, and does he get back together with Sheila? She was really nice. And, if
he doesn’t die, does he keep on being a secret agent? And do Fridas Monsolet and all those guys get killed? Oh, and the little girl, does she get her teddy back after the other one exploded? There are lots of loose ends, Mr Bookman.’
‘Step in front of the camera so I can see you.’
‘I-I … well, I … you don’t want to see me.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’m not looking my best. I’m having a bad-hair day. It’s okay, I’m not a spy or anything. Just tell me if Blake gets away in the end.’
‘You get away!’ the voice said. ‘And don’t come back!’
‘But Mr Bookman —’
‘Leave me alone!’ the man shouted.
(
Click
.)
‘Gosh,’ Selby thought. ‘What a grumpy-guts. I thought authors were nice people. What does he want? I said I liked his books.’
Selby was about to start on his long walk back to Bogusville when he remembered the scene in
Scream of Angels
where Blake Romano had to get through the tightest security in the world at Loch Sporran Castle to find the computer disk that could destroy the world.
Blake waited by the castle wall for the cover of darkness. Seconds ticked by, followed by minutes and then hours. The sun disappeared behind Loch Sporran Castle. Blake set his watch.
‘Zero hour,’ he murmured. ‘Now let’s see what tricks that knobbly-kneed laird has up his sleeve.’
Blake spat on the ground.
‘I’m going in,’ he said softly.
Selby felt something strange happening inside him. Maybe it was anger. Maybe it was daring. Maybe it was something else. Or maybe it was that feeling you get when you read about a character and that character slowly seeps into you like spilled milk into a sponge. Whatever it was, Selby felt the spirit of Blake Romano inside him. He
became
Blake Romano.
Selby waited as minutes turned into hours and darkness fell. He turned and spat on the ground.
‘I’m going in,’ he said softly. ‘Oops, maybe I’m not. The gate is locked.’
But, like Blake in
Night of Darkness
, Selby grabbed a tree branch and catapulted himself over the wall. And, like Blake in
Beyond Identity
, he searched the garden till he found the half-buried flowerpot with the key to the front door in it.
‘The old half-buried flowerpot trick,’ Selby sneered. ‘The oldest trick in the world.’