Read Angel Boy for Free Online Page B

stretched, remembered with a slam of his hopes where he was, then shut his eyes again so as not to look at the light coming straight at him. And as he opened his eyes to stare at the shadowed ramparts, he saw the sun’s after-image on his retina almost as clearly as the sun itself, blinding him to the stonework before him.
    And suddenly he had an idea. Where had that retina thing happened before? Not long ago. Where had he been blinded for a while, and what had he seen instead? It was where there werebars, a pattern of bright bars in a rectangle.
    His hyped-up brain quickly gave him the answer. It had been at the Door of No Return, where the light through the bars that first day had been so intense that he hadn’t seen the two backpackers standing against the walls beside it.
    So couldn’t someone else standing there be invisible too – until they could mingle in with the rest of the group? Couldn’t he make himself invisible for a vital few moments?
    Yes! That’s what he could do! If he could keep himself unnoticed and uncounted until that gate-door was opened, he could run out and get down to the beach.
    So long as no street kids were still waiting for him!
    But it was his best chance – although Leonard knew that wasn’t saying much; not much at all.

    Stephen Boameh had spent a day fruitlessly searching for his son; and on the second morninghe was up at dawn to check the quarries and the roadworks again. But he saw nobody new, just the same overseers who had shouted him away the previous day.
    He telephoned the hospitals, and he telephoned the police; he telephoned the Blessed Wisdom Primary School, and he telephoned the homes of the friends from Leonard’s school whose numbers he could find. But he drew the same blanks as before. Nobody had heard anything about his boy.
    Nana wasn’t singing hymns today. She hadn’t been singing them the day before, either. Instead, she was praying. Her eyes when they were open were on the telephone; and her eyes when they were closed were on the picture of Jesus that she carried in her head – with him saying, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me.’
    Every time the telephone rang she jumped like someone scalded. But there was no news. And as the first day and night ran into the second day and night, and the third morning dawned,her thoughts and those of Leonard’s father began to take a sinister turn.
    Was Leonard never to be heard of again?

    Leonard waited silently against the wall by the doorway. From where he was standing, everything was bright and focused in the light coming through the bars of the Door of No Return. But his memory and his senses told him that it wasn’t the same the other way round. For a while he would be invisible to the visitors.
    As he heard the first party coming round the fort, the voice told him the identity of the guide. It was the big man who had tried to grab him the day before. Leonard’s pleasant young woman had let him down: she wasn’t at work today; and his skin-thin hope shrivelled.
    He was now standing where the deepest shadow seemed to be; near enough to the door for the contrast to be strong – bright sunshineand deep darkness – but not so close that the light spilled on to his body. He stood, and he waited; he knew from before that once the tourist party was in the courtyard, it would be about fifteen minutes before they reached him, before all their eyes were staring at that terrible door. He stood as still as he could. And he wondered if his school shirt might be too bright, even in the darkness; so he took it off. He held it behind him, and he waited, and waited…
    At last they came.
    â€˜Here we’re comin’ to the in-famous Door of No Return…’ This man didn’t have the quiet, reverent sympathy of the young woman.
    â€˜Jus’ down by here…’
    It was a good-sized group, about fifteen of them, a mixed pick-up from