Thompkens Jenkins, Master of Disguise

     “Mrs. Dinsley,” said the figure; and, as it moved closer, Thom could see it was a young man, a blue Gelert. “I was round to your house at the old churchyard just now. I was sure you’d be there on a wild night such as this.”

     Thom tucked both his visible hands and his antennae into his cloak. It seemed now that he had finally admitted to himself he was cold, the cold hit him full force. He and the stranger stood in silence for a moment, until Mrs. Thom Dinsley, remembering his role, asked, “You wanted to see me about something?”

     The Gelert seemed to flush in spite of the chill, and all at once Thom noticed he had a sling on his right arm. It was quite dirty. “I just came to tell you that I’ve been to the place we spoke of.”

     “Ah yes, the place,” said Thom, like a wise and knowing gentlewoman. “And did you find the place to your likin’, I hope?”

     “Oh yes, they were very kind!” exclaimed the Gelert suddenly, as though overwhelmed by some feeling inexplicable. “They do a great service for people like you and I. They serve two meals a day, breakfast and supper. They even gave me a new coat!” He tugged the lapel of his coat with his unbroken hand, and even in the dim light, Thom could see it was no newer than his own.

     “Most importantly,” the young man said at length, “they’ve given me a place to stay, with other men in the same situation as I. It’s but a large empty room lined with beds on both sides, but it’s better than the park bench.” And he wore a genuine smile when he said this.

     “So I’ll not be imposing on your kindness again, my good lady.” The Gelert felt for Mrs. Dinsley’s hand inside the cloak, and took the first one he found — which happened to be a bottom one! Thom’s eyes nearly bugged out of his skull. This time he was surely caught!

     But no. “Indeed, my arm is on the mend,” said the Gelert. “The feeling is coming back to it, I know it is! And when I return to work at the factory, I intend to repay you for all you’ve done for me.”

     Thom swallowed. “Oh, that won’t be necessary...” he squeaked, sidling away from the young man’s grasp.

     “Nonsense,” the Gelert persisted, “I am eternally in your debt. If it wasn’t for you I would have died that night. I vow to you, Mrs. Dinsley, if there is ever anything I can do for you, you have but to say the word.”

     Mrs. T. Dinsley sputtered in a voice two octaves too high, even for the lady herself: “I will!”

     “Until then, will you allow me to walk you home? ‘Tisn’t a fit night out for lady or gentleman. Surely you won’t be seeing anyone else tonight.”

     Thom had no choice but to comply. ‘Mrs. Dinsley’ had no reason not to go home in the eyes of the Gelert. And besides, Thom was curious as to what this ‘house at the old churchyard’ may be.

     The walk was a short one from the corner of Macintosh and Wellington to a cemetery that was so hemmed in by buildings, Thom had previously not even known it existed. One could only guess from the dates on the tombstones, erected in the memory of people who had died years before Thom was born (perhaps even before Mrs. Dinsley was born!) how long the cemetery had stood, and decayed; uncared for, unvisited.

     Along one edge of the yard was a little building, a shed of sorts where the gravediggers of old used to store their tools. Today it contained nothing but a straw mattress against one wall, and an empty wooden potato crate against the other. (Thom realized now that he had left his own crate on the street corner, but thankfully, the Gelert hadn’t seemed to notice.)

     “It was great charity for you to share your lodgings with me, ma’am,” said the Gelert once they were inside. “The greater considering you had barely enough room for yourself. Uh, begging your pardon, ma’am.”

     “It was no trouble at all,” insisted Thom, but one could tell upon first glance at the dilapidated shed that this was a lie.

     The Gelert bade Mrs. Dinsley goodnight and made his departure, leaving Thom all alone in the old beggar’s hut. Outside the sleet had turned to certain snow, which settled on the ground and accumulated in heaps. The shed was obviously well-built to have stood for so many years, but for as sturdy as the walls were, they could not keep out the draught.

     The Ruki shivered from more than cold. Perhaps for the first time during the whole of the day’s crazy events, it occurred to Thom to wonder, truly wonder, what had happened to poor Mrs. Dinsley. The gravedigger’s shed offered no clues to elucidate her disappearance. It seemed as if all that was left of her in Neopia were her dingy straw mattress and her potato crate bench. And her cloak.

     Thompkens Jenkins did not often cry — in fact, he seldom ever cried unless the action profited him in some way. But tonight was a very special case, in mourning for a very special lady. Here was a true Good Samaritan, a woman who had no material objects to spare, and so gave cheerfully, unreservedly and devotedly, of herself. Mrs. Dinsley didn’t deserve the lot life had dealt her; and whatever tragic end she had come to, Thom was certain she hadn’t deserved that.

     The guilt began to take hold now... Thom had capitalized on her death, desecrated her memory for the sake of a petty swindle! And he was still wearing her cloak! He started to take it off, but quickly changed his mind, realizing he may not survive the frigid walk home without it.

     “I may not survive the walk home with it,” thought Thom as he stood in the tumbledown doorway of the shed. The snow reached halfway up the tombstones already, and was falling in a continuous sheet of thick downy flakes. It would be a treacherous hike back to Dowderby Street...

     “Unless I stay the night.”

     Thom snuggled into the straw mattress, his only blanket the Tyrannian fur cloak, just as Mrs. Dinsley had done so many times before. He took comfort in having it around his four shoulders. It was almost like having the lady’s spirit with him.

     Thompkens Jenkins fell asleep turning this thought over in his mind, almost amused by the bitter irony of his situation. He had stolen Mrs. Dinsley’s identity. Now he must endure all the circumstances that came with it.

     Thom awoke the next morning at the crack of dawn, as per his custom. He must have been plum exhausted, as it had been a strangely satisfying sleep — except that he had kept dreaming he was sleeping on a bed made of crates. Grover the Grocer was with him. They were jumping on the bed together.

     “I fail to see the point of this, sir,” said the Ogrin, panting like a rotund Puppyblew from this strange and intense exercise.

     “Without a boxspring, we go nowhere! We might as well be jumping on a wooden stage!”

     “Nonshensh, shonny!” Dream-Thom retorted. “It’sh all in the legsh! Whoopee!”

     Thom was on the verge of asserting himself as the bed-bouncing champion of Over the Hill and Far Away when he suddenly awoke to find himself mid-bounce, careening off the straw mattress, and landing flat on his back on the floor.

     “Crikey,” Thom wheezed, the wind knocked clean out of him. He sat up then, and took in his surroundings. He was still in the gravedigger’s shed in the old churchyard. His bed had been scarcely more comfortable than a wooden crate; in fact, as he dragged himself upright and sat down on the bench, he wished he had made this his bed. At least it wasn’t so lumpy.

     Grover the Grocer was no longer with him, and at this moment, oh! how he wished he was! The eerie prospect of the abandoned churchyard, its ancient headstones half-buried in snow, was not an agreeable sight to Thom upon this dreary winter’s morning...

     He resolved to put distance between himself and the old shed as quickly as possible.

     Still wrapped in the Tyrannian fur cloak, Thom set out, without so much as thanking the shed for providing his night’s shelter. Wending his way through the cemetery the Ruki determined to keep his eyes on the path before him, never allowing his gaze to rest on the headstones.

     “If I simply don’t look at them,” he reasoned to himself, “I just won’t know they’re there! Problem solved! Crisis averted! Predic’ment precluded—“ No sooner had he finished this word than an enormous Crokabek whizzed past his head. It landed at the tippy-top of an imposing tomb marker, right before Thom’s eyes!

     Thom screamed. There was nothing particularly frightening about the Crokabek, or even the tomb, save for its decaying grandeur and perhaps the way the rising sunlight hit it at that moment. But when we’re thoroughly spooked, we’re more susceptible to blind panic — especially when we’re eight years old and possessed of a guilty conscience. Oh Reader, how Thompkens Jenkins screamed and beat down that old stone path, as if somebody was trying to kill him!

     “It’s the Devil Crooooooow!”

     Thom ran like a crazed man; wildly, madly, giving no heed to where he was going. When he felt the full force of his body colliding headlong with a dark, solid mass, his last frenzied words were, “It’s gonna eat me!” before slipping into unconsciousness.

     Thom’s first thought upon coming to was that he had died and gone to Heaven. But, considering his past conduct and realizing that Heaven was an unlikely destination for a rascal of his calibre, the Ruki suddenly shot bolt-upright, dreading to discover where the Crokabek had left him. To his surprise he was still on the ground in the middle of the cemetery — and so long as he was above ground, and not beneath it, Thom supposed he had no cause for complaint.

     But why was Mrs. Dinsley here, kneeling before him as a spirit back from the dead?

     “The Crokabek got you too, eh?” Thom muttered vaguely. “That explains a lot.”

     “Crokabek? Whatever do you mean, child?” The lady spoke in a tone that sounded startled, but kind. Her wrinkled face was full of sympathy.

     “You disappeared, so I became you, seein’ as the position was open and I didn’t mean any harm in it. Only you didn’t disappear, you were taken by a Crokabek. And now he’s took me too. Serves me right, it does...” And the boy cast doleful eyes upon his boots.

     Mrs. Dinsley didn’t know whether to laugh or to send for a psychiatrist. “I haven’t been taken by any Crokabek, son, and neither have you!”

     Thom slowly and apprehensively scanned the churchyard. There was no Crokabek in sight, though Mrs. Dinsley was an irrefutable reality.

     “But– but you—“ the Ruki stammered, “you were gone!”

     The old green Aisha laughed. “Only to see my sister-in-law, child! I spent the evening at her home by the Deserted Fairgrounds. But you’ll be seeing a lot less of me from now on, I’m afraid. My sister-in-law has just received her inheritance money from an old uncle. Quite a fortune she’s fallen into, manor house and all! And, friend to me she’s always been, she’s decided to share it with me!”

     The lady’s words came quicker and quicker as she related her story to Thom, laughing at points as if half distracted, at other points seemingly on the verge of tears. And Thom laughed and shared in the excitement with her. Mrs. Dinsley, who had borne so much, was receiving her just deserts at last!

     “I’ve only come back to collect my belongings. And perhaps I’ll tarry just long enough to meet my friends, and tell them my good news.”

     Thom walked back to the gravedigger’s shed with Mrs. Dinsley, where he sat on the mattress and she on the crate (“I’ve always found the crate a deal more comfortable,” she admitted), and Mrs. Dinsley told Thom all about her sister-in-law and her new house, and the moment she received the letter notifying her of the inheritance. In the excitement of it all, it took Thom several moments to realize — “You still have your cloak!”

     “Oh, yes!” The gentle Aisha smiled. “I have a finer set of clothes under it than I’ve worn in a good long time! But I’ll not be taking this cloak off. I wager it’s the warmest thing I’ll ever own, be I rich or be I poor, for the rest of my days.”

     Thom was amazed. So the cloak he had been wearing all this time was the identical one to Mrs. Dinsley’s, but not the same one.

     “But look at you,” pursued the lady. “You appear to be wearing Tyrannian fur yourself! I tell you, child, you gave me quite a fright when I met you on the path back there! I thought I saw my own self coming towards me! Not that a jolly little boy could resemble an old lady in any way, ho ho ho! But from a distance, my!”

     Thom didn’t know what to say. Had he not already confessed to Mrs. Dinsley his lowdown, dastardly plot? Perhaps she had merely taken his words for the ramblings of a terrified child. Thom’s mind raced to concoct an explanation — but all that came out was a semblance of the truth: “I want to be just like you when I grow up.”

     The old lady was astonished. “Oh child, you don’t mean that! I wouldn’t wish my sorry life on anyone.”

     “I would,” contended Thom. “I’d wish it on everyone in the world.” If Mrs. Dinsley was thinking ‘What a nasty boy!’ she gave no indication. For she smiled.

     On the trek through the snow back to Dowderby Street, Thom suddenly stopped and laughed to himself. It had just occurred to him now — he hadn’t made a single Neopoint off this whole bleedin’ adventure!

     “Oh well,” Thom chuckled happily as he raced along home through slushy thoroughfares and sooty bystreets. “Bub will be thrilled to know we can get double his askin’ price for this warm cloak! It’s worth a fifty-er, at least!!”

     Dear Reader, I would be delighted to tell you that then and there, after his fateful first encounter with Mrs. Dinsley, Thom decided to turn over a new leaf and lead the life of an honest citizen. Oh Reader, I would be so delighted to tell you that! But alas, I’d like to think I’m more honest than Thom will ever be. So I cannot lie. The little ragamuffin decided no such thing. In fact, this first attempt at a disguised deception only opened the door to a succession of other masquerade cons, each one wilier than the last!

     But Thom did learn one thing from his experience with the old beggar lady. He resolved to never commit identity theft — that is to disguise as an actual person, living or dead — ever again. From now on he would have to create his own characters for his... little ‘theatrical productions.’

     A personal favourite of mine was a wandering healer from a faraway land, who sold miracle pills. That was an interesting episode in Thompkens Jenkins’ life! A story which, if all goes well, we will be seeing in the weeks to come.

     Until then Readers, keep smiling!

     Always keep your pockets buttoned, always keep your purse in hand...

     The End.