The Invisible Lars

A short Story by LJ Kundananji

For Martin

It was a busy day at the chemistry lab. The great Namalundu scientists were working hard on a special project they called “Project X”. They had been working on it for a very long time now, and some of them were slowly losing heart. Their odds of success, it seemed, were reducing with each passing day. But Mary, their leader and president of the Science Club—which is more appropriately identified with the sobriquet the ‘Namalundu Association of Mad Scientists’, was far from losing heart. She believed that the project was on the very edge of success. Her contagious enthusiasm kept the fires burning in the rest of the scientists, and kept them working most madly on a cause they little understood.

One hot Friday afternoon, the scientists were hanging out at the lab, and they were stationed in all possible stances of nonchalance. It was in the middle of October, and in Namalundu, around this time of the year, the temperatures soared to heights that could drive a person over the edge of sanity; and the biggest drawback for the scientists was that it was wretchedly hard to work under such conditions. Most of them, yawing and fanning themselves with fans made from the papers lying around, were on the verge of falling asleep. But in one nearly inconspicuous corner of the lab stood one very alert young man. With a serious look on his face, he was scrutinizing the purple liquid in a test tube. He was adding bits of a chemical compound, shaking it, and holding it against the dimly lit fluorescent tube to note any particular changes. After each observation, he would write down his observations onto his click board. This young man’s name was Justine and it need not be mentioned that he was a very hard working and conscientious young man. Standing hard by was Justine’s friend, Christopher, and he, being bored to the extreme, was hardly amused by Justine’s conscientiousness.
“I think I am quitting the Science club,” he said in a rather rustic tone.
Justine started and almost dropped his test tube and its precious contents upon hearing this. He goggled at his friend, visibly shocked. “What!”
“I said I wanna quit the Science club,” he repeated, chewing ferociously at a piece of paper—a habit he had picked up from Justine, and which Justine had picked up from his elder brother, Michael, and which Michael claimed he had picked up from one of the novels he had read when he was still young, naïve and dim-witted.
“Why would you want to do that?”
“It is not making much sense anymore.”
“Huh?”
“All we do for two days in a week is stand at our station mixing chemicals that hardly do anything significant.”
“This is very important work, Chris,” Justine said with a sober expression, “And besides, we are on the verge of making a break through.”
“Break through, bah!” He barked. “The only break through I remember making was when one of our members mixed a spatula of potassium with water. He spent a week in hospital, recovering from the blast!”
“He did not follow instructions. Mary gave precise instructions that he was supposed to follow, but he by passed them.”
“Mary, Mary, Mary!” He hit the bench in annoyance. “Should everything we do be dictated by that little slim girl?”
“She is the president.” Justine reminded him. “And she knows a lot of chemistry, and how different chemicals interact together to achieve certain results.”
“She does not know everything, man,” Chris fulminated. “In fact, she has lost it. How long have we been working on this Project X.”
“Just a little bit of patience man,” Justine said, stooping lower to take a closer look at the slightly fizzing substance in the test tube. “We are almost there.”
“How many times have we been almost there? Since the time we joined this club, that’s how many!”
“This time’s for real. We are almost there.”
“I do not believe it!” He leaned forward and stared into his friend’s eye. “We need to get real man. What we are trying to achieve is beyond us. Great scientists in other parts of the world like America have probably been trying this for decades and have written it off as impossible.”
“That is probably true.” Justine agreed grudgingly.
“See! If they can’t do it, what gives us the idea that we can?”
“You see,” Justine began, straightening up, “My brother always tells me something about what is wrong with us Africans. He calls it the great inferiority complex. He says as Africans, we have this innate tendency to reckon ourselves as inferior to them white people, and thus, we always assume that we are duller than they are. We underestimate our own intelligence, and thus the whites take advantage of that and behave all supercilious, working with our own warped up view of ourselves to convince us that they know more that we do; that we are dull and stupid.”
“Ha!” Chris scoffed. “Look who’s talking! It is not an inferiority complex. It is plain reality. Just look at our country! Compare it to theirs. It is not hard to tell who is duller!”
“C’mon. I don’t want to discuss politics.”
“This ain’t politics—it’s reality.”
“No matter. We do not need to allow their advances to scare us. We are equally capable of making progress as they are, and we should not let their failure put us off. I believe we can succeed. We can triumph where they have fallen.”
“Stop comforting yourself. You know in your heart of hearts that we are just wasting time. This club thing—it’s just some teacher’s idea to keep us occupied after classes; to keep us away from doing counterproductive things like smoking dagga, hanging out with girls or drinking. Just one of them unproductive occupations. After we complete school next year, we will totally forget ’bout it and move on to the normal things of life and be normal people. At that time you will see that all this was just a waste of our time.”
“You talk so negatively my friend; I do not like it.”
“I am just being real.”
“And what is real is that we are about to make a break through.”
“Sounds so sad,” he said with a chuckle, taking off his lab coat, “too bad I will not be there when it happens.”
“What do you mean?”
“I quit!”
“But…but…you can’t quit.”
“I can’t? Well, try to stop me.” With that he turned and walked towards the door, leaving a stunned Justine gapping after him. Just before he vanished through the door, he sharply turned, and with a mischievous look on his face, he said:
“Say Hi to your girl friend for me.”
“She’s not my…” Justine began defensively, but his friend had already walked out, sending the door slamming loudly after him, and the words died in his mouth. The other scientists, who by this time had fallen asleep, were started wide awake by the banging of the door. They looked fearfully about them with fear and agitation, their eyes popping out of their sockets; their reaction being directly connected to their innate fear of explosions, explosions whose destructive powers they knew only too well.
“She is not my girl friend,” Justine breathed, returning to tend to his test tube. He bit his lower lip. He knew that things were never going to be the same again without Chris by his side. They were best buddies and had been so from eighth grade, and apart from him, none of his classmates, let alone his fellow scientists, remotely understood or cared about him. To them, he was just a stuck-up guy with brains.  But Chris knew his human side, and with him, he could discuss some of his personal problems; problems which every ordinary girl wrestles with, for instance, having a crush on the president of your club but having no guts whatsoever to confront her. Apart from that convenient fact, Chris had laboured with him side by side since last year when they first learnt of Project X.  together they had tasted and tried out many compounds as stipulated by Mary. At first, the whole thing had been fun, but then it started becoming monotonous. Justine, indeed, was not so surprised at his friend’s quitting. In fact, he had anticipated it. Of late, Chris had become quite grouchy and negative, complaining about nearly each and everything and sometimes even refuting the president to her face!
To some extent, Chris’ leaving was a positive thing, because his negative attitude had begun to infect Justine. He had slowly started losing heart, and he on certain occasions, had begun to think that Mary was making them strive after the wind. In fact, he had begun to agree with Chris’ sentiments, namely that if the great scientists of America could not do it, then who the heck were they to do it. Yes, at times he had caught himself daydreaming about the idea of quitting and joining more interesting clubs like the Math Club, or even the Chess club, were results were more readily seen. He sighed as he stared at the purple liquid which was slowly effervescing, giving out an innocuous and dull smelling gas. His eyes suddenly felt heavy with sleep, and before he knew what was happening, he was snoring.
“Justine!” Mary’s sharp voice shrilled, jarring him awake. He leaped into the air and almost hit into one of the rafters that held up the roof of the lab, for which roof a ceiling was nonexistent and extremely unessential, considering that the pupils had long clawed, gnawed and bitten at it, and replacing it would be too huge a financial undertaking.
“Mary!” He exclaimed in surprise, more at the fact that he had actually fallen asleep than at the fact that she was staring at him with an angry look on her face—a thing she hardly did.
“What were you thinking, Justine?” she said, snatching away the test tube from his hand.
“What do you mean?” he mumbled in confusion. His head was still heavy with sleep, and his eyelids were only interested in closing.
“How could my trusted side kick commit a folly of such magnitude!”
“What are you talking about?”
She sniffed at the test tube and winced with an expression of disgust across her pretty face. “You made a sleep portion, Justine. It is no wonder you fell asleep at your station!”
“I did?” his eyes bulged out with surprise.
“Yes, you did,” she said with an imperturbable expression about her. “But I am proud of you. You always achieve results!”
“Well, thanks,” Justine replied, a bit flustered. This compliment cleared his head completely, and it is safe to say that now he was wide awake.
“But last time I achieved a result, you did not commend me,” a scientist who sat by the window with a pouting expression and red chilly eyes, complained.
Mary clenched her teeth, exposing them in an expression of regret. She turned to face the whiny scientist.
“Remind your president of your achievement, Mubanga,” she said with an ingratiating smile. “You know she forgets sometimes.”
“I made a big blue crystal of Copper Two Sulphate in a beaker, remember?” he said in a nearly angry tone.
“We all did that!” Another scientist, seated next to him, barked. The others agreed.
“But mine was bigger than all of yours!” Mubanga exclaimed.
“That was only because you misplaced your beaker, and it was only found it after a fortnight, in the store room in the girl’s toilet—however it got there!”
There was a row of laughter from everyone else, including Mary.
“It does not matter how it got there,” Mubanga said, sounding hurt, “and it does not matter that it was lost. What matters is that I generated the biggest crystal—a whooping five hundred grams.”
“Yeah, and it actually cracked the beaker.” Justine added with a snigger.
“But does it matter? It was the biggest!”
“Yes, it does matter, Mubanga,” Mary said. “And in fact Mubanga, remember that you still have to pay for that beaker. It is school property you know.”
“All this sucks!” Mubanga shouted, hitting the bench with annoyance. “I achieve a break through, and I have to pay for that!”
“It is a rule of thumb,” Trevor, another scientists of quite an elevated nature, who was playing with a pendulum—a metal bob attached to a string—and counting the number of swings, his eyes following the swings with the utmost fascination, said. “If you break school property, under whatever circumstances, deliberately or by accident, you have to pay for it.”  
  “I hate you!” Mubanga hissed.
“I know,” Trevor replied with a smug smile.
“Now, now, there is no need to fight,” Mary said in a pacifying tone. “Mubanga, what you achieved was truly remarkable. No one in the history of our school has made such a big crystal. In fact no one in all the schools in Zambia has ever made such a big crystal.”
There were murmurs of disagreement from nearly all corners of the room.
“It is true. I did my research. The biggest Copper Sulphate ever generated was at Roan Antelope Trust School in Luanshya, and it was only fifteen grams.”
“Really?” Justine stared at her with a gape. He knew the school, for he had once schooled there when his family still stayed in Luanshya—a town far more significant than Namalundu, a town in which he was born nearly two decades ago. Roan Antelope Trust School was among the best in the Country, and Namalundu High School was absolutely no contest. It was thus  remarkable that someone as reckless as Mubanga, in his recklessness, could beat the school.
“Yes, really, Justine,” Mary said. Turning to Mubanga, she said, “Don’t worry, I will ask our club patron, Mr. Chopa, to consider you for an award on prize-giving day.”
Mubanga clasped his hands and waved them about in a triumphant gesture, a silly grin on his large face.
“That’s not fair.” Trevor said, clasping the bob in his hand, thus interrupting its swinging. “How about the rest of us?”
“You are all going to be considered,” she said with a snort. “In fact, I will gauge and assess all your achievements, and the ones which impress me will definitely be awarded. So, Mubanga, don’t seat back on your laurels. Lets us get to work now. I have specific tasks for all of you to try out today.”
She dished out papers to everyone and they immediately got to work, mixing this and that. As they worked, she moved around, keeping an eye on everyone, and keeping abreast with their progress. As usual, she stopped for a longer time at Justine’s station.
“I will keep this,” she said, smiling, and showing him the test tube she had grabbed from him and its contents. She had secured it with a cork stopper. “You might never know when you might need it.”
“True,” Justine said with a slight smile.
“Hey, where’s that Chris, your friend?” she asked, as if suddenly becoming awake to the fact that he was not anywhere near Justine today.
“Um, he quit.” Justine said in a dismal voice.
“Well, good!” she replied. “He was more of a bother than a scientist. All bad seeds should be gotten rid of, right Justine?”
He just shrugged and said nothing at all.
“You look like you’re missing him.” She observed.
“Yes, I am.”
“Hey, don’t worry about him.”
“I am not. I am just beginning to think that he may be right,” he said, rather grudgingly.
“What!” She was shocked. “You also think we are just wasting our time?”
“I mean if Project X is really probable, don’t you think that it would have been discovered by now?”
“Justine, Justine, Justine. Remember the motto of the club?”
“Well, yes—winners never quit and quitters never win.”
“Precisely.”
“But—”
“Listen, Justine,” she stood lower, and put on a frown. “We are not the sort who quit, okay? Project X is going to be a success, okay? We have come too close, and I am not prepared to quit, and you are not going to quit at all.”
Justine nodded his head in a servile manner. Mary seemed to have a control over him that he did not really understand.
“Good.” She smiled back at him. His heart raced, and in that moment, he was inspired with an intense desire to work most madly on Project X. with an eye on him, she slowly edged towards the door. “Um, guys, I have to go to the library and do some research. I’ll be back in abou’ an hour. Now, just be good and work on what I have given you.”
“Okay,” everyone replied in an off-hand manner as they laboured away.

An hour later, Mary was back indeed, and she proceeded to inquire of the progress.
“I want a progress report, Justine,” she said. “How far have we gotten?”
Justine scratched his head, a thing he did most naturally without realizing it, but it did quite mess up his hair. “Not much progress. The compounds you’ve given us are not doing anything significant.”
“Oh.” She said in a small voice, a look of resignation coming over her. Now, whenever Mary said ‘oh’, as Justine had learnt from experience, it usually indicated disappointment; and he hardly enjoyed to see her disappointed. She slumped in the chair nearby and looked about with a pensive look about her.
“I was doing research in the Library,” she said with an ounce of dispari in her voice.
“I’m aware of that,” Justine said. “And I guess you did not find anything worth while.”
“No. in fact, I came across a book, stating in no uncertain terms that it is impossible to create a compound or any other substance that can give a body the characteristic of invisibility.”
“That sounds ominous. What are you implying?”
“Maybe your friend was right; maybe we are just wasting our time.”
“Finally someone admits it!” Trevor said triumphantly.
“No, Mary,” Justine found himself saying, an uncharacteristic boldness coming over him. “We cannot quit. Not like this.”
“No, we can’t,” she acquiesced, almost miserably. “But from my research, we have no chances for success.”
“No, that can’t be quite right,” Justine said poring over his calculations. “I think we are actually on to something.”
“Is that so, Justine?” her eyes lit up.
“Yes.” He suddenly came alive with a burst of animated enthusiasm. “Remember Compound Y?”
“Yes, the one which turned the block of wood black.”
“Precisely. Now, do you know why it turned black?”
“Um, not really.”
“It is because it caused the surface to be absorbent. Instead of reflecting any light at all, it actually absorbed all the light that fell on it. Now, that would not make it invisible right?”
“No, it would not. It would only appear black.” She replied with a thoughtful look.
“Exactly. Now what we do know so far is that for something to be invisible, it has to be transparent, right?”  
“Uh huh. Extremely transparent.”
“But from the calculations and research I have done so far, it is quite an impossible feat to make something transparent. But suppose we can make a substance that, once applied to the surface of an object, not only absorbs light but remits it on the opposite side with the same intensity?”
“Is that possible, Justine?” Mary asked, her lips curving into a smile.
“Yes, I think it is. From what I have calculated so far, if we mix compound Y and compound Z in the right proportions, then the reflective properties of Z will be integrated with the absorbent properties of y to form what I call compound X.”
By now, Justine had managed to capture the attention of all the scientists in the room, and they all gathered around him with intense curiosity on their faces. Justine looked at them and lifted the test tube containing the fizzing compound.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he declared. “Compound X.”
There was a buzz of excitement among the scientists, and the look of confidence on Justine’s face seemed to infuse them with a sense of hope, that their search was finally over, that their hard work had finally paid off.
“What you waiting for!” Trevor hissed. “Try it now.”
“Yes, Justine,” Mary said with big, round eyes. “Do me proud. Make my day.”
“Hold your breath, everyone.” He said pulling out the little block. Carefully, he poured the compound over the block and stood back, as if expecting it to explode. Everyone gasped, their eyes popping out as they watched the transformation before their eyes.
“It is changing!” some one observed.
“It is changing colour,” another observed.
“It is disappearing,” someone else noticed.
“It is just turning black, again,” Trevor said cynically.
“Just give it a moment,” Justine said. “It will disappear.”
“I doubt,” Trevor continued, pouting.
“Keep quiet,” Mary hissed.

Thirty minutes later everyone’s eyes were sore from scrutinizing the little block of wood which by now was as black as charcoal. Trevor had long quit and was back to his pendulum, watching it swing with a smug smile on his face. He straightened up and sneered at Justine.
“See,” he said in a triumphant voice. “I told you it will not work.”
“I don’t understand,” Justine said with a look of agitation about him. “It’s supposed to work.”
“It’s been a good effort,” Mary said in a forlorn voice, placing a hand on Justine’s shoulder, a visibly sad look in her eyes. “But it looks as though it will not work. Sorry Justine.”
“It’s supposed to work,” Justine said in desperation. “I know it’s supposed to. My calculation—”
“Let it go,” Mary said, her eyes reddening and in their edges, the vestiges of what seemed to be tears.
“Let it go?” He stared at her with question marks spinning out of his eyes. This did not sound like Mary at all.
“Mm hmm,” she nodded with her eyes closed. Her voice breaking with emotion, she said, “I have officially declared Project X a failure.”
“No…” he gasped, his voice hardly coming out from disbelief.
“Sorry everyone, for having wasted your time.” She said turning to address the other scientists. “You are free to go. We will work on something more probable; more conceivable. I am sure most of you are inclined to quit the science club; but please don’t. It continues to be the best club in the school. But if you want to quit, I will not stop you.”
Trevor had no kind words, nor intentions. “After having wasted our time…what do you expect? I quit.” He took of his lab coat and threw it to the floor. The others did the same thing and followed him out of the door, never to return again to the science club, never to set foot again in the Association of Mad Scientists.
Mary turned to Justine, who was goggling back at her.
“You are not quitting as well, are you?”
Justine walked up to her and held out his hand. “Ever since I joined the club, I believed in Project X. for the past two years I have dedicated myself to it, working round the clock. Without Project X, I do not see why I should continue being a part of this. It has been a pleasure serving with you.”
He gathered his stuff, flung them into his bag and slowly walked away, leaving Mary stunned and shaken. She could not believe it had come to this; she had not in the very least imagined that it would end in this manner. She slowly tidied up the room, with a tear or two streaking down her cheek. Finally, she had to lock up the lab, and as she did so, she took one last look around.
“Good bye,” she said to the room, to the equipment on the shelves and benches, to the wall of distinctions where all their awards were proudly hanging, to the banner hanging on strings attached to the rafters with the words “Welcome to the Science club” painted colourfully on it.
“Good bye,” she said, turned and walked away. A dark cloud seemed to hang over Namalundu Secondary School, over the Science Club, Over the Association of Mad Scientists, which association had met its demise in one afternoon, the afternoon of September 24 of the year 2009.

The sun was shining brightly, and the sky was a clear blue without a single cloud the following morning when Justine walked into school with a sluggish gait and a downcast expression about him. Though, as I have already mentioned, the ambience was bright and merry, his spirits were so dampened that he did not feel the warmth of the sun on his skin, nor did its stunning brightness burn his eyes like it usually did, in which event he would cover them with his hands as he made his way to the classroom. Yes, today was a very dark day in the life of Justine, and he had very little enthusiasm about the very idea of being in school. What use was school, he thought, when the science club was no more? Anyway, he assured himself, it had all been a bunch of crap. He found himself chuckling when he thought about it. Whatever had they been thinking? How in the world could they make an invisibility cream?
“No wonder,” he said aloud, for sometimes he had the nearly normal habit of talking to himself, “they call us the mad scientists.”
As thoughts of how preposterous a club the science club had really been, and how insanely stupid Project X was, crept through his mind, he realized that quitting had been a very appropriate move. He straightened up and held his head a bit higher. In all fairness, he had absolutely nothing to be gloomy about and everything to be happy about. No longer would he been wasting away precious afternoons mixing chemicals and coming up with wretched compounds which did nothing but blacken objects. Now, he would use these afternoons for more serious things, like preparing for his examinations, which were starting in a few weeks time. He kicked up his paste.
“Mary can…” he began, but he paused and bit his lip in regret. He tried again. “Mary can…”
He shook his head in amusement. He had meant to say something dimwitted, but he could not just get to do it. Somehow, Mary passed herself off as a goddess in his mind, who, if one made derogatory and irreverent statements about, would char to the bone with a flame of fire emanating from her nostrils. As his classroom came into view, a sudden mêlée from the direction of the Science lab caught his attention. Quickly looking up, he caught sight of Mary running towards him with a wild countenance.
“Justine,” she yelled on top of her voice. She came to a screeching halt just a few inches within him. The excitement about her was so great that she could hardly speak. “Justine…” She choked and coughed desperately.
“Talk,” Justine said placing his hands tentatively on her shoulders. “What’s going on?”
“Compound X…” she sputtered. “It works!”
“What!” His hair stood on end at the revelation, his eyeballs nearly shooting out of their sockets. “Shut up!”
“No—I’m not pulling your leg! It’s true!”
“I don’t believe it!”
“Come on!” She grasped his hand and yanked him forward. They lurched towards the lab. Barely a few seconds later, they were standing at the bench where Justine had left the blackened block of wood, staring at—nothing, for they was nothing to see except a very clean work bench.
“I see nothing,” Justine panted.
“’Course! Silly! You aren’t supposed to see anything because it is invisible.”
“Is this a joke,” he said staring at her incredulously.
“Nope. Check this out,” she stretched out her hand and gently and gingerly picked up an invisible something with her long fingers.
“I still think you are pulling my leg.”
“Hold out your palm.”
He did so, and she placed the something onto it. He gasped and jumped. There was the sound of a wooden block hitting the floor.
“Yikes!” He exclaimed.
“See now you have dropped it. How are we supposed to find it like this?”
“I can’t believe it,” he breathed. “It’s actually invisible!”
“Me neither.” She got on all fours and began to search for the block by feeling and groping at the floor.  He joined her, and soon it was he who was rewarded. He held it against the light with a gape of amazement.
“Found it Mary.” He said. “Can’t believe it still. Can’t see not even a bit of it—not even an outline!”
“You know what this means Justine?” she breathed.
“Huh? What?”
“We will be famous! We will get scholarships, and finally I will be able to leave this school!”
“Kinda cool,” Justine said with a shrug. He did not care for fame, nor for scholarships, but he cared for leaving Namalundu Secondary School!
They soon got involved in merry frolicking with the invisible ball, feeling nothing but euphoric about their achievement.  But their merry-making was rudely interrupted by cries of fear and despair emanating from the staff-room.
“What in the world…?”  Mary began with a quizzical expression. They rushed to the window and peered out. The sight that met their eyes was one of the strangest they had ever seen. The teachers, whose habit it was to huddle in the staff-room around the television set, were scampering out of the room into all directions, looks of sheer horror across their faces.
“What in the world?” Justine repeated, a great fear coming over him to see his teachers and mentors, including Mr. Chulu, a man he had great respect for, running in all directions. In a purely reflex action, he made to run as well; in fact he would have bounded off out of the door had not Mary held him back by his collar.
“Where the heck are you going?” she hissed.
“Running away,” he miserably mumbled.
“Running away from what?”
“Dunno, but everyone is running. It is only wise that we—”
“Run away? Come on, we need to find out what they are running away from.”
“There might be a bomb or something,” he said, shuddering with intense desperation as the cries of fear and revulsion increased. The school had in an instant become a frenzy of confusion, with everyone running around and out of the premises as quickly as they could.
“Come on,” Mary said, pulling him outside. He staggered after her. The mayhem outside was so intense that they were nearly knocked over and sent sprawling to the ground. Mary grabbled hold of one of the girls as she flew past, catching her in midair.
“Let me go!” she cried, squirming.
“What is going on?” Mary shouted. “What are you running for?”
“There is a ghost in the staffroom! He says he is going to get us one by one!”
“Ghost?” Mary was shocked.
“Yeah! Now let me go before he catches me!”
Mary let go of her and she continued her flight, interrupted only occasionally by the other fleeing beings. She turned to look at Justine. His eyes were popping from terror.
“Let’s go check this ghost out,” she declared fearlessly.
“But…but…”
“But what?”
“Me don’t like ghosts.”
“Justine, I am surprised at you.” Mary snickered. “I thought you don’t believe in ghosts.”
“I never believed till I saw one.”
“Don’t be silly. We all know ghosts are just people pretending… If you watch Scooby Doo you’d know. Now let’s go bust that ghost!”
Before he could resist, she was dragging him towards the staffroom. By the time they were stepping into the room, the school was nearly evacuated, the only beings being the two of them and the ghost. Carefully, on tip-toe, they edged into the room and looked around with their hearts in their mouths.
“Don’t see nothing,” Mary panted.
Justine suddenly turned white, and with his eyes popping out and falling out of their sockets as on the one occasion when he had seen a chameleon’s wretchedly long tongue, he pointed to the black board in the far corner of the room. Mary slowly turned and followed his finger. She gasped. There, suspended in the air and writing on the black board, was a piece of chalk.
“Impossible,” Justine gasped, getting behind Mary’s back.
“Am gonna to get you one by one,” Mary said, reading the vulgar words the piece of chalk was writing down. “From the biggest Heady Mastery to the Smallest gledi eighty.”
“Let’s run, Mary, this ain’t normal!”
“What bad grammar,” Mary laughed. “This ghost needs to go to school!”
“Mary!” Justine was nearly losing his mind.
The chalk suddenly broke, one piece falling to the floor. “Atase!”  A voice echoed, a voice whose owner they could not see; a voice which came from none other than the ghost himself. Mary laughed. She did not in the least look afraid now, much to Justine’s surprise. He watched her with a great feeling of dread as she walked to the door and closed it. She turned the key and pulled it out.
“What are you doing?” Justine asked, nearly swooning from fright.
“If this guy is a ghost, then he does not need to use the door, right?” Mary whispered back.
Justine nodded, understanding slowly coming to his chilled soul. He stared at the black board, and noticed that both pieces of chalk had dropped to the floor, and that the ghost has signed off with the words:

This is only beginning. Am Promise!
                                                                                              

Ironically, the flying chalk had pacified Justine, because they had given him assurance that he was nowhere near them, but like this, there was no way of knowing.
“Yoo-hoo! Mr. Ghosty!” Mary yelled. Justine’s soul nearly ran out of his body.
“Ka Mary!” the voice echoed.
“What do you want Mr. Ghosty?” she asked.
“To teach all of you a lesson!”
“What have we done to deserve this unfair treatment, Mr. Ghosty?”
“When I was at this school, they made me fail. I passed but they made me fail! Ever since, I have hated this school.”
“With such bad grammar, it is no wonder you failed!”  she laughed.
“Don’t be silly. My spoken English is excellent. I even used to participate in debate, if you don’t know.”
“You are convincing me,” she chuckled. “You do speak rather well.”
“Thank you.” There was the sound of footsteps walking towards them. They soon felt a presence in front of them. Though they could not see him, they could smell him, for he was reeking of an awful stench, that stench which reeks off someone who has not bathed for days on end. Justine found it a peculiar thing that a ghost could smell at all, and though he was wretchedly afraid, he still had enough soul left within him to wonder of this occurrence.
“Now give me the key,” the ghost demanded.
“No!” Mary said adamantly. “I am not gonna give you. If you are a real ghost, you can pass through walls.”
The ghost laughed long and hard, the sound of his laughter like the rustling of leaves. “You silly little girl! Ghost can do anything they want, and at this moment, I only fancy to use the door. Now give me the key, else I will strangle you.”
“I don’t believe you can,” Mary said confidently.
“Ghosts are like wind. They can’t strangle.”
“What a naïve girl you are! Ghosts can do anything they fancy!”
“Okay, then pass through the wall.”
There was a heavy sigh. “You are not making things any easy! I guess I have to use force.”
“Give him the key,” Justine pleaded. “Please.”
“No,” Mary said. “I want him to prove that he is the ghost he says he is.”
“Okay, let me admit an impediment. I am the sort of ghost who cannot pass through walls. There, now give me the key.”
Justine suddenly pulled Mary back, a wildness on his face that was mingled with surprise. “Mary! I know what is going on!”
“What do you mean?” 
 “Remember Compound X? This guy masquerading as a ghost is actually using compound X.”
“Bingo, Justine!” the ghost said.
Mary was amazed. “So it can work on a human too.”
“I am surprised too.” Justine admitted.
“Who are you?” Mary asked.
“I won’t tell you.”
“You must be one of our members turned traitor.” She said.
“No, I am not. If you were listening, you will remember I said that I was once at this school.”
Justine, with a sudden air of confidence, stepped forward, pushing Mary behind him. “I know who you are! I remember that voice. You are Lars, the dastardly Lars; the greatest rumour monger on Earth; the Lars who once made my older brother sleep on the roof; the Lars who once spent a month in jail for deformation of character!”
“You are right, little Justine.”
“How did you know about Compound X?”
“Trevor is a good friend of mine. He told me about it and so I sneaked into the lab and stole it.”
 “Bad boy you are!” Mary hissed.
“Listen, Lars,” Justine said. “You are in grave danger.”
“What do you mean?” Lars asked with a hint of worry.
“Compound X was never meant for use on humans. I never made it for that. It can have terrible and even lethal consequences.”
“What do you mean?” Mary inquired.
“It is a very powerful compound. It may lead to abnormal body behaviour.”
“Like what?” she asked.
Before he could venture to explain, there was a terrible scream from Lars, followed by a heavy thud.
“What a heck…” Mary began, staring at the floor. A faint outline of Lars began to appear, and slowly, Lars became visible. They stood next to him and watched him with awed expressions as he become completely visible. What they were looking at was not really Lars, but something more. It was a ball of thick, black, long hair wrapped in clothes.
“Gross!” Mary exclaimed. “This guy is got too much hair.”
“No,” Justine chuckled. “It’s Compound X. On humans, it causes uncontrollable growth of hair.”
“Amazing.” Mary said.
As they watched on, the ball of hair sprang to its feet. “What have you done to me!” It shrilled in horror.
“It’s not us,” Mary said, “You have done it to yourself.”
“No! Let me out of here!”
Mary ran to the door and opened it. Lars ran out. They rushed to watch him as he rolled down the road out of school like the ball of hair he was.
“Amazing,” Mary reiterated.
“Yeah,” Justine agreed. “Compound X actually grows hair. But I am sure with a little refinement, we can use it on humans and…”
She hushed him with a finger. “Let it go, Justine.”
“But why?” he was immensely surprised.
“Seems to me this Compound X will be much trouble. We might even be arrested for it.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“So what do we do?”
“When someone asks about it, not a word.”
“Not a word?”
“Not a word. We never invented it. It never existed.”
“But what about Lars? He will be bound to talk.”
“Who would believe a ball of hair, especially one made of Lars?”
“You are right,” he laughed.
“So, let’s go and destroy all the evidence.”
“Right on it.”

The invisibility Compound was one of the greatest inventions ever by the Namalundu Association of Mad Scientists. But there is no proof of this. All the scientists, when asked about it, just shrug their shoulders and say not a word. I learnt of this story from Lars. But then, would you be wise to believe anything Lars ever said?

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