The Fatal Strand
Robin Jarvis
Timely release of the classic fantasy trilogy by Robin Jarvis in ebook format, following on from the landmark publication of DANCING JAX, his first novel in a decadeIn a grimy alley in the East End of London stands the Wyrd Museum, cared for by the strange Webster sisters – the scene of even stranger events.But something has come to disturb the slumbering shadows and watchful walls of that forbidding edifice. Miss Ursula Webster is determined to defend her realm to the last as the spectral unrest mounts. Once again, Neil Chapman is ensnared in the Web of Fate, facing an uncertain Destiny. Can he and Edie avert the approaching darkness, or has the final Doom descended upon the world at last?The thrilling conclusion to the chilling trilogy.
ROBIN JARVIS
Contents
Cover (#u0f6e8cbc-ef41-53a2-bc83-1e43173338b7)
Title Page (#uf846e68a-0c78-5ace-8292-faf7880194c5)
Bethnal Green : London 1.30 am (#u538493fd-fd53-5fed-8925-d505e181e139)
CHAPTER 1: THE HOMECOMING (#uaccdae60-4a94-5761-b8c1-02b2c8481057)
CHAPTER 2: VIGIL FOR THE DEATHLESS DEAD (#uf938329f-4028-533f-9a3f-01d13de4d7d7)
CHAPTER 3: AN UNHOLY ABOMINATION (#ua94f7e18-40e1-5371-8f80-949f97137069)
CHAPTER 4: AN EARLY SUMMONING (#u2cbd048d-8132-5333-81b3-f7fa38b8700b)
CHAPTER 5: AWAITING THE CATALYST (#u806f3284-9620-55b2-8c38-76dda9617967)
CHAPTER 6: TWEAKING THE CORK (#u6ec9d7da-ca10-5609-843d-2cbcf005c0ca)
CHAPTER 7: MARY-ANNE BRINDLE (#uc6322822-c592-5424-b59e-a900763b713a)
CHAPTER 8: AWAKENING (#u7f847243-93d0-515b-bb93-61b3a7b5d16c)
CHAPTER 9: TICK-TOCK JACK (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 10: WHITE AND BLACK PIECES (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 11: TREADING DESERTED PATHWAYS (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 12: IN THE WELL LANE WORKHOUSE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 13: THE HORSE’S BRANSLE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 14: THE MENAGERIE OF MR CHARLES JAMRACH (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 15: PSYCHOMETRY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 16: MEMORY RECALLED (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 17: WITHIN THE GIRDLING MIST (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 18: DESECRATION (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 19: BESIEGED BY DEATH (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 20: THE FIRST WAVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 21: MORTAL DREADS (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 22: THE JOURNEY TO THE STAIR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 23: THE GLISTERING GRAINS OF TRUTH (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 24: THREE TIMES MORE EXTREME (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 25: REUNION AND CONFRONTATION (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 26: AN ETERNAL EMPIRE OF COLD AND NIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
In the Chamber of Nirinel (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgment (#litres_trial_promo)
Tales from the Wyrd Museum Trilogy (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Bethnal Green : London 1.30 am (#ulink_3bd23428-a967-59e6-836c-d84b2a384462)
Shrill screams, raging with grief, echoed throughout The Wyrd Museum. From the rambling attics, where frightened pigeons shuffled uneasily upon their perches, the hideous shrieking blistered. Down, into the shadow-filled rooms it poured, an incessant flood of anguish, streaming from chamber to chamber – until finally it seeped beneath the foundations and babbled through the subterranean caverns.
Miss Veronica Webster – she who was Verdandi, youngest of the immortal Fates – was dead. She who had once measured out the lives of men, who had sat at the ensnaring Loom upon which every strand of existence was woven; she who wielded the ultimate tyranny of Doom and Destiny was no more.
A darkness more profound than the pressing night smothered the museum and the incessant lament endured.
Outside, one of the bronze figures which flanked the main entrance lay shattered upon the ground and the shadows within The Wyrd Museum deepened, swelling the rooms with a solid suffocation of light.
To one neglected niche of the ancient building, the chilling dirge eventually penetrated, ripping through the previously inviolate night. Wretched and racked with pain the dismal chorus tolled, filling every invisible corner with the agony of loss.
Then it happened.
In that choking gloom appeared a soft pulse of light and a new sound was born. Softly at first, a gentle creaking began, like floorboards easing and groaning after a long day underfoot. Gradually, the noise grew louder. Creaks became snaps and the troubled dark rang with the frenzy of splintering wood.
Suddenly, another noise joined the increasing clamour. A panting, rattling breath which rasped and heaved when the rupturing of timber escalated to its height. Then a yelping, pig-like squeal spiked through the black gloom.
With one last, straining effort, the unseen creature was free. A hiss of exultation steamed from its wide mouth and it dropped to the floor.
Clawed feet clattered upon the ground as the small imp landed. For a moment it paused, a pair of large eyes blinking in the eternal dark, its tail switching from side to side. Then, with a gargling gasp upon its lips, the creature leapt forward – gnashing out a constant cacophony of barks and grunts. Through the ebon shadows it scurried, and in that jumble of guttural chattering, repeated a single word over and over again.
‘Gogus … Gogus … Gogus …’
CHAPTER 1 THE HOMECOMING (#ulink_43a2dcff-d444-5f81-96e0-711e3b2b818a)
The chill night airs which encircled Glastonbury Tor sliced through the barren trees, crowding its lower slopes and gusting with icy vigour up the narrow track that climbed the shoulders of that steep, ancient hill. The desperate conflict between the hideous forces of Woden and the small group from The Wyrd Museum was over. Upon the Tor a horrible battle had been fought and now, for those few who remained, this was a horrible, grief-filled time.
Standing there in the cold, his school uniform providing meagre protection against the biting breeze, Neil Chapman’s flesh trembled – but the boy made no other movement.
Upon his shoulder the feathers of a mangy looking raven stirred as the bird considered his young master with its single beady eye.
‘Gelid doth the blood flow thick and laggard,’ Quoth cawed faintly. ‘Cold as a frog art thou, yet the icy breath of the Northern wind is blameless in this.’
Lifting his head, the raven gazed upon the dreadful scene which lay before them and clicked his tongue sorrowfully.
There, lying across the muddy path, was the body of Miss Veronica Webster. By the old woman’s side an eight-year-old girl knelt in the crimson pool which had formed around her, weeping hopelessly. In that macabre mire lay a rusted spearhead which was steeped in blood.
Quoth sniffed and wiped his beak upon one wing. It was a terrible moment and although he racked his decayed brain he could find no words of comfort to offer.
Beyond the sobbing figure of Edie Dorkins, several small fires burned upon the hillside and the raven stared at them thoughtfully. There the last of the enemy’s servants, the Valkyrja, were burning. The small crow dolls which had taken possession of twelve local women were utterly consumed in the greedy flames and their reviled existence in this world was finally banished forever.
It had been a terrifying contest and Quoth pulled his head into his shoulders as he counted the cost of this unhappy victory. His brother, Thought, and many others had been lost in the horrendous violence. Aidan, the mysterious gypsy who had brought Neil to Glastonbury, now lay dead upon Wearyall Hill which reared into the darkness across the valley.
Almost drowned out by the dejected cries of Edie Dorkins, the raven could hear faint whimpers from the few lucky survivors and he shook his feathers in readiness to seek them out. But, before he could unfurl his wings, a wail of sirens joined the common grief and the night began to strobe with harsh blue lights.
Turning, Quoth peered down the track. Through the screening trees he saw many vehicles gathering in Wellhouse Lane, and heard the voices of men raised in wonder and dread, amidst the confused blare of alarm and engine.
‘Squire Neil,’ the bird croaked into the boy’s ear, ‘the reckoning hath come. We art besieged and guards toil up the mountain’s side to seize us.’
Slowly, Neil Chapman wrenched his eyes away from the desolate sight of Edie and Miss Veronica and moved like one roused from a fathomless sleep, gradually surfacing back into the grim, waking world.
At first he was only vaguely conscious of the frantic sweeps the torch beams made as they blazed through twigs and branches, dazzling in the muddy puddles and searing the shadowy night. Then one of the lights shone directly in his face and he threw up his hands to ward off the blinding glare.
Suddenly, he was aware of everything: the angry, bewildered yells and the urgent progress of the figures hastening up the track.
‘There’s a kid up here!’ someone bawled.
‘This is the police,’ another barked with authority. ‘Stay right where you are.’
Captured in the accusing glare of a dozen dazzling torches, Neil squinted and automatically raised his hands whilst Quoth gave a frightened squawk and buried his beak in his wing.
‘We haven’t done anything!’ Neil protested, his mind racing. How could he possibly explain what had really happened and expect anyone to believe it?
Then the torches fell upon Edie and Miss Veronica.
‘Another two behind him!’ one of the officers cried. ‘Get the medics up here – quick.’
Edie Dorkins tossed her head at the intrusive light and she curled her mouth into a ferocious snarl. If one of those men so much as touched Miss Veronica she was ready to fly at him, biting and clawing as rabidly as any wild creature.
‘God almighty,’ someone muttered, seeing the rivulets of blood streaming from the old woman’s body. ‘Explosion or summat, they said. She’s been knifed – look at the state of her!’
The first of the policemen drew level with Neil and the confused man stared at the boy questioningly.
‘Don’t you do nothing,’ he snapped as others pushed by him. ‘What the ’ell’s gone on ’ere?’
Before Neil could reply, one of the policemen ventured too close to Edie and there followed a savage struggle as he fell backwards into the mud, with the feral girl scratching and kicking him.
It took two of the astonished officer’s colleagues to drag the fierce child away and, although they kept a firm grip of her arms, their shins suffered vicious blows from a barrage of kicks.
‘We’re not going to hurt you,’ they assured her through gritted teeth. ‘Let the doctors by to ’ave a look at her.’
‘She’s dead!’ Edie screeched in a thin, shrill voice. ‘Let her ‘lone. Don’t you touch her. Veronica! Veronica!’
Neil tugged the sleeve of the distracted superintendent, and the man started nervously.
‘Keep your hands where I can see them!’ he ordered, but Neil could tell that the policeman was almost afraid of him. Did he think that Neil had murdered Miss Veronica? The whole town must be wondering what had happened upon the Tor. Tremendous rumbles had shaken the earth and angelic fires had raged upon the summit, spreading a blistering light across the surrounding countryside. Perhaps the officer thought that he and Edie were responsible.
Watching the man’s expression, Neil was certain of it. Yet there were more immediate concerns.
‘There’s others,’ he said, nodding towards the dark hillside where the small, scattered fires still crackled. ‘People – up there. Some might still be alive.’
The superintendent stared at him for a moment, then gave a shout to the surrounding police. A group of them hurried up the track, their torches thrashing the night as they searched the surrounding slope.
Feeling helpless, Neil looked on as a team of paramedics from one of the ambulances clustered around the body of Miss Veronica. Then he saw a fat sergeant carefully place the blood-covered spearhead into a plastic bag.
‘Looks like this is what did it,’ the man said, unable to hide his ghoulish glee at having been the one to bag the murder weapon.
‘Who did this?’ the superintendent demanded sharply. ‘Did you see? Was there someone else up here?’
Neil shook his head. Upon his shoulder the raven shifted his weight from one foot to another whilst ogling the man with the utmost displeasure.
Before anything further could be said, a new, abrupt voice called out, ‘Willis, get your lads out of the way! I’ll deal with this.’
The policeman turned and shone his torch straight into the face of a man who had quickly pushed his way up the track.
Neil looked at the stranger. He was a tall, big-boned man whose greying beard framed a hollow-cheeked face that was corrugated with irritation.
‘Turn that damn thing off!’ he rapped severely.
‘Chief Inspector!’ the superintendent exclaimed, fumbling with the flashlight. ‘We’ve got a right royal mess here. I was just …’
‘I said, get your lads out of the way,’ his superior insisted. ‘Those damn reporters’ll be here before you know it. Set up a cordon right around the Tor and one over at Wearyall Hill. Hurry up, man – I mean now, not some time next week!’
Cowed by Chief Inspector Hargreaves’ unusually curt directives, Superintendent Willis set about organising what had to be done and left him alone with Neil.
Staring at the stretcher which now bore Miss Veronica’s body, Hargreaves’ face looked more sunken than ever and he gripped hold of Neil’s shoulders to steady himself. Then, in a rush of anguished words, just low enough to prevent anyone else overhearing, he implored, ‘Is it true? Can Verdandi really be dead? How can the deathless die?’
Neil stared up at him. ‘Who are you?’ he asked in an astonished whisper.
It was Quoth who answered. ‘Canst thou not perceive it, my Master?’ the raven cawed. ‘’Tis another scion of Askar who standeth afore thee. That fairest of cities doth glimmer dim yet steady in his eyes. As Aidan was, so too is this spindle-shanked bean pole – a servant of the Loom Maidens is he.’
The Chief Inspector lowered his eyes, murmuring. ‘To the descendants of Askar, the world’s first civilisation, Aidan was our leader. I’ve just come from Wearyall Hill. I – I saw him there. It’s up to the rest of us now to continue his work.’
Setting aside his consternation and sorrow, he cast a wary glance over his shoulder before hastily continuing. ‘There’s not much time. You’ve got to trust me. Can you get the girl to come with us without a fight?’
‘Where are we going?’
‘Back to the museum. The sooner Verdandi is returned to that sacred place, the safer we’ll all be. The Cessation of the Three has begun. Anything may happen now. The order of Destiny has been interrupted. Go calm the girl. If we don’t leave soon it’ll be too late.’
With that, Hargreaves directed the two officers holding Edie to release her and at once the girl sprang forward to hare after the stretcher.
Neil caught up with her and whirled the child around.
‘Lay off!’ she squealed, brandishing her woollen pixie hood in the boy’s face. ‘You an’ your crow stay ’way from me.’
‘Listen!’ he hissed back. ‘Keep quiet and do as you’re told for a change or we’ll never get home. That man wants to help us; he’s the same as Aidan – do you understand what that means?’
The girl ceased her struggles and swept the hair from her eyes to regard the Chief Inspector more keenly. ‘Then he must take Veronica to Ursula,’ she demanded. ‘An’ the spear – that has to come as well.’
To the surprise of his men, Chief Inspector Hargreaves announced that he was personally taking charge of the children and would drive them to the police station at Wells. Any awkward questions were abruptly swept aside when a shout sounded upon the Tor and Neil guessed that yet another mutilated body had been discovered.
In the ensuing confusion, Hargreaves led the children down the narrow track to where his car was waiting. A private ambulance with dark, tinted windows was already moving off with Miss Veronica on board and Edie glared up at the Chief Inspector, suspecting treachery.
‘Don’t worry,’ he assured her. ‘The driver is one of us. He’s going to wait on the Wells Road, then you can sit by Verdandi’s side all the way to the museum. The weapon is with her also. I know just how dangerous it is.’
Presently Hargreaves’ car pulled away and, perched in the back, his feathery face pressed against the rear windscreen, Quoth watched the vast, black shape of the Tor recede into the distance.
In a small, dejected voice he croaked a final farewell to his deceased brother and soon the lights of Glastonbury were left far behind.
Still wet from the previous day’s downpour, the roads of London’s East End reflected a dun-coloured sky. The night had grown old and a dim, grey dawn was beginning to reach over the irregular horizon of ramshackle rooftops. At Bethnal Green, the many turrets and spikes which crowned The Wyrd Museum were mirrored in the countless dirty pools that surrounded it. When viewed from the corner of the alleyway, the dark, forbidding building appeared to become a sinister, moated castle.
At the rear of the museum, within the drab, cemented courtyard, a solitary figure stood in the reservoir of shadow which gathered deep beneath the high, encircling walls.
Wearing only an old T-shirt and a pair of ragged pyjama bottoms, Neil’s father, Brian Chapman, was staring up into the fading night. Even the brightest stars had fled from the brimming heavens, yet still he gazed at the realm of diminishing darkness high above.
A cloud of vapour streamed from his lips as, slowly, he lowered his eyes. The unlovely shape of the museum filled his vision and he shuddered involuntarily.
‘There was a crooked man …’ he muttered under his breath, ‘lived in a crooked house …’
Gooseflesh prickled his bare, scrawny arms and he looked down with surprise at his naked feet which were now purple with cold. Just how long he had been standing out there he had no idea and could not recall what had drawn him from his makeshift bed in the first place. All he remembered was the shrieking which had awakened him. But there had been something else too – a compelling urge to venture outside and be wrapped in the embracing cold.
That might have been hours ago. Under the blank gaze of the museum’s darkened windows he had remained. The violent weeping had ceased, but what had happened in the mean time? Surely he could not have fallen asleep out here in the yard?
‘Blood and sand!’ he scolded himself, pattering towards the caretaker’s small apartment once more. ‘This lousy place’ll drive us all nuts.’
Clambering back on to the couch, he wriggled inside the sleeping bag beneath his duvet – but the memory of the cold lingered with him and refused to thaw.
Even as the caretaker tried to get warm, the tall, gaunt shape of an elderly woman stood silhouetted within the grand Victorian entrance of The Wyrd Museum, silently watching the last dregs of night melt into glimmering day.
Upon the topmost of the three steps she waited – Miss Ursula Webster; Urdr of the Royal House, the eldest of the Fates. She, who throughout the long tale of time had been feared far more than her sisters, appeared drawn and defeated. In former ages it was she who had severed the threads of life, determining that irrevocable ending which sundered families and lovers with a single, merciless cut. Now a similar parting had been visited upon her and the pain of that loss was something she had not felt since the first days of the world.
Over her delicately-boned features a fine dew sparkled – perfectly matching the glitter of the jet beads which bordered her black evening gown.
A cauldron of emotions seethed and boiled within her. Rage and guilt battled with her grief, but she remained erect and alert, steeling herself against the contest that she knew was to come.
At the bottom of the steps, scattered in a disjointed snarl of twisted bronze, lay the fragmented image of Verdandi. The sightless eyes of that broken, upturned face seemed to stare up at her sister, but the old woman avoided meeting that steady gaze and maintained her unwavering vigil, glaring out into the alleyway.
She knew exactly what had transpired on Glastonbury Tor and who was responsible for this heinous tragedy. His unseen hand had driven that enchanted blade through her sister’s immortal flesh as surely as if he had gripped the spear himself. In some dank corner her great enemy waited, weaving his evil designs just as she and her sisters had spun the Cloth of Doom.
Perhaps even now he was watching her, savouring to the full the extent of his abhorrent crime.
‘Do you hear me?’ she asked, abruptly snapping the silence, her clipped voice charged with contempt and condemnation. ‘Is this what you have yearned for? Is this the triumphant victory you have sought these many centuries? How pitiable you have become, Mighty Woden! Is this the same god of war who hung for nine nights upon the World Tree? Is this He who fought with axe and sword against the ogres of the first frost? Has the Captain of Askar been reduced to this – murdering a woman too old and too witless to defend herself?’
Miss Ursula’s pale eyelids drooped closed as she fought to control her anger, fiercely pressing her thin lips together before attempting to speak again.
‘What sweetness can there be in my sister’s death?’ she eventually continued in as level a voice as she could maintain. ‘Wallow well in this, the vilest of deeds. If it is still your avowed intent to destroy the remaining daughters of Askar, then you will never succeed. Against the powers which are mine to command you can only fail. The fortress of my museum has, in its keeping, defences beyond either your strength or comprehension. Neither you nor your agents shall ever set foot over this threshold.
‘Do you mark my warning? If you desire this war, then so be it, the challenge is accepted. But know this – to the death shall the campaign be waged. The Mistresses of Doom and Destiny will conquer even you in the end.’
No answer came to Miss Ursula as she stood, dignified and grave upon the step. Before she had time to wonder if her adversary had heard her words, she became aware of a forlorn snivelling behind her and she turned archly.
Into the main hall, a bundle of dirty washing seemed to be making its clumsy, faltering way down the wide staircase. It paused next to a rusted suit of armour; the pale light which flickered from a small oil lamp lapped over the ragged form for a moment, before the hobbling gait continued.
Swaddled in a grubby nightgown that was fringed with filthy lace, Miss Celandine Webster stumbled on. She who was once Skuld of the Royal House of Askar was now an old woman. Her face, which normally resembled an over-ripe apple, was wrung into a wizened prune and in her large hands she clutched a mildew-speckled handkerchief.
‘Oh Ursula!’ she blubbered. ‘Don’t leave me all on my own. I can’t bear it – I can’t!’
The figure in the entrance regarded her coldly, her face betraying none of the emotions which churned within her.
‘Control yourself,’ she instructed. ‘Histrionics won’t bring her back.’
Miss Celandine staggered forward, her grimy feet slapping over the polished parquet floor of the hallway. ‘Make it better!’ she beseeched. ‘Bring Veronica back to us. How can she be killed? We don’t die – we can’t! I won’t believe it – I won’t, I won’t!’
The eldest of the Websters recoiled from this infantile display and returned her attention to the alleyway outside, completely ignoring Miss Celandine’s heart-rending pleas.
‘Oh help me, Ursula!’ she wept, dragging the handkerchief over her face and twisting it into her wrinkled eyes. ‘I’m frightened. What’s happening to us? Why did Veronica run away? My heart hurts me so. Please hold me. Make me feel safe.’
But Miss Ursula had no comfort to spare for her sister. Like a house of cards demolished in the draught, Miss Celandine crumpled to the floor. There she stayed, weeping and sobbing until her voice cracked and the spring of her tears ran dry.
For an hour they held their positions, one rigid and silent, the other a quivering heap of choking despair, and neither of them could give solace to the other.
Eventually, the sound of an approaching engine roused Miss Celandine from her pit of grief. Raising her head from the crook of her elbow where she had sniffed and whimpered away the dawn, she saw her sister move on to the middle step as the sound grew closer. Throwing her two plaits of corn-coloured hair over her shoulders, she rose and crept forward – her dry bones crackling in complaint.
‘What is it, Ursula?’ she cooed with a fearful voice. ‘Who is it?’
Pressing close to her sister, she tried to venture on to the topmost step to peer out, but Miss Ursula barred the way and propelled her back into the museum.
‘Stay in there,’ she rapped severely. ‘Veronica is returned to us.’
Rumbling into the alley came an unmarked ambulance with dark, tinted windows. Lumbering as close to the entrance as possible, the vehicle braked in front of the bollards which barricaded one end of the alleyway and the doors opened slowly.
Clambering from the passenger seat, Neil alighted upon the cobbles – with Quoth in his usual place upon the boy’s shoulder.
It had been a dismal journey in which few words had been exchanged. Neil had given Chief Inspector Hargreaves a sketchy account of all that had happened on Glastonbury Tor, but soon lapsed into weary silence, snatching occasional moments of much-needed sleep. The eyes he turned to The Wyrd Museum were ringed with grey and he ached for his bed. There was, however, one more duty to be done before then and he gazed at the man who was already closing the driver’s door.
Chief Inspector Hargreaves stood solemnly before that ugly building to which he and the other remaining descendants of Askar made their annual pilgrimage. For as long as he could remember he had come to this place, to lay an offering of flowers about the drinking fountain in the yard. It was a demonstration of fealty to those who lived within, yet never once had he or any of the others caught so much as a glimpse of the three undying Fates.
In all his imaginings he had not dreamed that he would ever meet the Handmaidens of the Loom. Now here he was, burdened with this most dreadful of errands – delivering the corpse of the youngest to her sisters, and his soul quailed inside him.
In sombre silence, he stared across to where Miss Ursula waited upon the steps and bowed reverently. The woman’s thin lips twitched with agitation, but she inclined her head in acknowledgement and gestured for the man to complete the grim task he had undertaken.
Turning on his heel, Hargreaves led Neil to the rear of the ambulance and pulled open the large double doors. Presently they emerged, bearing between them the stretcher upon which lay the body of Miss Veronica Webster.
Throughout the journey, Edie Dorkins had clung to the dead woman’s hand and now, as she walked alongside this melancholy procession, she held it still.
A blanket had been wrapped about the girl’s shoulders during the long drive from Somerset but it fell to the ground as she traipsed alongside the stretcher. Distractedly, she wiped her nose upon the sleeve of her coat.
Seeing the frail body of her sister, looking so shrivelled and old, Miss Ursula drew herself up to her full height and bit the inside of her cheek. She must not allow herself to weaken now. There must be no betrayal.
‘Take her within,’ she uttered thickly, standing back to allow them entry. ‘Place her over there, upon the floor.’
With bulging eyes, Miss Celandine watched as the litter carrying her younger sister passed under the archway and she yelped shrilly at the awful sight.
Miss Ursula knew it was pointless trying to stop her and so, with Miss Celandine’s ghastly squeals echoing about the hallway, she patiently waited until the stretcher had been gently placed where she had directed.
‘My family is in your debt,’ she informed the Chief Inspector. ‘I thank you for returning our sister to us.’
Hargreaves could only stare at his feet, suddenly speechless at this meeting.
‘You have risked everything to bring her here,’ Miss Ursula continued. ‘Your career, possibly even your freedom. If there was anything in my power to give you, it would be yours. The children of Askar are loyal indeed.’
The Chief Inspector shook his head and found his voice at last. ‘It is enough to have served,’ he muttered.
‘Then leave us now,’ she told him. ‘But do not stray far. In the dark days to come, Urdr may have need of you again.’
Hargreaves returned to the entrance and, with her taffeta gown rustling like dry grass as it swept across the floor, Miss Ursula Webster brushed him outside, closing the door in his face.
Upon the steps the Chief Inspector drew his breath and shook his head. The death of Miss Veronica had altered everything. His thoughts in turmoil, he hurried from the alleyway with a hideous dread gnawing at his spirit.
Something terrible was about to befall the world and, as he climbed back into the ambulance, he determined to summon as many of the descendants of Askar as possible.
‘The children of they who were there at the beginning,’ he told himself darkly, ‘should be here to witness the end.’
CHAPTER 2 VIGIL FOR THE DEATHLESS DEAD (#ulink_165f72d0-4e7f-515a-bac5-f81485ca9f9b)
‘You!’ Miss Ursula snapped at Neil. ‘Remove that accursed bird of ill omen from my sight, before I wring his wretched neck.’
Tickling Quoth reassuringly under the chin, Neil returned the old woman’s imperious glare, yet did not answer. Normally he would have shouted right back at her, but that morning he made allowances for her grief – and besides, he was too tired.
‘Come on,’ he told the raven. ‘We’ll grab something to eat, then I honestly think I could sleep for the rest of the day.’ With the scraggy-looking bird casting a fretful glance over his shoulder, they made their way through the many rooms and galleries, towards the caretaker’s apartment.
When they reached a dreary passageway, ending at a door covered in peeling green paint, Neil hesitated and turned to his faithful companion.
‘Listen,’ he began. ‘My dad can be a bit funny sometimes.’
Quoth gave a hearty cluck and hopped up and down with excitement. ‘Thou art the son of a jester!’ he chirruped. ‘That is well, for this sorry chick is melancholy as a gallows cat. ’Tis most surely a great truth that the memory of joy doth make misery thrice times awful. Haste, haste, Squire Neil, let us to this worthy fool – I wouldst be made merrie!’
‘I don’t mean it that way,’ Neil groaned. ‘My dad can be a bit strange, that’s all.’
The raven nodded sagely. ‘Ah!’ he croaked. ‘Thy father is mad.’
‘Very likely,’ Neil couldn’t help smiling. ‘So don’t make it any worse. Try and keep quiet. He doesn’t like stuff he can’t understand and there’s enough gone on in here to last him a lifetime.’
Trying to make as little sound as possible, Neil opened the door and crept inside the apartment.
To his surprise he found that his father was already awake. Half-submerged in the padded blue nylon of his sleeping bag, Brian Chapman was sitting up on the shabby settee, his face turned towards the window.
He did not seem to hear his son enter and Neil eyed him quizzically. ‘Dad?’ he ventured.
The man continued to stare fixedly out of the window.
‘Dad,’ Neil repeated, ‘I’m back.’
Quoth craned forward to peer at the boy’s father more closely.
‘’Tis most certain an affliction of the moon,’ he cawed. ‘Never hath this poor knave espied such a muggins.’
At that moment, Brian Chapman gave a violent shiver and he whipped around – startled.
Taken aback by the sudden movement, the raven squawked in surprise and flapped his wings to steady himself.
‘What’s that?’ Neil’s father cried, scowling at the bird in revulsion. ‘Take it out of here, Neil. It’s vermin! Full of germs. You’ll catch all sorts!’
‘Don’t worry,’ Neil said hurriedly, seeing that Quoth was already clearing his throat to let loose a fitting retort. ‘He’s very clean and doesn’t bite.’
‘You can’t keep him.’
‘I don’t have to – he’s my friend.’
Brian pinched the bridge of his nose, a sure sign that he was growing impatient.
‘I hate this place,’ he grumbled, extricating himself from the sleeping bag whilst snatching his spectacles from the nearby shelf. ‘Always something peculiar happening. Never stops. Couldn’t sleep a wink last night. An absolute madhouse! One of those barmy women was screeching her head off till God knows when.’
‘One of them’s died,’ Neil said simply.
But his father wasn’t listening. He glared at the raven and shook his head resolutely.
‘Disgusting!’ he declared. ‘It’s bald and mangy. What’s happened to its other eye? Might have fowl pest or worse – you’ve got to get it out of here. I don’t want it anywhere near your brother.’
Unable to remain silent any longer, Quoth finally defended himself against these unwarranted insults. ‘Woe to thee – most ill-favoured malapert!’ he quacked. ‘Verily dost thou show how abject be the poverty of thine wits! No ornament nor flower may this morsel be, yet mine eye findeth no delectation in thine own straggled visage! Thou hast the semblance of a wormy turnip which yea, even the famined wild hog wouldst snub.’
Brian gaped at the bird, but anger swiftly overcame his astonishment. Lurching forward, he grasped hold of the raven and Quoth bleated in fright as he tried to escape. Neil’s father, however, held him firmly and marched to the door – holding the wildly flapping bird at arm’s length.
‘It’s come from upstairs hasn’t it?’ the man shouted. ‘For God’s sake, Neil – isn’t it bad enough having to live in this asylum without you fetching the freaks down here?’
‘Let him go!’ Neil protested, trying to grab his father’s outstretched arm.
But it was no use. Quoth was flung out of the apartment and ejected into the corridor.
For a brief instant, the raven found himself tumbling helplessly through the air. Then he crashed into an oil painting, slid down the canvas and fell to the floor with a loud squawk of dismay.
Sprawled upon the cold wooden boards, he glared at the now firmly closed door, looking like a tangled clump of half-chewed feathers which an idle cat might have abandoned. He puffed out his chest indignantly.
‘Toad-frighter and donkey-wit!’ he mumbled to the expanse of peeling green paint. ‘Clodpole and besom steward!’
Picking himself up, the bird shook his tail and inspected his wings before waddling closer to the door where he waited for it to open again.
‘Master Neil?’ the raven cawed expectantly. ‘Master Neil?’
Within the caretaker’s apartment, Neil Chapman struggled to barge past his father, but Brian pushed him backwards.
‘If he can’t stay, then I won’t either!’ the boy fumed.
‘Go to your room!’
‘You haven’t even asked where I’ve been or what happened!’
‘I’m not interested!’ came the cruel reply. ‘I’m sick to death of having to live in this nut-hutch with that old bag upstairs bossing me around all day. Well, it won’t be for much longer.’
Neil stared at him. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Time we left,’ Brian said with uncharacteristic resolve. ‘I’ll find another job.’
‘You can’t do that!’ his son cried. ‘Not now!’
Running a hand through his lank hair, the man grunted with exasperation. ‘Blood and sand!’
Neil turned away from him and stomped towards the bedroom he shared with his younger brother, Josh. ‘You never stick with anything,’ he muttered resentfully.
Barging into the room, the boy threw himself on to the bed and miserably wondered what he would do if his father tried to make him leave The Wyrd Museum.
‘I can’t go now,’ he told himself. ‘This place hasn’t finished with me yet I’m sure – and what about poor old Quoth?’
But his wretched reflections would have to wait, for all his energies were utterly spent and the softness of the bed proved to be too potent a force to resist. In a moment, his eyes were closed and he felt himself drifting off to sleep.
In the living room, Brian slumped back into the armchair and gazed fixedly up at the ceiling, insensible to the dejected chirrups sounding from the corridor outside.
‘Not long now,’ he whispered to himself. ‘Then I’ll be free.’
In the main hallway, still clasping Miss Veronica’s hand, Edie Dorkins knelt upon the hard floor, arranging the dead woman’s dyed black hair about her shoulders, whilst brushing the mud flecks from her shrivelled face. Miss Celandine was still yowling, but she had buried her head into her spade-like hands and so the shrillness was muffled and less unbearable than before.
At her side, Miss Ursula’s countenance was fixed and immovable as any stone. Upon Miss Veronica’s breast, Edie had placed the old woman’s cane, and at her side was the plastic bag containing the rusted spearhead.
‘It is well that you brought it here,’ Miss Ursula observed, her flinty aspect vanishing when she saw the gouts of blood which smeared the vicious-looking weapon.
Visibly wincing, she cleared her throat. ‘In all creation there are few artefacts which can do us injury. This, the Roman blade which pierced the side of He who perished upon the Cross, is one of the most lethal. I ought to have accepted it within the confines of the museum long ago, when first it was offered unto my keeping. Veronica is the price I have paid for that folly and most bitterly do I accept it now.’
Clasping her hands in front of her, Miss Ursula bowed her head and the jet beads which hung in loops about her ears gave an agitated rattle.
‘We gonna bury ’er?’ Edie asked. ‘I’m good at digging ’oles.’
Miss Ursula straightened. ‘No need,’ she said. ‘Celandine and I shall take her down to the cavern. In the Chamber of Nirinel, beneath the surviving root of Yggdrasill, Veronica will sit out the remaining span of the world. That hallowed place shall be her tomb and no corruption will touch her. Now come.’
Striding to a section of panelled wall, the woman held up her hand and gave the wood three sharp raps.
With a clicking whir, the wall shuddered and slid aside, revealing a low stone archway and a steep, winding staircase beyond.
‘Edith, dear,’ Miss Ursula began, ‘take up Veronica’s cane and the oil lamp if you will, and bring the spearhead also.’
Inhaling great, gulping breaths, Edie hurried to obey. The stale air which flooded out of the darkness into the hallway was perfumed with a hauntingly sweet decay. Holding the lamp in one hand and the ivory-handled cane under her arm, she took up the bag which contained the hideous weapon and carried it warily. When she accidently touched the metal, the power within it prickled and hurt her, even through the polythene.
‘Celandine,’ Miss Ursula said tersely. ‘You must aid me in this.’
The woman in the grubby nightgown peeped out at her elder sister through a chink between her fingers. Then she blew her nose upon its large collar and shuffled reluctantly closer to the stretcher.
‘I want to be nearest her pretty little head,’ Miss Celandine muttered. ‘I shan’t be able to talk to her if you make me carry the feet.’
Miss Ursula indulged her. ‘Very well,’ she sighed. ‘Grip the handles soundly, I don’t want you to let go.’
‘Oh Ursula!’ her sister objected. ‘I wouldn’t – you know that, you do, you do!’
She pulled a face as if she were about to cry once more, but Ursula was already lifting and so Miss Celandine quickly forgot the offending remark and assisted her in hoisting their dead sister off the ground.
‘Why, the dear darling’s no weight at all!’ she exclaimed.
‘Come,’ Miss Ursula said. ‘We must bear her down the great stair.’
With Edie Dorkins treading solemnly at their heels, the despondent trio were quickly swallowed by the intense and stagnant dark as they began their descent, deep beneath the museum’s foundations.
Down into the severe blackness which filled the underground stairway and mocked the pitiful flame of the oil lamp, they slowly made their way. The plummeting path was perilous and progress was painfully slow. Inch by inch they bore Veronica’s body, avoiding the slippery patches where dripping water and the tread of countless ages had worn the steps treacherously smooth. Beneath lengths of mouldering pipework they ducked, until Edie suddenly called out and pressed her ear to the crumbling stone wall.
‘There’s summink behind it!’ she cried. ‘Listen – it’s gettin’ closer.’
Miss Ursula tilted her head to one side and tutted with irritation. ‘Remember what I told you, Edith dear,’ she began, ‘how near this secret stair brushes against the advances of Mankind? A meagre few inches beyond this very wall runs one of their subterranean railways. Brace yourselves, both of you – the engine approaches.’
All three could now hear the faint roaring noise which vibrated through the shaft, causing a tremor to ripple through the steps beneath their feet. Swiftly the sound soared, mounting to a trumpeting clamour that blared up the stairway. Edie fell back from the wall, expecting it to explode at any moment before the unstoppable force of the train which was surely about to cannon its way through.
The steps were shuddering violently now and the body of Miss Veronica swayed unsteadily upon the stretcher as her sisters endeavoured to remain standing. The din was deafening, a screaming rumble which reverberated through Edie’s chest, and she opened her mouth to yell amidst this clangorous thunder.
Then it was over. Beyond the narrow barrier of stone, the Underground train had passed and all that remained was a juddering echo, which flew up the spiralling stairs and vanished in the winding gloom above.
Catching her breath, Edie lifted the oil lamp to peer around her. The surrounding masonry was crazed and fractured and, from the still quivering cracks, fine rivers of dust were pouring.
‘One day our sanctuary shall be unearthed and all our secrets laid bare – but not yet,’ Miss Ursula assured her. ‘Come, Celandine, there is still some distance to travel before we can lay our sister to rest.’
In the wake of the train’s tumult, the ensuing silence was horribly oppressive. It made the pool of darkness, which constantly receded before them, seem resentful and full of invisible, unfriendly eyes.
The overwhelming hush made Edie uneasy; she did not like silence. She had only recently been plucked from the time of the Blitz, with its constant din of exploding bombs and the crackle of the anti-aircraft guns. Not since the time when she had been imprisoned under the ruins of her home, with the bodies of her mortal family around her, had she known such deathly quiet. She started to make small noises to fend off this unwelcome absence of sound.
At first she hummed tunelessly then, true to her feral nature, she tried a gentle, droning growl. After a short while, Edie was amused to find that her echoes sounded as though some little animal really was in there with them. Once she was almost certain that a snuffling bark had not stemmed from her at all, and she flourished the lamp behind her to check that nothing was hiding in the shadows. But before she could prove her suspicions, the descent was over. The staircase came to an abrupt halt and the space opened up around them, changing the nature of the echoes completely.
‘Edith,’ Miss Ursula instructed, ‘you must proceed in front and light the way. Nirinel is at hand.’
Through a network of caverns the girl led the Websters, until at last they came to a large metal gateway which swung open before them.
Immediately, the golden radiance of many flaming torches flared up to greet their straining sight. Edie ran forward to gaze up at the magnificent spectacle of the last surviving root of the World Tree – astounded afresh by its titanic majesty.
Up into the lofty, vaulted shadows the massive shape stretched, where no leaping lights could reach. The child’s eyes traced an imagined arch down to where the momentous root plunged back into the flame glow and thrust through the chamber’s far wall. It was a monumental vision of permanence, the oldest of all living things, the most wondrous of secrets hidden in the forgotten deeps of the earth – Nirinel.
From history’s cradle the Webster sisters had tended it, guarding their sacred charge against the relentless corruption of the marching years. It was only fitting that Miss Veronica would remain beneath its enchanted bulk for the rest of eternity.
‘Careful,’ Miss Ursula scolded Miss Celandine as they approached a large circular dais built in the centre of the cavern. ‘Lay her down gently.’
The ancient wellhead, from which divine waters were once drawn to anoint the ravages of age afflicting the great root, was now choked with moss and a hay-like growth of dead weeds. Upon their dry, cushioning layers the stretcher was placed and Edie put the ebony cane in Miss Veronica’s lifeless hands.
‘And the blade,’ Miss Ursula directed. ‘It should be beside her.’
The girl obeyed, carefully removing the deadly weapon from the bag. Then she caressed the dead woman’s cheek with her fingertips and whispered, ‘You can rest now.’
Regarding the child keenly, a curious light glittered in Miss Ursula’s eyes and she returned her attention to her dead sister.
‘Are you in truth at peace?’ she asked, intently scanning the lined face. ‘Is your soul finally free? You were never content, Veronica. In our youth I denied you your happiness and to this unending existence you were irrevocably fettered.’
Edie kissed the dead woman’s forehead then gave Miss Ursula a conciliatory smile. ‘At the end,’ she told her, ‘Veronica said as how she were sorry and didn’t blame you for what happened.’
On hearing this, the eldest of the Fates squeezed her eyes shut. Then, when she had mastered herself, she took the oil lamp from Edie and leaned forward – holding it over that cold, expressionless face, as if the answer to what troubled her could be found amongst the countless wrinkles which mapped its aged contours.
How different those familiar features now appeared. Without the inner spark to kindle that mottled flesh and fire it into life, it was like viewing some poorly executed sculpture of her sister. No trace of the character that had once burned within her could be glimpsed or guessed at. The absolute stillness was hideous to see and the pallid skin reflected the lamplight in a cadaverous ghastliness.
Still searching that beloved face, Miss Ursula muttered in a voice which at times cracked with despair.
‘Of this world there is little I do not understand,’ she said huskily. ‘But to this plane alone, and of those who are bound unto it, does my wisdom extend. Beyond the frontiers of life, Urdr has no knowledge. Outside the immutable confines of this strangling reality, is there an end to care and suffering? Can there indeed be a paradise? Is that where you are now, my dearest little Verdandi? Is all your hurt now healed?’
Listening to this, Miss Celandine snivelled into her handkerchief once more. It frightened her to hear Ursula so uncertain and questioning.
‘Is Veronica with Mother now, do you think?’ she spluttered.
Her elder sister lowered the lamp and let out a long breath. ‘I do not know,’ she replied with a bitter edge in her voice. ‘And I doubt whether I shall ever discover the answer. For how may the immortals ever know the truth of that – the most hidden secret of all?’
The woman lapsed into silence as she continued to survey the wizened corpse lying upon the dried weeds.
‘How small she seems, and how ignominious her journey to this place. Verdandi, princess of the Royal House, and yet she was carted here as though she were of no more import than a sack of coal.’
Spreading her hands wide, Miss Ursula lifted her eyes to the towering vastness of Nirinel as she contemplated the pomp and dignity that her late sister truly deserved.
‘In the forgotten past, the funeral of this daughter of Askar would have been effected with the highest ceremony. A legion of horns and trumpets would have sounded the heavens, and banners of sable flown from the city walls to mourn her passing. What solemn elegies the poets would have composed, what glorious outrage to inspire the balladeers’ songs.
‘In every window a candle would burn in memory of her. Across the land, monuments would rise and the brightest star in the firmament would be named anew.’
The woman’s voice trailed into nothing and she looked again at the wasted body upon the wellhead. ‘I regret that such ceremony is forever behind us,’ she admitted, ‘but still we will do what we can. Verdandi may indeed have to remain in this blessed place until the end of all things, but not for a moment shall she be alone. In this, her tomb, we shall take it in turns to sit beside her. However, on this grievous day, we shall all keep watch.’
‘Oh yes!’ Miss Celandine cooed. ‘And when it’s just her and myself, I shall bring down a plate of jam and pancakes to put at her side and tell her everything that happens – I shall, I shall.’
Under Miss Ursula’s instruction, they each took a torch from the carved walls and fixed them into the soil around the wellhead. Then, together, they knelt before Miss Veronica’s body and the long vigil commenced.
With her head to one side, and the torchlight sparkling in her bright eyes, Miss Celandine rocked backwards and forwards upon her knees, murmuring the snatches of old rhymes and songs she remembered from the ancient city of Askar and the days of her youth.
‘Oh see within that sylvan shade, the fairest city that e’er was made. A mighty tower roofed with gold, where dwells the Lady so I’m told. Queen of that ash land she may be, with daughters one, two and three.’
Turning to the old woman in the nightgown, Edie saw that large tears were trickling down her walnut-like face as she recited. But Miss Celandine’s memory soon failed her and the words trailed into nothing. Humming to herself, she twisted the end of her plaits around her knobbly fingers, whilst her whispering voice slowly began to chant another half-remembered rhyme:
‘… thus spurred by need she wove her doom. Then all were caught within that weave and from its threads none could cleave. The root was saved, but by the Loom all things are destined, from womb to tomb …’
At Edie’s side, the girl thought that she saw Miss Ursula flinch when these words were uttered and wondered what she was thinking.
‘… How fierce He roared, she cheated him of the ruling power hid within …’
Again the poem faltered, but Miss Celandine continued to drone the rhythm until a sad smile suddenly smoothed her crabbed lips when a different thought illuminated her muddled mind. Clumsily, she rose to her feet and, assuming a dramatic pose, pointed a big, grime-encrusted toe. Then, very carefully, she started to dance.
Edie shifted around to watch her. Swathed in her ragged nightgown, the old woman’s less than graceful movements were a peculiar sight. In other circumstances Edie would have laughed, but here in the midst of their grief, Miss Celandine’s shambling performance possessed an aching poignancy.
Around the Chamber of Nirinel Miss Celandine waltzed, twirling and revolving with her arms flung wide. At times she looked like a collection of tattered sheets torn from a washing line and caught in a buffeting gale, but there were moments when the crackling torch flames clothed her in an enchanted light and the endless years fell from her shoulders. In those brief moments Miss Celandine was beautiful; her hair burned golden and her supple limbs skipped the steps with dainty precision.
Then the vision was lost as she sailed out of the torchlight and reeled towards the entrance, where the metal gates formed a perfect backdrop for the rest of her display.
‘Oh what heavenly dancing there used to be,’ she pined, temporarily interrupting her tune. ‘What darling parties we had back then. Terpsichore, the gallants called me – Terpsichore, Terpsichore.’
Flitting behind Miss Celandine, a dozen shadows stretched high into the darkness above, magnifying her every move. Edie stared, enthralled by their grotesquely distorted, whirling shapes.
Even Miss Ursula had turned to watch her sister, yet the eyes which regarded her clumsy cavorting were filled with pity.
All their attention was diverted from the corpse which lay upon the wellhead, so not one of them noticed when the withered hand of Miss Veronica began to move.
With painful slowness, the arthritic fingers twitched and flexed, creeping across the bloodstained robe like the legs of a great, gnarled spider. Down to her side the hand inched, until the groping fingers closed about something metal and in that instant the old woman’s eyes snapped open.
‘Such is the demented doom which awaits me,’ Miss Ursula breathed, still following Miss Celandine’s ungainly prances. ‘As Nirinel rots, so too does her mind. That is the measure of how closely are we bound to it. Veronica was the first to fall victim. Then, piece by piece, Celandine followed until she became this witless fool. How many years are left unto me I wonder, before I too hitch up my skirts and join her in that abandoned madness?’
Edie chewed her bottom lip thoughtfully. ‘I’ll look after both of you,’ she pledged.
‘I know, child. To you I entrust the care of the museum and the many secrets it holds.’
Over the carved beasts which crowded the chamber’s walls, Miss Celandine’s wild shadows continued to leap, and Edie narrowed her almond-shaped eyes as she watched them. Something was wrong.
Amongst those gyrating shapes was a disharmony that she could not place. Over that stone menagerie the fleeting silhouettes licked and bounced with the same deranged vigour as before, but now a new element mingled with them – an extra shadow which did not belong there.
At first it was difficult to distinguish this additional outline from the rest of the frenetic show. Confused, Edie peered at the strangely stilted shade with a puzzled expression upon her face. Then, with a sudden terror clutching her stomach, the awful truth dawned upon her.
Spinning round, the girl let out a yell of fright. The stretcher was empty. There – standing directly behind Miss Ursula, her raised hand clutching hold of the rusted blade and ready to strike – was Miss Veronica Webster.
CHAPTER 3 AN UNHOLY ABOMINATION (#ulink_12580c2d-d963-5ac4-802c-2d9ce70d9b27)
Down stabbed the spear, slicing a savage arc through the stagnant air. But Edie’s shout had been enough, and Miss Ursula moved aside a moment before the weapon plunged through the space where she had just been sitting.
Springing up, Edie pulled the eldest of the Fates to her feet and both stared in horror at the decrepit figure before them.
Orbs of darkness glared out from Miss Veronica’s haggard face in place of eyes. Like mirrors of polished jet they reflected the surrounding torchlight, but no hint of life gleamed within their inky depths.
About her hunched shoulders, her long, coal-coloured hair snaked and streamed as though an infernal breeze blew upon it. Then, taking a lurching step forward, the apparition once again slashed the scarlet-steeped weapon in front of her.
Edie dragged Miss Ursula clear of the sweeping blade. Then those dark eyes bent their power upon her and the girl shuddered, caught in the malevolence of their glance.
With jerking spasms, the lifeless limbs lashed out and Miss Ursula covered the stricken child’s sight as she hauled her out of range.
‘Do not look at her!’ she cried. ‘That is not my sister. A foulness is in possession of her body. Edith – come quickly!’
Avoiding the spiking blows they fled, but the animated cadaver darted in pursuit, furiously ripping and tearing the air behind them.
Around the well Edie and Miss Ursula ran, barely dodging the vicious thrusts until Miss Veronica’s shrivelled mouth gaped open and the malice-filled spirit which drove her let loose an unearthly, echoing howl.
At the gateway, Miss Celandine staggered to a standstill. With the folds of her nightgown swishing about her, she stared at the scene incredulously.
‘Veronica!’ she exclaimed, a wide grin splitting her face. ‘Veronica!’
Overcome with joy she bounded across the earthen floor towards the horror that awaited.
‘No!’ Miss Ursula shouted. ‘Celandine – that is not Veronica!’
But Miss Celandine did not heed her. All she saw was her young sister, alive once more, and she flung herself forward, squealing with wondrous exultation.
A hideous snarl twisted the dead lips as the corpse wheeled to meet her and the spear glinted ruddily in the firelight.
‘Celandine!’ Edie bawled. ‘Stop!’
Too late, Miss Celandine beheld those black, soulless eyes. She could not halt her blundering gait and went slithering to the ground at the very feet of her departed sister.
Screaming shrilly, she frantically rolled aside just as the spear come plummeting for her chest.
Deep into the soil the weapon bit, but the creature immediately tore it loose. Already Miss Celandine was scrambling away, but she was no match for the adamantine will which propelled that repellent carcass. From the bloodstained robe a cold hand came raking. Grasping fingers clawed at her hair, seizing one of the wildly swinging plaits.
In despair, Miss Celandine felt the violent wrenching of her scalp and she buckled backwards, torn off balance. Down she fell and up flew the spear once more. This time there was no escaping; the fingers which yanked her head to the floor owned an unnatural strength and no amount of squirming would loosen their malignant, murderous grip.
Up into Veronica’s withered face Miss Celandine was compelled to stare, and from that dead mouth came a rasping breath which filled her shrinking nostrils with the reek of lifeless lungs.
Wailing in terror, Miss Celandine’s exposed throat quivered and trembled. Then the slaughtering strike came rushing down.
‘Get away from her!’ a furious voice shrieked.
Before the blade could drink yet more Webster blood, Miss Ursula came running up and threw herself upon that scything arm, using all her might to shove it aside.
By a hair’s breadth, the killing blow missed Miss Celandine’s neck and at last she wriggled free.
A repugnant hiss issued from the corpse’s mouth as it leaped after her, but Miss Ursula jumped forward. Just as Edie Dorkins scurried to the nightmare’s heels upon her hands and knees, the woman gave an almighty push.
Backwards the abomination blundered, tumbling over the obstacle which lay in wait behind. A hellish screech ricocheted about the cavern and the creature fell heavily against the weed-wrapped stone of the wellhead.
In a second it had rallied and risen once more. Brandishing the lethal blade, it darted greedy glances at the waiting prey, selecting which would be its first victim.
‘We can’t stop her!’ Miss Celandine wept, scampering towards the gateway. ‘She’ll kill us all!’
It was then that Edie discovered she was completely alone. Miss Celandine’s mewling wails were already echoing through the adjoining chambers and, with a shock, she realised that Miss Ursula had also disappeared. With those glittering black eyes turned full upon her, the girl saw the corpse’s sepulchral flesh come prowling closer.
‘Get back, you!’ the girl growled. ‘I warns yer!’
Yet her threats sounded feeble and unfounded, for the unclean darkness which beat from those venomous eyes rooted the child to the spot. There was nothing she could do; her limbs were locked and still the monster advanced. The hairs on the back of Edie’s neck prickled when she saw how sharp the rusted blade now appeared and she swallowed helplessly.
Then it pounced.
Yet in that moment, Edie was whisked off the ground and a glimmering light streaked past her.
With unerring accuracy, Miss Ursula hurled the small oil lamp at her dead sister and it exploded at the corpse’s feet with a blinding burst of glass and liquid flame.
On to Veronica’s bloodstained robe the fuel fires splashed and an instant later the entire garment was ablaze.
‘Begone and burn!’ Miss Ursula commanded, setting Edie back down.
Vivid, crackling flames were now leaping over the possessed creature, wreathing it in bright, lapping tongues, and a hollow, squalling screech boiled out from the blackening lips.
The long dark hair, which had been Miss Veronica’s pride, crinkled, burning away in the devouring heat whilst the wrinkled skin began to roast and smoke.
Yet still the eyes glared out at Ursula and Edie and, though the flames raged about its face, it could see them well enough.
As a writhing pillar of fire, the fiend tottered a wavering zigzag towards the woman and child, fiercely flailing its wasted, fiery arms.
‘Quickly!’ Miss Ursula told the girl. ‘Back this way.’
To the wellhead they stumbled, with the burning body chasing after, like a pursuing demon cloaked in flame. From this roaring terror they fled and, shining brighter than ever in that scorching grasp, the spear slashed a crimson web of hellish light.
Columns of twisting, fuliginous smoke poured from the lumbering lantern that had once been Veronica, coiling high into the upper darkness, giving it a turgid, churning density and substance. Within the inferno of that blistering furnace only a charred outline could now be glimpsed. The old woman’s bones were tinder dry and the rapacious fires eagerly consumed them.
Glancing backwards, Edie suddenly stopped running.
The fiend’s steps were beginning to falter. Torrefied sinews withered and the marrow fluxed from cracked bones, spitting and sizzling in the flames.
‘Edith!’ Miss Ursula called anxiously.
But the child grinned impishly at her. ‘It’s finished!’ she cried. ‘Frazzled – all crispy like!’
The flaring glare in the cavern began to diminish. Like dying candles the bright, licking tongues sputtered as they were quenched. Yet the power which steered that cindered skeleton was not quite beaten.
Swaying from side to side, as though the very effort of binding those blackened bones together was a tremendous strain, the smoking remains reached out a sizzling arm towards the young girl and flung itself forward.
Edie squealed and leaped upon the stone dais to escape the unexpected onslaught. Over the tangled weeds she ran, and the nightmare bolted after her, screeching for her death. Through the woody growth the horror lunged and staggered, but the guttering flames which still sparked about those misshapen limbs leaped into the moss, and immediately the well ignited.
Her clothes singed and smouldering, Edie Dorkins jumped clear as this new blaze roared into existence, sending a sheet of searing, tumultuous fire high into the curling smoke above.
Every dry stem burst into livid life, forming a dazzling pinnacle of flame. High into the age-old darkness the flaring light blasted, banishing the ancient shadows. For the first time in many years the entire, straddling shape of Nirinel could be glimpsed above the towering beacon.
Shielding her face from that blistering funnel of fire, Edie saw, within its seething heart, the animated cadaver stumble and lurch as the mind which drove those charred bones finally wrenched itself free.
Caught in the cremating maelstrom, the blackened form teetered for a moment about the wellhead, then toppled down into the gaping shaft at its centre.
Into the chasm fell the clattering bones, down into the empty deeps.
Suddenly, a violent quaking shook the chamber and, from the echoing regions of that immeasurable gulf, a gigantic ball of boiling flame exploded. Up to the arching height of the World Tree’s last surviving root the rumbling cloud rushed, erupting with an ear-splitting discharge of scorching heat and fire-dripping vapour as it stormed against that massive bulk.
Then, abruptly, it was over.
The exiled shadows quickly engulfed their old realm and a hot, squalling wind gusted about the cavern, dispersing the curdling clouds. The air became a blizzard of ash.
Only two of the torches remained alight and a thick layer of soot obscured the wide stone ring of the well.
Moistening her parched lips, Edie darted forward.
A few cherry-glowing embers still hissed and snapped, but the child clambered back on to the dais and ploughed through the choking mantle of fine powder. The heated stone scalded her knees as she crawled over to the broad, round hole where she stared down into the empty darkness.
‘It’s gone,’ her morose voice resounded from the void’s brim.
Behind her, Miss Ursula steepled her forefingers and tried to quell the anguish and panic which had overthrown her usual cold, collected bearing.
‘How dare He!’ she spat with passion. ‘How dare He invade this hallowed place and make a puppet of my sister!’
Edie wrinkled her nose. ‘Smells ’orrid in ’ere now,’ she stated, swivelling around to disclose a soot-smeared face. ‘Like burned bangers – only worser!’
‘Ursula!’ a timid voice called as Miss Celandine padded back into the cavern, looking warily about her. ‘I can’t go up the stairs in the dark, not all on my own. Is Veronica gone? Why was she being so beastly?’
It was Edie who answered. ‘It were that Woden,’ she guessed.
Surveying the wreckage, Miss Ursula nodded tersely. ‘Indeed,’ she uttered in a voice quivering with barely checked anger. ‘The age-old enemy of the Fates was the force behind the peril we have just faced. Did He not manipulate her enough when she was living? At least the shell of her being is out of reach now. Poor Veronica – how we all used her.’
‘He’ll try again though, won’t He?’ Edie murmured.
The woman gave an affirming nod. ‘Of that there can be no doubt. This was merely His calling card, to let me know His endeavours are only beginning. None, save He and I, know just how long this contest has endured. He will balk at nothing to destroy us. That is His only wish.’
Edie gazed back down the ponderous well mouth. ‘In Glassenbury, Veronica an’ me found a undine. I thought he might’ve come here to be with us – I asked ’im to, so as the water’d fill up again. Do you think he’ll ever show?’
‘An undine!’ Miss Ursula snorted in disbelief. ‘I doubt that, Edith. Their like have long since departed this world.’
‘I did find him!’ the child asserted. But Miss Ursula was looking beyond her, to a mound of ash and cinders a little distance away.
‘Even if you had,’ she conceded, ‘it would not avail us. The well is dry, Edith, and will always remain so. The time of the sacred waters has passed into memory only. We must find other sources of protection to defend us from our enemy.’
Striding around the wellhead, she lifted a familiar object from the soot, only to drop it almost immediately. Edie stared at the thing and shivered. The spear blade had not fallen into the abyss with Veronica’s bones and the girl drew her breath sharply.
‘Should I throw it in?’ she suggested.
Miss Ursula shook her head. ‘It would do no good. Woden will still try to find a way of using it against us. I would feel more secure if this perfidious object were under my scrutiny in The Separate Collection.’
The old woman wrung her hands. ‘I have been careless,’ she said. ‘I had thought the defences of my museum could withstand all assaults. Yet His base arts were able to creep through my barriers and seize control of Veronica. How vain and stupid I have been. Better to have left Celandine in charge. What use all those exhibits in The Separate Collection? Powerful and dangerous I have always thought them but look at this – see what He has done. My fortress is weaker than I ever …’
Her despairing voice fell silent as her gaze fell upon Miss Celandine who was still standing by the gateway and yawning widely. Suddenly, Miss Ursula’s face lost all trace of her discouraged melancholy and she pulled herself up sharply.
‘Of course!’ she said with renewed hope. ‘After all these years locked away in the museum, the exhibits have become sluggish and inert. Their forces are sleeping. This ennui must cease and the stagnation purged. The enchantments which were once so vigilant must be roused and made strong once more.’
Infected by the old woman’s sudden excitement, Edie bounced to her feet. ‘How do we do that?’ she demanded.
Miss Ursula turned a secretive smile upon her. ‘We do not have to do anything, my dear. You shall see. Now come, bring the spear and let us return to the museum – I have a further commission for your obliging policeman.’
With Edie and Miss Celandine hurrying after, Miss Ursula Webster strode from the Chamber of Nirinel and the metal gateway clanged shut behind them.
Outside The Wyrd Museum, a river of grey mist poured into the alleyway. The early morning light was weak, and the squat building seemed flat and shapeless beneath the pale disc of the sun which hung low in the dim sky.
Over the cobbles the thick fog flowed, filling the narrow way with a dense, swirling cloud. Suddenly that smoking sea billowed and divided as a hooded figure, wrapped in a mouldering black cloak, drifted towards the entrance.
A thin, whispering laugh issued from the blank shadows beneath the heavy cowl when that hidden face looked upon the remaining bronze figures about the ornate doorway.
‘Oh Urdr,’ Woden’s mellifluous voice murmured. ‘This time I shall be the victor. The war will not cease until you and those you harbour are utterly defeated. Do what little you think you can. The All father will not be bested by your paltry tricks and somnolent enchantments.’
With ropes of mist winding tightly about him, the enemy of the Nornir sank back into the fog. But, before the blanketing vapour engulfed him, his foot dragged against a fragment of shattered bronze and his laughter sounded once more.
Upon the upturned face of the sculpted Verdandi, he brought his heel crashing down and the metal cracked – snapping in two beneath the callous violence. Then into the smoke his low chuckles melted, and he was gone.
CHAPTER 4 AN EARLY SUMMONING (#ulink_d971597d-50a8-545e-8b57-df37f9dd9369)
Mrs Gloria Rosina focused a bleary eye upon her alarm clock and snorted in disgust to learn that it was only twenty-to-six in the morning. An impatient ringing had awoken her but the little clock was not to blame.
Someone was incessantly pressing her doorbell and brutal thoughts whisked through her mind as she hauled herself out of bed. Swearing, she thrust her podgy feet into an icy pair of slippers.
‘All right, all right!’ her gravelled voice ranted as she heaved herself into her worn dressing gown and bundled out of the bedroom, snatching up her cigarettes and lighter en route.
The landlady of The Bella Vista boarding house was a slovenly, fifty-three-year-old, overbearing widow who suffered no one gladly.
Instead of the familiar surroundings of her bedchamber, this morning her customary coughing fit was barked and expelled in the shabby hallway where cheap prints of London landmarks and exotic views cluttered the walls.
Still the bell rang its urgent summons, and the woman’s over-generous bosom heaved with annoyance as she regarded the wobbly outline showing through the frosted glass of the front door. Pulling the belt of her dressing gown to so tight a constriction that her ample figure ballooned around it, she padded down the shabby hallway with her arms formidably folded, an unlit cigarette twitching between her lips.
‘I hear you! I hear you!’ she bawled, angrily. ‘You’ll break the bleedin’ bell in a minute.’
The ringing ceased and the landlady grunted as she stooped to unbolt the door, wisely keeping the chain on.
‘Better have a flamin’ good reason to wake decent people up at this God forsaken …’
She left the sentence unfinished as she opened the door a fraction and saw the tall Chief Inspector upon the step.
‘Sorry if I woke you, Madam,’ Hargreaves apologised, ‘but it is important.’
Mrs Rosina shut the door again to slide the chain off, then opened it fully.
‘What is this?’ she asked, folding her arms once again. ‘A dawn raid? Post office ain’t been done over again has it?’
The Chief Inspector cleared his throat. ‘Nothing like that,’ he assured her. ‘I understand you have a Mr Pickering lodging with you. Is that so?’
The woman bristled visibly and she raised her dark eyebrows. ‘I see,’ she drawled with tart disdain. ‘What’s he done?’
‘Nothing, I’d just like to have a few words with him, that’s all.’
‘Look, love, I know it’s early but I don’t look that green, do I?’
‘Is Mr Pickering here or isn’t he?’
Mrs Rosina pursed her lips and the cigarette waggled insolently as though it were a substitute tongue.
‘You’d better come in, then,’ she finally invited.
Removing his cap, the Chief Inspector stepped inside the hall and gazed mildly about him.
‘Well, he’s not down here,’ the landlady was quick to point out. ‘Only me and me old mother have those rooms. What sort of a place do you think this is? That Pickering’s in Room Four, upstairs. This way.’
Leading the policeman up to the first floor landing, the woman gave a wheezing breath. ‘So what do you want him for?’ she insisted, blocking the Chief Inspector’s progress with her substantial form. ‘Got a right to know, ain’t I? I don’t want to be murdered in me bed.’
The Chief Inspector eyed her restlessly. He did not have time for this tedious woman. ‘I have already said that I only wish to speak to your boarder, Madam,’ he repeated, a note of impatience creeping into his voice. ‘I guarantee that you have nothing to worry about.’
‘So you’ve only come to have a cosy little chat with him – at this time of the morning? You must think I’ve just got off the boat. Hoping he can help you with your enquiries, is it? We all know what that means, oh yes.’
‘I’m sorry, Madam,’ Hargreaves interrupted, unsuccessfully attempting to squeeze by her. ‘It really is urgent.’
Mrs Rosina sniffed belligerently, then revolved like a globe upon the axis of her slippers and trotted to the door marked with a plastic number four.
Using the butt of her lighter, she vented some of her irritation by rapping loudly and calling for the occupant of the room to wake up.
‘Hello?’ a muffled, sleepy-sounding voice answered. ‘What is it?’
‘Visitor for you.’
‘If you could give me a minute or two to get dressed …’
The woman threw the Chief Inspector a sullen look. ‘Hope you’ve got some of your lads out back – ’case he scarpers through the window.’
The corners of Hargreaves’ mouth curled into a humouring smile which infuriated her more than ever.
‘Wouldn’t put anything past him, anyway,’ she said sulkily. ‘Bit too quiet, if you know what I mean. Doesn’t talk much – gives nothing away. Been here a couple of months now, on and off. Right through Christmas an’ all, which I thought was downright peculiar.’
Before she could unleash any further spite, in the hope of startling some hint or disclosure from the policeman, the door opened. As she’d been leaning on it, Mrs Rosina nearly fell into the room.
‘Austen Pickering?’ the Chief Inspector inquired.
A short man, with a high forehead encompassed by an uncombed margin of grizzled hair, looked up at him in drowsy astonishment.
‘Inspector Clouseau here wants a word with you,’ Mrs Rosina chipped in.
Her lodger blinked at her behind his large spectacles. ‘With me?’ he asked in surprise. ‘Is something the matter?’
‘You’d know, I’m sure,’ she rejoined in a voice which positively fizzed with acid.
Hargreaves coughed politely. ‘It’s all right, Sir,’ he said. ‘I merely wanted a word with you – in private.’
The landlady ground her teeth together, but she was prevented from speaking her mind on this matter by a voice which called to her from downstairs.
‘Glor?’ came the anxious cry. ‘Is that you, Glor?’
Mrs Rosina scrunched up her face in exasperation and hurried to the landing banister, where she leaned over and shouted down, ‘Quiet, Mother! Go back to bed.’
‘I heard voices, Glor.’
‘We got the flamin’ police in.’
‘Righto, I’ll do a brew then.’
‘No, just get back in your room.’
Returning from the banister, the landlady pouted with pique, for the door to Room Four was now firmly shut and the policeman already inside. Not knowing whether to demand entry or try to overhear what was being said, she crept closer.
However, just when she had decided on the latter course and was pressing her ear to the grubby paintwork, the door was yanked open again, and both her guest and the Chief Inspector bumped straight into her.
‘And you say that I can start right away?’ Austen Pickering asked, pulling on his mackintosh and taking no notice of the large woman in his excitement.
Already striding down the stairs, Hargreaves nodded briskly. ‘They want to see you at once, Sir,’ he said. ‘Made that point very clear when I got the message.’
‘Why now, I wonder?’ the little man gabbled. ‘I’ve written scores of letters, but never received any reply. Has something happened? I mean, why should you come and tell me this? Why the police? I don’t understand. There’s not been an … incident, has there?’
Pausing at the foot of the stairs, Hargreaves stared up at him. ‘She’ll tell you everything you need to know, Sir,’ he said. ‘But don’t worry, this isn’t police business.’
‘Then why …?’
‘Just come with me, please.’
And so Austen Pickering was bundled out of The Bella Vista, and the frosted glass of the front door rattled as he slammed it after him.
Standing in the hallway an elderly, kindly-looking woman gazed after the departing pair, then turned her attention to the staircase to see her daughter Gloria come stomping down.
‘I’m not having this!’ Mrs Rosina stormed. ‘Coppers turning up at all hours – what’ll the neighbours think?’
‘But you don’t speak to any of them, Glor,’ her mother put in. ‘You don’t like them. “Nowt but thieves and spongers,” you said.’
Fumbling with the lighter, her daughter finally lit the cigarette and drew a long, dependent breath. ‘Go an’ play your seventy-eights,’ she exhaled.
‘Don’t you want that cuppa then?’
‘What I want,’ Mrs Rosina snapped between gasps, ‘is to know what’s been going on in my own house! Well, I’m going to find out. No snotty policeman’s going to tell me what I can and can’t know about them what stop here. Where’s them spare keys?’
With her glowing cigarette bobbing before her face, she stamped back up the stairs and her elderly mother tutted after her.
‘I don’t think you should go through that man’s things, Glor,’ she advised. ‘’Tain’t right.’
But Mrs Rosina was too vexed and curious to listen – besides, it wouldn’t be the first time she had rifled through the private belongings of one of her guests. It really was fascinating, not to say revealing, to pry into what some of these people lugged about with them.
In the hallway, the landlady’s mother gave one final shake of her head and ambled back to her own little bedroom. ‘Blood will tell,’ she lamented. ‘Glor’s just as bad as she ever was.’
CHAPTER 5 AWAITING THE CATALYST (#ulink_4bba2011-c69c-56a0-96b9-c3f6047b13da)
Kneeling in front of a large open cupboard in the Websters’ cramped attic apartment, Edie Dorkins sucked her teeth and surveyed the cluttered bric-a-brac of Miss Veronica’s belongings.
Amongst the dusty, neglected jumble were some interesting odds and ends, culled from every age of The Wyrd Museum’s existence. A rolled up bundle of parchments, tied up with a lavender ribbon, revealed a collection of sonnets, letters and poems from the quills of the finest poets and playwrights. There were tiny framed miniatures of all three sisters; the women still appeared old, even though they had posed for the portraits several centuries ago. A purse of moth-eaten velvet contained diverse and sumptuous pieces of jewellery; from quite plain and chunky lumps of twisted gold, to single earrings or broken bracelets which sparked with finely cut gems.
Edie coveted this fabulous treasure and stuffed many of the shiny trinkets into her coat pocket, before crawling a little deeper into the cupboard to see what else she could discover in this fascinating hoard. To her annoyance, her progress was impaired by countless stone jars and bottles which the woman had squeezed into every conceivable space. Edie resented them; they were maddeningly in the way and did not contain anything that appealed to her poaching piracy.
Amongst those many pots were the late Miss Veronica’s innumerable aids to beauty. There were tins of flour and chalk which she had applied to her face; she had fancied that the dramatically bloodless effect granted her a much younger appearance. This grotesquerie was always heightened by a great daubing stripe of garish red from a tub of vermilion ooze, which the old woman had spread thickly across her lips, making her look like a nightmarish clown.
In another vessel, Edie found the lumps of charcoal which Miss Veronica had used to mark out her eyebrows, and a big bottle of green glass contained an unctuous, tarry mixture with which she had dyed her hair. Carelessly piled on top of each other, these receptacles were every shape and size, and maintained a brittle balance which Edie’s foraging threatened to capsize with each fresh incursion.
Sitting in the armchair next to the cold hearth, latticed by the grey light of the early morning which shone weak and pale through the one diamond-crossed window, Miss Ursula tapped her fingers upon the worn upholstery, patiently counting out each slow second. No expression modelled her pinched, camel-like features, but her raw eyes were a testament to the suffering she had endured during the recent hours.
A clattering avalanche of pots and jars caused the woman to jerk her head back and look across at the young girl half hidden inside her dead sister’s cupboard.
‘You will find nothing of note in there, Edith,’ she told her.
Edie rolled backwards and lay on her side, playfully flicking a dead, dusty mouse she had found across the threadbare carpet.
‘Where’s Celandine?’ she asked.
‘I allowed her free movement through the museum. I think it best for her. You know how she likes to wander, talking to the exhibits – it may help her come to terms with … what has occurred.’
Miss Ursula’s eyes fell upon the empty grate by the armchair and gave a slight shudder as she stared at those cold ashes and cinders. ‘Not since that day when we first came upon the forest clearing have I known such distress.’
Chewing the inside of her cheek, Edie regarded the black-gowned woman and said, ‘Tell me about the Loom.’
The faintest of creases furrowed Miss Ursula’s forehead. ‘You already know everything. The Loom was made from the first bough hewn from the World Tree by the Lord of the Frost Giants.’
‘But what was it like?’ the child persisted.
Miss Ursula sank back into the chair. ‘There are no adequate words to explain,’ she said. ‘From the moment I set it in motion and the glittering threads ran through the warp, everything was enslaved, including myself. Many have cursed my name since that day, but had I balked at the deed, then the lords of the ice would have destroyed the last vestige of Yggdrasill, and the end would have come before there had barely been a beginning. What choice had I?’
Edie reached for a small, unglazed ceramic jar which fitted pleasantly in her palm, and toyed with the idea of popping the dead mouse inside it.
‘Was you scared?’ she asked, irked to find that the lid of the jar was stuck in place.
‘Terrified,’ Miss Ursula confessed. ‘I had taken it upon myself and my sisters to become Mistresses of Destiny. Yet I was exhilarated also, and when the first glimmering strands began to weave the untold history of the world, it was the most entrancing sight I had ever beheld, outshining even the spectacle of Askar beneath the dappling sky of the great ash’s leaves.’
Lifting her face to the ceiling, where deserted cobwebs festooned the chandelier, the old woman’s stern countenance melted.
‘What ravishing beauty the fabric of the Fates possessed,’ she murmured. ‘Every stitch was an unseen moment in time and the threads of life shone with an intensity according to the nature of who they belonged to. How that shimmering splendour captivated me and my sisters, and how easily we accepted our roles – even Veronica.
‘You cannot imagine how bewitching that tapestry became – a rippling expanse of colour and movement that burned with a light like no other. Patterns of joy and creation glowed within its fabric in an ever-shifting performance of lustrous delight.’
Rising from the seat, the woman fetched Edie’s woollen pixie hood down from the mantelpiece, where she had placed it to dry after washing the blood and dirt of the girl’s adventures from its fibres.
‘The glittering strands which course through this hood are an impoverished representation of the glorious wonders which were stretched upon the Loom. Yet the garment is a symbol of your bond with us, Edith dear. A joining of your life to that of Nirinel.’
Edie came to stand next to her. ‘Is it dry?’ she demanded. ‘Give it to me.’
The old woman placed the small pointed hood upon the girl’s head and, with a slender finger, traced the interwoven streaks of silver tinsel.
‘Celandine knitted this from a single thread taken from the patterns of our own woven doom,’ she explained. ‘Through it passes the unstoppable might of Destiny and your life is tied to it.’
‘What did the Loom look like?’ the child asked.
Miss Ursula walked across the room to where a damask curtain hung across a doorway. ‘Come, child,’ she instructed.
The old woman led the girl down the narrow flight of stairs which led to the third floor of The Wyrd Museum, only to pause when they reached halfway. A huge oil painting hung upon the near wall and Miss Ursula regarded it with satisfaction.
‘I remember that I was a trifle harsh with the artist when he delivered the work to me,’ she said. ‘I thought he had taken my description a little too literally but, on reflection, it is a fine enough depiction of those far off days.’
Edie stared dutifully at the great canvas.
The borders of a vast forest crowded the edges of the frame but, rearing from the ground in the centre, was a representation of a titanic ash tree. The figures of three young maidens stood about a wide pool by the roots. Edie guessed that they were supposed to be the Websters and she smiled to note that, even here, Miss Celandine was dancing.
‘I do not recall if I ever congratulated the artist on his capturing of my sisters,’ Miss Ursula muttered. ‘I know that I was irritated by the veil he had painted across my face. But, now that I look closely, that nymph robed in white is unmistakably Veronica. Perhaps he based this portrayal upon a lover, for surely there is an intensity there. An unbounded beauty and tenderness, more so than the others. Veronica was like that; none could outshine her.’
Lifting her hand, she pointed at the measuring rod in the figure’s hand. ‘There is her cane,’ she said regretfully. ‘Alas for its loss in the burning – it is another power gone from this place and I wish we still had it in our keeping.’
The old woman’s jaw tightened and an expression that was drenched in dread settled over her gaunt face. ‘I must not anticipate the days ahead,’ she cautioned herself. ‘The ordeal will be severe enough without wishing it any closer.’
‘But the Loom,’ Edie prompted.
Miss Ursula’s caressing hand travelled across the varnished oils to where violet shadows were cast over her own, younger counterpart and directed the girl’s scrutiny towards a large structure fashioned from great timbers.
‘There it is,’ she breathed. ‘That which yoked us all and made us slaves to the lives we were allotted.’
‘Don’t look much,’ Edie grumbled with disappointment.
Miss Ursula straightened. ‘I was deliberately vague in the description I presented to the artist,’ she explained. ‘There were certain … details I had reason to leave out. But, in essence, that is the controlling device which dominated us all.
‘The span and tale of all things were entwined in that cloth, Edith. Yet within its bitter beauty were also large, ugly patches of fathomless shadow, where hate and war were destined to occur. Sometimes those conflicts were bidden to prove so violent that the horror and cruelty fated to transpire in the world would rip and tear through the fabric, causing vicious rents to mar the surrounding pattern. Dangerous and ungovernable are those fissures in the web of Fate. Although we did our best to repair them – poor Celandine toiled so hard, so often – many lovely things and brave souls were lost forever within those hollow voids and there was naught we could do.’
‘I came from one of them,’ Edie chirped.
Miss Ursula inclined her head and bestowed one of her rare smiles upon the child. ‘Indeed you did, Edith,’ she said. ‘When war rages and the cloth rips wide, my sisters and I are blind. We could see nothing beneath the banner of death which obscured those years and so we missed you – the very one we had waited for all these years. Still, once we realised our error, we were able to perform a little belated repair and pluck you through it to join us.’
Her eyes still riveted upon the indistinct portrait of the Loom, Edie asked, ‘What happened to it?’
Miss Ursula smoothed out the creases of her taffeta gown. ‘I believe I told you before you went to Glastonbury, Edith. The Loom was broken many years ago and cannot be remade. The tapestry of the world’s destiny was never completed and thus our futures remain uncertain.’
Edie lowered her gaze and fiddled with the jar she still held in her hand. Miss Ursula seemed to forget her young charge and was following her own train of thought.
‘Without the Cloth of Doom to guide me, how can I be sure that the path I have chosen is the right one? Is there still time to turn back and steer away from this course? Too long have I spent foretelling the pages of the world to act blindfold now. Halt this, Ursula, you must.’
Not listening to her, Edie gave the lid another twist and at last the wretched jar was opened. Bringing it close to her face, the girl inspected the contents to see if there was room for a dead mouse inside. But a foul-smelling, ochre-coloured ointment filled the small vessel and she groaned inwardly at having unearthed yet more of Miss Veronica’s wrinkle cream.
At her side Miss Ursula looked up sharply as though she had heard something.
‘It is too late!’ she cried, expelling her indecision with a clap of her hands. ‘He is here! Come, Edith, the one I have sent for, our catalyst – he arrives. We must greet him.’
Edie had not heard anything, but she knew that the eldest of the Websters was more attuned to the vibrations of this mysterious building than herself.
As Miss Ursula descended the stairs, the girl hesitated. She gave the ointment within the jar one final sniff, then stuck out her tongue to lick it experimentally. Retching and coughing, the girl hurriedly followed Miss Ursula into the main part of the museum, shoving the jar into her pocket with the rest of her magpie finds.
Neil Chapman had slept deeply for a couple of hours, but woke suddenly at quarter-past-six. His little brother Josh was still fast asleep and Neil looked at his watch in disbelief. After all that had happened, after his complete exhaustion, he was now, unaccountably, wide awake and no amount of burying his head under the warm blankets could make him doze off again.
Climbing out of bed, he dragged on some clean clothes and crept out into the living room. To his relief, he found that his father was finally sleeping, and the boy silently left the apartment to look for Quoth.
He did not have to roam far to find him. The raven was roosting in The Fossil Room, which opened off from the passage. With his head tucked under one wing, the bird sat upon one of the display cabinets, making faint purling noises in his sleep. In fact, his slumber was so profound that Neil managed to walk straight up to him without the raven waking.
The boy did not have the heart to disturb his rest. Quoth looked so contented there, in his dim little corner, that he almost tiptoed away again.
At that moment, however, a sudden pounding resounded within the museum and the raven was startled awake. With his scruffy feathers askew and his head wiggling drunkenly up and down, the bird stretched open his beak and fixed his eye upon his surroundings.
‘Good morning,’ Neil greeted him.
‘Fie!’ Quoth squawked in alarm. ‘The hammers of the underworld doth strike! Alarum! Alarum!’
‘I think it’s just someone at the door,’ the boy chuckled.
The bird rubbed the sleep from his eye and stared at Neil with dozy happiness.
‘Squire Neil!’ he croaked, slithering across the glass in his haste to salute him. ‘The argent stars of heaven’s country are but barely snuffed in their daily dowsing, yet already thou art astir! Good morrow, good morrow, oh spurner of Morpheus!’
Neil laughed and stroked the bird’s featherless head. ‘I’m sorry about what happened last night,’ he apologised. ‘Were you okay out here?’
‘This lack-a-bed sparrow hath nested in more danksome grots than this.’
‘Once an idea gets into Dad’s head there’s nothing anyone can do,’ Neil explained. ‘With any luck he’ll have calmed down by tonight.’
Again the knocking sounded and Neil held out his arm for Quoth to climb up to his shoulder.
‘We’d better see who that is.’
‘Good tidings ne’er rose with the dawn,’ the raven warned in his ear.
Through the collections they hurried, until they came to the main hallway, and Neil pulled the great oaken door open. To his surprise, he found the Chief Inspector waiting upon the step.
‘What’s happened?’ the boy asked, instantly fearing the worst.
‘Nothing yet,’ Hargreaves reassured him. ‘I’ve come on an errand – Urdr commanded me.’
Neil peered past him and saw, standing in the alleyway, the fidgeting figure of Austen Pickering. The boy recognised him immediately. The pensioner had stopped him in the street after school a few days ago, and warned him of the dangers of living in The Wyrd Museum. Neil had not forgotten those forbidding words and it made him uneasy to see this little man again.
‘A plainer pudding this nidyard ne’er chanced to espy,’ Quoth reflected, regarding the man with his beady, yet critical, eye. ‘’Twas a poorly craft which didst shape yonder lumpen clay.’
The Chief Inspector coughed awkwardly but added in a whisper, ‘I brought him as soon as I received the message from Urdr. I was to bring Mr Pickering here. It’s not my place to ask why.’
‘But that’s the ghost hunter,’ Neil muttered. ‘I don’t understand. What can she want with him?’
‘If you would be civil enough to allow the gentleman inside,’ a clipped voice rang out from the hallway, ‘you might be able to learn.’
Neil turned and Quoth chirped morosely. Upon the stairs, looking as regal and supreme as any empress, Miss Ursula Webster stood gazing down on them. At her side, in contrast to the old woman’s tall, stately figure, Edie Dorkins looked like a Thames-scavenging mudlark. Her oval face was smudged with dirt, her clothes were torn and wide holes gaped in her woollen stockings.
Hargreaves lowered his eyes in reverence and bowed to both. ‘I have done what was asked of me—’
‘Is there an outbreak of deafness?’ Miss Ursula demanded. ‘I said for you to let the man inside!’
Hastily leaving the entrance steps, the Chief Inspector permitted Austen Pickering to take his place, and Neil looked at him keenly.
It was obvious that the man was fighting to remain calm, but he was so excited that his breaths were shallow and gasping. With his already large-seeming eyes widening behind the thick lenses of his spectacles, he came to the arched doorway and placed his stubby fingers upon the bronze figure at his left.
Timidly, he stared in at the museum’s gloom-laden interior and took another gulp of air, as if he were swigging a measure of whisky for courage. Then, with an acknowledging glance at Neil, the man calmed himself. He had been longing for this moment for so long that he wanted to cherish it in his memory ever afterwards.
‘First impressions,’ Neil heard him mumble to himself. ‘I must be free to receive all I can. Come on Austen, old lad – be the blank paper, the empty jug, the untrodden snow.’
‘What are you waiting for?’ Miss Ursula called. ‘Be quick to enter.’
Half-closing his eyes, Austen Pickering stepped purposefully over the threshold and drew a deep, rapturous breath. For several moments he stood quite still with his head tilted back, and Neil began to wonder if the old man had gone into a trance.
But the peculiar silence did not last, for Mr Pickering presently opened his eyes and looked gravely about him.
‘Yes!’ he sighed. ‘I was right. But so many – hundreds upon hundreds. I never dreamed!’
‘What is it?’ Neil asked.
‘Most incredible!’ the man exclaimed. ‘I never expected so staggering a number. Quite astounding.’
Neil exchanged looks with the Chief Inspector, but Hargreaves’ hollow-cheeked face was solemn and the boy couldn’t guess what he was thinking.
Her chin resting upon the banister, Edie grimaced and took an instant dislike to the strange newcomer. Everything about the man’s bearing and attire suggested the strict, military discipline with which he ordered his life. What was left of his tightly waved hair was too neatly combed, a veritable knuckle of a knot secured his regimental tie in place, and his brown brogues shone like chestnuts freshly popped from their casing.
During her untame life in the bomb sites, Edie had spent too long distrusting and evading the figures of authority who had tried to catch her to abandon those natural suspicions now. To her, this fastidious little man was no different from the countless air-raid wardens she had hated; Austen Pickering wore his clothes like a uniform and she despised him for that fact alone.
Forsaking him in revolt, she looked to see what Miss Ursula made of him and was intrigued to read in the old woman’s face a considerable degree of approval.
‘You admire my museum?’ Miss Ursula said suddenly.
Mr Pickering turned to her and peered over the rim of his glasses. ‘Admire is not the word I would have chosen, Madam.’
‘That is to be expected,’ she said. ‘From the many letters I have received from you, I would have been sorely disappointed if you had not felt the pulse of life which courses through this building.’
‘Pulse of life!’ the man spluttered in disbelief. ‘I assure you, Madam, that it is the pain of the anguished dead which I feel – and that most deeply.’
The taffeta of Miss Ursula’s black gown rustled faintly as she stirred and gripped the banister rail a little tighter. ‘Tell me what it is that you sense,’ she commanded. ‘When you walked through that door – what was it like?’
The ghost hunter knitted his brows and in the grave tone he reserved for these matters said, ‘The atmosphere is electric – charged like a battery. No, more like a dam that is close to bursting. If nothing is done to release the pressure then I cannot begin to imagine what will occur. The tension is unbearable.’
Casting his gaze about the dim entrance hall, from the small window of the ticket booth to the drab watercolours which mobbed the panelled walls, he tapped his fingertips together and nodded grimly.
‘I’ve never been in so ancient a place. It’s staggering. How many trapped souls are locked in here? How many poor unfortunates have never been able to break free of its jealous clutch?’
But Miss Ursula had heard and seen enough for the time being. ‘That will be for you to discover,’ she told him. ‘I wish your investigations to commence at once. The caretaker’s son shall guide you around the museum. If there are tormented souls locked in here, you have my permission to do whatever you please with them. Now, close the door – the draught is intolerable.’
Neil glanced apologetically at the Chief Inspector who was still waiting outside, but Hargreaves was not in the least bit offended.
‘Close it, I say!’ Miss Ursula commanded.
Hargreaves moved away from the entrance. ‘I’ll be around should you need me,’ he called to Neil as the boy reluctantly pushed the door shut. ‘Urdr knows, those of us who are left will be here.’
The oaken door shuddered in its frame and Neil glared up at the imperious figure upon the stairs.
‘There’s no need to be so rude!’ he shouted.
But Miss Ursula had her back to him and was already ascending to the first floor. Giving the stranger a final suspicious glance, Edie Dorkins pulled an impudent face and capered after her.
Austen Pickering could only shake his head in disappointment. ‘Sad want of manners,’ he murmured.
‘Ignore them,’ Neil began. ‘They’re both bats.’
The old man regarded him for a moment. ‘I’ve come across worse. There’s no escaping it in my field of study. When you talk about phantoms and the unquiet dead to people, it seems to bring out the worst in them. I’ve been called more names than I can remember, but so long as the job gets done, they can call me twice as many again.’
Pausing, he looked at the raven sitting upon the boy’s shoulder and winked at him in amusement. ‘That’s a dandy specimen you’ve got there, lad,’ he said peering at the bird with interest. ‘However did you come by him?’
Quoth held his head up proudly whilst the man viewed him and turned his head so that his best side showed.
‘Vain little beggar, too,’ Mr Pickering observed.
‘He that be a foe of beauty is an enemy of nature,’ the raven retorted.
The man started and looked at Neil, as though suspecting him of ventriloquism. Then he laughed and removed his spectacles to polish the lenses. ‘A long time I’ve been waiting to get inside this place,’ he declared. ‘I told myself I’d have to expect all kinds, but I wasn’t counting on a talking raven to be my first surprise.’
Returning his glasses to their rightful place upon his nose, Austen Pickering smiled happily. ‘This is birthdays and Christmas all come at once,’ he explained to Neil. ‘I hardly know where to start. It’s like being given one enormous present, but too excited to peep inside the wrapping paper.’
Walking towards the door which led to the ground floor collections, he rubbed his hands together with an almost childlike glee. ‘You don’t have to show me around if you don’t want to. I’d be perfectly content to wander about on my own.’
‘No,’ Neil replied. ‘I’d like to. What you said about there being trapped souls in here … do you mean it’s haunted?’
At once Mr Pickering grew serious again. ‘Can you doubt it?’ he cried. ‘You who live in this revolting building?’
‘I believe you – honest I do,’ Neil assured him, and his thoughts flew to his friend Angelo Signorelli.
When the Chapmans had first come to stay in The Wyrd Museum, Neil had encountered the soul of that unfortunate American airman in The Separate Collection. There, in one of the display cabinets, Angelo’s spirit had been imprisoned for over fifty years, locked within the woolly form of a shabby old Teddy bear. Together, they had journeyed back into the past to save the life of Jean Evans, the woman Angelo had loved. But Ted had chosen to remain in that time and Neil still missed him.
Addressing Austen Pickering again, Neil asked, ‘When I saw you that time, out in the street, you said this place was like a psychic sponge – that it trapped souls and kept them. What you did just then, when you came in – are you psychic?’
The man stared at him. It was unusual for anyone to accept the things he said, but this boy was doing his best – even trying to understand. ‘I’m blessed with a very modest gift,’ he murmured. ‘From the moment I stepped inside this horror, I felt the unending torture of those who should have crossed over but are still bound to this world. This place has known untold deaths during its different roles throughout the ages.’
‘I know that it used to be an insane asylum.’
‘Oh, it’s been a lot more than that, lad. I’ve done my homework on this miserable pile of bricks, researching back as far as the scant records allow. Orphanage, a workhouse for the poverty-stricken silk weavers, before that a pest house and going even further back – a hospital for lepers. Think of all the suffering and anguish these walls have absorbed. No one can imagine the number of hapless victims that this monstrous structure keeps locked within its rooms, condemned to wander these floors for eternity. The poor wretches have been ignored for far too long.’
Clapping his hands together, he raised his voice and announced in a loud voice which boomed out like that of a drill sergeant. ‘Well, I’m here now – Austen Pickering, ghost hunter. Here to listen to their cries and, no matter what it takes, I’m going to help them.’
CHAPTER 6 TWEAKING THE CORK (#ulink_4222ebc9-444b-5714-982a-78bafae75585)
The rest of Neil’s morning was taken up showing Austen Pickering around The Wyrd Museum. The man marvelled at every room and each new display. He was a very methodical individual who took great pains to ensure that no exhibit was overlooked, reading each of their faded labels. Therefore, the tour took longer than Neil had anticipated, for the old man found everything to be of interest and had an opinion about all that he saw.
Quoth found this a particularly tiring trait and yawned many times, nodding off on several occasions, almost falling from Neil’s shoulder.
Whilst they were in The Roman Gallery, Miss Celandine came romping in, dressed in her gown of faded ruby velvet and chattering away to herself. The old woman was giggling shrilly, as if in response to some marvellous joke, but as soon as she saw Neil and the old man she froze, and a hunted look flashed across her walnut-wrinkled face.
‘Don’t leave me!’ she squealed to her invisible companions. ‘You said we might go to the dancing. You did! You did! Come back – wait for me! Wait!’ And with her plaits swinging behind her, she fled back the way she had come.
Austen Pickering raised his eyebrows questioningly and Neil shrugged. ‘She’s not all there, either,’ he explained.
‘The vessel of her mind hast set sail, yet she didst remain ashore,’ Quoth added.
Their snail-like progress through the museum was delayed even further by the ghost hunter’s habit of pausing at odd moments whilst he jotted down his impressions in a neat little notebook.
‘You never know what may turn out to be important,’ he told Neil. ‘A trifling detail seen here, but forgotten later, might just be the key I’ll be looking for in my work. The investigator must be alert at all times and record what he can. It might seem daft and over-meticulous, but you have to be thorough and not leave any holes for the sceptics to pick at. I pride myself that no one could accuse me of being slipshod. Everything is written up and filed. No half measures for me. I’ve got a whole room filled with dossiers and indexes back home up north, accounts and news clippings of each case I’ve had a hand in. It was the Northern Echo what first called me a ghost hunter, although … Blimey – would you look at this!’
They had climbed the stairs to the first floor where great glass cases, like huge fish tanks, covered the walls of a long passage, making the way unpleasantly narrow. Neil did not like this corridor, for every cabinet contained a forlorn-looking specimen of the taxidermist’s macabre art.
They were the sad remnants of the once fabulous menagerie of Mr Charles Jamrach, the eccentric purveyor of imported beasts, whose emporium in the East End of London had housed a veritable ark of animals during Victorian times. After both he and his son had died, the last of the livestock was sold off and a portion of it had eventually found its way into The Wyrd Museum.
Stuffed baboons and spider monkeys swung from aesthetically arranged branches. A pair of hyenas with frozen snarls looked menacing before an African diorama, incongruous next to an overstuffed, whiskery walrus gazing out with large doe eyes. In the largest case of all, a mangy tiger peered from an artificial jungle.
In spite of the fact that the cases were securely sealed, a fine film of dust coated each specimen and the tiger’s fur crawled with an infestation of moths.
Shuddering upon Neil’s shoulder, Quoth stared woefully at the crystal domes which housed exotic, flame-coloured birds, and whimpered with sorrow at the sight of a glorious peacock, the sapphires and emeralds of its tail dimmed by an obscuring mesh of filthy cobwebs.
‘Alack!’ he croaked. ‘How sorry is thy situation – most keenly doth this erstwhile captive know the despond of thine circumstance.’
‘Your raven isn’t comfortable here,’ Mr Pickering commented. ‘I don’t blame him. The Victorians had a perverse passion for displaying the creatures they had slaughtered. Disgusting, isn’t it? Beautiful animals reduced to nothing more than trophies and conversation pieces. You might as well stick a lampshade on them, or use them as toilet-roll holders.’
‘I’m not keen on this bit, either,’ Neil agreed, pushing open a door. ‘If we go through here we can cut it out and go around. There’s more galleries this way – even an Egyptian one.’
Leaving the glass cases and their silent, staring occupants behind them, they continued with the tour. It was nearly lunchtime and Neil was ravenous, remembering he hadn’t eaten anything since the previous day. But the boy wanted to show Mr Pickering one room in particular.
Eventually they arrived at the dark interior of The Egyptian Suite and the old man gazed at the three sarcophagi it contained. ‘Not satisfied with parrots and monkeys,’ he mumbled in revulsion. ‘Even people are put on display. Is it any wonder the atmosphere is filled with so much pain?’
But Neil was anxious for the man to enter the adjoining room, for here was The Separate Collection.
Moving away from the hieroglyphs and mummies, Mr Pickering followed his young guide, but the moment he stepped beneath the lintel of the doorway which opened into The Separate Collection, he gave a strangled shriek and fell back.
‘What is it?’ Neil cried. The man looked as though he was going to faint.
Mr Pickering shooed him away with a waggle of his small hands and staggered from the door, returning to the gloom of The Egyptian Suite.
‘Can’t … can’t go in there!’ he choked.
Neil stared at him in dismay. He hadn’t been expecting such an extreme reaction. The man’s face was pricked with sweat and his eyes bulged as though his regimental tie had become a strangling noose.
Blundering against the far wall, Austen Pickering’s gasping breaths began to ease and he leaned upon one of the sarcophagi until his strength was restored.
‘My, my,’ he spluttered at length. ‘How stupid. Austen, old lad, you should’ve expected it. You told yourself there had to be one somewhere. Oh, but I never dreamed it would be so … well, there it is.’
Quoth fidgeted uncertainly. ‘Squire Neil,’ he muttered, ‘methinks yon fellow may prove a swizzling tippler. The ale hath malted and mazed his mind.’
‘Are you all right?’ Neil asked the old man. ‘You look awful. What happened?’
Mr Pickering mopped his forehead and stared past the boy into the room beyond. ‘A fine old fool I am,’ he wheezed. ‘I’m sorry if I startled you, lad. It’s that room, I can’t enter – at least not yet.’
‘How sayest the jiggety jobbernut?’ Quoth clucked.
‘What stopped you?’ the boy asked, ignoring the raven. ‘Is it one of the exhibits?’
The ghost hunter shook his head. He had recovered from the shock and an exhilarated grin now lit his face.
‘All the classic case studies tell of them,’ he gabbled, more to himself than for Neil’s benefit. ‘Though I’ve come across the more usual cold spots before, I’ve never truly experienced this phenomenon. This really is a red-letter day.’
‘What is?’ Neil demanded.
Mr Pickering clicked his fingers as though expecting the action to organise and set his thoughts in order.
‘Occasionally,’ he explained excitedly, ‘a haunted site will have a nucleus – a centre of operations, if you like, where all the negative forces and paranormal activity begin and flow out from.’
‘And you think it’s The Separate Collection?’ Neil murmured. ‘I suppose it would make sense. There’s a lot of mad stuff in there.’
‘I’m quite certain of it. But the intensity – it’s incredible. Oho, it didn’t want me to go in, that it didn’t. It knows why I’m here and doesn’t want to let its precious spectres go. Well, we’ll see about that.’
Neil gazed into the large, shadow-filled room which lay beyond The Egyptian Suite and recalled how frightened he had been when he had first moved into The Wyrd Museum. He remembered how the building had almost seemed to be tricking him, deceiving his sense of direction – leading him round and around until finally he was delivered to that very place, where the exhibits were eerie and sinister.
A shout from Ted had put a stop to it back then, but the spirit of the airman who had possessed the stuffed toy was finally at rest.
‘Are you saying that the building is alive?’ he finally ventured. ‘Watching and listening to us?’
The old man gave a brisk shake of the head. ‘Not alive, no, not in the sense that we understand. That would imply intelligence and I wouldn’t go so far as to say that. I do believe, however, that there is a presence which permeates every brick and tile – an awareness, if you like. Call it a mass accumulation of history and anguish, recorded on to the ether, which operates on some very basic and primitive level. That is what we are up against. It is that force which feeds upon the energies of both the living and the deceased, and binds them to itself.’
Gingerly moving towards the doorway once more, the ghost hunter considered The Separate Collection and a gratified smile beamed across his craggy face. ‘This is amazing,’ he declared. ‘Absolutely amazing. There mustn’t be any more delay; the investigation proper will have to commence at once. But first things first. I’ll have to go back and fetch my equipment.’
Infected by Mr Pickering’s delight, Neil laughed. ‘What are you going to do?’ he asked. ‘An exorcism?’
The ghost hunter calmed himself. ‘Give over,’ he replied. ‘I can’t do that. We must learn all we can first. Besides, I don’t want to jump in at the deep end. I’ll work through the museum systematically, room by room and floor by floor. That Separate Collection is the supernatural heart of this place and I’m not ready for the surprises it might throw at me – not yet at any rate.’
When Austen Pickering left The Wyrd Museum to return to his lodgings, Neil hastened back to the caretaker’s apartment, taking care to leave Quoth in The Fossil Room once again. It proved to be a wise precaution, for Brian Chapman was in a terrible mood. He had only been awake for half an hour and it was now nearly two o’clock.
When he realised the time, he had looked into his sons’ bedroom but found it empty. Hurrying into the kitchen, he discovered a pool of spilled milk near the fridge and a bowl of half-eaten cereal in the sink. Tutting, he left the apartment to search for them.
Josh was playing in the walled yard, with a coat pulled on over his pyjamas and a pair of Wellington boots covering his bare feet. The little boy told him that he hadn’t seen his brother all day and that he’d tried to shake his father awake. When his efforts had failed, he had made his own breakfast.
Brian ran his hands through his greasy hair and pinched the bridge of his nose. He’d had an awful night and was now even more determined to look for another job. Anything. Just to get out of this hideous place was all that he craved and nothing anyone could say would change his mind. It wasn’t like him to sleep so late and he was more angry at himself than anyone else.
Neil hated it when his father was like this and decided against mentioning Austen Pickering, for that would certainly have made matters worse. The only course to take was to let Brian calm down. So, shutting himself away from the squall of his father’s temper, the boy calmly began to make sandwiches for them all.
Miss Ursula had not set any new work for Brian to do, so in the afternoon he slipped out, hoping that she wouldn’t notice. Entrusted with looking after Josh, Neil took the four-year-old to find Quoth. The child was scared of the raven at first, but he was soon tickling him under the beak, feeding him ham sandwiches and laughing at his absurd speech.
At four o’clock, a morose jingling announced Austen Pickering’s return and Neil ran to the entrance to admit him. Three large, much-battered suitcases surrounded the grizzle-haired man as he waited upon the steps, and he grumbled to Neil about the exorbitant cost of cabs in London, whilst the boy helped him to haul the luggage inside.
‘You’ve certainly brought enough!’ Neil exclaimed. ‘What sort of equipment have you got in here?’
‘That witch of a landlady told me to sling my hook! Got a terrible tongue on her, that cat has,’ the man puffed, dragging a heavy portmanteau under the sculpted archway. ‘She’s chucked me out – this is everything I had with me. You know, lad, it’s the living what scare me most. The dead I can deal with.’
Neil contemplated the suitcases thoughtfully. ‘So, you’re staying here then?’
‘Makes sense really,’ the ghost hunter replied. ‘I’d have to be spending the nights here anyway, so I might as well stop. No point shelling out for a new room when I won’t even be there. The Websters won’t mind, I’m sure.’
But Neil was not thinking about them; he was wondering what his father would have to say.
‘You know,’ Mr Pickering reflected, ‘I’m sure that nosy woman had been furtling through my stuff. She’d best not have messed with any of my apparatus. It’s already getting dark and I want to get started straight away.’
When Brian Chapman returned to the museum he discovered, to his consternation, that Austen Pickering had taken over one corner of The Fossil Room and was busily setting up his equipment in the rest of the available space. Several of the connecting rooms also contained one or two experiments; lengths of string were fixed across windows and doorways, and a dusting of flour was sprinkled over certain areas of the floor.
Neil’s father regarded the man with irritation. He had certainly made himself at home. His mackintosh was hanging from a segment of vertebrae jutting conveniently from a fine example of an ichthyosaur skeleton set into the far wall. His highly-polished brogues had been placed neatly beneath a cabinet and his feet were now cosily snug in a pair of slippers.
That disease-ridden raven was playing in one of the cases, tugging at a spare pair of braces he had unearthed amongst a pile of vests, and the newcomer himself was talking to his sons about haunted houses.
‘Blood and sand!’ Brian mumbled. ‘It’s one thing after another in here.’
There was, of course, nothing he could do about it. If his eccentric employers wanted to have seances, then it was up to them, but he wasn’t going to permit Josh to remain and listen to this nonsense.
Brian had spent the afternoon trawling the local markets and public houses, asking after casual work, and had eventually ended up in the job centre. His searches had not been successful, but he had brought a bundle of newspapers and leaflets home with him. Leaving the ghost hunter to his own business, he returned to the caretaker’s apartment, with his four-year-old son trailing reluctantly behind.
Neil heaved a sigh of relief. For a moment he had thought his father would demand that he join them, but Mr Chapman’s mood had mellowed in the time he had been out and he was obviously too anxious to hunt through the papers to begin an argument.
‘Doesn’t say much, your dad,’ Austen Pickering commented. ‘Now, where did I pack my pullover? Be draughty in here tonight – already turned a mite chilly.’
Neil glanced at him. The old man was busy putting new batteries inside an old tape recorder and the boy cast his eyes over the apparatus he had arranged on the glass surface of the display cabinets.
The ghost hunter’s paraphernalia was disappointingly mundane. Neil had envisaged sophisticated electronic gadgets which bleeped and flashed at a phantom’s approach. But the most advanced piece of technology was an ordinary camera, loaded with infra-red film.
As far as he could see, coupled with the tape recorder, that was as far as scientific instruments had progressed with regard to studying spectres. The rest of the ‘equipment’ was hardly impressive. There was a flashlight, at least a dozen balls of twine, a carrier bag filled with candles, several thermometers, a tape measure and a packet of chalks. The familiar notebook had joined forces with a clipboard, a bag of flour and a small, brown glass bottle.
‘Smelling salts,’ Mr Pickering explained, seeing the boy’s curious expression. ‘It has been known for people to swoon with fright when they come into contact with the spirit world. Always pays to be prepared.’
Neil began to suspect that the old man had never actually seen anything ghostly at all before, and that the smelling salts were for himself. Perhaps he was just a harmless crank who had let his hobby turn into an obsession. At the moment, anyone looking at him could mistake Mr Pickering for a lonely old pensioner settling himself down for a quiet night in front of his stamp collection, rather than preparing to see in the early hours, keeping watch for the supernatural.
‘Do you think you’ll see anything?’ Neil asked.
The old man peered at him over his spectacles. ‘Who can tell?’ he answered. ‘I might be here a week before I hear so much as a creaking floorboard.’
Neil groaned inwardly and realised how much he had been looking forward to what might never materialise.
‘Then again,’ the old man added, ‘there’s so much bottled up in here, I think it’ll be more a case of what won’t I see. Soon as I tweak the cork that’s holding it all in place, just stand back is all I’ll say.’
Neil brightened up – perhaps he wasn’t a fraud after all.
‘You wouldn’t believe some of the things I’ve seen,’ the ghost hunter continued. ‘Misty shapes drifting over the ground, blurred figures melting into walls – investigated the lot, I have.’
‘What was the most frightening?’ Neil asked ghoulishly.
Mr Pickering reached into a case for his pullover. ‘The dead can’t hurt the living,’ he declared, his voice a little muffled as he dragged the olive green woolly over his head. ‘Like I said, all I want to do is help them and see that they pass over. Besides, I’ve got the most powerful defence I could wish for.’
From another case he brought out a small, black-bound book, the pages of which were gilded about the edge, and he brandished it with great solemnity. ‘My Bible!’ he proclaimed. ‘That’s the first and most important safeguard. There’s no harm can come with this as protection.’
The evening was closing in. Darkness pressed against the blank windows of The Wyrd Museum and the old man moved through the rooms, measuring distances and drawing diagrams of the layout in his notebook.
‘Would your dad mind if I filled my thermos with hot water?’ he asked. ‘Three large mugs of strong black coffee should see me through and stave off the drowse.’
Neil thought that if his father was still in his relatively good humour then there was no harm in trying, and so he led the old man to their apartment.
Brian Chapman was sitting at the small table, surrounded by a sea of open newspapers. Josh had been put to bed and the caretaker scowled at the interruption when the door opened.
‘What is it?’ he snapped.
Neil guessed correctly that his father’s job hunting was proving more difficult than he had anticipated and was glad that he had not brought Quoth along also.
‘I said Mr Pickering could have some hot water for his flask.’
His father grunted and irritably flapped the paper he was reading. ‘You know where the kettle is.’
‘This way,’ the boy began.
Austen Pickering followed him inside the apartment, then drew a sharp, astonished breath. ‘Tremendous!’ he exclaimed, blowing upon his hands and shivering uncontrollably.
‘What’s the matter with him?’ Brian asked.
‘Can’t you feel it?’ the old man cried.
Neil shook his head, but glanced warily at his father.
‘It’s freezing in here!’ the ghost hunter declared. ‘This room is a definite cold spot. Something quite dreadful must have happened here in the past. Let me get my thermometer – I must see if it registers.’
Brian Chapman rose from the chair and slammed the newspaper upon the table. ‘That’s it!’ he snapped. ‘You and your crackpot notions can get out of here. For God’s sake, I’ve got a four-year-old boy trying to sleep in the next room. I don’t want him scared by this mumbo-jumbo claptrap. Go on – I said leave!’
Still shivering, a crestfallen Austen Pickering looked away, embarrassed. ‘I didn’t mean to alarm you,’ he uttered. ‘I sometimes get carried away. I’m sorry, I’ll get back to The Fossil Room. It doesn’t matter about the hot water.’
‘Oh well done, Dad,’ Neil shouted when the old man had departed. ‘There was no need to be so nasty. He isn’t doing any harm.’
The boy’s father sat down once more and rested his head in his hands. ‘I’ve had it up to here for today,’ he groaned. ‘On top of everything else, I don’t want a loser like him telling me that this flat is haunted.’
‘This place must be a magnet for losers, then,’ Neil snapped, heading for the door.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’
‘To apologise! Though I don’t see why I should – but I know you wouldn’t dream of it.’
Neil slammed the door behind him and, with a yell of frustration, Brian Chapman threw the newspapers across the room.
In The Fossil Room, Neil found Austen Pickering sorting through the many candles he had brought with him, whilst Quoth nibbled at the wax and pecked at the tantalising, worm-like wicks.
‘Sorry about Dad,’ Neil said. ‘He’s been a complete pain lately.’
The old man brushed the incident aside. ‘I told you some people don’t like what I do,’ he reminded the boy. ‘I’m used to it by now. A solitary vocation, that’s what this is.’
‘I could go back and fill your thermos for you.’
‘Don’t trouble yourself,’ Mr Pickering replied, walking over to where his mackintosh hung and pulling a silver hip flask from one of the pockets. ‘A nip of brandy will do just as well. I said I was prepared.’
Gathering up a handful of candles, he placed one in each corner of the room then threw Neil a cigarette lighter. ‘If you could set those going for me, I’ll just put two more in the centre here and jot down the direction of the draughts.’
In the bright glare of the electric lights, the candle flames looked cold and pale. Quoth amused himself by dancing around trying to blow them out – until Neil saw what he was doing and scolded him.
‘There.’ The ghost hunter finally nodded with satisfaction. ‘Now, if you could flick the switch, lad.’
Neil obeyed and the room was immediately engulfed in shadows which leaped about the walls. The huge black bones of the fossils appeared to twitch as great hollows of darkness yawned between the massive ribs, and prehistoric nightmares flew through the night above their heads.
Beneath them, however, the six cheery candle flames were reflected in the glass of the cabinets, and the cases which contained mineral samples glinted and winked as the faceted crystals and pyrites threw back the trembling fires.
‘Such glistering gaudery!’ Quoth cawed, hopping across to spread his wings and let the shimmering light play over his ragged feathers. ‘Fie, how this sorry vagabond doth put the lustrous Phoenix to shame.’
Neil grinned but Austen Pickering was already heading towards the next room. ‘Much more conducive,’ the ghost hunter remarked. ‘This kind of investigation always works better in the soft glow of candles. All to do with light waves and atmospheric vibrations – electricity is a terrible obstacle for some of the weaker souls of the departed, you know.’
The boy followed him and, dragging himself away from the sparkling cabinets, Quoth came waddling after.
‘Put the rest in the other galleries, I think,’ Mr Pickering decided, handing Neil a dozen more candles. ‘Then I’ll settle down and wait. I’ve got high hopes for this night. Once the usual noises of an old building settling on to its foundations have subsided, who knows? Perhaps there’ll even be a manifestation. I’ve never been so excited, not even in the Wigan case.’
‘What was that about?’ Neil asked.
The old man set another candle down and marked its position in his notebook. ‘Up till now it was my most rewarding investigation,’ he announced, ‘and an object lesson which proves that not all hauntings occur in churchyards or ancient buildings. Just an ordinary semi that a young family had moved into. Wasn’t long before they noticed strange things were happening – so I was called in.’
Wandering into another room he paused and lit another candle before continuing. ‘Five nights I was there till the poor soul made his appearance,’ he chuckled. ‘Except for the baby, we were all downstairs and I was beginning to wonder if the young couple had imagined it all. But sometimes the departed don’t want to let go of their ties with this world, and they can get a bit wily. That’s what was happening there. The old chap who’d lived there originally didn’t want to leave and was hiding from me. If it wasn’t for modern technology, I might still be there trying to find him.’
‘How do you mean?’ Neil broke in. ‘Did the ghost show up on one of your photographs?’
The old man laughed. ‘Nothing like that,’ he chuckled. ‘No, as I said, we were all downstairs when, over the baby monitor, comes a voice. He was up there in the nursery, talking to the littl’un in her cot!’
‘That’s well creepy.’
‘Oh, he didn’t want to hurt her,’ Mr Pickering asserted. ‘Just sad and lonely, that’s all. People don’t change just because they die, you know. He was a kindly soul, was old Cyril.’
‘What about those who were nasty when they were alive?’
‘Luckily, there’s more good in the world than television would have us believe,’ the ghost hunter replied.
In each of the ground floor rooms they had placed four candles, and the winding, connecting corridor was lit with another fifteen at five-metre intervals. All the electric lights were switched off, and now only those small flames pricked and illuminated the momentous dark.
When they reached the main hallway, where the stairs rose into the impenetrable, prevailing blackness of the upper storeys, the old man clicked his fingers in the manner which Neil already recognised as the sign that he was marshalling his thoughts.
‘There,’ he muttered, gazing back at the glimmering trail they had left behind. ‘I’m ready. I propose to begin here and work my way back to The Fossil Room. Thanks for your help, lad.’
The boy smiled at him. The lenses of the ghost hunter’s spectacles mirrored the candle which the man held in his hand and two squares of bright yellow flame shone out from his lined face. Yet behind those reflections, Mr Pickering’s eyes burned just as keenly. Neil wished that he could stay and see what would happen, but he sensed that tonight the eager newcomer would rather work alone.
‘Good luck,’ he said.
Mr Pickering raised his hand in a slight wave, then took a deep breath to prepare himself.
‘Come on, you,’ Neil told Quoth, lifting the bird on to his shoulder. ‘Let’s see if I can sneak you past Dad.’
Walking through the collections, the boy looked back to catch a last glimpse of the ghost hunter, cocooned in a golden, glowing aura, the cavernous night dwarfing and besieging his stout form as he began his lonely vigil.
‘Hope he finds what he came for,’ Neil said. ‘This place could do with a psychic spring-clean.’
In the entrance hall, Austen Pickering took out his Bible and held it tightly as he lowered his eyes and murmured a heartfelt prayer. The candle in his other hand fizzed and crackled as particles of The Wyrd Museum’s ever-present floating dust drifted into the heat and, presently, the man lifted his head. He was ready.
‘I know you can hear me,’ the ghost hunter called in a firm but friendly voice. ‘I don’t want to frighten any of you – there’s nothing to be afraid of. My name’s Austen. I’m here to help. Now is the time you have waited for. Listen to me – I can feel your torment. Don’t let this place keep you any longer. Come forward, I beseech you. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, I call you to me.’
The pensioner’s words echoed through the hall and out into the collections. Passing through The Roman Gallery, Neil and Quoth heard his compassionate appeals, the sonorous tones ringing through the still emptiness of the vacillating dark that surrounded them.
‘Make yourselves known to me. Let me guide you to the peace you have been denied.’
Quoth’s single eye gleamed small and sharp in the shadows as he cocked his head to listen, and Neil felt a sudden tremor of apprehension judder through the raven’s body.
‘Is something the matter?’ the boy asked.
‘Yea,’ Quoth answered in a hoarse whisper which was filled with dread. ‘The lumpen one knows not what is moving. From the Stygian mirk it cometh. Mine very quills doth rise at its approach. Tarry no longer, Master Neil. To thy father and the light we must away and flee this ray-chidden dankness.’
‘There’s nothing to be scared of.’
Yet the urge to leave that place was mounting within the boy too, and he quickened his pace. About the walls, the shadows of the countless terracotta pots and jars which crammed the shelves seemed to move independently of the candle flames. Neil forced himself not to look at them, for it was easy to see any number of imagined horrors in that crowding dark.
‘I should have taken the quick way through the corridor,’ he muttered.
‘Come to me!’ he could hear the ghost hunter calling. ‘Show yourselves!’
Quoth let out a bleating yelp and clung tightly to his master’s shoulder. ‘Canst thou not sense the terror?’ he wailed. ‘The wall of night doth quake and crack. Make haste afore the barricade is riven!’
Into The Neolithic Collection Neil hurried, running past the cases which housed fragments of Stone Age skulls and avoiding the gaze of reconstructed Neanderthals.
‘Squire Neil!’ the raven yammered, glancing behind them. ‘Behold the flames!’
Whirling around, the boy saw that the candles in the rooms they had passed through were guttering.
‘Lo!’ Quoth uttered miserably. ‘The nocturn breath of the unquiet dead doth blow upon them.’
As though caught in a gusting draught, the small flames sputtered. To his dismay, Neil saw in the distance an engulfing darkness creep closer as, one by one, the candles were extinguished.
‘Midnight as an ice lord’s gullet,’ the raven cawed.
Through the galleries the blackness moved, pouncing from corner to corner as each flame died. The boy could no longer hear Austen Pickering’s voice and, when he spun around again, he saw that the lights ahead were also dwindling and beginning to fail.
‘Too late!’ Quoth shrieked. ‘We are captured!’
With a rush of stale, swirling air, every light in The Neolithic Collection was suddenly snuffed out. Neil and the raven were plunged into a blackness that seemed almost solid.
‘The doom hath descended!’ Quoth cheeped forlornly.
Neil rubbed his eyes, but the darkness was absolute. This room had no windows so there was not even a pale glow from outside to guide him. ‘Stop panicking,’ he reproached the raven crossly. ‘You’re not afraid of the dark, are you?’
‘Alas yes!’ the bird replied. ‘Neath night’s mantle all manner of fell frights may stalketh – with gangrel limbs to drag the ground, clustering eyes and dribble-drenched snouts a-questing our hiding places. Oh, how the fetor steameth from their fangs! Aroint this umbral broth; ’tis the unseen fancy which inspireth the horrors tenfold.’
‘This is stupid,’ the boy answered, trying to sound calm. ‘It was only the wind that put the candles out. But if it was a ghost, then I’ve seen them before and I’m not scared. Edie used to keep loads of them in the bomb sites during the Blitz, the same as other people keep goldfish.’
‘Doughty and of the halest oak is thine heart fashioned,’ Quoth whimpered in admiration. ‘Yet, what sayest thou if the shades who dwell herein doth prove to be fiends most bloody and angersome? No wish hath I to be plucked untimely and robbed of mine gizzards. Spare this frail flower from the greed of the unclean eclipse!’
Neil rummaged in his pockets for the lighter, but remembered that he had given it back to Austen Pickering. Then, unexpectedly, he let out a cheerful laugh. ‘Why don’t I just switch the lights back on?’
Groping through the dark, he felt his way around invisible cabinets until he came to a wall and passed along it, picturing their progress in his mind.
‘The door to the passage should be near here,’ he muttered. ‘The switches are right next to it.’
Fumbling beside a long glass case, the ridges of the door jamb abruptly met his fingertips and at that same moment an anxious voice called out to him.
‘Are you all right, lad?’ Austen Pickering’s concerned cry came echoing through the museum. ‘All the candles have gone out. Stay where you are and I’ll come find you. Blast it! The lighter won’t work and I’ve left the torch back with the fossils.’
‘Don’t worry!’ the boy shouted back. ‘I’m going to put the—’
A frantic dab at his cheek caused his reply to falter. ‘What’s the matter now?’ he demanded of the raven.
‘Hush!’ Quoth urged, his rasping voice now charged with genuine terror. ‘We are not alone in this chamber. Hark – something hath stolen within!’
Neil held his breath, and his skin crawled when he heard faint scrabbling sounds coming from the direction of the far wall. It was a small and furtive scuttling noise which seemed to keep close to the skirting, travelling the boundaries of the large room as though shy of the open space which filled it.
‘What did you say?’ the ghost hunter called. ‘I didn’t catch it.’
But Neil was too afraid to answer. Whatever had joined Quoth and himself in The Neolithic Collection had overcome its reticence and given a sudden, pig-like grunt. Even now they could hear it snuffling across the floor, scampering under the cabinets and growling softly to itself.
‘’Tis a beast of the ancient wild!’ the raven whispered fretfully. ‘Or some frightsome bogle crawled from its brimstone grot. Master Neil, the great lights – command them!’
With the guttural breaths now sounding from the centre of the room, the boy hunted feverishly for the switches on the wall, but found only a blank expanse and his heart beat faster in his chest.
‘They’re not here!’ he hissed. ‘Quoth! I can’t find them. I must have got it wrong. This is the door to The Norman Hall – I thought we were on the other side of the room!’
At the sound of their frightened voices, the bestial snorts ceased and a foul, exulting gurgle issued from the blackness.
‘The fiend hath detected us!’ Quoth yowled. ‘We are discovered! Fly, Master Neil!’
A triumphant chattering whooped from the deep shadows as the creature bounded from beneath the cabinets, with a gnashing and champing of teeth.
Unable to contain his panic, Neil scrabbled with the handle of the door and cried out in despair. ‘It’s locked!’ he wept.
‘Then flee another way!’ Quoth implored, hopping up and down in terror. ‘The demon is upon us!’
Blundering sideways, Neil ran blindly across the room, but the snapping horror veered around in pursuit, its claws clattering over the polished floorboards.
‘More speed!’ the raven cried.
Neil flung himself through the gloom and the gargling snorts of the unseen beast rose to a horrible squeal.
Suddenly, the boy yelled in pain as he crashed into a table. Unable to check his momentum, he vaulted head over heels through the darkness, landing in a crumpled heap upon the other side.
Screeching, Quoth toppled from his shoulder and went tumbling backwards – straight into path of the oncoming nightmare.
CHAPTER 7 MARY-ANNE BRINDLE (#ulink_8424d1fb-8f69-5fb6-9b07-edd152275918)
For an instant, the raven lay upon the ground, wings outstretched and beak askew. Then the raucous shrieks of the marauding beast brought him to his feet and the bird bolted across the floor in search of his master.
Tormented with panic and terror, Quoth scurried in completely the wrong direction, quite forgetting in his fear that he could fly. Garbled cries howled from his throat, for his jaw had locked open and he could not move it. Behind, he could hear the fangs of the pursuing creature grind together as it lunged after him, and he swung his head from side to side, despairing for his life.
Then, with a painful thud, he ran headlong into the leg of a cabinet. The collision stunned him for a second, but his stringy legs continued to gallop and lurch onward despite his confusion. Thankfully, the aching blow clicked his beak back into place, and when the raven could direct any thoughts beyond the immediate throbbing of his skull, he let out a shrill squawk.
‘Squire Neil!’ he honked. ‘Run whilst thou may. The scourge is biting at mine tail. Aiyee! Aiyee!’
Spreading his tattered wings wide, the raven darted forward, careering clear across the room until he raced into The Roman Gallery. Huge dim squares reared up on the bird’s right and he stumbled towards them, skittering through the patches of melancholy light which fanned from those grimy Georgian windows.
After him the nightmare came and, dithering with terror, Quoth did not know which way to run.
Then he saw it.
Wheeling around, his breast heaving, the bird stared back into the dismal gloom and his puny legs dissolved under him. Catching his wheezing breaths, Quoth sank to the ground as, up to the brink of the dismal light, the creature came prowling.
Faint with fear, the bird saw a squat, outlandish silhouette, no taller than his master’s knees. It lowered a mane-crowned head and Quoth’s feathers prickled when he heard a grating babble issue from its unseen mouth.
‘Gogus …’ the imp-like figure panted. ‘Gogus …’
Quoth could only stare whilst the alarming aberration hesitated, and he wondered what it was waiting for. Was it taunting him, wringing out every last morsel of fright before it leaped in for the kill?
‘Quoth?’ Neil’s scared voice shouted from the other room. ‘Where are you? Quoth? Are you okay?’
Shuffling backwards over the floorboards and shrinking against the wall, the raven shook his head vehemently, too petrified to cry out. But, at the sound of the boy’s voice, the menacing apparition jerked its unwieldy head aside. With a furious chittering, the creature slapped the ground with its splayed claws and bounded back into the Neolithic room.
‘Quoth?’ Neil cried again.
Staggering to his feet, the raven spluttered, then shrieked. ‘Squire Neil! ’Ware the demon – ’tis thou it seeks! Save thyself!’
Nursing his bruised shins, Neil felt horribly vulnerable. Hearing that warning, he hobbled through the darkness, his flailing hands striking the cabinets and cases as he battled his way across the room.
Suddenly, the veiled shadows on his left were filled with a loathsome yapping, causing the boy to forget his injuries, and he pelted forward. The doorway to the passage could not be far off; already he could feel a current of air blowing upon his face and he charged recklessly towards its source, slithering and skidding in his haste to escape. But the fiend was closing, and its jabbering cries became outraged barks as it scooted towards the boy.
Even in that unmeasurable dark, Neil could sense the open doorway as it reared before him. He did not think to reach for the light switches and he threw all his strength into one last sprint.
Too late – the berserking creature was at his heels. Launching its squat form from the ground, the small, misshapen figure leaped. Wrapping its arms about the boy’s legs, it clung to him fiercely.
Neil howled in fright as powerful claws pinched and squeezed, and he toppled sideways, slamming into the wall. Squealing and snapping, his attacker held him with an iron grasp and would not let go.
‘Gogus!’ it raged. ‘Gogus … Gogus!’
‘Get off!’ the boy cried. ‘Let go!’
‘Gogus …’ was his only reply, and the vice-like clutch tightened all the more.
‘Help!’ Neil bawled. ‘Help!’
At that moment, the night was filled with ferocious screeches as, swooping through the air, Quoth came shooting to his aid. ‘Afright not, my master!’ he crowed. ‘Yon runted minikin shalt bear the mark of the raven afore thy boggling serf is slain.’
With talons outstretched, Quoth plummeted down. Towards the feverish barks and grunts he flew, his master’s cries jangling loud in his mind. His one thought, to do all that he could to save Neil – whatever the cost to himself. Across the beast’s large, ill-proportioned face, the raven’s claws gouged long scars and the enemy yowled in fury.
‘Avaunt ye!’ Quoth commanded. ‘Creep back to thy venomous lurks. Begone!’
Incensed by the bird’s harrying onslaught, the small figure loosened its grasp around the boy’s legs and retaliated. Before he realised what was happening, Quoth was plucked from the air and his squawks were throttled in his scrawny throat as those mighty claws hooked about him.
‘Gogus!’ the monster gargled madly, shaking Quoth as though he were a mouse in a cat’s jaws. The raven jiggled and flapped hopelessly, coughing and choking as he fought to breathe.
‘Quoth!’ Neil called, finally able to move his legs. ‘What’s happening? Quoth?’
The grunting horror let out a frustrated hiss and discarded the annoying bird, hurling him into the darkness as it swung back to pounce upon the boy once more. Mewling piteously, Quoth rocketed across the room.
‘Run, Master Neil!’ he wailed, before his head smashed into a Neanderthal display and the dazed raven slid down the cracked glass, burbling a warbled chirrup as he dropped to the ground.
Framed in the open doorway, Neil heard his friend’s collision and prayed he was unharmed. Yet there was nothing he could do, for in that instant, the pigmy-sized creature jumped up at him again and Neil let out a yell of fright as he tumbled backwards into the passage.
Immediately, the clamouring barks ceased.
Neil sat up in consternation. The stupefying dark was gone and the passage was lit with a dim light. He let out a long, grateful sigh.
‘Be still!’ a breathless voice hissed in his ear, and a filthy hand was clapped over the boy’s mouth before he could make any further sound.
‘This way!’ he was told. ‘They’ll be here in a minute. Don’t let them find us.’
With rough, hauling movements, the owner of that frightened voice dragged the struggling boy away from the doorway and pulled him into a shadowy alcove, where he was thrust into the corner and forced to crouch on his haunches.
‘Stay put and do as I say.’
His face was pushed against the wall and the weight of his captor was pressing against his back to keep him there, but Neil managed to twist his head about and glare at the person who had seized him. Anger and resentment ebbed away, to be replaced by an uproar of confusion and bewilderment, for he was staring up into the face of a young woman.
The gas lamp in the passage burned low, so that the flame barely flickered, and the resulting phosphorescence bathed everything in a deathly, dappled pallor. Under this chill radiance, the woman’s skin was painted cold and grey. Beneath those crinkling brows, her small eyes darted this way and that, glimmering like an owl’s in the ghastly illumination. A cloud of dark, matted hair fell about her tensed shoulders in an unkempt, twining tangle, and snarled hanks fringed her high, furrowed forehead.
Scouring the gloom, she cringed deeper into the alcove, bunching herself into as small a shape as possible. The crisply starched linen of her nightgown crackled faintly.
Neil’s mind surged with questions. He had no idea who she was. Had she broken into the museum? Did the vicious animal in the other room belong to her? Peering past her into the shadowy passage, the boy realised with a jolt that there was another riddle to which he did not know the answer. Mounted upon the panelled wall, enclosed in a globe of frosted glass, was the gas lamp which saturated the corridor in its pallid, corpse glow. But Neil was certain that all the lighting within The Wyrd Museum was electric. There were no gas lamps.
‘You’ll do it, won’t you, boy?’ the woman spat, bringing her face close to his. ‘Mary-Anne can make you – and she will if you force her!’
Neil wormed around a little more, his nose edging clear of the woman’s stifling palm. A sickly, antiseptic smell hung heavily in the air, but a sharp jab at his throat concentrated his mind on a new danger. In her other hand the woman was holding a knife.
‘You’ll know the way out, won’t you?’ she said in a threatening whisper. ‘Nice clean boy like you. Come a-visiting, have we? Been shown what they wanted you to see? No one gets to come down this way – not agreeable, not refined. Offend the paying relatives, it would.’
The woman pressed the flat of the blade against his skin and the dim gas flame reflected an anaemic sliver of light up into her eyes. Neil looked into them and swallowed uneasily. Those small, shifting pupils were filled with a wild, dancing desolation and he knew that she would not shrink from slitting his throat.
‘You want to live, boy?’ she demanded. ‘Then take Mary-Anne out of this. She’ll spike you if you don’t. Already killed once this night, she has – can’t endure it no more.’
The woman rocked forward to glance down the passage once more and, as she moved, Neil saw that her nightgown was sprayed with large, spattered stains. In the sombre light, the ugly marks and blotches were a purplish black, but they glistened wetly and the boy knew that he was looking at blood, freshly spilled from the vein.
‘Peace, now!’ Mary-Anne entreated, her voice rising with panic. ‘They’re coming. Rokeby’s been found. Josiah Rokeby – you devil! Even with your neck pricked, you’ll do for me!’
Gripping the knife so tightly that the blade sliced into the skin of her forefinger, the woman shivered, and Neil could feel that her every sinew was hideously taut and strained. Suddenly, she whipped the blade away from the boy’s throat and wrenched her hand from his mouth, as she swept the matted tresses from her ears, pushing herself against the alcove wall.
‘No!’ she whimpered, her mouth dry with horror. ‘He is with them. Oh, sweet heaven! Save Mary-Anne Brindle from that one.’
Wailing, she shook her head violently, banging her skull on the panelling and beating her temples with her fists. Then, abruptly, the tantrum was over and she sat there, panting feverishly. Her face half-hidden behind an untidy curtain of hair, Mary-Anne peeped out at the passage and nodded slowly.
‘Tick-Tock Jack has found him,’ the woman murmured. ‘It’s that one she should’ve stuck. No time for hiding now, not with Tick-Tock after her. Oh Lord, Jack Timms will knock the life out of her this time. Her’s won’t be the first head he’s broken.’
Still crouched in the corner, Neil heard the sound of running footsteps approaching down the corridor, and the noise caused Mary-Anne to spring to her feet. ‘Let them pass!’ the woman cried, hugging herself in distraction. ‘Rokeby had earned it. All the wardens warrant the same, but he and Tick-Tock the most. Dear Jesus, let them run by her!’
Only a few minutes ago, when he had faced that gurgling fiend in the Neolithic room, Neil had thought he had been afraid. But now, gazing up at this petrified, insane woman, he truly understood the meaning of real fear. Like a fountain of despair, the terror flowed out from her, breaking in wave after hopeless wave from her blighted, tortured form.
The noise in the passage was louder now. Heavy boots were pounding over the floorboards and Neil felt an overwhelming desire not to be found. Squeezing himself as far into the corner as he could, he waited, not daring to look up.
‘There!’ a rough male voice yelled. ‘She’s there!’
The woman screamed and angry shouts boomed within the corridor as her enemies thundered forward. Leaping from the alcove, she hared away and Neil heard her high, fluting shrieks as she disappeared from sight. He shrank further into the gloom, anxiously holding his breath.
Suddenly, three dark, burly figures hurtled past his hiding place, momentarily obliterating the feeble gaslight, and the boy knew that Mary-Anne would not escape them. Foul, drain-dirty curses blared in his ears, but all sounds were instantly drowned when another fierce, bellowing voice roared through the building.
‘Get back here! I’ll teach you to pink old Joe!’
It was a repellent, contemptible pronouncement and Neil’s scalp crept with the inexhaustible hate and malice which fuelled it. Then there came a shrill screech, accompanied by a frantic scuffling. The woman had been caught.
‘I’ll learn you!’ the spite-charged voice snapped. ‘Pin her still, lads!’
Deafening screams tore the gloom and, as savage, battering thuds shook the walls, vile jeers galed from the darkness.
Neil clapped his hands over his ears, but the brutality jolted through his bones and nothing could shield him from the woman’s howls.
‘Stop it!’ he yelled. ‘Leave her alone!’
And then, it was over.
The evil din ended. The final, piercing notes of Mary-Anne’s suffering lingered briefly upon the ether, until they were quenched by an ominous silence more horrible than anything he had yet experienced.
A nauseated burning bubbled in Neil’s stomach and he felt the bile rise to the back of his throat. At that moment, a deep shadow was cast over the alcove when a figure stepped in front of the gaslight. Neil scrambled to his bruised knees, cradling his head in his arms.
‘Get off!’ he cried. ‘Don’t you touch me!’
Looming over the huddled boy, the black shape reached towards him.
‘What’s this, then?’ a gruff voice demanded.
CHAPTER 8 AWAKENING (#ulink_16c8f3cb-dcca-5740-a7e9-73029f59d977)
Hearing those words, Neil jerked his head back and blurted out a great, glad cry. Standing over him, with the flame of his cigarette lighter bowing in the draught which coursed through the passageway, was Austen Pickering.
‘What happened, lad?’ the ghost hunter cried, seeing the fear graven in the boy’s face. ‘Are you all right? Did you fall and hurt yourself in the dark?’
‘Mary-Anne!’ Neil shouted, staggering to his feet and lunging from the alcove. ‘How is she? Where are the others?’
Stumbling up the corridor he whisked around but could see nothing in the darkness that had returned. Snatching the lighter from the old man’s hand, he hastened forward, then halted and came running back.
‘Others?’ Mr Pickering repeated. ‘Who do you mean – who’s this Mary-Anne?’
Neil rushed to the wall opposite his hiding place and held the wavering flame above his head whilst he ran his fingers over the worm-ridden wooden panels. But the gas lamp was not there and all he found was a tarnished brass fixing that had not been used for many years.
‘It was here,’ he murmured faintly. ‘She was here – Mary-Anne Brindle.’
An envious smile formed on the old man’s face. ‘You’ve seen something, haven’t you?’ he marvelled. ‘What was it? Tell me everything – I have to know each detail.’
The boy stared at him blankly. ‘But you must have heard them!’ he exclaimed. ‘They were just here, they chased her down …’
His protestations trailed into silence and he took a nervous, sampling breath. ‘That disinfectant smell,’ he muttered. ‘It’s gone as well.’
‘An olfactory emanation!’ Mr Pickering declared. ‘Of all the luck!’
Neil scowled at him. ‘It was nothing to be jealous of, I promise you.’
‘Even better!’ the ghost hunter exclaimed, rubbing his hands together. ‘Let’s get back to The Fossil Room – I want to record this.’
Neil drew a hand over his face. ‘But it was real,’ he whispered.
‘I’m not suggesting you imagined it.’
‘No. I mean they weren’t ghosts – they were actually here. And back there, in the Neo—’
The boy’s insides lurched as he suddenly remembered and went charging back to the Neolithic room.
‘QUOTH!’ he yelled.
Bursting in, he swung around and slapped his hand across the light switches. The sudden flaring of the electric bulbs was blinding and the boy screwed up his face as he rampaged inside, jumping over the table he had crashed into in the dark.
‘Quoth!’ he called again. ‘Where are you?’
Neil threw himself upon his hands and knees and scuttled through the room, searching under the cabinets until he heard a frail, bleating cry.
‘Fie, Sir!’ the familiar tones trilled in a delirious, hiccoughing prattle. ‘Ne’er hath this riddled bucket met with such a boggling – a tree-nesting milche cow! What prodigious eggs thou must be blessed with.’
The raven lay at the foot of the tallest display case, blearily gazing up at the ceiling. His bald head was lolling to one side, his legs split beneath him, one wing raised in the air and the other twitching erratically.
‘Alas, this goodly knight cannot sup with thee. A feast of running cheese and malmsey awaits him. Good Sir Geoffrey, see to mine steed, the rose-cheeked damsel beckons.’
Neil hurried to his side and gave a worried glance at the large crack in the glass where the bird had struck the case. ‘Quoth …’ he ventured.
The raven wagged his head as though he was drunk and Neil touched him gingerly.
‘M’Lady!’ Quoth objected. ‘’Tis most unseemly amid the crocks and dishpots!’
‘Is the poor thing injured?’ Austen Pickering spoke up as he joined them.
‘I don’t think anything’s broken,’ Neil answered. ‘He’s got a huge bump on his head, but – he doesn’t seem to know me.’
Lifting the raven’s limp body off the ground, the boy held him in his arms and the bird’s one eye rolled in its socket.
‘Does look a bit dazed,’ the ghost hunter observed.
Neil bit his lip nervously. ‘Will it be permanent do you think?’
‘Dunno, lad. I’m no vet and I’ve never kept so much as a budgie before. Hang on, this might do the trick.’
From his pocket, the old man pulled the small bottle of smelling salts and wafted the pungent vapour under the raven’s beak.
The result was swift and startling. Quoth bolted upright, spluttering and squawking. ‘Pickled toad stink and squeezings of sourmost mordant fish!’ he gasped. Blowing down his bill to dispel the noxious fumes, he stared accusingly about him until he caught sight of Neil’s face and his belligerent expression transformed to one of joy.
‘Master Neil! There is a remedy for all hurts, save death, and its name is thine.’
The boy laughed. ‘You’re back to normal,’ he said.
Quoth nuzzled against him, then tugged his head aside to glare and squint down at the floor.
‘The imp!’ he cawed, remembering the fiend that had attacked them. ‘Hath it fled hence? Didst thou despatch it?’
‘What’s he talking about?’ Mr Pickering asked. ‘He’s still rambling.’
Neil turned to him. ‘No,’ he replied gravely. ‘When the candles went out, something came after us in here. I don’t know what it was, but it was definitely no ghost. Couldn’t you hear us?’
‘I thought you’d tripped, that’s all,’ the old man answered. ‘I know I did when I came to find you.’
‘So you didn’t see anything either?’
‘Not a thing. Was it some kind of animal?’
Before Neil could reply, Quoth uttered a mortified croak and they lowered their eyes to where the raven pointed with his beak. Lifting one foot in the air, the bird flexed his talons and a splintered shaving of wood dropped on to Neil’s outstretched hand.
‘Behold!’ Quoth announced in a quavering voice. ‘’Tis a token gouged of the demon’s brow.’
Mr Pickering eyed him doubtfully. ‘What’s he saying?’
Neil stared at the evidence upon his palm. ‘No animal was in here tonight,’ he said, hardly believing his own words. ‘Whatever it was that attacked us wasn’t flesh and blood.’
A little while later they were sitting in The Fossil Room, discussing all that had happened from the moment the candle flames were extinguished. Not content with recording Neil’s experience on tape, Austen Pickering also took pages of notes, then went back to the scene of the visitation to see if any clues had been left behind in his scatterings of flour.
‘What a pity,’ he sighed on his return. ‘The marks were too confused to tell me anything. The only clear tracks I could find were a neat little set of raven footprints.’
Quoth gave a mournful cluck but the ghost hunter was not disheartened. ‘Better luck next time,’ he assured them. ‘I’ll put some more flour down later.’
‘I don’t think I want to see the next time,’ Neil put in.
Mr Pickering took out his handkerchief and polished his glasses. Peering at the blurred boy in front of him, he tutted and said, ‘Don’t say that. I’m counting on you, Private Chapman. I know you were scared, but there really was no need. I’ve never heard of a case where the departed harmed the living – fear alone does that.’
‘You don’t understand!’ Neil insisted, smacking the glass counter he was leaning upon. ‘That thing back there and those people I saw, they weren’t ghosts – they were as solid as I am.’
‘They might have seemed solid …’
‘Listen to me, they were! How else do you account for that splinter of wood?’
The ghost hunter replaced his spectacles and browsed through his notes. ‘Your little friend could have scratched one of the tables by mistake. It was pitch black in there. As for the woman in the passage, how could she be real? This confusion between this world and the next is very common, lad. Those who witness such events are often so caught up in the tragedies unfolding before them that their perspective on reality is altered, and they believe that what they are seeing has substance, when in fact it does not.’
Neil scowled and folded his arms. ‘She dragged me halfway down the corridor,’ he said emphatically. ‘I’d call that pretty substantial, wouldn’t you?’
‘You thought that she did,’ Mr Pickering persisted. ‘I’m a trained observer of this kind of phenomenon, lad, trust me.’
‘So what do you think it was then?’ the boy asked.
The ghost hunter put down his clipboard and leaned forward across the counter. ‘Most definitely an incident that happened way back in this building’s past. Judging from what you’ve told me, my first guess would be that it occurred in the time of the lunatic asylum, but we must wait until we have all the facts before we can be certain.’
‘That would explain the awful smell,’ Neil agreed.
‘Think of this place as a vast camera, and the air that fills it a photographic plate. Just like a camera, that plate is very sensitive – not to light in this case, but to certain actions and emotions. What you saw was a moving projection of some horrible, violent act that was so severe it imprinted itself on the atmosphere within that corridor. And, unless someone can release that unfortunate lady’s suffering, that scene will be replayed over and over forever.’
Neil wasn’t so sure. ‘But it wasn’t like that,’ he protested one final time. ‘It was more like I had slipped back in time, gone back to the past.’
Austen Pickering gave a humouring chortle. ‘Now, that is preposterous! I’m sorry, lad, but when I write this up for the psychic journal I can’t put that down – I’d never be taken seriously again. Time travel indeed.’
The boy realised it sounded ridiculous, but he also knew that within The Wyrd Museum anything was possible. He could not help smiling at the thought that Austen Pickering would undoubtedly have to eat a great many of his words before his investigations were over.
‘Master Neil!’ Quoth interrupted, pulling the boy’s sleeve to get his attention. Still grinning, Neil turned to him and saw that the raven was jerking his head towards the doorway. Before he could swivel around on his chair, there came an awkward cough.
Standing behind them, looking embarrassed and abashed, was Brian Chapman. ‘It’s gone nine,’ he muttered in a small voice. ‘There’s a bit of supper in the flat. It’s a school day tomorrow.’
Neil realised that his father was trying his best to make up for what had happened earlier. ‘So was today,’ he admitted.
‘Well, you got back late last night – and I got up late. One day won’t matter.’
Austen Pickering regarded the lanky, dishevelled man with mild interest. The boy’s father was the opposite of Neil; he didn’t appear to be capable of looking after himself, let alone two children. The ghost hunter’s critical, observing eyes flicked over the gangly figure before him and made a quick mental appraisal.
Brian had not shaved since yesterday, his greasy hair curled over the collar of his unironed shirt and wiry bunches spiked from his nostrils. A wide gap between the top of his scuffed shoes and the bottom of his ill-fitting trousers betrayed the fact he was wearing odd socks, and his slouching stance suggested that he was trying to pretend he wasn’t there. Mr Pickering had never encountered anyone who was so uncomfortable in his own skin before, and he pitied the boy for being afflicted with such a parent.
‘I brought you this,’ the caretaker said, shyly bringing his hand from around his back to reveal a thermos flask filled with hot water. ‘Didn’t mean to snap before. Been a bad few days.’
Austen Pickering smiled disarmingly. ‘Don’t mention it,’ he said and meant it. ‘Thank you for this – I could do with a cuppa right now.’
‘You … you could come and have something to eat if you like,’ Brian offered, not meeting the other man’s eyes.
The ghost hunter grinned but declined with a polite wave of his hand. ‘Appreciated, but no thanks. I’ve some satsumas and an instant soup if I get peckish later. I might take you up on it tomorrow, though, if the invite still stands. Lot to do tonight, got to get stuck in.’
‘Not found any spooks yet, then?’ Brian inquired, forcing a strained laugh.
Neil shot the old man a look which was loaded with meaning. Mr Pickering understood and a difficult silence followed that was broken only when Quoth shook his wings and cawed softly.
‘Haven’t made a proper start yet,’ the ghost hunter said evasively.
Brian nodded and backed clumsily to the doorway. ‘Well, see you in the morning, then,’ he mumbled. ‘See if your hair’s turned white.’
‘Not enough of it left for that,’ the old man joked.
Neil hesitated before following his father.
‘Dad,’ he called. ‘What about Quoth?’
At the mention of his name, the raven flew to his place at the boy’s shoulder and let out a sorrowful croak.
‘Oh, well – bring him along then,’ Brian relented, seeing how downcast and forlorn the mangy bird appeared. ‘But he’s not to sleep in your room.’
‘Zooks hurrah!’ Quoth sang.
Neil thanked his father and said goodnight to Mr Pickering. ‘Be careful,’ the boy warned him.
When he was alone in The Fossil Room, the ghost hunter gave a slight shiver and inspected one of the thermometers.
‘Down five degrees,’ he commented aloud, adding the information to his notebook.
The next half-hour was spent sprinkling more flour in the adjoining rooms, relighting all the candles and switching off the electric lights again. When it was done, the old man made himself a mug of strong black coffee and eased himself into his chair.
A brooding silence had descended over The Wyrd Museum and Mr Pickering took time to gaze about him. Like a dark sea, profound shadows lapped the walls and ceiling above him, and he lightly closed his eyes, trying to assess the building’s mood.
‘Nothing,’ he murmured. ‘Having a bit of a rest are we, or is it the sulks? Well, let’s see what else you’ve got up your sleeve, or should I say drainpipe?’
His voice echoed hollowly into the empty gloom and he shrugged. ‘Maybe you just prefer frightening children. You’ll not upset me so easily.’
Placing his Bible upon the counter, he took a swig of coffee and chose a book from one of the suitcases.
‘Billy Bunter!’ he proclaimed to the watching night. ‘A perfect read for the small hours. You’ll love it.’
Turning the pages, he moved the two central candles a little closer and started to read aloud. The beetle-black canopy enclosed around him and the ghost hunter reflected that it was going to be a long, but hopefully eventful, night.
Obscured behind thick, impenetrable cloud, the moon imparted little light upon the unlovely shape of The Wyrd Museum. Yet what drizzled through the large square windows was far brighter than the hoard of shadow with which the building clothed its galleries.
Those rooms facing out on to Well Lane benefited from the extra glare of the street lamps. Their stark, sodium glow diffused through the cluttered spaces in an unnatural, sulphurous daubing and, up on the first floor, Edie Dorkins meandered through The Separate Collection, the silver tinsel in her pixie hood glittering with small orange sparks.
After the Chamber of Nirinel, this was her favourite place. She loved to stare at the exhibits, wondering what they were for and, in some cases, who they had been. The headstrong and enigmatic little girl revelled in the delicious oblivion that the dark afforded and relished the musty, decaying smells of the museum which were always stronger in the lonely, shadowy murk.
Standing on a box, she pressed her nose against one of the glass lids and her mouth watered at what she saw inside. A large golden locket, bigger than her fist and curiously shaped, lay upon a cushion of faded purple velvet and Edie traced the snaking loop of the fabulous chain with the tip of her tongue.
Staring at the accompanying label, she almost wished that she was able to read what it said, for who could have worn such a heavy, prodigious pendant?
‘It contains the heel bone of Achilles,’ Miss Ursula’s voice sounded at the entrance to The Egyptian Suite.
Without taking her tongue from the glass, Edie raised her eyes. The eldest of the Websters was standing in the semi-darkness of the threshold to that midnight, windowless room, but the girl could only make out a black shadow shape which glinted when the jet beads of the woman’s evening gown caught the glare of the street lamp.
‘You can remove it from the case if you wish, Edith.’
With an impertinent toss of her head, the girl jumped from the box. The lumpy locket had lost some of its appeal now that she had been given permission to wear it and she ambled over to another cabinet.
The figure in the doorway remained in the masking gloom. ‘Soon you will know the history of each exhibit,’ she promised. ‘Remember that you are to succeed my sister and I as custodian of these precious and perilous objects. Ask of me what you will, before my mind collapses into the dementia of Celandine and Veronica before her.’
Peering into the recess of this larger case, Edie inspected the contents. Balanced upon a roughly-carved granite plinth was a great globe of worn and crackled leather. Over the irregular bumps of its scarred and weathered surface, the mustard-coloured light curved softly, making the pummelled and dented sphere look like a giant, mouldering apricot.
‘Big football?’ the girl speculated. ‘Break yer toes kicking that round the park.’
‘You know very well it is nothing of the kind,’ Miss Ursula’s floating voice upbraided her. ‘It is the Eye of the Fomor.’
Edie studied the huge, swollen globe anew. ‘A real eye?’ she breathed, misting up the glass. ‘It’s massive.’
‘The Fomorians were monsters who plagued the Ireland of ancient time,’ the old woman began in a whispering chant. ‘Yet even amongst their hideous company, Balor, the son of Buarainech, was as a mountain. All feared him, for one of his eyes had the power to wither and kill at a single glance. Such was its dreaded strength that he was compelled to keep it firmly closed and covered. But when the Fomorians rode across the plain to meet their enemies, the attendants of Balor would raise his eyelid with a great hook and entire armies fell before its destroying gaze.’
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