The Fatal Strand

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

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.