Candleman (21 page)

With all his might, Mr Nicely pushed Dr Saint over the edge of the platform.

T
ristus was hit by a wall of water and swept away helplessly in the dark tide. After his encounter with Skun he had been seeking an old tunnel that would take him into the heart of the Well Chamber, but now he was caught in the alchemical streams released by Dr Saint. The garghoul was swirled through a maelstrom of water, rock and nameless debris – taken on a perilous ride that would have killed any human – until he was finally hurled into the ashes at the bottom of the network.

He struggled to keep his feet, surrounded by boiling waters. Dark tombstones rose out of the foaming sea on all sides. He saw the great garghoul monument through the mists and realised he was at the resting place of the dreaded urughoul.

Tristus let out a cry of dismay as the darkness all around him began to glimmer, then explode with the light of a myriad scintillating sparks.

‘The enemy has achieved golden time!’ Tristus gasped. ‘Then they have won the war – after all these years.’ Despair began to take hold of him as he saw the gravestones begin to topple, the ominous mounds stir and dark claws reach up from under the ground.

Startling figures rose around him like the stone idols of an ancient religion. The warrior garghouls were twitching to life, the first wave of power calling them from out of their ashen graves. Tristus felt a chill in his very soul. Just one of these creatures would prove a formidable enemy for mankind. But here, there were hundreds – more than even he had anticipated.

‘It hardly matters if I save the boy now,’ he reflected. ‘No one could stand against such as these!’

The waters rushed Tristus towards one of the creatures. To his surprise, its huge claw shattered on impact with his own tough hide. The warriors were brittle, their re-creation incomplete.

‘The vital spark is missing!’ he realised. ‘So where is it? What is Dr Saint waiting for?’

The cry of agony seemed to fill the whole chamber. Dr Saint had fallen from the platform at the top of the tower and plummeted at least thirty feet on to the level below.
Please let him be dead,
Theo thought as he rushed to see over the edge.

A nightmarish sight greeted Theo’s eyes. Dr Saint’s body had plunged on to an iron spar, part of the railings that ran round the lower balcony. The great spike had almost torn his body in two. He hung there, like a figure of medieval torture, his limbs jerking strangely.

Theo glanced away, praying for the body to stop twitching. Just behind Theo, Mr Nicely was staring wide-eyed, his hands still smoking from where he had touched his employer.

‘I – I had to do it!’ Mr Nicely whispered, looking shaken to the core. ‘I knew it – it all went wrong a long time ago. But I – I was helpless to stop him. I just had to wait for the right moment …’

Theo stared down below. It seemed as if the body was still writhing. It was hard to tell – the little lights of the golden time danced maddeningly before his eyes. The forces of the great alchemical experiment were still in motion. Thunder rolled around the chamber.

‘That wasn’t very nice, Mr Nicely,’
came a thin, unearthly voice.

Theo’s blood froze. He gazed below. The broken skeleton was alive, staring back up at them with its one remaining eye.

‘You fools!’ Dr Saint screamed. ‘You cannot kill
me
!’

Theo looked in horror as the apparition struggled to life. Its limbs had been pulled from their sockets, shredded sinew and torn muscle hung from its frame like string and rags. Only a flickering white energy seemed to be binding it together.

‘I’m coming to get you,’ cried the thin voice. ‘You first, Mr Oh-so-nicely!’

Theo and the butler stared, aghast, as Dr Saint swung his broken body around on the iron spar. He extended a crooked arm to clutch an iron railing.

Could it be true? Could Dr Saint really make it back up? Surely he was finished?

‘It’s up to you, Theo,’ Mr Nicely said quietly. ‘No other power can do it. It’s just you and him now.’

Theo fought back a moment of panic as the truth of Mr Nicely’s words hit home. There was nobody to hide behind, nobody to defend or advise him. Only he – a true Wickland – could overcome the thing that his guardian had become.

Dr Saint slowly began to drag himself off the spike that had pierced his torso. He was leaving several ribs behind but didn’t seem to notice.

‘You’re just a child, Theo!’ Dr Saint scoffed. ‘You were never going to defeat me! You were always too weak, like that fool who wanted to save you – Norrowmore.’

‘Mr Norrowmore beat you!’ Theo shrieked back. He would fight Dr Saint’s lies with his last breath. ‘He planned my rescue – all of it – before he died!’

Dr Saint was hauling his slimy bones up on to the balcony rail, his gangling legs finding footholds.

‘Norrowmore was deluded.’ Dr Saint smiled with his cracked, crocodile jaws. He was buying himself time, getting used to inching his shattered body along. ‘He dreamt of peace between our warring Societies! I kindly offered it to him!’

‘Peace?’ Theo gasped.

‘We met in secret,’ Dr Saint gloated. ‘He took my peace proposal away to study. How he must have enjoyed reading it – as my poisoned ink evaporated into him and ate away his flesh!’

Theo felt sick. But this final revelation only made him more determined to defeat his foe. He had to do it – for Mr Norrowmore, for Chloe, for everyone in the Society of Unrelenting Vigilance who had risked their lives to help him.

Dr Saint was on top of the balcony railings now, poised there like an enormous squashed spider. Theo trembled on the platform above. He had just had a terrible idea.

If I jump at him – and cling on tight as we plunge to our deaths, then it’s all over. Candle Man and Philanthropist, the ancient battle over forever. The world free of us both.

Theo’s heart quailed. He felt lost and confused. Too much had happened to him in too short a time.
If I die now, I’ll never see Sam and Magnus again,
he thought.
Or ever go out on my birthday again – or eat pink cake.
Theo gulped. Perhaps this was it – the sacrifice demanded of a true hero. It didn’t seem fair. He had always imagined that heroes got to actually
live
before they died.

Clang!
He had reflected for a second too long – Dr Saint had sprung from the balcony, and was now crawling up the banisters that led to the top platform.

‘I did it!’ he cackled, his body creaking slowly towards them, up the last flight of stairs. ‘I fell to my death – and yet I still came back. It is my
will
that drives me now. I am beyond human!’

Theo braced himself for the attack, but the skeletal figure sprang past him, and fell upon the terrified Mr Nicely. Dr Saint gripped the butler by the throat and began to squeeze. Theo got there just in time. He grabbed Dr Saint from behind and dashed his skeletal body to the floor.

Theo turned to see if Mr Nicely was all right, then gasped at what he saw. One bony hand belonging to Dr Saint had been left behind, still clutching Mr Nicely’s throat. In a flash, Theo smashed it away with his fist. It skittered across the platform and lay twitching. Mr Nicely fell face-first to the floor.

Theo watched with revulsion as his guardian struggled back to his feet, a demented skeleton in a ragged suit. Theo noticed how slowly Dr Saint’s rickety frame moved – his hideous new power was not without limit. Theo had also noticed something else that gave him great hope.

‘Death has made me stronger!’ Dr Saint ranted on, glorying in his eerie power. He pointed at his own ghoulish body, but the gesture was spoilt by the absence of a hand to point with. ‘I am your master,’ he raved. ‘I have always been your master! Look upon me if you dare!’

Dr Saint was astonished to see his ward did not shrink before him. There was no fear, no doubt in the boy’s eyes. Instead there was a curious gleam, a half-hidden smile – almost as if the boy knew something Dr Saint didn’t.

‘I
am
looking at you,’ Theo replied, his voice surprisingly steady. Theo felt no fear, no doubt as he faced his guardian. ‘And do you know what?’ he continued. ‘I’ve just realised I can see you perfectly. Just like I can see everything around me. Do you know what that means, Dr Saint?’

For a moment Dr Saint faltered; his one remaining eye looked at Theo, uncertain.

‘It means,’ said Theo, ‘that I’m not being blinded by stars any more. It means the golden time has ended!’ He gestured all around him as the last tiny sparks winked out of existence.

‘You said yourself it was just a brief spell, when magical things were possible. Well, it’s passed! You failed to produce the
tripudon
fire – and now your chance is over!’

Dr Saint gazed around him in shock, his head almost flying off his scraggy neck. It was true. The air was clear. Hatred and revenge had blinded him at the crucial moment. His moment of destiny had slipped by.

Theo had been moving slowly towards his guardian. He was now only an arm’s length away.

‘Goodbye, Dr Saint,’ Theo said, his voice suddenly full of command. Now his guardian was trying to back away – but there was nowhere to go. Just the edge of the platform behind him.

‘Remember those old newspapers and books – all the tales of Lord Wickland that you never wanted anyone to see? Well, the words from one of those stories stand out in my mind right now – “Evil melts like wax at the hands of the Candle Man!”’

Dr Saint aimed a desperate blow at Theo, but the younger man was ready for him. Theo grabbed the bony wrist and held it in his glowing right hand. Sparks flew as the two power-fields collided.

There they stood, frozen in combat, as the energy they possessed struggled to assert only one as the master. Theo looked at his former guardian and remembered. He remembered every miserable hour of his lonely childhood. He recalled the wretched nights he had lain awake, terrified of a rare disease he’d never really had. He remembered every vile deed this man had performed in the name of Good Works.

Theo was ready. Beyond fear and anger now, he was sure of what he had to do. With a calm control he had never felt before in his life, he summoned the awesome power within him to come forth.

Dr Saint stared in terror as his bones were engulfed in a ghostly emerald radiance. Theo raised his left hand, and an explosion of
tripudon
energy blasted his enemy right through the balcony.

Dr Saint didn’t even have enough body parts left to scream with as the molten slurry of his body plunged towards the waters below.

T
he elements were not happy. Earth, air and water had been summoned in their eternal bargain to create life from the ashes of death. But the fire – the rare
tripudon
flame – had not been present. The vital spark had been missing. And in the depths of the network, in their vast graveyard, the army of warrior garghoul had been invited back from the darkness to the very brink of existence – then abandoned.

Now the dark waters seethed, sullen for revenge, seeking the slightest spark to call forth their rage. When Dr Saint’s disintegrating body hit the waters, the alchemical forces recoiled, ripped each other apart and erupted through the chamber with the force of an angry hell.

In a single moment, the urughoul were blasted into fragments. Minds of ancient malice – unimaginable to humankind – were splintered and evaporated.

The blast rocked the tower in the Well Chamber – one of its walls sheared away and melted into the fires beneath. Leaping flames engulfed the shattered stone. The platform tilted. Mr Nicely’s unconscious form began to slip towards the edge. Theo grabbed at the control panel with one hand and Mr Nicely with the other. There was a rending noise as the stone ruin began to fall in on itself.

Theo strained to keep hold of the butler’s sleeve. Through the stinging sweat in his eyes he looked up to see the last fragments of the lift shaft melt away in the air above him.
There goes the escape route,
he thought.
I’m glad Sam and Magnus made it out.

But rising up through the inferno came a dark figure on smoking wings. Tristus, the last living garghoul, had spotted two helpless figures trapped among the flames. Swiftly, he swooped down and lifted them in his arms as if they were rag dolls. The ancient creature’s heart soared with joy. Yes, one of the figures was the boy. Against all the odds, he had saved Theo.

Another explosion shook the blazing cauldron below. The Well Chamber shattered, its ancient roof cracked and stonework rained down. Tristus rose up through the shattered dome and into the darkness of the passages above.

Theo had swooned from the unbearable heat, but soon a cooler air brought him back to consciousness.

The Something on the Roof,
Theo thought,
it’s come back to save me.
Glancing about him, he recognised the main staircase that he and Chloe had crept down just a day before. A lifetime seemed to have passed since then. For a second, he dared to risk the hope:
does this mean I’m going to be OK?

Suddenly dark wings blotted out the shaft above them. Tristus was rocked by the impact of an unseen attacker. His wings were gripped by cruel talons.

Unable to defend himself in case he dropped his human cargo, the garghoul began to spiral down towards the great staircase. In moments they had collided with the iron steps. Theo and Mr Nicely were hurled across a landing. Theo looked up to see Tristus’s body plunging back into the fumes below, under the black wings of nightmarish birds. And down the staircase above descended the unmistakable form of the Dodo.

On Larkspur Hill, just behind the Condemned Cemetery, Sergeant Crane of the Metropolitan Police and his special-response unit almost leapt out of their skins as the still of the night was broken by an almighty rumble. It seemed to be coming from below their feet, like subterranean thunder.

‘What was that, sir – an earthquake?’ a young recruit in a padded flakjacket asked. There was no time to reply. Crane’s lanky frame suddenly stood out in sharp relief as beyond him, from the cemetery, great plumes of fiery smoke rose up from tombs and drain covers. Marble cherubs were rocked from their pillars. Crooked stones inscribed
Rest in Peace
tumbled to the ground.