Tales From The Wyrd Museum 1: The Woven Path (11 page)

At one end of the table this new dainty had pride of place. It had arrived three nights ago, tumbling from a ring of fire, just like the one the boy and his teddy bear had emerged from.

The girl knelt before this lovely addition to her collection and stroked it lovingly. The object was a small box of black wood, carved with mysterious symbols and surmounted by the image of a hideous demon with glittering, red eyes.

An adoring expression spread over her face, then her enchantment increased a thousandfold—the box began to move.

As if it were filled with angry wasps, the Casket of Belial twitched and jerked upon the table, almost as though the horror it contained could sense the violence and destruction happening in the outside world and was eager to break free to savour it to the full. Then the erratic movements subsided and it was still once more.

Elated, Edie fished into her jewel tin once more and brought out glittering brooches and twinkling bangles which she placed around the box in a gleaming circle, as tribute to the in-dwelling deity. Then, her handiwork done, she frowned and looked distractedly at the parlour door.

Taking a final look at her latest treasure, she hurried into the hall and saw that the kitchen was now crowded with shadowy figures.

In the deep gloom, over a dozen shapes were standing with downcast faces, shifting aimlessly from side to side and whispering to themselves in soft, mournful whispers.

At the sound of Edie's approach, the spectres lifted their heads and murmured faintly.

‘Edie has returned?
the rippling voices chanted,
‘the child is come back to us?

Slowly, the dark crowd raised their shadowy hands and reached out to her, beseechingly.

The girl chuckled as she gazed at each troubled face, by the power that was steadily growing within her she was holding and keeping them in the living world. These forlorn, earth-bound souls were now her family and she was both their captor and fierce guardian. Then an exultant cry sprang from her lips as she recognized a morose, bulky figure that was staring around uncertainly.

The shade of Arnold Porter looked blankly at his surroundings before uttering a pitiful sob.
‘What the bleedin’ ‘ell happened?’
he murmured.
‘Why am I here? I should be someplace else, why can't I leave? How did I get here?

Edie only laughed in reply and danced before the distressed spectre of the dead air-raid warden. With every raid her ethereal family grew. No longer would she be alone, no longer would the darkness be silent. They would remain with her for ever and in that, her scrambled thoughts found comfort.

Then her peculiar, disjointed mind jumped like a scratched record and a new thought gripped her.

With her giggling laughter rising into the night, she pushed through the congregating souls as if they were nothing more than clouds of vapour and hurried out into the bomb site.

Into a sky that was filled with winding threads of wood smoke, a bleary dawn was edging, gilding the ghostly shapes of the barrage balloons that floated way in the distance and climbing decorously up the church steeples which towered over the small terraces of the East End.

Barker's Row was one of the few streets that had as yet escaped the bombing. It was a quaint, almost unreal place whose inhabitants took great pride in the appearance of their homes. Doorsteps were swept every morning and, although crosses of gummed tape covered the windows, the panes gleamed like crystal.

In the boxroom of number twenty-three, Neil Chapman waited for the door to close behind him, then turned on the bear in his hands.

‘Now!’ he demanded. ‘You tell me exactly what is going on here!’

Ted glanced at the door and cocked an ear as he heard heavy footsteps descend into the hall.

The past few hours had flown by in a confusing whirl and the bear blinked in a daze as he tried to gather his usually sharp wits and sort them into order.

After fleeing from the corpse of Arnold Porter, he and Neil had been found by two of the dead warden's colleagues and taken to an ARP hut until the raid was over.

It was there, in the dim light of a naked, low-wattage bulb, surrounded by official posters and spare injury labels, that Ted had recognised one of the men and stifled a gasp of surprise at the sight of him—much to Neil's consternation.

When Wailing Winnie had sounded, that same man had brought the boy back to his home and it was here that Ted now found himself and he didn't like it, not one little bit.

‘Well?’ Neil snapped. ‘What's got into you? Why did you tell me to keep quiet and act dumb back at that hut? Now this Mr Stokes thinks I've been bombed out and hit my head in the process. What are we doing here? This is crazy—we ought to be out there looking for Josh! Where is he—where's my brother?’

But the bear wasn't listening to him. Ted's glass eyes were roving about the small bedroom, gazing mournfully at the collection of old toys ranged carefully upon the chest of drawers and the stack of film magazines piled below the window.

‘It weren't supposed to be like this,’ he murmured despondently, ‘it was meant to be easy an’ quick, that's all I agreed to. What are they playing at? Them daffy broads have got somethin’ cookin’ of their own—I mighta guessed they weren't doin’ this outta the kindness of their hearts!’

His dismal voice trailed off as he spotted a crumpled telegram on the floor and covered his face with his paws.

‘I dunno if I can take this a second time,’ he whimpered. ‘Why do this to me? Son of a- do they wanna torment me or what? If I'd known this was gonna be so tough...’

Puzzled by the bear's morose behaviour, Neil sat on the bed next to him. ‘Something's gone wrong, hasn't it?’ he said. ‘Back there in the hut, you saw something, didn't you? What happened? Is it to do with Josh?’

Ted stared at the boy keenly and in a grim voice told him: 'We're too early, kid. We popped outta that gateway ahead of schedule, seeing that Stokes guy was the first clue, then I saw the date on the paper the Warden was readin’. Yesterday was the twenty-sixth of February, that's no use to me nor no one—leastways, I hope it ain't.’

‘I don't understand,’ Neil said. Too early for what?’

Staring down at his stumpy feet, Ted wrinkled his nose and wondered how much he could reveal to the boy.

‘OK,’ he finally began. ‘If it's gonna keep you happy I'll say this much an’ no more. If you don't like it then it's just too bad—I got my orders, I'm sorry if this has been tough on you but I figure it'll get a whole lot worse before we're done. All I can say is that, for the moment, your brother is fine and safe.

‘I told ya time is a tricky gizmo to tinker with. Well, that hocus-pocus we went through was a shortcut to the past—don't ask me where it came from ‘cos I won't tell ya. All you need to know is that them babies ain't easy to rustle up—takes years of plannin’ to get the right dispensations and a whole mess of one vital ingredient, which is in mighty short supply where we come from. Anyhows, these time gadgets gotta be approached right—the longer you wait before jumpin’ in, the further back they go. Think of it like a drill, the more you drill the deeper the hole. That plain enough fer you?’

‘I haven't a clue what you're on about.’

The bear gave an irritated grunt. ‘Little Joshy went through first, yeah? Well, where he'll pop out is now bound to be somewhere in the future ‘cos you took so long debatin’ what to do. All that while the gateway was boring farther back, past the point where it dropped off your kid brother.’

‘It's very confusing.’

‘An’ highly specialised, they can't have just anyone punchin’ holes in the cloth of time, you know—you gotta restrict that kinda stuff.’

Neil chewed the inside of his cheek thoughtfully. ‘So all we have to do is wait until Josh turns up. When is that going to be?’

The bear sniffed and looked away. ‘He's due on the third of March,’ he answered.

‘But that's five days away!’ Neil protested. ‘What are we supposed to do until then? We can't stay here all that time!’

Ted shrugged. 'We don't have much option,’ he admitted. ‘Believe me, kid, I ain't lookin’ forward to it one iota but it looks like this is where we're supposed to be and I sure wish I'd been briefed a whole lot better on the whys and wherefores myself.

'The next few days ain't gonna be no picnic, fer you or me. This house has seen a whole lot of grief and it's gonna know a helluva lot more before the end, if'n we fail in what we have to do.

‘All you gotta remember is that, if you ever wanna see Joshy again, you better stick with me. I'm your only ticket outta this situation. I'm the only one who knows exactly when and where the gate'll appear to take you home.

‘Face facts, kid, you need me like Samson needs his crowning glory. So you better take good care of yours truly, ‘cos if anything happens to this cuddly critter, then you can whistle goodbye to your brother and you can bet your boots you won't never see your own time again. Well, not till you're sixty. Hey, that might not be such a bad idea, you could take one of them screwball dames to the movies—maybe all three if you take your vitamins.’

‘But I still don't know why you did it,’ Neil said. ‘I mean, why make Josh enter the gateway in the first place?’

‘I hadda get you in there somehow,’ Ted groaned apologetically. ‘You wouldn't help me any other way, you sure made that plain enough.’

‘But why?’ the boy insisted. 'What do you want me in the past for? What is it you want me to do?’

‘Just do your best,’ Ted murmured, ‘that's all we ask, you can't do more than that.’

‘Who's we?’

Ted ignored the question and jabbed a paw at the pillows. ‘Didn't that Stokes guy tell you to get some shuteye before?’ he asked. That ain't such a bad idea, kid. ‘Sides, you don't know what an honour it is for him to let you into this room.’

With his mind spinning from all he had witnessed in the few hours since he had emerged from the gateway, Neil lay back on the bed and in a matter of moments was snoring soundly.

Ted waited until he was certain the boy was really asleep. Then, quietly, he hopped from the bed, crept towards the door and slipped out of the room.

Jean Evans lifted her arms to the early sunshine and stretched thankfully. Yawning, the young woman shook her auburn hair and gazed about the garden which, before the war, had been one of the most beautiful in the district. But now, the flowerbeds were filled with the woody remains of last year's vegetables. Dead stalks of runner beans climbed the side wall of the outside toilet, behind which two chickens clucked in a homemade run, and most of the lawn had been given over to potatoes and turnips.

The only daughter of Peter Stokes, the warden, was a lovely creature, even dressed in the plain, blue siren suit, her beauty was not (diminished. Her eyes were as green as a cat's and sparkled in the sunlight, contrasting strongly with the red glints that danced and gleamed in her shoulder-length hair.

A whinging cry made her spin on her heel and she stepped back into the trench that her father had dug by the far wall and stooped through the low door of the Anderson shelter.

Wrapped in blankets, upon one of the bunks, was a small child and she picked him up in her arms to stop his tears.

There, there,’ she said, lovingly, ‘come on, Daniel, Mummy's here. Don't cry, angel. Did you think I'd gone and left you? Silly boy, I won't never leave you. Let's go out in the fresh air, shall we? See if Grandad's come back yet.’

Peter Stokes was stripped to his vest and braces and washing his face in the sink when his daughter entered the kitchen.

He was a tall, middle-aged man, whose most striking feature was his shining, bald head. In fact most of the locals joked that his ARP helmet had more hair on it. Set beneath a care-lined and bony forehead were a pair of steely blue eyes that were both piercing and gentle and situated on either side of a beaky nose which he had inherited from his mother. Beneath this, as if to compensate for the deficiencies of his scalp, Mr Stokes wore a grey moustache which was kept neatly trimmed at all times.

‘Mornin’, Dad,’ Jean said as she laid her son into a great black tank of a pram that dominated the small kitchen. ‘Heavy last night, weren't it? Much damage done?’

Before he replied, Peter wiped a towel over his bald head and screwed the corners into his ears.

‘A tidy bit,’ he answered, ‘five dead two streets away an’ I don't know what happened to Arnold Porter—didn't report back this morning.’

‘Fat Arnold prob'ly went home for his breakfast,’ Jean laughed and the sound of her fluting voice rang into the hallway and up the stairs to where Ted was standing with his head pushed between the rods of the bannisters.

A dreamy, yearning expression haunted the bear's face as he listened to the snatches of conversation which drifted up to him.

‘Nearly caught that Dorkins girl, too,’ Peter said, ‘only the perisher bit me.’

‘I’ll put some iodine on it for you, Dad.’

“No, it looks worse than it is. We got a guest stayin’ with us as well. A young lad—found him wanderin’ round last night. I reckon he was bombed out. Can't remember a thing, poor kid. Thought I'd try an’ find out who his folks are today. I. . . er, I've put him in Billy's room.’

‘You put him in there?’ came the girl's astonished voice. Well there's a turn-up.’

‘A shrine's no use to no one, is it? ‘Sides, the poor lad was all in and sufferin’ from shock.’

‘You're an honest-to-goodness saint, Dad, I reckon Bill'd be glad.’

Peering through the bannisters, Ted stretched his neck out a little further until he could glimpse the figure of the young woman in the kitchen, and his glass eyes seemed to blaze with a light all their own when his gaze fell upon her.

‘I better get off to the factory,’ she said, making for the hallway. ‘I don't want to be around here when Gran gets back and finds out she's got another mouth to feed.’

Peter's weary chuckle floated up from the kitchen and Ted swiftly withdrew his head from the bannisters as Jean strode into the hall and glanced upstairs. Scrambling over the landing with only seconds to spare, the bear shot nimbly into the box-room once more, just as the woman came climbing up to her own room.

Leaning against the bedroom door, Ted puffed and panted—moaning woefully. ‘Fifty years I been wishin’ fer this,’ he breathed in despair, ‘fifty years of waitin’ and hopin’ I'd see that face one more time; she's twice as beautiful than I ever remembered. This is more torture than a soul can take—after all the lonely years of prayin’, it sure is strange to learn that right here is the last place I wanna be.’

Staring across at Neil's sleeping form, the bear rubbed his woolly chin and his ears drooped sadly. This is a real mess I've dumped you in, kid,’ he whispered, guiltily, ‘but it's too late to turn back now. I just gotta pull this stunt off, I gotta!’

Later that morning, Neil was awoken by a pernicious dig in the back from the tips of two bony fingers. ‘Stir yourself, boy!’ barked a gruff female voice. ‘I haven't got all day to hang around while you dream. Get up, I'm warning you, I won't tell you again!’

Neil blinked the drowsiness from his eyes and stared up at the wizened creature hunched over the bed. At his side, Ted was also gazing at the old woman and a look of disgust spread over his face.

Irene Stokes was an elderly, bird-like woman, who squinted suspiciously through a pair of round, gold-rimmed spectacles. The lenses of her glasses were very thick and magnified her roving, distrustful eyes to a startling degree, whilst casting generous pools of light over her shrivelled features. Yet that was the only generous quality about her and to have those ocular-enhanced points fix accusingly on you was a disconcerting and unpleasant experience. ‘Old Mother Stokes’ or ‘Ma Stokes’ as she was unpopularly known, enjoyed spreading such discomfort.

Now, those exaggerated eyes were trained and focused spitefully upon Neil and the boy blinked under their baleful scrutiny as though they were harsh spotlights.

“Who are you?’ he asked.