Tales From The Wyrd Museum 1: The Woven Path (16 page)

‘We see you, boy,’
came a bleak, chanting chorus.
‘We have watched you. We know where you are headed. We cannot permit you.’’

From the deep shadows they came. Eight misty figures with sunken eyes and ashen faces, wearing the clothes their bodies had perished in. No shadows were cast beneath them as they shambled from the dark recesses and as one they lifted their grasping hands to Neil.

Spluttering in dread and horror, the boy fell back into a clump of weeds and, with faltering steps, the murmuring phantoms crossed the stony ground that separated them.

‘Get away!’ he yelled. ‘Keep back!’ But his terrified voice was thin and without force, dissolving feebly into the freezing air.

‘You must not go.'
their empty, lifeless voices called as he dragged himself up and lunged away from them.
‘Come and join us.'

But Neil did not listen. He sprang over the ruins, not daring to look back.

Behind him, one of the wraiths let out a terrible shriek and to his dismay, Neil heard answering calls all around the bomb site.

They're everywhere!’ he cried.

From the consuming night that pressed and smothered the haunted wasteland, he saw more shapes drift towards him. Four indistinct forms were already melting from the shadows ahead and to the left he could hear many discordant wails growing louder with every instant.

Nervously, he glanced to his right, where the rolling devastation reared and dipped towards the chimney-topped outline of the shops that lined the high street and the boy wept with relief- as yet that way was deserted.

Jumping a low wall, he pelted over the rubble, towards the welcoming, empty darkness. If he could only escape those horrific spectres—if he could only reach the world of the living once more.

At once, the gathering shades sent up a frightful howl and, with an unearthly gale tearing at their ragged clothes and hair, they hastened after him.

Beyond a ridge of crumbling ruins, Neil could already see the solid, black shapes of the street buildings growing closer, drawing him on and inspiring him with hope. But close behind, the wraiths’ chilling, frenzied clamour was increasing and their hideous cries now filled his ears, killing all other sounds.

Recklessly, Neil launched himself up the uneven scree of the final mountain of wreckage, scrambling over tumbled masonry and blocks of ravaged stone. With his heart smashing against his ribs, he sped on, ploughing through the dirt, heedless of everything except his desperate plight.

Then it happened. With the top of the hill almost within his reach, Neil's foot slipped on a broken timber. Hurling clouds of dust out over the bomb site, the beam went crashing down the slope and, yelling for his life, Neil came slithering after.

At the base of the ridge, the phantoms were waiting and their lifeless eyes watched keenly as the boy toppled and fell, powerless to stop himself.

Into their ghastly midst Neil plunged and when his violent lurchings came to an abrupt halt at their shadowy feet, he lifted his aching head and saw the now silent crowd flock around him.

Their faces were awful to look upon. Expressions, as desolate and lonely as the wild terrain they haunted, plagued their tormented features.

A deadly cold, more biting and intense than the night's frost, flowed out from the grim-countenanced apparitions and the boy felt his crawling flesh turn to ice as they pressed ever closer.

With twitching fingers, they stooped over him.

‘Get off!’ Neil screamed.

‘You were warned,’’
one of them hissed,
‘why did you not listen?

‘No!’ he bawled, throwing his hands before his face.

The echoing cold began to burn into his bones and Neil thought that he was lost for ever.

‘All right! All right?
barked a dismal voice, pushing through the crushing throng.
‘Stand back, stand back—what the bloomin’ ‘’ell’s goin’ on here, then?’

Neil recognised the voice immediately and he stared wildly up at the phantoms that were already lumbering forlornly to one side.

Cutting a swathe through the misty figures, the boy saw the ghost of Arnold Porter stumble to a standstill as he gazed down at him in confusion.

‘I know you’
the warden's shade muttered, his fat face quivering with doubt and stupefaction as he battled to remember,
‘there was something above—it... it?

But the chaos of his mind was not to be stilled, for at that moment the phantoms around him gasped sorrowfully and pointed into the gloom behind.

‘She is coming?
they sobbed.
‘You were to guard her, why did you abandon the child? If she is harmed then we are all doomed to the dark, and oblivion shall take us. Without her spark, we are nothing.’’

Arnold's troubled spirit turned his face from the perplexing boy lying in the rubble and stared into the night.

‘Go back.'
the others chanted as a new figure came barging between them.
‘It is not safe, you must return.’

To Neil's astonishment, a young girl thrust her way into the centre of the ghostly circle and glared down at him.

Both children regarded one another suspiciously. The girl knew the boy at once as the one who had emerged from the fiery window and, though he had never clapped eyes on her before, he guessed her identity.

‘You—you're Edie Dorkins, aren't you?’

The girl made no reply but continued to glower at him, narrowing her almond eyes into the meanest slits.

‘I've heard about you,’ the boy rambled anxiously, ‘aren't you afraid of these things?’

An unpleasant smile flickered on the girl's grimy face and she shook her head with slow pride.

“What are they?’ Neil asked. What do they want?’

The smile vanished and was replaced by the familiar scowl.

‘Come now, Miss Edie,’
Arnold Porter began, looking around them in a fluster,
‘you know what we said. It ain't safe out here this night. Downright dangerous it is.’

Irritated and annoyed by his interruption, the girl turned on him and screeched shrilly.

‘I'm sorry, Miss,’
Arnold cried,
‘but there's summink not right.’

Edie stared up at the ridge Neil had fallen from, then glanced back at their frightened and alarmed faces.

‘It is out there,' 
the shimmering figure of an old man warned, pointing a trembling finger over the steep hill,
‘the fiend! It has claimed that corner as its very own. We dare not tread there. And it is growing—inch by inch its territory increases. That lad was headin’ straight for it. Oh, Miss Edie, can't you feel the evil? It's stronger now than it was before, you must go—before it smells you out and comes huntin’. We know what it feeds on, you must run.’’

Edie's eyes grew large with defiance and she bared her teeth like a possessive dog protecting a bone.

‘No, Miss,' 
Arnold called as she paced towards the mountain of debris.
‘There's nowt you can do! You can't control the thing, it's stronger than any of us ever were. You ain't got that kind of power, no one has?

Upon the bitter night air, from the other side of the steep ruins, the faintest ripple of a distant, hideous laugh was wafted across to them and the sound cut through Neil like a jagged knife.

“What was that?’ he cried. ‘It didn't sound human.’

‘That were it,’
Arnold whimpered,
‘hark at it, I doesn't like that one little bit. Oh my Lor’, pretty soon it'll know we're here.’’

A flash of understanding jolted into Edie's meandering thoughts and a cry of dismay issued from her mouth. Pulling her pixie hood down low over her forehead, she made a grab at Neil's hand and dragged him to his feet.

The boy stared around at the empty, imploring faces.

‘Go with her,’
they urged,
‘flee whilst you can.'

Frantically, Edie tugged at Neil's arm and he was forced to follow her, back the way he had come, back to where it was safe—away from the hungry darkness that lurked in the bomb site.

‘’Hurry,'
 Arnold's woeful voice called out to them.
‘Get out before it's too late.'

Swiftly Edie ran, like a hare darting over a field. It was difficult for Neil to try and keep up with her and a hundred questions were spinning in his head.

‘I don't understand,’ he panted, ‘what's going on?’

Capering over the ruins, the girl hurried to the far edge of the bomb site and only when she was standing within sight of the road did she stop. Pirouetting upon a fallen section of fence, she danced on tiptoe until Neil came puffing alongside her.

'That... that shape in there,’ he wheezed, not wishing to say the word ghost, ‘I saw him killed, he was a warden. He's dead, I saw him!’

Edie covered her mouth with her filthy hand and laughed into it.

‘What does it mean?’ Neil persisted. “Why is he... why are all of them... ?’

The girl lowered her hand and smugly pointed at herself.

‘You?’ Neil asked. ‘You mean, you're the reason?’

Edie nodded and pranced up and down the fence.

‘Can't you talk?’

Not appearing to have heard the question, or choosing to ignore it, she performed a cartwheel, then gazed back into the devastated acres of the bomb site.

Neil stared at her—the girl was certainly peculiar—the shadowy figures that had pursued him were less ethereal and peculiar than she was. Then he noticed the incendiary device hung about her neck.

‘Is that live?’ he gasped. ‘Edie, it could go off at any second. Take if off!’

Anxiously, the boy rushed forward to take it from her but she gave a fierce squeal and leaped away from him.

‘Don't go!’ he shouted. ‘I won't hurt you, I only wanted to remove that—it isn't a toy, Edie.’

Fearlessly, the girl lifted the bomb in both hands and nuzzled her cheek against it. Then, half closing her eyes, she stroked the tail fins and rocked from side to side—crooning to the lethal instrument as though it were a baby.

‘Everyone was right,’ Neil said, ‘You are mad.’

Edie opened one eye and gave an enchanted chuckle, as if in confirmation, then she skipped to the end of the fence. In two nimble bounds she jumped on to a collapsed lintel and up to a lofty wall where she twirled dreamily and looked down upon the boy below.

“Wait!’ Neil called. ‘Don't go. You can't go back in there. Think about what those things were saying. It's not safe.’

Laughing, she pointed in the opposite direction, then gambolled sprightly along the wall, disappearing behind a tall, plaster-dusted hedge.

Unnerved by his experience, Neil hastened back to the road. If the girl wanted to stay then he wasn't going to go back in there to fetch her—besides, he still had to get to the museum.

That place is my only chance of getting out of this madness,’ he told himself. ‘If I don't get back home pretty soon, I'll end up as cracked as she is. She's like a younger version of Miss Celandine Webster.’

Since he hadn't the slightest desire to attempt the short cut a second time, Neil was compelled to skirt around the bomb site and, hoping he didn't run into anyone else that night, he hurried on as fast as he could.

The high street was deserted when he reached it. Looking cautiously from right to left, he scurried across to continue the journey hidden beneath the deep shadow of the shuttered shops.

He hadn't gone far, when a faint whirring made him turn and, seeing a weak, hooded lamp sailing towards him, Neil ran to the nearest shop doorway and hoped he hadn't been spotted.

Pedalling leisurely, Michael Harmon was gliding down the street on his rickety delivery bicycle. A tin hat was jammed on to the adolescent's head and he was wearing a pair of dark overalls. Inside the large basket fixed to the handle bars, a stirrup pump and a bucket clattered and crashed together as the machine bumped over the road.

So far it had been a disappointing night for firewatching; Mickey hated these phoney raids that either took ages to arrive or didn't begin at all. If the German planes took any longer it would be too late and the embarrassing eleven o'clock curfew his mother had imposed on his duties would come into force.

Listening out for the drone of the Luftwaffe overhead, Mickey saw a movement caught in the dimmed beam of his bicycle lamp and was pretty certain that the retreating figure nipping into the doorway was the mysterious, amnesiac Chapman boy.

‘Hoy!’ the firewatcher yelled, stepping harder on the pedals, ‘Neil—that you? What you doin’ out here? I know it's you, so you can stop hidin’.’

With a groan, Neil stepped out from the shadows—the last person he wanted to see was the chattering baker's son.

‘See you tomorrow,’ he called back dismissively, hoping he would get the hint.

Mickey heaved on the pedals as Neil began to run and wished the bicycle wasn't so old. Clanking and jangling, the machine bounced along and Mickey had to let go of one handle bar to keep the pump and bucket from falling out of the basket.

As he did this, Neil disappeared into an alleyway and when the cyclist next looked up he was nowhere to be seen

‘Neil?’ he shouted, applying the brakes—and shining the lamp down the street. ‘Where did you... ?’

Nearby, his friend suddenly gave a frightened cry.

‘NO!’ Neil's voice shrieked. ‘Oh, God!’

In a rattling instant, Mickey had found the alleyway and he rapidly angled the lamp around.

There was Neil, standing stiffly in the narrow dead end. Slowly, with an odd, jerky movement, he shifted around to stare at Mickey—the colour draining from his face.

Puzzled, the baker's son hoisted the bicycle on to the pavement and glanced down at the bedraggled bundle that lay on the ground.

There was the bloody corpse of Doris Meacham. The eyes were still wide with horror and her open mouth was locked in a hideous, petrified scream.

Morbidly, Mickey pushed his machine closer for a better look, as Neil turned away in revulsion.

‘Wow!’ the firewatcher gleefully drawled. ‘What a corker!’

'Who was that wise g-guy anyway?’ Frank asked as he and Kath dawdled behind Jean and Angelo. ‘He sure had some nerve hollerin’ at you the way he did, why I ought've slugged him on the jaw. Pity Voo stopped me.’