“If only,” I say, “we had some way of lighting it.”
Then I hear the matchbox rattle I heard earlier, in the study, and I flick the flashlight back at Violet.
“I, um, seem to have put these in my coat pocket,” she says, grinning sheepishly. “Whoops!”
I don’t complain. After everything Sebastian Eels has done to Violet and her family, he owes her a few matches, at the very least.
There’s a scrape, a small eruption of light, and a nose-tingling whiff of sulphur dioxide as Vi strikes a match and places it against the wick. After a moment, the candle sputters to life, as if being woken from a long sleep. Violet picks up the candelabra, and the cellar of the grand town house eases into dim view around us.
“No point trying the door,” I say, glancing back up the steps. “It’s locked. We need to go in deeper and see what’s there.”
Together we enter the long, vaulted space, carrying our little circle of candlelight with us. Our shadows, flickering up the walls, follow on either side. Along each wall there are more shallow recesses, with yet more boxes and wine racks. When we reach the far brick wall, it is entirely devoid of features or doorways.
“So much for another way out,” says Violet, looking at me fearfully from inside her hair. Her eyes glint in the flickering flame.
“Wait! Flickering flame?” I say.
“What?”
“Flickering flame!” I repeat. “Violet, the flame is flickering. That must mean there’s a draft!”
And it’s true: the flame of the stubby candle is leaning and dancing in one direction, causing the wax to drip.
Together we turn toward the current of air, and then we can feel it, too—a clammy breeze against our faces. It’s coming from the last recess, where there are a few old packing crates and not a lot else, except . . .
“Look!” Violet exclaims.
Half hidden behind the crates is an old, pitted metal door, open just a crack. Violet sweeps the candle high, to illuminate something carved crudely in the stone lintel above the door.
“Eerie Script!” Violet gasps.
This is the secret writing of the fisherfolk of Eerie-on-Sea, known only from a few rare examples kept by Dr. Thalassi in the museum, and officially undeciphered by anyone living. Officially being the most important word in that sentence.
“Do you still remember how to read it?” I ask Violet, thinking back to how she secretly cracked this code during our adventure with Gargantis.
“N-E-T-H-E-R-W-A-Y-S,” she reads, spelling out a letter at a time as she squints up at the runes and deciphers them. “It says Netherways, Herbie. What’s that?”
“Nothing good,” I reply with a croak. “But, one way or another, it looks as if we’ve found our way out.”
On the other side of the door we find ourselves in a rough, rocky passageway that leads off to the right and to the left. Violet holds up the candle again, to test for breeze.
“This way,” she says, pointing to the right. In the gloom we can see a brick archway with another passage leading off it, and from somewhere beyond that comes the echoing babble of running water.
“What is this place?” Violet asks as we walk, looking up at the dripping ceiling. “This can’t be Eels’s cellar anymore. We must be under the town. But this doesn’t look like sewers.”
“There have always been stories about tunnels and caves beneath Eerie-on-Sea,” I reply. “Dark stories. Smugglers used them once upon a time, and others, too, before them. I once heard Dr. Thalassi refer to them as the Netherways. He made me promise to never come down here.”
“Why?” Violet asks, in the way only Violet can.
“Uh, because they are dangerous?” I reply. “They say no one has ever been able to map the Netherways. There are loads of tales of people getting lost down here, Violet, and I’d quite like to not be one of them!”
“OK, but if there is such a vast network of tunnels, Herbie, there must be lots of ways in and out. We just have to find one, that’s all.”
“Well, there is a way in beneath the castle,” I admit. “Dr. Thalassi showed me the door. He keeps it bolted, of course. He said he thought lots of the oldest buildings in Eerie-on-Sea probably have secret doors into the Netherways.”
“Wait, you mean we could get into the castle from here?” Violet stops, her eyes flashing eagerly at the thought. “Or, say, into the hotel?”
“The hotel?” I blink.
“We need somewhere safe to go,” Violet explains. “Imagine if there were one of these secret doors straight into your Lost-and-Foundery, Herbie! Then we could . . .”
“Can we not imagine that? Thanks!” I squeak. “You think I’d be able to sleep at night if there were door from my home into this horrible, dark, drippy place?”
“But . . .”
“No, Vi!” I say. “People keep their secret Netherways doors locked for a reason. We’ll have to find a loose drain cover or something and get out into the streets. And the sooner we find one the better!”
We reach the archway and look down the brick-lined passage beyond. There is definitely a draft from that direction. We head down it, but soon the tunnel branches off in three ways.
Violet turns to face one direction, and then another. The candle flickers all over the place.
“I’m struggling to stay orientated,” she says, clearly trying to picture the layout of the town above us. “Herbie, I don’t know which way we should go.”
“Well, I vote we don’t pick that way,” I say, pointing into one of the branching tunnels. It slopes steeply downward into the dark, and it seems to be where the sounds of falling water are coming from. “I vote we choose only passages that go up!”
“Let’s try this one, then,” Violet says decisively, waving the candelabra at one of the other two, “and hope we find a clue.”
Shielding the candle flame against the draft, Vi and I set off again. But in no time the passage divides once more, and this time both ways go down.
And the candle flickers so hard that it almost goes out.
Violet and I turn to each other. I think I can see my own fear reflected in her eyes.
What if we never find a way out?
“Don’t think it!” Violet says, choosing a direction at random. “We just have to keep going, Herbie. That’s all.”
And that’s when we reach a bridge.
Or rather, that’s when the walls of our tunnel fall away on either side, but the ground continues ahead, and we see that our path is now high above an underground river. There is no handrail, and the rush of water far below is terrifying.
“Look, Herbie!” Violet cries over the echoing clamor of the water. “On the other side of the bridge, the tunnel goes up again.”
Sure enough, the candlelight reaches far enough ahead to illuminate steps. We begin to edge across the narrow bridge, but we stop when we hear a voice.
“What did you say?” Violet turns and asks me, confused.
“I thought it was you!” I reply.
We hear the voice again.
It’s hard to pick out above the cacophony of the river, but there is definitely a human voice, saying:
“Where is it? Where can it be? Where? Where is it? Got to find it . . . but, where can it be . . . ?”
Over and over again.
We freeze mid-bridge and look forward and back, but there’s no one there. Then we peer gingerly over the edge and see another narrow path far below that runs beside the river. And on that path is a person, groping along in the light of a small lantern. It’s such a shock to see someone down here in this subterranean maze that I’m surprised we don’t fall over the side of the bridge in fright.
“Hello!” Violet calls shakily, once we’ve steadied ourselves. “Who . . . who’s there?”
The figure below stops and looks each way. Then—her clothes disheveled, her hair a tangle of red—she finally looks up.
“Jenny!”
The candelabra nearly falls from Violet’s hand
as she cries the name. Down below us, the face of the owner of the Eerie Book Dispensary is briefly visible in the flickering light from her lantern. Her face is streaked with blood and filth, and her desperate eyes stare at us. Then the darkness closes again, and the face is hidden.
“Jenny!”
The figure stumbles on, uninterested in us now, her muttering still audible within the sound of rushing water.
“Where is it? I must find it. I must not stop . . . not for anyone. It is here, somewhere, the deepest secret. But where can it be? I must find it for the Puppet Master . . .”
And then we lose the voice as the figure vanishes into the dark below, her lantern bobbing as she follows the underground river into the bowels of the earth.
“JENNY!”
Violet clutches my arm. “Herbie, we’ve got to get down there!”
“Yes.” I gulp. “But how?”
There is no obvious way, and we’ve already seen that the path ahead goes up, not down.
“There was that other passage,” Violet cries, edging past me and back the way we came. “The one that went downward. Come on!”
“Violet, wait!” I shout, running after her. But she doesn’t wait. And it’s all I can do to keep up as she runs, shielding the candle flame and taking one side passage after another, until we come to a wide-open place where a half dozen tunnels connect.
“We didn’t see this before.” Violet stumbles to a halt in the middle of the cavernous room. “Or did we?”
“We didn’t!” I squeak. “Vi, we really are lost now.”
“But Jenny . . . !” Violet says, turning frantically to look into each passageway. “We saw Jenny!”
“I know,” I reply. “Or . . . did we? I’m beginning to wonder if we just saw what we wanted to see, Vi. This place will drive us mad!”
“What was that?” Violet cries, spinning around at the sound of . . . something.
“Sounded like . . .” I whisper, drawing in closer to Violet and her candle. “Like . . . laughter?”
“I thought it was more like a sob,” Vi whispers back. “Like someone sobbing in despair.”
Then Violet shouts as loud as she can.
“JENNY!”
The candle flame flickers more than ever behind Violet’s protective hand, and I try to shelter it, too. Around us, in the cavernous space where the half dozen ways meet, our hands cast strange and eerie shapes on the cracked bricks and stone of the walls.
Then something flickers across our vision.
Another shadow.
But not one cast by my or Violet’s fingers.
It flits from one passage entrance to another, always at the edge of our sight, never there when we turn to look at it directly. And all the time comes the sound of that laughing sob.
“Do you see it?” Vi hisses, spinning one way then the other. “Herbie!”
Before I can answer, the shadow comes to a halt in full view on the cavern wall.
And we see him clearly, grinning his creepy puppet grin.
The shadow of a man with horns upon his head.
Slowly the specter reaches grasping shadow claws across the ground toward us.
Violet thrusts the candle at him, moving her shielding hand away to throw forward maximum light, risking the breeze in her desperation to dispel the ghastly apparition in front of us.
“What have you done with her?” she yells at the shadow being. “What have you done with Jenny?”
But the specter only grins more deeply as his shadow hand reaches our feet and passes through us. We turn in horror to see its hooked fingers closing around our own shadows, which are cowering on the wall behind . . .
About to be snatched by the Shadowghast!
Violet turns to me with a desperate, wide-eyed expression, as if—despite the awfulness of our situation—an idea has just struck her. Then she pulls the guttering candle flame toward her and, with one last look into my eyes, she blows it out.
And plunges everything into total and unending darkness.
W-w-w . . . ?” I stutter, my brain so boggled by terror that I’m amazed I can manage even that. “W-why?”
It’s so dark now that I couldn’t see the back of my beyond even if I waggled it in front of my nose. I can still hear, though.
Somewhere in the void, that babbling, chuckling noise reaches us again. Is it the echo of a sunless river? Or the wind as it whistles down a storm drain?
Or is it the noise a Shadowghast makes when it’s about to snatch your soul?
I scrabble in my pocket for what’s left of the light in my keychain flashlight.
“No!” Violet whispers, grabbing my arm as she senses what I’m doing. “No more light!”
“But we can’t see!”
“Exactly!” comes Violet’s voice, right in my ear. “Think, Herbie! If there’s no light, how can there be a shadow?”
And that, right there, is a good point.
“You mean it’s gone?” I gasp in relief. “The Shadowghast is gone?”
The babble-chuckle echoes around the cavern again, reverberating down the side passages, one by one.
“Maybe not gone,” Violet admits, coming closer than I’ve ever heard to making a squeak of her own. “But at least, in the dark, we make no shadows, Herbie. And if we make no shadows, the Shadowghast can’t snatch them.”
Is Violet right? Is it really as easy as that to thwart the Shadowghast?
I guess we’re about to find out.
“But if we can’t see,” I whisper back, “how can we escape?”
Violet doesn’t answer. Instead she takes my hand and leads me forward into the blackness. I can sense her sweeping the candelabra in the dark ahead, using it to probe the void for obstacles. Then CLANG! She hits the wall. Violet begins tapping it with the silver candle holder, groping her way toward one of the tunnels.
The whispery, babbling noise echoes around us once more. I don’t know if it’s my imagination, but I feel I can hear a note of irritation, even anger, in it. There’s a sudden icy gust of wind that blows grit right into my face.
I let go of Violet’s hand as I stop to rub my eyes.
“Herbie?” Violet calls in the dark. “Herbie, where are you?”
“I’m right here,” I reply.
“Yes, but where?” Violet’s voice sounds panicky, and—I can’t help noticing—slightly farther away than I was expecting. Her footsteps echo from all sides of the cavern, making it hard to determine direction. “Herbie, I can’t find you!”
“Don’t move!” I call back into the darkness. “I’ll come to you.”
And I walk a few echoing steps toward where I’m sure Violet must be, waving my arms like a zombie, but finding nothing but cold empty air. I run a few desperate steps in another direction, but still nothing!
“Herbie, why are you walking away?” comes Vi’s voice again, much fainter and farther than it should be. “Turn around! We’re getting separated!”
“Violet!” I cry. “You turn around! Come back!”
“Herbie?”
Violet’s voice sounds so distant and cavern-far now that it’s a shock to hear it.
“Herbie!”
“Vi!” I yell. “VIOLET!”
No answer.
And now I’m all alone.
In the dark.
But no, not all alone . . .
A cruel chuckle rolls around the cavern, this time with a triumphant edge. I thrust my hand into my pocket and pull out the tiny flashlight.
DO IT! comes a voice
Except, it’s not a voice, not exactly. It’s more an absence of voice that is speaking to me—as if the very silence of the dark roars a little quieter in my ears, to form these words.
THE LIGHT! TURN ON THE LIGHT!
My thumb is already on the flashlight’s button. It would take only a tiny bit of pressure to click it on, and then I would be able to see . . .
THE LIGHT!
The flashlight falls from my hand, and I hear it skitter off acr
oss the flagstones.
Would I have had the willpower not turn it on? Or have I just been saved by luck and wobbly hands? I don’t know the answer to that. All I know for sure is I’ll never find that dropped flashlight, not now, not in the absolute dark, even if I wanted to.
So, there’s nothing I can do but close my eyes, and hope.
Now, closing your eyes in the pitch-dark might sound like a bit of a bonkers thing to do. But it actually feels much better to be in complete blackness if you’ve chosen to see nothing. Really, it does. Next time you’re alone in the dark, and a bit freaked out, try it and see.
I scrunch my eyes tight, fold my arms, and clamp my mouth firmly shut. Time to put Violet’s it-can’t-get-your-shadow-if-there’s-no-light-to-cast-one theory to the test.
There’s an icy swirl of air around me that tugs my uniform and plucks at my cap. It almost feels as though the darkness in the cavern is testing me, tasting me even, like a dog sniffs a morsel before chomping it down.
AAAAAH!
A final icy wind roars into my face—the grit it carries stinging me angrily.
YOU, the silence booms, ARE DIFFERENT.
“Huh?” I find myself saying, surprised despite everything. “What?”
YOU . . . ARE DIFFERENT . . .
I open one eye. Not that I can see anything, but I can’t help it.
“How . . . how am I different?”
Despite the terror of the moment, I still have enough spare brain to be amazed that, basically, I’m having a conversation with some sort of ghost!
THE DEEPEST SECRET . . . roars the silence in answer, THE SECRET THAT MY MASTER SEEKS . . .
I say nothing.
YOU HAVE SEEN IT . . . the roaring silence continues, BEEN TOUCHED BY IT. . . . IT HAS . . . MARKED YOU. YOUR SHADOW . . . IS DIFFERENT.
“But . . .” I say, opening both eyes now and staring into the black. “I don’t understand. Who is your master? What is this deepest secret?”
I’m hit by a final, furious blast of wind that forces me back so hard that I trip and fall onto the rocky floor. It’s as if I’m being pushed away.
Shadowghast Page 12
