“We need to go!” Violet cries, getting hastily dressed. I turn and stare into the corner so she can’t see how red I get. “We have to warn Doc, remember? Before he goes to the theater.”
We pull on our coats and head into Jenny’s kitchen.
“Are we going to use the Netherways to get to the museum?” I ask, dreading the answer.
“Better not,” Violet replies, handing me a hastily buttered slice of bread smeared with marmalade while chomping a slice of her own. “Ish too rishky.”
Well, I don’t argue with that, do I? Something tells me we should only ever risk the Netherways in an emergency. Violet hands me another slice, which I fold into a marmalade sandwich. I slip it under my Lost-and-Founder’s cap—beside Clermit—for later.
We leave the bookshop, Violet locking the door behind us, and run into the mist. We’d have to be pretty unlucky to bump into anyone who knows I’ve been grounded, and anyone else would just think I’m out and about on important Lost-and-Founder business.
When we reach the square in front of the castle, the mist is beginning to burn off in the sun. We duck into the great doorway of the old fortress. I keep a wary lookout while Violet pulls on the bell rope.
The door opens, and the doc leans out to inspect us from beneath his caterpillar eyebrows. He looks surprised. He also looks uncharacteristically untidy. Disheveled, in fact. Disheveled is a great word, but it’s not one I’d ever expect to use in the same sentence as Dr. Thalassi.
“Oh, Doctor,” says Violet. “I’m so glad you’re here. You haven’t been over to the theater yet, have you? We need to tell you something urgently.”
“I’m actually quite busy.” The doc frowns. “But if it’s urgent, you’d better come in.”
We enter the museum, passing the ancient fish-shaped bottle that the doc has displayed in pride of place in the foyer. He leads us through to the main hall, where the skeleton of a whale hangs over glass cabinets and display cases and all the peculiar exhibits of the Eerie Museum.
“Are you reorganizing?” Violet asks. “I’ve never seen so many cabinets open at once?”
Sure enough, there are signs everywhere that the doctor has gone through the displays, turning things over, opening boxes and rifling through drawers. He hasn’t even raised the window shutters, and the museum looks as though it wouldn’t be able to open again for weeks.
“I am auditing the entire collection,” the doc replies, “looking for . . . well, it would take too long to explain. But please, go through to my study.”
And he gestures toward the glass-fronted, book-lined office that overlooks the main hall of the museum.
“I wonder why he’s doing this now?” I whisper to Vi, looking around at the shambles in the museum. “Seems odd to be worrying about exhibits when actual people have gone missing.”
“Maybe he’s on the trail of some clue,” Violet whispers back.
The doc closes the door behind us, sits down in the large mahogany chair behind his desk, and runs his fingers through his crazy hair.
“Now,” he says, “what’s so urgent? Have you managed to find Jenny? Or Mrs. Fossil? Because I really must get back to work.”
“We haven’t, no,” Vi replies, “but we think we know what might have happened to them. Actually, we were really worried it might have happened to you, too.”
“To me?” replies the doc, raising one eyebrow in surprise.
“Yes!” Violet blurts out. “And all because of that magic lantern of Caliastra’s. This is going to be hard for you to believe, Doc, but we have something really important to tell you about it.”
“About the Shadowghast lantern?” The doc raises his other eyebrow. “What have you found out?”
“Well, for a start, whatever you do, don’t go near it!” Violet says. “The story of the Shadowghast is true! There really is a bad spirit haunting the lantern. And we saw it take Mrs. Fossil’s shadow, right before our eyes. Oh, Doc, I know this is going to sound crazy, but please believe me when I say that the Shadowghast is real, and if the Ghastly Night show goes ahead, then every last man, woman, and child in Eerie-on-Sea could be captured by the Puppet Master!”
All this comes out in a bit of a rush, and Violet is left nervously clutching the desk, clearly hoping not to be laughed at. Dr. Thalassi is a gentleman of science, after all, and not given to belief in goblins and sprites. But, amazingly, the gentleman of science merely nods and strokes his chin, as if considering the problem carefully.
“If what you say is true,” he asks, “why would the Puppet Master use the Shadowghast to snatch the shadows of so many people?”
“Well . . .” Violet blinks, surprised to be taken seriously. “We think . . . I think that the Puppet Master is sending people underground—people like Jenny, and probably Mrs. Fossil, too—sending them underground so they can be put to work searching for . . . something. Something in the Netherways beneath Eerie-on-Sea.”
“Oh?” The doc narrows his eyes. “What sort of something?”
“We . . . we don’t really know,” Violet begins, but I speak over her.
“The deepest secret,” I say. “The deepest secret of Eerie-on-Sea.”
Dr. Thalassi glances at me for a moment, and then back at Violet. “And who, according to your ‘theory,’ is looking for this deepest secret? Who is the Puppet Master?”
“Caliastra, of course!” Violet blurts out, at exactly the same time that I say, “Mr. Mummery!”
The doc gives a nod, an inscrutable expression on his face.
“What?” Violet turns to me. “You think Mr. Mummery is the Puppet Master?”
“Well”—I take a deep breath—“it was Mr. Mummery we found breaking into Sebastian Eels’s house and taking things from the secret chamber. And it was Mummery who reported me to Mollusc. There’s something about Mr. Mummery that I’ve never trusted, so, um, yes, I reckon he’s the one who’s behind it all.”
“But that doesn’t make sense, Herbie!” Violet slaps the desk in frustration. “It’s Caliastra who runs the whole show, and . . .”
“Stop!” commands Dr. Thalassi, holding up his hand. “I’ve heard enough. Violet, you are right, there is more to the legend of the Shadowghast than people realize.”
“I am?” Violet looks stunned to be hearing this from the doc, of all people. “There is?”
“Indeed,” the doc replies. “And I believe it’s time for you to become part of it. It’s time, Violet Parma, that you knew the whole truth about Ghastly Night.”
“Oh!” is all that Violet can say then.
“If you’d like to come this way,” the doc continues, straightening his robe and getting to his feet, “I will start by showing you something that I believe will interest you both.”
And the doctor strides back out into the exhibition hall, stepping over boxes and papers, making us jog to keep up.
“You remember from the story of Ghastly Night how old Standing Bigley was the mayor of Eerie-on-Sea?” the doc calls over his shoulder.
Reaching the far wall, he unwinds a rope from a hook beside a shuttered window and lowers a cage from the ceiling. This, I know from visiting the museum before, is called a gibbet—a cage the size and shape of a person that criminals were once hung up in as a lesson to others. There are several in the museum, from the dark days of Eerie’s past. Some of them even have spikes inside.
“Well, this is an actual gibbet from Bigley’s time,” the doc explains.
“It’s nasty,” says Violet, clearly confused. “But what’s this got to do with anything?”
“Stop asking questions, Violet, and let me show you!” the doc snaps as he opens the side of the gibbet cage with a screech of centuries-old metal. He points to the floor of it.
“There!” he declares. “What do you think of that?”
I peer down to where he’s pointing. I don’t think much of it, frankly, because I can’t see much at all. But then Violet gasps.
She jumps away from us, tugs the cord that
raises the blinds on the nearest window, and lets the sunlight stream into the hall.
And over the doc.
And that’s when we see it.
Dr. Thalassi has no shadow!
Run, Herbie!” Violet yells, darting away from the doc’s arm as he lunges for her.
My brain—bamboozled by the strange sight of a man with no shadow—is also flummoxed by Violet’s desperate call, dunderfied by the doc’s sudden aggression, and generally discombobulated by the whole bizarre moment. Before I can get a clear signal to any useful part of my body, Dr. Thalassi has grabbed me by the scruff, stuffed me inside the gibbet, and slammed the door.
“Herbie!”
Violet, seeing me captured, ducks beneath the doctor’s sweeping arms and kicks him in the shins.
“Argh!” cries the gentleman of science, hoping on one leg.
“Herbie, get out!”
Well, that’s what I’m trying to do, isn’t it? I push the door of the cage, and it creaks open a bit. But then the doc throws his whole weight against it, slamming it shut again and tearing my uniform.
There is a small iron loop on each side of the gibbet door where some kind of padlock would once have been fixed. Dr. Thalassi doesn’t have a padlock, so instead—using nothing but brute force—he twists the loops with his fingers, bending them together and fastening the cage door shut.
“Violet!” I call out, cursing myself and my flumboozerfied brain for not acting sooner. “Just get away! Go!”
But Violet doesn’t just get away or go. Instead, she runs here and there, dodging the doctor’s increasingly aggressive attempts to catch her. She’s clearly trying to get around to the cage, but what she thinks she can do to help, I don’t know.
Then the doc changes everything anyway by striding back to the gibbet, grabbing the rope it dangles from, and hoisting me high into the air. Violet rushes at him, but Dr. Thalassi is a big man, and he just pushes her over with his foot. While she’s clambering back to her feet, he ties the rope, and now I’m dangling as helpless as any eighteenth-century pirate, swinging in the gibbet.
“I don’t want to hurt you, Violet,” Dr. Thalassi says, turning to my friend. “If you knew what I know, you’d understand. And I want you to understand. You could be so useful to us. Come, let’s go to see Caliastra together. She’ll be able to explain.”
“Explain?” Violet shouts, her eyes alight inside her wild hair. “Or use the lantern on me and let the Shadowghast snatch my shadow, too?”
“It’s not what you think, Violet.” The doc holds one solicitous hand out to her. “Come with me. You won’t be hurt, I promise.”
“Let Herbie go!” Violet cries, darting around and then leaping onto the doc’s back. She wraps her arms around his throat.
But Dr. Thalassi simply throws her over his shoulder.
Violet crashes into an open display cabinet—gasping in pain and destroying a dinosaur skeleton. Violet is barely able to clamber out of the prehistoric ruin and run before the doc lunges once more. She must realize that she can’t beat the bigger, stronger man, because she sprints away now, down the central aisle of exhibits, toward the museum exit.
“I’ll get help, Herbie!” she calls, turning one last time. “I’ll get . . . I’ll get someone. I promise!”
And then she runs . . .
Straight into the stout form of Mr. Mummery, who has just entered the museum.
Mr. Mummery grabs Violet, but she slips out of her coat and escapes him. Dodging the doc one last time, she leaps desperately for the door.
But Caliastra is standing there. In her shadow-black coat of shimmering patterns, and with her raven hair and blazing eyes, the magician looks terrifying. She raises her glass cane and jabs the end of it into Violet’s chest with a cry of “Prestocadabra!”
Violet comes to a sudden halt, crying out, her arms flying wide.
“Well, well!” cries Caliastra. “I have caught a butterfly.”
And that’s when Dr. Thalassi and Mr. Mummery grab an arm each, and Violet is captured, too.
“Herbie, Herbie, Herbie . . .”
Caliastra walks toward me, giving her cane a few lazy swishes.
“If only you had stayed down in your cellar, you could have been spared all this. How did you get out, by the way?”
I say nothing. I can’t say anything.
“Never mind,” Caliastra replies. “In just a few hours the whole town will be under my control, and none of this will matter anymore.”
“I defended you,” I manage to blurt out. “When Violet said you were a villain, I thought you . . . I thought we . . .”
“But, Herbie, you thought right,” Caliastra says, hitting me with her dazzling smile. “You were right to think all those things you can’t quite say about me. I could be all of that to you, if you let me.” Then her smile goes hard and sour. “But Violet did have to spoil it, didn’t she? Whispering doubts in your ears and poisoning you with her jealousy.”
“I was the one who thought right,” Violet says, struggling uselessly. “You are a villain. You’ve been lying to Herbie from the start.”
Caliastra turns and raises her cane at Violet. If she were a real magician, I’d fear that lightning was about to erupt from the end. But instead, Caliastra blasts Violet with words.
“Everything I have told Herbie is the truth,” she declares. “Or rather, a truth that deep down he wanted to hear. You are the one who has kept him from embracing that truth, Violet Parma. And now look what you’ve made me do? Lock your best friend in a cage!”
“Me?” Violet is outraged. “How dare you blame me!”
Caliastra turns toward the entrance of the museum hall.
“Bring the lantern!” she commands.
There is movement at the door and Rictus and Tristo appear, dressed all in black as ever, with their ghastly painted faces. They are carrying the dragon-carved Shadowghast lantern between them.
“Set it up over here,” Caliastra instructs. “Thalassi, clear some of this clutter away,” she adds, waving her cane at the exhibits and display stands scattered on the floor. “I don’t suppose you have found anything useful, have you?”
“No, Caliastra,” the doc replies. “There is no map of the Netherways in the museum—just as Jenny didn’t find one in the book dispensary, or Mrs. Fossil in her shop. Do you really believe such a map exists?”
“Sebastian Eels did,” Caliastra snaps in reply. “Though, even he never found it.”
“We still haven’t searched the Lost-and-Foundery,” Mr. Mummery says. “According to his notes, Eels always wondered if the map could be there. Maybe we can squeeze some answers out of that pesky Lemon boy.”
And he throws a look of hatred up at me.
“Perhaps.” Caliastra glances up at me, too, tapping her cane on her teeth. “But in a few hours I will have an army of puppets at my command, and I can search the Netherways by sheer force of numbers. The deepest secret of Eerie-on-Sea will be found, one way or another.”
“Have the others returned, then?” Mr. Mummery asks.
Dr. Thalassi nods and hands his half of Violet to Mummery, who has to struggle to hold her on his own. The doc crosses to a closet and opens it. Two more people emerge into the crowded museum hall, shuffling like zombies, and my eyes bug out of my head when I see who they are.
“Jenny!” gasps Violet.
“Mrs. Fossil!” I cry out.
Sure enough, the owner of the Eerie Book Dispensary and the town’s one and only professional beachcomber step out into the light.
They look terrible. Jenny, in particular, looks as if she has been crawling on her hands and knees in the dark—her red hair bird-nesting around her face, which is streaked with blood and grime. Mrs. Fossil, who looks pretty scruffy at the best of times, hasn’t a single hat on her head, which isn’t like her at all, and is wearing only one rubber boot.
Of course, in the sunlight of morning, we see that neither of them has a shadow.
“Jenny, it’s
me!” Violet struggles violently. “Jenny! Mrs. Fossil!”
But neither Jenny nor Mrs. Fossil respond.
“What have you done to them?” Violet demands of Caliastra.
“It isn’t easy,” the magician replies, as if resenting having to admit to a weakness, “controlling so many minds at once. And these two puppets will soon be joined by hundreds more. None of them will need much intelligence to search a load of tunnels. I’ve shut most of their brains down.”
“Jenny!” Violet cries again, this time with a sob. “Jenny, wake up!”
But Jenny Hanniver just stares blankly at the floor and says nothing.
“We’ll find the deepest secret,” gasps Mr. Mummery as he fights to keep Violet still. His homburg hat has fallen to the ground with the struggle. “We’ll succeed where even the great Sebastian Eels failed. And there’s nothing you can do about it, girl.”
“Not if I stop you first, you won’t!” Violet shouts, almost breaking Mummery’s grip.
“Oh, but, Violet, you aren’t going to stop us.” Caliastra sounds amused. “You are going to join us. Just as soon as I light my little magic lantern.”
Let me go!” Violet yells, and the doc hurries to help Mr. Mummery pin her down. Even Tristo—still acting the clown as he capers over and replaces Mummery’s hat on his head—is needed to help. Rictus grins his terrible grin as he adjusts the angle on the lantern so that its dragon head points straight at Violet like a cannon.
“Don’t be distressed by what you are about to see, Herbie.” Caliastra smiles up at me comfortingly while the lantern is fired up and perfumed smoke begins to curl around the exhibition hall. “It’s quite painless. And I will allow Violet to keep her intelligence. She will be more useful that way.”
“Please,” I beg, rattling the cage. “Please don’t do this . . .”
“Sadly, you’ve left me with no choice,” Caliastra replies, walking over to Violet and sweeping the hair away from her defiant eyes. “Violet has shown initiative and flare. She reminds me a lot of myself when I was a girl. She will make an excellent assistant. I am so very disappointed in you, Herbie. But you will have your uses, too, I expect, when all this is over. In the bag-carrying department, perhaps.”
Shadowghast Page 16
