Shadowghast

by Thomas Taylor

  Now lit, the magic lantern is hissing and popping as it generates ever greater clouds of smoke. Streams of light are already finding their way around the silver orb in the dragon’s mouth as Dr. Thalassi and Mr. Mummery hold Violet up in front of it, at firing-squad range.

  “No!” I punch the cage. “Leave her alone! Do it to me instead! I’ll be good. I promise!”

  “I can’t do it to you,” Caliastra replies, almost as if she’s talking to herself. “That’s the point.”

  And she heads over to the lantern.

  “Herbie!” Violet calls up to me, giving up her struggle and standing tall. “Just remember, whatever I do or say after this, it won’t be me. OK? Remember it won’t be me!”

  I rattle the cage more desperately than ever and brace my legs against the door. I press with all the strength a desperate Lost-and-Founder can leverage in such a small space, and the twisted metal loops holding the door shut give a little.

  But it’s not enough.

  And I sag back into the gibbet cage, defeated.

  Smoke billows and frames the horrifying scene below.

  “Step right up!” cries Mr. Mummery, in mockery of the show he and the others have been rehearsing for. “Ladies and gentlemen, prepare to be amazed!”

  And Rictus plucks the silver orb from the dragon’s mouth, letting the strange and magical light of the Shadowghast lantern pour onto Violet.

  The first thing I notice is that not only does the doc cast no shadow, neither does Mr. Mummery. Tristo, cavorting beside them, is also without shade. But I shouldn’t be surprised. Caliastra must have commanded the Shadowghast to make puppets of them all. Violet’s shadow alone streaks out across the floor, unprotected, waiting to be the next victim.

  The light from the lantern illuminates the swirling clouds, and dark forms begin to appear. Shadows creep from the lantern and begin to move around. These must be the shadows of everyone captured already. There are so many! How many more will there be after the show tonight? How can anything stop the magician now?

  Then I gasp.

  I see someone I recognize!

  A familiar shadow staggers from cloud to cloud, her arms held out as if looking for a way to escape. It’s the shadow of Jenny Hanniver!

  “Jenny!” I call. “Jenny! It’s me! Herbie.”

  The shadow of Jenny Hanniver startles, as if hearing my voice, but doesn’t know where it’s coming from. I see her shadow mouth opening and closing as if she is shouting in reply, but I hear nothing. Then I see another shadow, this time of a person wearing at least three hats tied on with a piece of string.

  “Mrs. Fossil!”

  And my mind is boggled all over again at the sight of my friends’ shadows completely detached from the bodies that usually cast them. Other shadows begin to gather around them, some in costumes that belong to the past, and the horror I feel doubles as I realize that these must be the shadows of people whose bodies have long since died.

  “Mayor Bigley!” I cry as I spot the desperate shadow of the man who brought all this misery down on the town in the first place, all those years ago.

  One by one, the lost souls begin to stumble out of the clouds, as if drawn to my voice.

  Then comes a chuckling sound—a sound that may or may not be caused by the lantern’s fire. It echoes around the hall as another shadow appears.

  The shadow of a grinning man with horns upon his head.

  The Shadowghast!

  He swoops here and there, snatching the fleeing shadows, dancing with them in mock delight, taunting them, twisting their shapes into cruel and disturbing forms, before engulfing them, absorbing them into himself. With each shadow he devours, he grows darker, till he almost appears solid, stalking terrifyingly through the smoke as the only shadow that remains.

  Then the Shadowghast stretches his crooked shadow fingers across the floor to take the shadow of Violet Parma.

  “Remember, Herbie!” cries my friend. “Remember!”

  The Shadowghast’s arm darts forward and snatches her shadow.

  “Herbie!”

  The Shadowghast, grinning in triumph, whirls Violet’s shadow in a crazy waltz to music only he can hear. Then, after twirling her in the air one last time, he leaps toward the lantern and back through the lens, dragging Violet’s silently screaming shadow behind him.

  Rictus swiftly replaces the silver orb, and darkness returns.

  Violet goes limp in the arms of her captors.

  “Ladies and gentlemen!” calls Mr. Mummery into the silence that follows. “The show is over!”

  Release her!” Caliastra commands.

  The two men holding Violet step away, letting her slump to the floor. She crouches there a moment before getting slowly to her feet.

  “So, Violet”—Caliastra places a hand on my friend’s shoulder—“how are you feeling? It’s not too bad, now, is it?”

  Violet sways a little and then turns to look up at the magician, and for a moment I almost dare to hope that this dark magic of the Shadowghast lantern hasn’t worked. But then Violet speaks.

  “I feel . . . fine. I . . . understand now. These thoughts . . . in my head . . . I see I have been wrong. I’m sorry, Cali. May I . . . may I call you Cali?”

  Caliastra beams her brightest smile.

  “You may. You and I are going to be close, Violet. Very close indeed. I believe you are just the assistant I require. I should have seen it from the start.”

  “Vi!” I call, rattling my cage. “Vi, it’s me! Don’t listen to her.”

  Violet looks at me from inside her hair, which seems wilder than ever. But instead of the light of friendship I am used to seeing there, I receive only a blast of stern disapproval, as if Violet has just noticed something annoying that needs to be dealt with. And that something annoying is me.

  “Tell me, Violet,” says Caliastra, stooping so that her head is level with Vi’s, and indicating me with her cane. “You know Herbie better than anyone. Do you think he can escape from that cage? Or should we take more drastic measures to stop him from interfering with our plans?”

  “Herbert Lemon is clever and sneaky,” Violet replies, still looking at me as if I’m something on the bottom of her shoe. “He will try to break out, Cali, and he might succeed. He has a clockwork device under his cap that he will use to help him.”

  I gasp. It’s only now—as she betrays Clermit—that I realize Violet is completely lost to me.

  “Thank you,” Caliastra says. “I cannot allow Herbie to keep any such clockwork device. Rictus! Tristo! See to it!”

  The two mime artists motion to each other with exaggerated “After you!” gestures of politeness, followed by even more theatrical “No, after you!” mimes. Then Tristo, who is closest to me, finally accepts the task with modest bows of thanks to his partner, who blows kisses back to him, and I think, This is ridiculous! What villain in their right mind uses a pair of clowns as henchmen? And it’s then—as I’m rolling my eyes and shaking my head and no longer paying attention—that Tristo strikes.

  He cartwheels across the floor and propels himself straight up to grab the underside of the gibbet cage. The gibbet swings with an ominous creak. I stamp at the man’s fingers where they are clutching the bars below my feet, but they are already gone. Tristo scampers up the side of the cage to stare in at me with his awful face of painted sadness. He rubs away an imaginary boo-hoo tear with one hand.

  Then I notice that between his teeth he grips an evil-looking knife.

  Before I can react, Tristo darts the knife blade toward my head and severs the elastic strap on my Lost-and-Founder’s cap, which immediately pings off. Clermit tumbles out, and I clutch for him desperately, but he has already been snatched by the mime artist. A second later, Tristo has dropped to the floor and is cartwheeling back toward Caliastra.

  Tristo stops and kneels before her, bowing his head low and presenting Clermit to the magician as a royal servant presents a crown to his queen. Rictus, beside the lantern on the ot
her side of the hall, gives an adoring round of noiseless applause to his silent partner.

  “Ah, so this is it,” says Caliastra, taking Clermit into her hand and peering at him with interest. “I have heard of this device. It was part of Sebastian Eels’s secret collection of Eerie artifacts, but it was stolen.”

  She throws an arched-eyebrow look up to me.

  “I didn’t steal him,” I shout down. “Clermit is my friend. I promised to find out where he came from, and in return he helps me. That’s all.”

  Caliastra laughs.

  “Your friend?” she replies, waving the shell in the air. “This is just a collection of brass cogs in an old shell, Herbie. Merely one of the curiosities that helped Eels realize that all the eeriest things in this peculiar town are connected—connected by the deepest secret of Eerie-on-Sea. Truly, Sebastian Eels was a genius.”

  “A brilliant man,” says Mr. Mummery, nodding in agreement.

  “The greatest scholar this town has ever known,” adds Dr. Thalassi. “Sebastian Eels is sorely missed by everyone.”

  “If only he had lived to see this day,” Violet says sadly. “I . . . I really feel he was like a father to me.”

  And all I can do is goggle at this outburst of admiration for that villain Eels. And from Violet, too!

  But I don’t goggle so much that I fail to spot Clermit slowly reaching his brass pincer arm from his shell.

  Go on, Clermit! I scream silently in my head, at the top of my mind’s voice. Give her a snip!

  But before the clockwork hermit crab can get a strike in, Caliastra sees what’s happening. With a lightning motion, she tosses Clermit into the air, up, up toward the high medieval ceiling of the museum hall.

  As he reaches the top of his ascent, Clermit hangs in space for a moment, his legs extended, ready for landing. But when he falls back down, Caliastra is ready. She swings her cane—catching its tip into Clermit’s shell—and forces him down onto the hard floor with tremendous force.

  I hear the sickening sound of a shell cracking open.

  “NO . . . !” I yell, grabbing the cage.

  The clockwork hermit crab scrabbles around on the floor, his clockwork clearly damaged, his shell split in two. With one brass leg he starts clawing himself across the floor toward me, dragging along the two halves of his shell. But Caliastra strolls around in front of him.

  “Just a toy,” she sneers. “And a broken one at that. No value to anyone now.”

  She stamps down, hard, with the heel of her shoe.

  There’s a tinkle of shattering shell, and a rattle of brass parts, and Clermit goes still.

  “You’re a monster!” I call down, the words catching in my throat. “I . . . I hate you!”

  Caliastra looks up at me and smiles her brilliant smile.

  “No, you don’t, Herbie,” she says. “My poor, dear boy, I can see in your eyes what I really mean to you, even now. And I am sorry, I truly am, that it has to be this way. But you’ll come around to my way of thinking in the end.”

  “Shall I put the pieces in the trash, Cali?” Violet asks, pointing at the ruins of the clockwork hermit shell.

  “No,” Caliastra replies. “This whole sorry episode has been a huge waste of time. We must get to the theater and prepare. The townsfolk are expecting a spectacular show tonight, and I’m going to make sure they get it.” She places a hand on Violet’s shoulder again, steering her away. “And you, my new assistant, are going to be right at the heart of it.”

  Once the magician, and her gang—now grown even bigger with the addition of Dr. Thalassi and . . . I can hardly bear to think it . . . Violet—have gone, there is nothing but silence in the hall. Except for the distant shriek of gulls over the town and the creak of rope from my gibbet.

  I slump to the floor of the cage, which is just large enough to let me sit, provided I don’t mind having my own knees right under my nose. I bury my face in my arms and sob at everything I’ve lost and how wrong I’ve been.

  Remember, Herbie!

  Violet’s voice calls from my memory.

  I look up.

  Even when she’s not here anymore, Violet’s still right. I must remember her as she was and not listen to the shadowless Violet, who has just joyfully become the magician’s assistant and part of a plan to turn everyone in Eerie-on-Sea into shadowless puppets. I have to hope that the Violet I know is still in there somewhere, despite the control Caliastra exerts over her through the dark power of the Shadowghast.

  As I think about this, a question floats to the surface of my sea of troubles.

  “How is Caliastra immune to the Shadowghast?” I say aloud. “Why doesn’t it turn around and snatch her shadow, too?”

  The wind whistling down the chimney in the medieval hall is my only answer.

  “She must have something,” I reply to myself, “or know something that keeps the ghast at bay. But what?”

  Remember! Violet commands from a corner of my mind.

  He who controls the light commands the dark.

  Isn’t that what it said on the scrap of paper we took from Eels’s notebook? I rack my brain to try to recall when I’ve been present at the lighting of the lantern what it is that Caliastra does, but my mind is a mess.

  There must be something that ensures that Caliastra keeps control of the Shadowghast, though. And if I can find out what that something is, then maybe—maybe—I can stop her.

  As maybes go, though, this is one of the less impressive ones. Any plan that includes a maybe like this one is probably not a plan anyone should rely on. Besides, I’m locked in a cage, and there’s no maybe about that!

  Tinkle.

  I hear a small metallic sound and peer around the deserted museum. The great skeleton of the whale that hangs above the exhibition hall peers back at me unhelpfully. Then I hear it again.

  Tink-tinkle.

  I lean forward and force myself to stare down at the horrifying wreck of Clermit below me on the stone floor.

  He’s moving!

  Sure enough, despite the shattered shell and the scattering of cogs, the main mechanism inside the clockwork hermit crab is still capable of some movement. I can see a steady beat, as of a clock’s drive wheel and spring, and the glint of one metallic arm weakly extending into the sunlight.

  “Clermit!” I cry. “You’re alive!”

  Well, I add, but only to myself, as alive as something made of metal can ever be. And to look at him, maybe not even that for much longer.

  “I’m so sorry, boy!” I call down. “I don’t know if I can fix you.”

  The little scissor pincer rises up weakly and snips a tiny snip.

  “But,” I add, angrily wiping a tear from my cheek, “if I can get out of here, I’ll do everything I can to try.”

  Snip.

  The scissor pincer waves at me as if calling me over. But I can’t go anywhere. What can he mean? I set my mind racing for something I can do, and my eye falls on the rip in my uniform.

  I gasp in sudden realization. There’s a frayed end of thread hanging off. I tug it and it gets longer. As I keep tugging at the thread, it grows in loops in my lap, even as my uniform jacket gets shorter. Soon I have more than enough thread to reach the floor. I pluck off one of my brass buttons—it was hanging loose anyway—and tie it to the end of the thread to make a weight.

  “Clermit!” I call down. “Grab hold of this!”

  And I lower the thread down toward the ground. Soon I hear the ting of the button striking the stone floor. It lands a little way from Clermit, so I pull it off the floor again and start to swing it. When the button swings far enough to reach Clermit, I let the thread slip through my fingers, and I cheer as I see him wrap his pincer arm around the button and grab it.

  Carefully, I pull my shattered mechanical friend up to the cage. I’m torn between being appalled by the state he’s in and amazed by the beauty of his wondrous clockwork mechanism laid bare and sparkling in the sun. He is truly a work of art, surely beyond anything
a human being could make. And yet, here he is!

  “Come on, boy.” I lift him gently into my cap, beside the marmalade sandwich that is—miraculously—still there. “I’ve got you.”

  Clermit’s clockwork heart whirs and spins and dazzles me.

  “Maybe,” I say, wincing as I use that word again, “maybe, when I’ve found out who you really belong to, I can find some way to fix you, after all.”

  Clermit snips in reply.

  Then, slowly, as if in pain, he climbs out of my cap and onto the side of the cage.

  “What are you doing?”

  Clermit climbs until he reaches the two sticking-out loops of metal—the pieces that are twisted together to hold the cage door closed. Clermit uses two of his working limbs to get a firm grip on these pieces of metal. Then he starts to strain.

  “Wait!” I say, alarmed at the furious whirring from Clermit’s mechanism and the sudden juddering of his parts. Clermit’s drive wheel becomes a smoking blur of spinning metal as his spring rapidly unwinds. “Stop! You’ll break yourself for good!”

  There’s a grinding, screeching sound, and I don’t know if it’s Clermit or the pieces of metal, until . . .

  PANG!

  Something breaks.

  Clermit’s spring unravels in a spiral of shiny steel, and the clockwork hermit crab falls, motionless, into my hands. He is holding one of the pieces of twisted metal in his pincer, snapped clean off.

  “Ouch!” I gasp, sliding the hot metal machine into my cap.

  I push at the door of the cage, and it creaks open.

  “You did it!” I cry. “I’m so sorry, Clermit. But thank you!”

  And, as carefully as I can, so as not to spill the precious contents of my cap, I lower myself to the underside of the cage and then drop with a thud to the floor.

  I’m free!

  The first thing I do is gather up the burned-out and broken pieces of Clermit, shell and all, and hide them together in an antique vase in Dr. Thalassi’s study. If, at the end of all this, I can save the doc—just as I hope I can save Violet and the others—I’ll need his help if I’m to have any chance of fixing poor Clermit again.