“Where’s the toast?” he asked as if he was talking to a magician who had just tricked him, but Uncle Pogo merely patted Nelson’s stomach and said, “On its way to your guts by now, I imagine. Better get a wiggle on.” And the three of them began the long journey up from the crypt.
As Nelson climbed the stairs with his enormous backpack pulling at his shoulders and a large roll of plastic sheeting under each arm, he took one last look around. The black stone tomb, the tiled floor, and the bone-colored columns stood as they had stood for hundreds of years. It could have been a rat, he thought. There had been all those dead ones in the room he’d discovered last night. It was the logical explanation for the toast going missing, but it didn’t settle Nelson’s mind.
HIDEOUS FRUIT
The new day had filled St. Paul’s with light and life. What had been a dark and scary place last night was back to its utterly spectacular self this morning. That statue of the man on a horse was now free of its plastic wrapping and his stained marble features were already being given a good scrub by a restoration team from Doody’s department. Priests in black cassocks whizzed about the floor like battery-operated toys, and TV camera crews who had been told about the discovery of Christopher Wren’s secret laboratory were now gathered on the front steps around Doody, who was holding court with his unique brand of charisma. No one had seen Doody since his band split up, so to rediscover him as a professor of history all these years later only added to the exciting story of Christopher Wren’s secret laboratory.
There was so much attention surrounding Doody that no one noticed the tall man with the plastic leg and his nephew carrying the last of their camping gear out of the fire exit to a van. While his uncle strapped a ladder to the roof, Nelson had managed to make room for himself in the front passenger seat by collecting the newspapers and empty coffee cups into a plastic bag and dumping it all in a bin beside the bus stop. On his way back to the van he looked up at the cathedral. The clouds were still dominating the sky, but you could tell the sun wanted to come out and see what all the fuss was about.
As the van pulled away from the curb, Nelson looked back out of his window, saw the bush his uncle had fallen into last night, and noticed something very strange indeed. It appeared so quickly that if he had blinked he would never have spotted them. But he didn’t blink, which is why he saw them. Faces. Ghastly little faces stuck among the branches as if the bush had suddenly produced a crop of hideous fruits. There must have been at least six of them, and they were all staring with wide, mad eyes right at Nelson.
A passing bus wiped his view for a moment, and by the time he looked back at the bush the faces had gone, but they burned inside Nelson’s mind with a clear and fierce intensity. The oddest part of all this was that Nelson had a feeling he recognized them from his dream last night. Feeling suddenly colder, Nelson quickly wound up the window and sat back in his seat. He did not dare to look in the side mirror in case he saw the faces again, so instead he pulled the pendant out from under his T-shirt, gripped it with his fist, and waited for that nice feeling it seemed to give him to come back and replace the chill currently occupying his bones.
“In 100 meters, turn left onto the Embankment,” said a robotic female voice coming from Uncle Pogo’s false leg.
“GPS,” said Uncle Pogo in answer to Nelson’s quizzical expression. “State of the art, this leg of mine. Does pretty much everything I need, except make toast and put the rubbish out on a Thursday.” He chuckled as the van made the turn, but Nelson wasn’t really listening.
Uncle Pogo sighed. “So what’s that you’re holding on to there? Necklace or something?” he said, and Nelson opened his fist to reveal the pendant.
“It’s my sister’s,” said Nelson casually, not expecting a gasp of surprise in response from his uncle.
“Crikey O’Mikey!” exclaimed Uncle Pogo, glancing back and forth between the pendant and the road. “You do know what that is, don’t you?”
“It’s a pendant.”
“But you know where it comes from?” Uncle Pogo’s eyebrows were raised as far as they could go.
“Erm, I think it used to belong to Celeste’s mum. Your sister?” said Nelson slowly, in case this was some kind of trick question.
“Yes, but I bet no one’s told you why her mum had it in the first place, have they?” He sounded a little breathless now and Nelson shook his head.
“In 300 meters, bear left onto the A40,” said the GPS.
Uncle Pogo snorted. “Well, I’m not surprised. Your dad never did believe in magic and that kind o’ thing after Isabelle died.”
It was true. Nelson’s dad had always said that Uncle Pogo was as nutty as squirrel poo, but Nelson wasn’t about to let that get in the way of hearing some juicy family secrets.
“Where does it come from then?” Nelson raised the pendant level with his eyes and admired its delicious strawberry color.
Uncle Pogo took a deep breath as if about to dive into a pool and then spoke in a voice that was much more deliberate and calm than his usual enthusiastic tone. Until now I don’t think Uncle Pogo has said anything of any great importance, but I strongly urge you to pay close attention to the story he’s about to tell, for even though it might sound preposterous, it is in fact entirely true.
THE PENDANT AND THE FIRE
“That little red stone comes from my father, God rest his soul,” said Uncle Pogo. “He was a botanist—you know, studying plants, trees … nature stuff. Anyway, when I was a kid, before the girls were born, he used to tell me stories about all the things he saw on his travels—plants that glow in the dark or can eat a monkey whole—that kind of thing. I loved hearing about it—like fairy stories. Then one day he came back from a trip to Brazil and told me how he had found a secret jungle. He said it was like the real Garden of Eden, and everywhere you looked were all these incredible flowers and trees that you couldn’t find anywhere else in the world. Even the rocks and stones were like nothing else on earth—all brightly colored like gemstones. It was all because of a magic river that came up from deep under the ground. The River of Life, he called it. But here’s the thing: not only did that water give all the plants and stones strange powers, but any little fishy creature that crawled out of it would just start evolving straightaway, you know, adapting to being on land. Same goes for any critter that crawled in—it’d start adapting to life underwater.”
River of Life? Garden of Eden? This was already the biggest load of nonsense Nelson had ever heard and he now wished he hadn’t asked.
“So then, when I was five, Carla and Isabelle came along. You never met twins less alike.
“Carla came out first. Big strong baby she was. Had a scream on her like a banshee. Then Isabelle arrived, and she was just tiny and weak. Didn’t make a sound. Poor thing couldn’t even breathe properly. Had a whole bundle of problems, so they rushed her into intensive care and put her on all these machines. I remember being allowed to visit her. I couldn’t believe how small she was.
“The doctors told my parents that Isabelle wouldn’t make it past the weekend. There was nothing they could do. But my father, he wasn’t having that. He went back to the jungle to find something to save her.”
Uncle Pogo paused for a moment. They were waiting at a red light somewhere in Shepherd’s Bush, and Pogo glanced across at the pendant in Nelson’s hand.
“A few hours later Dad came home with that little stone and he laid it beside Isabelle in her hospital crib. They were supposed to be her last days alive. But then … Well, the doctors said they’d never seen anything like it. Couldn’t explain how Isabelle could suddenly breathe all by herself, her heart beating like a little drum. The weekend she was supposed to have died, Isabelle was back at home with all of us, gurgling and snorting away like a cheeky little piglet in my mother’s arms. Dad had the stone made into a pendant so that she could wear it all the time.”
Uncle Pogo’s voice trailed off as if he was lost in the happy memory, and it was only the honk of a car horn that
alerted him to the traffic light’s now being green.
“Wait a minute. You just said he went to Brazil and back in a few hours,” said Nelson, now convinced his uncle was making this up.
“Ah, that was thanks to the Bang Stone. He found it in the jungle. Dad said if you swallowed that stone and thought of where you wanted to be—bang—you were there. That’s how he got there and back so fast.”
“You saw him do that? Disappear, I mean,” Nelson asked.
“Er … Well, not exactly.”
Nelson stayed silent. This was exactly the kind of mumbo jumbo parents tell children to cheer them up, and Nelson couldn’t understand why even a loony like his uncle hadn’t worked this out yet.
“But he really did go to Brazil. I heard a big bang outside the hospital and I looked out of the window. There he was—out of nowhere. Then he took something from his pocket and held whatever it was so tight and he was crying his eyes out. And when he had no more tears left, he opened his hands, and there was the stone.”
Not one bit of this was making any sense to Nelson, but the most confusing part of it all was that Pogo really believed this crazy stuff was true.
“I don’t expect you to believe me,” said Uncle Pogo. “I know your father never did.”
“I do. I do. It’s just … Well, you have to admit it is pretty amazing.”
“Yep. It was amazing. It was a miracle. Except it turns out you have to pay for miracles,” said Uncle Pogo in a dark tone. “Dad said that the way the stone worked was that you poured all your love and hope into it and it could save someone’s life. His love was strong enough to save Isabelle but he was never the same again. He was like an empty version of himself. All hollow and distant, as if someone had scooped him out and left just the shell of him. It was as if he’d given all his love and happiness to Isabelle, see, and had none left for himself. I think that’s why he died soon after.”
“But that’s terrible,” said Nelson.
“Well, that was nothing compared to what happened to Carla. I mean, even though she was the prettiest and the smartest of the twins by a mile, Carla was always jealous of her sister. As they grew up Isabelle always loved to hear me tell the story of the River of Life and the pendant, but it just made Carla jealous. Jealous of how happy Isabelle was all the time. Jealous of the pendant and the love it contained. In the end it drove her mad.”
There was a sudden screech as Uncle Pogo slammed his foot on the brake to avoid a truck that had slowed down in front.
“Sorry about that. Maybe I should save this story for later. I’m not really concentrating on the road,” he said in a shaky voice.
“No. Please. What happened?” said Nelson, who was now hooked into the story.
“When they were twenty years old they had a terrible argument and didn’t speak to each other for years. Isabelle got married to your dad and had Celeste, and Carla got married to some guy called Brian. Then one day Isabelle got a call out of the blue. It was Carla. She said she wanted to meet Isabelle and make amends. So of course Isabelle went. She left little Celeste with your dad and went to see Carla. It was the last time I saw either of them.”
“Were you there too?” said Nelson.
“I was outside. Isabelle told me she was going to meet Carla, so of course I wanted to be there. But I was too late. When I got there the house was on fire, and when I tried to get in a wall collapsed and fell on my leg,” said Uncle Pogo at exactly the same time as his plastic leg said, “Take the next right and your destination is on the left.”
Uncle Pogo pulled over, gave a big sniff, wiped his nose on the back of his hand, and turned to face Nelson, who continued to stare at him with wide eyes and open mouth.
“Sorry. That was all a bit heavy, wasn’t it?” said Uncle Pogo, but Nelson shook his head.
“No, it wasn’t. It was … Yeah, it was a bit.”
“Well, that’s all ancient history. Talking of which, I say we celebrate being the discoverers of the lost chamber of St. Paul’s!” said Uncle Pogo with his usual cheer. “I have got a ton of food in the freezer. I shall prepare you a feast fit for a king!” He heaved his great body out of the van while Nelson unbuckled his seat belt and tried not to imagine what frostbitten horrors lay in his uncle’s freezer.
THE SCREAM
As you can imagine, the meal Uncle Pogo prepared for them both that night was dreadful. Even though lasagna was one of Nelson’s favorite foods in the whole world, the lump on his plate was inedible, bearing little resemblance to the delicious stuff he was used to at home. The meat was a strange wormy-looking gray and tasted exactly the same as Minty’s dog food smelled. The cheese sauce was a gluey white flavorless paste, and the layers of pasta were as tough to chew as a leather belt. It sat there on Nelson’s plate surrounded by a moat of green, watery peas, like the ruins of a tiny castle after a dragon had been along and burned it to a crisp.
Uncle Pogo had registered Nelson’s disgust and realized he had better do something about it. “Sorry. I’m not really used to cooking for other people. There’s a fish-and-chip shop nearby. Would you prefer that?” Nelson tried not to look too excited about this idea, but Uncle Pogo chuckled in recognition.
“Two large haddock-and-chips?” he asked, taking his van keys out of a small compartment on the front of his plastic leg and rising from his chair.
“One’s enough for me,” said Nelson, and his uncle laughed again.
“And ice cream for dessert. What’s your favorite flavor?”
“Chocolate,” said Nelson, and his stomach rumbled in agreement.
“Won’t be long. Watch TV if you like. Bound to be something on.” Uncle Pogo went out of the front door and into the UFO mother-ship blaze of his security light.
The clunk of Uncle Pogo closing the front door triggered the dog to bark like a nutter. Nelson still hadn’t set eyes on the animal. According to his uncle, it had belonged to a chaotic family who used to live across the street. The family had suddenly moved a few weeks ago, leaving the poor dog tied up in the yard (along with several mattresses, an old fridge, and a punching bag). Pogo had felt compelled to rescue the dog, only to find the reason they left it behind was due to its being a complete psycho. After it had shredded some of Pogo’s most valuable objects and bitten his hands and ankle at least a dozen times, Pogo had relegated the beast to the backyard, where it seemed pretty happy.
Nelson got down from the table and walked to the kitchen carrying both of their dinner plates. I say walk, but actually it was more like wading. There was more stuff and clutter inside Pogo’s house than there was in his front yard. Pogo had lived here for fifteen years, and even though the place had three floors, a big living room, dining room, and three bedrooms, he had made his bedroom in the tiny basement so he could use the rest of the house for storage and work space. Everywhere you looked there was something Pogo was either fixing or taking apart to get a better look at it. Old radio sets spread out in all their various pieces, vacuum-cleaner motors opened up for examination, and even computers were dissected. As Nelson scraped the remains of their ghastly meal into a flip-top bin he stared up at the walls, which were covered in African tribal masks, some of them as big as a surfboard, with surprised expressions on their faces and spiky straw for hair. From the kitchen window he could see straight into the greenhouse, which was out of bounds due to its being a miniature Amazonian jungle, as hot and humid as the real thing, complete with insects and a bathtub filled with tropical fish. On Nelson’s tour of the house Uncle Pogo had explained he was trying to continue with his father’s experiments with jungle plants, but by the look of things, his experiments weren’t going so well.
This is the view from the kitchen window into Uncle Pogo’s greenhouse.
After washing and rinsing their plates and cutlery in the sink and leaving them to dry on the draining rack, Nelson made his way back into the living room, past a fully functional red telephone booth, an industrial sewing machine on which lay a half-made kite, and piles and p
iles of books, and more books, and even more books. Even though there was plenty here to keep Nelson’s mind occupied, he sought the reassuring glow of the TV. As he waited for the screen to warm up, Nelson settled back into Uncle Pogo’s large black chair, which responded instantly by massaging his back, neck, and legs. It felt odd at first, as if the chair didn’t want him sitting in it and was trying to push him out, but by the time a program had appeared on the TV screen Nelson had decided he very much liked the feeling of being kneaded like dough. He scrolled through the channels, past a horse race, past a man holding another man up against a car and telling him he’d had enough of his lies, straight past a baffling commercial for something involving the woman from Pirates of the Caribbean and a motorbike, and then stopped dead at the sight of a face he recognized: John Doodson was standing on the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral talking to the cameras with his usual infectious charm. Below his face was a caption that read “Prof. J. Doodson. Museum of London.”
“The room, which we believe to be Christopher Wren’s private laboratory, was discovered last night while repairs were being carried out on the cathedral, and I can tell you, in all my years of working for the Museum of London, I’ve never been so surprised by a find. I mean, it’s amazing to think that millions of people have been in and out of this place and no one has ever known about this room.”
The picture cut to video footage of Doody inside the room as a voice-over informed the public that the team behind this discovery was led by ex-musician Professor John Doodson—former keyboard player in nineties techno group Messiaz. Meanwhile, Doody was peeling back the dust sheets that covered the strange objects and explaining what he had found.
Here are some sketches of the things Doody was talking about.
Wren was working on a new kind of musical instrument —little wires that when stretched between the fingers vibrated hundreds of tiny tuned bells.
The Deadly 7 Page 6
