by Robin Jarvis
When Mrs Wilson closed the shop and returned home, her daughter and husband were still busy. She joined in with the cleaning and by eight o’clock it was finally ready, with a rug on the bare boards as a temporary measure until they could redecorate.
After a takeaway supper of fish and chips, Lil decided to have an early night and went to bed, taking Sally with her. The little dog was very content, having eaten battered fish skin as a treat.
Lil opened the door and snapped on the light. It didn’t feel like her room any more. The bare floorboards gave it a strange echo and she wasn’t sure she’d ever feel safe in there again. Her nose wrinkled. Mrs Wilson had done as she promised and performed a purification ritual to banish evil forces and the pungent smell of the incense she had burned still lingered. Lil’s mum had also brought a Nightmarechaser from the shop to hang on the wall. It was a mad, witchy invention of her own, a more proactive form of Dreamcatcher, being a hideous thing with bird skulls, small bells, black feathers and dangling bottles containing herbs and powders.
Lil placed Sally on the end of the bed and the Westie curled up on the freshly washed fleece blanket, tucking her face into her paws.
The girl spent some minutes packing a large rucksack with items from her knitting bag. Then she turned off the light and got into bed, fully dressed except for her shoes. Checking her phone, she was surprised there were no messages from Verne. She had been too secretive today, he hadn’t liked that and Lil felt bad about it. She hoped he’d forgive her tomorrow when he saw what she’d done. It would be easier to explain it then anyway; she hadn’t known how to put it into words – she knew it would have sounded totally stupid. She just hoped he’d understand.
Setting the alarm, she tucked the phone down one of her socks. Then she lay her head on a new pillow and the exertions of the day caught up with her. In spite of her excitement, she was soon fast asleep.
Across the river, Bev and Angie had been summoned to Tracy’s house and were now slumped on the settee in the front room. Earlier that evening, Tracy had rowed with her boyfriend after they had watched Lil on the news and he had made the massive mistake of saying he thought the Wilson girl was brave and cool. Angie and Bev listened sympathetically as Tracy griped about him and what she’d like to do to that freaky Lil Wilson.
‘It’s not brave to stand in front of a window as skeletons come smashing through it,’ Tracy vented. ‘It’s moronic.’
‘She’s well weird though,’ Bev said. ‘I wouldn’t mess with her.’
‘A dead body went right for her like a heat-seekin’ missile,’ Angie agreed, grimacing. ‘That ain’t normal. It didn’t happen to anyone else in her street, did it?’
Tracy’s anger at her boyfriend made her forget the fear she had felt yesterday on the pier.
‘Rubbish!’ she snapped. ‘There’s nothing spooky about the Wilsons. They’re just mental.’
Her friends twisted their mouths and looked uncomfortable. In the corner of the room, Eggs and Bacon – two hamsters that belonged to Tracy’s young brother – were scurrying around the plastic tubes of their futuristic habitat, making enough noise to be a distracting nuisance.
‘What’s got into them?’ Bev asked.
‘They’re nocturnal,’ Tracy said, sneering in their direction. ‘Our Liam used to have them in his room, but they kept him awake all night. Not usually this rowdy though. Shut up over there!’
‘It’s well wrong, only comin’ out at night,’ said Angie, pulling a face.
‘They’re just rats without tails,’ Bev added.
‘Do you think them Wilsons keep rats? It’s the sort of mingin’ thing they’d do. Bet their house is proper rank.’
Tracy gave an exasperated grunt.
‘Stop going on about them!’ she said. ‘They’re nothin’ special. Anyone can pretend to be witchy and ponce about in cloaks being a prat. It’s all a con for their tatty junk shop. Look, I’ll show you. Shift those mags off the coffee table and sit round it.’
The girls obeyed while Tracy took a glass tumbler from her dad’s drinks cabinet and ripped some pages from a notepad. Bev raised her eyebrows at Angie as Tracy scribbled hastily on the paper and tore it into small squares.
‘What you doin’?’ Bev asked.
Tracy grinned back at her and started arranging the paper scraps in a circle on the table. She had written a letter on each piece and ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ on two larger bits which she placed on opposite sides. Then she turned the tumbler upside down in the centre.
‘Put your fingertips on it,’ she told the other two. ‘We’re goin’ to have a seance. We’re gonna speak to the spirits of the dead . . . wooooooh. How’s that for cool and brave?’
‘I don’t want to,’ Bev said, leaning away. ‘You shouldn’t mess with that sort of thing.’
Angie agreed with her and, if the frenzied racket coming from the hamster cage was anything to go by, so did Eggs and Bacon.
‘Shut it!’ Tracy bawled but the hamsters continued to dart round the coloured tubes.
‘They would drive me nuts,’ Bev declared. ‘They having fits or what?’
‘Ignore them,’ Tracy ordered. ‘Now put your fingers on the glass!’ She looked so fierce the other girls didn’t dare disobey.
Tracy took a deep breath and gazed up at the ceiling.
‘Is there anybody there?’ she asked in a haunted warble.
The glass slid across the table to ‘Yes’.
‘You pushed it,’ Bev accused her.
‘Never!’ Tracy lied.
‘This is too creepy for me,’ Angie put in.
‘What do you want to tell us, spirit?’ Tracy continued.
The glass began to move again, visiting one letter after another.
‘What’s it doin’?’ Angie asked.
‘Spellin’ out a message,’ Bev told her.
L-I-L I-S U-G-L-Y
The girls fell about laughing. When they recovered another message came through straight away.
W-I-L-S-O-N S-T-I-N-X
They laughed some more.
‘Does Lil Wilson ever wash?’ Tracy asked.
NO the glass declared immediately.
‘My turn!’ Angie insisted.
W-E R H-O-T-T-A
U R B-E-S-T E-V-A
T-R-U
Still laughing, they jostled for control of the tumbler, trying to think of even funnier messages. In the corner of the room, the hamsters stopped running around their cage and began frantically clawing at the plastic walls. Overhead, the light bulb crackled. For some moments, the room flickered in and out of darkness. The girls squealed.
‘Now that’s spooky!’ Tracy declared.
The other two giggled nervously. Bev shivered.
‘Gone cold in here,’ she said.
‘Quiet too,’ Angie added. The hamsters had retreated into their straw nest and were silent.
The glass began to move under their fingers again.
I A-M W-A-T-C-H-I-N-G Y-O-U
‘Err . . . what?’ Tracy asked. ‘Which one of you did that?’
Bev and Angie shook their heads. The glass slid across to the letters once more.
I W-I-L-L B-E W-I-T-H Y-O-U S-O-O-N
‘Stop doin’ that,’ Angie said. ‘It’s not funny or nothin’.’
‘Weren’t me,’ Bev told her.
‘Me either,’ Tracy swore.
Y-O-U H-A-V-E P-R-E-T-T-Y N-E-C-K-S
Angie took her finger off the glass and folded her arms. ‘Stupid game!’ she snorted. ‘I’m not playin’ no more.’
‘Me neither,’ said Bev, doing the same.
With only Tracy’s finger on it, the glass began to glide across to another letter.
D
‘See!’ Angie cried. ‘It is you!’
A
‘It really isn’t!’ Tracy answered, pulling her finger clear.
The tumbler’s movements ceased.
‘Oh yeah?’ Bev said. ‘Who then?’
Before Tracy could reply
, the glass began to move again. Without anyone touching it, the tumbler slid round the polished table by itself.
R-K
Suddenly the paper letters flew up into their faces. The girls shrieked and ran from the room. The glass shot off the table and smashed against the wall. In the hallway, as Bev and Angie continued to scream, Tracy paused and caught her breath when she realised she wasn’t remotely afraid; in fact, she felt excited and vibrantly alive.
‘DARK,’ she murmured to herself, repeating the final word.
Night deepened over Whitby. Pubs emptied and stumbling footsteps clumped home through the narrow streets. The lights around the church and the abbey went out, engulfing the East Cliff in gloom. On both sides of the river, cheery windows winked to black and boats in the harbour looked like they were bobbing on ink. Midnight ticked by and eventually there were no sounds other than the lapping water.
Above the Thistlewoods’ amusement arcade, Verne slept with the mysterious treasure he had found tucked under his pillow. He had hidden the fragments of the severed hand in a drawer and had spent most of the evening admiring and examining the Nimius, cleaning out the fine grooves with an old toothbrush and polishing it with a soft cloth. He still had no idea what it could possibly be, but he knew it must be very valuable and felt like the worst sort of thief. Several times as he rubbed it he had felt the object twist and click, and each time he stared at it in anticipation. But nothing further happened; it didn’t start ticking or opening, and when he looked closer he couldn’t even work out how it could have twisted. It certainly didn’t budge when he tried to move it himself. And so he hid it under the pillow, wondering if the morning would deliver up any fresh answers and whether he should confess and hand it in.
That night the boy’s dreams were filled with glittering images of the strange symbols that crowded the surface of his precious find. They whirled through his sleep accompanied by the steady movement of giant cogs, ratchet wheels, levers, slender springs and pendulums. A shining liquid pulsed through snaking glass tubes and an emerald flame burned within a revolving diamond. But the shadow of Verne’s guilt was always present, flooding his dreams with darkness.
‘Nimius,’ a distant, commanding voice echoed. ‘Deliver unto me the Nimius . . . This time Scaur Annie shall not win.’
Verne mumbled unhappily. He had a sensation of falling, spinning down through the intricate golden mechanisms. Next moment his eyes snapped open and he lurched forward. He was no longer in his bedroom, but striding into Whitby’s only inn, The White Horse.
‘Vittles is ready when you are, my Lord Pyke,’ George Sneaton the fat innkeeper greeted him, nodding deferentially. ‘Why, Annie!’ he added when he saw the soot-smeared girl wrapped in the noble’s cloak. ‘Whatever’s happened to you?’
‘Sandsend folk and a preacher,’ she answered fiercely. ‘They burned my hut and wanted to burn me too.’
‘Fetch ale for her,’ Melchior Pyke ordered. ‘And bring the supper at once; this girl is almost blue with cold and shock.’
‘Right you are, my lord,’ the innkeeper said, casting a concerned glance at Annie before rushing into the kitchen.
Melchior Pyke led the girl upstairs to the private parlour set aside for him and guided her to a padded leather chair near the fireplace.
‘You’re trembling like a lotus petal in the rains,’ he told her. ‘That’s not to be wondered at; you’ve suffered much this night at the hands of that accursed Puritan.’
Still huddled in his cloak, Scaur Annie peered around her. She was not accustomed to sitting in a proper chair and she took in the surrounding luxury with curious eyes. There were real candles in the tin sconces, not mere rushlights, and the fire irons were twisted and curled ornately. On one panelled wall there was even a small looking-glass, a rare object she had never seen before. She had only ever encountered her reflection in rock pools and she wondered if her face looked different when undisturbed by ripples. On a long table beneath it was an impressive collection of books and some unusual brass objects, the functions of which she could not begin to guess at. But what captivated her attention most was a painting over the mantle of the infant Christ in the Virgin Mary’s arms. Annie stared long at it.
Kneeling beside her, Melchior Pyke dabbed at the burns on her arms with a wet cloth. Annie flinched and pulled away.
‘Peace, little sand sprite,’ he said soothingly. ‘Your hurts need tending and must be cleansed else they’ll fester.’
‘I know what to do,’ she answered proudly. ‘I’m the cure-all for the poor folk hereabouts. I’ve got salves that heal and take the sting away.’
‘Not any more you haven’t,’ he reminded her.
The girl relented and let him wash the burns on her arms and shoulder. The tenderness of his touch surprised her. No man had ever shown her such kindness. While he was absorbed in his careful ministrations, she took the opportunity to get a good look at her saviour. His face was handsome and bronzed by travels in hot, distant lands. She had heard the gossiping fishwives talk of how this fancy nobleman had charmed the town with his smooth words and crinkling smile, and Annie found herself liking him too.
He raised his eyes suddenly. Annie averted her own and stared back at the Madonna above the fireplace. She could feel her face reddening, but hoped the grime and soot concealed it.
‘A bairn with its mam,’ she said at length, still enchanted by the painting. ‘That’s fair pretty and clever done. She’s full of the strongest love there is. She’ll do owt for that precious mite, guard it close, keep every danger away, take all harms to herself to save it, at the price of her own sweet life.’
Melchior Pyke rose to his feet and handed her the cloth. ‘Here, mistress, the flames did not lick deep; keep the wounds clean and healing will be swift.’
He gave the painting another glance. ‘You see more than I do in this. It smacks too much of Rome for my taste.’
The girl hugged her shoulders.
‘My folks was carried off when plague come to Whitby,’ she said quietly. ‘The same year as old Queen Bess died.’
‘Then that was a sad time for us both. My tutor and mentor, William Gilberd, died in the November. He set me square upon the long road of learning. He was the Queen’s physician and much more besides: astronomer, scholar of natural philosophy . . .’
He gestured towards one of the books on the table. ‘I keep his great work, De Magnete, by me wherever I travel. His passing grieved me, though I was a lad of fifteen summers and still had kin, yet you would not have been much more than a nursling when you were orphaned.’
‘Right enough. But I were lucky; I was took in and cared for.’
‘It is heartening to know the Church can still be charitable.’
‘Weren’t no church!’ the girl said with a snort, followed quickly by the ghost of a smile. ‘I’ve got no love for that and only go Sundays so I don’t get fined. No, my mam had friends, special secret friends. Was them as kept me safe. They –’
She broke off and began to cough, blaming the smoke in her lungs, but Melchior Pyke guessed it was because she felt she had said too much.
‘Where is that oafish innkeeper?’ he declared, turning to his manservant who was skulking in the doorway. ‘Mister Dark, hurry those victuals and make sure it’s the finest October ale for our guest, not his usual insipid brew. Then scare up the innkeeper’s daughter and send her here. Somewhere under this roof there must be fitting garments to be had.’
The manservant lingered a moment, his eyes staring past his master at the huddled girl. She had begun washing her face in the basin and the splashing water caught the firelight. The droplets were bright as burning diamonds. His scarred lips twisted more unpleasantly than usual and his brows bunched together.
‘She has a pretty neck,’ he said.
‘Every neck is prettier than yours,’ Melchior Pyke told him. ‘Now stop gaping and do as I’ve bidden.’
Mister Dark gave him a surly glance, then departed.
&n
bsp; ‘Ain’t no one likes him around here,’ Annie stated as she wiped her face with the cloth.
‘You must not mind Mister Dark,’ Melchior Pyke assured her. ‘His looks are against him, but he has his uses.’
‘Ain’t his face,’ Annie replied, with a shake of her head. ‘That don’t matter. It’s what’s inside that counts for everything. But there’s a force in him that makes the air thick as the threat of storm. Makes hackles rise and sets dogs to howling. Goose skin pricks out whenever he’s close.’
The noble was taken aback by her words. He was accustomed to people judging his servant on appearance alone. This girl had insight and a keen intelligence.
Scaur Annie did not notice his admiring gaze. Her eyes had been drawn to a delicate gilt arrow balanced on a needle, over by the books. It had started to swing wildly the instant Mister Dark left the room to go stomping down the stairs beyond.
She touched the three ammonites around her neck as if for protection.
‘Even yon dainty play arrow wagged when he went,’ she said.
Melchior Pyke looked at the instrument she pointed at.
‘That is a versorium,’ he informed her. ‘It detects the presence of a mysterious, invisible power called electricus. Mister Dark is brimming over with it because that is how he was revived on our first meeting.’
‘What do that mean?’
‘When I first encountered Mister Dark, he was swinging from a gallows, hence the condition of his unfortunate neck. I thought he was dead as a stone and he should have been; he had been hanging there all day. I needed a cadaver to further my studies, so I cut him down and took him back to my workshop.’
‘Dead shouldn’t be mucked with,’ Annie said crossly. ‘Goes against all that’s proper that does.’
Melchior Pyke chuckled at her outrage. ‘As you have seen, he was not dead. Somehow an atom of life must have lingered. When I began my first experiment, summoning that electricus force with a contrivance of my own devising, the remaining gasp in him was jolted into a sudden and desperate inhalation and I realised, to my great wonderment, that the man was alive.
