Candleman

by Glenn Dakin

  Chapter Twenty-six

  The Golden Time

  Theo sat on a crate by the elevator, Mr Nicely standing guard over him, a rifle in his hands. The young captive watched the lift rise away into the clouds, his heart pounding, his eyes misted with tears. Theo felt like his whole world was being spirited away from him, the only people he had ever cared about – dead or alive – all removed at one stroke. Somehow he just couldn’t accept that Chloe was gone.

  ‘It wasn’t the orders, Theo,’ Mr Nicely said quietly. ‘I’m sorry. She was spotted in the upper levels. The guards shot her by mistake. They’re all amateurs. Haven’t seen proper army service like me,’ he mumbled, and looked away, unable to face Theo. The pretending had gone wrong. In fact, it had gone so far wrong he was now having to use the truth to try and make things better. It didn’t feel right.

  Theo didn’t reply. Something about Mr Nicely’s words seemed out of place, but he couldn’t grasp why. Chloe’s death was too big to take in. He knew he couldn’t think about her now.

  Your own feelings aren’t important, Theo thought, remembering his years of indoctrination at Empire Hall. Remember – you are the least important person in the world. Right now, that thought kept him going.

  Suddenly he heard a deep grinding noise as all around the Well Chamber, circular stone covers rolled away from hidden outlets. Boiling streams surged downwards, hitting the mineral drifts below with a deafening hiss. While Theo had been distracted, Dr Saint had thrown the great lever.

  Magnus said this mustn’t happen, Theo thought. He rose to his feet, but Mr Nicely blocked his way, giving a cursory nod at the rifle. The pain of rising so quickly made Theo almost swoon and he fell to his knees, retching.

  ‘I told you life in the outside world would over-stimulate you,’ sneered his guardian, glancing over.

  Now Theo thought he was hallucinating, as sparks of light appeared before his eyes. He squeezed them shut, shook his head and looked again – but the tiny points of light were still there, filling the whole chamber.

  ‘Alchemists call this the golden time,’ said Dr Saint. ‘It is a brief, magical state in which miracles can happen. Earth, air and water have been conjured to do my bidding. I now need one final ingredient to complete the alchemy!’

  Dr Saint was now staring at Theo’s hands. Theo looked down to see a pale green glow dancing about his fingers, becoming brighter as his strength returned.

  ‘Get away from the controls!’ he cried out, staggering to his feet.

  Mr Nicely went to block his way again, then noticed Theo’s glowing hands. The butler jumped back, dropping the rifle in surprise.

  Theo lurched forwards. Mr Nicely stared at those dangerous-looking hands. He did not try to pick up the gun.

  ‘Stop him, Mr Nicely!’ ordered Dr Saint over his shoulder. The crucial time had arrived for his great alchemical work, and he did not want to be torn away from the controls. ‘Do it now!’ he roared. But Mr Nicely stayed where he was. It was probably the first time in his life he had ever disobeyed an order, and he stood there, in his shirtsleeves, like a guilty schoolboy.

  ‘Err … no, sir,’ came the reply.

  ‘What did you say, Mr Nicely?’

  ‘No, sir,’ the butler repeated, refusing to budge. ‘He, err … melts people, sir. Wouldn’t want to risk it.’

  Dr Saint stared at Mr Nicely, speechless. Part of his face dripped down on to his tie.

  Theo’s spirit rose at this unexpected turn of events.

  ‘I don’t want to hurt you, Mr Nicely,’ Theo said quietly.

  Mr Nicely gave a weak smile. He looked tired and confused. ‘I always looked after you,’ Mr Nicely said. ‘You know that, Theo.’ Except the butler could hardly say the word Theo – it seemed to choke him.

  Theo walked on, straight towards Dr Saint, his bare arms held out before him, his shining fingers twitching as if beyond his control.

  ‘Stop it!’ Theo cried out. ‘Stop it now!’

  Dr Saint turned to face Theo with a cold smile. ‘You’re too late!’ he declared with evident satisfaction. To prove it, he stepped away from the controls. ‘The process is now in motion.’

  ‘What are you doing?’ Theo demanded. ‘Tell me!’

  ‘I’m quite happy to tell you what you have failed to prevent,’ his guardian replied smoothly, ‘if you have the good manners to hear me out.’ He gestured grandly all around him. ‘You are in a most sacred place,’ he said. ‘Over a hundred years ago, the original Philanthropist, Erasmus Fontaine, discovered these secret chambers beneath London. He used them for his experiments. He awakened dark things down here, creatures from the earth’s ancient past – the urughoul: warrior garghoul.’

  Theo listened, fascinated. After years and years of lies, he sensed he was finally getting to hear the truth. Why? Did Dr Saint believe he could finish him off any time he liked?

  ‘One by one he called them to life, these mindless creatures of destruction. They welcomed his commands. He used them as secret assassins, destroying all those who opposed him. Only one man stood in his way – Lord Wickland, the original Candle Man.’

  As he spoke that name, he looked darkly upon Theo, a look of open loathing such as Theo had never seen before in his life.

  ‘The war between them was terrible. The police could not control it. They even had to invent lies and legends, like the tales of Jack the Ripper, to account for some of the slaughter on the streets.’

  Dr Saint smiled to himself. As he spoke, Theo appeared to be calming down. Perhaps soon he would become less desperate, sink back into being the docile fool he had always been at Empire Hall.

  ‘Lord Wickland won,’ Dr Saint continued. ‘There were no witnesses to what happened, but a terrible slaughter took place here in the network. Your precious ancestor destroyed them all – the Philanthropist and his army. The lifeless forms of the urughoul were found – by me – at the bottom of this chamber.’

  Theo trembled. Dr Saint did not know that Theo had seen the garghoul graveyard – but that proved his guardian was finally speaking the truth. Theo stood there, boldly facing his enemy, like a hero ready for a final confrontation. In fact, he felt ready to drop. Every moment he stood there was torment to his punished body. But at last he was getting answers. He wanted to know all the truth even if it killed him.

  ‘The network –’ Theo ventured. ‘You’ve turned it into a kind of enormous Mercy Tube. I recognise its … echoes.’

  Dr Saint twitched with ill-concealed surprise. Part of his ear began to trickle down his neck.

  ‘Clever of you to see that,’ he said. ‘But no amount of smart guesswork can help you now.’

  Theo had been trying not to think about his personal peril. He glanced around to check that Mr Nicely wasn’t going to change his mind suddenly and jump him. But the butler stood blank-faced nearby, unmoving, like a man in a dream. The tiny stars danced like a golden blizzard all around them.

  Dr Saint loomed closer to Theo, a cracked smile of triumph on his face.

  ‘I will bring the creatures of darkness back! I will free them from their ashy tomb. They will be my personal army. You have not seen a warrior garghoul in action, Theo; their hands can cut a human apart like flint knives.’

  There was a chill in Theo’s heart – utter dismay at this final proof of his guardian’s dark, dreadful ambitions.

  ‘Listen to yourself!’ Theo cried out in misery. ‘Is this your kindness? Your good work?’

  Tears were trickling down his face, although he did not remember crying them.

  ‘You are young, Theo,’ Dr Saint said, now in a soothing manner. ‘You don’t understand the world. One day you will find out that there is no such thing as law and order out there. There is only the rule of whoever has the most power. That is why the world needs Good Works!’

  ‘It’s not true!’ Theo shouted. ‘If your works are so good, why did you have to lie to me all those years? What are you hiding? Why couldn’t you tell me the truth – about me bein
g the Candle Man?’

  ‘Tell you the truth?’ scoffed Dr Saint, a cold smile on his blistered lips. ‘About the monster you really are?’

  ‘The Candle Man was a hero – not a monster!’ Theo cried out. ‘I’ve seen the old newspapers – been into your secret room!’

  Dr Saint recoiled at this, truly shocked. His skin rippled like a disturbed pool.

  ‘A hero?’ Dr Saint echoed, giving himself time to recover his superior air. ‘At first, yes. But he had no control over his power. I gather you have used it already – seen its hideous effects?’ Dr Saint brandished his own hand, the once finely manicured fingers now bubbling and bony.

  ‘I have.’

  ‘And in your travels, I expect you have met the Eighty-eight?’

  ‘I – I’ve been there,’ Theo said.

  ‘Do you know what they are?’ taunted his guardian.

  ‘Magnus wouldn’t tell me.’

  Dr Saint sighed, shook his head and placed his hands together in his old familiar gesture of prayer.

  ‘The Candle Man created them!’ said his guardian. ‘They were all victims of Lord Wickland. Anyone and everyone who got in the way of his war with the Philanthropist. They all felt his touch. He wanted to melt them, but he knew little of his power and cared even less. It didn’t always destroy, sometimes it merely changed. All those ghouls and ghosts trapped down there are not dead – they are victims of the Candle Man!’

  Theo wanted to shout at Dr Saint, tell him this was just another one of his lies. But something held him back – a horrible suspicion that this was the truth, or at least a fragment of the truth. Theo had seen his powers dissolve two men. The bizarre way their bodies had been melted was certainly similar to the hideous transformations he had seen in the gulag. He looked at Dr Saint now, and saw his skin dribbling off his cheekbones as he spoke.

  ‘Thanks to your noble ancestor,’ Dr Saint crowed, sensing an advantage, ‘those poor souls are trapped between life and death, substance and disintegration.’

  ‘Like you!’ cried out Theo. ‘If they are the Eighty-eight, then you are number eighty-nine!’

  Dr Saint froze. His skin began to peel from his head with the shock of this unpleasant truth.

  ‘Yes,’ hissed Dr Saint, his face a dripping skull. ‘Like me!’

  A loud klaxon sounded from the main panel. The ghastly figure, still immaculately dressed in a dark suit, sprang to the controls and pressed a button. A series of alchemical symbols flashed on the main screen.

  ‘Final phase,’ Dr Saint said. ‘I’ve kept you talking long enough. Now I’m ready.’

  ‘Stop!’ Theo cried. ‘Don’t force me to use my power!’ He raised a glowing hand. To his astonishment, his guardian responded with cold, mocking laughter.

  ‘That is the one thing I want you to do!’ Dr Saint said. He gestured at the row of symbols illuminated on the screen behind him. The one in the centre was a queer elemental hieroglyph Theo had never seen before, like a letter ‘t’ with a cross at the top. Dr Saint’s eyes lit up with glee as if he was enjoying a secret joke.

  ‘Your power,’ said Dr Saint, ‘our power – the tripudon energy – is the final ingredient needed in my calculations. It is the tiny flame that will ignite this whole chamber and fulfil all my plans. Use it, and you will awaken my army!’

  Theo wavered. A cold feeling in his guts told him this horrible claim was all too true. They always know more than we do, Chloe had said. That was why they had kept him all those years – to use his flame for evil purposes.

  He would not let that happen. He would hold on to his cold fury, the way he had held back his hopes and desires every single day at Empire Hall.

  ‘Then I will not use my power,’ Theo said bitterly. ‘Not even to kill you!’ He stood defiantly before his guardian, his arms folded, hoping he would not pass out at any moment.

  ‘Your plan has failed!’ Theo said. ‘Your power is just a cheap copy of mine – I can see you falling apart before me!’

  Dr Saint admired his own shimmering flesh. It was now flickering with a weak flame.

  ‘My power will rise,’ he said, ‘when I use it to kill you!’ He leapt on Theo, clutching at his throat with hands of white fire. A blinding aura of green light blazed around the two figures. But Dr Saint’s skeletal fingers could not grip his intended victim. Energy flashed and crackled between them, hardly allowing them to touch.

  Theo tore himself free, and fell to the floor, his body glowing, his hair a shock of flame. He felt as if he was burning up; the power was crying out to be used, but he would not be its servant – he would be its master. Grimly, he refused to call upon it.

  Dr Saint bore down on him again. ‘I’ll kill you in the end!’ the melting man shrieked, pounding the exhausted boy with desperate fists. But Theo could feel no physical pain now, only the searing energy within him.

  ‘It’s over!’ Theo cried, breaking away and standing tall with his last strength. ‘You can’t beat me. The power won’t let you!’

  ‘I feel the flame! I feel the power rising!’ Dr Saint screamed, raising his hands up high.

  Suddenly Theo heard running footsteps. He realised he had taken his eyes off Mr Nicely for too long. He tried to turn and defend himself, but – to Theo’s surprise – the butler raced straight past him.

  With all his might, Mr Nicely pushed Dr Saint over the edge of the platform.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  The Undead

  Tristus was hit by a wall of water and swept away helplessly in the dark tide. After his encounter with Skun he had been seeking an old tunnel that would take him into the heart of the Well Chamber, but now he was caught in the alchemical streams released by Dr Saint. The garghoul was swirled through a maelstrom of water, rock and nameless debris – taken on a perilous ride that would have killed any human – until he was finally hurled into the ashes at the bottom of the network.

  He struggled to keep his feet, surrounded by boiling waters. Dark tombstones rose out of the foaming sea on all sides. He saw the great garghoul monument through the mists and realised he was at the resting place of the dreaded urughoul.

  Tristus let out a cry of dismay as the darkness all around him began to glimmer, then explode with the light of a myriad scintillating sparks.

  ‘The enemy has achieved golden time!’ Tristus gasped. ‘Then they have won the war – after all these years.’ Despair began to take hold of him as he saw the gravestones begin to topple, the ominous mounds stir and dark claws reach up from under the ground.

  Startling figures rose around him like the stone idols of an ancient religion. The warrior garghouls were twitching to life, the first wave of power calling them from out of their ashen graves. Tristus felt a chill in his very soul. Just one of these creatures would prove a formidable enemy for mankind. But here, there were hundreds – more than even he had anticipated.

  ‘It hardly matters if I save the boy now,’ he reflected. ‘No one could stand against such as these!’

  The waters rushed Tristus towards one of the creatures. To his surprise, its huge claw shattered on impact with his own tough hide. The warriors were brittle, their re-creation incomplete.

  ‘The vital spark is missing!’ he realised. ‘So where is it? What is Dr Saint waiting for?’

  The cry of agony seemed to fill the whole chamber. Dr Saint had fallen from the platform at the top of the tower and plummeted at least thirty feet on to the level below. Please let him be dead, Theo thought as he rushed to see over the edge.

  A nightmarish sight greeted Theo’s eyes. Dr Saint’s body had plunged on to an iron spar, part of the railings that ran round the lower balcony. The great spike had almost torn his body in two. He hung there, like a figure of medieval torture, his limbs jerking strangely.

  Theo glanced away, praying for the body to stop twitching. Just behind Theo, Mr Nicely was staring wide-eyed, his hands still smoking from where he had touched his employer.

  ‘I – I had to do it!’ Mr Nicely whis
pered, looking shaken to the core. ‘I knew it – it all went wrong a long time ago. But I – I was helpless to stop him. I just had to wait for the right moment …’

  Theo stared down below. It seemed as if the body was still writhing. It was hard to tell – the little lights of the golden time danced maddeningly before his eyes. The forces of the great alchemical experiment were still in motion. Thunder rolled around the chamber.

  ‘That wasn’t very nice, Mr Nicely,’ came a thin, unearthly voice.

  Theo’s blood froze. He gazed below. The broken skeleton was alive, staring back up at them with its one remaining eye.

  ‘You fools!’ Dr Saint screamed. ‘You cannot kill me!’

  Theo looked in horror as the apparition struggled to life. Its limbs had been pulled from their sockets, shredded sinew and torn muscle hung from its frame like string and rags. Only a flickering white energy seemed to be binding it together.

  ‘I’m coming to get you,’ cried the thin voice. ‘You first, Mr Oh-so-nicely!’

  Theo and the butler stared, aghast, as Dr Saint swung his broken body around on the iron spar. He extended a crooked arm to clutch an iron railing.

  Could it be true? Could Dr Saint really make it back up? Surely he was finished?

  ‘It’s up to you, Theo,’ Mr Nicely said quietly. ‘No other power can do it. It’s just you and him now.’

  Theo fought back a moment of panic as the truth of Mr Nicely’s words hit home. There was nobody to hide behind, nobody to defend or advise him. Only he – a true Wickland – could overcome the thing that his guardian had become.

  Dr Saint slowly began to drag himself off the spike that had pierced his torso. He was leaving several ribs behind but didn’t seem to notice.

  ‘You’re just a child, Theo!’ Dr Saint scoffed. ‘You were never going to defeat me! You were always too weak, like that fool who wanted to save you – Norrowmore.’

  ‘Mr Norrowmore beat you!’ Theo shrieked back. He would fight Dr Saint’s lies with his last breath. ‘He planned my rescue – all of it – before he died!’