“OK, OK, Ladies and Gentlemen, our tour starts with Cleopatra’s Needle…”Iona imitated Arthur’s theatrical story-telling style as best she could.
She told how this was a popular site for suicides, and how strange figures were sometimes seen throwing themselves into the river by the Needle.
At first she wanted to be exactly like Arthur, and tell all the stories precisely as he had done. When she reached her own front door, however, she began to deviate from the script.
“At this point Arthur would tell you about Sweeney Todd, but he’s a creep, so I’m going to tell you the story of the axe murderers’convention...”
Chapter Fourteen
Playing-cards
and Bandages
Later that night, in a dimly-lit room, four dark shapes were hunched around a very old table.
“Queen of hearts,”hissed a wheezy voice.
“Seven of clubs,”said the next figure, with the same wheeze in its speech. As he spoke, his bandaged hand placed a card on top of the one before.
“Snap!”shouted the third figure, slamming a seven of diamonds on top of the pile. A cloud of grey dust erupted from the impact of his hand on the table.
“No way man!”protested the fourth figure. “You always do that Nubkheperra. You’re not allowed to look at the card before you put it down.”
“But I didn’t,”complained the third figure huffily, then crossed his arms in front of his bony chest.
“You said‘Snap’before it touched the table–you must have looked!” Some of the bandages slipped from the fourth figure’s face as he spoke, revealing his ancient skeletal features. His waxy black skin was hanging off yellow bones. All the players were dead: long dead. They were mummies who spent their days in display-cases in the Egyptian Gallery of the British Museum, and their nights bickering over games of chance. It had been their nightly ritual for centuries.
“Henutmehyt is right. You don’t play fair.” The first figure stood up, knocking the table over in his outrage. “It was the same in Egypt, just because you were Pharaoh...”
“But we didn’t have cards in Egypt,”the ancient King protested.
“No but whatever we played you still sodding cheated,”snapped Henutmehyt,“knuckle-bones, marbles, the snake game: you cheated at the lot.”
Suddenly they stood rigid and still, listening intently to a sound they’d all heard at once. Although their ears had long since withered into tiny wrinkles of skin, their hearing was supernaturally keen.
“Quick, back to the sarcophagi!”
The mummies shambled down a dimly-lit corridor. Their ancient limbs were dry and stiff and their joints rustled like old tissue-paper. Although they were true ghosts and could float free from their long-dead bodies, they had taken to reanimating their mouldy cadavers after seeing a film starring Boris Karloff in 1932.
There was a sudden crash behind them as a black-clad figure smashed through a window. The electronic wail of a burglar-alarm competed with rasping shouts of panic and the cackle of military-like radio messages.
“Father Pious, I’ve got three, no make that four targets, travelling west along corridor B.”
The mummies heard the voice behind them a split-second before the noise of gunfire filled the air. One of the ghosts, that of Nubkheperra (the card cheat) abandoned his body and fled up through the roof. His bandage-clad cadaver clattered to the ground.
Two more figures dressed in black appeared in front of the remaining mummies and opened fire.
Bodies that had been preserved for millennia, carefully excavated, transported and cared for by museum experts, were ripped to shreds. The souls that had inhabited them were forcibly put to rest.
The ghost of Nubkheperra looked mournfully at his broken body from behind some stone tablets in a glass case. His ethereal eyes narrowed as he turned them towards the black figures.
One of them turned to their leader“One got away Father. What should we do?”
“The secular Police will be here any minute; we need to get out of here now,”came Father Pious’irritated reply. “He’s lost his mummy; he won’t cause any more trouble.” He paused and nodded towards the museum’s security cameras,“We’ll get the highwayman tomorrow night, then leave the country before we get too famous.”
They turned and fled into the night, ancient bones crunching under feet as they ran.
Chapter Fifteen
The Eternal Battle
“So what next?” Morag asked Gibbs as they walked across Waterloo Bridge.
“We fight the eternal battle against despair.” Gibbs uber-gloomy voice was even more melodramatic than usual.
“How on earth did ye ever manage to get a job as a minstrel with that bonny, sunny disposition?”
“I never really enjoyed it,”Gibbs replied with a glum shrug. “I wanted to be a thatcher and mend roofs.”
“Och why didn’t ye, wee hen?”
“My father was a minstrel and his father before him. He wanted me to pass down the family traditions and songs. But I could never remember the words.” Gibbs shuddered glumly, then suddenly, his eyes lit up -“But I was very good on the lute.” He pulled something like a small, rounded guitar out of his bag. It was ornately carved in pale wood. Like Gibbs himself, his lute was faintly transparent: the ghost of a musical instrument.
He smiled with a faraway look in his eye; Morag returned the smile as warmly as her irritation with this morose minstrel would allow.
He played a few notes and Morag was not sure if he had started the song or if he was still trying to tune his lute.
Then he started to sing,“There’s a lady who’s sure…”
Morag felt the smile slip from her face.
“…all that glitters is gold…”
The singing was dreadful.
“…and she’s buying…”
Half of the lute’s strings were flat, and the rest were sharp.
“…a stairway…”
The chorus of howling cats that had struck up around them sounded more tuneful.
“…to heaven.”
By the time Gibbs had finished singing the first line Morag could well imagine how he had come to be a dead minstrel. However, she was aware that Gibbs was her only friend in a strange city and even stranger afterlife, so she tried to change the subject.
“Och hen, that’s lovely,”she lied,“but are we nearly there yet?”
Gibbs looked around and seemed disappointed as he replied,“Yes, just around this corner.”
They were walking through dark and dingy streets. For a moment Morag felt nervous: “Hadn’t we better quieten down? It looks like a rough old part of town.”
“Dear lady, there’s no need to worry, the worst has already happened - you’re dead!”
“It’s no’the worst thing that can happen!”Morag shuddered, remembering her husband Harold’s cry as his ghost had been exorcised.
* * *
They finally stopped at an almost derelict building surrounded by closed-down factories. The building had very few windows that were not boarded-up nor broken.
They looked at the list of names by a long row of doorbells beside the main door. Morag tried to press the bell of the room they wanted, but her finger passed right through it.
“You’ll need a lot of practice before you can do that sort of thing,”explained Gibbs, as he leant through her and pressed the buzzer.
They waited for a few minutes and just when they were about to try the bell again, Arthur opened the door. “Gibbs!”he exclaimed,“How nice to see you, it’s been at least fifty years; and who is your young friend?”
Chapter Sixteen
Finding Arthur
Iona was elated, her ghost walk had been a success. She couldn’t believe that the sightseers had accepted her stories.
She had even livened up the dull bits of the walk where Arthur would talk about the history of the streets and historic residents. At these points Iona made up stories about serial-killers, carnivorous du
stbins, and a nineteenth-century lady naturalist who had pressed flowers in life, and in death pressed lost tourists between the pages of her gigantic book. Iona described how she had pressed Australians, Germans, French and Japanese, and, with a cross look at the large American couple who kept asking awkward questions, added,“all she needs to complete her collection is a couple from the United States.”
When the walk finished Iona had hurried down to the tiny South Bank office of‘London Sightseeing Ghost Walks,’but the office had been closed and it was next morning before she had found anyone there.
William, the man she had met before in the HQ, was there at ten the following day. He looked horrified as Iona told him about Arthur’s absence, and even more horrified when she told him that she had taken his walk herself.
“How old are you young lady?”
Iona hesitated,“eighteen.”
“The truth.”
“OK, OK, sixteen. But I’m very old for my age.”
“Blimey!”William ran a hand over his balding head. “If the Police found out I had a sixteen-year-old girl looking after a group of tourists I’d be finished.”
“It wasn’t my fault,”protested Iona.
“No young lady, I don’t suppose it was. I’m not cross with you, it’s blinking Arthur I’m cross with.” William sighed deeply “He’s my best walker, but his heart hasn’t been in it lately.”
“Can I’phone him to see if he’s OK?”asked Iona as she took her mobile phone from her pocket.
“Sorry love,”shrugged William,“I haven’t got a number for him.”
“What about an address?”
William consulted his address book. “Flat thirteen, Shelly Apartments, Bloch Road.” He paused for a moment. “Not a good area for a young girl like you. I’ll call in on him in my lunch hour, make sure he’s going to take his tours today. He’d better have a blinking good reason for missing his walk!”
Iona didn’t argue, but she repeated the address over and over in her head as she bid William a hasty goodbye and ran to the nearest newsagent to look up Bloch Road in a London A to Z.
Chapter Seventeen
‘We’re for vengeance’
“So how long ago did you die?” Morag asked Gibbs as they turned away from Arthur’s road. They were walking through roads illuminated by the sickly yellow glow of the street-lights.
“W-well, let me think…It must be five... no, six hundred years.” The medieval minstrel sighed deeply. “I’ve been dead longer than I’ve been alive. My life is just a distant m-memory now.”
“Och, goodness me!” Morag looked startled. “I didn’t think I’d be hanging around like this forever. I want to be with my Harold again.” Her thoughts returned to her late husband. “I thought my death would reunite us, but he seems further awa’than ever. My poor wee hen!”
She shook her head, straightened up, and spoke to herself,“What would Harold say? He’d say,‘Pull yourself together you daft wee woman,’and he’d be right.”
She looked back at Gibbs.“Six hundred years eh?” She forced a smile,“you’re an expert at being dead then?”
“My dear lady, I don’t know what to say.” Gibbs’sympathetic nods were cut short by some more of his violent convulsions. When he steadied himself he continued,“I-If I were an expert at being dead I wouldn't be stuck here!”
But Morag had stopped listening. She was looking up into the dark sky. Her sorrow and anxiety were once more getting the better of her; she started speaking to herself again,“What does it all mean?”
Gibbs gave a gentle cough,“I-If I may suggest something?” He paused to make sure she was back with him. “I’m guessing that you’ve stayed behind to avenge his exorcism.”
Morag waited politely while Gibbs gibbered uncontrollably for a few moments. “Hga wggga wagga baaaah! Ugh, please excuse me dearest lady. Once you’ve wreaked your revenge, or done some serious h-haunting, you'll move on as soon as you’ve arrived. I’ve seen hundreds like you come and go.”
“Och maybe you’re right.”
“Of course I am,”smiled Gibbs. “We will arrive at Judge Hawkin’s haunt in a few moments and call the Parliament. That’s the first step to revenge and the first step back to Harold.”
* * *
As they were talking the gentle breeze had gathered strength. Dust swirled around and a tangle of cloth fluttered and moved and slowly took human shape. With a sense of disgust Morag realised that the cloth was a mess of dirty bandages smeared with a number of exotically-coloured stains.
“Who’s there?”Gibbs called into the shifting mass of grubby material.
Once it settled into human form a dry voice like the sound of a quill on parchment spoke,“I am Nubkheperra. I have come for vengeance.”
“Och!”Morag exclaimed,“That’s nice, we’re for vengeance too.”
Chapter Eighteen
Shelly Apartments
Thee area where Arthur lived was not a place Iona would have visited at night. Even in the pale afternoon light it seemed a dangerous place to be. Broken glass crunched underfoot as she approached an almost derelict building surrounded by closed-down factories. The building had three boarded-up windows for each one containing glass, and at least half of the glass ones were broken.
Standing in front of the Shelley Apartments Iona found herself in a puddle so foul-smelling that she did not want to guess what it might be.
As she walked up the path to the building she wiped the soles of her shoes on some coarse grass sprouting between the cracked paving stones.
By the door was a panel of doorbells with labels and room numbers.
The list of occupants included:“O’Leary’s Loans Agency,” “Smith & Smith’s Security,” “Sharon - genuine model,”and, at number thirteen the name“John Palmer”was crossed out, and underneath, the name“Arthur Terpynne”had been hand-written. Iona was sure that was the number William had told her.
She pressed the bell.
There was no response. She waited and waited, tried again and waited some more.
Eventually a woman with tired eyes and a mini-skirt left the building without casting a glance at Iona or acknowledging her half-hearted apology for being in the way. Nor did she wait for the door to close properly behind her. Iona caught it before the latch clicked, and with one last glance at the apartment list, she slipped inside.
* * *
Having come this far, she resolved at least to go and look at his front door. Maybe the bell was broken, maybe he wasn’t in, or maybe he was too ill to answer the bell. She had to know.
Predictably the lift was broken so she had to walk up the unlit staircase, more broken glass crunching underfoot. When she arrived at the door, it had peeling green paint and a small pane of reinforced frosted glass.
Iona bent over to read another grubby label similar to the one outside the front, which also read,“Arthur Terpynne.”
Just as she was wondering if this really could be her Arthur she noticed that the door was not fully closed.
“Arthur,”she called out,“are you alright?”
Silence.
“Are you in there?”
Iona pushed the door open and cautiously stepped inside.
Chapter Nineteen
St. Cyril
Father Pious grimaced and spat on to the floor as he left the crypt. His fellow priests looked at him expectantly. “God is surely with us Fathers,”his smile was completely devoid of warmth,“it seems we have just hit the jackpot.”
“What is it now?”asked Father Thomas, carefully adjusting the bandages around his face.
“I have just been informed of the time and location of the biggest gathering of the undead we have ever heard of: hundreds of the devils under one roof. I would say this was an historic occasion.” For a moment his smile seemed almost genuine,“I would say this was historic ifour work were not so secret that no historians would ever write about it.”
“How are we going to deal with hundreds of them?” Father T
homas asked with a sigh. “There are only four of us and we are too tired and too injured for such a battle.”
Pious tutted. “Where is your faith young Father? Does not Holy Scripture tell us how the boy David defeated the mighty giant Goliath with only a few pebbles and a sling? Besides, I have a contact who can get us access to the chamber where the Parliament is held, andI’m calling for reinforcements.”
“How can we call for reinforcements if our work is top secret?” Ever since Father Thomas had joined the company he had asked questions. However, since his injury his eagerness and awe had given way to bitterness and scepticism.
“We will call on the Third Order of St Cyril. They normally work in Africa or Latin America, but I know they have a monastery on the south coast of England. If the Abbot is agreeable they can send a delegation within two hours.”
“Who are the Order of St Cyril?”
“ThirdOrder,”corrected Father Pious. “St. Cyril was a scholar and leader of the Church. The first two Orders of St Cyril are monks and nuns who are teachers. But there is another secret Order. Where Cyril lived in fourth century Alexandria there was a pagan scholar, a woman, a rationalist called Hypatia. Cyril had his followers kill her by slicing her with shells and sharpened flints. Ever since there has been a militant Order of St Cyril, ready to take up arms against the enemies of the faith. They are brutal, merciless and very effective. They are our friends”
Chapter Twenty
Bleak House
“Arthur, are you home?”Iona called into the small hallway.
Her chunky boots left footprints in the thick dust on the bare floorboards as she cautiously entered the flat.
She wrinkled her nose against the smell, so strong it hit her like walking nose-first into a brick wall. It was like rotten flesh and every putrid thing she had ever smelt. It was the kind of stench she could imagine never being able to get out of her nose. It was a smell she could taste, like poison on her tongue; she tightened her lips to keep it out of her mouth.
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