by Robin Jarvis
Searching those frostbitten faces, Neil quickly found the one he knew would be there. 'Chief Inspector!' he yelled.
In the centre of the large group, a tall figure stirred and glanced up the alleyway to where the children stood. With a shout, he hastened over to greet them. His uniform concealed beneath several layers of clothing, Chief Inspector Hargreaves met Neil and Edie with a sombre expression graven in his hollow-cheeked face.
'I took it upon myself to summon the others,' he addressed Edie with solemn reverence. 'At this, the time of judgement, it is fitting that we stand and wait for the outcome. But what has happened? I thought you were inside the museum.'
The girl eyed him sternly. 'Nirinel has been destroyed,' she proclaimed for him and the others to hear. 'The last root of the World Tree is dead—and so are Urdr and Skuld.'
Despondent cries issued from the gathering and the police officer took a horrified step backwards. 'The Fates are no more?' he murmured incredulously. 'We saw that the three figures about the entrance were broken, but we did not dare to think... Then the eternal dark must surely take us.'
Edie snorted and barged past him. 'Keep yer beard on,' she declared. 'It's not finished yet.'
Hargreaves stared at her, but it was Neil who answered. 'We're going back inside,' the boy said.
'But the doorway is sealed!' the Chief Inspector exclaimed. 'The ice is a foot thick.'
'Getting in is the least of our problems,' Neil told him. 'You don't know what's loose in there.'
Reaching the entrance, Edie found that the fragments of the bronze sculpture, which had represented Miss Ursula above the sign, had been cemented to the ground by the frost. Gazing at that imposing Victorian facade, the girl saw that it was indeed embedded within a solid curtain of ice. In those bleak, frozen depths, the oaken door was almost impossible to see. There was no way anyone could break through.
A superior smile curved over Edie's mouth as she raised her eyes to that gilded sign above the arched doorway.
'It has to let me in,' she said with sudden authority. 'I belong here. You can't keep me out—I'm the daughter of the Three.'
Upon her head the silver strands of her hood shone coldly, as a deep furrow creased her brow. Then, within the ice, beneath those bronze letters, the one remaining feature of the ornate entrance was lit with a green, pulsing glow. There, the moulded face of a cherub gleamed under her commanding glare. Suddenly, the alley chimed with a brittle, crackling din as the ice which smothered the door shattered and collapsed in great, glittering fractures that spilled out on to the frozen ground.
Over the children's feet the glacial splinters tumbled, until at last the way to the door was clear. With a prolonged squeak of its hinges, the stout oak barrier yawned open.
Edie tossed her head, snapping out of her fierce concentration. 'This is it,' she told Neil. 'You ready?'
Staring into the main hallway, the boy gave a resolute nod. 'Let's get it over with,' he said.
Turning to the well wishers, Edie told them to wait a little longer.
'You sure you want to go in there, just the two of you?' the Chief Inspector asked, uncertainly. 'Wouldn't it be safer if we all...'
'No!' she snapped. 'This is our Destiny, not yours. You lot stay out here. If what we're gonna try don't work, you'll know soon enough.'
Hargreaves bowed. 'Then all our hopes go with you,' he said respectfully.
Yet Edie Dorkins was already stepping over the fallen ice to the doorway and, with a final glance at the Chief Inspector and the descendants of Askar, Neil followed.
Inside The Wyrd Museum, the chaos of the churning centuries had ceased completely. The familiar, panelled entrance hall met the children's gaze when they clambered inside, but here, too, the horrendous winter had come.
Knives of jagged ice stabbed viciously from the ceiling and the shadowy corners were heaped with snow. The statues that Jack Timms had disfigured and defaced, dripped with glass-like needles. Looking at the stairs, the children saw that the banisters were painted white with the extreme, hoary cold.
'Your dad's been this way,' Edie whispered.
'That thing's not my father!' Neil denied angrily.
The girl peered into The Roman Gallery and the connecting corridor. Devastation was everywhere. All the exhibits had been thrown down and the walls had suffered a dreadful, hacking violence. Every frost-sparkling surface had been ripped and smashed by the berserking ice lord, and they both knew the reason why.
'It's searchin' for the Loom,' Edie said. 'Tearin' the museum apart bit by bit till it's found.'
From somewhere upstairs there suddenly came a frantic crashing, and they both started in alarm.
'Least we know it hasn't been discovered yet,' Neil breathed.
'Can't be long though,' the girl added. 'We've got to get there first.'
'Upstairs, where that thing is?'
Edie nodded and moved towards the steps, pausing to plunge her hand into the pocket of her coat once more, praying she had guessed correctly.
Without warning, the entrance abruptly slammed shut behind them and, outside, the ice seeped back over the door, locking them within.
'I won't be able to open that again,' Edie murmured. 'Not from in 'ere—the head won't hear me.'
Neil glanced warily up the stairs. 'Let's just get to the Loom as fast as we can,' he urged.
'Not yet,' the girl told him. 'First, I've got to get summink from The Separate Collection.'
'We haven't time!'
'If we don't, then we might as well give up now!'
Neil groaned. 'All right,' he relented. 'If you're sure.'
Up the slippery, ice-covered stairs they ventured, and all the while those terrible sounds of destruction grew steadily closer. No expanse of wall had been left unscathed in the Frost Giant's furious hunt for the device made from the first branch hewn from Yggdrasill. Savage gashes ran the length of the stairs to the first floor landing, where a whole section of panelling had been torn down and the plaster beneath ravaged by a frenzied assault.
Standing there, looking at the wreckage, with that awful clamour thundering endlessly about them, Neil stared at the landing door and in a small, anguished voice said, 'Edie, it's on this floor. The Frost Giant's in there somewhere.'
The girl's eyes opened wide. 'We've got to reach The Separate Collection,' she breathed. 'We must.'
Cautiously, they edged towards the door, fearfully moving into the passageway, where they held their breath and listened to that constant hammering turmoil.
'That's coming from either The Egyptian Suite...' Neil muttered.
'Or The Separate Collection,' the girl agreed.
Neil shivered. 'Which way should we go?' he asked.
Edie pointed down the corridor. 'It'll take us straight there,' she said. 'Better than runnin' through the rooms and bumpin' smack bang into him.'
They raced through the passageway where the remains of Mr Jamrach's stuffed menagerie still cluttered the floor, leaping over broken display cases and crumbling corpses.
Louder now that dreadful riot boomed and, reaching the far entrance of The Separate Collection, Neil hesitated as he grasped the doorknob. The whole of the first floor was juddering under that terrible, pounding fury. Even the air trembled under the severity of the Frost Giant's belligerent attacks, and the boy tried to quell the terror that steamed within him.
'What if it's already in here?' he whimpered.
Edie gripped his arm. 'Then we'll have to run like the clappers,' she said flatly. 'Go on—have a butcher's.'
Within the room, the calamitous uproar intensified. With a quailing heart, Neil inched the door open and peered inside. Gusts of squalling frost were charging between the display cabinets. All was glittering white and, upon the counter at the far side, the body of Miss Celandine Webster was interred within a high drift of snow. But it was the entrance to The Egyptian Suite which commanded the children's attention, for it was in there that the possessed Brian Chapman rampaged.
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br /> Out from that windowless room, the deafening commotion came blasting as the unclean fiend which inhabited the caretaker's body clawed and smote the hieroglyph-covered walls, hurling the sarcophagi out of his way as though they were no more than shoe-boxes.
As Neil and Edie watched, great holes were smashed in the panels of The Separate Collection as the ice lord roared with fury and hatred on the other side.
Biting her top lip, Edie Dorkins pushed the door open a little wider. The object she wanted resided in one of the large cases, and with her eyes fixed upon the storm which blasted from the ruined Egyptian Suite, she stole inside.
At once Neil dragged her back into the corridor. 'You're crazy!' he hissed. 'That thing'll come barging out any second. You'll be caught and killed!'
Edie glared at him, but she knew he was right. 'Only one thing fer it then,' she decided. 'You'll have to distract it for me.'
'What?'
'I'll run back through the other rooms and, while you lure it away, I can nip in, get what I need and dash out again.'
Neil shook his head. 'It'll never work!' he objected. 'And if you think I'm going to stick my head in there and be a sitting duck for that... that monster, you're even madder than—'
But Edie had pulled away from him and was already haring back up the passageway. 'Meet me upstairs!' she called. 'The Websters' room in the attic! And don't let it catch you!'
'Edie!' the boy cried desperately. 'No! Come back.'
Laughing grimly, the fey Dorkins girl raced around the twisting corner and Neil knew that there was no dissuading her. He had to act as a decoy. The time had come for him to confront that abhorrent apparition of his father, and he battled to master the terror which surged within him at that harrowing prospect.
Allowing Edie as much time as he thought she would need to run from the corridor and into The Dissolution Gallery, Neil waited. Each slow second was an agony to bear. Then he returned to the door and spied through the crack.
Brian Chapman had lumbered from the demolished Egyptian Suite and was now destroying that room which housed the exhibits too perilous for the outside world. Through the blitzing tempest which howled around the displays the boy stared, to where the figure of his father vented the full fury of the malevolent spirit within him against the shivering walls.
The sight which met his eyes was more horrible than anything he had imagined, and it was then that he discovered he had no more tears left to cry.
Neil's father was now a misshapen parody of a human being. The weakest link in the chain of those who dwelt within The Wyrd Museum, he was the ideal host for the obscene forces of those who had waited an eternity for their chance.
Over the caretaker's body an even greater, more grotesque transformation had taken place. The ice lord which controlled him had swollen and burgeoned in strength. From the fastness of the frozen northern wastes, the Frost Giant projected its pitiless malice, invading and infecting every cell of the man it had made its creature.
'My God!' the boy spluttered.
The clothes hung from its bulging, buckled back in tattered shreds, and the hands that clenched the Spear of Longinus were distended talons of ice. Into the juddering walls that rusted blade went striking, and those unclean claws ripped and lashed against the breached and quivering surfaces.
For the moment, the face of that abomination was turned away, but Neil knew that, as soon as he called out, he would be compelled to look upon those altered features, and he wondered how much longer his courage could endure. Yet Edie must have reached the wreckage of The Egyptian Suite by now and, steeling himself, the boy pushed the door fully open to brave the blasting tempest which scourged that benighted room.
The Frost Giant gouged away the plaster from the underlying bricks, splintering the oaken panels with an unhallowed frenzy. It was so intent on this destruction that it did not observe Neil's scared figure when he entered.
Neil opened his mouth to call out, but even his voice was too afraid to make itself known to that lamentable horror and he stood there, stricken and silent, just like one of the statues which had once been part of the collection. Then his cringing fear was broken as, in the decimation of The Egyptian Suite, Edie Dorkins' small face appeared over the mounded rubble.
The caretaker's son glanced from her to the distorted vision of his father and, in a warbling cry, called out, 'Hey! Over here!'
At once the violent, hammering blows were stilled and the Frost Giant was finally aware of him. With torrents of hail raging about its humped form, the monstrous shape turned its malignant head, and Neil stumbled against the doorway, too distraught to utter another sound. As an ogre that figure now appeared, but it was that repellent countenance from which Neil's sight recoiled.
Brian Chapman's face had warped and blistered out of all recognition. Over his thin nose, where branching forks of ice erupted from his nostrils, a huge, ridged forehead bulged. Across that ballooning skull, the once-lank hair spiked in razor-sharp spines. Under that bone-bursting brow, the Frost Giant's eyes were clustered ice crystals which looked as though they belonged to some gargantuan, glacier-dwelling insect. Within the rime-locked beard, blue lips had peeled back to the ears, revealing a pernicious expanse of bloodless gums from which countless jags and thorns of ice protruded, and out of that ghastly maw the atrocious, evil winter came fulminating.
Nothing remotely human remained in that loathsome burlesque of a face and the fragmented eyes shone a deathly light upon the boy who cowered by the door.
Then from the awful, howling throat, the Frost Giant's chilling voice spoke. 'Where is the Loom?’ it demanded with a rumbling shriek. ‘Where is the last remnant of Yggdrasill?’
Neil fumbled for the door, the inextinguishable might of that grievous aberration swallowing his nerve.
'Where is the Loom?’ it thundered, taking an intimidating step closer. 'Thou shalt answer!’
The boy saw Edie Dorkins creep out from the ruined entrance of The Egyptian Suite, behind that horrendous apparition. Choked and stammering, he finally managed to cry, 'Where you'll never find it!'
'Show it unto me!’ the ogre of the first cold commanded.
Lingering as long as his daunted valour could bear, Neil saw the creature come stomping forward, brandishing the spear in its deadly grasp and casting the cabinets aside.
'I wilt find it!’ the cruel voice screeched. ‘My brethren shalt be freed.’
That was all the boy could withstand and, throwing himself from the room, he pelted up the corridor as fast as his shivering legs would carry him.
A vicious crash suddenly exploded only inches from his head. In a bombarding barrage of plaster, the passage wall erupted as the Frost Giant smashed its massive fists against the panels of the room beyond, and Neil was hurled to the ground. Underneath him, he felt the jarring thud of the ogre's stampede as it lurched towards the door. The boy scrambled to his feet, then charged towards the landing.
'That had betterVe been enough time, Edie!' he bawled. 'It's after me now!'
From The Separate Collection the ice lord burst, its eyes blazing in the gloom, and the hail-teeming gale stinging from the bellowing mouth. Up the corridor that scathing, hunched horror lunged, the spines of its hair raking the ceiling. Neil Chapman fled before it—racing for his life.
Chapter 26 - An Eternal Empire of Cold and Night
Out on to the landing the boy flew, skidding over the ice-brindled wreckage that was strewn everywhere. Close behind him, the trumpeting rage of the Frost Giant came booming out into the stairwell, and the churning air was sullied by scoring, scratching snow.
Up the stairs Neil catapulted, not pausing for breath until he reached the third floor. Below, the ogre that his father had become stomped over the splintering steps, and a whirling white storm tore before its ominous approach.
Panting furiously, Neil charged over that topmost landing, flew across the dim passage and dived into The Tiring Salon. The obliterating cold had not yet reached that spacious galle
ry but, as he sped through it, the boy knew that it would only be a matter of moments before the finery of the thronging mannequins would be stained and speckled with ice.
Leaping over the headless dummies, Neil finally attained the small door bearing the image of a flowering tree. In his panicking flight, he kicked it open. In the narrow space beyond, where the green-carpeted steps rose to the Websters' attic apartment, he slammed it shut behind him and saw that Edie Dorkins was waiting there.
Standing upon the middle stair with her back to him, the girl was staring at the large oil painting. She had removed the jumper she wore under her coat and now held the gathered welt in her hand, with the empty arms trailing down the step. The grubby garment was strangely filled with a spherical bulk, and Neil guessed that whatever she had taken from The Separate Collection was stuffed inside.
Before he had time to ask, The Tiring Salon abruptly resounded with the terrible roaring of the Frost Giant as the ogre thundered on to the third floor, and Neil hurried over to the stairway. Up the steps he bounded, heading for the curtain-covered door at the top whilst, outside, the long gallery rang with the ice lord's wrath.
Dragging the damask drape aside, Neil stared desperately into the Websters' cramped little room, then turned back to Edie. The girl was still gazing at the painting.
'Edie!' Neil called. 'Where now?'
Over the polished floorboards where once the Fates had danced, the distorted vision of Neil's father crashed and, beneath the small ornate door, the first grains of snow came flurrying.
'Edie!'
Tilting her head to one side, Edie Dorkins narrowed her almond eyes. 'This is a poky attic for such a big buildin',' she reflected. 'What's under the rest of its roof?'
Stretching out her free hand, she touched that part of the painting where the forgotten artist had portrayed his indistinct version of the Loom, and curdy commanded, 'Lemme see!'
With that, the entire painting, including its baroque, gilded frame, slid silently to one side. There, revealed behind its hanging space, was a low opening where three steps led up into a hidden, secret room.
