by Paula Wynne
As fast as it had arrived, the memory faded. She stood for a moment, struggling to retrieve it, desperate to remember those little details about her mother.
When she turned and glanced at the kitchen once more, it took on the bruised hue of decomposing flesh. Kelby swung around and tiptoed between the glass fragments. Out in the hall, she leaned against the wall. It was sad such a terrible place had reminded her of her mother, but she was heartened that some precious memories still remained inside her.
Still unable to find what she’d come for, Kelby suspected Gary’s note indicated a room number. But none of these rooms bore signs. She fled, too afraid to look into any more rooms.
At the end of the long passage, a large arched landing area proudly showed off a carved flight of steps. For a moment, Kelby admired the stained glass skylight which sent shards of splintered colour down the dark stairs.
With a knot of dread unravelling in her stomach, Kelby peered down the curling staircase to the lower floor wondering if Hawk had ventured that far.
‘Hawk?’ she whispered.
Now convinced Gary’s number indicated a room, she had to see if she could find it below. Picking her way between rotting floorboards, she crept into the basement of the derelict building. Each stair proved to be perilous as it squeaked and croaked under her feet.
Some had rotted away, others had holes where wood worms had eaten through the once solid oak. At the bottom of the creaking stairway, the musty odour became stronger, clinging to her nose.
Half way down another long corridor she passed a broken and rusting wheelchair, minus one wheel and the seat eaten by rats. The sharp stench of urine and musk grew stronger. She was heading deeper and deeper into the bowels of the mansion.
When Kelby thought she could take no more of this stinking place, a faded sign on the wall indicated an arrow.
And a number. 42A.
116
Leaping into the air, María kicked the uncloaked soldier leaning over her mother. He fell back, more overcome with surprise than hurt.
The unbooted soldier dropped the bucket and reached to grab her. María darted under his arms and spun back. She grabbed the bucket, dumping it over his head. Using the point of her carved wooden-soled clog, she stomped with all her strength on his toes.
‘¡Ai-yee!’ her war cry echoed around the room.
Then, with both hands, she barrelled towards the unbooted soldier, uttering another war cry. Her lithe body smacked into his. The force shoved him into the fire. His frightened yelp echoed inside the bucket. She spun around, grabbed the hair-matted dagger and hurled it into the flames.
The uncloaked soldier dropped her mother and scrambled to his feet, cursing.
María dived to her knees and grabbed two of the quills still drying on the edge of the hearth. With the instinct of a killer, she spun back to face him.
And plunged the quills into his eyes.
The man’s screech filled the room. He gripped the quills, trying to pull them out, but tottered around like a drunk in a dark cobbled alley. He stumbled into the unbooted soldier who had wrangled the bucket from over his head, then he banged into the wall and passed out.
Beside the pile of clothing still to be packed away, María spotted her ink stained chemise.
The unbooted soldier came at her from behind.
Without thinking, she ducked, grabbed the ink stained chemise and tossed it high over her shoulders. His head caught in the loop of muslin that descended over the two of them. She yanked on it, jerking him into her back as the chemise suffocated him. Even though she had no chance against all three, she had to maim at least one. When the others came at her, she’d fight to the death.
The leather jerkin, still holding the tongs into her mother, let them go and jumped up. With her lips pulled back, María bared her teeth at him. He lunged at her with his huge leather glove.
María instinctively took a deep breath a second before the glove clamped over her mouth. She struggled against him for a long moment. She had to save Madre.
Nothing else mattered.
Without air to fuel her, María’s strength ebbed away. The grip she had on the chemise behind her slackened, and the unbooted soldier’s head came free. He grabbed her hands and twisted the chemise around them. In front of her, the leather jerkin held the glove over her mouth with his other hand on her throat.
María took one last glimpse of her mother’s bloodied breasts and looked into her eyes.
Then her beloved kitchen went black.
117
Outside Homerton Laboratory Olaf slinked around the giant’s beamer. Despite its age he loved the colour. Metallic shades reminded him of guns. Even though he hated guns and refused to use one, he still admired their fire power.
Nee, he preferred using his own body strength and turning his Tag into an animaal act. It was an art to use items around a killing scene. And this weird place certainly had enough creativity for him to use.
Most people would never guess by the look of him that he loved reading books, even soppy ones. The best ones took him away from his life and into another world where the seedy forest of his teens didn’t exist.
The forest that had turned a boy into an animaal.
Others took him straight back to that day. Those stories taught him things school couldn’t and steeled his resolve to stop the place haunting him.
Olaf clenched his fists and watched how his biceps jumped into sinew. He had no idea how the devil had found the lab but something in her brother’s den must have led her here. That meant he hadn’t scoured it properly after he’d silenced Wade.
A fault on his part. One he wasn’t going to let Jurgen find out. The German would go totally berserk.
Olaf decided to sort this out first and head back to trash Wade’s shed. He’d make it look like a robbery. Rather that, than not finding Wade’s notes. Thankfully, MG trusted him enough to believe there were no notes.
All had changed with the devil sister’s discovery of the rizado lab.
Olaf heard the ground crunching as a twig broke amongst dried leaves. He stopped and listened for other sounds. Apart from an occasional breeze rustling the dead leaves littering the drive, silence settled upon Homerton Lab.
He’d give the devil a few minutes to get stuck in the maze of corridors and hallways, then he’d corner her.
But first he had to go after the giant.
Rather than killing two birds with one stone, having them separated would give him two spoils.
More excitement for the dragon.
118
An eerie glow oozed out of number 42A. With a shaking hand, Kelby nudged the door open wider. It hung ajar. The painted number had almost completely flaked off.
A pungent stench pierced her nose. Death and chemicals formed a noxious concoction.
Her mind flashed back to her school days, and how once the science teacher had to call Gary to take her home. He had been only a little fella, but he had bravely taken his nauseous older sister by the hand, and walked her home. Now, she wondered why he had led her to such a disgusting place.
Inside 42A, Kelby immediately saw it was Homerton’s hidden laboratory. As she sneaked inside, her shoes squelched on a sticky residue stuck to the floor. Something dangled in front of her face. Kelby jumped back, afraid a creepy creature had tossed its web to stop her entering.
Phew, only a long corded light switch.
She tugged on it and peered around. Opposite her, a fridge sagged into the corner. Cold air rattled through its pipes and echoed around the lab. The eerie sound reminded Kelby of films about people living under New York who communicated by tapping on pipes.
Next to the fridge a solid oak door looked as if it hadn’t been opened in years. Above it, a wall clock ticked. A freezer hummed eeril
y in the opposite corner. Whilst it emitted only a quiet pulse, a variety of other sounds filled the room, including chiming beeps and blips from strange looking apparatus. Machinery boiled and bubbled with vats of unknown substances. Kelby shivered, refusing to imagine what they contained.
Despite the mansion’s decay, this laboratory was equipped with the sophisticated tools of modern science: neatly stacked test tubes, beakers, flasks of coloured liquids and bunsen burners. Even an operating table.
An impressive sculpture with funny-shaped coils of glass glinted in the fluorescence. A large blackboard on the wall was covered in scribbles of unreadable notes and equations.
Kelby gagged at the stench. It made her eyes water. There were rows of containers of dead animals preserved in formaldehyde, some recognisable and other simply grotesque organs. She spotted brains sealed in a glass jar. In the bright light, a rabbit’s two front teeth jutted out. Beside it a cat’s wet furry head, soaked in chemicals, peered at her, its eyes transfixed in death. Its tongue hung out beside its fangs.
Nausea gripped Kelby. Why on earth had Gary led her to this sordid lab?
119
María came round and gagged on the ink stained chemise rammed into her mouth. Tied to one of the kitchen chairs, she opened her eyes to see her mother still on the floor in front of her.
In her fury, she hadn’t thought about her own life. Everything she did was focused on saving Madre.
‘She’s awake.’ A voice close to her ear smelt sour and rancid.
‘Let’s get on with it.’
A red-hot stick from the fire glowed in front of María.
‘Close your eyes and you’ll get the same treatment you gave our friend over there.’
María’s gaze slid to the left to see the cloaked and quilled man slumped against the wall with her mother’s apron wrapped around his head.
Keeping the glowing poker in front of her face, the unbooted soldier forced her to look at her mother. Once again the leather jerkin lifted the searing clawed metal spider out of the flames and clamped it to her mother’s breasts.
Her mother let out another shriek and fainted.
María screeched into the gag. She struggled against the ropes, ignoring the sting of the rope rubbing her arms raw. In her attempt to get closer to her mother, she shunted the chair aside. One of its legs rocked on the uneven stone floor, and the chair crashed over. María’s head slammed against the stone slabs, sending a jolt of pain through her.
The leather jerkin’s glove ripped the metal spider out of her mother’s breasts. The claws ripped and shredded Madre’s soft skin.
Tied to the chair on its side, María lay still, her head pounding. The soldiers left Madre bleeding while they finished their stew and discussed what to do with her.
The leather jerkin prodded María with his boot. ‘Where is the rizado?’
María’s eyes widened and her mouth went dry.
He asked again, ‘Someone told Queen Isabella about your stories. She demanded to see them and your heretic journal.’
María stiffened. Although shocked anyone other than Tío’s family knew about her stories, María knew they would not betray her.
‘If you do not give us this rizado to take to the queen, you will face the same beating as your mother.’
A sudden giddiness filled María’s head. Who told the queen?
120
As Olaf slipped behind the derelict mansion, he glanced around. Spotting a long piece of weathered twine holding a vine, he jerked at it. It snapped.
He held it at arm’s length and tugged it between his hands, but it tore into two threads. He shook his head in disgust and tossed it away. As he did so, he noticed more of the twine tucked closer to a rotting window. He yanked it and immediately felt it rub between his finger and his palm, giving him a rope burn.
‘Goed!’ He followed the twine with his fingertips and found the end. Unravelling it from the vine, he tucked it into his pocket. It helped to have a backup weapon. As he rose to his feet, he stumbled over a rusty old pipe, hanging off the wall.
Olaf’s gaze followed the conduit and saw the water irrigation pipework would give way in numerous places. ‘Even better,’ he muttered, and wrenched the tube. Clumps of rust peeled off like crumbs falling from a fresh crusty loaf.
At the end of the corroded cylinder an oxidised tap leaked out a greenish-brown fungus. Although the fetid slime reeked of a foul-smelling pond, the tap tempted his imagination. He turned it and realised its inner parts had rusted up, but he ripped it off the wall bracket. Something extra to add to his weaponry.
He stopped and listened. Hearing the giant’s footsteps around the back of the mansion, he started following with slow deliberate movements. His heart raced and sweat prickled in his armpits.
He wasn’t afraid of the giant. Not at all. Thinking of how the dragon would slay the giant, excitement gripped him.
When his animaal called, he obeyed
121
Kelby wondered if the animal stuffed in the bottle was Fat Cat. She couldn’t tell because the chemicals had bloated its face. Thankfully its eyes faced the wall.
Lots of the formaldehyde bottles had either evaporated or leaked out. The smell was dire, making breathing nearly impossible. As she reeled from the stench and shock of seeing so many dead things in one place, her hand clutched her nose. She glanced over her shoulder to the door, half expecting a mad scientist to jump out and stab a needle of some concoction into her neck to experiment on her.
The sudden venting of an air conditioning unit sounded like the release on the old steam train ride she’d enjoyed with Annie.
Inside an open cabinet, corked bottles of dusty medicines had illegible handwritten stained labels. Many of them had broken open with fumes leaking out causing the most putrid smell. Kelby switched on the desk’s lamp. Beside it, a set of jars with medical labels showed a series of scientific equations.
One read: Na+C=N
Lots of squiggles with letters surrounded hexagonal diagrams showed letters: CI and HO.
Another read: N > P = O
For a moment, she examined a journal that lay beside the powder-filled jars. She turned the pages, but none of it made any sense. It appeared to be similar to Ana-María’s herbal guide, except the images had dried leaves, dried seeds and petals crudely plastered into the pages with lines pointing to different formulas.
Then, something leapt from the page: Natural Toxicology.
122
Shouting that he needed to take the rizado to the queen, the leather jerkin’s slammed his boot into María’s body.
‘Where is it?’ he cried out, bringing another kick closer to her face.
María jerked her head back knowing it would only take one hard kick to shatter her jaw.
Most men didn’t expect a woman to be as strong as her rage had made María. As soon as she broke free, she’d fight to the death like a mother lion defending her young.
‘Answer me, or you will get the same beating.’
‘She will get more than a beating.’ The unbooted soldier leered at her, ‘I want her first.’
‘No, I will be first,’ the quilled soldier muttered from his position against the wall, ‘and I will take my time to punish la puta where it hurts the most. She will be begging for mercy.’
‘And,’ the unbooted soldier guffawed ‘she will tell you everything to report to the queen. What is this rizado, anyway?’
The leather jerkin shrugged. ‘I don’t know and I don’t care. I am the senior officer, so I will have her first.’
They banged their fists on the table as they started squabbling.
María took no notice. She tried to focus her mind on other things, but questions tumbled around: Who had told the queen about rizado? Had the herbal jo
urnal been published and shown to the monarch?
Behind her, María’s arms twitched against the bounds of the ropes. How could she escape? And how could she get Madre to a safe place?
A loud bang on the door jolted her out of her reverie. A fourth soldier booted it open and bellowed, ‘Who is next on watch?’
The leather jerkin bellowed at the young soldier, ‘You are. Get back to your post.’
‘I saw two inquisitors; they are going to burn their first witch.’
‘You mean beat her.’
‘No. Burn her.’
123
Inside Homerton Laboratory, Olaf listened to the hollow echo of footsteps. He followed them. Slow and deliberate. And silent. Stealth led to a surprise attack on his victim.
The devil had to be careful. The place had been abandoned a century ago, like the clinic next door. A lot of this building had been declared dangerous. No-one had even bothered putting up ‘No Entry’ signs.
When Gordo had spent millions renovating the clinic, he’d said he would do the same for this dilapidated side of the property, but he hadn’t got around to it.
Using it for secret testing of drugs was a clever tactic. No-one finding the building by accident would attempt to go inside. It looked too creepy. And no-one would guess the two buildings were connected via stinking underground tunnels. They were ideal for transporting drugged test patients from one to the other.
When Olaf saw the place, Gordo had let slip it used to be an asylum for mental patients before the turn of the century. But whenever he came here, it reminded Olaf of the houses in the horror stories he read. The ones where humans turned into werewolves or other animals at dusk. Humans were basically animaals. They played the roles of humans, but everyone had the ability to turn, as he had discovered.
What tests they did here, he didn’t know or care. His job entailed exterminating the human rats. At the beginning of his deal with Gordo, he’d been given a tour of the place. At the time he hadn’t asked questions.
