by Robin Jarvis
Josh traipsed out of the colourful chaos he had created. Broken stems dangled limply from the collar of his coat, fallen leaves were tangled in his fair hair and, when he shambled from the wreckage, the grips of his shoes dragged a number of bedraggled bouquets after him.
Pulling the floppy stalks from his clothing, he peered at the large image of a tree made solely from petals and turned an excited face to his brother.
‘Neil,’ he whispered, ‘is that a magic picture?’
Neil tapped him on the head with a bunch of browning daffodils. ‘Don't be soft, there's no such thing.’
‘Yes there is,’ Josh told him with a superior air, ‘this place is full of magic’
‘If you say so.’
‘It is!’
Neil wiped his forehead where a splash of water had landed. ‘It's starting to rain,’ he grumbled, ‘come on you, back inside.’
Josh glowered at him mutinously. There is, too, magic,’ he breathed, ‘I seen it.’
Back in the apartment, Neil read a book whilst his brother emptied a bag of toys on the floor and quietly began to play with them.
After half an hour, Neil laid the book down and looked round to see what Josh was up to.
The four-year-old was sitting behind the settee with the fluffy polar bear he usually took to bed propped up on its hind legs before him. Unaware that he was being observed, Josh whispered and beckoned to the stuffed animal, staring at it the entire time with unusual concentration on his expectant face.
Neil had never seen him play like that before.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked finally.
Josh raised his eyes, pouting with impatience and confusion. ‘I wanted to show you,’ he burbled, ‘Why won't it work?’
‘What won't?’
‘Groofles,’ came the perplexed reply, ‘he won't wake up.’
Neil groaned and tried to remember if he had been as childish when he was that age. Picking the book up once more he gladly abandoned Josh to whatever nonsense he was playing.
From behind the settee the child's plaintive voice resumed speaking to the polar bear.
‘Say “hello” Groofles,’ he instructed, “you can do it. Go on, like the other one does. Say “hello”.’
Neil's book was thrown to the floor as he raced round to grip Josh by the shoulders.
‘What did you say?’ he demanded. ‘What “other one”? What do you mean, Josh?’
The toddler gazed at him in bewilderment. ‘Let me go!’ he squealed. That hurts, I'll tell Dad.’
But a dreadful suspicion had stolen over Neil and he grasped his brother's arms even tighter and shook him. 'Tell me,’ he shouted, ‘has someone been telling you that toys can talk? Who was it? It's important, Josh, you've got to tell me. Was it when you were with Dad yesterday?’
Josh nodded.
‘What happened, did someone speak to you?’
‘Might've.’
‘Did they?’
‘You'll make fun of me.’
‘I won't, I promise.’
‘Will!’
‘Honest. Tell me, who was it? What was it?’
The child stared straight into Neil's eyes and in a tiny, yet defiant voice he said, ‘It was a teddy!’
Neil released him and looked away.
‘It's true!’ Josh insisted. ‘It was an old teddy with a ribbon. He said he was magic and wanted to play with me. Said I could wish for anything, but Dad came and he said I wasn't to tell!’
By now Neil's head was in his hands and he was thinking wildly. When he next turned his face to Josh, it was scared and his voice was trembling and anxious.
‘Listen,’ he said frantically, ‘you're not to go into that room where you saw that thing again. Do you understand me?’
‘Why?’
‘Because it's dangerous, Josh, you've got to swear not to go there!’
‘S'only a teddy.’
‘Don't argue, just do what I say.’
‘But. . .’
‘Promise me!’
‘I promise,’ Josh said solemnly, but as he spoke he hid his hand so that Neil couldn't see his crossed fingers.
When Mr Chapman returned, Neil hurried up to the Separate Collection and stormed over to the cabinet that contained Ted.
The bear was sitting in his usual corner with a blank expression on his fleecy face.
Neil gave the case a sound thump with his fist that rattled the contents and made Ted jiggle from side to side.
‘How dare you speak to my little brother!’ Neil fumed. ‘You leave him alone! Do you hear me? I don't know what you're up to but no way would I ever help you now.’
The bear made no response, he remained motionless and stared fixedly ahead like any other stuffed toy. Neil found this even more infuriating and he slapped the cabinet's sides.
‘Fine!’ he bawled. ‘If you want to play dumb, go ahead! But believe me, if I find out you've spoken to Josh again, I'll have you out of there so fast you won't know what's happening and I'll shove you straight into the nearest fire. You got that?’ he shouted at the top of his voice. ‘Answer me! Answer me!’
‘What is the meaning of this?’ rapped a grim voice suddenly.
Neil whirled around and there was Miss Ursula Webster advancing towards him.
The old woman's face was flushed an indignant and angry purple. ‘I will not have this!’ she cried, bearing down upon him, the nostrils of her long nose flaring like a snorting horse and her lips curling back over her brown teeth. ‘You are a vandal, Child—nothing more. I cannot begin to comprehend what you were trying to do, thankfully my mind does not plumb such iniquitous depths.’
‘I wasn't going to break anything!’ Neil told her.
‘Liar!’ she rasped back. Without warning, her bony hand flashed out and caught him by the hair which she tugged and twisted in her grasp. ‘I saw enough to satisfy me that you were about to smash your way into this case and destroy one of the exhibits. Is that any way to repay me for giving your bumbling fool of a parent an honest position?’
Neil struggled to be free of the old woman's claw-like grip. But her fingers were as strong as iron and no matter how much he squirmed she would not let go and it felt as though she was trying to tear the scalp from his skull.
‘Little boys always bring trouble and heartache!’ she snapped vehemently. They are dirty, lying, filthy beasts—no better than disease-carrying bluebottles. That's what you are, Child, a germ-ridden bluebottle who requires swatting. No, not even that, for the Canaanites believed they were the transporters of human souls. You are far beneath that—you are the maggot the insect carries in its belly. A lowly, creeping, crawling worm, that's all you are; a filament of putrid flesh writhing and burrowing within its own slimy phlegm.’
‘Get off!’ Neil called having to stand on tiptoe to ease the torture of his hair. ‘I wasn't going to break the glass, I swear!’
‘But you did break it!’ Miss Ursula snarled. ‘You trespassed and entered where you were forbidden to tread!’
Neil looked back at the cabinet. The woman was unhinged, the glass wasn't broken. To make matters worse, he saw that a smug grin had appeared on Ted's face.
‘Deny it if you dare,’ Miss Ursula badgered, ‘but if I find you smashing any more windows or if you so much as touch another pipe, let alone ripping it from the wall, I will have to take the most severe of measures. Is that understood, my little maggot?’
‘You're mad!’ Neil shouted. ‘I don't know what you're talking about.’
Scorn and disdain twisted the woman's face as she shoved him roughly away from her. ‘Get you home,’ she spat, wiping her hand on her coal black gown, ‘and be assured that I will speak to your father about this.’
Neil rubbed the top of his sore head. Unable to bring himself to say anything more to the insane baggage, he stole one final, warning glance at Ted and ran from the room.
When Mr Chapman finished work that afternoon, Miss Ursula sought him out and told him that she ha
d caught his son in an act of wanton vandalism. Brian could hardly believe it but she was so emphatic that his faith in Neil began to waver. As soon as he returned home he accused his son of doing all that she had said and would not listen to any of his protestations.
Neil was sent to bed early, even before Josh, and he lay there cursing Miss Webster and the whole wretched museum. His entire life had been turned upside down during the past week and he was startled when he realised how extremely sorry for himself he was feeling.
Presently, Josh crawled in beside him, gloating that his older brother had been punished. Neil gave an irritated grunt as he tried to ignore him and sulkily turned on to his side.
Maliciously, the four-year-old giggled into Groofles’ ear and pointedly repeated their father's scornful tirade with the utmost satisfaction.
‘Shut it, squirt!’ Neil rumbled, aiming a swift kick under the bedclothes.
Josh gave the polar bear a gleeful squeeze, then threw himself against the pillows.
Outside, the moon was swollen with ghostly radiance and ringed with a bright and frosty halo. Yet the heavens were crowded with thick clouds that hugged and pressed around the wintry disc, scurrying before her face and causing deep voids of travelling shadow upon the world below.
Lost in the ever changing gloom, the Wyrd Museum sat silent and watchful. The turrets and spikes that speared from its roof knifed and jabbed at the blackness, then gleamed icily in the silver moonlight as the empty night slowly deepened.
The room was dark when Neil awoke. Several disorientated moments passed as his vision swam in the gloom and he rubbed his eyes wearily. His sleep had been fitful and haunted with nightmare images of Miss Ursula Webster who dragged him round the whole of the museum on a short lead and beat him with a stick before each exhibit.
His scalp was throbbing. That barmy old woman was dangerous, it wasn't safe for her to be loose. Well—she wouldn't get a second go at him, he was absolutely determined to keep out of her way in future.
Warbling a great yawn, he tried to recapture the fleeting fragments of sleep. Snuggling deeper into the warm bedclothes, he waited for the inevitable drowsiness to conquer him, but it was no use and the harder he tried, the further away the elusive slumber slipped.
After ten minutes had dragged by, Neil was wide awake and an uncomfortable, sickening chill began to prickle along his spine.
The room was uncannily silent and, with a jolt, he understood why.
‘Josh?’ he murmured. ‘Josh?’
The soft sound of his brother's gentle breathing was completely absent and, worriedly, Neil reached out for him.
The far side of the bed was empty.
Neil sat up in the bed and reached down for his slippers. His brother never got up in the middle of the night, not even to go to the toilet, and a dreadful suspicion was forming in Neil's mind.
Pulling on his dressing gown, he reached for the torch he kept by the bedside and crept into the living room.
Erratic, piggish snorts regaled him from the settee where Mr Chapman lay curled beneath a duvet and when the boy switched on his torch he was careful not to shine the beam into his father's face. Sweeping the small circle of light into the corners, then through the doorway into the kitchen, Neil could see that Josh wasn't there and, after a brief examination of the bathroom, his fears were confirmed.
‘He's gone into the museum,’ he breathed, marvelling at the youngster's courage. ‘But why? What could have induced him to go there in the dead of night? He hates the dark.’
But Neil had already guessed the answer and in a fierce hiss he spat out the name.
'Ted!’
Wasting no more time, he opened the door of the apartment and, leaving it on the latch, closed it silently behind him.
The narrow corridor beyond was black as pitch and even the torchlight made little difference in the dense darkness. Neil had never been inside the Wyrd Museum in the middle of the night, the early evening had proved to be bad enough. Now there was no telling what might be lurking in wait for him. He thought of all the macabre exhibits—what if Ted wasn't the only one that came to life? There could be many more terrifying creatures roaming the deserted building.
Swallowing nervously, and with these unsettling fears seething within him, he forced himself to take the first step down the corridor.
Before him, the torchlight bobbed and trembled unsteadily as his hand began to shake. It was almost worse being able to see glimpses of the way ahead and if there were any horrors wandering through the museum they could not fail to see him. The torch would act like a beacon to draw them close, every ghastly, unnamed spectre would flow silently and unerringly through the gloom—sailing towards him with their bloodless talons reaching out for his throat. Even now, a host of unclean spirits could be thronging around him, lured by the torch beam and the scent of his pulsing blood. Perhaps these demonic fiends were skulking behind him, keeping well out of the feeble light, letting him blunder deeper into the museum's heart where they could all pounce and feed upon his tender flesh.
Neil uttered a cry of dismay as these frightening thoughts got the better of him and he whirled the torch wildly around, shining it into the thick shadows of the corridor until he was satisfied that it was empty.
‘Get a grip,’ he scolded himself. ‘Josh has come through here and in total darkness—I can't think how he...’
The thought of his small brother pushed some of his fears aside and Neil pressed onwards.
Through the ground floor rooms he went, the torchlight picking eerie glints from the displays around him and flinging grotesque shadow shapes on to the walls.
Occasionally, the pale moonlight would burst in through the windows as ragged clouds blew through the sky and the rooms were abruptly flooded with a deathly glow that made everything it touched appear wraith-like and otherworldly. It was like being in the middle of a painfully slow lightning storm as the Georgian windows sluggishly brimmed with radiance, glimmered for a moment, then faded back to the dismal dark.
In a small, but determined voice, Neil called Josh's name, but he heard no response and his instincts told him he would not find him on this floor. His only hope was to reach The Separate Collection before Josh did.
Whatever Ted wanted from his brother, Neil was sure it was evil and dangerous. The creature hadn't been sealed in the cabinet for nothing, and he was now convinced that if Ted were ever released, something dreadful was sure to happen.
‘Maybe everything here is treacherous.’ His mind raced as he hurried for the hallway. ‘Perhaps that's what this place is for. This is where all the nasty stuff is kept, all the bad things—too perilous for ordinary buildings. That's why no one ever comes, it's like a dumping-ground of horrors—all that's foul and gruesome eventually manages to find its way here.’
This new and unwelcome thought panicked him and when the torchlight finally fell upon the panelled hall and staircase he tried to quell the terror rising to the surface once more.
‘Stop it!’ he snarled as he reached the stairs. ‘It's only a creepy ruin, there's nothing to be scared of. Just find Josh and go back to the flat!’
Suddenly, caught in the beam of his torch, Neil saw a long, glittering knife blade come slicing towards him.
The boy screamed and stumbled down the steps, flinging his hands in front of his face as a gnarled claw flew from the shadows to clutch at him.
‘No-o-o!’ he yelled. ‘Help—Dad!’
The torch clattered on the floor as it fell from his grasp and a flickering pool of light went spinning across the room. Towering above his prostrate form, Neil beheld a ghostly figure swathed in robes.
‘Keep away from me!’ he bawled as the nightmarish apparition shambled closer and crouched over him, filling his nostrils with an overpowering reek of damp and stale decay.
Then it spoke.
‘Do you think she will like it?’ the phantom cried. ‘I do hope she will, I really do.’
Neil recovered himself and st
ared upwards. At that moment, the moon emerged from the shrouding clouds and the staircase was bathed in a pallid splendour.
‘M—Miss Celandine..!' he gasped.
With the moonlight shimmering over her plaited hair, Miss Celandine Webster jerked her head sideways and blinked her tiny bright eyes.
She was dressed in a nightgown of antique and moth-eaten lace that twirled and billowed about her like tattered shreds of mist caught on thorny branches. As she moved, a large, silver-winged insect fluttered in a drunken spiral above her head before zooming down to crawl inside a deep fold once more. A bemused and preoccupied look was on her face and the air squeaked in through her buck teeth as her gaze roved around the hallway, before finally coming to rest and settling on Neil.
Then, sucking in her cheeks and fizzing with excitement, the old woman showed him what she had clasped to her breast.
In her withered hands, Miss Celandine flourished a square of knitted wool and what Neil had mistaken for a weapon was actually one of a pair of knitting needles.
'I haven't lost my touch, have I?' she asked, holding it close to his face. ‘It took Veronica simply ages to wind it and cast on, but not me, I've forgotten nothing. My fingers never were as fickle as hers. Ha! They both thought I wouldn't be able to manage, that I wouldn't have the strength, but look—see how the threads are enmeshed ever so tightly to one another. That is how it should be, a blissful binding of one line into another. A splendid ravelling together to create the perfect weave. I'm so happy with it. I am, truly I am! Oh, to lead the willing and drive the stubborn—how glorious it was!’
Neil stared at the scrap of wool she waved in his face. It was made from different shades of green and shot through with fine strands of bright silver tinsel which sparkled and gleamed in the moonlight. Miss Celandine was obviously proud of her handiwork and pressed it lovingly to her cheek.
‘It's been so long,’ she crooned, ‘so very long. When the loom was broken I never thought I should make anything again, yet here it is. I've done it—another web, after all these years. How glad it has made me.’ She broke into a high, squawking laugh, thrusting the cherished woollen square back to her bosom, and swayed from side to side, enraptured.
