In each of the ground floor rooms they had placed four candles, and the winding, connecting corridor was lit with another fifteen at five-metre intervals. All the electric lights were switched off, and now only those small flames pricked and illuminated the momentous dark.
When they reached the main hallway, where the stairs rose into the impenetrable, prevailing blackness of the upper storeys, the old man clicked his fingers in the manner which Neil already recognised as the sign that he was marshalling his thoughts.
‘There,’ he muttered, gazing back at the glimmering trail they had left behind. ‘I’m ready. I propose to begin here and work my way back to The Fossil Room. Thanks for your help, lad.’
The boy smiled at him. The lenses of the ghost hunter’s spectacles mirrored the candle which the man held in his hand and two squares of bright yellow flame shone out from his lined face. Yet behind those reflections, Mr Pickering’s eyes burned just as keenly. Neil wished that he could stay and see what would happen, but he sensed that tonight the eager newcomer would rather work alone.
‘Good luck,’ he said.
Mr Pickering raised his hand in a slight wave, then took a deep breath to prepare himself.
‘Come on, you,’ Neil told Quoth, lifting the bird on to his shoulder. ‘Let’s see if I can sneak you past Dad.’
Walking through the collections, the boy looked back to catch a last glimpse of the ghost hunter, cocooned in a golden, glowing aura, the cavernous night dwarfing and besieging his stout form as he began his lonely vigil.
‘Hope he finds what he came for,’ Neil said. ‘This place could do with a psychic spring-clean.’
In the entrance hall, Austen Pickering took out his Bible and held it tightly as he lowered his eyes and murmured a heartfelt prayer. The candle in his other hand fizzed and crackled as particles of The Wyrd Museum’s ever-present floating dust drifted into the heat and, presently, the man lifted his head. He was ready.
‘I know you can hear me,’ the ghost hunter called in a firm but friendly voice. ‘I don’t want to frighten any of you – there’s nothing to be afraid of. My name’s Austen. I’m here to help. Now is the time you have waited for. Listen to me – I can feel your torment. Don’t let this place keep you any longer. Come forward, I beseech you. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, I call you to me.’
The pensioner’s words echoed through the hall and out into the collections. Passing through The Roman Gallery, Neil and Quoth heard his compassionate appeals, the sonorous tones ringing through the still emptiness of the vacillating dark that surrounded them.
‘Make yourselves known to me. Let me guide you to the peace you have been denied.’
Quoth’s single eye gleamed small and sharp in the shadows as he cocked his head to listen, and Neil felt a sudden tremor of apprehension judder through the raven’s body.
‘Is something the matter?’ the boy asked.
‘Yea,’ Quoth answered in a hoarse whisper which was filled with dread. ‘The lumpen one knows not what is moving. From the Stygian mirk it cometh. Mine very quills doth rise at its approach. Tarry no longer, Master Neil. To thy father and the light we must away and flee this ray-chidden dankness.’
‘There’s nothing to be scared of.’
Yet the urge to leave that place was mounting within the boy too, and he quickened his pace. About the walls, the shadows of the countless terracotta pots and jars which crammed the shelves seemed to move independently of the candle flames. Neil forced himself not to look at them, for it was easy to see any number of imagined horrors in that crowding dark.
‘I should have taken the quick way through the corridor,’ he muttered.
‘Come to me!’ he could hear the ghost hunter calling. ‘Show yourselves!’
Quoth let out a bleating yelp and clung tightly to his master’s shoulder. ‘Canst thou not sense the terror?’ he wailed. ‘The wall of night doth quake and crack. Make haste afore the barricade is riven!’
Into The Neolithic Collection Neil hurried, running past the cases which housed fragments of Stone Age skulls and avoiding the gaze of reconstructed Neanderthals.
‘Squire Neil!’ the raven yammered, glancing behind them. ‘Behold the flames!’
Whirling around, the boy saw that the candles in the rooms they had passed through were guttering.
‘Lo!’ Quoth uttered miserably. ‘The nocturn breath of the unquiet dead doth blow upon them.’
As though caught in a gusting draught, the small flames sputtered. To his dismay, Neil saw in the distance an engulfing darkness creep closer as, one by one, the candles were extinguished.
‘Midnight as an ice lord’s gullet,’ the raven cawed.
Through the galleries the blackness moved, pouncing from corner to corner as each flame died. The boy could no longer hear Austen Pickering’s voice and, when he spun around again, he saw that the lights ahead were also dwindling and beginning to fail.
‘Too late!’ Quoth shrieked. ‘We are captured!’
With a rush of stale, swirling air, every light in The Neolithic Collection was suddenly snuffed out. Neil and the raven were plunged into a blackness that seemed almost solid.
‘The doom hath descended!’ Quoth cheeped forlornly.
Neil rubbed his eyes, but the darkness was absolute. This room had no windows so there was not even a pale glow from outside to guide him. ‘Stop panicking,’ he reproached the raven crossly. ‘You’re not afraid of the dark, are you?’
‘Alas yes!’ the bird replied. ‘Neath night’s mantle all manner of fell frights may stalketh – with gangrel limbs to drag the ground, clustering eyes and dribble-drenched snouts a-questing our hiding places. Oh, how the fetor steameth from their fangs! Aroint this umbral broth; ’tis the unseen fancy which inspireth the horrors tenfold.’
‘This is stupid,’ the boy answered, trying to sound calm. ‘It was only the wind that put the candles out. But if it was a ghost, then I’ve seen them before and I’m not scared. Edie used to keep loads of them in the bomb sites during the Blitz, the same as other people keep goldfish.’
‘Doughty and of the halest oak is thine heart fashioned,’ Quoth whimpered in admiration. ‘Yet, what sayest thou if the shades who dwell herein doth prove to be fiends most bloody and angersome? No wish hath I to be plucked untimely and robbed of mine gizzards. Spare this frail flower from the greed of the unclean eclipse!’
Neil rummaged in his pockets for the lighter, but remembered that he had given it back to Austen Pickering. Then, unexpectedly, he let out a cheerful laugh. ‘Why don’t I just switch the lights back on?’
Groping through the dark, he felt his way around invisible cabinets until he came to a wall and passed along it, picturing their progress in his mind.
‘The door to the passage should be near here,’ he muttered. ‘The switches are right next to it.’
Fumbling beside a long glass case, the ridges of the door jamb abruptly met his fingertips and at that same moment an anxious voice called out to him.
‘Are you all right, lad?’ Austen Pickering’s concerned cry came echoing through the museum. ‘All the candles have gone out. Stay where you are and I’ll come find you. Blast it! The lighter won’t work and I’ve left the torch back with the fossils.’
‘Don’t worry!’ the boy shouted back. ‘I’m going to put the—’
A frantic dab at his cheek caused his reply to falter. ‘What’s the matter now?’ he demanded of the raven.
‘Hush!’ Quoth urged, his rasping voice now charged with genuine terror. ‘We are not alone in this