‘Gogus!’ the monster gargled madly, shaking Quoth as though he were a mouse in a cat’s jaws. The raven jiggled and flapped hopelessly, coughing and choking as he fought to breathe.
‘Quoth!’ Neil called, finally able to move his legs. ‘What’s happening? Quoth?’
The grunting horror let out a frustrated hiss and discarded the annoying bird, hurling him into the darkness as it swung back to pounce upon the boy once more. Mewling piteously, Quoth rocketed across the room.
‘Run, Master Neil!’ he wailed, before his head smashed into a Neanderthal display and the dazed raven slid down the cracked glass, burbling a warbled chirrup as he dropped to the ground.
Framed in the open doorway, Neil heard his friend’s collision and prayed he was unharmed. Yet there was nothing he could do, for in that instant, the pigmy-sized creature jumped up at him again and Neil let out a yell of fright as he tumbled backwards into the passage.
Immediately, the clamouring barks ceased.
Neil sat up in consternation. The stupefying dark was gone and the passage was lit with a dim light. He let out a long, grateful sigh.
‘Be still!’ a breathless voice hissed in his ear, and a filthy hand was clapped over the boy’s mouth before he could make any further sound.
‘This way!’ he was told. ‘They’ll be here in a minute. Don’t let them find us.’
With rough, hauling movements, the owner of that frightened voice dragged the struggling boy away from the doorway and pulled him into a shadowy alcove, where he was thrust into the corner and forced to crouch on his haunches.
‘Stay put and do as I say.’
His face was pushed against the wall and the weight of his captor was pressing against his back to keep him there, but Neil managed to twist his head about and glare at the person who had seized him. Anger and resentment ebbed away, to be replaced by an uproar of confusion and bewilderment, for he was staring up into the face of a young woman.
The gas lamp in the passage burned low, so that the flame barely flickered, and the resulting phosphorescence bathed everything in a deathly, dappled pallor. Under this chill radiance, the woman’s skin was painted cold and grey. Beneath those crinkling brows, her small eyes darted this way and that, glimmering like an owl’s in the ghastly illumination. A cloud of dark, matted hair fell about her tensed shoulders in an unkempt, twining tangle, and snarled hanks fringed her high, furrowed forehead.
Scouring the gloom, she cringed deeper into the alcove, bunching herself into as small a shape as possible. The crisply starched linen of her nightgown crackled faintly.
Neil’s mind surged with questions. He had no idea who she was. Had she broken into the museum? Did the vicious animal in the other room belong to her? Peering past her into the shadowy passage, the boy realised with a jolt that there was another riddle to which he did not know the answer. Mounted upon the panelled wall, enclosed in a globe of frosted glass, was the gas lamp which saturated the corridor in its pallid, corpse glow. But Neil was certain that all the lighting within The Wyrd Museum was electric. There were no gas lamps.
‘You’ll do it, won’t you, boy?’ the woman spat, bringing her face close to his. ‘Mary-Anne can make you – and she will if you force her!’
Neil wormed around a little more, his nose edging clear of the woman’s stifling palm. A sickly, antiseptic smell hung heavily in the air, but a sharp jab at his throat concentrated his mind on a new danger. In her other hand the woman was holding a knife.
‘You’ll know the way out, won’t you?’ she said in a threatening whisper. ‘Nice clean boy like you. Come a-visiting, have we? Been shown what they wanted you to see? No one gets to come down this way – not agreeable, not refined. Offend the paying relatives, it would.’
The woman pressed the flat of the blade against his skin and the dim gas flame reflected an anaemic sliver of light up into her eyes. Neil looked into them and swallowed uneasily. Those small, shifting pupils were filled with a wild, dancing desolation and he knew that she would not shrink from slitting his throat.
‘You want to live, boy?’ she demanded. ‘Then take Mary-Anne out of this. She’ll spike you if you don’t. Already killed once this night, she has – can’t endure it no more.’
The woman rocked forward to glance down the passage once more and, as she moved, Neil saw that her nightgown was sprayed with large, spattered stains. In the sombre light, the ugly marks and blotches were a purplish black, but they glistened wetly and the boy knew that he was looking at blood, freshly spilled from the vein.
‘Peace, now!’ Mary-Anne entreated, her voice rising with panic. ‘They’re coming. Rokeby’s been found. Josiah Rokeby – you devil! Even with your neck pricked, you’ll do for me!’
Gripping the knife so tightly that the blade sliced into the skin of her forefinger, the woman shivered, and Neil could feel that her every sinew was hideously taut and strained. Suddenly, she whipped the blade away from the boy’s throat and wrenched her hand from his mouth, as she swept the matted tresses from her ears, pushing herself against the alcove wall.
‘No!’ she whimpered, her mouth dry with horror. ‘He is with them. Oh, sweet heaven! Save Mary-Anne Brindle from that one.’
Wailing, she shook her head violently, banging her skull on the panelling and beating her temples with her fists. Then, abruptly, the tantrum was over and she sat there, panting feverishly. Her face half-hidden behind an untidy curtain of hair, Mary-Anne peeped out at the passage and nodded slowly.
‘Tick-Tock Jack has found him,’ the woman murmured. ‘It’s that one she should’ve stuck. No time for hiding now, not with Tick-Tock after her. Oh Lord, Jack Timms will knock the life out of her this time. Her’s won’t be the first head he’s broken.’
Still crouched in the corner, Neil heard the sound of running footsteps approaching down the corridor, and the noise caused Mary-Anne to spring to her feet. ‘Let them pass!’ the woman cried, hugging herself in distraction. ‘Rokeby had earned it. All the wardens warrant the same, but he and Tick-Tock the most. Dear Jesus, let them run by her!’
Only a few minutes ago, when he had faced that gurgling fiend in the Neolithic room, Neil had thought he had been afraid. But now, gazing up at this petrified, insane woman, he truly understood the meaning of real fear. Like a fountain of despair, the terror flowed out from her, breaking in wave after hopeless wave from her blighted, tortured form.
The noise in the passage was louder now. Heavy boots were pounding over the floorboards and Neil felt an overwhelming desire not to be found. Squeezing himself as far into the corner as he could, he waited, not daring to look up.
‘There!’ a rough male voice yelled. ‘She’s there!’
The woman screamed and angry shouts boomed within the corridor as her enemies thundered forward. Leaping from the alcove, she hared away and Neil heard her high, fluting shrieks as she disappeared from sight. He shrank further into the gloom, anxiously holding his breath.
Suddenly, three dark, burly figures hurtled past his hiding place, momentarily obliterating the feeble gaslight, and the boy knew that Mary-Anne would not escape them. Foul, drain-dirty curses blared in his ears, but all sounds were instantly drowned when another fierce, bellowing voice roared through the building.
‘Get back here! I’ll teach you to pink old Joe!’
It was a repellent, contemptible pronouncement and Neil’s scalp crept with the inexhaustible hate and malice which fuelled it. Then there came a shrill screech, accompanied by a frantic scuffling. The woman had been caught.
‘I’ll learn you!’ the spite-charged voice snapped. ‘Pin her still, lads!’
Deafening screams tore the gloom and, as savage, battering thuds shook the walls, vile jeers galed from the darkness.
Neil