The Fatal Strand. Robin Jarvis

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СКАЧАТЬ but I never dreamed it would be so … well, there it is.’

      Quoth fidgeted uncertainly. ‘Squire Neil,’ he muttered, ‘methinks yon fellow may prove a swizzling tippler. The ale hath malted and mazed his mind.’

      ‘Are you all right?’ Neil asked the old man. ‘You look awful. What happened?’

      Mr Pickering mopped his forehead and stared past the boy into the room beyond. ‘A fine old fool I am,’ he wheezed. ‘I’m sorry if I startled you, lad. It’s that room, I can’t enter – at least not yet.’

      ‘How sayest the jiggety jobbernut?’ Quoth clucked.

      ‘What stopped you?’ the boy asked, ignoring the raven. ‘Is it one of the exhibits?’

      The ghost hunter shook his head. He had recovered from the shock and an exhilarated grin now lit his face.

      ‘All the classic case studies tell of them,’ he gabbled, more to himself than for Neil’s benefit. ‘Though I’ve come across the more usual cold spots before, I’ve never truly experienced this phenomenon. This really is a red-letter day.’

      ‘What is?’ Neil demanded.

      Mr Pickering clicked his fingers as though expecting the action to organise and set his thoughts in order.

      ‘Occasionally,’ he explained excitedly, ‘a haunted site will have a nucleus – a centre of operations, if you like, where all the negative forces and paranormal activity begin and flow out from.’

      ‘And you think it’s The Separate Collection?’ Neil murmured. ‘I suppose it would make sense. There’s a lot of mad stuff in there.’

      ‘I’m quite certain of it. But the intensity – it’s incredible. Oho, it didn’t want me to go in, that it didn’t. It knows why I’m here and doesn’t want to let its precious spectres go. Well, we’ll see about that.’

      Neil gazed into the large, shadow-filled room which lay beyond The Egyptian Suite and recalled how frightened he had been when he had first moved into The Wyrd Museum. He remembered how the building had almost seemed to be tricking him, deceiving his sense of direction – leading him round and around until finally he was delivered to that very place, where the exhibits were eerie and sinister.

      A shout from Ted had put a stop to it back then, but the spirit of the airman who had possessed the stuffed toy was finally at rest.

      ‘Are you saying that the building is alive?’ he finally ventured. ‘Watching and listening to us?’

      The old man gave a brisk shake of the head. ‘Not alive, no, not in the sense that we understand. That would imply intelligence and I wouldn’t go so far as to say that. I do believe, however, that there is a presence which permeates every brick and tile – an awareness, if you like. Call it a mass accumulation of history and anguish, recorded on to the ether, which operates on some very basic and primitive level. That is what we are up against. It is that force which feeds upon the energies of both the living and the deceased, and binds them to itself.’

      Gingerly moving towards the doorway once more, the ghost hunter considered The Separate Collection and a gratified smile beamed across his craggy face. ‘This is amazing,’ he declared. ‘Absolutely amazing. There mustn’t be any more delay; the investigation proper will have to commence at once. But first things first. I’ll have to go back and fetch my equipment.’

      Infected by Mr Pickering’s delight, Neil laughed. ‘What are you going to do?’ he asked. ‘An exorcism?’

      The ghost hunter calmed himself. ‘Give over,’ he replied. ‘I can’t do that. We must learn all we can first. Besides, I don’t want to jump in at the deep end. I’ll work through the museum systematically, room by room and floor by floor. That Separate Collection is the supernatural heart of this place and I’m not ready for the surprises it might throw at me – not yet at any rate.’

      When Austen Pickering left The Wyrd Museum to return to his lodgings, Neil hastened back to the caretaker’s apartment, taking care to leave Quoth in The Fossil Room once again. It proved to be a wise precaution, for Brian Chapman was in a terrible mood. He had only been awake for half an hour and it was now nearly two o’clock.

      When he realised the time, he had looked into his sons’ bedroom but found it empty. Hurrying into the kitchen, he discovered a pool of spilled milk near the fridge and a bowl of half-eaten cereal in the sink. Tutting, he left the apartment to search for them.

      Josh was playing in the walled yard, with a coat pulled on over his pyjamas and a pair of Wellington boots covering his bare feet. The little boy told him that he hadn’t seen his brother all day and that he’d tried to shake his father awake. When his efforts had failed, he had made his own breakfast.

      Brian ran his hands through his greasy hair and pinched the bridge of his nose. He’d had an awful night and was now even more determined to look for another job. Anything. Just to get out of this hideous place was all that he craved and nothing anyone could say would change his mind. It wasn’t like him to sleep so late and he was more angry at himself than anyone else.

      Neil hated it when his father was like this and decided against mentioning Austen Pickering, for that would certainly have made matters worse. The only course to take was to let Brian calm down. So, shutting himself away from the squall of his father’s temper, the boy calmly began to make sandwiches for them all.

      Miss Ursula had not set any new work for Brian to do, so in the afternoon he slipped out, hoping that she wouldn’t notice. Entrusted with looking after Josh, Neil took the four-year-old to find Quoth. The child was scared of the raven at first, but he was soon tickling him under the beak, feeding him ham sandwiches and laughing at his absurd speech.

      At four o’clock, a morose jingling announced Austen Pickering’s return and Neil ran to the entrance to admit him. Three large, much-battered suitcases surrounded the grizzle-haired man as he waited upon the steps, and he grumbled to Neil about the exorbitant cost of cabs in London, whilst the boy helped him to haul the luggage inside.

      ‘You’ve certainly brought enough!’ Neil exclaimed. ‘What sort of equipment have you got in here?’

      ‘That witch of a landlady told me to sling my hook! Got a terrible tongue on her, that cat has,’ the man puffed, dragging a heavy portmanteau under the sculpted archway. ‘She’s chucked me out – this is everything I had with me. You know, lad, it’s the living what scare me most. The dead I can deal with.’

      Neil contemplated the suitcases thoughtfully. ‘So, you’re staying here then?’

      ‘Makes sense really,’ the ghost hunter replied. ‘I’d have to be spending the nights here anyway, so I might as well stop. No point shelling out for a new room when I won’t even be there. The Websters won’t mind, I’m sure.’

      But Neil was not thinking about them; he was wondering what his father would have to say.

      ‘You know,’ Mr Pickering reflected, ‘I’m sure that nosy woman had been furtling through my stuff. She’d best not have messed with any of my apparatus. It’s already getting dark and I want to get started straight away.’

      When Brian Chapman returned to the museum he discovered, to his consternation, that Austen Pickering had taken over one corner of The Fossil Room and was busily setting up his equipment in the rest of СКАЧАТЬ