The Fatal Strand. Robin Jarvis

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СКАЧАТЬ ‘On top of everything else, I don’t want a loser like him telling me that this flat is haunted.’

      ‘This place must be a magnet for losers, then,’ Neil snapped, heading for the door.

      ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

      ‘To apologise! Though I don’t see why I should – but I know you wouldn’t dream of it.’

      Neil slammed the door behind him and, with a yell of frustration, Brian Chapman threw the newspapers across the room.

      In The Fossil Room, Neil found Austen Pickering sorting through the many candles he had brought with him, whilst Quoth nibbled at the wax and pecked at the tantalising, worm-like wicks.

      ‘Sorry about Dad,’ Neil said. ‘He’s been a complete pain lately.’

      The old man brushed the incident aside. ‘I told you some people don’t like what I do,’ he reminded the boy. ‘I’m used to it by now. A solitary vocation, that’s what this is.’

      ‘I could go back and fill your thermos for you.’

      ‘Don’t trouble yourself,’ Mr Pickering replied, walking over to where his mackintosh hung and pulling a silver hip flask from one of the pockets. ‘A nip of brandy will do just as well. I said I was prepared.’

      Gathering up a handful of candles, he placed one in each corner of the room then threw Neil a cigarette lighter. ‘If you could set those going for me, I’ll just put two more in the centre here and jot down the direction of the draughts.’

      In the bright glare of the electric lights, the candle flames looked cold and pale. Quoth amused himself by dancing around trying to blow them out – until Neil saw what he was doing and scolded him.

      ‘There.’ The ghost hunter finally nodded with satisfaction. ‘Now, if you could flick the switch, lad.’

      Neil obeyed and the room was immediately engulfed in shadows which leaped about the walls. The huge black bones of the fossils appeared to twitch as great hollows of darkness yawned between the massive ribs, and prehistoric nightmares flew through the night above their heads.

      Beneath them, however, the six cheery candle flames were reflected in the glass of the cabinets, and the cases which contained mineral samples glinted and winked as the faceted crystals and pyrites threw back the trembling fires.

      ‘Such glistering gaudery!’ Quoth cawed, hopping across to spread his wings and let the shimmering light play over his ragged feathers. ‘Fie, how this sorry vagabond doth put the lustrous Phoenix to shame.’

      Neil grinned but Austen Pickering was already heading towards the next room. ‘Much more conducive,’ the ghost hunter remarked. ‘This kind of investigation always works better in the soft glow of candles. All to do with light waves and atmospheric vibrations – electricity is a terrible obstacle for some of the weaker souls of the departed, you know.’

      The boy followed him and, dragging himself away from the sparkling cabinets, Quoth came waddling after.

      ‘Put the rest in the other galleries, I think,’ Mr Pickering decided, handing Neil a dozen more candles. ‘Then I’ll settle down and wait. I’ve got high hopes for this night. Once the usual noises of an old building settling on to its foundations have subsided, who knows? Perhaps there’ll even be a manifestation. I’ve never been so excited, not even in the Wigan case.’

      ‘What was that about?’ Neil asked.

      The old man set another candle down and marked its position in his notebook. ‘Up till now it was my most rewarding investigation,’ he announced, ‘and an object lesson which proves that not all hauntings occur in churchyards or ancient buildings. Just an ordinary semi that a young family had moved into. Wasn’t long before they noticed strange things were happening – so I was called in.’

      Wandering into another room he paused and lit another candle before continuing. ‘Five nights I was there till the poor soul made his appearance,’ he chuckled. ‘Except for the baby, we were all downstairs and I was beginning to wonder if the young couple had imagined it all. But sometimes the departed don’t want to let go of their ties with this world, and they can get a bit wily. That’s what was happening there. The old chap who’d lived there originally didn’t want to leave and was hiding from me. If it wasn’t for modern technology, I might still be there trying to find him.’

      ‘How do you mean?’ Neil broke in. ‘Did the ghost show up on one of your photographs?’

      The old man laughed. ‘Nothing like that,’ he chuckled. ‘No, as I said, we were all downstairs when, over the baby monitor, comes a voice. He was up there in the nursery, talking to the littl’un in her cot!’

      ‘That’s well creepy.’

      ‘Oh, he didn’t want to hurt her,’ Mr Pickering asserted. ‘Just sad and lonely, that’s all. People don’t change just because they die, you know. He was a kindly soul, was old Cyril.’

      ‘What about those who were nasty when they were alive?’

      ‘Luckily, there’s more good in the world than television would have us believe,’ the ghost hunter replied.

      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 СКАЧАТЬ