Читать книгу The Fatal Strand - Robin Jarvis - Страница 11

For an instant, the raven lay upon the ground, wings outstretched and beak askew. Then the raucous shrieks of the marauding beast brought him to his feet and the bird bolted across the floor in search of his master.

Tormented with panic and terror, Quoth scurried in completely the wrong direction, quite forgetting in his fear that he could fly. Garbled cries howled from his throat, for his jaw had locked open and he could not move it. Behind, he could hear the fangs of the pursuing creature grind together as it lunged after him, and he swung his head from side to side, despairing for his life.

Then, with a painful thud, he ran headlong into the leg of a cabinet. The collision stunned him for a second, but his stringy legs continued to gallop and lurch onward despite his confusion. Thankfully, the aching blow clicked his beak back into place, and when the raven could direct any thoughts beyond the immediate throbbing of his skull, he let out a shrill squawk.

‘Squire Neil!’ he honked. ‘Run whilst thou may. The scourge is biting at mine tail. Aiyee! Aiyee!’

Spreading his tattered wings wide, the raven darted forward, careering clear across the room until he raced into The Roman Gallery. Huge dim squares reared up on the bird’s right and he stumbled towards them, skittering through the patches of melancholy light which fanned from those grimy Georgian windows.

After him the nightmare came and, dithering with terror, Quoth did not know which way to run.

Then he saw it.

Wheeling around, his breast heaving, the bird stared back into the dismal gloom and his puny legs dissolved under him. Catching his wheezing breaths, Quoth sank to the ground as, up to the brink of the dismal light, the creature came prowling.

Faint with fear, the bird saw a squat, outlandish silhouette, no taller than his master’s knees. It lowered a mane-crowned head and Quoth’s feathers prickled when he heard a grating babble issue from its unseen mouth.

‘Gogus …’ the imp-like figure panted. ‘Gogus …’

Quoth could only stare whilst the alarming aberration hesitated, and he wondered what it was waiting for. Was it taunting him, wringing out every last morsel of fright before it leaped in for the kill?

‘Quoth?’ Neil’s scared voice shouted from the other room. ‘Where are you? Quoth? Are you okay?’

Shuffling backwards over the floorboards and shrinking against the wall, the raven shook his head vehemently, too petrified to cry out. But, at the sound of the boy’s voice, the menacing apparition jerked its unwieldy head aside. With a furious chittering, the creature slapped the ground with its splayed claws and bounded back into the Neolithic room.

‘Quoth?’ Neil cried again.

Staggering to his feet, the raven spluttered, then shrieked. ‘Squire Neil! ’Ware the demon – ’tis thou it seeks! Save thyself!’

Nursing his bruised shins, Neil felt horribly vulnerable. Hearing that warning, he hobbled through the darkness, his flailing hands striking the cabinets and cases as he battled his way across the room.

Suddenly, the veiled shadows on his left were filled with a loathsome yapping, causing the boy to forget his injuries, and he pelted forward. The doorway to the passage could not be far off; already he could feel a current of air blowing upon his face and he charged recklessly towards its source, slithering and skidding in his haste to escape. But the fiend was closing, and its jabbering cries became outraged barks as it scooted towards the boy.

Even in that unmeasurable dark, Neil could sense the open doorway as it reared before him. He did not think to reach for the light switches and he threw all his strength into one last sprint.

Too late – the berserking creature was at his heels. Launching its squat form from the ground, the small, misshapen figure leaped. Wrapping its arms about the boy’s legs, it clung to him fiercely.

Neil howled in fright as powerful claws pinched and squeezed, and he toppled sideways, slamming into the wall. Squealing and snapping, his attacker held him with an iron grasp and would not let go.

‘Gogus!’ it raged. ‘Gogus … Gogus!’

‘Get off!’ the boy cried. ‘Let go!’

‘Gogus …’ was his only reply, and the vice-like clutch tightened all the more.

‘Help!’ Neil bawled. ‘Help!’

At that moment, the night was filled with ferocious screeches as, swooping through the air, Quoth came shooting to his aid. ‘Afright not, my master!’ he crowed. ‘Yon runted minikin shalt bear the mark of the raven afore thy boggling serf is slain.’

With talons outstretched, Quoth plummeted down. Towards the feverish barks and grunts he flew, his master’s cries jangling loud in his mind. His one thought, to do all that he could to save Neil – whatever the cost to himself. Across the beast’s large, ill-proportioned face, the raven’s claws gouged long scars and the enemy yowled in fury.

‘Avaunt ye!’ Quoth commanded. ‘Creep back to thy venomous lurks. Begone!’

Incensed by the bird’s harrying onslaught, the small figure loosened its grasp around the boy’s legs and retaliated. Before he realised what was happening, Quoth was plucked from the air and his squawks were throttled in his scrawny throat as those mighty claws hooked about him.

‘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 clapped his hands over his ears, but the brutality jolted through his bones and nothing could shield him from the woman’s howls.

‘Stop it!’ he yelled. ‘Leave her alone!’

And then, it was over.

The evil din ended. The final, piercing notes of Mary-Anne’s suffering lingered briefly upon the ether, until they were quenched by an ominous silence more horrible than anything he had yet experienced.

A nauseated burning bubbled in Neil’s stomach and he felt the bile rise to the back of his throat. At that moment, a deep shadow was cast over the alcove when a figure stepped in front of the gaslight. Neil scrambled to his bruised knees, cradling his head in his arms.

‘Get off!’ he cried. ‘Don’t you touch me!’

Looming over the huddled boy, the black shape reached towards him.

‘What’s this, then?’ a gruff voice demanded.