Robin Jarvis - The Fatal Strand

‘I’ve never been in so ancient a place. It’s staggering. How many trapped souls are locked in here? How many poor unfortunates have never been able to break free of its jealous clutch?’

But Miss Ursula had heard and seen enough for the time being. ‘That will be for you to discover,’ she told him. ‘I wish your investigations to commence at once. The caretaker’s son shall guide you around the museum. If there are tormented souls locked in here, you have my permission to do whatever you please with them. Now, close the door – the draught is intolerable.’

Neil glanced apologetically at the Chief Inspector who was still waiting outside, but Hargreaves was not in the least bit offended.

‘Close it, I say!’ Miss Ursula commanded.

Hargreaves moved away from the entrance. ‘I’ll be around should you need me,’ he called to Neil as the boy reluctantly pushed the door shut. ‘Urdr knows, those of us who are left will be here.’

The oaken door shuddered in its frame and Neil glared up at the imperious figure upon the stairs.

‘There’s no need to be so rude!’ he shouted.

But Miss Ursula had her back to him and was already ascending to the first floor. Giving the stranger a final suspicious glance, Edie Dorkins pulled an impudent face and capered after her.

Austen Pickering could only shake his head in disappointment. ‘Sad want of manners,’ he murmured.

‘Ignore them,’ Neil began. ‘They’re both bats.’

The old man regarded him for a moment. ‘I’ve come across worse. There’s no escaping it in my field of study. When you talk about phantoms and the unquiet dead to people, it seems to bring out the worst in them. I’ve been called more names than I can remember, but so long as the job gets done, they can call me twice as many again.’

Pausing, he looked at the raven sitting upon the boy’s shoulder and winked at him in amusement. ‘That’s a dandy specimen you’ve got there, lad,’ he said peering at the bird with interest. ‘However did you come by him?’

Quoth held his head up proudly whilst the man viewed him and turned his head so that his best side showed.

‘Vain little beggar, too,’ Mr Pickering observed.

‘He that be a foe of beauty is an enemy of nature,’ the raven retorted.

The man started and looked at Neil, as though suspecting him of ventriloquism. Then he laughed and removed his spectacles to polish the lenses. ‘A long time I’ve been waiting to get inside this place,’ he declared. ‘I told myself I’d have to expect all kinds, but I wasn’t counting on a talking raven to be my first surprise.’

Returning his glasses to their rightful place upon his nose, Austen Pickering smiled happily. ‘This is birthdays and Christmas all come at once,’ he explained to Neil. ‘I hardly know where to start. It’s like being given one enormous present, but too excited to peep inside the wrapping paper.’

Walking towards the door which led to the ground floor collections, he rubbed his hands together with an almost childlike glee. ‘You don’t have to show me around if you don’t want to. I’d be perfectly content to wander about on my own.’

‘No,’ Neil replied. ‘I’d like to. What you said about there being trapped souls in here … do you mean it’s haunted?’

At once Mr Pickering grew serious again. ‘Can you doubt it?’ he cried. ‘You who live in this revolting building?’

‘I believe you – honest I do,’ Neil assured him, and his thoughts flew to his friend Angelo Signorelli.

When the Chapmans had first come to stay in The Wyrd Museum, Neil had encountered the soul of that unfortunate American airman in The Separate Collection. There, in one of the display cabinets, Angelo’s spirit had been imprisoned for over fifty years, locked within the woolly form of a shabby old Teddy bear. Together, they had journeyed back into the past to save the life of Jean Evans, the woman Angelo had loved. But Ted had chosen to remain in that time and Neil still missed him.

Addressing Austen Pickering again, Neil asked, ‘When I saw you that time, out in the street, you said this place was like a psychic sponge – that it trapped souls and kept them. What you did just then, when you came in – are you psychic?’

The man stared at him. It was unusual for anyone to accept the things he said, but this boy was doing his best – even trying to understand. ‘I’m blessed with a very modest gift,’ he murmured. ‘From the moment I stepped inside this horror, I felt the unending torture of those who should have crossed over but are still bound to this world. This place has known untold deaths during its different roles throughout the ages.’

‘I know that it used to be an insane asylum.’

‘Oh, it’s been a lot more than that, lad. I’ve done my homework on this miserable pile of bricks, researching back as far as the scant records allow. Orphanage, a workhouse for the poverty-stricken silk weavers, before that a pest house and going even further back – a hospital for lepers. Think of all the suffering and anguish these walls have absorbed. No one can imagine the number of hapless victims that this monstrous structure keeps locked within its rooms, condemned to wander these floors for eternity. The poor wretches have been ignored for far too long.’

Clapping his hands together, he raised his voice and announced in a loud voice which boomed out like that of a drill sergeant. ‘Well, I’m here now – Austen Pickering, ghost hunter. Here to listen to their cries and, no matter what it takes, I’m going to help them.’

The rest of Neil’s morning was taken up showing Austen Pickering around The Wyrd Museum. The man marvelled at every room and each new display. He was a very methodical individual who took great pains to ensure that no exhibit was overlooked, reading each of their faded labels. Therefore, the tour took longer than Neil had anticipated, for the old man found everything to be of interest and had an opinion about all that he saw.

Quoth found this a particularly tiring trait and yawned many times, nodding off on several occasions, almost falling from Neil’s shoulder.

Whilst they were in The Roman Gallery, Miss Celandine came romping in, dressed in her gown of faded ruby velvet and chattering away to herself. The old woman was giggling shrilly, as if in response to some marvellous joke, but as soon as she saw Neil and the old man she froze, and a hunted look flashed across her walnut-wrinkled face.

‘Don’t leave me!’ she squealed to her invisible companions. ‘You said we might go to the dancing. You did! You did! Come back – wait for me! Wait!’ And with her plaits swinging behind her, she fled back the way she had come.

Austen Pickering raised his eyebrows questioningly and Neil shrugged. ‘She’s not all there, either,’ he explained.

‘The vessel of her mind hast set sail, yet she didst remain ashore,’ Quoth added.

Their snail-like progress through the museum was delayed even further by the ghost hunter’s habit of pausing at odd moments whilst he jotted down his impressions in a neat little notebook.

‘You never know what may turn out to be important,’ he told Neil. ‘A trifling detail seen here, but forgotten later, might just be the key I’ll be looking for in my work. The investigator must be alert at all times and record what he can. It might seem daft and over-meticulous, but you have to be thorough and not leave any holes for the sceptics to pick at. I pride myself that no one could accuse me of being slipshod. Everything is written up and filed. No half measures for me. I’ve got a whole room filled with dossiers and indexes back home up north, accounts and news clippings of each case I’ve had a hand in. It was the Northern Echo what first called me a ghost hunter, although … Blimey – would you look at this!’