Shadowghast

by Thomas Taylor

  “Oh, that’s just Mrs. Fossil,” I reply. “Practicing. Come on! That means she’s in.”

  And I push open the door to the shop and step into the curious world of beachcombed treasures.

  Piled high against every wall are buckets and crates and barrels and lobster pots, and basket upon basket of curiosities. And it’s bonkers to think that everything here was found washed up on the beach. More containers—heaped with beach-rolled plastic, twists of driftwood, glass fishing floats, and every conceivable thing that could ever be lost at sea—crowd the floor, below a ceiling hung with fishing nets and salvaged parts of ships. And all of this is bathed in a rainbow of sunlight from the countless jars of colored sea glass that fill the wide window of Mrs. Fossil’s Flotsamporium.

  “Hellooo, my dears!” cries a singsong voice as Mrs. F herself looks up from her seat beside her stove, frowning with concentration. In her arms she cradles an extraordinary musical instrument of gleaming red wood, inlaid with patterns of shell. With one hand she cranks a handle, while the fingers of the other fly across wooden keys, and her foot taps a beat on the floorboards.

  “Can’t stop yet! Hold on . . .”

  And the music tumbles on—buzzingly, mesmerizingly—as blue driftwood flames dance in the window of the stove, and my own foot starts to tap, until, with a droning flourish—like a choir of bees coming to the end of a particularly manic song—it’s over.

  “Phew!” gasps Mrs. F, sitting back in the ringing silence that follows and giving us a snaggletooth grin. “Still got it! Bit rusty, though. Must put in all the hours I can before the big night.”

  “Mrs. F, what is that?” Violet says, the reason for our visit briefly swept aside by curiosity about the object in the beachcomber’s lap.

  “Hurdy-gurdy,” comes the reply, and Mrs. Fossil gives the instrument another crank and spins the wheel that makes it drone. “Played it for years, on and off.” And she lifts the strap of the funny-looking thing over her head and lowers the instrument gently to the ground. “You two are just in time. Clever of you to guess my latest batch of ginger cookies is almost ready. Want a cup of tea?”

  And I can’t help making an enormous grin of my own. Because, sure enough, somewhere behind the smell of wood smoke, seaweedy beach treasures, and drying waxed coats, my nose picks up the warm scent of fresh baking.

  “Sounds perfect, Mrs. F. Thanks!” I reply. “By the way, would you believe Violet hadn’t heard of manglewick candles before? Imagine that!”

  “Well, I never!” cries Mrs. F, standing up and stretching. “But I suppose it is just a funny old local tradition. Most folks outside Eerie don’t much bother with it, or so I’m told. And they are lucky they don’t have to, I suppose.”

  “What do you mean?” asks Violet?

  Mrs. Fossil glances over to one corner of her shop and gives a nod at the strange objects there.

  “Well, people outside Eerie don’t need their protection, do they?”

  In the corner are dozens of strips of gnarly driftwood, attached to the wall so that they stick out like brackets. Each piece of wood has a candle fixed at the end. And the candles all have wire twisted around them. The ends of the wire, which stick up beside the candles’ wicks, are turned and bent and, well, mangled, in a strange way. Each wire is different from the next, but frankly—seen like this—they don’t look very impressive.

  “Manglewicks,” I say, picking up a nearby box of matches and heading over to the corner. “Can I light one, Mrs. F? So Violet can see . . . ?”

  “No! Wait, Herbie . . . !” Mrs. Fossil calls out, but it’s too late. I’ve already struck a match and placed the flame against the wick.

  The dark corner is bathed in a flare of soft light.

  Now that the candle is lit, the real skill of what Mrs. Fossil has done is obvious. The little twist of wire, nothing much on its own, throws a shadow onto the wall behind—the shadow of a crooked man with horns on his head, who dances with the flicker of the flame.

  Mrs. Fossil runs forward, slides to a halt in her woolly socks, and, with a puff, blows the candle out.

  “Herbie, it’s bad luck to light them before dusk,” she gasps. “Didn’t you know that?”

  “Why?” says Violet. “Why is it bad luck?”

  Mrs. F clutches at her dungaree straps and looks around nervously.

  “Because,” she replies, in a trembly voice, “a manglewick only distracts the Shadowghast at night, when he’s on the prowl. But if you light it early, before the sun goes down . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, then you’ll summon him, won’t you? And he’ll snatch your shadow instead!”

  I’m about to give Violet a “Yeah, right!” grin when I happen to catch sight of the candle. From the wick curls the smoke of the dead flame, and for a moment—just a tiny, fleeting moment—the smoke takes on a wispy shape.

  The shape of a crooked, grinning man with horns on his head.

  At least, that’s what people say,” Mrs. Fossil adds, waving the candle smoke away and grinning sheepishly. “But you know what Eerie folk are like. I expect it’s just a bit of fun to mark the changing of the season, but all the same, Herbie, it’s not something to take lightly. Now, let’s get that kettle on.”

  “They’re beautiful,” says Violet, glancing back at the unlit manglewick candles as we follow the beachcomber to her corner kitchen, “in a weird sort of way. And that shadow was wonderfully creepy.”

  “Thank you, my dear,” says Mrs. Fossil. “I make them every year. It gives me something to do when the tourists are gone. Each one is ready to go to a home here in Eerie, to cast a little shadow at night and keep the Shadowghast at bay.”

  “But what is the Shadowghast?” Violet asks.

  “Ah, but of course!” Mrs. Fossil says as she fills a big copper kettle with water. “You haven’t been here for Ghastly Night before, have you? This will be your first. Well, if you’ve got some time now, the doc will be around soon with his puppets and props, to rehearse. And you can see for yourself.”

  “Rehearse?”

  “Yup,” I say. “Dr. Thalassi and Mrs. F put on a Ghastly Night show of their own, down on the pier, every year. At least, they usually do . . .”

  “We always do!” Mrs. Fossil corrects me. “Do please stay to watch. It would be good to have an audience. Now, let’s get those cookies out . . .”

  “But are you still performing?” Violet says, exchanging a look with me. “This year, I mean. I thought Lady Kraken had invited a big-name magician to do the Ghastly Night show. At least, that’s what I’ve heard.”

  “Where did you get that idea?” Mrs. Fossil chuckles, sliding her big fat golden ginger cookies onto a cooling rack. “What famous magician would waste their time coming to Eerie-on-Sea? Ghastly Night’s just a few locals gathering on the pier, with hot drinks and caramel apples, while Doc tells the story and I grind my old gurdy.”

  “The reason we came around,” Violet says hastily, changing the subject to the business that brought us here in the first place, “is to see if you’re all right, Mrs. F. After what happened last night, I mean.”

  “Oh, that!” Mrs. Fossil says with an embarrassed grin. “I was just being silly, I’m sure. I’ll be jumping at my own shadow next.”

  “But what did happen?” Violet says. “You came around to the book dispensary, didn’t you? Afterward you and Jenny went off somewhere, and she hasn’t come back.”

  “She hasn’t?” Mrs. Fossil turns her head sharply and drops the last cookie. It plops to the floor. “Are you sure?”

  We both nod.

  “Oh!” Mrs. Fossil clutches her dungarees again. “You . . . you haven’t seen her today at all?”

  “I haven’t,” Violet replies. “Do you know where she went? After she saw you?”

  Mrs. F scoops up the dropped cookie with a spatula.

  “She just walked me home. That’s all,” the beachcomber explains. “I had a bit of a scare, you see, while out delivering my mangle
wicks. Some customers like me to drop them off personally, but I left my rounds a bit late last night. I’m always a bit jumpy this time of year, and I got spooked. Jenny knows what I’m like, so when I came banging on the door of the bookshop, she let me in and gave me a cup of tea. Then she saw me safely home.”

  “But where is she now?” Violet demands. “You’re the last person to see her. Surely, you know something! Why didn’t she come home?”

  “What scared you, Mrs. F?” I ask gently, putting a reassuring hand on Vi’s arm. “What did you see?”

  Mrs. Fossil sends a fearful glance over to the corner where she displays her manglewicks.

  “I saw . . . well, I thought I saw . . . in the window of that boarded-up house down the street . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “I thought I saw . . . now, you mustn’t laugh! But . . . I thought I saw the Shadowghast.”

  Just then the door of the Flotsamporium bursts open, and a tall shape fills the doorway, spilling a long, dark shadow across the shop floor.

  “Agh!” Mrs. Fossil cries, throwing up her hands in surprise. The dropped cookie now flies off the end of her spatula and sticks to the ceiling. “Dr. Thalassi! You frightened the life out of me! You’re early.”

  “Good day,” says Eerie-on-Sea’s medical doctor as he enters the shop and removes his astrakhan hat. “If it is a good day, that is, which I’m beginning to doubt. Have you heard? Apparently, Lady Kraken has decided to invite someone else to perform the show on Ghastly Night this year. A professional! Do you know anything about this, Herbie?”

  I do an awkward grin.

  “It’s true,” I admit. “There’s a magician up at the hotel. They’re opening up the theater on the pier specially for her. Ghastly Night is going to be big this year. I . . . I’m sorry, Doc.”

  “But it’s our show!” Mrs. Fossil cries. “We do it every year! No one tells the story quite like the doc. He does all the voices and everything.”

  Dr. Thalassi shrugs a cloth sack off his shoulder onto the floor, and it falls open. A jumble of sticks and props clatter out—the doc’s collection of shadow puppets.

  “It’s an outrage!” he booms, his caterpillar eyebrows low over his Roman nose. “I’ve invested precious time in rehearsals—not for fun, you understand, just to keep a piece of local history alive—and then Her Ladyship repays me by getting some jumped-up little conjuror in and not even telling us! I’ve got a good mind to go over to the hotel and demand an explanation.”

  I don’t think Caliastra is a jumped-up little conjuror. And I don’t think the doc would either if he met her and saw one of her tricks. But I don’t say anything. Mrs. Fossil and the doc clearly have enough to say about it all without me joining in, and they go on moaning about the situation as Mrs. F pours the tea and the doc sets out chairs beside the stove.

  And anyway, here is something else for Violet and me to think about.

  There is only one “boarded-up house down the street” that I can think of, and that’s the house of a man Violet and I would like never to think about again. A man who is gone for good but who seems, nevertheless, to have left a very long shadow of his own across our lives.

  A man named Sebastian Eels.

  “Herbie”—Vi leans in close to whisper—“are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “That depends,” I reply. “Are you thinking how soon we can help ourselves to a cookie without being rude?”

  “No, I’m not! I’m thinking how could Mrs. Fossil have seen something in the window of a boarded-up house when its boarded-up!”

  “You think it’s been un-boarded, then?”

  “One window must have been, at least,” Vi replies. “Maybe someone’s been in Sebastian Eels’s house. And maybe Jenny wondered the same thing last night. And maybe, after dropping Mrs. Fossil back here, she decided to investigate. And maybe something happened to her!”

  “That’s a lot of maybes, Vi,” I say. “And here are a few more: maybe Mrs. F really did just get spooked by her own shadow. And maybe Jenny really has just been delayed somewhere, and maybe you’re still just seeing adventures where there aren’t any.”

  “Perhaps,” says Vi, with a sigh, “but there’s only one way to know for sure. We should take a look at Sebastian Eels’s house for ourselves.”

  And probably we would have done that straightaway, if something extraordinary didn’t start to happen right in front of us, beside the cozy fire in the Flotsamporium, in the presence of a loaded plate of ginger cookies.

  Because somehow, using only things from his bag, Dr. Thalassi has built a striped fabric booth around himself, like the kind used for puppet shows. Only, where the little stage should be, he has stretched a cotton screen. With a scratch from a match, the doc lights a kerosene lantern, and the screen begins to glow. Then, with one of his puppet sticks, he makes a shadow silhouette dance and cavort across the screen.

  “We will rehearse anyway,” comes the voice of the doc from inside the booth. All we can see are his tweed trousers and shiny shoes showing underneath. “I won’t be able to persuade Lady Kraken to change her mind if we aren’t ready with our own show.”

  “Come sit, Violet,” Mrs. Fossil calls. “You wanted to know the story of the Shadowghast. Well, now’s your chance!”

  And Mrs. F sits beside the doc, straps her hurdy-gurdy around her waist once more, and cranks out an eerie drone.

  I can see that Violet is about to argue. But I can also see that she’s curious to see what will happen next. And besides, there really are plenty of innocent reasons why Jenny hasn’t come home yet. I steer Violet to a chair and hand her a cookie.

  “Who’s that?” she asks after a moment, as the cutout shadow of a tall man with a fat belly and muttonchop whiskers walks across the screen in front of us, looking grand and important.

  “That’s old Standing Bigley,” I explain from the cushion beside Violet. “He was mayor of Eerie-on-Sea a long, long time ago. He’s a big part of the story of how Ghastly Night began, way back when the pier was first built.”

  “What are those things in his hands?”

  “Money bags,” I reply. “Shh! The show’s about to start.”

  “Gather close, people of Eerie!” cries the doc then, in a loud showman’s voice. The shadow of Mayor Bigley vanishes from the screen, and a model of Eerie Rock with the town on it appears above a rolling sea. “Gather close for the story of the misdeeds of old Mayor Bigley . . .”

  “Boo!” cries Mrs. Fossil, pretending to be in the audience and nodding at us encouragingly.

  “Boo!” I cry. “Hiss!”

  “. . . and the coming,” the doc continues, “of the fearsome Shadowghast! And, lest that terrible spirit come again even now, hold your manglewicks high!”

  “Hurray!” cries Mrs. Fossil, and Violet and I join in.

  Mrs. F plays a short seafarer’s jig on her hurdy-gurdy while the doc changes the scene and I sit munching the munchiest cookie I’ve had in ages, as the story of Ghastly Night unfolds before us in a spectacle of light and shadow.

  Once upon an autumn night, on All Hallows’ Eve, the fisherfolk brought a strange seafarer to Eerie-on-Sea. They had found him caught in the strong currents around Maw Rocks, though no one could say where he could have come from in such a small boat, and the stranger himself wouldn’t say. But what made this stranger strange even for Eerie-on-Sea was the bronze lantern he carried with him. It was sculpted to resemble a dragon with a silver orb in its mouth, and it gave off a pungent stink of naphtha.

  “Who are you?” the fisherfolk asked.

  “I am the Puppet Master,” replied the stranger, with a bow and a curious twinkle in his pale eyes. “And this is my magic lantern.”

  This happened back in the days when the mayor of Eerie-on-Sea was trying to change the town from an ancient tumbledown coastal settlement, haunted by mystery, into a jolly seaside resort of cotton candy, beach huts, and profit. The mayor—a rich man of business named Standing Bigley—had already bough
t up most of the seafront and kicked out the people he found there. Only the Grand Nautilus Hotel held out against him.

  Mayor Bigley’s master plan was to build a pleasure pier opposite the hotel and cover it with lights and amusements, beneath a new sign calling the town CHEERIE-ON-SEA. He said it would bring in tourists by the thousands. He said it would make the town rich. He didn’t say it would make him richer than anyone else, but he didn’t need to.

  The people of Eerie were beginning to think that they needed a new mayor.

  “We should put on a show,” declared Mayor Bigley to his nervous investors as the pier was being finished, “to demonstrate to the people that I am right. But where can I find entertainment at such short notice? And cheap entertainment, at that!”

  It was just as this question was being asked that the stranger with the lantern arrived.

  “I can put on a show for you,” the Puppet Master said. “And it will be a puppet show of such wonder and delight that you will happily pay me five golden coins.”

  “Five!” Mayor Bigley cried, nearly losing his wig. “To a poor, dirty fellow such as you? I will pay two and not a penny more. And these puppets of yours had better be good, my man, even at that price. Five! I’ve never heard of such greed!”

  “Then two it is.” The Puppet Master bowed and stepped back into the shadows. “And may you get what you pay for.”

  Although the structure of the pier was at that time complete, work had barely begun on its buildings, and the grand theater due to crown it was nothing but a drawing in the architect’s office. No matter—that night the Puppet Master set up a makeshift stage of planks and canvas at the end of the pier, and with a hissing taper he lit his lantern’s wick.

  The folk of Eerie-on-Sea gathered in the dark—carrying chairs and cushions if they had them, or rolling barrels if they didn’t—and huddled together in the chilly air. All around them tumbled billows of perfumed smoke from the lantern as the Puppet Master plucked the silver orb from the dragon’s mouth and released a strange light from its lens.