Shadowghast

by Thomas Taylor

  “Where’s he gone?” Violet whispers.

  As if in answer, we hear a rattling sound. It’s exactly the sound you would expect if a mechanical hermit crab were shaking a box of matches and trying to get your attention. I swing the flashlight around to the desk and, sure enough, Clermit is perched there. He taps the glass of the lamp with his little scissors.

  “Good boy!” I say, coming over and grinning at the little contraption.

  “He’s not a dog, Herbie,” Vi says as she takes the matches, strikes one, and relights the lamp. A soft glow banishes the gloom, and the study of Sebastian Eels comes back into view.

  “He is a faithful companion, though,” I reply, holding out my hands so that Clermit can climb aboard.

  But instead, he reaches his scissor claw inside his shell, pulls out the scrap of paper he snaffled, and stuffs it into my hands. Then he folds himself away, whirs to silence, and goes still. I pick him up and pop him back under my cap.

  “What’s on it?” Violet asks, coming over to look.

  I spread the paper on the desk. It’s very scrappy, and crumpled from Clermit’s shell, but I would recognize Eels’s energetic spider scrawl anywhere.

  “Looks like a diagram,” I say, “of the Shadowghast lantern. With notes about how to use it.”

  “Let me look,” says Vi, tipping the lamp to get a brighter view of the sketch and scribbled notes. She taps a label on the diagram, which points to the lantern’s dragon head with an arrow. “This part seems important. It’s underlined twice.”

  “He who controls the light commands the dark,” I say, reading aloud the words.

  “He,” says Violet, “or she.”

  I decide not to reply to that.

  “Either way, it’s a clue, Herbie,” Vi continues, folding the paper into her coat pocket, “and we need as many of those as we can get.”

  “We should take that sketch to my Lost-and-Foundery,” I say, stepping toward the door, eager to be gone. “For a proper look. It’s risky to stay here, and we don’t know for sure we can open that back door.”

  “True.” Violet nods. Then she turns to face the bookshelves. “But obviously we can’t go yet, Herbie.”

  My heart sinks.

  “We can’t?”

  “Of course not!” Vi cries. “We have to explore the secret chamber first.”

  I don’t argue. I know my friend well enough by now not to waste my breath.

  Violet reaches out and presses one of the books in. There’s a soft click, like we heard before.

  “I just wish I’d seen all the books Mr. Mummery used to open it,” Violet continues. “This is the only one I’m sure of. Did you notice any?”

  “I’m fairly sure that was one,” I reply, pointing to a second book, which has a thick bloodred spine and large lizard scales embossed on it. Inside some of the scales are white capital letters spelling out the book’s title:

  Vi presses this spine, too, and again we hear the click.

  “Well, that’s two.” She puts her hands on her hips. “But I was counting, and Mummery pressed seven books. How will we know what the other five are?”

  “There was one about here-ish.” I wave my hand in a general way over an end of a shelf. “If that’s any help.”

  “It’s not really,” says Violet, stroking her finger along the spines there. “Except, look! Here’s one of Eels’s own books.”

  Sure enough, we see a novel with a poison-green leather spine, decorated with an emaciated human figure who looks as though he’s only a notch or two up from being a skeleton.

  “The Sweet Smell of Despair.” I read the title over Violet’s shoulder. “By Sebastian Eels. Sounds charming! Let me add that to my TBRN list.”

  “Don’t you mean TBR list?” Vi asks. “As in To Be Read?”

  “To Be Read NEVER is what I mean, thanks, Violet,” I explain. “Only a man like Sebastian Eels could have spent his life writing such horrible-sounding stories.”

  “Wait!” says Vi. “By S. E.! That other book—the beast one—was written by S. E. Is that Sebastian Eels, too? And if so, what about that first one . . . ?”

  Violet darts over to the first book she pressed, and sure enough, there on the sickly-yellow spine is the name Sebastian Eels, beside the title Dead, and All Bones.

  Vi jumps back to The Sweet Smell of Despair, presses it, and cries “Yes!” when we hear a third click from inside the secret doorway.

  “Of course he would pick his own books.” Vi’s eyes flash triumphantly in the lamplight. “But his bigheadedness makes it easier for us . . .”

  It takes us only a few moments to locate more of the author’s titles among the works of history, mystery, and the occult that fill the shelves. Soon we have a total of six of them pressed back, each making its own clicking sound.

  “We need the last one,” Vi says as she grips the shelves and pulls, but to no effect. “It still won’t open.”

  And that’s when I see it.

  There, on the lowest shelf, is another book by Sebastian Eels—a book I know only too well. It’s the first book I was dispensed by the mermonkey when I first came to live in Eerie-on-Sea. A book that has haunted me ever since.

  Violet spots it, too.

  “The Cold, Dark Bottom of the Sea,” I say, reading out the title. “I might have known. On my TBRN list, that book is right at the top!”

  “You may hate that book, Herbie,” Violet says, “but perhaps you shouldn’t. After all, it’s the only place I’ve ever seen mention of your ship, the SS Fabulous.”

  “Except for Caliastra’s ticket,” I correct her. “My aunt was actually on the ship, remember?”

  Violet raises one eyebrow at me.

  “If she was claiming to be my aunt,” she replies, “I’d want better proof than that. Maybe if you actually read the book, you’d find some answers for yourself.”

  “We don’t have time for two mysteries,” I say firmly. “Let’s worry about finding Jenny first. My shipwreck can wait till later.”

  And I push at the spine of The Cold, Dark Bottom of the Sea, sliding it back till we hear . . .

  CLICK!

  Then comes that same stone-scraping we heard before, deep within the structure of the building, and the hidden bookshelf door is released.

  We have opened Sebastian Eels’s secret chamber.

  Taking up the lamp from the desk, Violet and I creep inside the secret chamber.

  The room is about half the size of the study. On the walls there are wooden shelves, divided to form deep square alcoves of varying sizes. And in all of the alcoves there are treasures.

  Well, maybe treasures isn’t the obvious word for a bunch of dusty boxes, rolls of paper, notebooks, and linen-wrapped artifacts—it actually looks like some of the older and more cobwebby stuff I keep in my Lost-and-Foundery—but you can tell by the careful way everything is stored that these things were very much treasured by someone.

  “There are labels,” says Vi in a whisper. “On each alcove.”

  Sure enough, in Sebastian Eels’s spider writing, we see the names of creatures we know from the legends of Eerie-on-Sea:

  “What’s Fargazer?” I ask. “I don’t know that one.”

  “It’s an old tale,” Violet replies. “Jenny told it to me once. It’s really creepy and . . . Wait, look! Herbie!”

  And so I look. Violet is pointing at a word that means more than any other right now:

  “But it’s empty,” I say, peering into the alcove. “There’s nothing there.”

  Sure enough, where the other alcoves contain wrapped objects and notebooks and boxes, the one marked SHADOWGHAST contains nothing at all.

  “Not exactly nothing,” says Vi, leaning in closer. “Look, in the dust. There are marks where something once stood.”

  “Looks like footprints,” I squeak, feeling a sudden rush of uneasiness. “Like footprints made by four giant chicken feet!”

  The marks do indeed look like they were made by bird claws. If, tha
t is, the bird was the size of a wolf.

  “Not chicken feet, Herbie.” Vi turns to me, realization on her face. “Dragon feet.”

  “What!”

  “The Shadowghast lantern, remember?” she says. “It’s shaped like a dragon and stands on four clawed feet. This is where it must have been kept. All those years that people thought the lantern from the first Ghastly Night was still lost in the sea, Eels had it right here, hidden in this secret room.”

  “I wonder what else he’s got?” I say, looking around. “I bet everything he ever collected about the Legends of Eerie-on-Sea is in here.”

  “And it sounds as if it’s all about to go to Caliastra,” Violet replies. “If she buys the house, as it sounded from Mummery like she’s planning to do, she’ll get everything. And something tells me that’s not a good idea.”

  I want to protest, to say that my aunt wouldn’t be up to anything really bad, but my eye catches on something. A small thing that I might have missed if the lamp hadn’t flared brighter for a moment. I stoop to look closer.

  “Herbie?” says Vi. “What are you looking at?”

  Near the bottom of one wall, with a label I can barely read in the dark, is a particularly small alcove.

  “Bring the light!” I cry. “Bring it!”

  Violet leans in, holding up the kerosene lamp so that we can read the tiny, curling label above the little alcove. When I see what’s written there, I can hardly breathe.

  “But that’s . . .” Violet starts to say, as if struggling to get the words out. “That’s . . . you!”

  With a trembling hand, I reach into the tiny alcove. I pull out an object and hold it up in the light of the lamp.

  Violet’s eyes are as wide as scallop shells as we stare at the thing in my hand.

  It’s a lemon.

  A dried-up, slightly rubbery lemon.

  “Do you think . . . ?” Vi asks, still struggling to get words out. “Do you think this is one of the actual lemons from the crate you were washed up in?”

  “Maybe,” I reply through a gulp. “But why would Sebastian Eels keep something like that?”

  “Why, Herbie,” says Vi, “would Sebastian Eels have a special ‘Herbert Lemon’ alcove at all?”

  And I don’t know the answer to that, do I? If I did, I probably wouldn’t be standing there openmouthed like a fish hoping for a fly. And maybe, if I hadn’t been gawping—and if Violet hadn’t been gawping with me—we would have noticed that someone has just entered the study and is doing a bit of gawping of his own as he finds the door of the secret chamber open, and us inside.

  “What the blazes are you two doing here?” demands Mr. Mummery.

  He is already getting over his surprise enough to turn a furious shade of purple. One of his hands reaches out automatically and takes the homburg hat off the hook that he, Mr. Mummery, hung it on about twenty minutes before.

  Violet and I exchange glances, the same thought written across our faces.

  We should have noticed that Mr. Mummery had forgotten his hat.

  We should have expected he might come back to retrieve it!

  And now, because we didn’t, we see as plain as day that we’re about to be shut into the secret chamber ourselves.

  “No!” cries Violet, starting to move.

  But Mr. Mummery has already grabbed the bookshelf door and is starting to swing it shut. We’re only seconds away from being entombed.

  So, I do the only thing I can do in the circumstances.

  I throw the shriveled lemon at Mr. Mummery.

  It hits him on the nose.

  “Ow!” Mummery cries, letting go of the door and clutching his face.

  “Run!” I shout, though I don’t really need to. Vi and I elbow the theatrical manager out of the way and rush past him. He makes a grab for us but only succeeds in knocking the kerosene lamp from Violet’s hands. The lamp hits the floor with a crash of shattering glass. Light flares as blazing kerosene spills out across the rug, setting it alight.

  “The door!” Violet shouts. “The front door!”

  We charge out onto the landing, as the flames flicker behind us. We can hear Mr. Mummery cry in alarm and start stamping at the fire. But we’re too busy rattling down the stairs to check what he’s doing.

  As expected, the front door is slightly open, the cold blue of night just visible around the doorway.

  We run toward the door, and freedom, and pull it open, and . . .

  A dark shadow falls across the doorway, blocking our way. Then another looms up, as two tall, wiry silhouettes step into the house. In the faint, crackling light of the fire upstairs, we see ghastly faces we were not expecting—the painted stage masks of Rictus and Tristo.

  They rush forward to grab us.

  This way!” Vi cries, quickly switching direction, dashing around the staircase and heading down the hallway, deeper into the house. We need to find that back door after all—the one with the key still in the lock—and we need to find it quickly!

  It’s really weird being chased by mime artists. There’s no “Hey, get back here!” or “Just wait until I get my hands on you, Herbert Lemon!” or any of the things people usually shout when I’m running away from them. No, there’s just an eerie silence and the sense of two strong men sprinting right on our heels. Even when Violet tips over a coat stand—causing the men to trip and gaining us a few precious seconds—they don’t cry out. If anything, this only makes the pair even more terrifying.

  We dive into the kitchen, slam the door behind us, and lean against it.

  I shine my flashlight around desperately—its light glinting off copper pots, dusty glassware, and moldy unwashed dishes. There’s an almighty wallop against the door, and Vi and I are nearly shaken off our feet. Then comes another crash, and the door moves as the Rictus and Tristo force it open.

  A black-clad arm reaches in and grabs my uniform front in a fistful of fabric and brass buttons.

  “Erk!” I cry.

  Violet snatches up a fork from a nearby counter and jabs it into the hand, which lets go and withdraws, allowing us to slam the door shut again. But we get only a moment’s relief before the walloping starts once more, and I know we won’t be able to hold them back for long.

  Then Violet wedges the fork under the door with her foot.

  When the next crash comes, there’s a screeching sound as the fork gets stuck in a floor tile, and the door sets fast.

  “Run!”

  Together we jump away. The door is holding for now, but the mime artists are throwing their whole weight against it, and the fork is starting to bend.

  There’s a back way out of the kitchen, and we run into a corridor beyond it. Here we find the back door—the one with the key in the lock, that leads into the garden—but there are boxes and things piled against it. We’ll never shift them in time.

  “Oh, bladderwracks!” I shout. “Now what?”

  “Here!” Violet pulls my arm, and we head the opposite direction. There’s a big old cellar door halfway down, and Violet heaves it open.

  We are hit by a blast of cold, musty air, as we find ourselves looking into a void of darkness. I probe it urgently with my keychain flashlight, but I only manage to identify a couple of steps leading down into the fathomless black.

  “We can’t go down there!” I squeak.

  There’s a sudden shriek of metal scraping against tile as the fork finally gives way. Back in the kitchen, we hear Rictus and Tristo burst through.

  “No choice!” Violet gasps, and she begins to descend into the darkness. I step after her, swinging the door closed behind us and wincing as it creaks on rusty hinges. The cold and the dark close around us as we go down, step by step, with nothing but the keychain flashlight to light our feet.

  We reach the bottom step and crunch onto a gravelly surface.

  There’s a sound from the corridor above, and I quickly switch off the flashlight. The velvet dark engulfs us utterly.

  Way above, we hear the old cel
lar door open creakily on its hinge. Our night-adapted eyes see a rectangle of darkest gray in the open doorway. Two silhouettes stand there—Rictus and Tristo—staring down into the blackness, silent, listening.

  I bite my sleeve to prevent a squeak of terror from bursting out, and Violet grips my other arm so hard it actually hurts.

  Then—slowly, deliberately—the door at the top of the steps creaks shut and slams with a sound like the grave.

  We hear the scrape of bolts sliding after it.

  “Herbie,” Violet’s voice comes eventually, smaller and more terrified than I’ve ever heard it before. “Turn your flashlight back on!”

  I do so, and the light springs out once more. But I can’t help noticing that the beam is weaker than it should be. I give the flashlight a tap but only succeed in making it flicker.

  “The battery must be running out,” I say. “I’m sorry, Vi.”

  “Then we’d better find out where we are while we still can,” Violet replies, still shaken, but as practical as ever. “This must be a cellar.”

  I shine the failing flashlight around, slowly, and we try to piece together our surroundings. We can see a ceiling of vaulted brickwork, dripping with white stalactites; arched alcoves filled with collapsing crates, ancient barrels, and half-empty wine racks; and a long, vaulted space that extends beyond the reach of the flashlight beam, and which offers the only possible alternative way out.

  “What’s that?” Violet whispers near my ear. “Over there?”

  And she guides my arm so that the feeble flashlight beam picks out a table in one of the alcoves, with a few objects on top.

  “Maybe there’s another flashlight over there,” she says. “Or some batteries.”

  It doesn’t seem very likely to me, but I don’t see what else we can do. Together we walk toward the table.

  “No batteries,” I say as my flashlight picks out an array of old tools, empty bottles, and cobwebby clutter. “But there is a candle!”

  Sure enough, sitting alone in a blackened silver candelabra that would once have held five candles in happier circumstances, a single stub of candle with a dusty black wick offers us the tantalizing hope of light beyond the failing flashlight.