Candleman

by Glenn Dakin

  He had an idea. Crawling backwards on his hands and knees he slowly returned to the skeletons he and Chloe had found before. The gun the dead men had left behind was useless, but they might have other stuff – a torch even.

  Holding his breath, he felt around among the rags and bones until he found some belongings. A wallet. A scattering of change. A box of matches. Theo struck a light. A heady smell filled his nostrils as the match ignited and dazzled his eyes. Now he crept forwards again to the edge of the shaft. He stared into it.

  My only real friend is down there, he thought. I have to find out what happened to her. That’s all that matters.

  He looked around, pondering his next move. Then he stopped, astonished. Somebody was waving at him. He blinked and looked again. There, some way down the tunnel, was the face of a kind old lady smiling at him. Her friendly features seemed to be caught in a beam of soft light. From the shadows the woman beckoned him, raising a single bright finger.

  Spellbound, Theo began to walk forwards. Just in time he remembered the shaft and stopped himself with a jolt. He swayed on the edge of the drop, about to plunge in, but somehow made a desperate leap to clear the distance.

  He landed safely on the other side. The kindly face had disappeared. Theo let out a sigh of relief. It was short-lived. Now he could hear footsteps. Not faint, creepy, ghostly footsteps, but bold, confident, striding ones. They were approaching from around the corner up ahead. Theo waited in the darkness, his heart pounding.

  A policeman turned the corner. Not a modern-day policeman, but an old-fashioned constable, such as Theo had seen in his Pictorial Tour of Victorian London. The policeman’s uniform was out-of-date, bulky and brass-buttoned, with no holsters and flaps for radios and guns. The officer also wore huge sidewhiskers, which were quite out of fashion nowadays – even Theo knew that.

  The figure stopped on the corner, and stood there, looking up and down the tunnel as if on duty. I shouldn’t be able to see that person, Theo thought. There’s no light down here. As with the kindly face, the visitor seemed to be illuminated by its own inner glow.

  ‘Evening,’ the figure said.

  Is he talking to me? Theo wondered. Please don’t let him be talking to me. Theo stayed where he was, not daring to breathe.

  ‘No cause for alarm, sir,’ the officer said, rocking slightly on his heels. ‘Just a routine patrol.’

  Theo remained silent. No book of manners could prepare him for an encounter like this.

  ‘You can come out of the shadows, young feller,’ the constable said in a pleasant voice. ‘I know you’re there! I realise the official uniform can be a bit imposing, but I don’t bite, I can assure you!’

  Theo took a deep breath and stepped nearer. There was no escape from the steady gaze of the constable, who appeared to be about fifty years old, craggy-faced and robust.

  ‘Can I help you in any way, sir?’ the man asked.

  Theo took a gamble. ‘I, um … seem to be a bit lost,’ he said. ‘Could you, err … tell me the way out?’

  ‘Out?’ the constable echoed. The word seemed to trouble him. ‘Out? I don’t know what you mean, sir.’

  Theo stared at the figure. The policeman seemed to be losing his balance – his body quivered strangely.

  ‘Very sorry, sir,’ the man said. ‘It’s been a long time – I sometimes have trouble … remembering.’

  A pang of pity struck Theo, though he didn’t know why.

  ‘Remembering what?’ he asked.

  The constable stared sadly at him. ‘Remembering what I’m supposed to look like!’ slurred an inhuman voice. Before Theo’s eyes, the policeman began to fall apart. His body became transparent, his skin peeled away on all sides like a human banana and slid to the floor with a hissing flop. For a second a bright skeleton gaped at Theo before tumbling down, broken, into the molten slurry of the body.

  Theo was forced to step over the terrifying remains, which were now slithering across the tunnel floor like a living pool. He fled blindly into the blackness. He crashed into a wall and slumped against it, panting.

  ‘A visitor!’ declared a ringing voice from behind him. Theo turned, trembling, to see a beautiful woman standing there. Like the other members of the Eighty-eight he had witnessed, she shone with her own inner radiance, which made her quite dazzling. Her sweeping, perfectly styled hair was white, and she wore a long, shimmering, silver gown.

  ‘How nice of you to drop by!’ she continued, her voice sweet and cooing. ‘Except …’

  Theo staggered backwards. ‘Except …?’ he stammered.

  ‘Visitors aren’t allowed!’ shrieked the woman, her jaw suddenly dropping and displaying a mouth of razor-sharp teeth.

  He turned and ran, reckless of any peril ahead. He feared the worst, expecting to be horribly killed at any instant. He tore through the darkness, away from the terrifying figures, every step bringing him hope of escape.

  ‘Grab him!’ a voice screamed, and Theo was clutched by clinging hands. But these weren’t ghostly hands – they were warm flesh. And they dragged him through a hatch to safety. And the voices shouting his name were wonderfully familiar.

  Chapter Twenty

  In Which Mysteries Are Respected

  Theo sank into a comfortable pile of rugs and gazed with astonishment at Sam, Magnus – and a shamefaced but grinning Chloe.

  ‘There!’ said Sam. ‘Pretty blooming vigilant, I’d say.’

  ‘Unrelenting,’ smiled Magnus, tears leaking from his pale old eyes.

  ‘Take it easy, Theo,’ said Chloe. ‘You’re safe here for a while.’

  He took in his new surroundings. They seemed to be in a kind of narrow lumber room containing a crazy miscellany of bric-a-brac, old books, diving equipment, a stuffed eagle, a rack of clothing and an elephant gun. Electric strip lighting provided a pleasant glow. It seemed forever since Theo had felt safe and warm. He was so relieved to be back among friends.

  Magnus had already retired to the far end of the room, to sit down in a big swivel chair before a bank of black-and-white viewing screens.

  ‘He’s never off-duty,’ smiled Sam.

  ‘How – how did you …?’ Theo had so many questions he didn’t know where to start.

  ‘When we fled from the Watch Tower, Chloe told us to run to the safest place we know,’ Sam said. ‘Magnus dragged me down here, into the depths of the network.’

  ‘What is this place?’

  ‘This is the bunker,’ Magnus piped up from the corner. ‘Set up a few years back by the Society as a kind of – urrgh –’ He ran out of breath and sat gasping to himself.

  ‘Better leave him,’ Sam said. ‘Too much excitement at once.’ He scuttled over into a corner and lit a gas ring. ‘All mod cons,’ he added, pouring a bottle of liquid coffee essence into a pan. ‘Dunno how old this stuff is,’ he smiled. ‘They didn’t do use-by dates in them days.’

  ‘You’re supposed to dilute that muck,’ Chloe said to Sam. He ignored her.

  Theo sighed and lay back. Now that he could relax for the first time in ages, a great wave of tiredness hit him. He could even feel his hands trembling. Chloe took a perch on a box nearby. Theo had a moment of double vision, for an instant seeing two Chloes. He shook his head to pull his wits together.

  ‘I knew you’d be all right.’ Theo smiled up at Chloe. He felt almost tearful at seeing her again, but he did his best to cover it up.

  ‘I got careless,’ Chloe said, tenderly feeling a bruise on the back of her head. Theo realised she had lost her peaked cap and found it strange to see her familiar shrewd face framed by a shock of dark brown hair.

  ‘I stepped into a shaft,’ she said ruefully. ‘Slid down it and whacked my silly head at the bottom.’

  ‘We picked her up on the monitors!’ Sam said. ‘We’ve had a vigilance camera system set up in the network for years. Haven’t really had much call to use it before. We’d spotted you both about an hour ago – snooping around. So we were on the alert, ready to pounce.’r />
  Chloe shook her head in disbelief. ‘You have this monitor station hidden in the heart of the network, and you didn’t even tell me?’

  ‘It’s very clever,’ Sam said. ‘Norrowmore set it up years ago apparently. Tiny cameras hidden in the fungus globes. The enemy have never found them because the globes don’t need maintenance – each one is a little ecosystem.’

  ‘Neat. So you were spying on the enemy and up we popped instead!’

  ‘Yes.’ Sam smiled. ‘We lost you for a bit when you ducked into the gulag. That manoeuvre even took Grandad by surprise. But as soon as Chloe fell down the shaft we spotted her again. Then we used a secret passageway to get close to Theo.’ He grinned and offered Theo a mug of black coffee.

  Theo accepted it, figuring it couldn’t be much more dangerous than a ghostly policeman, an army of trigger-happy Foundlings or a horde of smoglodytes.

  Magnus plugged a mysterious little brown bottle up his nose and inhaled deeply. Sam passed the old man some coffee and two white pills. The cemetery keeper swallowed the lot in one gulp, his Adam’s apple bobbing crazily in his scrawny throat.

  ‘It must seem a strange hideaway to you young ones,’ Magnus said in his feeble, wheezing voice. ‘So close to our enemies. But remember, the network had been quiet for decades till recently. None of the old combatants had much business here. It’s only in the last couple of days we’ve had all this activity.’

  ‘Yeah – it’s like an ants’ nest now,’ said Sam.

  ‘But,’ interrupted Theo, ‘don’t you care how close you are to those – those ghosts?’

  Magnus smiled. ‘No. I do not fear their presence myself, because I know what they are,’ he said, then fell silent.

  ‘You can’t just stop there!’ shouted Theo. ‘What are they? There was a ghostly policeman and – other things,’ he said, not wishing to relive his experience quite yet.

  ‘Now is not the time,’ Magnus said. ‘Chloe – I’d better have your full report.’

  Showing no signs of fatigue, Chloe sprang up and went to join Magnus at the monitor station.

  ‘Not the time!’ groaned Theo. ‘When I’ve just been attacked by them! What would he call a good time, then?’

  Sam smiled. ‘Grandad’s always like that. It’s nice for me to see someone else get the treatment.’

  Theo did not look amused.

  Sam drew him aside. ‘You must be starving,’ he said, showing Theo an enormous grey wall cupboard. Sam slid back a wooden door. ‘We’re set up to withstand a long siege. Look at the supplies they’ve got here.’

  Theo, weak with hunger, studied the shelves of canned food. Ox tongue. Eel in jelly. Condensed spinach.

  ‘Is it safe?’ he asked.

  ‘Course it is. Canned food can last for a hundred years,’ said Sam. ‘Reckon they must have stocked up just after World War Two.’ He picked up a rusting can. ‘Look at this one: Ballast! The Ministry of Food’s All-Purpose Root Vegetable Paste. See government instruction manual.’ Sam laughed. ‘Lucky we don’t eat this rubbish today.’ Then he suddenly stopped grinning. ‘Well, actually we still do, because it’s all there is!’

  The two teenagers chuckled as they prepared the semblance of a hot supper for everyone. Theo had never had to look after himself before, and he made a horrible mess of the simplest culinary tasks, to Sam’s amusement.

  From the corner, Chloe watched and nudged Magnus. The old man’s eyes sparkled.

  ‘… And you say,’ the old man whispered, ‘that he used his power – in front of your eyes?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Chloe replied. ‘Once seen, never forgotten.’

  Magnus was sitting up now, with a new eagerness. ‘Against a foe? On purpose?’

  ‘Yes – he saved my life, in fact.’

  Theo couldn’t help overhearing this debate, as Magnus was a trifle deaf. The reminder that Theo had already proved useful enough to save Chloe from harm gave him a wonderful feeling inside. He looked around the cluttered bunker – at the new friends who all knew his name, asked him questions, needed his help. For a moment, among all the terror and dismay, life had a fleeting glow of perfection.

  Magnus smiled at Chloe, his deep wrinkles softening as his whole being seemed to relax.

  ‘All the requirements are satisfied,’ he whispered, still loud enough for Theo to hear. ‘I do believe it is time.’ He nodded profoundly, to no one in particular, then scurried off to hunt for something among the boxes.

  After their meal, Magnus called for an end to the group’s chatter, and hauled a battered leather case out from under an enormous old Union Jack.

  ‘Theo Wickland,’ he said. ‘Please rise.’

  Theo looked across to Chloe, who shrugged. Theo rose, though his every bone requested otherwise.

  ‘Since we freed you from Empire Hall,’ Magnus said, ‘we have been at war – fighting a diabolical foe who has given us little time to conduct our affairs as we would like.’

  ‘Hear hear!’ shouted Sam. Magnus scowled at him.

  ‘Winston Churchill!’ Chloe grinned. ‘I like it!’ But she shut up when she noticed that Magnus was looking sad.

  ‘If things had been different – if Mr Norrowmore hadn’t died – if we had been able to contact the Council, then things would have been done properly. There were plans, Theo, to educate you gently into the special role, unique to the Wickland family, that you are destined to assume.’

  Magnus dropped his grand orator style to rest against the back of a chair and take a breather. ‘We didn’t want to frighten you, lad,’ he confessed, with a disarming smile, ‘by telling you too much all at once. But now, as it often turns out in wartime, we don’t have the luxury of doing things right. We just have to get on and do them.’

  Theo felt a tingle running up his spine. But he also felt anxious. Mysteries and destinies were great when they were off somewhere in the distance, not when they actually became true in front of your eyes.

  Magnus opened the suitcase. He pulled out an enormous black cape and draped it over Theo’s shoulders. Then he reached inside the box and produced a pair of black leather gauntlets. He motioned to Theo to try them on.

  ‘The Ascendancy is upon us,’ Magnus said. ‘A scion of the House of Wickland, on the brink of adulthood, has shown the special powers. At last, after ninety-seven years, London has a new Candle Man.’

  Theo felt faint. So that was the Ascendancy, he thought to himself. It was me all along! Suddenly his fatigue hit him. The room swam before his eyes.

  ‘You’ll look a right prat in that lot,’ he heard Chloe say – then he passed out.

  Chloe was leaving. This had been decided while Theo was asleep. Obviously becoming a legendary hero didn’t yet entitle him to join in any important decision-making.

  ‘You’re OK, Theo – just exhausted,’ Chloe said, loading up her backpack. ‘It’ll be safer for you to stay here for the next few hours.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Theo was feeling better again now, and tucking into a tin of cabbage for breakfast.

  ‘While you were asleep,’ Chloe said, ‘Magnus and I looked at the laptop Foley stole from Dr Saint. There’s enough evidence on there for the police to move in on him and shut down his so-called charity. I’ve got to get it to Sergeant Crane.’

  Theo’s heart sank. ‘Can’t we all go?’ he asked. ‘I think it’ll be a big mistake to split up!’

  Chloe sat down next to him and spoke gently. ‘Don’t worry about me, Theo. I know what I’m doing! The enemy has been sealing up the exits to the network, but one person who knows it well enough could still get out.’

  ‘I don’t like it,’ Theo said. He had only just been reunited with Chloe. He felt safer – stronger – with her around. He didn’t want to lose her again.

  ‘It’s our best hope,’ Chloe insisted, trying to look cheerful. ‘If I can get Crane to authorise a search of the network we’ll have an army of officers – enough to drive out the Society of Good Works and stop whatever they’re up to.’
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  Theo still looked doubtful.

  Chloe rose and pulled her coat on. ‘Once I’ve handed the evidence to Crane or Finley, I’ll get some reinforcements and come back for you guys.’

  ‘It’s too dangerous out there!’ Theo protested. ‘You’ve got the smoglodytes, Foundlings – and the Dodo after you.’

  Chloe smiled. ‘Don’t be daft, Theo. It’s not me they want – they’re all after you!’

  ‘Terrific. Now I feel a lot better,’ Theo moped.

  ‘It’s perfect!’ Sam said with forced enthusiasm. Theo guessed that Sam didn’t want to lose Chloe either. ‘We can just sit tight here and Chloe will mobilise the forces of law and order. Bingo!’

  ‘It just doesn’t feel right. The “forces of law and order” don’t seem to have helped much in this weird war so far,’ Theo said. ‘If I have these powers, maybe I should be using them,’ he added.

  They all fell silent.

  ‘Fair point,’ chirped up Sam.

  Magnus nodded sagely. ‘If the Candle Man is against the idea, then we really must listen to him. The Wicklands have a special instinct in these matters!’

  ‘Rot!’ said Chloe, selecting a new hat from the piles of gear in the bunker. She chose a khaki military policeman’s cap. ‘What else can we do? What’s your plan B?’

  This question was answered by a long silence. Chloe pulled on her backpack and got ready to leave.

  Theo jumped up, dismayed. ‘We can stay together, spy on them –’ he began.

  Chloe shook her head. ‘Then what? Defeat an army of fanatics and monsters with an old man and two drippy teenage boys? Sorry, gang, but it’s up to me. Luckily, I’m the cool heroic type.’

  Chloe opened the hatch and was gone.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  A Mistake

  Tristus soared across the London skies, thick yellow fog blotting his presence out from human eyes. The battle against the smoglodytes had left him weak; their foul toxins still clouded his mind and sapped his strength. But at last he felt strong enough to return to the fray – or what was left of it, depending on how long he had been out of action.