by Imogen White
Quick as a flash, Rose grabbed the brown paper packaging her new clothes had been wrapped in, squashed it flat and stuffed it under the door. Using her hairgrip, she poked out the door key, which chinked onto the paper beneath.
“Hey presto!” She grinned, theatrically pulling the paper and key inside. “The key to my room, Master Rui.” She curtseyed, presenting him the key on her outstretched palms.
Rui shook his head and smiled. “Tre-mendous!” he said, unlocking the door and kicking it wide. “Open sesame.”
Bahula hared out of the room and they followed him, descending through the big house to the kitchen below.
Downstairs, Rose pointed at the kitchen clock in dismay. “Look, it’s gone eleven,” she panted.
“Yes, and the spell will be performed at midnight. We have less than an hour to get to the West Pier.”
“But first of all we need to save Enna.” Rose drew a deep breath; she wouldn’t let Enna down. “I ain’t leaving her trapped in the shop. Plus, we need her.” Rose did up her coat buttons. “Once we’ve got Enna, we’ll head seawards. The West Pier ain’t that far. We can do it.”
“Of course we can. Together we can do anything!”
Rain hammered against the kitchen window making them feel like they were strewn on a boat far out on stormy seas. Rose pulled on her gloves. “But the odds ain’t in our favour. Even the police are in on it. I’ve got nothing to lose but you, Rui…” Rose trailed off.
“We must try and do whatever we can. That’s what Miss T would want: to fight the good fight. She would be spurring us on. Such a tremendous woman! And Mr Gupta too, they tried their best to stop these villains. But it looks like it’s down to you and me now, Rose Muddle. You know.” He paused for a moment. “I came here searching for adventure, Rose, and it turns out I found something far exceeding that: true friendship.”
“Yes,” she whispered, wanting to say more but not finding the words. Friendship. She realized in that moment Rui was the best friend she’d ever had. She felt a tear coming and looked up at the ceiling to stop it falling.
A clap of thunder shook the world outside.
Bahula sidled up to Rui’s legs. “Oh! And you too are my friend – a brave and fearless comrade.” Rui placed Bahula on the kitchen table, and bent down to eye level and spoke very softly. “May Hanuman, the monkey god, watch and guide you, tonight. We may have need of your cleverness.”
Bahula stared at Rui, unblinking, as he spoke.
Rose rested her hand on Rui’s shoulder. “Yeah. We all have to rely on each other now – it’s all we’ve got.”
“Right, well Godspeed.” Rui pulled up his jacket collar, and Bahula jumped onto his shoulder. “Now, dearest friends – well, only friends,” Rui continued. “The planets align in fifty-five minutes; we must together overcome the terrible evil the Brotherhood of the Black Sun plan to unleash. Ready?” He kicked the back door open.
A flash of lightning lit up the ugly night outside.
Rui turned to Rose. A moment of silence danced between them.
“Let’s go get Enna!”
The storm cracked and shook the sky outside. Rui had wasted no time locating the wrench he’d found the evening before in the yard of the tobacconist’s. Knowing the shop was empty, he’d forced open the chained padlock to the cellar, not caring if anyone heard.
Inside the cellar, rain lashed through the open trapdoor, splattering on the dusty flagstones. Rose found Enna’s discarded shawl and held onto it, watching anxiously as Rui forced open the crate that Bahula had sniffed out.
The nails broke away from the frame with a groan. Rui dropped the wrench by his feet, and it clattered across the stone-clad floor.
The three of them peered inside the open crate. A flash of lightning spread a bright blue light over the cellar.
A frail body bound in gauze bandages lay scrunched up at the bottom. Sensing their presence, the head looked up.
“Enna Lee?” Rui croaked. The bandaged head nodded.
Tears stung in Rose’s eyes. “Get her out!” she shrieked, as hot fury raced through her. “Them lily-livered cowards.”
Helping Enna out, they unbound ream after ream of gauze from her face, until they could finally see her. Dark circles hung beneath her eyes; her skin was sallow and drawn.
“I need my waters…” Enna’s chest heaved as she pulled away the remaining bandages. Her jewelled fingers gripped the crate for support. “Anthony Funnel,” she hissed.
Rose explained all that had happened and the events that had unfolded. When they had finished, Enna turned to Rose, her tired eyes filled with sadness. “Rose, there is something you must know,” Enna rasped over the knuckling rain outside. “Your two halves.”
A shiver flew up Rose’s spine. “Yes? What do they mean?” Rose stared at her unblinking.
“Emily Templeforth.”
“Miss T’s sister?” Rui asked.
Enna nodded, her dull blue eyes fixed on Rose.
“She’s something to do with me, isn’t she? I know coz the pendant told me. Or tried to, but I just couldn’t understand, and—”
“Anthony Funnel,” Enna interrupted. She shut her eyes and drew a deep breath.
“Yes, Emily Templeforth and he knew each other,” Rui interjected. “I remember in the library, the way Funnel looked at her portrait. I could detect a hidden history.” He looked between the two of them.
“Emily and Anthony Funnel were childhood sweethearts,” Enna stated. “Emily died quite suddenly at the tender age of twenty-one. We tried to get word to Anthony, who had left for India with the British Army. But some time later we received a telegram saying that he had died in a train fire,” she spoke quickly.
“But as we know now, he faked his own death,” Rui added.
Enna sighed. “I believe Anthony Funnel and Emily Templeforth had a child. A secret daughter, whom even Funnel did not know about. Following Emily’s death, over forty years ago, Emily’s father took that child to the workhouse…and left her there. That daughter was—”
A clap of thunder shook the room, followed by a blinding bolt of lightning. Rose stood firm.
“Elephas Maximus!” Rui stared at Rose.
“W-what? I’m not following this.”
In truth, Rose was following every word, but she didn’t like where it was leading.
“Your mother, Rose. She was the daughter of Emily Templeforth and Anthony Funnel.”
“What? That…Funnel is my…grandfather?” She knew Enna was right, but the thought of it stung. “So that’s why the pendant showed me the portrait in the library, then put me inside Funnel’s head?” She squeezed her eyes shut. “It was trying to tell me all along.”
“Your two halves, Rose,” Rui said. “That’s why it was so important. You share the bloodline of both brothers! Your mother was part Templeforth and part Funnel – which means you are too. That’s why Verrulf fears you and why your power over the pendant is so strong.”
Rose clenched her fists.
“Rose, the planets align soon. Then they will perform the spell.” Rui tugged at her sleeve.
Enna pointed into the storm raging in through the trapdoor. “Go. Now.”
“What about you?” Rose asked, wiping her wet hair from her face.
“I need to get back to the park and drink my waters; I need to revitalize, build my strength. I am no good to you this weak. You must stop Verrulf.
“If the spell performed is strong enough to open the gateway inside the cup and let Verrulf out…we are in serious trouble.” Enna stood up but stumbled, just managing to stop herself from falling.
Rose knew there was no way Enna could make it to the pier. It was down to them. Using the open crate as a launch, Bahula leaped onto Rui’s shoulder.
Rui shot a look to Rose, his eyes fierce behind his long lashes.
“To the West Pier.” Rose gritted her teeth. She grabbed Rui’s hand and together with Bahula, they headed back into the storm.
The rain fe
ll in sheets and the wind drove it towards them. Rose and Rui pushed on against it until, finally, the wrought-iron entrance to the West Pier loomed ahead. A fork of lightning highlighted the decked walkway beyond the gates, dotted with whitewashed buildings and pavilions. The waves of the English Channel crashed beneath it.
Rose picked up the heavy chained padlock on the towering gate and, shaking her head, shouted over the wind. “These gates are too high to climb, and this lock ain’t going to be easy to break.”
She peered through the iron bars, the icy metal biting her cheeks. Rain pelted off the deserted boulevard like dancing gravel. “There ain’t no one here.”
“Rose,” Rui called behind her. “Jack Billings said Mr Gupta’s body was discovered under the pier, not on it!”
“You’re right!” Rose ran past the entrance to the pier, and over to the waist-high railings stretching all the way along the sea road.
She leaned over the railings, wiping the loose strands of wet hair from her face. Several yards below she could see the pedestrian walkway which extended all along the seafront to Shoreham Harbour. The beach beyond formed a series of steep banks, pitting and falling down to the shoreline. The sea’s frothing mouth dragged the shingle back noisily as the next wave pitched over it. The West Pier jutted out into the angry sea, supported by legs of iron.
“Do you suppose they are down there somewhere?” Rui shouted above the noise of the lashing rain.
Rose raised herself up onto the bar of the railing, and peered down towards the shadowy underbelly of the pier next to them. She spotted a distant light blinking within the cavernous blackness.
“I seen something, this way.” She spat the salty hair from her mouth and grabbed Rui’s hand. Together they rushed down the wide steps to the promenade below, Bahula scampering behind.
At the bottom, sticking close to the wall, they sneaked past the brick arches supporting the roadway. Bahula surged forward and grabbed something rolling on the ground. Turning, he held aloft his missing red hat.
“Look, Bahula’s found his hat,” Rui whispered. “He must have lost it down here, when Banks attacked poor Mr Gupta.”
Grinning, Bahula strapped it back onto his head.
The wind whistled through the West Pier as they skittered between the tall iron columns. Thunder shook the ground. Rose looked up as the thick wires tying the structure together creaked around them.
Running from one iron leg to the next, they made their way towards the light, the storm masking the sound of their feet crunching the shingle. Bahula trailed above in the rafters.
The light now flickered twenty yards away.
“There are people over there,” Rui whispered, pointing towards the shadowy figures ahead.
Ducking, Rose and Rui scampered to a discarded pile of fishing nets thick with seaweed. They crept along the back of the nets to the far end where a heap of lobster pots teetered in the breeze. Bahula swung down to join them as they peered over the top. The rain struck the walkway above them like a continuous round of applause.
Ten yards ahead, highlighted beneath a swinging lantern, the Brotherhood formed a wide circle. They wore hooded gowns which rippled in the wind. Rose picked out the spindly figure of Snodgrass, and the massive frame of Grobbs – but all the others were hard to tell apart. She gritted her teeth. She wanted to know which one was Banks.
In the centre, Funnel stood hands on hips. His outfit was different from the others: a hoodless black gown trimmed in gold. He spun around, revealing the black sun emblem embroidered on his back. Stepping to one side, he exposed Mr Gupta’s body. The corpse sat cross-legged, kept upright by an iron rod forced down the back of his tunic. Funnel marched around the corpse, throwing his hands in the air and shouting.
“That’s horrible.” Rose swallowed. “Poor Mr Gupta.” She squeezed Rui’s arm.
“How dare they desecrate his body like this?” Rui murmured, his lips pursed.
Mr Gupta’s swollen eyes stared, bloodshot, beneath the lantern, his mouth gaping and his turban balanced at an angle on his head, threads running free where the ruby had once been.
Bahula squeaked into his tiny fists and Rose squeezed him close to her.
Another bolt of lightning scattered blue light across the men, followed at once by a tremendous bang of thunder.
“Funnel looks decades younger now,” Rui whispered.
Funnel’s wrinkles had filled out, his scars healed, his lips were fatter, and his now brown hair waved around in the wind. But his missing eye, unashamedly absent, confirmed his true identity.
Rose shivered, not against the cold, but against everything. Please let ’em fail, she begged to anyone who might be listening. “What we gonna do?” She looked on in dismay. Maybe Banks is right? What match are us two and a monkey against all them?
“Why isn’t this working?” Funnel whipped around and confronted Ormerod. “I can’t see how pouring the water over a corpse can possibly be right!” Ormerod jumped back from Funnel’s angry words, nearly losing his grip on Mr Gupta’s journal. “I thought you said you could translate this! The alignment is already in place, man,” he bellowed.
Rose and Rui peered through the lobster pots.
“I knew it! They can’t translate it, Rose!” Rui whispered.
Ormerod flinched. “Try it again, but this time maybe let the corpse drink from the cup?” he shouted over the weather, his thin hand outstretched.
Funnel ducked out of view momentarily, then stood clutching the Amber Cup. A violent gust of wind suddenly swept through the moaning structure.
Funnel clicked his fingers, and a member of the brotherhood stood, and presented Enna’s flask. It was Banks. His stony face flickered in the lamplight from beneath his hood. He popped off the crystal stopper and filled the cup with the red liquid.
“Enna’s magic waters,” Rose gasped, her eyes fixed on the cup, which started to glow as the brotherhood began to mumble strange-sounding words.
Banks hurriedly resumed his position in the circle with the others.
Thrusting the cup above him, Funnel’s face illuminated under its glow. The cup’s energy sent him stumbling towards the corpse.
The brotherhood’s incantations carried on the wind; they chanted a language Rose didn’t know.
The cup pulsed in time with their words. Funnel addressed the cup, repeating back the strange-sounding words that Ormerod spoke aloud for him.
“What’s he saying, Rui?”
“He is saying: I am the bearer of the two pendants and I demand you to bring the Master of the Black Sun forth, his new body awaits. Rose, he’s managing to translate it!”
The hollow sound of Funnel’s laugh filled the air as black shapes emerged within the body of the cup.
The shadows, like a pack of hunting wolves, grew ever bigger. The grotesque projections radiated across the clearing and onto the hooded faces of the brotherhood. One electrical flash of lightning followed another before a rumble of thunder shook Rose’s bones. It felt like the sky was cracking apart.
“KALA SURAI, KALA SURAI, KALA SURAI.” Banks’s face shone in the light, unblinking and crazed. He repeated the chant, his mouth opening and closing in time with the others.
Rose covered her ears, her head throbbing. Something terrible is coming! She could feel it. Her skin crawled with its energy.
“Rui, we got to do something to stop them,” Rose shouted above the noise, just yards away from the bizarre ceremony. She caught sight of her pendant flashing golden next to Verrulf’s darker one. Trapped against its will, being forced to comply.
Rose heard a sudden rush of voices in her mind. “Your two halves, Rose.” Miss Templeforth’s panicked voice cried above the others. Rose felt a warm rush through her heart. “Rui, I know what I gotta do.” She flexed her fingers. “I need to get both ’em pendants. If I got both brothers’ blood running through me, maybe I’m strong enough to stop all this?”
“But rushing in there now will just see us captured. There a
re too many of them,” Rui insisted. “When the time is right, I will formulate a plan.”
Rui was right. Rose had to trust him; a plan was more than she had just now.
Funnel’s mouth twisted as he repeated aloud the strange words Ormerod whispered to him. Rose didn’t need to know what any of them meant to feel a thick invisible ugliness that hung over the scene. She shivered.
“WE ARE READY FOR YOU, MASTER!” Funnel shrieked over the brotherhood’s chants and the howling wind.
Funnel kneeled by Gupta’s dead body and poured the cup’s liquid into its open mouth. The ground beneath him rumbled, throwing him off-balance.
The whole pier shook with a metallic groan.
Bahula rolled around on his back, his hands grappling at the air above him.
“What’s happening?” Rose breathed. While her heart was banging inside her chest, the rest of her was numbed with utter dread.
Everything froze. A vast, eerie stillness swallowed the space.
The noises of the crashing waves, the raking shingle and the howling wind all drew into a temporary vacuum. A moment so silent it pulled at Rose’s eardrums.
Funnel stared at the cup, his lips trembling.
Slowly a wisp of blackened smoke drew up from inside the cup. Delicate and fragile.
The twelve members of the brotherhood gasped in awe.
Mesmerized, Rose watched the smoke dance around like a flame. Then it morphed into a crooked hand with elongated fingers that teased the air. It looked wretched. Rose’s guts twisted as a choking fear flooded her body.
“It’s him! He’s coming.” On Rui’s words, a cloud of black matter exploded from the cup. It surged upwards and hit the platform above, before raining down to gather in a seething pool around Funnel’s feet.
“It worked!” Funnel roared.
The thick, treacle-like mass licked about his feet. Funnel sniggered as it rose up, forming coils that curled up around him like a serpent. Funnel’s smile dropped. The gunge wound higher up his body, roll upon roll until it reached his head. Terrified, Funnel’s mouth opened to scream.