by Paul Stewart
Also available by Paul Stewart & Chris Riddell:
FERGUS CRANE
CORBY FLOOD
HUGO PEPPER
THE EDGE CHRONICLES
BEYOND THE DEEPWOODS
STORMCHASER
MIDNIGHT OVER SANCTAPHRAX
THE CURSE OF THE GLOAMGLOZER
THE LAST OF THE SKY PIRATES
VOX
FREEGLADER
THE WINTER KNIGHTS
CLASH OF THE SKY GALLEONS
For my nephew, Stephen – P.S.
For Jack – C.R.
Have you ever felt your skin being peeled slowly away from your arms and legs? Your muscles being torn and shredded as every bone in your body fights to burst through your flesh? Have you ever felt every tendon and sinew stretched to breaking point as your skeleton attempts to rip itself apart from the inside?
I have, and I’ll never forget it.
I remember moonlight. The great silver disc of the full moon bearing down into my upraised eyes, its intoxicating light seeping into my pores and coursing through my veins, stirring something deep, deep within me.
And then the pain. Terrible convulsions racked my body, my skin seemed to be on fire and, looking down in horror, I saw my fingers and toes contract into hard, claw-tipped paws. My neck strained, my belly cramped, while the muscles in my chest and shoulders rippled and rolled as though a colony of trapped rats was writhing beneath my skin.
At the back of my throat I felt a burning sensation as the root of my tongue swelled and squirmed, leaving me choking for breath. I coughed, and my tongue leaped out between my parted lips and lolled from the corner of my mouth, down past my chin. Strands of drool splattered onto the floor and glinted in the moonlight.
Such pain I endured. Such terrible pain. It felt as though my very skull had been placed in a carpenter’s vice, which was being screwed tighter and tighter.
And then the noises began …
There was a creaking, cracking sound inside my ears, and I knew that my jaw was thrusting forward even as my nose did the same. The next moment I realized I could see them both at the same time through my narrowed eyes. I shook my head violently and tried to scream, but all that emerged were growls and yelps that turned into a terrible howl as my terror grew.
I tried to get away, but was overwhelmed with an impossible heaviness that pinned me to the spot. I was trapped, scarcely able to move so much as a muscle – yet my senses were on fire.
My hearing was more acute than ever before. My eyesight had sharpened, so that everything looked bright and clear – though curiously elongated, as if I was looking through a slightly warped lens. My nose quivered with excitement as a thousand different scents and odours assailed it.
There was the pungent smell of linseed oil in the varnished woodwork. There was the fragrant perfume of a recent visitor – as well as the sour underlying sweat she had been attempting to conceal. There was tile polish. Spilled milk. Crushed grass. Pigeon feathers. Soot. Dust. Tarmacadam. A trace of vomit. A hint of dog …
And then the itching began. All over my body. Scabrous, overwhelming and impossible to ignore, it had me scraping and scratching at every inch of my skin with my claws, using all the energy I could muster. And as I did so, my jaw dropped with a mixture of horror and shock as I witnessed my smooth, almost hairless skin begin to sprout thick, dark fur.
Horrified, I stared up and howled once more. My clothes lay in tatters about me.
The cramped and dingy chamber was heavily padded. Each wall and surface had been covered with a heavy, pale-grey felt quilting that deadened all sound – quilting which, even as I looked, revealed dried splashes of blood.
Above my head was the skylight – a thick double-glassed window in the low sloping ceiling, like a monstrous eye – which concentrated the beams of light from the full moon down into the chamber. I stared back, transfixed.
Then I heard it. A low unpleasant chuckle that came from behind me. With great effort, I slowly turned my head …
A figure was looking down at me.
He was dressed in heavy robes and a huge, sinister hood which obscured his head and face completely. The moonlight glinted on the dark glass panels that concealed his eyes – and on the huge silver and glass syringe he had clasped in his gloved hand.
I stared back, unable to move so much as a muscle.
The next moment the hideous apparition started moving towards me; slowly, deliberately, the syringe held out before him. I let out a whimper as a spasm of fear convulsed my body.
Thump-thump-thump.
He took another step closer, raising the syringe and letting a couple of drops of silvery-white liquid emerge from the tip of the great needle and trickle down the side. My ears pricked up and my lips drew back in a terrified snarl – I couldn’t get away from him. I couldn’t move. Another spasm ran down my spine.
The moonlight glinted on the dark glass panels that concealed his eyes…
Thump-thump-thump.
What was that sound? Something thumping on the padded floor, as if beating a rhythm with my pounding heart. The figure raised the needle-sharp syringe as I fought to regain control of my pain-racked body.
Thump-thump-thump.
There it was again. With a jolt, I realized what it was thumping behind me …
It was my tail.
I’ll never forget the events of that terrible night as long as I live; events that, even now, as I speak of them, bring a cold sweat to my brow and a tremor to my hand. Yet speak of them I must, for in their retelling, perhaps I can offer some insight into the black heart of this great, bustling city.
It is a dark world that I, as a ‘tick-tock lad’, have come to know all too well. And there are horrors I have witnessed that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. One such horror is the subject of this tale …
As I said, I’m a tick-tock lad – a sort of cross between a messenger and a delivery boy, only a tick-tock lad has to be faster than the first and twice as sharp as the second. It’s no job for a green-willow or a haywain bumpkin, make no mistake.
I know this city like the back of my hand – every alley, every twitten, every street. I have to: it’s my trade. Getting about it is second nature to me. Give me any two places and I’ll tell you the quickest way to get from one to the other in an instant. Time is money. Tick-tock – the ticking of the clock …
That’s why they call us tick-tock lads.
You won’t find us stuck behind a desk in some poky office. Always out and about, we are. Whether it’s witnessing wills or serving writs, recording testimonies or collecting petitions, dispensing subscriptions or running bond certificates, it’s all in a day’s work for a tick-tock lad. And I’ve had my fair share of strange assignments, I can tell you.
There was the time I had to deliver a consignment of blue-speckled Muscovy duck eggs, still warm, to the Wetland and Fen Ornithological Society in time for their Annual Hatching Banquet. There was the occasion of Lady Fitzrovia’s secret masked ball, when I had to distribute two hundred gold-edged invitations in the middle of the night – and with half the scribblers from the gossip sheets on my trail.
And then there was the time when I was called upon to deliver subscriptions to Colonel Wybridge-Tonks’s historical pamphlet, Chronic Afflictions from the Uncleansed Drain – and found myself being pursued through the sewers by a pack of flesh-eating salamanders …
But that is a story so gruesome it deserves a book of its own.
The terrible dark evil of my current tale began with the seemingly innocent fashion for fur collars and cuffs, known as the Westphalian trim. It was all the rage a while back – but then fashion is a strange thing. One week you can’t move down Gallop Row for raffish sw
ells in double-hoop top hats. The next, they’ve moved on to straw tom-o’tassels, just like that. And those fine young ladies who promenade along High Market and Regency Mall are just as fickle. One season it’s all fingerless lace gloves and sealskin boots, the next, oriental skirts and lapdogs the size of dormice.
As for me, a twelve-pocket poacher’s waistcoat, a coalstack hat and a trusty swordstick are all I need, but then I’ve never been a follower of fashion. No, I leave that to the swells and fine ladies. And as for them, well, they couldn’t seem to get enough of this Westphalian trim.
The fur was thick and soft and luxurious, but what truly set it apart from your average rabbit or squirrel fur – or stray cat, for that matter – was its lustre. It was a lustre that had to be seen to be believed; a lustre so exquisite that the fur itself seemed almost to glow.
They couldn’t seem to get enough of this Westphalian trim.
The story went that it was made from the pelt of the great night wolf – a rare species that roamed the forests around the remote mountain town of Tannenburg in the East. The skins of these rare beasts were reputedly so valuable that the merest sliver used on a collar or cuff would enhance the value of a well-tailored jacket or coat a thousandfold.
It wasn’t long before the swells and fine ladies of Gallop Row and Regency Mall were competing with each other for the highest collar and most generous cuff finished off in the exquisite Westphalian trim. As I say, it was the fashion, and I would have thought no more about it had it not been for the grim adventure that was about to befall me late one damp spring afternoon as I set off towards the austere legal offices of Bradstock and Clink.
Young Bradley Bradstock and old Aloysius Clink were regular clients. I had picked up a batch of summonses from the two lawyers as usual and delivered them, before returning to their offices in my usual way. A normal job on a normal day – or so I thought.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Nothing could have prepared me for the sight that met my eyes up on the old chamber roofs as I took my usual short cut. It was a sight that made my blood run cold …
But to understand the true horror of the terrible events that began that night, I must tell you of my friend, Old Benjamin.
Old Benjamin had lived in a pair of dingy rooms in that tall, wedge-shaped building on the corner of Water Lane and Black Dog Alley for as far back as I could remember. Drove a city coach-and-four for years, as I recall. ’Course, with his wrinkled face and shock of unruly hair, he’d always seemed old to me – but then I suppose all kids think that adults look old, don’t they?
Anyway, when I was a nipper, I used to see him out front on his days off. He’d drag a battered old coachman’s chair onto the pavement at all hours of the day or night, and sit there watching the world go by.
Sometimes he was in a good mood, and would greet passers-by, having a laugh and a joke with anyone who would stop for a chat. Other times, he’d be as miserable as a deacon’s dog on Friday, cursing the drayman’s nag for the piles of steaming manure left on the cobbles, berating the street urchins for throwing rotten oranges at windows, and shaking his fist at the wealthy toffs and swells for not tipping their hats as they hurried past.
I’ve got to say, though, he was always all right with me. More often than not, he’d catch me when I was passing on some errand or other, and get me to carry out a little errand of his own – taking a message to one of his coachman colleagues on the other side of town or bringing him something back from the shops. Then he’d flip me a coin as a reward – something small, but enough for a gobstopper or a sherbet dab …
And if ever he noticed me walking when he was driving his city coach-and-four, then he’d stop and let me ride up top for free.
I used to love that coach of his. It was smaller than the ones you get nowadays. There was no staircase up to the top deck, just rungs at the back. And when you’d climbed up, you had to sit back to back with the others already there, on a narrow bench – the knife-board, Old Benjamin used to call it – which ran along the middle of the roof. There was nothing to hold on to and no protection from the weather. All us passengers up there would cling to one another for dear life every time we went round a corner, shrieking with fear and laughter …
Yes, Old Benjamin was a good friend to me. Later on, of course, he’d been forced to retire by ‘coachman’s lung’ – a dry hacking cough caused by stable dust and sooty street air – and after that he spent most of his time in that coachman’s chair of his.
That was where I saw him one bright, sunny spring day as I was passing on some errand or other. He was looking tired and ill, with dark rings beneath his watery blue eyes, and his thick shock of pewter-grey hair uncombed.
‘Barnaby,’ he said as he saw me approaching. His lips peeled back in a smile to reveal stained, gappy teeth. ‘Barnaby Grimes, you young whippersnapper. Of all people! What brings you— khaaagh khaaagh—’
All at once his pleasantries gave way to a fit of coughing. He reached towards me, those watery eyes streaming and his face turning a deep, dark purple as he tried in vain to speak. The hacking cough grew more unpleasant by the moment, gurgling in his throat and rattling in his chest.
‘Khaaagh … khaaagh … khaaagh … khaaagh …’
Bulgy-eyed and gasping for breath, he looked as though he was going to drop dead on the spot.
‘Khaaagh … khaaagh … khaaagh …’
With flailing arms, he gestured desperately to his back. Doing as I was bid, I stepped forward and thumped the old coachman hard between the shoulders.
To my horror, his coughing grew worse. Then, with a sudden wheeze, he abruptly fell still. His head lolled down onto his chest.
‘Are … are you all right?’ I asked nervously.
He looked up, his face drained of all colour. ‘Me coachman’s lung, it’s getting worse … and worse,’ he gasped, shaking his head miserably as he struggled with the words.
‘You should see a doctor about it,’ I suggested.
‘Doctors! Don’t talk to me about doctors!’ said Old Benjamin, suddenly agitated. ‘They look at you for two minutes, use a lot of fancy-sounding words, then suggest you take a rest-cure in the mountains or on the coast. And charge you the earth for the privilege. Pah!’ He shook his head in disgust. ‘No, what I need, young Barnaby, is a good old-fashioned cure-all – a cordial or some such to pick me up. You know the sort of thing …’
I knew just what he meant all right. There were dozens of quack patent medicines on the market. The only trouble was that half of them were highly likely to do more harm than good, which was why so few of them stayed on sale for long.
Dr Jolyon’s Fever Powder, for instance, was removed from the shelves when it was found to raise rather than lower a patient’s temperature; Morrison’s Patent Iron Pills were discontinued when those who took them turned rust-brown; while Godfrey’s Cordial was considered by many to be the most likely cause of a whole spate of grisly ‘leaking’ deaths in the East End of the city.
One of the most popular medicaments around a while ago was Old Mother Berkeley’s Patent Tonic. Despite its inventor’s claims that it ‘can be taken under all circumstances, requiring neither special diet nor confinement to bed’, and that ‘its timely assistance inevitably cures all complaints and cheers the heart under any misfortune’, I reckon the best that could be said for it was that its side effects weren’t permanent. True, all your hair fell out – which could be traumatic – but it usually grew back again.
Anyway, I told Old Benjamin I’d look out for something that might help him, and set off. I was just turning into Mission Lane when I heard his terrible hacking cough echoing down the street after me. It would have to be a miracle cure, I remember thinking to myself, judging from the state of Old Benjamin’s lungs.
To my shame, I have to confess that I forgot all about Old Benjamin and his cough almost immediately after that. I’d had a lot on my plate around that time – several new clients with a whole array of pr
oblems, ranging from some minor unpleasantness concerning a costermonger’s noisy parrot to a tick-tock lads’ dispute over the ticket trade at the Easter races which threatened to turn nasty. Then, of course, there was that macabre business I got embroiled in with the haunted marionette theatre …
Suffice it to say that when I next bumped into Old Benjamin three or four weeks later, on that fateful day when I’d just finished delivering summonses and was returning to the offices of Bradstock and Clink, the moment our eyes met, I was overwhelmed with guilt. It was getting dark, but he was still outside, sitting in that old coachman’s chair.
‘Well, well, well,’ he exclaimed. ‘Look who’s turned up again like a bad penny!’ He stuck out his hand in greeting.
‘Benjamin,’ I said. We shook hands warmly. ‘I haven’t forgotten about your medicine,’ I lied. ‘I’ve just been too busy to check out any cordials or tinctures—’
‘No need,’ said Old Benjamin cheerily. ‘I’ve found something. Got talking to a passer-by a few weeks ago. He stopped and admired my fine head of hair. I thanked him and explained how it had grown back once I stopped taking Old Mother Berkeley’s Patent Tonic. He smiled at that, and when I began coughing, he recommended this …’
Old Benjamin reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a blue glass bottle with a black and silver label on it. He looked down and frowned, then cleared his throat.
‘Doctor Cadwallader’s Cordial,’ he read out. ‘It’s a miracle! My cough has completely gone and I’ve never felt better in my life.’ He returned his attention to the label. ‘An efficacious elixir for the enhancement of mental and physical powers …’ He looked up, a gappy grin on his face. ‘I’ll tell you what, Barnaby,’ he added. ‘It’s even improved my eyesight!’
He pulled out the stopper, cleaned round the top of the neck with the palm of his hand and held the bottle out to me. ‘Fancy a swig?’ he said. ‘It’s a real tonic.’
‘That’s very kind of you,’ I said, ‘but no.’ I chuckled. ‘I’m feeling fine.’