by Robin Jarvis
Edging closer to the flame glow, the gentle flickering illuminated a pair of large eyes with sharp corners that pointed down to a small, flaring snout. Beneath those questing nostrils was a gibbering mouth, so wide that it practically divided the creature's face in two, filled with rows of peg-like teeth.
Shaggy fur frilled the unnatural beast's outline but, as it entered deeper into the radiant realm of the candlelight, the final, fabulous secret was disclosed and Edie almost choked as she stifled a yell.
The mysterious imp was made completely of wood.
Every detail of the face, from the untame jungle of hair to the inquisitive, inscrutable eyes, had been chiselled and carved from a single piece of timber. It was as if a graven, medieval nightmare had escaped from the gothic decoration inside a cathedral and, in her hiding place, Edie was beside herself with joy at the sight of this miraculous being. If only she could befriend it—how ecstatic she would be.
Turning away from the candles, the creature's wooden eyelids blinked and the lower lip quivered as it unleashed a continuous stream of unintelligible yaps. The imp stole further into the hallway—keeping close to the wall.
Up into the lofty blackness which loured over the staircase it cast its curious eyes, sniffing and tasting the air as though aware that another presence was close by. Suspiciously, it glared at the imposing entrance, then directed its accusing gaze at the ticket office window. Edie ducked from sight just in time, but the creature gargled and growled uncertainly.
Her face still wreathed in smiles, Edie Dorkins waited in the confined dark of the ticket booth whilst a succession of foraging grunts warily inspected the space directly outside.
Presently there came a restless, relinquishing bark and the girl heard the wooden claws clatter back into the main part of the hallway. Cautiously, she raised her eyes over the counter once more and watched as the creature pranced across to the wall that concealed the hidden entrance. It sniffed along the skirting, like a dog hunting for a scent.
Then, jabbering softly to itself, the living carving raised its pugnacious head to stare up at the panels and, with infinite ceremony, took three steps backwards.
Silent now, except for its wheezing breaths, the bizarre figure put its arms down by its sides and bowed low until the forest of its hair brushed the ground.
Remaining in that prostrate, venerating position, with great solemnity and in a gravel, guttural voice—it barked one proclaiming word.
'Gogus...'
In response, and to Edie's amazement, a grating whirr vibrated behind the panelling and a section of wall slid aside. The hidden entrance to the secret, winding stair was revealed and, in the stone archway beyond, the stout door swung open.
Muttering to itself in a grating gargle, the wooden creature reared its large head and skipped to the opening—its tail swishing after it.
Into the dark, plunging deep the imp melted and its excitable, echoing snorts went spiralling down into the earth. Her mouth gawping, Edie Dorkins clambered from the ticket window and set off in pursuit.
'Gogus! Gogus!' she cried in elated imitation. 'Come back, Gogus!' But even as she reached the entrance, where the fragrant, stagnant airs breezed up from the subterranean caverns far below, a different, alarming sound reached her ears and she hesitated on the threshold.
From some far region, down the steep stairway, there issued a ferocious baying, a trumpeting roar which stopped the girl in her chase and sent her scurrying backwards. Louder the tremendous clamour grew, booming and blasting up from the confounding shadows which filled the plummeting path, and the child chewed her lip uneasily.
Over the steps some colossal beast was charging. She could hear its mighty hooves smiting and splintering the ancient stones in its furious, rampaging ascent. The blaring challenge was deafening now. The very air trembled and Edie could feel the floor begin to quake as the monster stampeded up the remaining distance.
Beside her, the leaves of the weeping fig shook madly and, with a clanking crash of collapsing metal, the suit of armour finally went toppling to the ground.
Breathing hard, Edie's almond eyes were glittering as she hugged herself and waited anxiously for the mighty tempest to erupt from the darkness. In a moment she would see it. The roars blasted inside her head and the pictures on the walls swung on their wires. Even the candle flames yielded to that almighty, pounding gallop and the light leaped in a chaotic frenzy about the hallway.
Then, as the floorboards buckled and frames smashed from their fixtures, it burst through the entrance. Like a savage, supreme storm it exploded into the persecuted gloom and, gasping, Edie's vision was filled with a solid tower of rippling muscle. Pawing the dark, silver hooves bruised the ruptured air and a great, worshipful stag snorted its awesome presence.
The ailing light licked over the splendour of its snow-white coat, and fierce flames blazed in its huge, amber eyes. Tossing its gargantuan head, it defied the surrounding, constricting walls. Into the wooden panels the argent spurs of immense, branching antlers tore and a torrent of splintered oak came raining down.
Edie Dorkins could only gape at the glorious creation which bayed above her. Never had she imagined such perilous, absolute majesty. Here, stamping and rearing before her, was the God of the first forest and an insane giggle sailed from the girl's lips.
With that, the father of stags became aware of her.
Like a piercing horn blast that raged with the power of the forgotten world, it bellowed once more and lowered its antler-crowned head. Over the fracturing floor the Lord of the Wild Wood raced, to gore and rend. Edie screamed, throwing her hands before her face. Hot, steaming breath gusted around her and she waited for those terrible antlers to hurl her shattered body aside.
Then, at the last possible moment, the divine beast gave a bass, bone-jangling roar and the ground in front of the girl was trampled and trounced to splinters. With a shake of those ornate, thrusting antlers the stag reeled and, kicking its glimmering hooves, it thundered off- plunging down the corridor.
Breathless and close to fainting, Edie opened her eyes, then clapped her hands in delight. A delicious, mossy musk laced the air and she darted to the doorway to see the ghostly shape of the mammoth beast go hurtling into the first of the collections.
Enraptured, the girl watched the titanic, milky shape leap over the cabinets and tables before it veered off into the connecting corridor, and she raced after it—shrieking with demented glee.
In The Fossil Room, at the first rumble of the stag's approach, Austen Pickering lowered the book he was reading and took up his Bible. Pushing his spectacles high up his nose, he left the chair to fumble with the 'record' button of the tape machine. Then, snatching up his camera, he hastened over to the open doorway.
'I'm impressed,' he murmured, listening to the uproar which resounded from the main hall. 'Pulled all the stops out on the first night.'
Before him, the candles he had positioned along the twisting corridor were already guttering and the ghost hunter's blustering bravado abated rapidly as the snorting maelstrom cannoned from the collections.
Gripping his Bible to his chest, he saw a horned, horrendous shadow engulf the walls and then, around the corner, the apparition of a vast white stag came charging.
'Dear God!' the ghost hunter cried, aghast and afraid.
Into The Fossil Room the calamitous creature crashed and Austen Pickering staggered back, tripping and falling—his Bible flying from his hand.
The beast's great eyes blazed with wrath and, rearing upon its mighty hind legs, it bayed an ear-shredding note of defiance—thrashing the air above the old man's head with its pulverising hooves.
Every display case rattled as the contents jumped and bounced in the violence of that racketing blast. The hoary mountain twisted its huge head, the silver anders sparking with fire as they crunched into the large fossils upon the wall.
Mr Pickering called out in terror as the destroying hooves came hammering down. And then, without warn
ing, the stag vanished.
The air within The Fossil Room whisked and eddied for a moment, and then the place seeped back to its former silence.
Incredulous, the ghost hunter stared at the empty space above him. Stumbling to his feet, he gazed in stupefied shock at the broken floorboards, crushed by those unstoppable hooves, and shook his head in disbelief at the chipped and shattered ichthyosaur bones that lay scattered over the ground.
'It's gone.' A sorrowful voice spoke suddenly and the old man leaped in fright.
'Oh!' he stammered. 'You... you startled me.'
Standing in the doorway, Edie Dorkins tilted her head and pouted sullenly. 'The 'orse with 'orns,' she said longingly and with aching disappointment.
'You saw it, then?' Mr Pickering asked. ‘I can hardly believe it. I don't know what to...'
But he discovered that he was talking to himself, for the child had already scampered back down the passageway.
Quickly, Edie raced to the main hall but, when she reached it, to her frustration she saw that the secret entrance had closed once more, leaving only a blank expanse of panelling.
'Open up!' she demanded.
No answering click responded to her angry command and she gave the wooden wall a second, irritated kick.
Alone in The Fossil Room once more, Austen Pickering reached for his hip flask and took a long, comforting gulp.
'What have you taken on, old lad?' he asked himself.
***
The long night crawled into the early hours and, in the walled courtyard outside the caretaker's apartment, a dense fog flowed through the gaps in the boarded gateway. Steadily the vapour flooded in, covering the cheerless expanse of cement until a lake of turgid smoke filled that dim, dark place. In the sooty gloom, enveloped in the shadows which skulked behind the tall, wooden gate, the cloaked figure of Woden gazed up at the square ugliness of The Wyrd Museum and a soft, purling chuckle issued from beneath the concealing cowl.
'Her defences are waking,' he whispered, his thoughts probing the bricks and mortar of the darkened building to sense the forces stirring within. 'Yet no matter. In her haste Urdr has opened the way for me. Her squalid abode is beginning to remember its former existences. Thus is the key to the downfall of the Nornir delivered unto my hand and the method of their destruction made plain.'
The hidden face turned away from the unlovely building and stared up at the overcast heavens, where the lurid glare of the city could be glimpsed above the high, glass-fanged wall.
'Urdr has permitted the binding years to be unravelled,' he cackled. 'She has chosen both the board upon which the battle will be fought, and the pieces also. Thus shall I choose mine, the one who will serve me and bring about her lasting doom.'
A sharp, compelling hiss escaped from his unseen lips and he raked a withered hand through the chill air. Ribbons of mist rose in a high, coiling arc around him and at once the courtyard in which he stood began to flicker and change.
Overhead, the orange glow of the modern age dwindled and dimmed and the endless, distant din of the lumbering lorries which travelled through Bethnal Green grew faint and abated.
Beneath the curling fog the cement evaporated, exposing an area of uneven flagstones and, beyond the screening wall, the street lamps of Well Lane were quenched—their towering posts winking from sight.
The boards which covered the battered gateway dropped off their nails, revealing the tall rails and scrolling flourishes of the robust wrought iron beneath. Through that ornate barrier only a few metres away, the Victorian gas lamp, whose disused lantern had been smashed for over fifty years but which had not worked in eighty, abruptly flared into life.
Somewhere in the grimy streets, a horse's hooves rang off the cobbles and Woden withdrew into the fusty shadow of that earlier time as heavy, booted footsteps came stomping down the lane.
Into the lantern light a corpulent, burly figure lumbered. He carried a gnarled, club-ended stick tucked under one of his trunk-like arms, and a large hoop of keys jangled at his belt. A shabby black greatcoat, hanging in heavy creases about his knees, worn shiny at the elbows and sploshed with stains down the front, could not obscure the gross, barrel-shape of the man within.
A rumpled top hat, smeared with grease and bitten at the brim, cast a band of night across his features as he leaned drunkenly against the lantern post to drain the dregs of porter from the pewter pot in his hand. A trickle of the black brew drizzled down his stubbled jowls and over the rolls of his fat neck, and a tarry, swollen tongue slithered out in search of those precious, escaping drops. Then a sour, rancourous belch blossomed in the shade of his hat as he consigned the empty tankard to a hook on his belt.
The keen, chill air blew cold upon his spit-soaked skin and he cursed as he wiped his chin with the ends of his grubby green scarf.
'Tick-Tock likes a drop of the heavy wet,' his phlegm-slurring voice gargled. 'But a hot negus'd be a real way to keep the damps out. Needs a jamboree, that's what he wants—work up his colour and round off the night.'
Still propped against the post, Jack Timms shifted his gaze down to the hoop of keys and fetched them into the light.
'I'll school it to them crazies tonight,' he promised himself as he turned the key in the lock and heaved the squealing gate open. Raising his stick, he clattered it over the ironwork and smithied a clanging tattoo to rouse the unfortunate inmates of the Well Lane Infirmary.
'Wake up you dribblers!' his menacing voice called. 'Time's come for one of you.'
Honking with evil mirth, he kicked the gate shut and staggered through the waist-deep mist of the courtyard, lurching from side to side.
'Who'll it be, Tick-Tock?' he asked himself. 'Whose mad skull are we going to crack some learnin' into tonight? Can't be that clerk, he ain't had nearly enough tormentin' yet.'
Tottering towards the rear door of the museum, he grasped his Tormentor as though it were a conductor's baton and tapped lightly upon the brick wall.
'Soon they'll know,' he said biliously. 'They'll hear Jack Timms a-Tick-Tockin' down the wards and they'll pray their time ain't up just yet.'
Holding up the circle of keys once more, he squinted at them but they swam before his intoxicated vision and, as he fumbled, they fell from his fingers and dropped, jingling, into the fog.
A bestial oath sprang from the man's mouth and he prodded his stick into the veiling vapour to search for them.
'Jack Timms,' called a soft voice.
Immediately Jack reeled about, his greatcoat whirling as he thrashed the Tormentor, viciously swiping it through the shredding mist.
'Who's back there?' he bawled, keeping the Tormentor raised and ready. 'Sneaking up is it? Well, I've rumbled you and hiding won't save you. It's in the river they'll find you, come morning.'
'Lay your weapon aside,' the whispering voice instructed in a persuasive, mellifluous chant.
Tick-Tock snorted, then blew a nugget of brown spit at those shielding shadows in which the stranger hid.
'Old Jack warned you,' he snarled, taking a cocksure step forward and slapping the club end of his stick into the palm of his hand.
Through the smoke he strutted, back to where the gaslight shone through the iron bars of the gate, and their long shadows striped his brutal face. Beneath the chewed brim of his hat, two sly rat eyes were set deep in a mire of florid, pock-marked skin, which possessed the clammy, waxen aspect of abattoir flesh. In the centre of that liquor-bloated face, a squashed drinker's nose, like a clump of ripe raspberries, burgeoned and bloomed. A puckered, crescent scar traced a perfect 'C down from his right temple to the scabby corner of his leering mouth.
It was a repellent countenance, stamped with only a fraction of the unmined resources of sadistic cruelty and overwhelming hatred which pervaded his abhorrent being.
Striding a little closer to the gateway, Jack Timms switched the Tormentor before him and his small eyes squinted into the shadows.
‘I come only to invite you into my employ,' the
voice assured him.
The scar on Tick-Tock's face twitched uncertainly. "Ere!' he warned. 'Stop that clownin'.'
In the darkness the fog rolled thickly. Then, with the tendrils of mist twining about him, a tall, cloaked figure stepped out into the gaslight.
'Who's hiding under that hood?' Jack Timms demanded.
'The one who can give you what you crave.'
'And what's that then?'
'Whatever you wish it to be.'
Jack Timms' fat red lips parted and, through the blackened stumps of his teeth, he growled impatiently.
'What I want right now is to see you split an' spurtin'!' he cried, charging forward.
The robed stranger lifted a withered hand and immediately the Tormentor flew from the brute's fist. High into the air it soared, spinning and twirling in the night. Tick-Tock Jack spluttered in confusion, stumbling back to catch his cherished possession when it returned to earth.
But the stick did not return. Far above the courtyard it continued to wheel and turn, and he gawked at it in slobbering amazement.
'What you done?' he asked, not taking his eyes from the whirling cane in the sky.
'It is but a paltry testament of my strength,' Woden whispered. 'Will you now not listen to me?'
Jack Timms dragged the hat from his head and lowered his gaze, nodding profusely.
'This is my offer,' the coercive tones of Woden began. 'If you consent to be directed by me, then you shall name your own reward.'
An unpleasant smirk sneaked over the warder's repugnant face. 'I know the work you're speaking of,' he snickered. 'You should've said the sooner, without the theatricals. I'll see the job's done an' keep my mouth shut. Tick-Tock don't mind a bit o' honest thuggery. You just tell him who you'd be rid of
'Then we understand one another,' Woden murmured. 'That is all to the good. With your help, Jack Timms, I can invade the very heart of the Nornir's domain. No time nor place shall be safe for them.'
Tick-Tock sniffed, his vile wits still clouded by the drink. 'What's that you say?' he asked.