Tales From The Wyrd Museum 3: The Fatal Strand

by Robin Jarvis

  'Knew it!' the girl grinned, glancing at Neil. 'Don't stand there like a daft lemon! Quick—inside!'

  Into the secret opening Edie jumped and, with the tremendous clamour of the ogre's echoing shrieks reverberating just outside the small door, Neil hastened down the stairs and hurried after her.

  Immediately, the painting glided back behind them. Yet the moment its well-oiled mechanism purred into place, the door outside was thrown from its hinges as the abhorrent enemy smashed its way within.

  On the other side of that large, shuddering canvas, the voice of the Frost Giant came screaming and the children heard the foul creature clamber up the stairs. Inches away it trampled past, with only the thin partition of the painting to screen them from its mordant malice.

  Holding his breath, Neil heard the apparition ascend the steps. Then came a shrill, squeaking jangle as the curtain outside was wrenched from its brass rings, and the monster heaved its tall, ungainly bulk into the Websters' room. ‘Thou canst not conceal thyself!’ it shrieked. ‘Thine shielding cloak shalt be torn from thee! Where is the Loom? Where?’

  Throughout the attic the dreadful violence of the ice lord's anger went shuddering. In that cramped and dusty space, furniture was flung aside and the walls crunched and split under those immense fists.

  With that riotous tumult rattling the roof slates, Neil slowly backed up the three steps and bumped into Edie. 'Lor!' she breathed in a marvelling, awestruck murmur. 'It's beautiful!'

  Only then did Neil turn around and a blissful, silvery-green light blazed on to his face. In that secret room beneath the gabled rafters, steeped in the glimmering glow, they both stared at the dramatic and ravishing spectacle which captivated their astounded vision.

  'Amazing!' Neil breathed, and for a brief moment his terror was forgotten. Rearing before them, rising up into the sloping roof, was undoubtedly the most glorious and splendid object he had ever beheld.

  There, in the place where Miss Ursula Webster had kept it hidden for centuries, was a towering framework of sturdy, richly carved timbers—the Loom of Destiny.

  It was a magnificent, elegant structure which possessed all of Nirinel's regal majesty, being made of that same divine substance. Here was the first wood chopped from Yggdrasill, the World Tree, and Neil could feel the might of its enchantment throbbing through its fibres.

  Around the two main supporting pillars, images of leaves and flowers had been skilfully crafted. But where the monumental frame stood upon the ground, actual living shoots had sprouted and pushed out from the woodgrain. Over the surrounding floorboards these tendril-like, foraging roots had snaked, fanning out into the attic, to go delving down inside the walls of The Wyrd Museum.

  Upon those timbers, stretched within the Loom's stately, unparalleled framework, was the Cloth of Doom itself. The wool of Edie's pixie hood gleamed and sparkled in response to the glistering glare which pulsed and flickered from that shimmering tapestry. Within the taut expanse of woven threads, a vibrant web of shifting light flared with lustrous colours that neither of them had ever witnessed before.

  It was impossible to see exactly what designs were spun there, for they moved and changed constantly: one moment they were portraits of faces; the next, scenes of distant and remote lands, which were in turn replaced by patterns of dazzling brightness. In many areas, however, the endlessly fluid weave was marred by ugly holes and rents, around which the resplendent effulgence was dimmed. Edie knew that in the rippling tale of the world, those flaws were the blemishes of war and, through one of those, she herself had been plucked.

  'All those years Ursula lied,' the girl whispered. 'She told Celandine and Veronica the Loom had broke, when really she'd brought it here to work at in secret. The Doomcloth was finished after all, and in it she put the deaths of Woden, her sisters and herself

  Stepping forward, hesitant in case the fabulous, dream-like vision might be snatched away, Edie Dorkins studied those intricate, shining depths and bent the fluctuating images to her controlling will. The fatal strands of the tapestry were suddenly lapped with an emerald flame, and then she saw what she had yearned to see.

  In the centre of the web, the lambent threads disclosed a sprawling, verdant landscape dominated by a colossal, but supremely graceful, mountainous tree. Up into the heavens that miracle soared, its leaf-covered branches mingling with the clouds, and in one distant region, beneath the momentous trunk, she saw from afar the glittering silver towers of a fair city.

  'Askar,' she murmured. 'Under Yggdrasill when it were young.'

  Standing behind her, Neil was enthralled, but then the clangorous racket in the Websters' apartment restored his thoughts to the dangers of their predicament. How long would it be before the Frost Giant finally discovered them?

  The delicious scene within the tapestry melted as Edie sighed, lifting her face up to where an arch of carved decoration linked the Loom's two supporting columns. In the middle of the curling fronds and interweaving vines, she looked on the central figure amidst that sculpted adornment and clapped her hands when she saw that it was already stirring.

  Neil could not help laughing grimly when he, too, noticed the wooden effigy which had so terrified Quoth and himself in the darkness of The Roman Gallery only three nights previously. Compared with what had happened since, and their present plight, those fears seemed ridiculous and childish.

  With an agitated splintering of wood, the outlandish shape of the Paedagogus worked itself free of its position upon the Loom of Destiny. Using its monkey-like tail, it swung down from the arching ornamentation to land, with a slap of its splayed claws and a wheezing, piggy grunt, at Edie's feet.

  'Gogus...!' it barked, executing a low bow before her and waiting obediently. 'Gogus... Gogus!'

  The girl beamed at it, patting the wood urchin's large head. 'Yes,' she admitted, 'this is the time when you're needed most, what was foretold by the Queen of Askar. The others are gone, Gogus—Nirinel, Ursula, all of 'em. There's just us left.'

  With a forlorn whimper the imp slapped its head and jabbered woefully, before waggling its ears and gnashing its teeth at the din which echoed throughout the attic.

  'The Loom...' Neil began. 'Can you make it show us what we're supposed to do? Can we see what's going to happen?'

  Edie laid her hands upon one of the intricately carved pillars, wherein the sap of the World Tree still flowed. 'Yes,' she answered. 'Then we'll know.'

  Concentrating upon the tapestry once more, Edie frowned, and the tinsel in her pixie hood crackled and sparked as she compelled the cloth to reveal what the future would hold for them.

  Without warning, the commotion in the Websters' apartment suddenly ceased and the silence that ensued was more frightening than any amount of thunderous crashes.

  'What's it doing now?' Neil whispered.

  Gogus grunted and pattered softly down the three steps to listen behind the oil painting.

  At the Loom, beneath the flickering, emerald flame, an image was forming within the Doomcloth. Staring intently at the gleaming threads, Edie saw a desolate wasteland shimmer into view. There was the realm of the lords of the ice and dark—an empty, tortured domain of winter, devoid of all life and hope. This, then, was what the immediate future held, and the girl staggered back aghast.

  'It's no use!' she cried. 'We're done fer! The end of everythin' really will 'appen!'

  Covering her eyes in anguish, the girl recoiled from the bleak vision. At once, the icy wilderness disappeared back into the ever-switching patterns.

  Neil looked at her in consternation. He had never seen Edie so crushed. 'There is a way out of this mess!' he spat. 'There must be! Can't you make the tapestry work for you? Can't you cut out the life of the Frost Giants?'

  Edie shook her head. 'Nothin' will be any good,' she wept. 'We can't change it! It's Fate—don't you understand that by now?'

  'Well, I won't believe it!' he fumed, glaring around the attic. 'There has to be something we can do. Come on, Edie, you can't giv
e up now!'

  Tearing through swathes of ancient cobwebs, Neil ran the length of that dusty space, then darted around the far corner to where the rafters angled sharply, forming a high gable end. There the boy saw a rickety-looking ladder stretching up to the inside of one of the many turrets which crowned The Wyrd Museum.

  Testing the rungs, he found that it was sturdy enough to support his weight and a desperate plan flashed into his mind.

  Before the Loom, Edie Dorkins drew the back of a hand across her nose and considered the jumper which held the object she had set such store in. She must have been wrong; that was not the answer after all.

  The eerie, unsettling hush deepened. Not a sound came from outside that hidden room. Wherever it was, the ice lord was keeping absolutely silent.

  Questing the air with its snout, Gogus grimaced and pressed one of its large pointed ears against the canvas.

  'Gogus...' it hissed. 'Where... Gogus ... Cold...?'

  Suddenly, with a hideous rending tear, the Spear of Longinus came stabbing through the oil painting. Behind, the rancorous shrieks of the Frost Giant bellowed in triumph. Yammering wildly, Gogus tumbled head over tail as the monstrous deformity of Neil's father ripped the canvas aside and pushed its way into that secret room.

  Up into its glimmering space the nightmare lumbered. The bitter despair of the deathly light which beat from those malignant, clustered eyes contested with the heavenly radiance emanating from the Doomcloth. Under the steepled roof beams the whirling winter went storming. Over the caretaker's disfigured features an arrogant snarl twisted those blue, repellent lips within the ice spikes of the branching beard.

  'The Loom!' that ghastly voice proclaimed. 'Now shalt the rightful rulers of the world be freed of their shackles.’

  Shrieking with blaspheming laughter, the Frost

  Giant surged forward, the spear raised above its malformed skull. Squealing, Edie Dorkins rushed in front of the Loom to protect it, but the unstoppable force of the ice lord knocked her aside and the girl was sent reeling.

  At once Gogus snapped and barked, pouncing on to one of the monster's legs and scampering up over the distorted back to claw and bite, thrashing the horror's face with its long tail. But the fiend was oblivious to that insignificant onslaught. Consumed with hate and malice, the great, inhuman arms lifted the rusted spear high over the ice-crested head, then down it plunged.

  Edie screamed and a searing flash of silver light blasted out across the attic. Dashing back to the girl's side, Gogus somersaulted and gibbered in a feverish panic. Returning from the far reaches of the attic, Neil Chapman was just in time to witness the end of the Fates' dominion over the world.

  Into the Cloth of Doom the Spear of Longinus went tearing. With bursts of blinding fire, each of the glittering, fate-filled threads was severed and snapped. Up through the riven fabric, tongues of devouring flame shot out, licking over the rusted blade, travelling along its shaft. Where they touched the Frost Giant's ice-clawed hands, the ogre screeched in agony.

  Yet nothing could prevent that savage creature from executing that reviled and heinous deed. From the Loom's towering framework, the omnipotent Web of Destiny was finally ripped, its glorious splendour diminished as the power of Fate failed within its woven strands. Emerald flames roared fiercely and, in their devouring heats, the tapestry withered and was utterly consumed.

  A horrendous shout of evil mirth gusted from the ogre's throat, but in its grasp, the Spear of Longinus was also destroyed, and blackened fragments of that hallowed blade fell as charred, flaking cinders from those cruel claws.

  To accomplish its true purpose, the fell spirit needed no weapon other than its own unquenchable malignance. Bellowing furiously, the monstrous figure lashed with its talons and gouged deep wounds into the Loom's supporting timbers. From those vicious gashes, a luminous lymph oozed out over the ornate carving, and the hellish laughter trumpeted into every corner of The Wyrd Museum.

  Shrinking away from that awful spectacle, Edie watched in hopeless dread as those raking claws hacked and slashed their way into the Loom's living wood. Then, into that bleeding mutilation, the Frost Giant breathed its glacial breath. Just as Nirinel had suffered and perished before, so the timbers of the Loom were killed by the thrusting ice, which murdered its corrosive way through the sacred fibres of its grain. From the top of the arching decoration, down into the magical, serpentine roots which spread through every part of The Wyrd Museum, the slaughtering cold coursed, and the building was seized by a violent shuddering.

  'Die now, last vestige of Yggdrasill,’ the terrifying voice howled upon the snow-seething gale. 'The last drop of thy sovereign blood is stilled and blighted at last and ever more!'

  With a ruinous crash, the stately frame of the Loom ruptured and the mighty timbers split asunder, collapsing and toppling on to the floorboards, which smashed and shattered. Down through the shrivelling roots the fractured remains of that device, which once had governed and controlled the lives of all mankind, went tumbling, cannoning into The Tiring Salon below.

  The malevolent force that dwelt within Brian Chapman threw back its grotesque head. 'The age of darkness and despair hath come at last!3 the discordant voice exulted. 'Now doth our rightful reign commence.3

  Whilst Neil and Edie stared at that repulsive figure, the might of the Frost Giants flowed more fiercely within it and the caretaker's form became even more distorted and monstrous.

  'Edie,' Neil whispered, with one eye trained upon the terror that had once been his father, 'what's your plan?'

  But the girl could not wrest her eyes from that ghastly apparition which, with a horrible cracking of bones, was growing before them and cackling foully. 'Edie!' Neil persisted, shaking her. 'You must have had something in mind. What did you take from The Separate Collection?'

  'No point,' she muttered flatly. 'We've lost. This is the end.'

  Mewling morosely, Gogus buried its face in the girl's arms. Then, as she absently ran her hands over that pugnacious head, Edie's eyes suddenly kindled with her former fire. 'Maybe not!' she cried, the faith in herself soaring once more. 'That's what the prophecy meant—'course it did!'

  Snatching up her bulging jumper, she clutched Gogus by its claws and turned a resolute face upon Neil. 'We got to get out in the open!' she urged. 'Sharpish!'

  Even with the biting hail squalling about him, Neil chuckled. 'This way!'

  Through the snow-lashed attic they ran to where the ramshackle ladder reached up into the empty turret. Edie stared up at the wooden slats which shuttered that lofty enclosure and nodded vigorously.

  'Get up there!' she ordered. 'An' climb out on to the roof

  'What are you going to do?' Neil demanded.

  'Tell your dad just what I think of 'im,' she answered, with a mischievous grin.

  With that, she hared back under the rafters to where the disfigurement of Brian Chapman was now complete.

  Any semblance of the man he had once been was completely erased. The ice lord had total dominion. The flesh that covered his warped and crooked skeleton shone cold and grey, and from those hunched shoulders, long, powerful arms stretched down to the ground. In that giant, gruesome head, the glaring, ice-covered eyes cast a cadaverous pallor over everything. The mouth, now a harrowing blue-lipped slit which divided the swollen skull in half, was enmeshed within a thicket of a white and rigid, briar-like beard.

  About its immense repugnance, the infernal cold tempested furiously. Striding into that battering gale, Edie Dorkins glowered and snapped her fingers at that inhuman obscenity.

  'Oi!' she yelled, swinging her bulky jumper behind her. 'You ain't won yet, you know, and yer won't, neither!'

  The corpse glow of those frozen clusters gleamed at her across the attic. 'Little fool? the ogre scorned.

  'Canst thou not feel the everlasting dark descending? Death shalt come swiftly unto thee.’

  'You're the fool!' Edie bawled back, and her voice rang with a challenging disdain reminiscent of M
iss Ursula Webster at her most imperious and condescending. 'You think you've got rid of every drop of sap what flowed through the World Tree—well, you ain't!'

  ‘Thou jest!’ the Frost Giant roared.

  The girl tossed her head and laughed. 'You might've killed Nirinel and the Loom,' she cried mockingly, 'but you forgot about the Paedagogus, dintcha? He were made from that same bit of Yggdrasill, an' in his veins the sap still runs. Your rotten old crew's stuck out in the cold, where you all belong!'

  An ear-splitting shriek blared from the ogre's dark throat as it leaped forward, spitting icy death and scything the air with the slashing knives of its claws.

  'Come on, you dirty old snowman!' Edie called impudently, and she scurried off towards the ladder.

  Having climbed up into the turret, Neil Chapman squirmed around in the cramped confinement of its walls, then kicked out at the wooden shutters which hemmed him in. Perched upon the rungs directly beneath, Gogus yapped and barked impatiently and the boy growled right back.

  'I'm doing the best I can!' he snapped. 'It's not easy, you know!'

  With that, he gave the boarded slats another shove with his heel and at last they yielded. Out over the tiles of the sloping roof the broken shutters went slithering, and Neil crawled through the opening.

  Scampering up behind, the Paedagogus paused at the summit of the ladder, wrapping its tail about the topmost rung, to peer down at the attic floor where Edie Dorkins came running into view.

  'Gogus...!' the wood urchin yammered. 'Gogus... Climb... Gogus!'

  Glancing over her shoulder, Edie let out a squeal of fright as the Frost Giant tore after her. She threw herself at the ladder, scuttling up as fast as possible, her bulging jumper dangling madly in her grasp.

  'Don't wait fer me!' the girl shouted up at the imp. 'Get out, quick!'

  Wagging its head dutifully, Gogus swung across to the new gap in the turret's side. Higher Edie toiled, shrieking in alarm when the ogre came raging below and seized hold of the rungs. For an instant she thought that it was going to tear the ladder from the turret, but instead the misshapen horror began to clamber after her.