Tales From The Wyrd Museum 3: The Fatal Strand

by Robin Jarvis

  'Hoped you would,' the girl mumbled under breath as she reached the top and scrambled outside.

  Neil Chapman was shaking his head in disbelief when she emerged. 'Where are we?' he murmured.

  The blizzard that had so beleaguered the building was raging still, but the surrounding, snow-shrouded sprawl of Bethnal Green had disappeared completely. Not a brick or a lamp-post remained to show that the district had ever existed and, beyond that immediate emptiness, the whole of London had also vanished. In every direction, wherever they stared, all they could see was a desolate, winter landscape and overhead a canopy of absolute night loured.

  'This is what I saw in the tapestry!' Edie exclaimed.

  'But what's happened to everything?' Neil cried.

  The girl smiled gravely. 'You don't understand. It ain't gone nowhere—it's us what's moved. Right now, them lords of the ice an' dark are almost as strong as they ever was. It's them what's done this. The whole museum's been shifted—slap bang in the middle of their territory, that's where we is now.'

  A baying shout issued up out of the turret behind them and the children stared back fearfully. 'This really is the last hope,' Edie declared. 'We'd best run before that 'orror breaks out.'

  'Where to?' Neil cried, but Edie and Gogus were already hurrying over the ice-smothered slates.

  'You'll see!' the girl yelled.

  Up that tiled slope of the gabled roof they clambered, to escape from the pursuing ogre which had now reached the top of the ladder.

  The roofscape of The Wyrd Museum was a disordered, graceless clutter of periods like the rest of the building. Tudor chimneys of flat, red bricks pointed like sandstone fingers up into the freezing dark, whilst less elaborate but stouter structures were topped by tall, crown-capped pots. Towards the centre, a large verdigris bump, too irregular and pinched in shape to be termed a dome, peeped up over the high, containing ridges.

  Around those rearing columns and squat towers, many pieces of spearing ironwork rose like naked hedges of barbed bramble. Weather vanes adorned almost every chimney, and rows of railings ran like fences along every apex. Finials of all shapes and dimensions presided over the leaded junctions, and below them, the clogged gutters meandered as rivers through that geometric, grey mountainside.

  From the attic, the ferocious call of the Frost Giant blasted out, and the turret shuddered as the ogre heaved its great size up after the children.

  Scaling the roof, Neil and Edie squeezed through the railing at the top, then slid down the other side as Gogus bounded and hopped before them, chattering excitedly. Behind, there came a fearsome splitting as the turret burst open, and the four shuttered sides, together with the scalloped copperwork of its tented lid, went careering down the building to plummet into the blanketing ice below.

  Out of the attic the ice lord came and a reviling laugh was hurled up into the gale. ‘So shalt the world be ours!’ it gloated. 'An eternal empire of cold and night. Bring me the carving, so I might crush and destroy!’

  Up from the lead-ripped wreckage the swollen creature dragged itself, the long arms reaching over the rails as it hoisted that vile, inhuman shape on to the roof. With a trouncing crash, the heavy, bloated feet crunched down into the slates and the ogre went striding over the buckling roof in pursuit of the Paedagogus in which the last sap of Yggdrasill coursed.

  In a feverish scramble, the children fled between the snow-wrapped chimneys, then down the steep, treacherous ravines beyond. Bellowing shrieks of hate thundered after them and, to their dismay, they felt the rafters of the museum quail under the Frost Giant's rampaging approach.

  Hearing that malice-fuelled voice, Neil looked back through the stacks and spikes and saw the awful, deformed shape of the ice lord stomping in their wake. Carelessly it brushed aside the wrought-iron rails as if they were no more than waving grasses.

  'How long canst thou evade meV that damning voice menaced. 'Surrender unto those of the first flesh. Deliver up that trifling contrivance which standeth in our way.J

  Turning from that disgusting sight, Neil hastened after Edie and Gogus, and the boy could not help asking himself how much longer they could continue this murderous chase.

  'Abandon this folly I Let the embrace of the dark ones take thee.}

  Darting under an iron archway, Neil suddenly lost his footing and almost went slithering to his death. Upon that whipping wind a new sound pummelled its way into his despair.

  In the dark, remote distance of this pernicious wasteland, the hosts of the Frost Giants were calling, answering the booming shrieks of their creature upon the top of The Wyrd Museum. Under that accursed, eclipsed firmament, the empty, echoing shouts travelled. With his heart leaping into his mouth, Neil realised that they were quickly growing louder.

  'The lords of the ice and dark are headed right for us!' he spluttered.

  Clinging to the nearest spire, the boy whirled about and saw that Edie too heard that atrocious uproar. 'Don't stand there ditherin'!' she yelled. 'Not far now!'

  'Gogus...!' the wooden imp barked across the tiled valley which divided them. 'Gogus... Haste... Gogus!'

  Lurching from the projecting spire, Neil teetered along the tortuous route, whilst the ogre that came striding after mocked and taunted them.

  'Hearken to the approach of mine brethren! Soon shalt they converge upon this place and agonies undreamed of wilt they bring. Yield to me and thou shalt suffer but fleetingly. Give me the curving!3

  Over the rooftops Edie Dorkins capered nimbly, her assured steps protracting the distance between herself and Neil. A little way in front, Gogus danced along the jabbing rails, yammering at the rising clamour that mounted steadily under the sky.

  'This way,' Edie told it, turning sharply to hare towards the tallest of the chimney stacks. With a last, defiant yap directed at the veiled horizon, the imp flicked its long tail and obeyed.

  At the rear of that confused roofscape, the greatest of those lofty structures was a high, Victorian chimney which soared up into the blind heavens, dwarfing the lesser vents and pot-peaked funnels that congregated about its wide base. Ever upwards that towering pillar of bricks seemed to rise. Even when the masonry could ascend no more, a sun-shaped weather vane continued above it, the sharp tip of its topmost pinnacle threatening to puncture the cavernous underbelly of that grim darkness.

  Hurrying between the smaller chimneys, Edie Dorkins finally reached their superior and, tying the empty sleeves of her bulging jumper around a jutting post, the girl glared out into the night. The resounding calls of the other Frost Giants were much closer now and, when she peered into the black rim of that horrible emptiness, indistinct, monstrous shapes were moving.

  'Not much time,' she breathed. Dragging the pixie hood from her head, the girl snapped one of the woollen threads with her teeth. Perched upon the slate slope at her feet, Gogus coiled its tail about one of the spearing spikes. It grunted softly as she took the gift of the Fates in her fingers and rapidly started to unravel the glittering green and silver stitches.

  Trumpeting challenges now filled the plucking gale. From all sides the frightful calls blasted, and Neil Chapman shivered uncontrollably as he pushed between the encircling chimneys to join Edie and Gogus. Glancing back, the boy saw the distorted apparition of his possessed father lumbering towards them.

  'What are you doing?' Neil demanded, mystified by Edie's actions. 'It'll be here any minute!'

  'I'm buyin' us a bit more time!' she answered curtly as the last of the knitted stitches untangled in her hand. Then, like lightning, she leapt away to tie the end about one of the chimneys. With the thread trailing from her fingers, she scurried in between the posts and funnels that clustered around the tallest stack, weaving in and out, forming the flimsiest of fences around it.

  Speechless, Neil watched the fey girl go twining that ludicrous barricade about them. At his side, Gogus regarded its young mistress keenly, yipping and nodding its eager encouragement.

  When she had used up all of t
he unravelled thread,

  Edie stood back and surveyed her work proudly. Like the untidy web of some inept and drunken spider those strands appeared, yet in that chill darkness, the clumsy, enclosing net glimmered and sparkled.

  Neil stared at it doubtfully. Was there any power in that peculiar, makeshift mesh?

  At that moment the grotesque, crooked figure of the caretaker came crashing towards them. With a sweep of those horrendous talons, the pots of the outlying chimneys exploded as into the bricks of their stacks the rending claws went gouging. A torrent of hail seethed about the children, and Neil looked once more upon the atrocity that his father had become.

  The ogre was now twice as tall as Brian Chapman had been, and the thorns of ice which crowned its deformed head reared high into the turbulent night. From the hideous death lamps of its frozen eyes that scathing, unclean glare shone, and the children and Gogus were steeped in its defiling light.

  Barking madly, the wood urchin bared its teeth and slapped the slates with its own hooked claws.

  Brighter and more intent became the unholy glow from its frozen eyes as the blue lips of that abhorrent mouth parted and a vaunting, merciless laugh was let loose.

  'Now the age of Yggdrasill is ended indeed.’

  Through the remaining chimneys the ogre's odious bulk came savaging, until a flash of silver flame suddenly spat and sizzled across the stacks. A brilliant, burning light flared up into the monster's vile face and it shrieked in pain. The stretch of Edie's straggly web that it had raged into was now shining fiercely, and searing fires were dripping from the crackling strands.

  Lifting its enormous, scorched fist into the air, the Frost Giant yowled, and the violence of that dreadful din shook the surrounding spires. Incensed with wrath, the ogre lunged forward a second time, but the barring cords pulsed with the might of Fate, and the roofscape of The Wyrd Museum flickered and flared as the nightmare battled in vain to breach them. But the supreme forces of Destiny travelled through the net, and every woollen strand was like a ribbon of heavenly flame.

  Consumed with wrath, its skin burned and bubbling, the ghastly apparition blundered back, incensed and dismayed.

  'It's working!' Neil exclaimed. 'Edie, it's working!'

  'There!' the girl shouted. 'You can't get Gogus now!'

  Prowling around that threaded area, the repugnant enemy snarled and tested the strands with its talons. But every time its cruel claws touched the wool, a shower of blazing sparks erupted and those burning stars bit deep into its cold flesh. The ogre hissed with fury.

  'Daughter of the Fates/it growled with consummate menace. 'Remove thy snares before my brethren reach thee. Against their combined might thy traps and games are as nought. This trick they shalt brush aside and, for daring to oppose them, thou shalt be made sensible of the true cold and perceive the full measure of despair.'

  Edie snorted and turned away from that malevolent face. Crouching beside Gogus, she cupped her hand to one of its pointed ears and whispered quickly. The imp's eyes swivelled in their wooden sockets, then the carving wagged its large head in ready agreement.

  'Yes... Gogus... Yes...!'

  'From the fastness of their stronghold they storm!' the puppet of the Frost Giants cried. 'To me, my brethren! To me!}

  Staring out beyond the taut, shimmering strings, Neil's heart thumped fiercely when he beheld the gargantuan forms thundering across that ice-covered plain. The true lords of the ice and dark were immense and mountainous. Through the whirling storm they charged, their eyes cutting through the blizzard to beat upon the quailing walls of The Wyrd Museum with the full vehemence of their enmity.

  On every side those vast, dark shapes came rushing from the enclosing night, and Neil knew that there was no way Edie's little web could withstand them. Just one of those horrors could easily crush the museum, and the boy shrank against the brickwork of the chimney, trembling at the futility of thinking they could ever have fought them.

  Here, on this rooftop, he and Edie would die. The sap within the carving would be staunched and poisoned with the unstoppable cold, and the final dark would descend. In shallow, anxious breaths, he gulped and swallowed the biting, hail-ridden air. Then he turned to that loathsome abhorrence which dwelt within his father's body.

  'Listen to me!' he implored. ‘I know it now—we've lost. But please, let my dad go. You don't need to use him any more—you've won!'

  The fiend that had twisted the caretaker out of all recognition cackled callously. 'Now at the end dost thou understand?’ it brayed. 'Sip to thy fill the brimming cup of thy terror!’

  'I'm begging you!' the boy yelled. 'Let us be together.'

  'Release unto me the Paedogogus and I might consider it,' came the foul reply.

  Neil turned beseechingly to Edie, but the girl was busily untying the sleeves of her jumper from around the post.

  'Which is it to be?’ that mocking, repellent voice demanded, relishing the boy's torment. 'Wouldst thou choose the petty life of thy weak and irresolute father—he whose own feebleness of mind made it so much the easier to obtain? Such is thy dilemma—the frailest of men or the Doom of thy entire world!’

  'Stop it!' Neil shouted across the fencing threads. 'I can't do that. Just let my dad come back!'

  The ogre jeered at him, and the mordant sound chilled the boy's blood more than the intense cold ever could.

  'Another weak-minded fool’ the apparition hissed. ‘Didst thou really believe thy father still lived within this impotent shell? Upon that instant when the first of the Fates didst perish and I claimed this vessel, thy parent was killed. ‘Twas I who played his mundane part all times since.’

  Neil clenched his fists and drove his fingernails into the palms of his hands. 'No!' he screeched.

  Even as Neil endured those hellish taunts, Edie Dorkins placed her bulging jumper upon the sloping tiles at her feet and gazed out at the shadowy tempest. The blizzard was at its height now and the vast shapes of the evil host would shortly be upon them. It was time to see if her guess had been correct.

  Taking a deep breath, she peeled back the gathered welt and reverently took out that object she had removed from The Separate Collection.

  'Chapman!' she hollered. 'Get back 'ere, now!'

  But the boy ignored her. All he could think of was his father. 'He isn't dead!' he yelled. 'You're lying!'

  Behind the restraining web, the corpse light of the ogre's ice-clustered eyes glared at him.

  'My dad is still in there somewhere!' the boy insisted. 'He has to be. It was him who scribbled those messages on the walls of the museum, wasn't it?

  Before you stopped him. You couldn't control him completely. He's in there—I know it!'

  With her back to the chimney, Edie lifted the exhibit in her hands. Gazing up at it, Gogus bowed low.

  'Chapman!' the girl shouted again. 'If you don't get over 'ere right now, you're done fer!'

  The boy glanced at her, distracted. But when he saw what she held in her hands he turned back to the crooked abhorrence of the Frost Giant with even greater urgency and impassioned dread.

  'Dad!' he called. 'Dad! I know you're in that thing somewhere. Please—it's me—it's Neil! Listen to me! You can fight it—you can!'

  Throwing back its ice-crowned head, the nightmare bellowed with pitiless scorn.

  'Dad!' Neil pleaded. 'For once in your life, be strong—you must!'

  Running her fingers over the dry, crackled surface of the large, leathery globe in her grasp, Edie Dorkins placed the Eye of Balor on her knees, then reached deep into her pocket. From her hoard of plundered treasures, the girl brought out a small, unglazed ceramic jar and hastily removed the lid.

  'Chapman!' she shrieked a third time, but her voice was snatched by the gale and that battering wind bellowed with other, fiercer calls. The ancient forces of death and darkness were almost upon them. The enormous, sweeping shadows obliterated the surrounding desolation, and the destroying clamour of their bane-filled wrath shook the foun
dations of the world.

  Oblivious to all this, Neil Chapman entreated the abomination before him one last time. 'Dad! Answer me—please!'

  The hideous slit of that blue-lipped mouth gaped ever wider as the ogre ridiculed his puling efforts. But then, in the midst of that detestable, vainglorious derision, Neil thought he heard a tiny, far-off cry.

  'Neil!' that distant voice called desperately. 'Neil, it's me! Son, it's me!'

  Behind him, Edie stared into the jar she had taken from Miss Veronica's cupboard, the day she had returned from Glastonbury. Then she dipped her fingers into the ochre-coloured ointment it contained. Not wasting a second more, the girl larded the greasy salve over the parched and rigid leather of the Eye of Balor, rubbing it well into that adamantine skin.

  'Please be the right one,' she prayed.

  To her relief, the shrivelled vellum softened and became supple under her fingertips. With a final, anguished glance at Neil, the girl passed the lumpy sphere to Gogus.

  'You know what to do,' she cried above the squall.

  Jabbering, the wood urchin nodded wildly. Wedging the great globe in place under one of its stunted arms, it leaped away.

  Edie Dorkins watched the Fates' familiar swarm expertly up the towering chimney stack. All around The Wyrd Museum, huge, malevolent forms reared from the darkness and she clapped her hands over her ears to blot out their rioting uproar.

  Within the harrowing laughter of the ogre which mocked him, Neil could hear his father's shouts growing steadily louder, but time had nearly run out.

  Up around the chimney Gogus climbed, its bow legs scrabbling furiously. Swiftly, the imp of the Loom raced heavenward, its yammering barks shredded and scattered by the storm.

  'Dad!' Neil cried far below.

  Within the disfigured apparition, Brian Chapman's will grappled to reassert itself. As Neil watched, a change took place over the Frost Giants' creation. The evil glee died in the ghastly throat and, as the hail lashed about that distended form, its grotesque dimensions seemed to decrease in size, dwindling like wax in a flame.