ENGLAND EXPECTS EVERY MAN TO DO HIS DUTY
These were the words written in mosaic tiles on the stone at the foot of the second flight of steps they were about to climb. “The words of Admiral Nelson,” said Uncle Pogo, pointing and talking loudly over Paul Simon. “And it is our duty to find and repair this leak!” As they stomped up the stairs, Nelson could hear his uncle’s laptop beeping faster. He had seen enough action movies to know this meant they were getting closer to the target (although if this was a movie the target would be something more exciting than a leak, and they certainly wouldn’t be dressed up like this).
The rubber boots Nelson had been forced to wear were way too big for him and made the climb to the first floor an exhausting experience. When they reached the top Pogo pulled out his laptop and flipped open the screen. An image of St. Paul’s appeared, covered in little red dots. One of the red dots was flashing, and when Pogo hit the Return button, the image zoomed in on it. “And we should find the leak right around…” He scanned in closer to the flashing dot and a huge smile came to his face.
“Ah, I see. We’ve come up too high. Idiot. Must be down there.”
He switched off the music and there was a delicious silence.
“Sorry about that, Paul Simon, but we will need to use our ears now. Follow me, Nelson.” Nelson had no intention of being anywhere on his own and kept up as best he could as his uncle hurried back toward the stairs. At the bottom there was a long corridor lined with prints of the cathedral in various states of construction down one side and great stone arches down the other.
“These are the buttresses. They hold everything up. Superb design.” Pogo was gazing up at the ceiling admiringly. “And through here we should find…” He wrestled with a key in a lock and opened yet another door, into a magnificent library. Nelson’s flashlights revealed the eerie stone busts of men wearing large wigs and proud expressions on their faces.
This is the library at night.
It’s very dark in here, which is why you can’t see very much.
He turned around and realized he had walked to the opposite side of the library to his uncle, who was pressing his ear against a gap between two bookcases. “Here! Listen!” said Uncle Pogo with such delight and urgency that Nelson found himself running toward him.
Uncle Pogo was right. Nelson could hear rushing water on the other side of the wall. “Maybe there used to be a door or maybe a…” Uncle Pogo pulled off his rubber gloves and pressed his hands against the wall. Crouching low, he took his hands away from the wall. With a smile as wide as his entire head, Uncle Pogo showed Nelson that his hands were covered in white, wet plaster. He looked delighted, like a toddler displaying his first finger painting.
Using a crowbar from his toolbox, Uncle Pogo managed to create a split in the wall that ran vertically from just above his head down to the floor. There was a loud crack as the split reached the floor, immediately followed by water rushing out of the bottom and a smell that was so bad and so strong it would make your nose want to quit its job for good.
“Stand back,” cried Uncle Pogo, and grabbing the open seam with both hands he pulled as hard as he could. More water gushed across the floor. Filthy, stinking water. Something bumped against his ankle, and when Nelson looked down his headlamps lit up several dead rats thudding against his rubber boots. His instant reaction was to jump back, but all this did was splash the horrible smelly water all over himself.
“That’s as far as it will go for now, but I wonder if…” Uncle Pogo trailed off as he strained against the opening. He let go with a sigh and peered into the gap he’d made. “I can see it. It’s right there.” He picked up his toolbox and tried to wedge his entire body into the gap he had made. No chance.
“Nelson, over here.”
“It really stinks,” protested Nelson, sloshing through the water, whose flow was now subsiding.
“A smell won’t do you any harm. Now look. Do you see it? At the back, up high.”
Nelson peered through the gap and his headlamps illuminated a windowless chamber about the size of his headmistress’s office. There was an iron chandelier hanging from the ceiling, which would have once held candles but now looked more like a rusty torture device. Against the far wall there were two stone sinks without taps, and above them a large pipe that ran the length of the room had snapped through and the end that hung loose was spewing water all over the floor.
“Here,” said Uncle Pogo, handing Nelson the toolbox. “It’ll be dead easy. I’ll talk you through it.”
“What? I’m not going in there,” protested Nelson, aware that his voice was suddenly higher-pitched than usual.
“Oh, you’ll be fine. Really it’s a piece o’ cake. And it’s only to stop the water for now. I’ll need some backup in the morning to get this to open wider before I can repair it properly,” said Uncle Pogo, trying hard not to sound too excited. Nelson didn’t move. He just stood there. “Please,” said Uncle Pogo, with a sorry look on his face. “It’ll only take a minute. Then we can go home.”
He really did want to go home, so Nelson took a deep breath and, holding his nose, squeezed through the gap. Once he was on the other side, Uncle Pogo handed him the toolbox and a large roll of silver industrial-strength sticky tape. Nelson turned around and focused his headlamps on the broken pipe. The rest of the room was way too creepy and he certainly didn’t want to look into the dark corners.
“Now you just need to find something to stand on so you can reach the pipe,” said Uncle Pogo, his face squished into the gap in the wall.
This meant Nelson was forced to look around. Slowly he turned his head, and the lamps on his ears revealed an eerie sight. The room stretched back farther than he had thought and ended at a large black wooden door. One side of the room was lined with furniture-sized objects covered by filthy torn sheets, like a group of oddly shaped people in bad ghost costumes.
“Can you see anything to stand on, Nelson?” asked Uncle Pogo, sounding more keen than ever.
Nelson looked up at the pipe hanging down from the wall and realized he would need more than a chair to reach it. He turned back to the objects covered in sheets and selected the tallest thing he could see: a narrow table under a particularly moldy sheet. “There’s a table, Uncle Pogo. I’ll try and move it.”
He took a few steps through the filthy water toward the table, grabbed the edge, and pulled. There was a horrid scraping noise as the metal legs ground against the stone floor.
“That’s it, Nelson. Now put the toolbox on the table, and once you’re up there I’ll talk you through what you need to do.”
Nelson put one knee on the corner of the table and tried to climb on top without disturbing the horrible sheet.
“The pipe will likely be made of lead, so it’ll be easy to bash it back into place with the mallet—not the hammer,” called out Uncle Pogo through the gap in the wall. “But have the tape around your wrist so you can tear off a strip and wrap it around as quickly as possible.”
The table gave a shake, which made Nelson gasp. “It’s quite wobbly, Uncle Pogo.”
“I’m not surprised. It’s probably hundreds of years old! Now you want to get the two ends of the broken pipe to meet, or at least get them as close together as possible. So you’re gonna whack that loose end with the mallet until it’s back where it should be. Got it?”
Nelson gave his uncle a thumbs-up, lifted the mallet out of the toolbox, and looked up at the offending pipe. The stench was awful, and his body made all the movements necessary to be sick without actually being sick.
Just get it done and get out, thought Nelson, and he swung the mallet at the hanging pipe. His uncle was right; the pipe was made of lead and it bent back into position after only a few blows of the mallet.
“Yessss!” cried Uncle Pogo as if Nelson had just scored a goal in the World Cup. “Now tape it up with a few short pieces first. It should tear easily but you may need to bite it.”
The two ends of the broken pipe were now only a couple of centimeters apart and ready to be joined again, but the vile water was hissing out of the small gap between the pipes right into Nelson’s face.
Nelson turned around and spat to get the water out of his mouth and tore a length of tape from the roll.
Just as he was reaching up to tape it closed, the entire pipe dropped back down and shot him with a face full of water. Off balance and unprepared, Nelson fell and landed flat on his back on the table. If this had been a normal table he would have sat straight back up, but what Nelson and Uncle Pogo didn’t know was that, hidden under the sheet, the table was covered in hundreds of tiny metal spikes. Like a bed of nails, they pierced Nelson’s poncho and stuck right into his skin.
“Nelson! You all right?” shouted Uncle Pogo. But Nelson just lay there, not moving or making a sound.
“Oh no. Oh no. Oh no,” panted Uncle Pogo, his excitement now replaced with complete panic. From Uncle Pogo’s point of view, Nelson was in a very bad way, but from Nelson’s point of view things could not be better.
* * *
You would have thought that landing on a bed of spikes would be extremely painful, but all Nelson felt right now was bliss. In fact it felt as if his body was melting like butter in a frying pan. The terrible smell in the room had left his nostrils and his nose was filled with the scent of the rose soap they kept in the downstairs bathroom at home. As his eyes closed he was looking up at trees, and sunshine was peeping through the green leaves. It was clear to Nelson where he was now—not in St. Paul’s Cathedral but in his backyard on a perfect summer’s afternoon. A memory brought back to life so completely that he was reliving it with every part of his body. He was sitting on a stool. Yes, he remembered it all now. Celeste was cutting his hair. Celeste. She wasn’t missing at all. She was right there, standing in the yard with a comb clenched between her teeth and a pair of scissors snipping away at his bangs. Charles from next door sat on the wall watching them like a pigeon. Celeste’s hands smelled of the rose soap. She leaned forward. “Close your eyes,” she said, and for a moment all Nelson could feel was his sister blowing the hair off his face. When he opened his eyes again, he was looking straight at her pendant. The pendant she always wore. The pendant that had belonged to her mother. The pendant that was supposed to bring good luck. The pendant she had given to him when she left—
And all at once the dream ended and Nelson screamed the most terrible scream.
Uncle Pogo was tearing at the wall and trying to squeeze his body through the gap. “Nelson! Nelson! Get up!” he cried, but Nelson could not move. He felt as if his body was gone and all he had left were his eyes. They were wide with fear and bewilderment. Even his breathing had stopped and he could hear a high-pitched whistle, like several kettles reaching boiling point. Nelson didn’t know this, but the sound was coming from beneath the table, where there were seven copper test tubes held in a row by an iron rod. The copper had turned green after hundreds of years of neglect and each test tube fizzed and steamed and frothed as if someone was pouring invisible hot fat into them. The whistling, screaming sound got louder and louder as the test tubes shook and spat and sent steam rushing upward. The whole table rattled as if it was furious. It was like an end-of-the-world-style earthquake and everything was screaming and there was steam and heat and pain and …
It was over. Completely over, as if it had never happened. Nelson sat bolt upright and gasped as if he had been holding his breath all this time.
“Nelson!” cried Uncle Pogo.
Nelson rolled off the table and stood on shaky legs. “I’m okay,” he mumbled, and with that he passed out and fell to the floor with an almighty splash.
Luckily Nelson had fallen close enough to the gap in the wall for Uncle Pogo to reach with his right arm and drag him through.
He woke briefly to find himself being carried over his uncle’s shoulder in a fireman lift as they were bounding down some stairs. The next time his eyes opened he was lying on his back in the orange tent and being tucked under blankets. Uncle Pogo was looking down at him with real concern in his eyes.
“I’m totally okay,” said Nelson weakly.
“I’m such an idiot. I should never have asked you to do that. I’m so sorry. I’d take you home, but I think you’re better off resting up here for a bit. You won’t tell your folks about this, will you?” said Uncle Pogo, half joking but with a hint of real desperation.
Nelson nodded. And smiled. Once again he felt all his sadness and worry and fear leave his body, as if he was sinking back into that happy feeling, like a great warm bath.
“I feel great, just tired…” He yawned and another dream, this time of eating lasagna, Minty at his feet, washed over him.
* * *
The storm had passed. The sky was black and the puddles were great inky mirrors reflecting the orange lamplight. Uncle Pogo had already been on the phone to the caretakers and his contact at the Museum of London, who were coming as quickly as they could. Pogo was well aware that not only had he found the source of the leak, he had also stumbled across something special. A hidden chamber. This was bound to be of interest, even if it was rather smelly and gloomy looking.
As Pogo gathered the tools he would need to repair the lead pipes more permanently, something truly extraordinary was happening above …
* * *
Back in the filthy hidden chamber, beneath the bed of nails, the seven green copper vials appeared to be trembling in their metal stand. When Nelson fell on the table he had switched on a machine that had lain dormant for hundreds of years, and now, like eggs about to hatch, these vials contained something that was alive and growing. Something that wanted to get out. And each one was making a very distinct noise. Awful gurgling sounds came from one of the tubes. From another, a noise like popcorn being made. Together it was a strange chorus of hissing and belching and growling and moaning, and it reached such a crescendo that the test tubes began to topple and fall from the iron holder. The contents of each vial floated out into the filthy water on the chamber floor, like disgusting croutons in a horrible soup.
The strangest things you’ve ever seen. A tiny eyeball, alive, blinking, and swelling in size. A tongue rolling and stretching like a slug in salt, a bird-sized claw flexing and scraping against the stone, a tentacle like those of an octopus, which wrapped itself around a squashy green ball but quickly let go when the ball erupted in spikes like a cactus. A scarlet crescent-shaped object began to peel itself like a banana to reveal a black horn underneath, while a little purple sponge blossomed with thick fur and released a cloud of purple ink into the water. Though these strange and ugly and noisy little things looked and behaved completely differently from each other, they all had one thing in common: they were growing very, very quickly indeed.
