On the bus, they relived the water fight again, much to Ellie’s disgust. She was pretty miffed that they hadn’t made the effort to find her and made them both promise that, if it ever came to it again, she was not to be left out. Then Ruff began explaining how he’d finally deciphered the coded message.
“At first I thought maybe it was just a simple transposition cipher, but then I wondered if it was polyalphabetic, or even a rotor machine…”
“I didn’t know you could speak Hungarian,” Ellie said, tilting her head and folding her arms.
“Us codebreakers—”
“Just tell us in English,” Ellie said, her eyes flashing dangerously. But Ruff wanted his moment of glory.
“It’s all a bit technical,” Ruff explained. “Be easier just to show you.”
Despite more threats from Ellie, Ruff insisted on keeping his powder dry as the bus deposited them at their stop and they hurried to Magnus Street. It was not an evening for dawdling or outdoor conversation; the temperature was dropping fast. Yet another frost was forecast, and if there were any doubt about that they only had to look at the plumes of water vapour erupting from their mouths like dragon breath as they ran along the deserted streets. Christmas trees, adorned with tinsel and lights, lit up the windows of the houses, and one or two front gardens had Santas and sleighs in lurid displays. But they paid hardly any attention to the neon reindeer and glowing elves as they hurried on.
The wind had dropped and above them the stars glittered in the clear, black night sky. Penwurt was completely dark, the bartizans and spindly chimneys silhouetted against the starlit heavens like dark warning fingers. Noses red from the cold, they went straight to the library and stood around the desk as Ruff finally explained what he’d worked out.
“Wasn’t difficult, once I figured out the key,” he said, trying to sound nonchalant and failing miserably.
“Which was?” Oz asked.
“Well, that’s the thing, I spent ages wondering what word your dad might use as a key. He was almost a professor of history, right? So I was going bananas trying to think of some weird ancient word or saying.”
Oz frowned. “But I don’t even think my dad knew the letters were in the clock. Like I said, he was always threatening to get the thing fixed so that it would run.”
“Exactly.” Ruff pointed a confirmatory finger at him. “It was Morsman that found the letters and put them in the clock for safekeeping, right? And it was Morsman that wrote the code on the back as a reminder.”
“Why bother? I mean, why not just memorise the message?” Ellie said.
Ruff shook his head. “I reckon it’s like having an instruction manual for a new gizmo. You’ll probably never read it, but you hang on to it in case you just might have to. He wrote the message down as a back-up, but coded it in case anyone else found it.”
“So it was Morsman’s keyword you needed,” Oz said.
“And what would be easier than something he’d see whenever he reread the letter?” Ruff said teasingly. He was clearly enjoying this.
“Come on, Ruff,” Ellie demanded. “Just tell…” She stopped in mid-sentence and her eyes became very large and very round as she whispered, “The clockmaker’s message.”
“Tempus Rerum Imperator,” Oz said slowly, seeing it, too, now.
“Exactly.” Ruff nodded and fished out a notebook from his backpack. He wrote out Tempus Rerum Imperator and then wrote numbers beneath. “So if you substitute the letters for numbers, you can see it’s just a simple reverse alphabet cipher. Instead of A being one, Z is one. Look, the sequence of numbers for “tempus” is 722141158, right? So T would be 7 and E, 22. Get it?”
“Hey, Ruff, I’m impressed,” Ellie said.
“There’s no need to sound so surprised,” Ruff retorted, but he grinned as he said it. He flipped over a couple of pages of his book. “So every sequence of numbers spells a word. And, surprise, surprise, they all spell alchemical symbols. I wrote it all down, but I just need to check this off against the symbols on the panels to try and make sense of it.” He went to the panel with the wheel of twenty-six symbols and pored over it, consulting his notebook every now and then. Oz and Ellie watched him for a while as he mumbled to himself before Ruff, finally realising that he was being observed, looked up and said tetchily, “I could be a few minutes.”
Oz shrugged and turned away. He ran his fingers along the dusty spines of the stacked books on their shelves, peering at their titles.
“What are you looking for?” Ellie whispered, so as not to distract Ruff.
“Dunno, really. Just something the twins said to me. It sounded important at the time, but I couldn’t make a connection. And I almost had it again tonight. Something to do with Gerber.”
“Was it the fact that he’s an ugly gonk?” said Ruff distractedly from across the room.
“Get on with your cipher solving,” Ellie snapped.
“Something about Gerber’s family firm being involved with the German army in the Second World War,” Oz went on, and then turned to Ellie with a little shake of his head. “Why should that be important?”
Ellie started to shrug, but then stopped abruptly. She frowned and her eyes widened. “Hang on,” she said, walking along the shelves, searching for a book. “Here it is.” She pulled down a black, leather-bound tome and started flicking pages. “Yeah, I knew it.”
She looked up at a perplexed Oz and explained, “A Short History of Seabourne’s Ancient Houses. I borrowed it, remember?”
Oz nodded vaguely
“Remember that stuff I found about Shoesmith the farrier and the shell thingy? I remember reading somewhere…yes, here it is. They worked looking after horses for the British during the First World War. That’s a bit of a coincidence, isn’t it?”
Oz frowned. “Yeah, but the First World War was, like, thirty years before the second one.”
“Still, bit weird, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, I suppose there is a bit of a connection, but didn’t you say that one of the Shoesmiths was killed in that war?”
“That’s right.” Ellie scanned the page with her finger until she stopped about halfway down. “Yeah, here it is. At the Battle of Le Cateau in 1914.”
“Oh well, it must have been horses that triggered my…” Oz stopped. Something shifted in his brain, like a curtain wafting in the wind to reveal a hidden view. He turned to Ellie, his voice now an excited, harsh whisper. “That’s it. That’s it!”
“What’s it?” Both Ellie and Ruff stared at him, but Oz was running downstairs to his bedroom. He grabbed his laptop and bolted back up to the library.
“Look up gerber,” he said as he powered up the laptop.
“I told you, I already have,” Ellie said.
“Not Gerber the bloke, ‘gerber’ the word. There’s a German/English dictionary up there somewhere.”
Frowning, Ellie started searching the shelves as Oz waited for the laptop to boot up. He found the file he was looking for just as Ellie pulled down a battered book and blew dust off its cover.
“I knew I’d seen it in here somewhere,” Oz said, his voice high with excitement. “In 1914, Morsman went on an expedition to France to look for the fifth artefact. Everyone said he was mad because the war was on. But he didn’t go alone.”
Ellie looked up from the dictionary and read out what she found. “Right, ‘gerber, of German origin. Someone who skins animals, a—’”
“Tanner,” said Oz before Ellie could finish.
She stared at him in astonishment, brows knitted. “How did you know that?”
“I didn’t. But I remembered that the bloke who went with Morsman to France was called John Tanner. You worked it out, Ruff. You told us that gerber means someone who skins animals. Don’t you see?”
“No,” said Ruff, totally flummoxed.
Ellie’s face bore a strange expression of mingled horror and confusion. “Are you seriously trying to tell us that Gerber is John Tanner?”
“It all fits,” Oz said, and started pacing up and down the room. “Tanner was Morsman’s big mate in the orphanage. They went to France in 1914 to look for the fifth artefact, but didn’t find anything, or at least that’s what my dad said in his article. Afterwards, Tanner disappeared.”
“But…”
“Don’t you see?” Oz exclaimed. Suddenly, it was all so obvious. But the others just gawped at him as if he’d gone bananas. “Shoesmith’s shell was the fifth artefact! And I bet Tanner found the thing and took it for himself.”
“But what about the Shoesmiths?” Ellie said.
“You said that one brother was killed in action in 1914. Maybe he was already dead when Tanner found him,” Oz reasoned.
“Or maybe Tanner had a hand in him dying, too,” Ellie said quietly.
The boys stared at her.
“Wait a minute,” Ruff said, his voice dripping with disdain. “Morsman was born when, 1880? If Tanner is the same age as him, that would make him a hundred and buzzard thirty. I know he’s a repulsive gonk, but…”
Oz’s eyes shone. “The twins told me that Mrs. Fanshaw thinks he’s some kind of freak. Ellie said he’s really difficult to research. Perhaps he doesn’t want anyone to know about his past.” His voice dropped to a loaded whisper. “What if the artefact somehow keeps him young?”
Ruff’s mouth dropped open and Ellie’s brows crumpled in disbelief, but then her eyes lit up.
“The Shoesmiths were all renowned for living for, like, ages—over a hundred, many of them—except the bloke who wrote the autobiography.”
“But he didn’t have the shell by then, did he?” Oz said quickly. “I know how it sounds, but what if it did? What if it was what made the Shoesmiths live longer, and now, somehow, it’s having an effect on how Gerber ages? That would make him want the other artefacts, too, wouldn’t it?”
“Yeah, but a hundred and thirty?” Ruff said, wrinkling his nose.
“Hold on,” Oz said, and quickly fetched the small ladder that fitted onto the bookshelf. He clambered up and reached for the old photograph albums of Penwurt and the orphanage. In date order, starting in 1886, were faded sepia prints of those lucky enough to have found a home under Colonel Thompson’s wing. Oz took out the loose print he’d found Halloween night. He found Morsman two in from the end in the front row, a smiling, gap-toothed boy in a loose-fitting, open-neck shirt, with his arm around the head of another, slighter boy.
“This is 1892. Morsman would have been about our age.” Oz stared at the second boy. He looked thin and gawky and troubled, his hair tousled and dark, and even with the poor quality of the old sepia print, from the way his head was angled by the headlock Morsman had him in, it was clear that John Tanner had been cursed with a large, dark blemish that covered most of one half of his neck.
“The twins told me that Gerber wears high collars to hide a large birthmark.” Oz held out the photograph for Ellie and Ruff to see. When they looked up again, their faces were strained and serious. No one spoke. It all seemed so incredible and yet, somehow, the pieces fitted together perfectly. Oz spoke for all of them when he finally said, “Maybe the coded message has the answer to some of this.”
Ruff nodded and turned his attention back to the oak panelling.
“Okay, the letter sequences on the back of Redmayne’s letter spell out sixteen words and they’re all symbols.” Ruff used his finger to point out the symbols as they appeared on his notebook. “Iron, nitre, glass, rot, ummm…essence, soap, soap, alum, tin, and then there’s soap, urine, nitre, rot, iron, soap and essence.”
“Is that really the symbol for urine?” asked Ellie, making a face.
“Yeah,” Ruff said.
“Cool,” Ellie said, shaking her head.
“But what does all this mean?” Oz said.
“Maybe we should check the Redmayne letter again?” Ruff suggested. “In case there’s something we’ve missed.”
“I’ll get it.”
Oz ran down the stairs and headed for the study. The first sign he had that anything was amiss was the fact the door didn’t look quite right. Not ajar as such, but not quite flush with the frame, either. He noticed a small smattering of shiny dust on the carpet right underneath the lock as he reached for the handle. The door swung open and he saw immediately what had happened. The lock itself lay on the study floor with more fine metal shavings around it. Someone had drilled it out, and that same someone had taken the clock off the wall and laid it on the desk.
Oz stood frozen on the threshold. Nothing else was different about the study, but there was something very different about the clock. The drawer beneath the pendulum lay shattered, the wood splintered and broken. Stomach writhing, he took a step forward into the room, his eyes drawn to the broken clock drawer. It was empty.
“Ellie! Ruff!” he yelled, and heard rapid footfalls as they responded to the urgency in his voice. In a couple of seconds they ran along the landing and through the doorway of the study, where they both froze.
“Oh my God,” Ellie said, hand over her mouth.
“Buzzard,” spluttered Ruff.
“They’ve got them all,” said Oz dully. “The letters, the dor, the pebble. Everything.”
“What should we do?” said Ellie. “Ring the police?”
“And tell them what?” Oz said angrily, not taking his eyes from the broken drawer of his dad’s clock.
“That there’s been a burglary,” Ellie said.
“But has there?” Oz said.
“We’d better check the rest of the house,” Ellie whispered urgently, and ran out, yelling, “I’ll check downstairs. You two do up here.”
But the TV was fine, and so were the CD player and Oz’s Xbox and his iPod. All the things that burglars usually burgled remained untouched, and after ten minutes of searching it was clear that nothing else had been disturbed. Not one other thing had been taken.
“But it’s still a robbery,” Ellie protested as they gathered back in the study. “At least ring your mum.”
“And tell her that someone’s stolen Morsman’s artefacts?” Oz shook his head. “She’d probably get up on the table and do the Macarena.” He slapped the desk angrily. “I should have hidden them somewhere else. Somewhere away from Dad’s study.”
“No good beating yourself up, Oz,” Ellie said.
“We’ve still got the message,” Ruff added hopefully.
“I thought you needed the letter,” Oz muttered, his words leaden and bitter.
“It was just to double-check,” Ruff said. “See if I’d copied everything down right.”
Oz looked at his friends. They were desperate to help.
“Come on, Oz,” Ellie urged.
Shrugging despondently, his heart iron-heavy and his mind whirling full of self-recriminatory what-ifs, he allowed himself to be led back up to the library. While Ellie and Ruff pored over the coded message, Oz sat in one of the chairs watching them, his appetite for the mystery suddenly gone. If only he’d put the artefacts somewhere really safe, like in the garage with the boxes of old tools. No one would have thought of looking there. Or even in a plastic bag taped to the underside of the lid of the cistern in the unused bathroom. That’s what they did in all the films when they wanted to hide something. Oz’s mind went round and round in ever-decreasing circles. He hardly noticed how much Ruff and Ellie were concentrating and how they’d pause occasionally to give him a worried glance.
No one spoke for almost ten minutes.
But it was in one of those tense, silent moments that a new sound appeared, faint but definite—the creak of a floorboard twice in quick succession, followed by the dull tattoo of someone, or something, crossing a room.
Footsteps.
Ellie and Ruff paused and Oz sat up. Could it be that their ghost still had the answers to what was going on?
“Hear that?” Ruff whispered.
“It’s coming from behind this wall,” Oz said, getting up from his chair and putting his ear against the panelling.
“Should we go over there?” Ellie said, but there was doubt in her voice.
“To the orphanage? Tried that, remember?” Oz said, suddenly buoyed by this new twist. “No, the answer’s here. In this library, I’m convinced of it. It’s here in these books, or the symbols, or something…”
“Maybe we could get a wizard from one of Ruff’s Xbox games to cast a spell and reveal it to us,” Ellie said drily.
Ruff gave her a long-suffering look. “Very funny.”
“Just a suggestion,” Ellie said.
“Don’t give him any ideas,” Oz said.
“Heeps had ideas,” Ellie muttered, her face glum. “He’d written them all over the poster I saw on Kate’s phone. What does ‘orthographic’ mean?”
“I dunno,” Oz said. “Something to do with printing?”
Ruff’s face had gone strangely slack. “Spell,” he whispered, his eyes focused on something far away. Oz and Ellie stared at him.
“For crying out loud, I didn’t mean it about the wizards. It was just a joke, Ruff,” Ellie snapped.
“No, it isn’t,” Ruff whispered, his eyes burning. “Spell, don’t you see? There’s a whole section on the Cypherspace page about it.”
Oz and Ellie just stared at him.
“I don’t mean ‘spell’ as in jiggery-pokery and wands and stuff. I mean ‘spell’ as in spelling. That’s what orthographic is all about.” He pointed towards the wheel of symbols. “I reckon the message spells out an instruction. Look, take the first letter of all of these symbols.”
Ellie took a pencil and quickly did as Ruff suggested. “I, n, g, r, e, s, s,” she mouthed and scribbled at the same time. Two seconds later, she sat back and announced, “It spells ‘ingress at sunrise.’”
“Great,” Ruff said, sounding deflated. “I thought it might mean something.”
“It does mean something, obviously,” Ellie said.
Ruff collapsed into an armchair. “Well, if we have to wait until sunrise, we’ll need to get some snacks.”
But Oz was frowning. He knew this house better than anyone else. “You can see the sunrise through that window.” He pointed at one of the huge panes in the turret above.
“And the wall below it has the same pattern of twenty-six symbols as the other one,” Ellie said, walking over to it. Behind that same wall was where they’d heard the footsteps moments before.
Ruff got up, walked over to join Ellie and examined the symbols. “They are the same, but they feel different. Look here, see? These faint lines around each one? It’s like they were carved on blocks and placed here.”
“You mean, like a mosaic?” Ellie said.
“Or a jigsaw,” Ruff mused. “Maybe we could prise them out?”
Ruff tried to get his fingernail into one of the faint cracks, but the symbols had been inlaid with great workmanship and the spaces were barely visible. There was no way he could get between them. “I’ll probably need some tools,” he said.
Ellie nodded and sighed. “Or we wait until the sun comes up.”
But Oz was shaking his head. “It can’t be that difficult. Morsman built this place. It doesn’t make any sense that he set a cipher that could be read for just one small part of the day. We’re missing something. It’s another puzzle.”
“Well, ingress means entry, doesn’t it? Entry into what, though?” Ruff pondered.
“A place?” Ellie said. “Like an address?”
“Maybe, or numbers or coordinates to do with sunrise or…oh, I don’t know.” Ruff shook his head in frustration.
Oz listened to his friends voicing the words that milled about in his own head. Ruff was right. They needed some directions. He looked at the ancient globe atlas standing in the corner, with its compass symbol. He went over and spun the globe, watching the countries roll by beneath his fingers. Watching the sailing ship moving around and the compass rotating into view with each revolution…
“That’s it,” Oz said so loudly that the other two jumped. “It’s a place.”
“Like a fish?” Ruff said.
Oz pretended he hadn’t heard that. “This library is perfectly aligned on compass points. That wall,” he pointed right, “is directly north from the centre of the room. And that one…” he pointed towards where they were standing, “is where the sun comes up.”
“The sun rises in the EAST,” breathed Ellie.
“Essence, Alum, Soap and Tin,” Ruff said, running his fingers over the symbols. “Here’s essence.” He frowned at the symbol. “Funny, it looks a bit faded and worn compared to the oth…”
He didn’t get any further. The slight pressure of his finger had caused the wooden block on which the symbol was carved to move inwards slightly. Ellie caught her breath, and in a second Oz had joined her to watch with barely restrained excitement as Ruff pushed the symbol in as far as he could. It slid in a full inch and stopped. Then he did the same with the alum symbol and the soap symbol. Both slid in the exact same amount and clicked to a stop.
“Oz,” said Ruff, his voice a low murmur, “I reckon you should do the last one.”
Trembling slightly, Oz put his finger on the tin symbol and pushed. This time, when it stopped moving, there was a faint but definite click, followed by a discernible creak, and the whole six-foot-by-six-foot panel in front of them gaped open an inch on one side.
“Awesome,” Oz said.
“I knew it! I knew there’d be something behind these panels,” Ruff added triumphantly.
“Ingress,” Ellie whispered in awe. “The way in.”
Beyond the door was a very narrow passageway, just wide enough for someone to get through sideways. Ruff stuck his head in.
“Wow, looks like they built this inside the walls.”
Ellie immediately edged forward, but Oz stopped her.
“Let me get some torches.” Oz ran down to his bedroom and found a couple of pen torches which, miraculously, worked. Back in the library, Ellie and Ruff looked as if they’d been arguing.
“What’s wrong?” Oz asked.
“Nothing. It’s just that…” Ruff began.
Ellie threw him a withering glance and then said, “Ruff thinks we should call someone.”
“Well, don’t you?” Ruff protested.
“I told you, my mother isn’t interested,” Oz explained. “She’s too busy partying with Heeps and Gerber.”
“Yeah, but…” Ruff frowned.
“And Caleb doesn’t answer his emails or texts, so who else is there?” Oz demanded.
The other two didn’t answer, but both wore slightly troubled expressions. Doubt suddenly clouded Oz’s mind, too. Maybe Ruff was right. None of them had any idea what was inside these walls.
But then Ellie shook her head. “Look, we’ve just found one of Penwurt’s big secrets. I mean, it’s a hidden passageway, for crying out loud! Come on, where’s your sense of adventure?”
Ruff glared at her. “Oh, that’s just typical you, isn’t it? Just doing stuff without thinking it through.” His face had gone bright red. “What if something happens? Guess who’ll be blamed for solving the cipher and opening the door…”
But Oz was sold. Having already lost the artefacts, he wasn’t about to turn away from this new opportunity to find out who the footsteps belonged to.
“Come on, let’s do it,” Oz said, and saw Ellie grin delightedly, while Ruff’s shoulders slumped. Oz went first, his feet crunching on rough stone, the torch beam picking out the thick curtains of cobwebs that hung off the walls and the roof of the narrow passage. A couple of steps in, he heard footsteps behind him as Ellie and Ruff followed. They inched their way along, and after ten yards or so they came to some steps and descended before turning sharply to find themselves in a wider walkway, this one with wooden floors which creaked ominously as they crept forward. On one side, the rough stone wall remained, but on the other, Oz’s hand brushed against a rough texture of interwoven wattle and daub. Here, it was broad enough for them to walk facing forwards.
“How far down do you think those steps were?” whispered Ruff.
“Eight feet, maybe,” said Oz.
“So that would have just about taken us to the first floor of the orphanage,” said Ellie.
Oz heard an audible gulp from Ruff. “Where we thought we heard the footsteps.”
“Not thought, did hear them,” Oz whispered excitedly. “This floor is the same one as on the other side of that wall.” He pointed at the wattle and daub. “We didn’t find any sign of footsteps in the room, because whoever they belonged to was outside in this passage all along. Someone knew…” Oz didn’t finish his sentence. Ahead of them, close by, a floorboard creaked. They froze.
“If this was an Xbox game, we could pause it and get some hot chocolate,” Ruff whispered shakily. “That usually helps.”
“Switch off your torch,” Ellie said.
“Why?” Oz said.
“Trust me.”
Oz did as Ellie asked and saw why immediately. Five yards ahead of them at floor level, a thin, rectangular strip of light suddenly appeared, the exact size and shape of a gap under a door. They crept forward, and then stopped again as they heard something that plucked at their already stretched nerves and sent their imaginations into overdrive. Something howled behind the wall. And it didn’t sound like a wolf or a dog; it sounded like nothing any one of them had ever heard before—an unearthly, wailing screech followed by an urgent, tremulous whisper.
“Oz, this is really buzzard,” Ruff hissed.
“Come on,” Oz said, sounding a great deal braver than he felt. He turned his torch back on and aimed it at the wall above where the light had appeared. The beam picked out a rough wooden frame in the mess of plaster, mud and vegetable matter that the builders had packed between the wooden lattices. An iron ring halfway down the right side of the frame served as a handle for what was obviously a door.
Oz could feel his heart banging against his rib cage. Somehow, he knew that behind this wall lay the answer to the ghostly footsteps. And yet, he sensed that something wasn’t right here. All this time, he had harboured the secret hope that the footsteps had something to do with his father. But the noises they now heard were of something wretched, something ill at ease and disturbed.
“Ready?” Oz said, feeling his fingers tremble as he swapped the torch to his left hand. He heard both a “no” and a “yes” as a response. But there was no time for debate. Oz reached for the iron ring, turned it and pushed the door open. What light there was came from a single lantern in the centre of the room. It threw up a watery beam that showed two figures, one standing and holding something beseechingly, the other crouched on its haunches, regarding the standing figure with wild and feral terror.
Oz felt the temperature drop as they entered, but only had seconds to register the fact that it was because the sash window was wide open and freezing night air was pouring in before chaos erupted. The hunched figure jerked its head towards them, and Oz saw a pinched, filthy face and yellow teeth bared in animalistic terror. But his mind also, impossibly, registered the sleek body and banded head of a human-sized polecat shimmering around the matted fur coat the thing wore. It was only a momentary realisation as the creature let out another screech, the noise of a wild animal suddenly cornered.
Oz reached out a hand. “It’s okay. We’re not here to harm…”
The thing shifted abruptly, and from behind him Oz heard Ellie shout, “Look out, it’s going to attack!”
She leapt towards it with her foot outstretched and kicked away the arm it had thrust towards Oz. There was another scream, and before anyone could move it scurried towards the open window and leapt out into the night air.
“God, Ellie,” Ruff said in a harsh whisper, “now look what you’ve done.”
“NO!” Another wail, this time from the standing figure. It was a cry full of hopelessness and desperation that pierced Oz’s heart. The figure rushed to the window, choking back a sob. It stood for two long seconds, staring out into the night, before turning back to them with an expression of such hate that it appeared almost as inhuman as the wretch that had just leapt out. The eyes that stared up from the gaunt face were a girl’s eyes, but they burned with such a terrible, feverish brightness that for a moment Oz couldn’t place the features, so distorted were they by anguish and loathing.
But then recognition kicked in. Suddenly, Oz knew why the polecat creature had attacked them as they’d walked home from the park that night. There was no denying that the face they were now looking at and the distorted features of the creature had been molded from the same genetic clay. Oz only had a fleeting second to register all this, because his eyes darted between the hammer that wavered in one of the girl’s shaky hands and the smooth dark objects she held in the other—the obsidian pebble and the black dor. Oz felt a pressure at his back and realised that Ruff and Ellie were close behind him, but all he could think of was that insane look in the girl’s eyes and the hammer in her hand.
“You!” Lucy Bishop screamed. “This is all your fault.”
“What was that thing?” Ruff asked in a very shaky voice from behind Oz’s left ear.
“That was her brother,” Oz said without turning around.
Lucy Bishop threw back her head and let out an anguished wail.
“What?” said Ellie.
Oz didn’t take his eyes off Lucy Bishop as he spoke. “It went for us in the park because it was hungry. She was going to feed it…”
“Not an it!” hissed Lucy Bishop. “Edward, his name is Edward, and you’ve ruined any chance we had. Blundering, meddling kids.”
“What are you talking about?” demanded Ellie.
Lucy Bishop thrust out her hand and the pebble and the dor it contained. “Don’t pretend,” she spat. “Thought you could hide them, didn’t you? But I found them. Go on, deny it. Deny that you were hiding them from me.”
“They’re Oz’s, and you’ve got no right to steal them,” Ellie said, pushing Oz aside to face the distraught girl.
“His?” Lucy Bishop let out a sneering laugh. “These aren’t possessions to be bought or sold. They choose their keepers.” She kept her eyes on Oz and slowly raised the hammer, pointing it at him. “This is your curse, boy.”
Next to him, Oz felt Ruff flinch as he leaned in and whispered, “She’s gone stark raving bonkers.”
“My dad sent me the pebble,” Oz said, wishing Ruff would keep his thoughts to himself.
Lucy Bishop glared at him in utter disdain, but she didn’t reply, merely stood with the breath heaving in and out of her chest.
“What’s wrong with your brother?” Ellie asked abruptly.
Lucy Bishop’s eyes widened and she half-fell backwards, putting her hand out to the wall for support, as if the words had struck her a blow. Glancing back out of the window, she said in a choked voice, “Edward…”
“Is he ill?” Ruff asked.
Lucy Bishop let out a strangled sob, which turned into a derisory laugh as she swung back towards them. “Ill? He isn’t ill. He’s possessed. A demon has him in its clutches. A demon that has twisted his mind. Turned him into a wild creature.”
“I’m really sorry,” said Oz, “but that doesn’t give you the right to steal the pebble for Gerber.”
“Yeah, we know you’re working for him,” Ruff said.
“Gerber,” she cackled. “That monster. Never…” She trailed off in a sob.
“Was it you in here the other night?” Ellie asked suddenly. “We heard your footsteps.”
The question threw her. “I’ve never been in this accursed room before.”
“But we heard you…” Ruff began.
“What you hear is the house. It feeds on the innocent and the gullible. It’s cursed. Like you. Like these abominations.” She looked down at the pebble and the dor, her voice now a barely whispered moan of hopelessness. “I tried. I tried to use them to help Edward…” Her breath moved in and out in staccato bursts. “But it’s no use.”
Her eyes came slowly back up and fixed on Oz. “But somewhere in this house is a place where these things are vulnerable. I have to find it. They must be destroyed before they ruin another life.” “No,” Oz yelled, but it was too late. Lucy Bishop fell to her knees and threw the artefacts to the floor. In one smooth movement, the hammer in her other hand fell. Oz saw it plummet, driven by Lucy Bishop’s mad strength. But when it hit the pebble, there was no noise except the whoosh of something heavy flying through the air and Lucy Bishop’s arm swinging back as if made of rubber.
“Cursed!” she screamed. “Cursed! You see! You see!” Time and again, she brought the hammer down and time and again, there was no smashing noise of splintering metal, just the whoosh of the hammer flying back up as if it were bouncing off a trampoline. After a while she stopped and sat back, sobbing, her sweaty hair over her face like a damp curtain. She looked up again, and this time her expression had moulded into an ugly mask of real hate. “But perhaps I’m doing this all wrong. Perhaps it isn’t the artefacts I need to destroy. Perhaps it’s you and this cursed house.”
With a banshee wail she flew at Oz, the hammer held high. Oz dived to his right just as her arm came down and the hammer smashed into the door frame. He scrambled forward, half-stumbling and taken off-guard by the ferocity of Lucy Bishop’s attack. The torch flew from his hand and rolled over the floor. He turned to see her dark shape coming for him again, brandishing the hammer high above her head.
But then he saw a shadow beside him, and saw it move lithely to stand between him and the deranged young woman. There was a whirl of limbs and an unpleasant-sounding thud as a foot connected with something soft. Oz scrambled for this torch and shone it towards the middle of the room just in time to see Ellie’s foot connecting once again in a helicopter whirl with Lucy Bishop’s head. It snapped back and Lucy Bishop staggered backwards towards the panelled wall. There was a sickening thud as she connected with the solid wood, and then she slid down like wet wallpaper, the hammer clattering heavily to the floor at her feet.
“Oz, are you okay?” Ellie asked.
Oz got to his feet and wiped dust from his knees. “Yeah, thanks to you.”
“Told you she was a ham roll short of a picnic,” Ruff said shakily, staring down at the crumpled form of Lucy Bishop. But Oz’s attention was elsewhere. He’d gone over to the corner where Lucy Bishop had tried smashing the pebble and the dor. To his utter astonishment, they weren’t smashed to smithereens. In fact, they weren’t smashed at all.
“Ruff, Ellie, look at this.” Oz held out the pebble and the dor for them to see.
“But I saw her pulverise them with the hammer,” Ellie said.
“Yeah, but there was no noise, was there?” Ruff said.
“But what does it mean?” Ellie demanded.
“I have no idea,” Oz said, shaking his head, “but I think now would be a good time to call someone. Come on.”
They went back to the passage and made their way to the gap between the walls. Oz led, but just when he arrived at the top of the steps leading to the library, he heard a voice.
“Hello? Anybody there?”
A head appeared above Oz, squinting into the torchlight.
“Tim? Tim Perkins? Is that you?”
“Heard a funny noise. Seemed to be coming from the library, and then I found this door open and…”
“You won’t believe how glad we are to see you,” Oz said with relief. “It’s Lucy Bishop, she’s…”
“Had an accident,” Ruff said quickly.
“An accident?” Tim asked, concern clouding his face.
“Yeah. Down here.”
Quickly, they backtracked, leading Tim to the room where Lucy Bishop lay. He knelt and felt for a pulse in her neck.
“Is she okay?” asked Ellie anxiously.
“Out cold. But what’s all this about?”
Oz, Ellie and Ruff looked at each other and then Oz said, “It’s a long story. Lucy stole something from me. We heard a noise and stumbled on this passageway, which led us here.”
“We think she’s gone a bit weird,” Ruff said. “Something to do with her brother.”
“What did she steal from you?” Tim asked, looking perplexed.
“Just some old stuff my dad sent me.” Oz held out the pebble and the dor for Tim to look at, and his response was refreshingly honest.
“They don’t look very valuable.”
There was a very pregnant pause before Ellie said, “They’re not. They’re just historical artefacts.”
“Well,” Tim said, standing up, “we’ll put her in the recovery position, and I vote we get out of here and call an ambulance straight away.” He lay Lucy Bishop down on her face and then moved swiftly across the room with the other three in tow. But when he got to the passage, he hesitated. “Oh, one thing. Could you two just check to make sure she hasn’t got anything like lighter fluid, or matches? We don’t want her waking up and setting fire to the place, do we?”
Oz waited while Ellie and Ruff quickly went back into the room, and Ellie patted Lucy down while Ruff searched the corners.
“No,” sang Ruff, “there’s nothing here.”
“She doesn’t have anything on her eith…”
Ellie’s voice was suddenly cut off. Tim had shoved Oz hard so that he stumbled forward into the passage, banging his head painfully against the wall. At the same time, Tim followed Oz out and pulled the door shut. Within seconds, he had some thick plastic ties wound around the iron handle and the wooden surround so the door couldn’t be opened from the inside. Oz heard the muffled protests from within.
“Oy, let us out,” yelled Ellie.
“What do you think you’re playing at?” Ruff demanded.
Then Oz found his voice, too. “Tim, what are you doing?”
“Keeping your meddling friends out of the way,” he said, and there was something about his voice that made Oz’s stomach do a backflip. Suddenly, he was grabbed roughly by the arm and shoved forwards along the passageway.
“Very convenient of you to turn up with the very things I’ve been scouring this mausoleum for three months for.”
“What are you talking about?” Oz said. But all he got in reply was another shove. They were heading in the opposite direction to the one which took them back to the library now, deeper into the orphanage block.
“Your name isn’t really Tim, is it?” Oz asked, though he didn’t need to. He already knew the answer. Suddenly, it was all blindingly obvious.
“No, it’s not. And I’m not a student or a repair man, either.”
“Then who are you?” Oz demanded.
“Your worst nightmare. The name’s Rollins.”