“I BET SEBASTIAN EELS KNOWS,” says Violet as the door of the Eerie Book Dispensary closes behind us.
It’s properly dark now, and getting late, but the mist seems to be lifting, and the moon cuts through the haze above us. Our footsteps crackle in the frost as we pass the dolphin fountain and leave the square.
“I bet he knows exactly what happened to my mum and dad.”
“You could be right,” I reply. “But what can we do about it? We can’t confront him without any evidence.”
“How much do you trust Jenny?” Vi says, and I look surprised.
“I’ve never thought about it, but I don’t see why she’d lie to us. Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know,” says Vi. “It’s just that I wanted to ask her a question but suddenly thought I should keep it back.”
“What question?”
“About the malamander egg,” says Vi.
“It seems to me,” I say as we start down the narrow steps towards the hotel, “that if you want to know more about that part of the legend, you should read the rest of that book of yours. When we’re safely back in my cellar and not freezing our cockles off out here, you can have another good go at it, Vi, and maybe find the answers for yourself.”
“Yeah, maybe,” says Violet. Above us, the last of the sea mist melts from the sky, and we stop and gaze in wonder at the inky blackness of space, sparkling with stars.
“What’s that?” says Violet.
“The inky blackness of space,” I say. “Sparkling with stars.”
“No, not that. That?”
I look along her arm. Just above the rooftops, one star burns brighter than the rest, fierce and red. As we watch, the light dims till it’s almost out, before flaring bright and red again.
“That’s no star,” says Vi.
I’m about to say something when a sound cuts through the night air. It’s a screeching, roaring wail, and when it dies down, I find I’m clinging on to Violet and she’s clinging on to me.
“OK, and what’s that?” she exclaims.
“Close,” I reply. “That’s what that is. Too close.”
As our eyes adjust to the moonlight, we see that the strange, pulsating red star-that-isn’t-a-star isn’t in the sky at all, but in a window. The window of an old tower, above the battlements.
“That’s the museum,” I say.
“Dr Thalassi’s museum?”
Just then the terrible, shrieking wail comes again, echoing in the narrow street, and the red light winks out altogether. For a moment, as we watch, a dark and spiny shape seems to scuttle up the wall of the tower – but when I blink to make sure I’m not seeing things, it disappears.
“We should go,” I say, trying not to squeak.
“We certainly should,” says Vi. “Before we miss something important.” And she hurries off towards the museum.
“Wait!” I grab her coat. “I didn’t mean that way. I meant back to the hotel.”
“But the adventure is that way.” Vi pulls herself free. “Not back in the hotel.”
“But back in the hotel there aren’t any strange lights or terrible nightmare sounds!” I squawk, flapping my arms.
“Curiosity may have killed the cat, but that doesn’t mean cats shouldn’t be curious.”
“Ha!” I cry. “That’s easy for you to say.”
“Except…” Vi replies, blinking, “except I didn’t say it. He did.”
I look to where she’s nodding. Erwin is sitting on a nearby window ledge, giving us both a significant look.
“Seriously?” I say to him.
But the cat just purrs and licks his paw like any other cat in the world. And by the time I turn back to Violet she’s already running off into the dark, towards the museum.
So there’s nothing left for me to do but run after her.
I catch her up as she’s heading down another flight of steps and out into a dimly lit street. From here I can see Mrs Fossil’s Flotsamporium. There is a light on somewhere inside, and I wonder how Mrs F is doing, but I can’t stop to knock now – Violet is off again. It’s only when we come out onto the battlements, at the fortified western end of town, that Violet finally comes to a halt. She crouches in a shadow and nods across the expanse of cobbles to a crenellated medieval building that hulks on the other side.
“Is this it?” she whispers.
“Yes, the museum is in the old castle,” I whisper back. “Well, the doctor’s surgery takes up some of the ground floor part, but all that up there is the museum, including the tower.”
Violet looks up at the tall, Gothic windows. They look back at us, black and vacant. Silence covers everything, and I begin to wonder if we really saw or heard anything strange at all. Unsurprisingly, at this late hour the tall arched door of the museum is firmly shut.
“Where does that go?” says Violet. She’s pointing at a flight of ancient steps that wind up around the back of the building.
“Side way in,” I reply. “But…”
Vi darts out into the moonlight and crosses to the castle. Then she trots up the steps and vanishes from view.
“What are you doing?” I shout in my loudest whisper. “Violet!”
I find her standing on the top step, beside a gnarly wooden door. Of course, she’s testing the handle.
“Seriously, Vi, it won’t be open. We should go.”
Violet releases the door handle with a sigh. “After all that, we’ve missed it,” she says. “Whatever ‘it’ was.”
From the steps we can see over the highest part of the town’s ramparts, down to the shore far below. The sea mist, which has by now entirely seeped out of the town, is collecting on the beach beneath us. With the moonlight pouring down, it looks like a rolling ocean of silvery vapour, making it impossible to see what may or may not be on the sand below.
“Have you got a torch?” asks Vi. “I just want to peek through the window.” When she sees the expression on my face, she adds. “And then we’ll go, Herbie. I promise.”
I rummage in the enormous pocket of my coat and pull out a small torch. I join Violet at a window beside the door, place the business end of the torch right against the glass – to avoid reflection – and click it on. Inside the museum, dark shapes and twisted shadows are thrown into relief by the sudden light.
“Happy now?” I whisper.
Vi squints in, shielding her eyes. “I can’t see much.”
“Which is why we should come back tomorrow when the museum is actually open,” I say, and I shut off the light.
But Violet suddenly gasps and grabs at the torch in my hand. It’s an unexpected movement, and the torch falls and hits the hard flagstone with a crack.
“What are you doing?” I say, but Violet ducks down and pulls me after her.
“There’s something in there!” she hisses in my ear.
“It’s a museum,” I say. “Of course there’s something in there.”
“Something moving.” Vi puts her finger to her lips.
Slowly, we both rise up and peer into the window.
Nothing.
Just dark, and blackness, and nothing. But then …
… two pale orbs, side by side, blink at us with reflected moonlight.
I say that bad word again. I can’t help it. If those are eyes, they are the size of grapefruits!
Then something hits the glass. A flat, flippery something that slaps the window right in front of us with such force that it shatters. We fall back, shards of glass and window frame raining down all around us. I feel points of pain on my hands and face as the pieces cut in.
Then something huge is there, slipping through the shattered window – a fast-moving shadow that blots out the moonlight above. It moves fast, jumping over our heads, hitting the rampart wall with a clatter. It begins to throw itself over the edge.
Except it can’t.
Violet is jerked to her feet by some tremendous force. I see that she is going hands first, and I realize why: she is holding on to something!
Is it a tentacle? Or a tail? Or just a piece of hosepipe? In the gloom, there is no way I can tell. All I can see is that if Violet doesn’t let go, she’ll be pulled over the ramparts too, down onto the tooth-like steeples of Maw Rocks, far below.
So I grab her by the boot and am dragged hard against the wall.
Let go! I want to shout, but I can’t. Not with the air being crushed out of my lungs. I struggle up, seize her coat with my other hand and pull back as hard as I can. From here, I look down the wall. Violet is now halfway over the rampart, her hair dangling crazily over her face, her fists still tightly balled as she clings on to … whatever it is!
The two orbs of light flash again. There’s a shrieking howl, and something swipes across my field of vision. Is it a hand? Is it a claw or a flipper?
Violet cries out in pain and finally lets go, and we both fall back onto the steps. The dark shape of what could be a tail whips away, and I jump up to the wall, desperate to get a good look at whatever it is attached to.
I expect to hear a thud, and maybe the crunch of breaking bone, as the tail-owner falls and hits the rocks. But instead there’s just a faint, flippery sound, then nothing. A shadow flits between two spurs of rock, vanishing in a swirl of mist. There’s a hint of movement in the fog further down the beach, and then even that is gone. Soon all we can hear is the faint washing of the tide as the invisible sea creeps slowly back up the land.
