MOLLY’S STILL SMILING LATER, AT HOME, as she sits on her bed that evening, one leg in plaster, Gabriel beside her, and reads once again the headline article in the Ethelhael Panopticon about how Lawrence de Ville is still Mayor of Howlfair.
Barry Parrott came second place.
Benton Furlock? Well, he would have come second place, but nobody knows where he is. The local council has taken over the running of Howlfair Orphanage. Loonchance Manor has been closed until further notice.
Molly scratches Gabriel’s head and looks out of the moonlit window with a strange sense that happy times await her haunted town. She doesn’t want to think about ghouls or Benton Furlock or Lady Orgella or investigations. She wants to sleep soundly and dreamlessly under her duvet with the Dracula cover. And so she closes her eyes.
Out in the evening, Mr Evans is lowering the awnings outside the tourist office on Zaleska Street.
In a candle-lit attic in a neighbouring valley, Benton Furlock sits at a desk, a bandage over one eye, scratches circling the other, glaring at a crumpled old poster that reads:
FURLOCK FOR MAYOR
Back at the Excelsior Guesthouse, Molly’s mother is sorting through her late husband’s clothes. Her freckled face furrows with a frown as she holds up a long-sleeved tee-shirt that has a hole in one of the forearms. It looks rather as though something has burned through the material. She drops the tee-shirt into a bin-bag full of similar items, and within moments it is forgotten.
In his lamp-lit study, Wallace Wetherill is looking at an old framed photo of a group of people. There’s Doris de Ville holding a savage-looking, silver-jawed mechanical litter picker. There’s Mr Wetherill himself, hefting a musket in each hand. There’s a frail-looking elderly lady wearing a wolf pelt and a spiked glove, and Mrs Giddimus brandishing an iron stake. There’s Farmer Digby holding a harpoon gun, and Mr Banderfrith with a fencing foil. There’s Benton Furlock – both hands healthy, one of them gripping the handle of a curved knife. And in the middle there’s the group’s leader. David Nathaniel Thompson, caught mid-laugh. He’s the only person in the photograph without a weapon. He’s holding a sleeping baby girl: his daughter, Molly. At the bottom of the photograph, someone has written the name of the old gang of Howlfair citizens who’d once sworn to guard the secrets of the Gates of Hell:
The Guild of Asphodel
Meanwhile, in a crypt below Loonchance Manor, shadowy creatures descend from secret nooks and assemble in the middle of the chamber, firelight fluttering upon each vile fanged face.
Their left eyes no longer glow. The blue moon has passed.
They stare at the portrait of Lady Orgella, as though waiting for their mistress to confirm what Molly Thompson told them.
All at once they stagger backwards as the nightmare face begins to move.