The Phenomenals: A Game of Ghouls Read online

  He peered out between the bars and strained to see around the space in which he was incarcerated. The chain was looped over what looked like a broad beam and he was hanging in a room with curved stone walls. A staircase round one side led up to the floor above. There were three glassless windows in the wall, which explained why it was so cold, and when the flashing light faded it was still dark but there was a subtle tinge to the darkness that made him think Lux was approaching.

  Vincent stared at the ceiling and was not encouraged by the huge crack that ran diagonally across it. Doubtless caused by the earthquake. There was a strong smell of tar and burning. He listened for footsteps, but all he could hear was a constant clicking noise above him. He frowned. This was a puzzle indeed.

  How long had he been here? He thought hard and willed himself to remember. The last thing he recalled was the sight of Leucer d’Avidus standing behind him in the study. Wait! The Blivet. Where was it?

  Vincent groaned and would have put his head in his hands if he had been able. It was all coming back now, fast and furious and frustratingly brief. Now he knew why his head hurt, from the blow Leucer had dealt him after wrenching the Blivet from his hand. And the narkos. He could still smell it faintly on his nostrils. Felled by his own weapon! And that was it. He had passed out and now he was here, wherever that was, waiting presumably for Leucer or Kamptulicon. But surely this place was not the Governor’s Residence?

  Carefully, more slowly this time, he began to sit up. This caused more swaying, but eventually he managed to lean his back against the bars with his legs drawn up in front of him. His feet were pushing against a dark mass. He gave it a tentative shove. It groaned and moved.

  There was someone else in the cage with him.

  ‘Hey!’ hissed Vincent. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I could ask you the same question,’ came the groggy reply.

  ‘Citrine!’ exclaimed Vincent in amazement. ‘What in Aether are you doing here?’ Indeed, the dark mass was Citrine. The cage swung jerkily as she manoeuvred herself into a sitting position opposite him. There was barely enough room for the two of them. When the light flashed again, Vincent whistled softly.

  ‘You’re a sight,’ he said bluntly. ‘You look like a Lurid.’

  He wasn’t wrong. Citrine’s thick make-up was peeling from her face and dried blood stained her collar. She yawned. ‘Where are we? And Leucer and Edgar! Where are they?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Domna! I’m tied up.’

  ‘Me too. Hold out your hands.’ Vincent reached across, careful not to upset the cage too much, and began to untie Citrine’s hands. She untied his and then they untied their legs, all the time talking.

  ‘The Blivet! Did you get it?’

  ‘Yes, but Leucer caught me.’ Vincent heard Citrine make a strange noise, as if a sob had caught in her throat. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I’ve just remembered – at the playhouse, Edgar had a body. He said it was my father.’ In a strained voice she recounted the horror of the night. ‘The Urgs took me and Edgar drugged me, again.’

  ‘It’s becoming a habit,’ said Vincent drily, and in turn explained as fully as he could how he had ended up in the cage.

  ‘Leucer left before the end of the show. He must have known you were going up to the house.’

  ‘It’s my own fault,’ began Vincent, but Citrine interrupted.

  ‘Why!’ she declared. ‘I think I know where we are. We’re in the lighthouse. That’s why the room is round.’

  ‘And that explains the light and the clicking. But what a strange place to leave us.’

  Moments later they were both unbound, but still swinging in the trap. Outside the sky had taken on the very beginning of a glow.

  ‘I think the sun is coming up,’ said Citrine, and the atmosphere lightened at the thought. ‘At least we will be able to see properly.’

  At that moment there was a huge groan and the building seemed to lurch sideways. Citrine clung to the bars until the lighthouse settled again, albeit at a more acute angle. She looked anxiously at Vincent. ‘The whole tower is about to collapse. We’ve got to move fast.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ he muttered. He was examining the cage and chain, looking for some clue to how they might escape their pendulous prison. His cloak pockets had been rifled and nothing of any use had been left behind. He still had his metal hand though. It was gloved and he wondered if perhaps that was why it hadn’t been taken.

  ‘No point panicking. Let’s just stay calm and work out what we can do. Now, as far as I can see, we’re hanging from a beam that is attached, in the shape of a cross, to another beam.’

  ‘Hmm,’ murmured Citrine. ‘I’m not so sure it’s attached. I think it’s balanced. Look.’

  Vincent looked where she was pointing and saw exactly what she meant. Sitting on top of the other end of the beam from which their cage was hanging was a large wooden barrel.

  ‘That barrel must be full of something, something heavy enough balance our weight,’ said Vincent. ‘It’s as if we’re a set of weighing scales.’

  A sudden scrabbling noise caught his attention.

  ‘It’s only a gull,’ said Citrine.

  The gull, one of the flocks of large speckled birds that lived around the lighthouse, stood at the window. It eyed the incarcerated pair for some moments before flying up and standing on the beam right beside the barrel. Then it flapped up and landed in the barrel itself, its body and head still visible.

  Vincent and Citrine watched the gull peck into the barrel and then lift its head and swallow something. Another gull flew in, screeching harshly, and joined the first bird. It too pecked and swallowed.

  ‘It’s fish,’ said Citrine in confusion. ‘The barrel is full of fish.’

  ‘Just what sort of trap is this?’ said Vincent.

  Now a score of gulls wheeled and cried outside the window and others were jostling on the ledge. Inside the barrel ten quarrelled noisily over the unexpected banquet. Five flew off at once, each holding their glistening prize. At the same time the chain began to slide jerkily down the beam as it started to upend, and the cage dropped slowly, albeit ominously, by several inches. Vincent and Citrine grabbed at the bars.

  ‘Domne! It’s the gulls,’ said Vincent. ‘When they take a fish, the barrel lightens, upsetting the balance.’

  ‘If the fish are eaten, won’t we just be lowered to the ground?’ asked Citrine, her knuckles white from gripping the bars so tightly.

  ‘No,’ said Vincent. ‘Look down.’

  The growing morning light was casting a clearer picture of their predicament. What they had taken to be a solid floor below them now showed itself to be a gaping hole that ran right through the centre of the lighthouse. At the bottom, a hundred feet down, there was only craggy rock.

  ‘I see,’ said Citrine slowly, trying to hide the terror creeping into her voice. ‘The gulls take fish, the barrel side of the beam rises, our side lowers. Eventually the chain will just slide off completely and our cage will fall into the hole. We can’t survive that.’

  ‘Eventually? Surely just one fish will tip the balance. It could be the next one.’

  ‘The straw that breaks the camel’s back,’ whispered Citrine.

  ‘If I ever get my hands on Leucer or Leopold, they’ll be sorry they tangled with me,’ muttered Vincent. He looked all around him in futile desperation. For the first time in a long time, he could see no way out of the peril.

  Another fish was taken.

  The barrel end of the beam rose slightly.

  The chain slid a few more inches, hastening their dreadful fate.

  Vincent looked across at Citrine’s pale face. She was saying something, but he could hardly hear it above the noise of the gulls.

  ‘I’ve got an idea,’ she shouted. ‘But once we start there’s no going back.’

  CHAPTER 30

  COUNTDOWN

  On the shore of the Flumen, lit up intermittently by the lighthouse be
am, Jonah and Folly were debating what to do. It was not easy to make themselves heard above the noise of the water and the wind and the screaming of the gulls.

  ‘What’s wrong with them?’ asked Folly. ‘They’re making a Hades of a racket.’

  They both looked at the lighthouse and the flock of birds circling the listing tower.

  ‘That won’t be standing much longer,’ said Jonah. ‘It’s getting too dangerous to stay here.’

  As if on cue, the lighthouse chose that moment to shudder and shift even further sideways. Jonah jumped to Folly’s protection. She was staring at the tower, listening intently.

  ‘Was that a human cry?’

  ‘It can’t be. No one’s allowed up there. It must be the gulls,’ said Jonah. ‘We need to go to find the other two. They could be in danger. The sooner we get to Wincheap’s the better.’ He began to climb over the rocks, but Folly held back.

  ‘I’m not sure they’re going to be there.’

  Jonah turned. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Your cards, they said you would be in danger in a high place. Well, the lighthouse is high. And something Axel said, about when he was being tortured by Kamptulicon and Leucer – “light coming and going”. Maybe it was the lighthouse beam.’

  Jonah frowned. ‘What exactly are you saying?’

  ‘I’m sure I heard a scream. Maybe this is where Leucer takes his prisoners. There could be someone up there. What if it’s Citrine’s father? Give me the glasses.’

  Jonah handed them over and Folly trained them on the top of the lighthouse. As she watched, the towering edifice lurched again and part of the roof crashed into the Flumen with a tremendous splash, showering them with water.

  ‘Flapping flatfish!’ exclaimed Jonah, pulling at Folly’s arm. ‘We’ve got to go.’

  But she shook him off. ‘There is someone up there,’ she said. ‘At the window, I saw an arm. I’m sure of it.’

  Jonah took the glasses and looked up to see the figures of Citrine and Vincent clambering on to the window’s edge and standing hand in hand.’

  ‘Domna,’ breathed Folly. ‘I think they’re going to jump.’

  Only moments earlier in the lighthouse the gulls had taken so many fish that, as Citrine had rightly predicted, the beam was at such an acute angle that the chain was fast approaching the end. But, by then, she and Vincent had set the cage in motion, swinging back and forth across the hole, so when the moment of truth finally came and the chain slid right off, instead of plunging the pair to certain death down the centre of the lighthouse, the cage flew off the end of the beam, overshot the hole and smashed against the lighthouse wall. The cage shattered and Vincent and Citrine lay stunned in the wreckage.

  It took quite a few moments before the two of them were able to crawl from the twisted bars and take stock.

  ‘We’re alive,’ whispered Citrine. ‘I can’t believe it.’

  Vincent, who had dragged himself to a sitting position against the wall beside her, shook his head in disbelief. ‘It worked – your idea worked,’ he said.

  Citrine opened her clenched palm and held it out to him. ‘Maybe it was something to do with this.’ She was holding his silver acorn.

  More than a little overcome by emotion, Vincent and Citrine hugged and laughed for a few seconds, but they knew their ordeal was not yet over.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Vincent, helping Citrine to her feet. ‘We might still be able to make our way out using the stairs.’

  No sooner had he uttered the words than the lighthouse shifted again, even more violently than before, and they were thrown back against the wall. The tower was leaning like a severely listing ship; the curved wall had become the floor, and the floor had become a precipice. Outside, parts of the lighthouse masonry were breaking away and crashing into the water.

  ‘Crawl around to the window,’ said Vincent. ‘Maybe we can jump.’

  Together they made their painful way to the window, which was now at such an angle that it had effectively become a hole in the floor. In trepidation they looked out and their exhausted hearts sank. Through the flock of circling seagulls all they could see below them were the churning dark waters of the Flumen crashing on the jagged, black rocks.

  ‘We can’t jump,’ said Citrine softly. ‘It’s certain death.’

  The lighthouse groaned.

  ‘We can’t stay,’ said Vincent simply.

  ‘Then at least let’s go together.’

  They hauled themselves on to the window’s edge and, hand in hand, stood there bloodied but unbowed.

  ‘After three?’ said Vincent.

  Citrine started to count. ‘One . . . two . . . th—’

  Just as her tongue touched her lower lip to form the ‘three’, something whizzed by her head so closely that it actually took out a hair.

  ‘Domna,’ she exclaimed. ‘I’ve felt that before!’

  And indeed she had! For the whizzing sound was made by Jonah’s whale spear. The last time she had heard it fly past, Citrine’s head was in the Carnifex’s noose and she was on the verge of being hanged.

  ‘Spletivus! It’s Folly and Jonah,’ cried Vincent, still teetering on the edge. ‘They’re down there on the shore.’

  He looked behind him. The whale spear had shot through the window and embedded itself in the beam. It had a thick rope tied to its end with a sturdy whaler’s knot.

  ‘We can escape down the rope,’ said Vincent urgently. ‘Jonah’s holding the other end. I’ll hook my metal hand over it and we can slide down.’

  ‘It’s better than our other plan,’ Citrine managed to joke as they tied themselves together using the cords that had earlier bound them. Vincent tested the rope, deemed it sufficiently taut (though he could hardly have deemed it otherwise under the circumstances), and together they launched themselves from the ledge into the unknown.

  The metal hand, its fingers locked into a hook-like shape, slid rapidly down the length of the line with Vincent and Citrine dangling beneath. On the shore Jonah braced himself with every ounce of strength he possessed to keep the tension on the rope. Folly held on to his belt and pulled from behind to give him extra purchase. The strain was beginning to tell.

  ‘I don’t think I can pull any harder,’ gasped Folly, and she felt her feet starting to slip on the slimy rocks.

  ‘Only a few more seconds,’ panted Jonah. ‘Hold tight.’

  Then Vincent and Citrine suddenly loomed large before their rescuers and, just as their feet touched the shore, the lighthouse gave one last groan and toppled into the water.

  CHAPTER 31

  A QUEER QUARTET

  In Leucer d’Avidus’s study four men – the governor himself, Edgar Capodel, Professor Soanso and Leopold Kamptulicon – were busy congratulating themselves on a hugely successful and exciting evening.

  ‘I thought the tremor in the middle only added to the atmosphere,’ remarked Edgar.

  ‘Indeed,’ said the professor. ‘I couldn’t have asked for better timing! It gave the demonstration that little bit of extra tension. Kept the audience on the edge of their seats.’

  ‘So, you think perhaps we three can work together?’ enquired Leucer, topping up Arkwright’s glass again. ‘Kekrimpari and tar and chemicals seem such an ideal combination.’

  ‘Oh yes, Governor,’ replied the professor, slurring slightly.

  Leucer put a friendly arm round his shoulder. ‘Oh, call me Leucer, please! After all, we’re going to get to know each other very well indeed. I can tell.’

  ‘Now, Leucer, that old woman,’ began Arkwright. ‘A criminal and a fugitive, you say?’

  ‘Oh, no need to worry about her. She is well and truly dealt with.’

  ‘She seemed a little disturbed by proceedings.’

  ‘Very disturbed,’ chipped in Edgar. ‘Belongs in the asylum. And another criminal was apprehended too, in the very act of robbing this house!’

  Professor Soanso took a step back. ‘Good lord! What a truly remarkable night!’ />
  ‘Indeed,’ said Kamptulicon. ‘Two down, two to go. The Urban Guardsmen are waiting at the Kryptos. The others will be apprehended before sunrise.’

  ‘Well, I propose a toast,’ said Leucer. ‘To what lies ahead.’

  And all four touched glasses and each toasted his own vision of the future.

  CHAPTER 32

  LOOSE ENDS AND SECRETS

  The sounds of consternation and confusion were ringing around Mercator Square as the crowds mingled about the entrance to the Degringolade Playhouse and lingered in the streets. The show inside had been over for some time, but nobody wanted to go home. The startled audience didn’t know quite what to make of the events they had witnessed. Ironically, the sight of the grey-haired woman running away seemed a fitting conclusion to Professor Soanso’s attempt to revive a dead body. Some wondered if the old lady had not had a shot of kekrimpari herself. The atmosphere was further heightened by the rumour spreading that the lighthouse had fallen.

  Away from the hubbub, in the back room of the Caveat Emptorium, Jonah, Folly, Citrine and Vincent were also in a state of disbelief, mainly on account of the fact that they were all still alive. Suma and Wenceslas were fussing over the foursome, pouring tea and attending to wounds and plying them with horsemeat-and-mustard sandwiches and hard cakes.

  ‘So, Professor Soanso tried to revitalize a dead body with kekrimpari,’ speculated Wenceslas. ‘But how did they know you were there?’

  ‘I think Edgar knew that there was a pretty good chance I would want to see the kekrimpari demonstration,’ said Citrine quietly. ‘If I had stayed quiet, I wouldn’t have been found out, but I took their bait. How could I not say something? The thought of my poor father being subjected to such . . . such wickedness.’

  ‘Despicable,’ said Suma. ‘Edgar rooted you out by appealing to your devotion to your father. He is beyond contempt.’

  ‘That’s if it even was Hubert,’ said Jonah.

  ‘I really couldn’t see, but I was so shocked at the time, and after all that has happened, that I actually believed Edgar might be telling the truth.’