Mariah Mundi (17 page)

Mariah looked to the chair. There in the shadow, lit only by a small chink of light that seeped in through the circular porthole cut into the roof, was Old Scratty. She was sitting bolt upright, a slight smile etched on the lips of her white china face as if she had watched all that had taken place. The doll was leant slightly to one side, as if resting her wearied self against the back of the chair. Her hands were stuffed in the pockets of her smock, sleeves rolled back to expose the white sea-washed wood.

‘How did
she
get here?’ Mariah asked as Sacha began to pull the barricade away from the door.

‘She wasn’t there before. I looked at the chair and it was empty – no one was there, no one.’

‘She must have been, Sacha. Dolls just don’t appear,’ Mariah said doubtfully as he looked at the manikin. It was then that he saw the silver bangle upon her wrist. The metal tarnished to almost black and the straw figures etched deeply into the silver looked as if they were veiled in dark smoke. A sudden thought flashed across his mind as an image of the Kraken appeared again in his memory. ‘That bracelet – I saw one just the same on the wrist of the Kraken.’

‘Take it from her, then we can see,’ Sacha said, not wanting to move an inch nearer the smiling doll.

‘You take it. I don’t want to touch her.’

‘We can’t leave her here. Bizmillah will wonder where she’s gone,’ Sacha replied as she pushed Mariah towards Old Scratty.

‘It’s how she got here that bothers me. She wasn’t in the room until the Panjandrum blasted everywhere. She just appeared, moved on her own, just like she did in the cellar,’
Mariah blurted angrily. ‘That’s the thing – dolls like her can’t move on their own. She’s got wooden arms and a painted china pee-pot for a head. Don’t tell me she could have got here by herself.’

‘And don’t tell
me
that cards can dance in the air and pin me to the wall, smothering the life from me,’ Sacha snapped back. ‘We both saw it and it was me that Joker tried to kill.’ She paused for a moment, drawing her breath, her voice calming. ‘I know where Felix and the others are being kept. They’re not dead … Just before the explosion I looked into the depths of the earth and Felix was in a cavern under the Prince Regent. That’s what the cards showed me.’

‘And that’s why they tried to kill you, so you couldn’t find him,’ Mariah said as the thought crystallised in his mind. ‘If the cards are right, then Perfidious Albion is in trouble …’

‘And Felix is trapped.’ Sacha looked hopelessly at Mariah. ‘We have to help him.’

‘They’ll know that the Panjandrum cards are here,’ Mariah went on, ignoring what she had said. ‘He had the postcard of the hotel. They’ll come looking here and find me. Isambard Black!’ he said quickly. ‘I should have known. He said on the train he had been waiting for someone. He was waiting for Perfidious Albion, he talked about tricks and magic and …’

Old Scratty interrupted. Her long wooden arm clothed in its black smock sleeve clattered against the wall, its hand hanging limply by her side. Mariah saw that Scratty’s wooden fingers clasped a large metal key. He stepped to the manikin and carefully unravelled each of the stiff jointed fingers, thinking that at any moment she would spring to life. The silver bracelet slipped suddenly across her wrist, scraping against the wood.

‘It is the same as the Kraken’s,’ Mariah said as he looked up at Old Scratty’s face. For the briefest of moments he was sure that the smile had slipped from her face and that she gave the
mildest look of anguish as he spoke the Kraken’s name. Then a single tear fell from a blind eyes and rolled across the white china cheek, as if he had spoken the name of someone long missed.

‘You here to help us, lass?’ Sacha asked Old Scratty as Mariah plucked the key from her fingers and held it to the light. ‘Is there a door for this key, Old Scratty?’

The doll’s right hand suddenly fell from her lap, a finger pointing to the floors below.

‘Let me see,’ Sacha insisted as she grabbed the key from Mariah and looked at the thick shavings of rust flaking from its surface. She sniffed it intently and with the tip of her tongue tasted the metal. ‘Seawater,’ she said brightly. ‘This has been tide-washed many times.’

‘Deeper than the cellar?’ Mariah asked.

‘Deeper and more dangerous,’ Sacha replied as she stroked the long locks that hung raggedly from Old Scratty’s head.

M
ARIAH opened his eyes and stared at the empty chair. The call of sea hawks heralded daybreak and the sound of the crashing surf of the morning storm echoed around the towers of the Prince Regent as it washed against the steaming sands. Sacha huddled against him, wrapped in the coarse hair blanket, not wanting to leave his side, fearing the shadows and the power of the Panjandrum. She held the rusty iron key in both hands, cradling it as if it were some great prize snatched from another.

He looked to where Old Scratty had been and smiled to himself. The manikin had vanished, slipped from their lives as they slept. Old Scratty had gone as silently and surreptitiously as she had appeared. Her white face had been the last thing he had stared upon as he fought against the onset of sleep. As the oil lamp had faded and its light had thinned to a whisper, they had spoken of what to do next. Sacha had told him over and over what she had seen as the golden orb had exploded. She had described in the minutest detail how the earth had opened before her eyes and she had plummeted from the sky and into the depths of the cavern. Mariah had hoped that it was but a
chimera, a fanciful dream. In the cold grey light of morning the events of the dark hours became a faded memory. It was only the sight of the Panjandrum on the hearth of the fireplace that reminded him of the reality of what had gone before. The Joker smiled a thin fretful smile, as with one eye it appeared to stare at the sliced plaster hanging from the wall where Sacha had been pinned like a rag doll.

‘She’s gone,’ he said softly as he tried to wake the girl from her deep slumber. ‘Old Scratty has vanished again, not a trace …’

The wind-blown chiming of the steeple-house clock warned of the seventh hour. Its clatters danced above the pounding surf and the calls of seabirds. Sacha lifted her head and peered out of tired eyes rimmed with the desire to sleep on until the late of day.

‘Morning?’ she asked as she pulled the blanket up around her head and snuggled against the pillow, hoping that the daylight would vanish once more and time would return to night. She looked at the empty chair. ‘Gone?’ she asked not waiting for an answer. ‘Was any of it real?’ Her thumbs rubbed the flaking metal of the old iron key.

‘It happened – that’s for sure,’ Mariah said as he rubbed the sleep from his face and tousled his hair. ‘But whether it was real …’ There was something about his voice that echoed the thoughts of his mind. What he had seen in the glow of the fire and on the steps in the town had somehow remained on the edges of reality. It tapped gently on his consciousness like the lamplighter’s staff rattling the wicks of the fireheads.

‘Do you think she –?’ Sacha asked, unable to finish the question as her thoughts raced ahead of her words. ‘ Could she –?’

‘Better not ask. Old Scratty turns up whenever you think about her. I know we’ll see her again. She wants us to find something.’

‘Or someone,’ Sacha said quickly, wanting it to be Felix.

‘One thing,’ he went on slowly. ‘The bracelet was the one the Kraken had when he saw me and Charity fought him off. Trouble is … the trouble is, Charity didn’t tell me where he had been and why he was skulking around in the dark. Just came out of nowhere – said he’d followed us.’

‘Do you think he knows?’ she asked.

‘I’m afraid he does. I think he knows everything.’ Mariah looked to the Panjandrum. ‘I want to hide these so no one will find them. Soon they’ll come looking. If they have Perfidious Albion then they’ll come for me. He’s bound to crack and tell them who he gave them to and all about the postcard. I’m going to have to move on. I can’t stay here much longer.’

‘Throw them in the sea and lie till your teeth fall out. That’s what my father did. He burnt the secrets of the armoury when a Frenchman sailed into the harbour. Threw the ashes down the old well in the castle. He thought we were to be invaded. Oh, the look on his face when they sailed away after firing a couple of cannon. Red as a baboon’s ar–’

‘You need a good memory to be a liar. Better I just go back to London,’ Mariah said sharply as he picked the Panjandrum from the fireplace and stuffed them into his pocket.

‘You’ll do what you have to do,’ Sacha snapped as she got from the bed, pushing it away from the door. ‘I’ll be finding Felix myself, no problem in that. I have the key and somewhere there’ll be a door to fit it. If Old Scratty is right then Felix won’t be too far behind.’

‘But you can’t go on your own,’ Mariah said as he reached out to stop her. ‘You don’t know what’ll be waiting.’

‘Then come and don’t run away,’ Sacha replied as she pulled her arm from his grip and opened the door. ‘It’s beyond us now, can’t you see? It’s as if there’s a wheel turning and you and me are on it going around and around. You can’t go now, whatever happens.’ She held the key in front of his face. ‘This is our
future, Mariah. Yours and mine, and there’s nothing we can do to change that. Old Scratty knew, that’s why she found us. Whatever is going on in this place has to stop. We can’t go to the police, they’ll never believe us.’

‘We could try – tell them about the murder last night and the Kraken.’ Mariah sniffed.

‘And they’d believe that?’ Sacha asked mockingly. ‘I’m a Fenian. I’ve been running from things for most of my life, and I’m not going to run from this. If I stand alone, then I stand alone.’

‘What about Captain Charity?’ Mariah asked impatiently.

‘He’s not here. It’s just you, me and a cellar full of secrets. If you’re in, Mariah, then we have to be gone.’ Sacha didn’t wait for his reply as she stepped through the door and into the small corridor. She pressed the button to summon the steam elevator and stood back against the wall listening to its groaning as it slowly pumped itself higher and higher. Mariah followed sheepishly, his hands pressed deeply into the pockets of his coat.

‘What shall we do about Bizmillah?’ he asked anxiously as the elevator steamed closer.

‘You did everything last night. That gives us until eight o’clock tonight. Should be enough time to see what’s going on down in the cellars.’

‘What if we get caught?’ he asked, his throat tighter than before.

‘Then we end up like Felix.’

The steam elevator stopped suddenly. Sacha pulled the cage door open, stepped inside and waited for Mariah. He paused for the slightest of moments as he looked back to the door of his room, wondering how Old Scratty had found him. Within a second they were plummeting deeper and deeper into the depths of the Prince Regent. From far below, the smell of dank seaweed seeped from every stone and crevice as the steam elevator slowed to a juddering halt.

‘As deep as we go,’ Mariah said as he quietly slid the gate open and checked this way and that along the dark corridor. He peered from the elevator’s blanket of amber light and listened to the swish of the waves by the faraway portal.

‘A storm and the tide is in,’ Sacha snorted to herself, sniffing the air as if it would tell her the secrets of the cellar. ‘Perfume,’ she whispered to Mariah. ‘Monica has been this way.’

Mariah suddenly perked up his ears and listened even more intently than before. He sniffed the air, trying with all his might to capture the tiniest essence of her fragrance. ‘How can you tell?’ he asked as Sacha stepped from the elevator and sniffed again, following the scent as if she were a bloodhound. ‘All I can smell is the stinking sea and the cess Luger pumps into the Galvanised Bathing Machine.’

‘It’s what you can’t smell that’s important,’ Sacha replied just above a breath. ‘They went this way – scent and cigars.’

Mariah lifted his nose higher as he stood tiptoed and gulped the sharp breeze that rushed back and forth through the cellar from the sea like the laboured breathing of a stranded whale. There was the faintest, mildest whiff of pungent tobacco that hung momentarily in the air and then vanished like an ancient spectre. ‘Gone,’ he said to himself as he followed Sacha, quite disappointed that he couldn’t taste Monica’s scent upon his lips. ‘Are you sure it’s her and not another?’ he asked through clenched teeth.

‘Cheap,’ she whispered back, much to his annoyance. ‘From a penny cart in the market but strong enough to cover the smell of her salty sweat.’

‘What?’ Mariah asked, pulling her into a small arched doorway.

‘She drips with it, constantly powders her face to soak it from her skin. Lead paste and lime plaster. Why do you think she doesn’t take off those gloves?’ Sacha said as she nodded to
herself in approval. ‘If she sits she leaves granny dabs wherever she’s been. Mister Murrybuck calls her
the slug
. Follow the trail and you’ll find Monica, dressed in black, sweating in the corner. Told me that as he carried in some cases.’

‘Murrybuck’s a fat old farting porter who stinks himself. Shouldn’t be talking about people in that way.’ Mariah scowled.

‘That he may be, but
she
still stinks. Snuggle up to her and it’s as if you’ve stuck your head in a chamber pot,’ Sacha said as she turned to follow the scent that only she could smell.

The corridor led several turns to the left and only one to the right. It spiralled lower and lower, passing open doors and empty rooms, each lit by a single oil lamp set high upon the wall. The air grew thick with salt mist that clung to their skin, drying upon the lashes of their eyes like crisp white icicles. With every step the heat grew more intense as the steam thickened and swirled in the fading light.

They turned a final corner and there in front of them was a short flight of steps that led quickly to a long, damp passageway. Far away in the darkness they could hear the sound of the sea crashing through the doors and rushing into the cellars. Mariah looked down to his feet as the sound of sharp scurrying rushed about him. The green-tiled cellar floor moved as one. Sharp shells clattered against each other. Grinding blacktipped pincers snapped at the air and red eyes on stalks stared back in the dim light.

‘Look!’ Mariah said as he stared at the thousands of tiny red eyes that reflected the dim lamplight. ‘What are they?’

‘Cancer Pagurus,’ Sacha replied as she stepped down one step to take a closer look. ‘Sea crabs, but twice the size of any I have seen before. We’ll never get that way – claws like that would snap through your ankle.’

‘How did Luger get through?’ Mariah asked as a particularly
large red crab, the size of a dinner tray, crawled on another’s back and pulled itself up the step towards him, snapping its pincers.

‘They went in here,’ Sacha replied, pointing to a door set into an alcove in the wall and covered by dangling throngs of damp sea grass.

Mariah continued to stare at the Pagurus that scraped its shell against the side of the step as it beat its two large claws against the green tiles. ‘Where do they come from?’ he asked quietly as he gazed at the creature. ‘It’s amazing – look at the size of the beast …’

‘Never been in this place before. Not even Bizmillah would come down here. Nothing but the wine cellars and –’ she stopped speaking and pointed to the corridor.

In the misted half-light, Sacha saw the crabs quickly scurry to the sides of the passageway as from below their sharp pointed legs there slowly emerged an even larger, more gigantic back of an even greater creature. It shook the sand from its piecrust shell as it slowly and silently lifted itself to the very tips of its spiked legs. It hulked from side to side like a clawed grand piano set on six long pink legs.

The creature turned slowly, picking a smaller crab from the floor. Crushing it in its pincers, it gorged itself with the dripping red mucus that oozed from the broken shell like the filling of an overstuffed sandwich. The Pagurus squealed with excitement and its mandibles quivered over its mouth. Its black eyes set on stubby stalks scanned the passageway, flexing in and out with every sharp and sudden breeze that gusted towards it.

The Pagurus picked another crab the size of a small dog and again snapped it in two before pushing it ravenously into its mouth and crunching it with its mandibles. The creature shuddered and bristled the hairs upon its legs as it turned, and with one stem-like eye stared at them.

Sacha and Mariah stood frozen with foreboding, hoping they would not be seen. All about them a host of small crabs scurried by, running into the open doors of the many rooms that lined the passageway. Mariah pushed her to one side, took hold of the large iron ring that formed the handle to the door in the alcove, and turned it as quickly as he could.

The large Pagurus took two long and slow steps towards them, tasting the air as he picked his way through the scurrying masses that snapped at his bony, spiked feet. It stopped and snapped its pincers three times and then stepped even closer.

‘The door’s stuck,’ Mariah shouted as the creature came towards them through the steam-mist. ‘There has to be a key somewhere.’

Sacha took Old Scratty’s key from her pocket and tried it in the lock. It twisted part way and then stuck tight and would move no further. She pulled it back and forth as Mariah pulled upon the circular handle and strands of sea grass fell upon them like cold wet hands.

The Pagurus ambled slowly along the tiled corridor, too big to turn, its size forcing it to squeeze itself along the narrowing passageway. The chafing of its shell squealed into the distance like chalk on board as it snapped out its pincers with every step.

Sacha pulled on the rusted key, which finally gave way and cracked from the lock. She looked crestfallen as she panted her breath and glanced back towards the creature that edged its way closer.

‘Just run!’ Mariah said, pulling sea grass from his face as the horror of what his eyes fell upon dawned in his mind. ‘We can go back.’

‘What about Felix?’ Sacha asked quickly as she held the key like a knife in her hand.

‘There must be another way … Quickly, run!’ Mariah
pulled Sacha by the arm as the Pagurus quickened its gait towards them. ‘This way!’

Together they set off at a fearful pace, running back the way they had come, up two flights of the spiralling corridor and then on to a long landing. The tiled green stone reflected the gas lamps like old moons rising from the sea. Far behind they could hear the clattering of the Pagurus as it chased on, its mandibles echoing like jagged, chattering teeth.