Authors: Helen Phifer
‘Careful, Master Beckett, you’ll do yourself an injury rushing around at that speed.’
‘Sorry, Lucy.’
His mother nodded her head with approval at his manners although he could tell she was a little displeased with him. He looked down and saw the black marks on his clean white shirt and realised why.
‘Sorry, Mother, we were playing hide-and-seek.’
Martha was already standing next to her.
‘Yes, we were and he was cheating again. I told him I wasn’t going up to the attic but he still hid up there.’
‘Now listen to me very carefully: when the guests begin to arrive later on I want you both to be on your best behaviour. No bickering between yourselves and definitely no hide-and-seek in the attic. Do you understand what I’m saying, Joe?’
‘Yes, Mother.’
‘Good. I understand you might be excited and need to burn off some energy. It’s such a dismal day outside and you can’t go and run around the garden, so another fifteen minutes of play and then I want you both to go and get washed and changed.’
‘Yes, Mother.’
They both spoke in unison and she stood up, holding out her arms to them. They ran over for a hug and she squeezed them tight.
‘Now you know that I would like nothing more than to spend tonight reading stories to you both, but your father is an important man and with great importance comes great responsibility, which means he must invite all the other important men and women that he works with into our home to share our precious time. I promise you both that, after dinner tomorrow, when the last guest has gone home, both your father and I will play whatever games you would like and read as many stories as you desire. How does that sound?’
‘Wonderful, Mother.’
‘Good. Now go and play for a while before you need to start acting like two of your father’s waxwork dummies. I love you both very much.’
She kissed them, one after the other, on the tops of their heads and then patted their bottoms, shooing them out of the dining room.
Joe ran along to the kitchen to see what Mary was cooking. He was starving. The halls were filled with the aroma of roast beef and roast chicken. Martha followed him, and Mary laughed to see them both looking like a couple of street urchins, with dirt-streaked hair and faces, and black marks all over their clothes.
‘Where the devil have you two been? Up to no good, I’ll bet. I suppose you’ll be looking for some biscuits and a drink of milk after all that exploring.’
They both nodded and climbed onto the wooden chairs around the huge kitchen table that filled the middle of the room. It was covered in plates and dishes of food, and Joe had begun to lift the lid off one when he felt a tap on the back of his head.
‘Hands off! I haven’t been awake since five o’clock this morning baking and cooking for you to put your scruffy little hands all over my works of art.’
Martha giggled and he stuck his tongue out at her, which made her giggle even more.
They sat and drank the glasses of milk as they nibbled on warm shortbread biscuits that had just come out of the oven. When they finished and Joe had wiped his milk moustache from around his lips he bent his head towards her and whispered, ‘One last game of hide-and-seek and then I’ll play dolly hospital with you.’
‘You promise? You have to nurse the dolls and make them better and not grumble about it.’
‘I promise.’
‘I suppose so. Please can I count in here? I hate having to wait on my own.’
He nodded his head, jumped off his chair and ran towards the door. ‘No peeking, Martha – I’ll know if you cheat.’
Then he was gone. Martha could only count to twenty and then she had to stop and start all over again. She was watching Mary pipe icing onto the biscuits and forgot all about going to find Joe until she heard him call her name. He sounded like he was far away. She jumped off her chair and began walking towards the hall.
A door banged behind her and she turned to see the cellar door ajar. He was just being mean and he was a big, fat cheat. She had told him not to go in the attic or the cellar and he had gone into both. He knew she didn’t like them. Well, he could wait in there all day. There was no way she was going down to look for him in the dark. She shivered. Just thinking about the dark and the rats made her want to cry. What if they nibbled her feet while she was walking around in the dark? She sat on the bottom step of the staircase and waited for him to get fed up and come back up. After what seemed like for ever she stood up and walked along to the door. She stood and listened and thought she heard her brother crying. Opening the door she stood on the top step and shouted, ‘It’s no good pretending. I don’t care one little bit if you are upset. I told you I wasn’t going down into the cellar to look for you so you might as well come back up.’
Martha expected him to come bounding up and clip her round the ear for being so cheeky to him, but he didn’t. She listened again, only this time she heard a scratching and a dragging sound. She had no idea what it was but it sounded like something much bigger than Joe. Getting cross now she folded her arms and shouted at the top of her voice, ‘Joseph, I’m going to tell Father if you don’t come out of there right this minute and play dollies with me. You promised you would. Don’t be so mean.’
Still there was no reply and Martha felt scared. What if he’d fallen over and hurt himself in the dark? It would serve him right but he could have at least called out and told her he needed some help. Worried now, she began to suck her thumb and turned to run and find her father. She didn’t have to go far as he was striding along the corridor towards her.
‘Martha, what have you been doing in the cellar? Why is the door open?’
‘It was Joe not me. We are playing hide-and-seek and I told him I wouldn’t look for him down there or in the attic but he’s still gone down. Only he’s not answering when I shout to him.’
A look of alarm crossed her father’s face and he moved her to one side and leant forward to tug the light-pull and illuminate the steps.
He ran down them and began to look around for Joe, who was nowhere to be seen. He shouted, ‘Joseph Beckett, if you don’t show yourself now you will not be able to sit down on your bottom for a week. I mean it.’
There was no reply. He looked at the drain in the corner that led into the sewers and saw that the iron grating was out of place. It had been moved and not put back properly and his head began to pound. Surely a nine-year-old boy wouldn’t have the strength to move a heavy iron cover on his own and then move it back again? He ran towards it and fell to his knees, looking down into the black hole. ‘Joseph, are you down there? Are you stuck? Do you need help? If you do, then answer me, boy. I won’t be mad at you. Just tell me if you are down there.’
A scuttling, scratching sound made him jump back. It sounded as if there was nothing more than rats down in that hole. But who had moved the cover? Unless it was the builders who hadn’t put it back properly and he’d just never noticed before. He stood up, taking one last look around the cellar, and then he ran back up the stone steps to Martha who was now crying.
‘He isn’t down there, Martha. Now where else could he be? Why don’t you show me the places he likes to hide in the attic? Maybe he’s fallen asleep and can’t hear you shouting.’
She nodded her head and grabbed hold of her father’s hand, leading him up the stairs to the attic, but she knew in her heart that Joe was down in that cellar somewhere because she had heard him crying down there.
They checked the entire house, and by this time her mother and father were panicking. Martha had been told to sit in the kitchen with Mary after she’d shown her father all of Joe’s hiding places and he was nowhere to be seen. Martha watched Lucy put her coat on and go outside to check the gardens in the pouring rain, but she could have told her not to bother. There was no point. Joe was in the cellar somewhere, except she didn’t know where; her father came in with Davey, the gardener, who doubled up as the caretaker when it was winter. They both had lanterns in their hands and were going down into the cellar to look for Joe. Her mother had come into the kitchen to sit with her and was very quiet. She didn’t speak a word and her eyes were watering, and all Martha could hear was Mary saying over and over again, ‘Don’t you worry, miss. He won’t be far. Up to no good as usual. They’ll find him. You just wait and see.’
After the third time her mother screamed at Mary, ‘Shut up, please, just shut up. Where is he? He can’t have just disappeared.’
Martha had never heard her mother shout at anyone, not even her father, and this scared her more than the thought of Joe being down in the cellar.
Her mother grabbed her hand. ‘Where is he? Where did you last see him, Martha? This is very important. He might have hurt himself and need our help.’
‘I was in here. He begged for one last game of hide-and-seek and ran off. When I went to look for him the cellar door was open and I heard him down there, but he was crying, and then it went quiet and he didn’t make another sound.’
Her mother stood up and ran to the cellar and her husband and Davey.
James was down there scratching his head in disbelief. Between all three of them they pulled out every box, case and trunk to search inside them. James looked at the old wooden crate he’d brought in here one evening before he, Eleanor and the children had moved in. It looked as if the lid had been ripped off and put back on. A ball of fear lodged in the base of his spine and he had to force his feet to move towards it. Had someone been down here and taken the thing from inside it? Perhaps Joe had caught them stealing it and they’d taken him as well.
Another thought crossed his mind and he tried to block it out, but he couldn’t. He had an uneasy feeling about the empty crate, which should have contained the supposed, magnificent, one and only captured Windigo in the whole world, and now didn’t. He tried to think who knew about it and when the last time was that he had looked at the packing crate, but he couldn’t remember. James knew it was a long time ago. He’d moved it in under the cover of darkness with help from Archie, one of his most trusted workers, and he’d sworn him to secrecy.
If Eleanor had known he’d brought that thing into their home she would have been beside herself. It terrified her. She’d made him promise that he wouldn’t bring it anywhere near their house, but it was worth a lot of money and he didn’t want to leave it lying around the amusement park until the building that was going to house it was finished. It wasn’t alive. It was dead. At least it looked as if it was dead. In fact, he didn’t even believe that it was real. He had no idea who had made it, or how, but it was a very good piece and one of its kind. So why could he not shake the uneasy feeling that the monster’s disappearance had something to do with his son who was now missing?
He thought back to the night he had first set eyes on the creature, as he’d walked down the cobbled street and, for the second time in ten minutes, asked himself what he was doing. Why did the man who had the piece he wanted to add to the display of his sideshow of freaks and monsters want to meet in a dark back alley in Piccadilly? He knew he should have sent one of his employees but he needed to see the thing for himself, to see if it was real or at least looked realistic, because the asking price had been a lot of money and this wasn’t exactly one hundred per cent above board. There were no shipping papers from America. where it was from, to go with the skeleton. In fact there were no papers at all. This was a strictly take a look and pay cash on the spot deal.
He stopped and looked at the blackened door in front of him. This must be the one. As he lifted his hand to knock it opened a crack. The smell of stale ale and something that had gone off escaped, making him take a step back. ‘Who is it?’
‘Mr Beckett.’
There was some shuffling and fumbling and then the door opened wide enough for him to step through. For a moment he contemplated turning around and walking away. For all he knew he was about to get beaten and left for dead.
‘I thought you were. I can tell by your fancy clothes and the sound of your shoes on the stones outside that you’re not one of us.’
James, who had never looked down on anyone in his life, even though he had been brought up the son of a businessman, thanked God that he wasn’t one of them – whoever they may be.
‘Come in before someone sees you.’
He forced himself to step inside the dark hallway and tried not to flinch as the man slammed the door behind him.
‘So you are looking for something special for your fairground, are you? Something the likes of which the world has never seen?’
‘I am. That’s very true but I don’t know if you can show me anything that I want. I’m afraid I might have made a mistake coming here.’
The man smiled, showing a mouthful of rotten teeth.
‘Oh you’ll want what I have, all right. It’s been kept in the dark, underground, for five years, waiting for the right buyer to come along.’
The man led James along the narrow corridor into a room that was brightly lit by many candles. Inside it was an assortment of boxes and crates of all shapes and sizes. He continued walking to the back of the room until he reached one that was almost seven feet tall and looked more like a coffin than a crate.
‘Tell me, Mr Beckett, do you believe in those Red Indian folk tales at all? A man of your stature must like to read. Do you have any interests in the Algonquin tribes?’
James shook his head. ‘Not specifically – I have read a lot about the history of the Indians but nothing that I can recall about that specific tribe.’
‘Have you ever heard of the thing I’m going to show you? Apparently it’s bad luck to speak its name. It came over from North America with my great-uncle who went out there and became a bit obsessed with their way of life. He spent many years with a certain tribe and this was the parting gift he brought back.’
James could feel his heart begin to race. He was scared yet at the same time morbidly fascinated to see what was in the box. He felt his knuckles flex. He needed to see inside that crate. There was no way – no matter how much he disliked the dirty, smelly man standing in front of him – that he could leave now.