Candleman (2 page)

A
shattering of glass woke Theo. He heard a rush of feet, somewhere far off in the mansion. He sat bolt upright in bed. Empire Hall was a smooth, well-regulated household – here, surprises and unexpected noises in the night were not tolerated.

Then came a sharp cry of pain from Mr Nicely. Theo leapt out of bed. He could hear muffled arguing getting closer.

‘You fool, Brady! You’ve gone and killed him!’ whispered an old man.

‘No I ain’t,’ snapped back a younger voice. ‘And there’s no need to whisper either, Foley. We know there’s just the two blokes living here, and we saw the other one go out.’

A sudden rattling began at Theo’s door. He stood, frozen in the shadows. ‘Look in here!’ ordered the older voice. There was a splintering smash and Theo’s door flew open. In the half-light from the hallway, Theo could make out a skinny old man in a long raincoat, and a big, younger man in a leather jacket. Theo stared, transfixed.

People.

The old man, Foley, had a haggard face with a tuft of ginger beard. Brady, the younger, had a clean-shaven head and a squashed nose.

‘Blimey!’ exclaimed Brady. ‘There’s a kid in here!’

Theo froze as the two men advanced on him. The old one was smiling. He had horrible grey teeth, not perfect ones like Dr Saint and Mr Nicely. And he had spots and pimples all over his face. Theo found them very interesting.

‘This is a piece of luck,’ said Foley. ‘Since you almost stiffed the butler, we need someone to show us around the house!’

‘Oh yeah,’ said Brady. ‘Someone to point us to the valuables!’

Foley waved a pistol at Theo.

‘Is … is that for me?’ asked Theo, wondering what the strange black metal object was.

‘It
will
be for you, if you give us any lip!’ snapped Brady.

Just in time, Theo remembered his
Guide to Good Manners.

‘I’m very sorry,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t believe we have been introduced.’

The two men stared at him as if he had said something strange. Theo quickly asked the question he really wanted to ask.

‘Would you mind telling me what you’re doing here?’

The two men looked at each other. Brady suddenly raised a big ugly fist, covered in rings. Foley stopped him.

‘Leave this to me. The boy’s obviously a weirdy,’ Foley said, making a screwing gesture with his finger to the side of his head. ‘That must be why they keep him locked up in this room. And that’s why we didn’t know he lived here, even though you’ve been casing the job for two weeks!’

Foley turned back to Theo.

‘Listen, kid,’ he said in his hoarse voice. ‘We’re robbers. We’ve come to nick all the good stuff. So we need your help – as tour guide.’

‘Robbers.’ Theo nodded. ‘I know about you.’ He smiled, pleased with his worldly knowledge. ‘You’re in one of my books of fairy tales. Ali Baba and the forty thieves.’ Theo looked around as if expecting another thirty-eight men to appear.

‘Just show us where the loot is, and we won’t have to crack your skull like we did to the butler.’

‘May I see?’ asked Theo. The thought of Mr Nicely with a cracked skull interested him strangely.

‘No – he’s in the hallway, tied up and gagged now, and
we’re
calling the shots, not you, Weirdy. Now show us around the house.’

Theo’s face clouded over. ‘I’m sorry,’ he sighed. ‘But I’m not really allowed out of my room.’

Theo was shoved into the hallway, where he crashed into a grandfather clock and hurt his head.

‘Nutter or not, a bit of old-fashioned persuasion will change your tune!’ Brady snarled.

This physical pain after Theo’s latest session in the Mercy Tube was making his head swim. He looked around the elegant oak-panelled hallway with wide eyes. He had hardly ever been in this part of the house before. A corridor led to several doorways at the end. What was down there? The kitchen? The garden? How he longed to see those places. But not with the robbers. Now he was scared.

‘Upstairs,’ hissed Foley, and they made Theo stumble ahead of them as they mounted the long staircase. Suddenly Theo felt terribly anxious. He had never been upstairs before, and they expected him to show them around! Then Theo realised something else …

‘I – I’m not wearing my gloves!’ he almost screamed. Theo stared at his bare hands and for a moment they seemed to stand out with strange clarity in the darkness. This fleeting impression soon vanished from his mind as the two men rounded on him.

‘Shut it!’ growled Brady, bunching a fist under Theo’s chin.

‘Listen, kid,’ Brady said, ‘we know you’re crazy, but one more word –’

‘You don’t understand!’ Theo said. ‘I have to wear my gloves, or –’

Now Foley jabbed the gun into Theo’s ribs. ‘Enough!’ he ordered. ‘Forget your rotten gloves! I know it’s cold in this place, but one more dicky bird from you – unless we tell you to speak – and you are dead.’

Theo fell silent. He knew what dead meant.

Not long afterwards, Mr Foley and Mr Brady had cheered up. Theo had optimistically pointed them towards one of the rooms upstairs and it had turned out to have some valuable gadgets, computers and cameras in it. From the looks of it, this was Dr Saint’s bedroom. But the intruders soon started complaining again.

‘Where’s the real stuff?’ Foley muttered. ‘This bloke Dr Saint is the head of all sorts of charities. Gentlemen like that are always loaded. Sticky fingers, y’see.’

‘Show us more!’ ordered Brady, shoving Theo ahead of them down the landing. Theo threw out a hand to steady himself and he touched the head of a little statue of a nymph, set into a recess in the wall. To Theo’s surprise the statuette’s head sank downwards into its body, followed by a sudden click and a low grinding noise.

A section of the wall slid back, revealing a concealed passage. All three stared in silence.

‘Well done,’ breathed old Foley finally. ‘That’s more like it.’

A short, narrow passage led to a doorway, which was secured with a heavy lock and several bolts. There was a moment of professional reverence from the experienced burglars.

‘We’ve hit pay dirt!’ said Foley.

Theo watched, scared and fascinated as the two crooks set to work with a combination of sly know-how and crude violence. Screws were eased out, locks oiled and hammered, and the bolts studied and shattered. The thick inner door creaked open, revealing a dark chamber beyond. Using a tiny torch, Foley located a light switch. They stepped into the room, and Theo gazed around him, astonished.

The forbidden things.
The room was littered with newspapers, magazines, photos – all the things that told you about
the real world.
Theo was not allowed to see such information. Dr Saint had always told him that knowledge of real-life events, news and history would only excite and confuse his mind.

But Theo could not help looking. Yellowing old newspaper articles were pinned to boards on the wall. There were maps of London, snapshots of crumpled bodies, pictures of sinister figures with strange names. Theo peered at the dark, illustrated image of a monstrous, misshapen man:
the Dodo,
a caption read.

‘This can’t be right. It’s just a study or something …’ said Brady.

Unnoticed, Theo was looking through a pile of pictorial newspapers. He looked at the dates. They were over a hundred years old. There was so much to see, read and drink in …

Crime Ring broken by Unknown Crusader
one magazine read. Another headline proclaimed:
New Hero of the Night
– but the picture with it had been removed.

Foley was staring about him like a frightened rabbit. His graveyard teeth nibbled nervously on his lower lip.

‘Well, say something, you old fool!’ shouted Brady. Instead, Foley stepped towards a shadowy alcove at the far end of the room and switched on a lamp. They all stared. Theo’s jaw dropped.

A pale, long-haired man in a smart cape was peering out at them from a sepia photograph in a golden frame. The man had a haunted, tragic face. Yet there was something strong and resolute in its lines too – the angular nose, tough chin and those unfathomable eyes. Beneath the portrait was the legend:
The Candle Man.

Theo stared. There was no mistake. For a moment time seemed to stand still. But there was no denying, his first startling impression had been correct.
The man in the picture looked exactly like Theo.

‘Candle Man? Never heard of him!’ said Brady. ‘Have you?’

Foley nodded. ‘We should get out of here!’ he whispered.

‘You what?’

‘It’s unlucky, you see …’ Foley was almost as white as a sheet. ‘Especially in our game,’ the old man said. ‘It goes a long way back. People hear about the Candle Man and not long after … they disappear.’

‘Then why haven’t I heard of him?’ Brady asked.

‘It was all covered up – made into a secret. It was too horrible …’ the old man was distracted, ferreting around nervously at the piles of papers. He looked at some random photos and blenched.

‘What a terrible way to go!’ he gasped, putting the photos back face down. He switched off the alcove light and tried frantically to replace everything they had touched.

‘We’ve got to get out of here, now!’ he urged. He was no longer the hardened housebreaker, but more like a terrified child. ‘This is way over our heads! We came to the wrong house tonight.’

The old man headed straight out of the room, and Brady followed.

‘This is crazy! Get a grip!’ the younger man roared, but Foley was bounding down the stairs now with a speed hard to believe for his age. Brady was slower, dragging Theo by the arm. In the downstairs hallway, Foley turned to stare at Theo.

‘We’re in dark waters,’ Foley said. ‘No one must know we’ve been here!’

‘That means offing the boy!’ shouted Brady, pulling a heavy metal wrench out of his kitbag.

‘I – I don’t like it,’ stammered Foley. ‘Kill the mad kid? That’s too much bad luck! We’ll have to take him with us!’

Suddenly a police siren was heard in the Gore outside, followed by a rending crash from a side door and the bark of an Alsatian.

‘Police! We’ve got no choice now,’ Brady said, advancing on Theo. ‘We’ll never get away dragging him along. He’s heard us talk, knows our faces …’

Brady swung the wrench back, ready to strike a fatal blow.

‘No!’ cried Theo. He raised a feeble hand in self-defence, grabbing at his attacker’s wrist.

Then it happened.

Brady’s arm stopped in mid-swing, as if frozen. His body glowed with a soft green light. And then, before their eyes, he melted.

I
t had not been a dream. Theo sat up in bed and saw the familiar shadows cast by the morning sun on the wall. He saw his bookcase of fairy tales and guides to manners. But when he closed his eyes he saw the robber, Brady, dissolving into a pool of oily slime and seeping into the deep hall carpet.

The events of the night before, brought to so sudden an end by the arrival of his guardian and the police, had left his mind scarred forever.

My rare disease
, Theo thought.
My special condition, which, by the way – sorry we didn’t mention it before – actually means that if you touch people they die.

Theo shivered inside. He had melted someone. The killing had been in self-defence, of course, which Mr Nicely had once told him was all right. But it didn’t make Theo feel much better. Strange thoughts and doubts flitted through his mind, images he could not drive away. He recalled the picture he had seen of that hideous figure, the Dodo. How could a real man come to resemble an extinct bird? Suddenly his world was full of mysteries and misgivings.

Theo ran through the events that had happened after Brady had melted. The old robber, Foley, had bolted – out through a side window – and hadn’t been seen again. Dr Saint had appeared and raced up the stairs without even checking to see if Mr Nicely was still alive.
Not very saintly, Dr Saint,
thought Theo. He didn’t know what his guardian had done upstairs, but he certainly hadn’t mentioned the secret room to the police. Theo didn’t mention it either.

Clarice came in with a cup of hot water, Theo’s morning treat. Tea was apparently too stimulating for him and might lead to enjoyment – never a good thing for someone like Theo. She proceeded to check his temperature, blood pressure, the circumference of his head and the endless other measurements and readings that made his life a masterpiece of tedium.

‘The thing is, Clarice,’ Theo said, ‘I was always told by Dr Emmanuel Saint that I was a mystery baby – abandoned at one of the orphanages run by his Society of Good Works, with just a note saying my parents had died and could someone look after me.’

Clarice searched for lice – or something – in Theo’s hair.

‘So what I want to know is,’ Theo continued, ‘why, hidden away in a secret room upstairs, is there a picture of a man who looks just like me?’

Theo put on a dressing gown.

‘Secrets, Clarice. That’s what you’re good for. You can’t hear, so you can’t tell tales, I suppose. Is Dr Saint being kind by employing a deaf maid, or is he actually being … careful?’ Theo sipped his hot water thoughtfully. It was the only hot drink he would get all day.

‘Dr Saint has been keeping secrets from me, that’s for sure,’ Theo resumed. ‘I can’t help wondering about
everything
now …’

Theo stopped. He was suddenly reminded of the mysterious gift he had received, the snow globe that covered a miniature London in black flakes. Had it been some kind of message? He needed to look at it again.

‘A special treat for you, Theobald!’ came the strident voice of Dr Saint from the doorway. Theo looked round. In came Mr Nicely, his head wrapped in bandages, beaming a big smile – but his eyes looked rather glazed and he was moving stiffly.

‘Your butler and, dare-I-say-it, best friend, is back on the case!’ grinned Mr Nicely. ‘I mean, back on duty,’ he corrected himself. ‘In fact, what I ought to have said, is I’m back doing what I love best,’ he added finally.