Candleman (9 page)

‘Where are we going?’ panted Theo.

‘Can’t you guess?’ Chloe called back.

Theo hurried to keep her in sight through the gathering dusk. After a gloomy trek through the trees, Chloe stopped by a crumbling tomb carved to represent an immense sleeping lion. She motioned for Theo to remain there while she scouted ahead. She scuttled through the smog, the holly and the gravestones. Suddenly she straightened up, relaxed and beckoned Theo. ‘It’s clear,’ she said.

The cemetery keeper’s cottage had been trashed, taken apart by curious and destructive hands. Even items that couldn’t possibly be important had been scattered and smashed, like the glasses Theo and Sam had so recently used in celebration.

‘I should have known,’ said Chloe dismally. ‘There would have been a light on if they were here.’

‘What do you think it means?’ Theo asked.

Chloe looked anxious. ‘That someone knew the Society of Unrelenting Vigilance had a house here. That they looked for clues. Then they wrecked the place to upset and frighten anyone who should return here.’

‘So you think Sam and Magnus weren’t home when it happened?’

‘I’m pretty sure of that. No signs of a proper struggle. This looks like an act of frustration, because they didn’t find what they were hoping for.’

‘But how would they know where to come? This was all secret, wasn’t it?’

‘There are ways. Maybe they just followed a trail – your scent – I don’t know.’

Theo needed a rest. With his thick gauntlets he brushed some glass off the sofa he had slept on only the night before, and sank into it gratefully.

‘That’s bad tradecraft.’ Chloe scowled, wagging a finger. ‘If Dr Saint and his evil gang come back, they’ll say, “Oh look, someone’s brushed the glass off here,” and they’ll keep watching the cottage in case we return!’

‘Well, we won’t be here,’ objected Theo. It still upset him to hear Chloe refer to his guardian as evil.

‘No, but Magnus might,’ Chloe retorted. ‘He’ll be trying to think of a way of finding
us
again …’ She stood, chewing her lower lip and staring at nothing in particular. Theo could tell her mind was racing.

‘I’m anxious,’ she admitted, ‘because it’s really quite a bad thing that we haven’t found Magnus here. It’s also not good – and when I say not good, I mean very, very bad – that our enemies found this cottage, and the Watch Tower.’

Chloe pondered for a while. Eventually she sighed, tipped some glass off a wooden chair and sat down too, looking glum.

‘I’ve been doing all this by the book,’ she said at last, ‘following Vigilance orders. But now Norrowmore is dead and Magnus isn’t here. I think the rules have changed a bit.’

Theo thought he heard a rustling outside, but was too concentrated on Chloe to pay it any mind.

‘What do you think happened to Sir Peregrine when he touched you?’ Chloe asked suddenly.

I have to trust her,
Theo told himself.
I would be a prisoner again if not for Chloe. I might even be dead.

‘You wrote it – didn’t you?’ he asked. ‘My name on the birthday present. The silver lettering?’

‘Yes,’ said Chloe. ‘Mr Norrowmore provided the snow globe. He knew it would intrigue you – enchant you – prepare you for our approach. It was a clue, if you needed one, to show you your life was under a dark shadow.’

‘It wasn’t the shadow that intrigued me,’ said Theo. ‘It was the beautiful handwriting. Seeing my name like that was magical. It made me think that I – that life could be better.’

‘It can be,’ Chloe replied quietly. ‘It will be. But it’s going to get worse first.’

It was now or never, Theo thought. He had to tell Chloe about his power – warn her that he might be dangerous.

‘I think Sir Peregrine was right,’ Theo began, ‘when he said that I didn’t have a rare skin disease. But I – I do have
something
inside me,’ he continued, his eyes lowered. ‘A kind of energy. It can affect people – make things happen.’

Chloe nodded. ‘When we were in the network, the first time, and those Foundlings faced you – you glowed,’ Chloe said. ‘I swear you glowed, like a human candle.’

‘Like a candle man,’ Theo said quietly.

‘Uh-huh,’ Chloe said, looking away from him.

‘Chloe – I think you know more than you’re telling me!’ he blurted out. ‘How can you know about the Dodo but not know about the Candle Man?’

Chloe put a finger to her lips. ‘Let’s keep our voices down,’ she said. ‘We should probably move on.’ But she didn’t go anywhere.

‘All right,’ she confessed. ‘I lied to you earlier when I said I didn’t know anything.’

‘I knew it!’

‘When I was a little girl, Mr Norrowmore told me the myth one day. He said the Candle Man was a great hero. He had fought against the Society of Good Works in the olden days. It was a nice legend of good conquering evil.’

‘Except it’s more than a legend. It was real,’ interrupted Theo eagerly. ‘Dr Saint has a secret room all about him. I saw a picture of him there – and he looked just like me!’ He stopped, looking faintly apologetic. ‘That’s about all I know,’ he added.

‘When I was older,’ Chloe said, ‘I was told never to mention the Candle Man. Apparently the enemy could bump you off just for knowing about him. That terrified me – so I buried the whole thing in my mind.’

Theo was watching Chloe’s face. For a moment there, talking about her past, in the gloomy, wrecked little parlour, he felt he had caught a glimpse of her as she was when she was a child – and he felt sorry for her.

‘Recently, it came up again,’ Chloe continued. ‘I was working on the “prisoner” mission. That was you, of course. When he sent me in to spy on Empire Hall, Mr Norrowmore said it was possible that you were the modern-day descendant of the original Candle Man. I thought it was just a crazy dream he had. But after what’s been happening – well, I’m prepared to believe anything.’

‘Why did you lie to me?’

Chloe scowled. ‘I was ordered not to discuss it with you. Norrowmore said it could only be done at a full Council – if we could get you there alive.’

Theo gulped. It was terrible not knowing about the Candle Man – yet dreadful to open up the subject.

‘We need to know more about you – about him,’ Chloe said. ‘The enemy seem to have all the advantage – but there’s one thing they don’t have: you.’

‘Or you.’ Theo grinned. Despite the dire situation, he couldn’t help feeling that with Chloe by his side they could do almost anything.

Suddenly he heard another rustle outside. Then a soft thump. He whirled around and saw a huge black rat on the windowsill – and it was staring straight at him.

T
heo screamed. Chloe clutched at him.

‘Don’t scream, you idiot!’ she hissed. ‘Stay calm. It’s only a rat. It’s only the biggest, scariest rat I have ever seen in my life.’

The rat leapt down into the room, its sharp eyes gleaming with a disconcerting awareness. It stopped a few feet away, its pink nose sniffing up at them and its silver whiskers quivering crazily. The front door creaked and two more enormous rats, the size of Jack Russell terriers, squeezed through.

‘Three
of them!’ Theo said, trying to hide behind Chloe. ‘Now that’s got to be bad!’

Chloe stepped back nervously, splintering glass with her heel. The three extraordinary creatures began to circle them silently.

‘What kind of rats are they?’ Chloe wondered, horrified.

‘Siberian Wolf Rats,’ Theo said. ‘Page seventy-two,
Woolcombe’s Bestiary of Post-Diluvian Extinctions.
And – as
you
would say – extinct.’

The rodents suddenly stopped circling, sat back on their haunches and threw back their heads, showing long white teeth. Then they let out a queer, high-pitched whine that grew louder and louder, turning into a hideous ear-splitting squeal.

‘We’ve just been identified and pinpointed,’ Chloe said. ‘I’m betting the Dodo won’t be far behind. We’ve got to get away fast!’ She bundled Theo ahead of her, straight out of the door, with the rats in close pursuit.

Chloe paused in the little clearing, glancing around for their best exit. Through the dusky woods, they could see four men in goggles and white coats running towards them – the Dodo’s men.

‘Of course – they came down the network behind us!’ groaned Chloe. ‘Any bright ideas?’

Then the shadows fell. From out of the trees they dropped, child-sized silhouettes descending on the white-coated men and pulling them to the ground. Theo and Chloe gazed, horrified, as the Dodo’s men struggled and sank under the attack of the nightmarish forms. Suddenly, from a nearby thicket, a single shadow sprang towards Theo and Chloe.

There it stood, an ugly, gloating imp, with a face like a crudely cut jack-o'-lantern. Its skin was stretched over its soft bones like a polythene bag, revealing bubbling gas and shrivelled organs pulsating inside. A long grey tongue was hanging out and a pale light burnt in its eyes.

‘Smoglodytes!’ gasped Chloe.

‘He is ours!’ screeched the creature. It bounded towards Theo, but was pounced on by the three rats. A horrible cry rent the air as the ferocious rodents attempted to rip the airy bag of the smoglodyte’s body to pieces. Chloe didn’t have to tell Theo to run.

The hunted pair fled through the woods, squeals and whimpers fading in the dirty air behind them. No longer caring if they were seen, they headed straight for one of the main pathways. A bent old woman placing roses on a grave turned and looked in surprise to see two figures tearing helter-skelter through the tombs.

Amazed at their own progress, they stumbled out into the dazzling electric light of a busy city street, and grinned at the enormous friendly form of a big red double-decker bus.

‘Wake up,’ said Chloe, shaking Theo by the shoulder. He had fallen asleep on the leather sofa in the tall old house they been in earlier that day. She gave him a drink of hot water. He cupped his hands around the big green china mug and peered down through the steam at his blistered bare feet. He wiggled his sore toes. He wasn’t used to any kind of exertion, and it was only now that he fully realised the damage his delicate body had sustained.

It was hard to believe he was back, safe in Chloe’s mysterious world of luxury after all their adventures.

‘Not much food left, I’m afraid,’ she said, sitting next to him. ‘Smoked salmon on crispbread. Tinned artichoke hearts for pudding.’ The squeak of some brakes in the street made Theo jump, but Chloe shook her head.

‘We would’ve been tracked down by now if the Dodo’s unearthly menagerie was still on our scent. I’m guessing the two different groups of attackers pretty much slaughtered each other.’

‘That would be great,’ said Theo.

Chloe frowned.

‘When you get older,’ she chided, ‘you’ll come to regard any loss of life as a pity.’

‘Not gigantic rats,’ said Theo. ‘I kind of liked the smoglodyte, though,’ he added. ‘He isn’t in any of my books. Mr Nicely must have been saving him up.’

‘Oh, Mr Nicely has been saving him up all right,’ said Chloe. ‘The smogs were imprisoned over a hundred years ago. Magnus told me about them once. Apparently they were used as spies on the streets in Victorian times. They can only survive in filthy smog. Now it looks like the Society of Good Works has brought them – and the smog – back again to track you down.’

Theo peeled away a slimy morsel of smoked fish, put it back on the plate and bit into some crispbread. He was pleased to find it had a plain, wholesome drabness to it. He was only used to boring food and wanted the comfort of it now.

‘Have
we
got any plans?’ Theo asked.

‘Mr Norrowmore had all the ideas, and the fallbacks.’ Chloe sighed. ‘A man obsessed with secrecy unexpectedly dies, leaving his secret society in bits with no notion of what to do next.’ For once her face looked drawn and tired.

‘There must be something! I thought you were a big organisation – Great Council of the Vigilant and so on. Lighting the way to the Ascendancy.’

‘Do you know about the Ascendancy?’ asked Chloe eagerly.

‘No. Only that Magnus said the time for it was right now.’

Chloe looked troubled. She drained her black tea, ignoring Theo’s disgusted look.

‘I only wish there
were
a Council to help us,’ she said. ‘We were a big group once. But the Society of Good Works has been shutting us down. There were two old brothers, the Howes. The Know-Howes we used to call them. Experts on the garghouls, smoglodytes, things like that. They were murdered two years ago by Foundlings. Then there was an old scientist, Mr Arklow – he’s vanished without trace. Maybe Mr Norrowmore was killed too, in the Watch Tower. We’ll probably never know.’

‘Not now that you’ve torched the place and destroyed all the evidence,’ Theo remarked.

‘Exactly,’ replied Chloe. ‘Another one of my brilliant ideas. Like taking you to have a check-up with the Dodo. I’ve been on great form since this crisis kicked off.’

Theo grinned. ‘You’ve been unrelentingly vigilant,’ he reassured her. ‘You haven’t let me out of your sight.’

Chloe looked pleased. ‘We need to act,’ she decided. ‘Since we’re working alone and have the hounds of hell after us –’

Theo went pale.

‘Not the actual hounds of hell,’ Chloe groaned. ‘Since we’re in a tricky spot, we have to follow up our one advantage. What scares them most is you. We need to find out the truth behind this Candle Man business.’

Theo sipped his hot water and pondered.

‘There is someone else,’ he said. He paused, unsure whether or not to go on.
This is it,
he thought.
I’m heading straight into the terrible thing. The ancient myth that makes grown men turn white and run away.

‘Go on,’ said Chloe gently, fishing a dripping artichoke heart out of a tin.

‘An old burglar. He knows things. His name’s Foley. If we could find him he might …’ Theo’s voice trailed off miserably. ‘I’m joking. How are two people like me and you going to find one old robber in an enormous city like this?’

‘We might,’ said Chloe, reaching for the telephone. ‘Because there’s something I haven’t told you.’