Tales From The Wyrd Museum 1: The Woven Path Read online

  ‘Aw,’ the man pouted, ‘ickle Voodini don't wanna play no more.’

  Running to the doorway, Frank stared after his buddy and rounded angrily on the officers.

  ‘I sure d—do hope you're mighty proud of yourselves, sirs,’ he reproached them. ‘Voo might take his cockamamy hocus-pocus a mite far but there ain't one of you, I bet, who d—don't d—do the same. I only been on one mission so far but you can bet that tomorrow morning I'll be d-doin’ the exact same thing I did last time, so as not to break the luck that brought me safe home. Ain't right you makin’ fun of Voo like that, you oughta be ashamed—he's g— got enough on his mind!’

  The other men stared sheepishly at the floor; one of the men opened his mouth to retaliate but his captain nudged him into silence.

  ‘Can it, Pat,’ Captain Resnick said, ‘I seen the way you put on your socks on mission days, you always wear one inside out. I guess you're right, Frank, we shouldna teased Voo like that. I'll go apologise, did you see where he went?’

  Frank looked at his watch. ‘It's three o'clock,’ he answered simply, “Voo'll be doin’ his ritual now.’

  The officers looked at one another abashed.

  Greatly subdued, the bombardier took Daniel's bear and returned it to Angelo's kitbag. Then, in a remorseful humour, they left the hut in single file.

  Out on the airfield, the squadron's bombers were lined up on the tarmac in vast, stately rows.

  Despite their unwieldy size and olive-drab livery, the B-17s were oddly beautiful and possessed an indefinable, elegant grandeur that the crews of the smaller, pregnant-looking B-24s could only envy.

  On the sides of these regal aircraft, a virtual chorus line of delectable and imaginatively proportioned women had been brightly painted alongside garish letters pronouncing the bomber's name. There was Sweet Sue, Darlin’ Daisy, Naughty Katy, Cutelips, Parson's Daughter, Flyboy Dream and a host of others. Several of them bore more descriptive legends, such as Helldragon, Nazi Killer, and Flak Trap, but, standing proudly between Big Momma and Li'l Honey, was The Kismet.

  Angelo Signorelli had already clambered up on to the left wing when Frank and the officers found him.

  Unaware of anything but himself and the aircraft, Angelo began the ritual he had started as a drunken joke on the afternoon before his first mission and before his superstitions had come to obsess him. Raising the bottle of beer to the leaden heavens, he threw back his head and called out the exact same words he had uttered then.

  ‘Hey!’ he cried. ‘Fate, Lady Luck, Kismet—whatever you wanna call yourself! This is Lieutenant Angelo Signorelli speakin’. First thing tomorrow mornin’ me an’ my buddies are gonna be puttin’ our necks out an’ we'd sure appreciate it if you could see that we came outta this in one piece.’

  Walking along the wing, he poured a drop of beer over each of the two engines before hoisting himself over the windows of the flight deck and dropping down the other side where he repeated the ritual on the remaining two.

  A sizeable crowd had now gathered around the Fortress—the rest of The Kismet's aircrew had come out to join the officers, whose numbers were already swollen by many of the ground staff.

  No one uttered a sound; only the rain, as it pattered and drummed on the fuselage, could be heard until the ceremony that had become important to all of them was complete.

  There!’ Angelo yelled. That's the libation, now don't you let us down, ya hear? Keep this baby in the skies!’

  Swigging back the rest of the bottle, the American's voice dropped to a fretful murmur as he added, ‘Please, I got a real bad feelin’ about this one.’

  On the ground, the whole of The Kismet's crew bowed their heads, then everyone else followed suit. Angelo's ritual had become a rare fixture in each of their lives now and they knew he invoked the powers of Fate on all their behalf.

  Within the officers’ barracks, the unbroken silence was disturbed suddenly by the rustle of canvas as Angelo's kitbag shuddered and jerked.

  ‘Peeyoooh!’ Ted breathed, gratefully, when he finally managed to pop his head out and wriggle free, past Daniel's bear. This guy oughta wash his socks more often.’

  Hopping from the bunk, he walked over the concrete floor into the middle where he warmed himself by the small, coke-burning stove, and let his eyes roam sadly around the pin-up covered walls of the hut.

  ‘Jeez!’ he breathed excitedly as old memories came crashing back to him. ‘Here I am again, been a long time. I forgot how young this crew was. That's Pat Dyson's cot, that Detroit wiseguy gave me such a hard time. Over there's where Arty Stewart used to keep the whole hut awake with his hog snoring, till he was killed over France—poor sucker was only twenty-one. Bob Ootterell was just nineteen when the fighter's lead found him; here's Herb Miller's place and old whatshisname with the sweet tooth...’

  Ted's ears drooped sorrowfully and his eagerness to look on the barracks once more vanished, as the faces of his dead comrades floated out from the dusty corners of his woolly mind.

  ‘You goddamn louse!’ he condemned himself. ‘All these years I been so wrapped up in my own trouble that I didn't even stop to think and remember. You were good buddies to me, saved my neck every time we went on a mission and this is how I pay you back—by forgetting. Sorry, pal, you're just a face that was there one day and replaced the next.

  ‘It's a good job toys can't cry, else I'd need wringing out. Tain't good when all you can say is sorry; I'm sorry I'm such a selfish heel who's been too busy tryin’ to free himself. I don't even know what happened to the rest of the group after I dropped out. Did Jimmy ever make it back to Myra? Did any of them get to finish their tour of duty? Prob'ly not. All of us burned bright and brief.’

  Returning to Angelo's bunk, Ted pulled himself up and went to stand on top of the locker where, by stretching as high as his fleecy legs allowed, he could just peep over the sill of the window.

  On the airfield, the ceremony was over and the men were drifting back to the barracks.

  A regretful light shone in Ted's glass eyes as he stared at the majestic outlines of the B-17s and their returning crews.

  ‘Ain't none of them gonna get much shuteye tonight,’ he predicted, hopping from the locker and struggling back inside the kitbag, ‘and if they do, it'll be riddled with nightmares.’

  The shadows of evening spread thickly over the East End and though the rain had ceased, it left behind expansive pools of black water that leaked over the streets and formed gurgling rivers that rushed along the gutters beneath a flotilla of scum and dust.

  Once Peter Stokes had gone on duty and his crabby mother had departed for the shelter, Neil falsely told Jean he wanted to go and speak to Michael Harmon—in the hope that she would let him out of the house. The prospect of visiting the Wyrd Museum burned and consumed him more than ever; without Ted, that sinister building was now his only link with the future and he desperately hoped that there he could find all the answers.

  But the young woman bluntly refused to allow him, reminding the boy that, whoever killed Mrs Meacham, was still at large.

  Although he appreciated her concern, Neil ignored her warnings. As soon as she went into the garden to put Daniel into the shelter, he slipped out of the front door and ran down the street.

  Twenty minutes later, he was splashing through the countless puddles that swamped Well Lane and the fastness of the Wyrd Museum, with its spear-tipped roof, loomed high above him.

  A deathly quiet lay over the place and, looking up at the dark, blank windows, Neil had an uneasy feeling that it had been expecting him. Still, nothing to do with this peculiar, menacing building would surprise him any more, or so he thought.

  Striding into the narrow alleyway, he took out his torch and shone it up on to the boarded entrance.

  ‘I need to find a length of pipe or a railing to prise myself in there,’ he told himself, mounting the steps to run his hands over the sheet of wood that barred the door.

  To Neil's surprise, the wood was loose
—the nails that held it in place were rusted through and, without too much effort, he was able to budge it aside.

  ‘No way was it like that the other day,’ he whispered, ‘what's going on here?’

  Even as he voiced his doubts, the arched door before him gave a painful-sounding creak and swung wide open.

  Startled, the boy leaped down the steps again and directed the torch beam into the awaiting blackness beyond the threshold.

  ‘You can stop playing your little games,’ he snarled at the forbidding building, ‘they might have scared me once, but I haven't got time to care any more.’

  Grimly, he ascended to the entrance again and, the next moment, the darkness had swallowed him.

  Waving the torchlight around the panelled hallway, Neil had to keep reminding himself that he was still trapped in 1943. He thought glumly of his father and wished he had not argued with him; at that moment, he would have given anything to see him again.

  At first, apart from the absence of the suit of armour, everything looked exactly the same as when he and his father had first arrived and unloaded the van, then he began to notice the subtle changes.

  In place of the watercolours that he remembered seeing on the walls, there were now large notices advising visitors not to approach anyone who wasn't wearing a uniform and under no circumstances were the patients to be given anything not authorised by the medical staff.

  Where the armour had stood, there was a life-size, anatomical model of a human body, displaying, in successive degrees and various detachable layers, the muscles, skeleton and internal organs. Beside this was a queue of primitive wheelchairs, each one stacked high with a pile of metal bedpans.

  ‘So it was an infirmary,’ Neil breathed, venturing a little further, and peering into the first room.

  Gone were the glass cabinets and exhibits of his time and in their place was a row of empty, iron bedframes, pushed against the far wall. Suspended from the high ceiling was a complex network of gas pipes that criss-crossed the room, feeding the broken lamps above each empty bed.

  A fierce smell of chemicals prevented him from exploring in detail, but before he returned to the hall he saw, to his discomfort, that each bed possessed a set of leather restraints.

  Turning his attention to the stairs, he began climbing them, hesitating only when the memory of Miss Celandine Webster, dressed in her nightgown with her knitting in her hand, waltzed briefly through his thoughts.

  Up to the landing he went, then started to make his way towards the room that had held, and would still hold, The Separate Collection.

  Through ward after ward of empty beds, their damp and fusty mattresses heaped in the corners, Neil ploughed.

  They really should've reopened this—I'd have thought they'd need as many hospitals as possible.’

  Keeping his hand over his nose and mouth, he vainly tried to blot out the all-pervading, insidious reek which he gradually came to realize was growing stronger. The sickly, laboratory atmosphere, was a noxious mixture of rancid disinfectant, damp bed linen, carbolic and spilt formaldehyde which condensed on his palate, forming a foul acidity round his tongue, and stung his eyes until they watered.

  Eventually, the boy reached the windowless room he had known as The Egyptian Suite and found that it was empty except for a locked drugs cupboard and a barbaric dentist's chair with cruel jaw clamps, a neck brace and iron manacles to hold down the hands and feet.

  Hardly glancing at the savage contraption, Neil hastened past, eager to see what changes time had wrought upon the place where he had first heard Ted's voice.

  A raised platform of wooden benches running the length of three walls was the first thing he noticed. It was like standing on a sunken stage and having the empty auditorium staring down at you. The floor was covered in mouldering sawdust and then, in the centre of this gloomy arena, he saw a long, wooden table surrounded by three small trolleys.

  Cautiously, Neil walked over to them. Each of the trolleys bore a selection of tools—long hacksaws, vicious knives and gargantuan hypodermics that looked as though they were made to pierce the hide of a rhinoceros.

  Then it dawned on him that they were all medical instruments and he was in an archaic operating theatre. Staring up at the dark, empty benches, he imagined the awful carnage those mawkish onlookers would have witnessed. The grating rasp of the hacksaws cleaving through human bones and those horrendous knives carving and chopping up flesh and muscle.

  Gravely, he realised that the blades were not rusted—the powdery, brown substance that covered the tarnished metal was dried blood.

  ‘Mickey would love this,’ he balked.

  The panelled walls must have soaked up a cacophony of screams to rival purgatory and the floorboards must have been steeped in and awash with the hot gore that gushed and spilled from the table.

  Squeamishly, he wondered how many of the patients, or victims, had survived the brutal surgery. Perhaps the inmates of the asylum had been experimented on. Had the top of their skulls been removed for the inquisitive students to inspect what a mad person's brain looked like?

  Chilled by these unwelcome imaginings and not wishing to remain a moment longer, the boy fled back past the dentist's chair and through the echoing wards until he stood on the landing again where he gulped down great breaths of the sweeter air.

  ‘It's all so different,’ he sighed. ‘I hardly recognize any of it.’

  Then, even as he tried to come to terms with the indisputable reality that there was no way out of this period in time, a feeble glimmer of hope began to smoulder in his mind. With renewed hope, Neil glared up the stairway that led to the third floor.

  That's where the answer is!’ he exclaimed with a rush of understanding and comprehension. Ted was always shouting up at the ceiling of The Separate Collection—he wasn't yelling at heaven, it was the room above, where the sisters lived!’

  Vaulting the stairs two at a time, he hurtled up to where a white-painted door forbade access to any wandering patients.

  Even in the future, Neil had never set foot in the Webster sisters’ quarters and as he turned the handle to admit himself he couldn't help remembering that Miss Ursula had expressly forbidden him to go there.

  Then he was inside and he flashed the torch curiously about him.

  Neil found himself in a large room; heavy velvet curtains, fringed with silk tassels, were draped over the windows and a worn, Persian carpet covered the floor. But crammed into every spare inch, shouldering and jostling for space, was a multitude of different shaped and different sized furniture and every single piece was covered by its own, individual dustsheet.

  Flaring strangely in the torchlight, the shrouded cupboards, bookcases and wardrobes looked like pantomime ghosts of themselves and the suspicion that under one of them someone might be lurking in wait, occurred to the boy more than once, as he pushed and squeezed his body between a cloaked cabinet and what he presumed to be a chest of drawers.

  Warily, he drew aside the nearest sheet and peered underneath.

  ‘Wall!’ he squealed, as a tiny, withered face leered out at him, caught in the torch's beam.

  But his fear didn't last long and, in amusement, he took a second look.

  Beneath the mantling sheet was a glass case and dangling in a ghastly row was a display of shrunken heads.

  The exhibits,’ Neil cried, dragging off one cover after another to reveal many of the Wyrd Museum's specimens, ‘this is where they are.’

  Hurrying between the crowded cabinets, he passed into the next room and discovered that it, too, was stuffed to overflowing.

  They're all up here!’

  Moving through the whole of the jammed third floor, intermittently inspecting the displays, Neil finally came to a halt in front of a small door.

  An image of a flowering tree had been carved into the panels and the boy traced the chiselled shape with his fingertips. It was a masterly piece of craftsmanship; every leaf was clearly defined and an intricate pattern of bark
wound over the gently raised trunk, down to each of the tree's three roots. Beneath the central, longest root, a circle of lapis lazuli had been cunningly inlaid and set within a narrow band of gold.

  Studying the design in the torchlight, Neil chewed his lip and wracked his brain. ‘I've seen this before,’ he murmured, trying to jolt it from his memory, ‘or something very like it—that picture made from flowers those people put in front of the drinking fountain—it's just the same.’

  The door was obviously the entrance to somewhere important and, gingerly, he reached for the handle and pushed it open.

  A narrow flight of steps lay beyond covered by a plush green carpet and spanning the entire length of the wall above was a huge oil painting of a mythological landscape executed in the Pre-Raphaelite style.

  Mounting the stairs, the boy paused to look at the great canvas. The scene was the edge of a forest—a titanic ash tree dominated the middle of the picture and at the base of the trunk, positioned around a pool of blue water, were the slender figures of three beautiful nymphs arrayed in flowing robes of white, red and black.

  Each exquisite, willowy woman was holding something in her pale, elegant hands and Neil held the torch very close until he could see what these objects were.

  The crimson-clad figure, whose hair shone in the sunlight like a river of molten gold, was depicted performing a graceful dance and she bore aloft a silver spindle, wrapped around with many different-coloured threads.

  Next to her, and reaching for one of the threads with her right hand, was the white-robed maiden, who carried a measuring rod in her other hand. The beauty of this woodland goddess caused Neil to catch his breath—her coal-black hair streamed behind her in long, raven tresses and her face was lit by a heavenly radiance that emanated from within.

  Turning from her, Neil brought his scrutiny to bear on the third and final female.

  Standing a little apart from the others, there was something sinister about this black-gowned woman. Standing beside a large wooden loom and lost in the tree's shadow, a veil obscured her face, and in her grasp she clutched a pair of shears which she brandished menacingly. Unlike the rest of the picture, where spring and summer flowers mingled idyllically in the warm sunshine, the ground about this cowled figure's feet was stony and barren and the only plants that grew there were monstrous toadstools and rank, strangling weeds.