Tales From The Wyrd Museum 1: The Woven Path (33 page)

The woman looked up sharply. ‘Angelo?’ she cried, recognising the voice. ‘Is that you?’

Leaving her son behind, she stepped cautiously outside and peered into the blank, blanketing fog.

‘Angelo? Where are you?’

‘Stay there, Jean!’ the airman's familiar voice told her. ‘Don't come out here—it's too dangerous!’

‘Well, you come inside!’ she said. ‘Did you find Frank? Are you both going back to the base now?’

A little distance away, standing upon a low wall, the small shape of a teddy bear could see the outline of the woman he loved as she stared into the thick, rolling cloud, straining to find him.

‘I won't come in, Jean,’ he said shakily, ‘I... er... I can't stop.’

‘What's wrong?’ she cried, sensing the turmoil he was in.

‘I love you, Jean Evans,’ Ted told her, ‘do you know that?’

‘Yes,’ she answered, ‘I truly do.’

With his glass eyes gleaming, the bear gazed sorrowfully at her, yearning for what never was. ‘I love you more than life itself, Jean!’ he called. ‘More than you will ever, ever know. God—I really do. I love you so much it hurts.’

‘Angelo,’ she said, worriedly, ‘you're making me nervous. Please, let me see you. Come in—are you in trouble?’

‘I can't be with you, Jean.’

The woman shuddered at his words, and hugged herself bitterly. ‘What... what are you saying?’ she murmured.

‘I been doing a lotta thinking,’ the bear went on. ‘An awful lot.’

‘Don't frighten me, Angelo.’

Ted pressed his paw into his forehead as her injured tone stabbed into his soul.

‘You an’ me don't stand a chance,’ he eventually answered. ‘Never did and never will.’

Jean leaned against the doorway of the hut. ‘You... you're leaving me,’ she muttered. ‘Angelo, why?’

‘Lady Luck just ain't willin’ to smile on me no more,’ the bear told her, cursing himself for the pain he was inflicting. ‘Your husband's alive, Jean, believe me—I know. He's gonna come back to you some day, and you gotta wait for him, Jean. Right now the thought of you waitin’ here is the only goddam thing that's keepin’ the poor Joe alive. I... I can understand that—boy, do I ever.’

The tears were streaming down the woman's face.

'I know it's stupid,’ she wept, ‘I've only known you a few days, but Angelo, I really don't know what I'll do without you.’

‘You'll learn to live without me,’ Ted murmured. ‘It'll work out how it's supposed to.’

With his head in his paw, the bear spurred himself on for the final moments. ‘It's time now, we gotta say goodbye. Unlike the song, we won't never meet again. All I wanna tell you is that, though this lousy war'll come to an end some day, it'll always be waged in my heart.’

Ted stared across at the woman he adored, remembering every contour, every detail of her lovely young face.

“Whatever you might hear about me in the days to come,’ he said thickly, ‘I want you to remember this Jean Evans. I did all I could to save Frank but like everything else, I failed. You... you were the one shining light of this guy's miserable existence and, without you, there's a mighty dark emptiness. Don't you ever get to thinking that Angelo Signorelli was a bad man. He just met the dearest, sweetest soul of his short life a coupla years too late. It just weren't meant to be—the fates were ranged against us from the start.’

As the wretched tears threatened to overwhelm her, Jean wiped her eyes and somehow managed to stem the mounting tide.

That's my girl,’ Ted encouraged, ‘you don't need a bum like me around, anyhow.’

Jean battled with her voice, defying it to break into racking sobs. ‘Well,’ she uttered in a hoarse, rasping tone that Ted loved her all the more for, ‘so that's... that's it. I see... Before... before you do your last trick for me, Voodini, and disappear, mightn't I see you one last time? Is that really too much to ask?’

‘Yes,’ the bear said forlornly, ‘I gotta go now. Remember the night we danced under the moon, Jean? That's the moment I'll treasure for the rest of eternity. I... I... I'll leave you something to remember me by—as a kind of hostage for my love. If you ever wanna think of me, if for some mad reason you still want to, after what I've put you through, then look at this and I promise, I swear, that wherever I am—I'll know about it.’

‘I'll always love you, Angelo,’ she cried. ‘Always and forever.’

Staring solemnly at her, the bear shivered. ‘I know that,’ he whispered, before adding in a faltering, failing voice, ‘Goodbye—I love you, too.’

‘Angelo?’ she called. ‘Angelo?’

But the bear spoke no more and went limp as the soul of Angelo Signorelli finally departed and was at last able to rest—his torments over. Running into the fog after the airman, Jean found the toy lying motionless on the ground.

‘Angelo!’ she wailed, crying into the darkness. ‘Please!’

Finding no trace of her lieutenant, Jean picked up the teddy bear and understood that here was the American's gift to her.

The woman hugged the scorched, mutilated toy tightly and kissed it in utter despair.

Then, distraught, she ran back into the ARP shelter and threw herself on to the stool beside her son as the grief burst from her heart.

In her grasp, Ted's glass eyes were fixed and still. Angelo's soul was finally at rest and the bear never moved or spoke again. Yet in that terrible, bleak hour, when Jean mourned for the lost love of her life, the fur round the toy's staring eyes became damp and, as if the airman's departed spirit had placed them there, two great, weeping tears went splashing to the floor where they mingled with hers.

2.57 am

The Separate Collection was dark.

Over the shattered wreckage of the glass cabinets and display cases, the ponderous shadows that lay heavily in the Wyrd Museum scattered into the dark corners.

In the dank air above, a fierce crackle of energy signalled the reopening of the gateway. Suddenly, the shards of glass that littered the floor winked and flashed as the purple lightnings rampaged once more around the ceiling and the vortex ripped apart the atmosphere.

Into the debris, two figures came tumbling and Neil Chapman and his brother Josh sprawled headlong into a heap of blackened ashes.

The whirling portal flared and, gurgling with excited joy, Edie Dorkins came spinning into the shadows.

Staggering to his feet, Neil stared groggily at the young, blonde-haired girl.

‘What are you doing here?’ he mumbled. ‘You don't belong in this time!’

Edie ignored him and glanced up at the gateway. The churning rent sprayed a hail of glittering sparks and then imploded.

At Neil's side Josh was bawling his head off and the older boy tried his best to comfort him.

Then, without warning, the lights were snapped on and standing in the doorway were the Webster sisters.

They were all dressed in their nightgowns. Miss Celandine looked just as they had last seen her, over fifty years ago. Her sister, Miss Ursula, had her hair tied in curling papers and covered with a fine net, whilst Miss Veronica's face was plastered with a thick beauty cream.

Sternly, Miss Ursula surveyed the mess, snorting at the damaged exhibits and twitching her eyebrows at the branches that now grew from the oak panels. Eventually, her vexed and irritated gaze came to rest upon Neil.

‘Well, Maggot,’ she said, ‘I see your father will certainly have much to do in the coming weeks.’

Neil opened his mouth, but her eyes had already left him.

“Welcome, Edith,’ she said with a rare measure of genuine warmth, ‘a long, long time have we awaited your arrival.’

The girl waded through the rubble towards her and the others and when she reached them she bowed low, before taking out the bulky object she had stuffed inside her coat.

Reverently, Edie Dorkins lifted the Casket of Belial and gravely presented it to Miss Ursula.

The old woman received it with equal gravity. ‘I shall see to it that he is sealed inside for a great many more years,’ she said, before turning to her sisters.

‘Let me give it to her!’ Miss Veronica begged.

‘Will not!’ Miss Celandine answered.

‘Ursula, tell her—I want to!’

‘But I made it!’

‘I cast it on for you and measured the thread!’

Miss Ursula primly clapped her hands for them to stop squabbling.

‘Celandine,’ she commanded archly, ‘surrender it to me.’

Pouting, Miss Celandine handed over the scrap of knitting she and her sister had been fighting over.

‘Blood and sand!’ a man's voice exclaimed behind them. What's been going on?’

‘Dad!’ Neil yelled, rushing past the Webster sisters and flinging his arms round Brian Chapman, much to the gangly man's embarrassed discomfort. ‘Oh, Dad, I'm sorry I said what I did. I'm glad Mum left me behind—I am, really.’

Miss Ursula's thin lips curled into a smile as she knelt down and placed her sister's gift upon Edie Dorkin's head with the utmost ceremony as though she were crowning a princess of a rare and sacred lineage.

The girl gurgled happily as the green pixie hood, shot through with strands of silver tinsel was pulled down over her hair.

There,’ Miss Ursula said firmly, ‘now are the three fates of the unhappy world contented. Behold, my sisters, the daughter that should have been ours is finally come amongst us. Now the Nornir are four in number and the hope of the land is renewed, for the days ahead shall be dark indeed. Edith, dear, you are joined with us, we, who walked under the youthful stars and heard the chorus of the wind in the branches of the world-tree, are now your family. You are one of us, Edith, and a great yet deadly destiny awaits. Speak your thoughts, child.’

Edie stared around her; from the face of the imperious old woman, to her two twittering sisters, the unfamiliar man pinching the bridge of his nose, whilst hugging his children and then, finally, at the jumbled devastation that was the Separate Collection.

Taking a deep, thoughtful breath, Edie Dorkins gazed back at the women who were so eager to adopt her and in a slow, considered whisper, said, 'Oh yes, I know I shall like it here—this is where I belong.’