The Parliament of the Dead (7 page)

Morag waited politely while Gibbs gibbered uncontrollably for a few moments. “Hga wggga wagga baaaah!  Ugh, please excuse me dearest lady.  Once you’ve wreaked your revenge, or done some serious h-haunting, you'll move on as soon as you’ve arrived.  I’ve seen hundreds like you come and go.”

“Och maybe you’re right.”

“Of course I am,”smiled Gibbs. “We will arrive at Judge Hawkin’s haunt in a few moments and call the Parliament.  That’s the first step to revenge and the first step back to Harold.”

*   *   *

As they were talking the gentle breeze had gathered strength.  Dust swirled around and a tangle of cloth fluttered and moved and slowly took human shape.  With a sense of disgust Morag realised that the cloth was a mess of dirty bandages smeared with a number of exotically-coloured stains.

“Who’s there?”Gibbs called into the shifting mass of grubby material.

Once it settled into human form a dry voice like the sound of a quill on parchment spoke,“I am Nubkheperra.  I have come for vengeance.”

“Och!”Morag exclaimed,“That’s nice, we’re for vengeance too.”

Chapter Eighteen

Shelly Apartments

Thee area where Arthur lived was not a place Iona would have visited at night.  Even in the pale afternoon light it seemed a dangerous place to be.  Broken glass crunched underfoot as she approached an almost derelict building surrounded by closed-down factories.  The building had three boarded-up windows for each one containing glass, and at least half of the glass ones were broken.

Standing in front of the Shelley Apartments Iona found herself in a puddle so foul-smelling that she did not want to guess what it might be.

As she walked up the path to the building she wiped the soles of her shoes on some coarse grass sprouting between the cracked paving stones.

By the door was a panel of doorbells with labels and room numbers.

The list of occupants included:“O’Leary’s Loans Agency,” “Smith & Smith’s Security,” “Sharon - genuine model,”and, at number thirteen the name“John Palmer”was crossed out, and underneath, the name“Arthur Terpynne”had been hand-written.  Iona was sure that was the number William had told her.

She pressed the bell.

There was no response.  She waited and waited, tried again and waited some more.

Eventually a woman with tired eyes and a mini-skirt left the building without casting a glance at Iona or acknowledging her half-hearted apology for being in the way.  Nor did she wait for the door to close properly behind her.  Iona caught it before the latch clicked, and with one last glance at the apartment list, she slipped inside.

*   *   *

Having come this far, she resolved at least to go and look at his front door.  Maybe the bell was broken, maybe he wasn’t in, or maybe he was too ill to answer the bell.  She had to know.

Predictably the lift was broken so she had to walk up the unlit staircase, more broken glass crunching underfoot. When she arrived at the door, it had peeling green paint and a small pane of reinforced frosted glass.

Iona bent over to read another grubby label similar to the one outside the front, which also read,“Arthur Terpynne.”

Just as she was wondering if this really could be
her
Arthur she noticed that the door was not fully closed.

“Arthur,”she called out,“are you alright?”

Silence.

“Are you in there?”

Iona pushed the door open and cautiously stepped inside.

Chapter Nineteen

St. Cyril

Father Pious grimaced and spat on to the floor as he left the crypt.  His fellow priests looked at him expectantly. “God is surely with us Fathers,”his smile was completely devoid of warmth,“it seems we have just hit the jackpot.”

“What is it now?”asked Father Thomas, carefully adjusting the bandages around his face.

“I have just been informed of the time and location of the biggest gathering of the undead we have ever heard of: hundreds of the devils under one roof.  I would say this was an historic occasion.” For a moment his smile seemed almost genuine,“I
would
say this was historic
if
our work were not so secret that no historians would ever write about it.”

“How are we going to deal with hundreds of them?” Father Thomas asked with a sigh. “There are only four of us and we are too tired and too injured for such a battle.”

Pious tutted. “Where is your faith young Father?  Does not Holy Scripture tell us how the boy David defeated the mighty giant Goliath with only a few pebbles and a sling?  Besides, I have a contact who can get us access to the chamber where the Parliament is held,
and
I’m calling for reinforcements.”

“How can we call for reinforcements if our work is top secret?” Ever since Father Thomas had joined the company he had asked questions.  However, since his injury his eagerness and awe had given way to bitterness and scepticism.

“We will call on the Third Order of St Cyril.  They normally work in Africa or Latin America, but I know they have a monastery on the south coast of England.  If the Abbot is agreeable they can send a delegation within two hours.”

“Who are the Order of St Cyril?”

“
Third
Order,”corrected Father Pious. “St. Cyril was a scholar and leader of the Church.  The first two Orders of St Cyril are monks and nuns who are teachers.  But there is another secret Order.  Where Cyril lived in fourth century Alexandria there was a pagan scholar, a woman, a rationalist called Hypatia.  Cyril had his followers kill her by slicing her with shells and sharpened flints.  Ever since there has been a militant Order of St Cyril, ready to take up arms against the enemies of the faith.  They are brutal, merciless and very effective.  They are our friends”

Chapter Twenty

Bleak House

“Arthur, are you home?”Iona called into the small hallway.

Her chunky boots left footprints in the thick dust on the bare floorboards as she cautiously entered the flat.

              She wrinkled her nose against the smell, so strong it hit her like walking nose-first into a brick wall.  It was like rotten flesh and every putrid thing she had ever smelt.  It was the kind of stench she could imagine never being able to get out of her nose.  It was a smell she could taste, like poison on her tongue; she tightened her lips to keep it out of her mouth.

She looked around.  On a table by the door there was an old-fashioned telephone and a newspaper with yesterday’s date, but even that was covered in what appeared to be several weeks’dust.

It looked like an uncared-for recreation of a flat in a museum, rather than a real home.  Something other than the smell was not right about this place. 

Cobwebs hung in every corner, sagging, heavily laden with dust.

“Arthur?”she called out again, though with less conviction than before.

Entering the kitchen she discovered the strangest sight yet.  The sink did not look like it had been used for years: it was filled with old leather-bound books, and all the worktops had been used as bookshelves.

There were newspaper articles pinned to all the cupboard doors.  When Iona looked closer she saw that several had pictures of people who looked very like Arthur.  Iona realised it couldn’t be him when she saw an article more than fifty years old that had a picture of a man (also‘Arthur’) who looked older than her Arthur did now. 

“Must be Arthur Senior,”Iona whispered aloud.

The pictures all had Arthur look-alikes; some young, some old.  Iona could not tell which were of the man she knew and which were of his relatives.

When Iona opened the cutlery drawer she found it full of documents and identity cards in a variety of names spanning over a hundred years.  There was a yellowing card spotted with mould that read,‘This is to certify that Arthur Turpin-Richards, Undertaker, has been registered under the National Registration Act 1915.’ There was‘Carte D’Identité’with a small photo of a man who looked exactly as Arthur did today, and at least a dozen passports.

Iona looked in the other cupboards and found a collection of old coins and bank notes, a hand-written pile of papers with the title page,“
Bleak House
by Charles Dickens”and two old-fashioned flint-lock pistols.

Chapter Twenty-One

Clock-watching

Tiggy Ward looked at the clock for the sixth time in five minutes.  It was six-thirty.  Iona had not been back for lunch, and now she was late for dinner.  Her mobile was switched off.

Tiggy wondered where Iona had been all day.  It was a safe bet that she had not been visiting museums and art galleries.  Her friends had been in school for most of the day.  Maybe she had gone to see one of them after school.

Tiggy stood biting her nails and watching the clock.  Another hour passed.  Once her last fingernail was as short as it could get she decided she would telephone one of Iona's friends.

Iona’s best friend had gone missing on a school trip to Ireland a year before.  Since then Iona did not seem to have made any close friendships; at least none that Tiggy knew about.

The only friend of her daughter’s she had met recently was a girl called‘Dusk,’who had come to dinner about a month ago.

Tiggy climbed the stairs to Iona’s bedroom and searched through the mess for her address book.

When she finally found it (under a pile of dirty laundry and crumpled Tarot cards) she sat on the dyed black sheets of her daughter’s bed and called Dusk’s number. 

Chapter Twenty-Two

Revelations

After ten minutes of exploring Arthur’s flat Iona finally located the source of the smell.  It was a door at the end of the hallway.

Her imagination ran riot, placing untold horrors behind the grubby door.  Excrement and decaying corpses filled her mind as her trembling hand turning the handle.

It was just a toilet.

The water had dried up in the bowl.  Iona realised that with nothing in the‘U-bend’the smell could rise from the sewers.  Iona experimentally pulled the flush chain.  It was rusted and it snapped, but not before allowing the toilet bowl to fill with water and the smell to ease a little.  However, the stench was so all-pervasive that it would take some time to clear completely.

With a relieved sigh Iona started back towards the main room to open some windows, and stopped dead in her tracks.

“Arthur!” Iona was startled to find Arthur sitting on the chair in the same room. 

“I’m…”Iona was not sure how to justify her presence, uninvited, in Arthur’s strange flat.  Then she remembered she was here because he had failed to turn up for his job, leaving her, a fourteen-year-old girl, to take his place.

“Where were you?”

“I was here all along.”

“No you weren’t, but that’s not what I meant.  Where were you today?  Your walk?”

Arthur sighed deeply and rubbed the back of his neck.  The movement of his collar allowed Iona another glimpse of the strange red mark around his throat that she had noticed the first time they’d met. “Oh yes, William will be cross.  But it doesn’t matter, it’s time for me to move on.”

Iona wanted to tell him that she had taken his walk, but she wanted to know what Arthur meant. “Move on?”

“Yes, dear girl, to pastures greener.” He looked at her with a sad smile. “Or at least less grey.”

“Where, I mean why?” Arthur was the most interesting person she had met in years, she couldn’t bear the thought of him leaving when they had only just met.

“At the risk of sounding melodramatic, it’s no longer safe for me.”

“Safe?  What’s going on?  Are those stolen antiques or something in your kitchen?” As Iona looked back out of the room she noticed that everything looked different from when she had first come in.  Without giving Arthur a chance to answer the last group of questions she noticed another difference in the room, so she asked quicky,“Where did all the dust go?”

“Dust we are, Iona,”sighed Arthur,“and to dust we return.”

“OK, this is too weird, you’re freaking me out now.  What is happening here?  Who are you, why have you got all that stuff in your kitchen and what was going on with your toilet?”

Arthur smiled, although his eyes were still sad. “Alright, dear girl, I’ll let you into my secret.”

He coughed before continuing, “I’m dead.”

Iona furrowed her brow. “What, dead as in
you’re in really big trouble
?”

“No, just dead, as in
no longer alive
.  I’m a ghost!”

Chapter Twenty-Three

An interrupted Reverie

The room was lit by large black candles that gave off a scent like old roses.  The curtains were of deep red velvet.

Arcane symbols were painted onto the black walls.

A pale hand turned the pages of a musty book.  Next to the book lay an object that looked very much like a human skull.

The silence of the room was broken by the sound of a bell ringing.

The pale hand clicked open a mobile phone. “Hello, Dusk here,”chirruped a friendly voice with an East London accent.

“Erm, hello Dusk,”a woman’s voice spoke hesitantly down the line,“this is Tiggy Ward, Iona’s mother.”

“Oh hello Mrs. Ward, how nice to hear from you!” Dusk replied enthusiastically,“Thanks for the dinner last month.”

“Erm, don’t mention it.  Dusk, I wondered if you had any idea where Iona is at the moment?”

“No, Mrs. Ward, I haven’t seen Iona since she was s…”Dusk stopped herself before she said‘suspended’she did not want to remind Tiggy of her daughter’s trouble at school. “I haven’t seen her for a couple of weeks.”

“Oh.” Tiggy’s voice was so faint it almost faded to nothing. “Well thank you anyway Dusk.”

Dusk picked up the fallen conversation. “I’m sure she’s OK Mrs. Ward.  She’s just not a great time-keeper.”

*   *   *

Tiggy was already lost in thought and did not respond.

“Well, Mrs. Ward,”Dusk continued,“I’ll let you know if she gets in touch OK?”