Kevin
had no wish to admit this particular fear to himself, however, for the admission of fear always cost him grief if it gained a foothold in his mind. He guarded systematically against such weaknesses, rooting them out like a personal medieval witch-hunt. Therefore, he picked himself up and stepped into the bathroom, where he could strip off his sodden pyjamas in favour of a clean set. He should shower. Hot water and up-to-date bathrooms were among the few modern amenities available at Pitterdown Manor. He twisted the taps, waited thirty seconds, and stepped beneath the rushing water.
His second howl of the evening attended the splash of water upon his shoulders, for it stung like a million needles zinging off his outraged flesh.
Kevin was used to numbness. He stoically endured injections and treatments without complaint. He was not used to his skin reacting to sensation like a cat to a squirt of water, and so he scrambled out of the shower and stood there shivering, dripping wet, trying to figure out what had gone wrong with the temperature settings. But the dials were in their customary positions. He had not touched them. Wafting his hand under the steady flow assured him that the temperature was at its normal, bearable level, and there was indeed nothing sinister about the shower. Taking a deep breath, he plunged in again.
Mind power will only take a person so far. As he could not believe anything had changed,
Kevin insisted on prolonging the torture for as long as he could tolerate it–and soon, the stinging settled down to a form of mild tingling akin to nerve endings being teased by a mild electric current. With a self-congratulatory gurgle, he switched off the water and applied the towel vigorously to his scrawny body. He might as well have been drawing sandpaper across his hypersensitive skin, for it felt as though the cloth were abrading him raw.
“Jiminy ruddy cricket!” he howled, dancing a jig with his towel. And then chastised himself, “Careful,
you old geezer.”
But a glance in the mirror
reassured him; only a pink blush from the hot water was apparent upon his milk-pale skin. He examined his jawline dubiously. A pimple he had dubbed ‘Mount Vesuvius’ had mysteriously vanished. In fact, his skin was looking positively–he skirted the word ‘healthy’–decent. Most pleasing.
Kevin
donned fresh pyjamas–a blue and white checked set–while resolutely disregarding the prickling of cotton all over his body. It must have something to do with this peculiar turn he was having. The bathroom floor felt cold, so he rushed to the bed and thrust his feet into his slippers.
Just then, he stopped to consider what he was doing. He lifted his left leg and put it down again. He waggled the right in the air. A few circles of the ankle were accompanied by a little hop.
Kevin glared at his feet.
“Oh no you don’t! Don’t you go all strange on me now
. I’ve endured quite enough nonsense for one day!”
L
ast time he had dreamed of the Unicorn something similarly bizarre had happened–this time, it was worse. Much worse. He had read somewhere that people sometimes started feeling better just before they died. Maybe this time, it was terminal.
“Too much activity will strain the old ticker,” he berated himself
.
But his feet
itched. He had to keep moving. Glancing at his wristwatch, he saw that it was three o’clock in the morning. Why, what better time to …
“No!” he whimpered at once. “Don’t even think about it, Jenkins. You’ve just spent three days holed up in bed and you’ll simply relapse. Father will have servants out on the prowl.” No one had heard
his shrieks, though. “You’ll need keys for the cellars. You don’t know what you’re looking for. For goodness’ sake! Most normal people are sleeping. It’s just a dream, Kevin. You’re crazy, three cards short of a full deck. That whole key business is just something Great-Grandmother concocted.” Twenty years after she died. In one obscure book amongst tens of thousands, which he would never complete reading in his lifetime. “Not that you’re going to live long, you sickly hospice case. Come now, the royal bed awaits. Everything will be fine in the morning.”
Except that his calves and thighs were twitching now too, making him
frantic to walk it off, so he crossed the room to pick up the pillow and return it to his bed. It was exhilarating to be able to accomplish this small task so easily. Just to feel the sensation of legs and limbs working together as they should and to know that the usual aches and pains were taking a vacation, was highly addictive. Perhaps he might consider walking to the end of the hallway and back again? But he would need to dress warmly. No need to catch a chill at this hour. He should test his sea legs while no one else was about.
Before reason could intrude or even raise a peep of protest,
Kevin hastily pulled on an old woollen jersey, seized
Locks Through the Ages
from the dresser, and bolted out of the door.
It was easier once he was moving.
Kevin wandered down the corridor, so consumed with the sensation of walking without discomfort that he weaved and swayed from side to side like a drunken partygoer. This was unprecedented! Thrilling! Magnificent! Had he not been so weak from years of enforced inactivity, he would have been capering along without a care in the world, but wasted muscles soon proved unequal to his enthusiasm and he was forced to rest on an antique wooden bench beneath the portrait of an obscure Jenkins relative.
“Ah, Master Jenkins!” he wheezed softly, “your end is nigh. The price must be paid for this astonishing vitality.” And he pushed himself to his feet. “Now, before you wake
n the entire household, you should just turn around …”
But a minute later, he was startled to find that he was descending the main staircase, step by effortless step. “Well, I say, perhaps a tour of the ground floor, then,” he said,
grasping the handrail like a zealot grasping a holy object. What a strange compulsion–he banished this thought. Kevin Jenkins was always in full command of his faculties. “You do not often make it this far, old bean. Strike whilst the iron is hot, eh?”
Tutting
like a demented squirrel, Kevin descended into the black depths of the grand hallway at the front entrance of Pitterdown Manor. The great doors, unattended by the butler for the first time in his memory, stood locked and barred against the perils of an inky countryside night.
He knew that the closest entrance to the cellar lay though the kitchens, but it was here too that he most feared the lurking presence of a servant, perhaps posted by Father to watch for the kind of misdeeds presaged by the advent of darkness–or so he imagined. Thus, it was with reluctant, mincing steps that he proceeded down the short hallway that led to the kitchens. My goodness, something smelled good. He licked his lips.
This evening’s roast dinner, no doubt, which he had been denied because he was adjudged too ill to stomach solid food. His mouth began to water.
Kevin
swallowed. “Perhaps a tiny detour,” he suggested tentatively. His stomach gurgled vigorously. “Just through the door; a peek into the kitchen. No doubt it will all be locked away and … oh dear, it couldn’t be in that dish? No right-minded servant would leave a roast out like that, would they?”
His legs
twinged again, so Kevin gave in and scurried over to the long table. It was battered and stained with years of use. Up went the silver lid and … bingo! Before he could stop himself, his hand closed on a slice of beef sitting already cut just alongside the roast. He stuffed it into his mouth and chewed blissfully.
“Good God
, that is perfectly marvellous!” he declared. “A smidgen surely would go unnoticed.” He must be starving from the last three days of illness, Kevin decided, for the meat was magnificent. Usually his appetite was more comparable to that of a mouse, and he was a very fussy eater in the main. At length, he wiped his mouth and belched delicately. “Now
that
was a meal fit for a king!”
Thus strengthened for the fray, a foray to the cellars now proved
an irresistible lure. Shortly he shoved open a heavy, ironbound door that opened on a black stairwell–the way to the cellars. Finding a lantern and matches on a high shelf within the entrance, he fiddled with the lighting before padding downstairs, and presently hesitated amidst the low-arched colonnades of an immense area, which stretched in every direction as far as the limited glow would allow him to see. A moment’s pause oriented him according to the maps he had pored over, and then he set off with a confidence that was barely paper-thin. There might be rats or spiders or a million other nasty creatures lurking here, infesting the dark corners.
Kevin
’s focus narrowed to blot out his misgivings, which lashed him with increasingly graphic images of his inevitable demise. These feelings wove around him like invisible, suffocating bonds, by degrees contracting about his chest until he began to pant and the familiar asthmatic tightness gripped his throat like a strangling noose. Fingers fumbled in his pocket. One, two puffs, deep into the clogged roots of his lungs–and an unpleasant fit of coughing ensued, but his weak hacking was lost amongst the stacked boxes in this section of the cellars. At length he hawked up a mustard-yellow gobbet of phlegm and deposited it behind a large crate stamped ‘Shelby & Sons Limited Fine Ales’ where he hoped it would not be found.
“Fine and dandy,” said he, shuffling on tiredly. “Not far now, and we can lay this idiocy to rest, eh
, Kevin? Bloody cough really knocks it out of you.”
But the way had narrowed, twisting and turning between stacked boxes and crates and barrels and
piles of wood and an old leather sofa and three dilapidated oak wardrobes and all the combined bric-a-brac of hundreds of years’ living in Pitterdown Manor. Dust lay thickly on every surface. His jersey and pyjama trousers were smudged in a dozen places already, and he had ripped a hole near his left elbow on a rusty nail–by good fortune it had not snagged the skin. The air was cool enough to feel moist against his face. Kevin lifted the lantern higher, feeling that he was a very lonely and small spot of light moving through a pitch-black wilderness. Distances on the map were deceptive down here. He ducked beneath a low beam, wriggled through the narrow space beyond, and abruptly found himself in a cramped nook almost overrun by a mountain of yellowing papers. Half-hidden amidst this pile was a large chest.
“Gosh, what have we here? You brass-bound beauty, what secrets lie within your wooden belly?”
He must stop speaking to himself. Twenty-seven was too young for the onset of senility!
It was just what he
might have imagined, a battered and travel-worn chest about five feet in length and three deep, constructed of thick, rough wood with solid brass bindings, hasps and locks. It must weigh a ton! The varnish had cracked and crumbled with age, giving the wood a moth-eaten appearance. Kevin shoved some of the papers aside, slipping and falling to his knees in his excitement. A small avalanche buried his feet, but after some further scrabbling and digging, he managed to lay the chest bare.
“Oh
crikey, a combination lock.”
His fingers tested the large, solid lock, but it refused to budge. It was of the type with a numbered dial on the front face, as large as his fist, and would evidently be removed by nothing less than the right code, or a stick of dynamite.
Kevin looked at
Locks Through the Ages
, and then at the lock itself, struck at once by a crazy idea.
“I wonder what Colette is thinking?”
What if the pages where the clues were located, also indicated the code numbers on the dial?
He settled the lantern on the chest and held the book to the light. “Hmm
, and we have … seven … thirty-four … fifty-six … 119 … and then 358 … let’s see now … 622. Last but not least … where’s that wretched page … 789.” His mouth pursed. “But the dial only goes up to ninety-nine! Perhaps the first digit of each number?”
He tried it forwards and backwards, without success. Then he tried the first two digits, the last two, and several other random combinations, but in this too he was frustrated. He was about to fling
Locks Through the Ages
at the chest in disgust, when another idea struck him. What if he re-sequenced the pages according to the way the clue read? And then took the first two digits, perhaps?
It worked backwards.
“Why, not so daft after all, Jenkins!” he grinned, unable to suppress a little caper of celebration. Well aware that he was being foolish, he removed the combination lock, placed the lantern on the floor, and grasped the lid of the chest with both hands. To a groan of protesting hinges and Kevin’s gasps of effort, the lid rose very slowly until he could prop it against the papers at the back. It only just balanced in that upright position, but stayed put even under the full force of his sceptical frown.
The interior was lined
with an emerald green fabric, which he eagerly tugged aside. Ah! He held up the lantern. He saw boxes of powders, phials of evil-looking liquids, a fur-lined cloak, a large and barbaric-looking cutlass, a dried and well-preserved rat which nearly made him scream, two vast, leather-bound volumes titled in a language unknown to him, an iron chalice, and a few instruments of unknown purpose. Here was a badly-worn leather glove, an old conical hat only a wizard or a comedian would have considered wearing, a bone-carved whistle … he delved in further. Where would one hide a key-ring? Ugh–human bones! Who was the owner of all this strange paraphernalia? And here was a quill and several inkpots! How old
was
this chest?