The Lunatic's Curse

  ‘That looks like part of a warder’s uniform,’ said Rex, but Hildred didn’t answer. She took one final right turn and they found themselves in a small chamber where the tunnel had widened. On the floor propped against the opposite wall was a bleached skull.

  They looked at each other with mounting excitement. ‘My tattoo is in the shape of a skull,’ said Rex quietly.

  Hildred picked it up and examined it. ‘It’s just a skull,’ she said.

  ‘Maybe it’s some sort of marker,’ suggested Rex. ‘Maybe there’s something buried here.’

  Feverishly they both began to dig. The earth came up easily, damp as it was, and before too long Hildred’s broken nails scratched across something that wasn’t sand or grit or dirt.

  It was the front of a large brown book.

  ‘It’s one of those record books,’ said Rex. ‘Like the ones they burned and you found. But why would my father hide a record book?’

  42

  Too Much Information . . .

  Rex sat beside Hildred with the lantern while she dusted off the cover.

  ‘Hold the light closer,’ she said, and began to turn the pages. ‘It’s just like the others,’ she said, ‘with lists of the patients and their cures . . .’

  ‘Look for Ambrose Grammaticus,’ said Rex, and he watched as Hildred ran her fingers up and down the columns on each page. Then her face visibly paled.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Rex anxiously. ‘Have you found my father? What does it say?’

  ‘It’s not your father, Rex,’ she said slowly. She pointed halfway down the column and there, written in black ink, with their dates of admission, as clear as day, were three names: Ida Runcible, Walter Freakley and Gerulphus Godsacre.

  ‘Fingerknots!’ exclaimed Hildred. ‘They were admitted over a decade ago!’

  Rex sat in stunned silence. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said eventually. ‘How can they be patients?’

  ‘There can only be one explanation,’ said Hildred. Rex could see fear in her eyes. ‘All three of them are lunatics.’

  ‘Lunatics? But they can’t be. They work here.’

  ‘Who says? We’ve only ever had their word for it. Listen to this.’ Hildred had flicked over the page and began to read aloud. ‘Ida Runcible: Ida worked as a cook for a wealthy Opum Oppidulum family. After some months she took against her employers for reasons unknown, and poisoned the whole family with toxic fish, Salpa salpa, a type of noxious bream found in Lake Beluarum. In small amounts it induces temporary insanity, in larger amounts certain death. When questioned she said the tea leaves told her to do it. Prognosis: Not expected to be cured.’

  ‘Toxic fish?’ said Rex, thinking of the fish she had been cooking the other day. ‘What about Walter Freakley?’

  Further down the page Hildred came to his entry. ‘Walter Freakley: after being rejected for a job on the river Foedus in Urbs Umida, Walter attacked and killed a boatman and commandeered his boat. He posed as a ferryman for nearly two weeks, robbing his passengers and turning them into the water. When questioned he said that he was the reincarnation of Charon, ferryman of the dead, and that he believed the Foedus to be the river Styx, the mythical river between the real world and that of the dead. Prognosis: Not expected to be cured.’

  ‘And here’s Gerulphus. He was admitted before the other two.’

  Rex listened incredulously. ‘Oh my, this is truly dreadful! I can’t believe it! They’re all mad.’

  ‘It must have been when the lunatics escaped recently,’ said Hildred, thinking quickly. ‘For some reason the three of them stayed behind.’

  ‘Well, Freakley likes boats, so he became the ferryman. But what happened to the real ferryman?’ Hildred and Rex exchanged glances. Knowing what they now knew about Walter, they had a good idea. ‘That explains why he couldn’t row straight!’ said Rex grimly.

  ‘And Ida Runcible was a cook before she went mad,’ said Hildred. ‘Remember, she complained about not having any tea. It was because she was under lock and key that Chapelizod didn’t allow them to have tea. It was bread and water. As for Gerulphus . . .’

  ‘We’re lucky to be alive,’ said Rex, shaking his head. ‘We’ve been living side by side with crazed murderers!’

  Hildred frowned. ‘But this still doesn’t explain why your father hid the book.’

  ‘Let me see,’ said Rex, and he took the book and flicked on through the pages. ‘It only covers the first six months of that year,’ he said. There wouldn’t be anything about my father.’

  ‘There’s something at the end,’ said Hildred, and she pulled a piece of newspaper out from between the last two pages. ‘It’s an old article from the Hebdomadal. It’s about another breakout. Hold up the light.’

  She began to read.

  BREAKOUT AT DROPROCK ASYLUM

  It is now a week since three dangerous lunatics escaped from Droprock Asylum. The superintendent and the head warder are missing, presumed dead, and still there is no trace of the escapees. By now they have probably changed their names and tried to alter their appearances but each has a distinctive feature which the mayor and the constables hope will aid in their capture. We at the Hebdomadal have been asked to warn the public not to approach these people as they are a danger both to themselves and to others and will stop at nothing in their bid for freedom.

  The descriptions of the three are as follows:

  Gerulphus Godsacre:

  A huge man, grossly overweight, sent to the asylum by his parents who claimed that he was

  ‘Gerulphus?’ interrupted Rex. ‘If he escaped then why is he still here?’

  Hildred shook her head. ‘I don’t know. And he’s not fat!’ She read on.

  Meredith Whipspittle:

  Ms Whipspittle is described as an uncommonly pretty young woman, but do not be fooled: she is a devil in disguise. Her mind is incurably disturbed. She was incarcerated in the asylum after the suspicious deaths of her two husbands. She claims to be at least ten years younger than she is. Although she has the social skills to pass as a normal member of society, indeed she has the ability to mix in all circles, she can be identified by one distinctive feature: the little finger on her right hand is permanently rigid and cannot be bent.

  Claude Boughton:

  Thought to be the ring-leader, and an extremely persuasive character, Mr Boughton is afflicted by a number of conditions. He is certainly delusional: he likes to refer to himself as Doctor although he has no medical qualifications at all. He also claims to be able to control minds. He suffers from Tetragonocephalitis and exhibits the classic head shape of the disease, namely an overtly square jaw and skull, caused when the brain swells in all directions and distorts the cranium.

  ‘Stop!’ said Rex. ‘This is even worse than I thought.’

  Hildred stopped reading.

  ‘Meredith and Claude, they’re Acantha and Tibor, it has to be. The square head, the stiff finger. They’ve changed their names but they were in here too!’

  ‘There’s more,’ said Hildred. ‘Far from being a healer, Claude Boughton is actually a convicted murderer. He was committed to the asylum after the remains of his parents were found buried under the floorboards of his house. Both he and Meredith Whipspittle were also accused (but not convicted) of being active An-dro-phagues.’

  Hildred stumbled slightly over the last word.

  ‘An-dro-phagues?’ repeated Rex. ‘Now why does that word seem familiar?’

  ‘Say it again,’ said Hildred. ‘Slowly.’

  Rex repeated it twice. ‘Androphague, Andrew Phague—’

  ‘Andrew Faye,’ finished Hildred.

  Rex was stunned into silence.

  ‘It’s not the Society of Andrew Faye,’ said Hildred. ‘It’s the Society of Androphagues.’

  ‘But what is an Androphague?’

  Hildred looked thoughtful. ‘When I was with the Panopticon—’

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ said Rex, ‘did you have an Androphague? What did he do?’

&nb
sp; Hildred didn’t seem to hear, or else she ignored his interruption, and continued. ‘Mr Ephcott taught me many things. A little Latin, a little Greek, philosophy, logic –’ that explains so much, thought Rex – ‘I believe that this word could have its origins in Greek. Andros means “man” and phagein is the verb “to eat”.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Rex. ‘Then it means “a man who eats?”’

  ‘No,’ said Hildred softly. ‘It means “man-eater”.’

  ‘Man-eater?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Rex saw that the book was shaking in Hildred’s hands. He looked into her eyes. Time seemed to slow. He finally understood.

  ‘Rex,’ said Hildred softly. ‘Tibor and Acantha were accused of being cannibals. They thought he ate his parents.’

  Rex staggered backwards. He felt as if his heart had stopped, as if he had been punched in the stomach, as if something had been torn out of him. Wordlessly he dug deep into his pocket. ‘I think it was these trousers,’ he muttered. He pulled out his hand and held up a small gold object.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Hildred.

  ‘It’s a gold tooth,’ said Rex. ‘But not from a fish. I think it’s Chapelizod’s.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘It’s initialled.’ And indeed it was, quite clearly: ‘C.C.’

  Hildred examined the small object carefully. ‘But where did you get it?’

  ‘I found it in the bottom of the cooking pot at Acantha’s.’

  ‘Now I don’t understand,’ said Hildred.

  Rex’s eye welled up with tears. ‘Oh, Hildred,’ he said, ‘I think those monsters ate Cadmus Chapelizod.’

  Hildred started shaking her head. ‘But, Rex, if Acantha was a cannibal, what does that mean about—’

  ‘My father? You tell me,’ he said, and he began to laugh hysterically.

  ‘Calm down,’ said Hildred firmly, trying to hide her own fear. ‘This can’t be true. Your father was a good man taken in by a very wicked woman.’

  Rex stopped laughing but he was far from calm. ‘I can see it now,’ he said with an odd smile. ‘Cecil Notwithstanding warned Father about Chapelizod, that’s why he told Acantha not to see him any more, but Acantha refused. And then she fed him the poisonous fish – she said it was bream – just enough to send him mad. She might even have got the idea from Mrs Runcible. They were in the asylum at the same time. I remember now, she didn’t eat hers. It was perfect. Chapelizod, the superintendent of the asylum, declares him insane; Stradigund, the helpful solicitor, does the legal paperwork. And of course, they’re both cannibals too. As for that pest controller, it wasn’t meat he was delivering, it was people.’

  ‘Well, that is meat, I suppose,’ said Hildred, in such a state of shock she was hardly aware of what she was saying. ‘Oh Lord, do you suppose he’s the one taking the beggars?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Rex grimly. ‘That’s exactly it. Acantha laughed about it, she called them pests, but that’s who they were eating. And then somehow the pest controller must have caught Chapelizod and he ended up in the pot.’

  They were both silent as the deeply disturbing revelations sank in.

  ‘But your father,’ said Hildred carefully. ‘When he came back that night, to warn you, to get you away from her. He can’t have been a can— one.’

  Rex was increasingly agitated. ‘Acantha said that he liked her cooking.’

  ‘That doesn’t prove anything,’ said Hildred hesitantly. ‘He saved you. Surely that’s what’s important?’

  ‘But he couldn’t save himself,’ said Rex. He turned to Hildred. His face was as stone, his voice hoarse, like gravel.

  ‘Do you want to know what really happened to his hand? Do you?’

  ‘Rex, you’re scaring me,’ said Hildred as she looked into his burning eyes.

  ‘He didn’t lose it in an engineering accident.’

  ‘Then what?’ she asked in a shaky voice.

  Rex looked directly at her and with his shorn head and his wild eyes he looked more like a madman than anyone else in the asylum. He opened his mouth and hissed through gritted teeth, ‘He ate it, Hildred. My father ate his own hand!’

  And then he collapsed in a quivering heap on the floor.

  43

  Bad Timing

  Rex was beyond consolation for a long time. All the while Hildred sat beside him, her arms around his shoulders. She could feel his chest heaving and hiccupping. She stroked his head, the stubble from the shorn part rough against her palm, and murmured softly to calm him. After a while his sobbing subsided and he managed to speak.

  ‘It was dreadful,’ he whispered. The lantern was burning low by now and Hildred stared hard at his lips to make out what he was saying.

  ‘You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,’ she said. ‘I can see that it is upsetting.’ But the truth was she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

  ‘No, I have to. It’s been a burden to me, a terrible weight. You see, when Father went mad he took a sword from the suit of armour and . . . and he chopped off his hand. It was utterly ghastly . . . the noise, the blood. Then he screamed at Acantha, “Is this what you want?” and before we could stop him he took his hand and he began to tear at it with his teeth. He was like an animal. But she just sat and laughed. The housekeeper and the bootboy and the butler came in and they grabbed him. Later, when I told him I didn’t believe he was insane, he said that his hook was proof of his madness.’

  ‘Poor, poor man,’ said Hildred. ‘It must have been the toxic fish. Oh, Acantha is pure evil!’

  ‘That’s why he wouldn’t take me with him. Acantha had already fed him that . . . meat. He used to go to the dinners with Chapelizod and Stradigund. He said it was a disease. I think he was afraid he might eat me too,’ said Rex. He wiped his face and stood up. ‘Hildred,’ he said grimly, ‘what if I am one too? A cannibal?’

  Hildred got to her feet, shaking her head. ‘How can you be, Rex? You’ve never eaten a . . . person . . . have you?’

  He looked down at the gold tooth. ‘I ate some of Chapelizod, just a smidgeon, I swear.’

  Hildred hoped that Rex couldn’t see on her face the revulsion that was churning her up inside. ‘Is that all?’ She laughed lightly, to comfort him, to comfort herself. ‘It’s no worse than chewing your fingernail.’ Then her logical nature took over. ‘Look,’ she said, pointing at the book, ‘you’ve got the proof we need now, about Acantha and the others, Chapelizod and Stradigund. Let’s just get out of here. We’ll take the boat.’

  Wordlessly and heartsore the solemn pair hurried back through the maze, taking great care to reverse exactly the right and left turns they had taken on the way, until at last they reached the panel that led into the torture chamber.

  ‘We’ll just sneak away,’ said Hildred. ‘In less than an hour we’ll be in Opum Oppidulum and we can take the book to Cecil Notwithstanding. He’ll know what to do.’

  She pushed on the panel and it opened noiselessly. They stepped into the torture chamber . . . and walked straight into Gerulphus and Tibor.

  Now it has to be said that it was very bad luck indeed that Rex and Hildred bumped into Tibor and Gerulphus at that moment. A few minutes later and they would have been gone.

  You see, Gerulphus, by habit, had come down to the torture chamber earlier and, seeing the padlock on the ground, he had resolved to find out exactly who was responsible. He went straight to Tibor who denied everything but suspected immediately that Rex and Hildred were involved. With the launch of the Indagator so close he could not ignore the fact that they might be up to something

  ‘I don’t quite trust that girl,’ he confided to Gerulphus. ‘There’s something distinctly odd about her.’

  ‘I believe it might be in your interest to find out what they are doing,’ suggested Gerulphus cryptically.

  So in a rare moment of collaboration Tibor and Gerulphus went to the torture chamber. As a previous inmate of the asylum, Tibor was well aware of both the torture chamber and the seco
nd entrance to the catacombs.

  ‘The boy’s father was an engineer, you know,’ said Tibor thoughtfully. ‘It would not surprise me if he can break a padlock.’ He frowned and looked at Gerulphus. ‘You really do remind me very much of the Gerulphus I used to know,’ he said. ‘But he was a much larger fellow.’

  ‘People change, Dr Velhildegildus,’ replied Gerulphus. And it was at that exact moment, just as a flicker of understanding began to cross Tibor’s face, that Rex and Hildred chose to appear. All four stood in surprised silence.

  Gerulphus spoke first. ‘That’s one of the asylum record books,’ he said slowly, looking at the volume Rex was clutching tightly.

  Tibor frowned. Certain things were suddenly beginning to become crystal clear. He looked at Gerulphus, a thin, etiolated man, and began to wonder, to imagine how he might be with a little more flesh on his bones. He remembered the piles of ash around the place. ‘I thought you said the lunatics burned things like that.’

  ‘It looks like one got away,’ said Gerulphus.

  Rex watched with mounting fear as Tibor closed the cell door and locked it from the inside. He nodded to Gerulphus and in one swift simultaneous movement each man grabbed a child. Tibor took Rex and Gerulphus took Hildred and it was merely a matter of moments before they found themselves immobilized on the tables, strapped down tightly at their ankles and cuffed at the wrists.

  Gerulphus had the book and Tibor stood at the end of the table with his arms folded across his chest.

  ‘Dear, dear,’ he chided. ‘What a shame it has come to this. And everything was going so well. Didn’t I tell you not to pry, Rex? Why did you not heed my warning? Have you read the book? No need to answer, I can find out. After all, I have my Lodestone.’ He pulled it from his waistcoat pocket and swung it over Rex’s face teasingly. Rex gritted his teeth but his heart sank. He knew his weaknesses. He could not fight this. Gerulphus grinned – an odd sight.

  ‘You, young Rex, you’re no fun,’ said Tibor. ‘I know you can’t hold your tongue, but, Hildred, let’s try it on you.’