A Very Peculiar Plague Read Free Page B

Bogling could be dangerous. Jem understood that. He’d almost been eaten by a bogle, once. And although Alfred had saved him the last time, there was no guarantee that the bogler would be able to do it again.
    For all he knew, he could be making the biggest mistake of his life . . .

3

A CELLAR-BOGLE
    The Viaduct Tavern was all gilt and glass and polished wood. Roaring voices filled the taproom. Gas-jets flared in a haze of smoke, keeping the dismal afternoon at bay. The air smelled of sweat and cheap spirits.
    Things were very different downstairs, though. Jem knew at once that the basement was much older than the house above. Slimy stains covered the walls. Iron bars were pitted with rust. There was black grime all over the vaulted brick ceiling.
    Gloomily surveying all the kegs and barrels stacked near the bottom of the staircase, Alfred said, ‘This is bigger’n I expected.’
    ‘Half a-dozen rooms, at least,’ Mabel confirmed, handing Jem her paraffin lamp. ‘You’ll not be needing me, will you? I only ask as it’s busy, and by rights I should be at the bar.’
    Alfred grunted. ‘D’you know where Florry might have gone?’ he queried.
    Mabel shook her head. Then she flapped her hand at one shadowy doorway. ‘She were sent to fetch sherry, which we keep in that room, with the port wine. But there’s coal down here, and lye, and sand . . . ain’t no saying where she might have gone, if prompted to.’
    ‘Mmph,’ said Alfred. Taking his nod as a kind of signal, the barmaid abruptly turned tail and hurried back upstairs. Alfred let her go without comment. He gazed around, sniffed the air, sighed and told Jem, ‘Don’t you wander off, now. Stay close to me.’
    ‘I’ll do that,’ Jem assured him.
    Together they began to explore the maze of cellars, which weren’t as well stocked as they could have been. One room was full of coal. Another contained buckets of sand, bags of potatoes and crates of glass bottles. But there was also a lot of empty space, dotted here and there with shelves, sinks, alcoves, iron-barred screens and dark, mysterious holes.
    ‘Looks just like a prison, don’t it?’ Jem remarked under his breath. When very young, he had once visited his uncle in a debtor’s prison – before his mother’s death had left him homeless – and he had never forgotten the clang of metal doors swinging shut. The memory made his heart sink. He’d spent years worrying that one day, when his past crimes caught up with him, he would end up locked in a dank, musty prison cell.
    ‘You’d pay fourpence a night for a crib this dry, down near the docks,’ he joked, in an effort to shake off a sudden, overwhelming sense of gloom and dread. ‘Mebbe I should ask the landlord if he’d care to take in a lodger – cheap, like, on account o’ the bogle . . .’
    ‘Shhh!’ Alfred had stopped on a threshold. Peering past him, Jem saw that the room beyond was small and low and murky. There was an assortment of junk stacked in one corner: a broken chair, a cracked coalscuttle, a bent poker, a length of pipe.
    In the floor was an iron grate, set over a drain.
    Alfred hissed when he spotted this grate. He pulled Jem back from the door and hustled him in the opposite direction, growling, ‘That’s the one.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘She’ll have met her end in there, poor lass.’ Having retired to a safe distance, Alfred dropped his sack and rummaged through it. ‘Bogles like drains,’ he said quietly.
    ‘But that drain’s so small,’ Jem protested. ‘And there ain’t nothing in the room – not to speak of. Why would she want to go in there?’
    Alfred shrugged. ‘To drink a sly nip? Or eat a stolen crust?’
    ‘But—’
    ‘As to the size o’ the drain, never think any hole is too small for a bogle. You never know where a drain might lead.’ Alfred’s knees cracked as he rose again. He held a small leather bag in one hand and his spear in the other. ‘Can you sing?’ he asked. ‘Whistling ain’t