Wild Boy and the Black Terror Read Free Page A

pushed the door wider, revealing a room that might once have been elegant but was now musty and dusty and falling apart. Suits of armour stood along a wall, splotched with rust and clothed with cobwebs. There were a grandfather clock, a grand piano and a fire that looked like it hadn’t brought warmth or light to the room in decades.
    Otherwise the room was empty.
    The Gentlemen had vanished.
    Wild Boy looked at Clarissa, and his smile grew wider. Just because there were no doors didn’t mean there were
really
no doors.
    “Your turn,” Clarissa said.
    He began a slow walk around the room. His heart settled and his breaths deepened, rustling the hair on his chin. His eyes began to move, taking in every inch of the wood-panelled walls, the faded carpet, the clock and the armoured knights.
    A thrill ran through the hair on his back, like a crackle of electricity. It was that feeling he got when he stopped looking and started
seeing
.
    This was what
he
did best.
    For most of his life, Wild Boy had been locked up alone, first in the workhouse and then the freak show, watching the world through gaps in curtains or cracks in caravan walls. He’d studied people, wishing he had their lives. He learned to read their stories from tiny details he spotted on their faces or clothes. Hardly anyone passed without some scar or stain or tear or tick that revealed who they were or where they were going. His eyes homed in on each clue, and his mind instinctively processed its meaning. Magic happened in his head.
    Clarissa leaned against one of the wall panels, pretending to look bored. “Get on with it then,” she said.
    Wild Boy moved faster around the room. He pressed a palm against one panel, leaned in and smelled another. He stepped up to one of the suits of armour, ran a hairy fingertip over its metal arm and then peered into its open visor.
    “You found it yet?” Clarissa said.
    “Eh?”
    “The secret door. You found one yet?”
    “Oh. No.”
    “What? You’re meant to be a great detective!”
    “No, I mean I didn’t find
one
. Found four.”
    He didn’t want to show off, but he couldn’t help it. Back at the fairground he’d kept his detective skills a secret, in case they made him even more of a freak. Now they made him proud.
    “The first hidden door is easy,” he said. “That wall panel there opens. See the carpet? It’s worn down where people have climbed through. And there are small scratches on the panel next to it, where it slides open.”
    “I don’t see any scratches.”
    “They’re
very
small.”
    “So how does it open?”
    Wild Boy rushed to one of the suits of armour. “See this feller? Why’s his face mask thing up when all the others got theirs down?”
    Rising to tiptoes, he slid the visor down.
    A hollow
thunk
came from inside one of the walls, then the rattle and jangle of a chain somewhere in the ceiling. The wooden panel slid sideways. A stale breeze rustled from the darkness beyond. The first secret door.
    Clarissa’s eyes lit up. Wild Boy knew she loved watching him use his skills as much as he enjoyed her acrobatics. But she would never show it.
    “All right,” she said. “What clue shows a second door?”
    “Something we can hear.”
    “I can’t hear nothing.”
    “Exactly. This grandfather clock. Why ain’t it ticking?”
    “Ain’t been wound.”
    “No. See these wax drops on the floor? They’re about five hours old, I’d say. Someone’s been here today, right by this clock. And look at the hands. Stopped exactly on midnight. Funny, that. The hour hand’s all rusted, hasn’t moved in months. But the minute hand is nice and shiny.”
    He turned the minute hand a full circle, round and back to midnight.
    Another
thunk
. Another jangle.
    He stepped away as the clock scraped forward. Behind it was a narrow entrance to a tunnel.
    “Brilliant!” Clarissa said. “I mean … what about the third door?”
    “That’s the fireplace. Turns in the middle. There’s frost on the