Well, as I draw near completion of a second draft of the Unnatural History Museum for an interested US publisher, I thought it only fair to share a little glimpse into the depths of the UHM. History grad Polly Nightingale has taken up a post at one of London's most prestigious museums under the eccentric curator Dr Germader Speedwell and found herself a round-the-clock guardian of an incredible secret, which has transformed her understanding of reality.
Here, in a scene taken from my fourth (unpublished) Unnatural History Museum story, we join Polly in the depths of the museum which by a quirk of fate she now calls home ...
Vauncey
The darkness receded, and as the shadows melted away, Polly dreamt that a ripple of energy sighed over her as she lay sleeping, a tangible force which she perceived as an almost phosphorescent wave of light.
She murmured as she rose to consciousness, aware of a voice calling in the darkness – Speedwell … his former assistant - unsure if it were all still a dream.
She opened her eyes and sat upright, coming fully awake at last. The room seemed unnaturally cold and empty. It was not a dream: the voice was familiar - but the words made no sense.
‘Vauncey? Vauncey!’ Speedwell was calling anxiously, the sound seeming to move around the corridor outside, the bright glow of a lamp bobbing below the bottom of her door.
She pushed back the bedclothes and pulled on her dressing gown, rubbing at her tired eyes, still disturbed by the strange sensation of her waking dream.
‘Vauncey!’ Speedwell’s voice called from the far end of the basement corridor more sharply, and unlocking her door glanced out just in time to see her superior’s spectral form disappearing into one of the large finds rooms in a blaze of lamp-light.
She followed briskly, feeling disoriented, the air in the corridor still palpably chill and airless.
‘Speedwell?’ she frowned worriedly as she neared the doorway and he turned with a start, the oil lamp jerking dangerously in his hand.
‘I was writing,’ he said shakily, ‘then I heard a sound…felt a rush of air and then…’ He swallowed hard, the reality of what he had just witnessed clearly dawning on him for the first time.
‘What?’ she asked desperately, ‘what on earth just happened?’
‘Vauncey!’ he replied distractedly, ‘Vauncey is missing…’
‘What?’
He was making no sense and had now turned to survey the shadowy corners of the large room once more, with his lamp held out before him. She swallowed and stared, feeling horribly concerned. ‘Speedwell – what are you doing?’
‘Why I’m looking for Vauncey,’ he replied in a shaken tone.
She looked at him blankly.
‘Vauncey - my cat,’ he frowned as if it were self-explanatory, ‘he’s gone.’
Then the penny dropped. A strange feeling of dread came over her – a horror at what she did not want to have to believe. The intimidating wild cat which stood in a glass case on one of the cabinets in his office - a skilled piece of taxidermy frozen in the act of snarling viciously at a threat, its eyes wide and its back arched – had somehow managed to come back from the dead.
She turned away jogging briskly in the direction of his office, her mind beginning to race. Either he’d gone mad or was dreaming or…. She glanced in at his door, and in the light of the corridor could see that the glass case was empty, the large domed cover toppled on its side, circumnavigated by a long crack.
A creeping feeling of primal horror began to crawl over her as she stood staring at the empty case, her brain trying to wrestle with the implications.
No! This can’t be real!
But, try as she might to rationalize the facts of what she saw, there was no denying that the glass case was empty and that the long-dead wild cat was gone.
Speedwell entered the room behind her in a blaze of light, his troubled face unnaturally pale as he glanced first at the cat-less display and then at her.
‘Oh dear!’ He said anxiously, ‘oh dear, oh dear, this does not bode well…this does not bode well at all!’
Polly stared back at him for a moment, then pulling her dressing gown more tightly about her shoulders cast a nervous glance past him towards the shadows beyond the open door.
It did not bode well. Vauncey was gone.
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