Return of the Emerald Skull by Paul Stewart Read Free Book Online Page A

so pleased with my progress that she began to teach me about the power of the mind and yinchido techniques to enhance it. It was fascinating stuff and I was looking forward to an enlightening autumn with my beautiful guide.
    Unfortunately, that was not to be. Dark forces were at work, an ancient evil was spreading, and I – for all my yinchido training – didn't see it coming.
    Turning the corner into Grevy Lane onemorning late that summer, I walked into a shambling character hurrying in the opposite direction. He looked into my eyes, an expression of abject terror on his face, like a rat in a tuppenny trap.
    ‘It's you!’ I gasped.

t was none other than the Major, the amiable gatekeeper from Grassington Hall — though until I'd looked into his eyes, I hadn't recognized him, so dramatically had he changed.
    He was unwashed, dishevelled and as pungent as a tomcat, and there were deep scratches on his head and hands. His once neat side-whiskers were matted and filthy, his waxed moustache now bristled like a scullery maid's broom, while his face was so haggard it looked as if he hadn't slept for a year. There were buttons missing from his jacket, and a tear in one of the knees of hisbreeches, the frayed tatters of cloth fringed with dried blood where he'd fallen and cut his leg.
    ‘Little horrors, little horrors, little horrors …’ he was muttering to himself as he brushed against my shoulder, and he would have passed me by if I hadn't grabbed the sleeve of his jacket with an outstretched arm.
    ‘You're the Major, from Grassington Hall, aren't you?’ I asked him.
    At the sound of my words, the poor man froze. He turned his head slowly towards me, until his terrified gaze was fixed on my own eyes. His gaunt face went as white as a pastry-cook's apron and the right side of his mouth began to twitch involuntarily.
    ‘The gatekeeper,’ I persisted. ‘At Grassington Hall?’
    The man looked stricken. He started back, fine beads of sweat on his forehead. ‘Y-you're not …’ he stammered. ‘You're not one ofthem, are you?’ His voice was low, tremulous, and so full of dread you'd have thought he'd just seen a ghost.
    ‘Them?’ I said.
    ‘I'm not going back there.’ He trembled, his eyes taking on a hunted, panic-stricken look. ‘Never, you hear me? Never …’ His voice was becoming hysterical. ‘And they can't make me …’
    With those words, he tore my hand from his sleeve and pushed past me. Out of the alley he clattered, his hobnail boots skidding on the cobbles as he ran, before darting out across the road – straight into the path of an oncoming coach-and-four which, at that exact moment, came thundering round the corner.
    ‘Watch out!’ I bellowed.
    But too late. A moment later, there was a thud, a crunch and an agonized scream, followed by panicked whinnying, and the sound of the coachman cracking his whipand bellowing for his rearing horses to calm down.
    ‘Easy there!
Easy!
’
    The stamping of hooves and rattle of the iron wheels came to an abrupt standstill. I looked across the pavement, my heart in my mouth, to see the gatekeeper lying motionless in the gutter, one arm twisted behind his head, his legs broken and crumpled beneath him, and a line of blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. Passers-by rushed over to see what could be done, but as I joined them, I already knew it was hopeless.
    I looked down into the gatekeeper's terror-filled eyes; his lips twitched as he struggled to speak.
    ‘Evil … Terrible evil …’ he rasped. ‘Beware …’
    His head jerked forward urgently, before falling to one side, and his eyes glazed over into a sightless stare as he breathed his last.
    A sizeable crowd had now gathered aroundthe stricken gatekeeper, gawping and chattering. The coachman had climbed down from his seat and was telling anyone who would listen the same thing, over and over.
    ‘He just ran out in front of me. Just ran out, he did. There was nothing I could do. He just ran out