The Case of the Devil's Key by Mandrake Pan

Author:Mandrake Pan
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Humor, Ghost, Supernatural, Detective, Victorian, Humour, Adventure, Absurd, Surreal, Funny
Publisher: Mandrake Pan
Published: 2024-09-07T00:00:00+00:00

Wax Cylinder Twenty-Four

Found & Foiled

I COULDN’T TELL YE how long I were dead to the world. It might’ve been minutes, or it might’ve been hours. All I knew was I didn’t have a single dream, and when I finally came back to the land o’ the living I could feel me head were thumping as if it were being pounded like a dinner gong. I opened me eyes a crack, but the light what snuck through was like hot irons on me eyeballs, so I screwed ‘em up tight again. And that were the least o’ it. Me skin was raw, me limbs all ached, and even me teeth was throbbing something awful. That nun were right when she told me I’d be in for a rough ride. Although, I s’pose when all said and done, at least I were alive. Not that it felt much o’ a bonus as I tried to open me eyes for a second time. At least dead was peaceful and didn’t ache so much—as far as I knew from the conversations I’d had with undead nuisances and the like.

“Ah,” a voice said then. It sounded like it were coming from very far away, as if it were talking from inside a very deep bucket. “The urchin is waking too.”

That grating raspy voice sounded familiar to me n’ all, but in me swoony state, I couldn’t quite place it.

I blinked. I tried to move me hand to wipe some drool what was working me way down me chin, but as soon as I tried to lift me arm, I realised it were fastened tight. I had been tied up!

“W-what... what the blazes is going on?”

That were Woolfitt. His voice came from behind me. And as I winced against the light again, the scene about me soaked into view. I realised we were in Hagg’s Folly still, and I was sitting on a dining chair in the middle o’ Barnaby’s parlour. The only problem were, I was bound by a great length o’ rope that wound about me ankles and ‘round me middle and snaked around me wrists, knotted so tight I couldn’t feel me fingers no longer. I weren’t alone neither. To me left there was Barnaby in a similar fix, and to the right o’ me Kitty Montrose was also restrained like a chicken ready for the pot. They was also just emerging from their stupor.

“The... the Sisters of Agony...” I heard Kitty mumble as if she were still in the throes o’ the realisation just before she had been ambushed. “We have to... to get out...”

But then a new voice said from the shadows o’ the room, “I’m afraid it’s too late for that.”

I puckered me eyes to slits when I heard them words, helping me see a bit better. And I could just make out a tall figure standing in the shadows by the hearth. By the door, them three nuns who I now knew as the Sisters o’ Agony seemed to stand to attention at that, if this new speaker outranked ‘em.

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