Candleman by Glenn Dakin

Pulled out a roll of notes in front of us all, and offered to buy the whole lot. Grandad was well chuffed. “I’m sitting on a gold mine,” he says. I was pleased, cause we never had much money. Hoped he might buy me some lead soldiers.
    ‘But Grandad wouldn’t sell. He said the Wickland stuff had got so rare the price could only go up and up. The posh bloke was furious. Told us he was from some kind of important charity. Was Grandad going to stand in the way of vital charity work? Well, Grandad told him to sling his hook.
    ‘About a month after that we had a funny letter from the government. Department of Toxicology or something. It said all picture magazines from a certain period had accidentally been printed with toxic ink. Dangerously poisonous. It said men would be calling around to check.
    ‘Well, just a day later, these blokes forced their way in. Couple of brutes and a toff in a hat and scarf lurking behind them, directing operations.
    ‘Grandad was furious. “It’s you, isn’t it?” he said to the posh geezer looking through all his stuff. “You’re that bloke who was here before!” Then one of the brutes knocked Grandad to the floor. I didn’t understand it. I was only a nipper and I burst into tears. They found his precious collection and took it away.
    ‘“You’re just after my Candle Man books!” Grandad shouts. This made the posh gent come back for a moment. “That name is unlucky,” he says. “Breathe it again, and it’ll be your last breath.”
    ‘Grandad died not long after. Poison from them old magazines, a doctor came and told us. Said Grandad should have given them up years before.’ Foley fell silent. Time seemed to slow down as Theo waited for the old man to continue. Suddenly Foley leant forwards, becoming more conspiratorial.
    ‘Before Grandad died, he told me the whole truth. One evening he was sitting up in bed as if he was going to get better. He called me in, just for a chat like. But when I shut the door he looked all serious. Said there were important things that had to be remembered. He said the reason he had hung on to them Candle Man stories was because they were part of his life – they were all true!
    ‘Grandad said he had been in one of the gangs when he was younger. He had guarded some prisoner, run some guns, delivered some livestock for the Dodo. That’s right – all them grisly characters was
real.’
    ‘Wait!’ Chloe stepped lightly to the window and twitched the curtain back. There was nothing outside but the fog and the glare of traffic crawling by in the street.
    Don’t stop him now,
thought Theo. With every word he could feel his destiny drawing closer. He had always guessed, throughout his long, dreary childhood at Empire Hall, that life in the outside world could never be as dull and matter-of-fact as his guardians had led him to believe. Foley was right – the things that people said were just stories could all turn out to be true.
    Chloe turned away from the window, frowning. ‘Ignore me,’ she muttered. ‘I’m getting paranoid.’
    ‘I didn’t hear nothing,’ Foley said, looking around for the bottle. But Chloe didn’t give him any more. ‘We’re two floors up anyway.’
    ‘I know,’ said Chloe quietly. ‘Go on.’
    Theo noticed that Chloe had stopped baiting the old man. It seemed Foley had been touched by the bad luck too. His grandad had obviously been robbed of his Candle Man books by the Society of Good Works, then killed to keep him quiet. As Foley continued his tale, Theo began to feel they were no longer speaking as enemies. They were falling under the same shadow – all in it together.
    ‘In those days there were more blokes around who knew this stuff,’ said Foley, ‘men who had been through the
war,
met the bigwigs. My grandad had it confirmed from one or two lads who had seen it first-hand. They all lived in terror of Lord Wickland. His name alone was worth more than a hundred men to the police. He wasn’t just