The Book of Dead Days by Marcus Sedgwick Page B

disbelief.
    “No,” said Valerian, “but please concentrate.”
    “Where is he?” asked Willow, dragging her gaze away from the magical lights.
    “We must search the house. Something is wrong.”
    Valerian winced as he spoke.
    “Damn this arm!” he moaned. He rummaged in his deep left-hand pocket and pulled out another of the small bottles. It was at least his third, and pulling the cork with his teeth, he finished it off.
    “Disgusting!” He spat, setting the bottle down on Kepler’s desk. “You start at the top and work down, room by room. If you see any more of those,”-he glanced toward the bottle-“bring them with you.”
    Willow didn’t move. “Valerian?”
    “What is it?”
    “Do I have to go upstairs by myself?”
    “Yes. You’ll be quicker than me. Don’t tell me you’re getting scared like Boy? Go. I’ll be down here.”
    He turned to the desk and began to open drawers and flip through books. She saw him look with interest at a piece of paper covered in writing and diagrams, which he folded roughly with one hand and put in his pocket. Then he went on rummaging.
    Willow didn’t understand how that would help find Kepler, and wondered who was really the more scared of what lay upstairs. But she turned and, with her heart in her mouth, set off for the upper floors.

14
    Willow thought about using the electrical light system, but it was probably dangerous. Seeing that Valerian was poring intently over papers at Kepler’s desk, she lit the stub of the candle from the cemetery expedition with a match she had found beside the fireplace.
    She reached out a shaking hand to the first door she came to. Taking a deep breath, she turned the knob and pushed the door gently, and waited. Nothing. Holding the candle out in front of her she moved slowly into the room. A bedroom. There was no one there, nothing strange.
    As she went through room after room and found nothing extraordinary in any of them, she began to calm down. This was just a normal house, the home of an educated man, with normal things in every room. Only the strange electrical switches on the wall showed that it was anything other than totally commonplace. She noted that the bed was made in what she assumed was the main bedroom, with clothes in neat piles on boxes, and everyday things sitting just where they should be.
    There was no sign of violence, or robbery, or even untidiness anywhere.
    Mystified, she went back to the study to find Valerian.
    He was not there.
    She swung around as if she was about to be attacked from behind at any moment.
    No one there.
    “Valerian! Valerian, where are you?”
    She noticed a small door standing open in the far wall of the study. It was a secret door; she could see that it was made to look like part of the wooden paneling of the wall when it was shut.
    Had it been open when they first came in? She crept across the room, trying not to make a sound.
    Valerian,
she thought angrily,
where are you?
    When she reached the small doorway she was not surprised to see a tiny flight of steps that turned immediately and led down, she presumed, to the cellar.
    “Valerian!” she called.
    Curse you,
she thought.
    Still holding her lighted candle, she put her foot on the first step and began to descend. Two more steps, and she noticed there was light coming from below, that strange yellow electrical illumination.
    She blew out her candle and went down.
    She stopped abruptly at the bottom.
    Valerian stood with his back to her, perfectly still, staring at the floor.
    Around the walls were ranks of clay troughs, piled one on top of the other, so that there was almost no wall space left uncovered. In the top of each Willow could see metal plates, and from these came copper wires, which trailed crazily all around the stuff. There was an awful smell of some chemical. Willow supposed this was the source of the weird lighting.
    But Valerian was staring instead at the floor space in the center of the cellar.
    He turned and saw