Page 95 of Dead Serious: Case 3 Mr Bruce Reyes

“Wait,” she says suddenly.

“Er… I’d rather not.”

“No, there’s something I think you might need.” Her eyes widen as if she’s just remembered something important. She opens a nearby door and flips the light on, disappearing inside. Not wanting to be left out here on the landing by myself, I follow her.

The room is filled to bursting with boxes of every size, description, and age. It’s like an episode ofHoarders.

“Where is it…” she mutters, shifting things aside carelessly, and I’m really quite concerned about her ending up buried under some sort of storage-box avalanche.

“Here it is,” she finally says in triumph. “Tristan, help me.”

I set the case down and rush over, lifting boxes out of the way until we reach the one she wants. It looks so old a good breeze will probably make it fall apart.

“I’ve got bin bags downstairs. We can put it in one of those to keep it waterproof,” she says, picking it up and handing it to me. “I think you’re supposed to have this.”

“What’s in it?” I open one of the flimsy top flaps to find stacks of yellowed pieces of paper, and when I look closer, I find nearly illegible handwriting all over them.

“Crawshanks Guide to the Recently Departed.”

“What?” Confused, I look down at the paper-laden box.

“It’s the original version with all his annotated notes,” she explains. “It’s the full copy of the manuscript he submitted to the publisher, including all the things they wouldn’t allow in the final printed copy. Trust me, if there’s something about a magic doorway to the spirit world in his childhood home that was connected to his sister”—she looks down at the box—“it’ll be in there.”

22

Don’t panic, don’t panic, don’t panic, I chant over and over in my mind as I pull another delicate piece of paper from the box and squint hard, trying to decipher the faded looping scrawl.

It’s one day until the end of the world, twenty-four hours before the potential apocalypse, one thousand four hundred and forty minutes to a global cataclysm, or a Zombie breakout, or possibly an alien invasion. Hell, the end of days could come in the form of a sixty-foot Stay-Puft marshmallow man with not a single Ghostbuster in sight. Who knows? Like I told Danny, it’s all been rather vague, and we don’t know what’s coming for us, but I’m guessing whatever it is, it’s not going to be good.

For the past two days, Madame Viv has been holed up in our spare room, attempting to eat her body weight in Pringles and watching crappy daytime TV on the spare telly we brought from the back room of the bookshop. She seems a lot more relaxed now she’s out of the shop, but the sense of foreboding has stayed with me. I can’t shake the feeling of unease that constantly prickles along my skin, and the storm raging outside seems to have intensified the closer we get to the eclipse.

I’m worried about Dusty. She’s at the bookshop pretty much constantly now since she won’t leave Bruce’s side. But, as much as I want her here with me, safe and nowhere near that bloody doorway, I’m glad Bruce isn’t alone.

Danny and Sam have been frantically running down leads or, in Danny’s case, hobbling down leads on the current whereabouts and status of Jack Miller, the man we think was Bruce’s ex-lover.

As for me, I’ve barely left the kitchen, planted at the table and surrounded by neat piles of paper while I search through the surreal landscape of Cornelius Crawshanks’ psyche. It’s a weird place. His random contemplations are scattered and often bizarre, and I know this because he seems to have had a habit of writing down every little passing thought that occurred to him. No wonder his publisher stripped half of this from the finished book.

Danny helps as much as he can, but recently he’s become fascinated with anything historical, especially since he found my dad’s boxes containing some of our family records, which Dad had been tracing back before his illness, and his attention is difficult to keep on these papers. Danny was riveted to find out that I’m descended from someone with a title, albeit we’re the disgraced black sheep arm of the family. My several-times-great-grandfather on my dad’s side was a marquis. We’re descended from his daughter Georgianna, whose son was born out of wedlock and named after her beloved uncle, another black sheep of the family. In fact, my family probably has enough black sheep in their closet to form a herd. That beloved uncle’s name eventually ended up becoming our family surname when we were distanced from the legitimate branch of the tree.

But what really pushed all Danny’s buttons, much to his delight, was that the uncle was a reverend who had lived right here in Whitechapel in the late nineteenth century. Rumour had it he wasvery closeto his lifelong friend, a detective who worked for Whitechapel’s infamous “H” division.

I’d almost had to physically drag him away from that box and refocus his attention on our current mission to save the world. Every now and then, I see him glancing at Dad’s files longingly. I think I may have just accidentally made a historian of him. Especially if it has anything to do with police history in London.

I pick up another page and start reading. Chan had been insistent that Death said to check the book. I know there’s definitely nothing in the cannibalised version the publishers released, so it has to be here somewhere. I just wish I knew what I was looking for.

With a sigh, I put that aside and reach for the next one, pausing when I realise it’s a page torn from Cornelius’ journal. It’s not the first torn page I’ve come across but almost immediately my eyes are drawn to one very specific name hidden amongst the words.

Cordelia.

I quickly read through the page and my heart starts to pound. “Danny!” I call out, and a few minutes later, I hear the familiar click-click of his crutches as he enters the kitchen.

“What is it?” he asks distractedly. “Have you found something?”

“Were you in the family records box again?” My mouth twitches in amusement.

“Nooo,” he says innocently and nods towards the table. “Have you found something?”

“I think I might have,” I confirm. “Listen to this.” I clear my throat and begin to read aloud.