VOODOO!

It is early Wednesday morning and Phillip the Anxious Homunculus, having wrestled and temporarily stunned his crippling agoraphobia, tip-toes tentatively through the Grymoire Observatory front door and into the chilly dawn mist. Distant rooks caw and twigs drip as he straddles his rusty but dependable old Sturmey Archer 3 Speed racer and after an uncertain start and teetering fifteen minutes along dank, laurel arched lanes he arrives in Cronkleton High St. First stop: Ellson's Models and Crafts for another Airfix Spitfire; a few halting words over the dusty Humbrol paints with old Mr Ellson and out again into the frigid morning. Past Morris Cringe the Bakers with his renowned display of cream horns rampant in the window; past Sprockett, Bearing and Flange, solicitors, and as he at last stoops to unlock his bicycle by the war memorial - an odd sound catches his ear. Was it distant drums or the rumble of a passing lorry? Shaking his head Phillip fiddles anxiously with the combination and....there it is again! Definitely drums. Momentarily distracted, Phillip's attention is suddenly gripped by a shop across the street which he is quite sure he has never noticed before: Harbinger's Curios and Object D'Art. As though in a dream, he finds himself crossing the road and pushing open the grimy door; a bell tinkles and he is standing - dazed - in a brown gloom surrounded by heaped shelves and piles of outlandish bric-a-brac. 'Thrum-thrum-thrummety-thrum!' Go the drums. There are full suits of armour, stuffed monkeys, trombones, horse brasses, specimen jars and silk flowers. There are dried frogs, shrunken heads, binoculars, butterfly collections and tin hats and everywhere narrow spires of musty books of all kinds twist precariously up to the murky dusk of the ceiling. Furthermore, the shop appears to recede endlessly, a narrow path winding between myriad, teetering towers of tat. Every turn brings a fresh astonishment: here a beautiful, miniature pipe organ; there a tarnished tuba. All the while, the drumming becomes louder and louder - 'thrum-thrum-thrummety-thrum!' After what seems like hours, Phillip arrives at the back of the shop. There is no-one to be seen. On the dusty counter, however, is the apparent source of the drumming. It is about eighteen inches tall; a strange wooden statue of a man or ape like thing. It has a hideous, primitive aspect with a ghastly lamprey circle for a mouth set about with jagged shark teeth. Milky gem stone eyes appear to glow and on the end of two spindly, twig like arms wizened, bird-like claws seem to flex. The whole space around it throbs balefully; the drumming is inside his head! And now, above the beat a rasping, hateful voice: 'KOOOOZZZOOO!' 'KOOOOOOZZZZZZZZOOOOOOO!'

Hours later back at the Observatory, sweating and trembling and unable to remember returning home, nor even purchasing the thing or indeed from whom, Phillip steps back from the shelves housing Mr Scott's collection of disturbing nick-nacks and gapes slack jawed at the horrible fetish he has brought to the ancient pile in his fever. The drumming and voices have ceased and for the first time he notices the rusty nails driven into every part of the vile thing. Thrusting the knuckles of his right hand into his mouth as if to stifle a scream, he turns away……to be continued.