Tales From The Wyrd Museum 1: The Woven Path by Robin Jarvis

like it. ‘The building,’ he whispered, ‘it's deliberately misleading me, trying to trick me. It knows where I am, it can feel my movements.’
    Realising how foolish this sounded, he tried to laugh but only managed a thin squeak. ‘Get a grip,’ he told himself firmly, ‘got to be a perfectly reasonable explanation. I turned off wrong somewhere. Just go back and...’
    Running frantically, he sprang into a completely new room that contained nothing but an old armchair. Giving a dismal howl, the boy spun on his heel. Panic had seized Neil entirely and, flying blindly through door after door, he blundered into the mounting shadows with terror filling his heart.
    Some evil intelligence was behind all this, some malignant mind controlling the interior of the museum, leading him deeper and deeper into its heart; watching his movements as it had watched him playing in the yard. Was it guiding him to itself?
    If so, what for? What would he see? At the end of his stumbling search, what crouching horror would confront him? He would be too tired to fight the creature off, that was why it was doing this. When the end came he would be utterly exhausted, too spent to defend himself.
    His eyes stinging with anguished tears, Neil burst through the gathering darkness and yelled at the top of his terrified voice.
    ‘Stop it! Let me out! Let me go!’
    From the gloom, something rose up and caught hold of his foot. Neil screamed as he fell and crashed to the floor with a heavy thud.
    ‘Get off! Get off!’ he bawled, tugging his foot free.
    The sweat was streaming down his face as he stared fearfully into the dim shadows before him; then he gave a choking cry as he saw that it was only the corner of a rug that he had tripped over.
    ‘I’m getting as potty as them upstairs,’ he muttered. Then he realised where he was and his spirits plummeted lower than ever.
    He was in The Separate Collection and above him was the cabinet containing the eye of Balor. Neil shuffled backwards, either it was his imagination or a trick of the failing light, but in a deep crevice that scored the leathery surface, he thought he saw a glimmer of red.
    ‘Let me out of here!’ he called again. ‘Stop—please!’
    The silence in that eerie room almost deafened him but he was too petrified to get back on his feet.
    Sinister shapes crowded behind the cabinets, a terrible silent throng that waited for its moment.
    Then, from an unseen point beyond the cases, there came a voice.
    ‘Hey, kid,’ it yelled, ‘cool it will ya! It's jus’ this heap o’ bricks toyin’ with ya ‘n’ havin’ its fun.’
    Neil slid across the floor as he scrambled to his feet. He hadn't a clue who had spoken, but it was muffled—as if it had come from inside one of the display cases.
    ‘Hey! Leave the kid alone!’ the voice yelled again. Emitting a high-pitched screech, the boy hurtled from the room, and then, three minutes later, found himself standing on the landing.
    With his knees trembling and the breath wheezing in his chest, Neil hurried down the stairs as the awful thought flashed horribly bright in his mind—who had spoken?

Chapter 5 Ted

    When Neil finally returned to the apartment, he made no mention of the disturbing experience on the first floor, and when his father asked what he had been doing, he merely shrugged and mumbled that he had only been wandering around. Now he was safe and surrounded by everyday, normal objects, with the television droning away in the background, his fears seemed foolish and absurd.
    Later, when Josh was fast asleep, his young face turned to the glow of the nightlight that shone feebly by the bedside and his arms wrapped tightly about Groofles, his toy polar bear, Neil lay on his back staring up at the dark ceiling. Had he imagined it? Had his own terror blinded him to the correct route to the landing? Yet what of the voice that had spoken? That was no figment of his frightened mind, he had heard it, there was no doubt about