But nobody came, and the spirit slept.

• • •

So it was that the store had been closed for what seemed like a very long time—and was, actually, a very long time.¹² Two generations of Biddlecombe children had grown up without any memory of Wreckit & Sons being anything other than an empty shell, its ground-floor windows boarded and its doors locked. Eventually people just stopped noticing it, although strangers would sometimes pass through the town and gaze up at it. And when they asked who had designed such a building, the residents of Biddlecombe would shrug their shoulders and point at the statue of Hilary Mould, assuming they could find it.

But if the history of Wreckit & Sons was odd, its oddness didn’t stand out quite so much when monsters and demons began invading Biddlecombe, even if they didn’t leave a lot of proof behind once they went away again, monsters in ponds and spectral voices from golf courses excepted. Psychiatrists spoke of mass hysteria, and comedians made jokes about the townsfolk. Experts arrived and took readings. They dug in the ground, and tested the air, and poked at people who didn’t want to be poked, thank you very much, and warned that, if the experts continued to poke them, they’d find their poking sticks stuck somewhere the sun didn’t shine.¹³ With so much strangeness going on, suddenly Mr Wreckit’s old store began to seem not so strange after all. But it was. It was very, very strange, and strange things have a habit of attracting more strangeness to them.

• • •

In the basement of Wreckit & Sons, something moved. It was pale and naked, but it eventually managed to find a suit that fitted it, and a shirt that wasn’t too yellowed, and a smart gray tie. As thousands of eyes followed it round the room, it wiped the dust from an old mirror and smoothed its hair.

“What is my name?” it asked.

The Voice in the Wall told him.

You shall be called Mr. St. John-Cholmondeley.

“How do you spell that?”

The Voice in the Wall spelled the name.

“But you say it’s pronounced Sinjin-Chumley?”

Yes.

“Are you sure that’s right?”

Yes.

The Voice in the Wall sounded a bit miffed. It was so difficult to find good help these days.

The newly animated Mr. St. John-Cholmondeley looked doubtful.

“If you say so.”

I do.

The Voice in the Wall directed Mr. St. John-Cholmondeley to a safe, and told him the combination. Inside the safe was a great deal of gold, along with details of secret bank accounts. The bank accounts were all in the name of St. John-Cholmondeley, even though they had been set up more than a century earlier.

“What do you want me to do?” asked Mr. St. John-Cholmondeley.

The Voice in the Wall told him, and Mr. St. John-Cholmondeley set to work.

Wreckit & Sons was about to reopen for business.¹⁴

12. Well, long in human terms, which is all that concerns most people. That’s a little narrow-minded, though, and if you only think in those terms then perhaps you should take a long, critical look at yourself in the mirror. Frankly, you’re not the center of the Multiverse, no matter what your mum and dad might say, or your nan, or your auntie Betty who never got married—mainly because, according to your dad, nobody could get her to shut up long enough to ask her—but comes around to “babysit” occasionally and just seems to drink a lot of your parents’ sherry before falling asleep.