The package in the cellar

      ‘Pretty Cats!’

      In the hall of number nine, Filbert Street, a small boy stood at the foot of the staircase. He looked sickly and too thin. Scraping a tangle of dull brown hair away from his face, he stuck out his tongue. ‘Flames! That’s what they call you, isn’t it?’

      The three cats, sitting on the rail, stared down from the landing above. They had fiery coloured coats: copper, orange and yellow. The orange cat hissed; the yellow cat lifted a paw and flexed his dangerous claws; the copper cat gave a deep, threatening growl.

      ‘Why don’t you like me? I’m smarter than you. One day,’ the boy raised his fist, ‘you’ll be sorry.’

      A door opened behind him and a voice called, ‘Eric, what are you doing?’

      ‘Come and look.’

      Two women stepped into the hall. They would have been identical if there had not been twenty years between them. Both were tall and dark-eyed, with thin, chilly mouths and long, narrow noses. But whereas one had bone-white hair, the other’s was as black as a crow’s wing.

      ‘Look!’ Eric pointed up at the three cats.

      The older woman uttered a throaty snarl. ‘What are they doing here? I’ve forbidden them, expressly.’

      The younger woman, Eric’s stepmother, grabbed his hand and dragged him back. ‘I’ve told you never to approach those creatures.’

      ‘I didn’t,’ said Eric. ‘I’m down here and they’re up there. And anyway, they can’t hurt me.’

      ‘Of course they can,’ his stepmother retorted. ‘They’re wild creatures.’

      ‘With leopards’ hearts,’ her sister added. Raising her voice, she called, ‘Charlie! Charlie Bone, come here, this minute.’

      A door opened upstairs and a moment later a boy with tousled hair leaned over the railing. The yellow cat walked up to him and rubbed its head against his arm. The other cats jumped down and circled his legs.

      ‘What is it, Grandma?’ Charlie stroked the yellow cat’s head and yawned.

      ‘Lazy lump!’ said his grandmother. ‘Have you been asleep?’

      ‘No,’ Charlie replied indignantly. ‘I’ve been doing my homework.’

      ‘Did you let those cats in?’

      ‘They’re not doing any harm,’ said Charlie.

      ‘Harm?’ Grandma Bone’s dark eyes became angry slits. ‘They’re the most harmful creatures in this city. Get them out.’

      ‘Sorry, Sagittarius.’ Charlie lifted the yellow cat off the banisters. ‘Sorry, Aries and Leo,’ he said to the cats winding themselves round his legs. ‘Grandma Bone says you’ve got to go.’

      Whether it was Charlie’s tone of voice or his actual words was not clear, but the cats appeared to know exactly what he was saying. They followed him into his bedroom and, when he had opened his window, they jumped through it, one by one, on to the branch of a chestnut tree that stretched close to the sill.

      ‘See you at the Pets’ Café,’ Charlie called as the Flames leapt on to the pavement. They bounded up the street with a chorus of mews that made a dog, on the other side of the street, stop dead in its tracks.

      Charlie smiled and closed the window. Returning to the landing, he found his grandmother, his great-aunt Venetia and Eric still staring up at him.

      ‘Have they gone?’ Grandma Bone demanded.

      ‘Yes, Grandma,’ Charlie said wearily.

      At this point a third woman emerged from the sitting room. With her sharp features and abundant grey hair she was clearly related to the other two women. She was, in fact, Charlie’s great-aunt Eustacia. She was carrying a flat rectangular object covered in brown paper. It was about a metre and a half long and, perhaps, just under a metre wide.

      Charlie knew there was no point in asking about the package. He would be told to mind his own business. But he had a fairly good idea what it was. He began to feel unaccountably excited.

      ‘What are you staring at?’ Great Aunt Eustacia grunted at Charlie.

      ‘Get back to your homework,’ ordered Grandma Bone.

      Eric’s thin little mouth twisted into an unpleasant smirk. ‘Goodbye, Charlie Bone!’

      Charlie didn’t bother to reply. He went back to his room and closed the door with a loud click. But then, as quietly as possible, he opened it, just a fraction. He wanted to know what was going to happen to the object Eustacia was carrying. Surely, it had to be a painting.

      It was two years since Charlie had discovered his extraordinary endowment. It had begun when he heard voices coming from a photograph. Over the next few months Charlie found himself travelling into photographs and talking to people who had died many years before. When he turned his attention to paintings, the same thing had happened: he could meet the subjects in old paintings, people who had lived centuries before. Charlie often tried to avoid these situations; it was one thing to go into the past, quite another to leave it. Once or twice he’d been lucky to get out alive.

      For some reason, the rectangular object with its covering of wrinkled brown paper aroused Charlie’s intense curiosity. He put his ear to the crack in the door and listened.

      ‘Why you’ve brought it here, I can’t imagine.’ Grandma’s voice crackled with irritation.

      ‘I told you,’ whined Great Aunt Eustacia, ‘my basement’s damp.’

      ‘Hang it on your wall, then.’

      ‘I don’t like it.’

      ‘Then give it to –’

      ‘Don’t look at me,’ said Great Aunt Venetia. ‘It gives me the creeps.’

      ‘She made me take it,’ Eustacia said fretfully. ‘Mrs Tilpin isn’t someone you can argue with.’

      Charlie stiffened. He hadn’t heard Mrs Tilpin’s name mentioned for some time. Once, she had been a rather pretty music teacher called Miss Chrystal, but she hadn’t been seen since she had been revealed as a witch.

      ‘They won’t keep it at the school,’ went on Eustacia. ‘Even Ezekiel is wary of it. He says it steals his thoughts, it draws them away like a magnet – he says.’

      ‘Joshua Tilpin is a magnet,’ said Eric.

      His stepmother uttered a short, dry laugh. ‘Huh! The witch’s son. So he is.’

      At this everyone began to talk at once, and Charlie had difficulty in making out what was said, but it seemed that Grandma Bone had finally agreed to allow the painting, or whatever it was, to be stored in her cellar. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t her cellar,