Mariah Mundi (19 page)

‘I could try. But for what reason?’

‘So we can show Jack Charity. He’ll know what to do. He’ll tell someone who can sort the whole thing out,’ Mariah replied as he opened the coat and looked at the crisp white shirt that lay beneath covering the boned ribs. Just above the heart were three small puncture wounds cut into the fabric; around each was the slightest smear of faded blood. ‘He died quickly. Not much blood.’ He pulled the shirt to one side. There, tucked into the trouser belt was a pearl-handled pistol. ‘Otto Luger carried a gun,’ Mariah said as he carefully picked the pistol from the belt, blew from it a thick covering of salt and checked the chamber. ‘And he never used it. So he was either surprised by or knew who would kill him. Brought down here and then killed for what he had.’

‘So why did they leave him?’ Sacha asked.

‘Bricked him into here and thought he would never be found. If it hadn’t had been for the Pagurus we would never have come this way. There must be another way out …’ Mariah lifted the oil lamp and watched the lamp flame flickering in the unseen draught. ‘We can’t go back.’

He turned and walked on with the lamp, this time checking that Sacha was still near by. Sacha quickly stuffed the wallet into her deepest pocket. She patted her frock coat and gripped the pearl in her hand. In the distance she could see the light picking its way through the stone columns into the darkness. She followed on, every now and then putting the pearl to her lips as Mariah traced the breeze.

Soon they had reached the far wall of the ruin. It was made of the same hand-cut stone that had been Otto Luger’s tomb
for so long. Here there were just two granite columns holding up the roof. A thick covering of hot sand swathed the floor. In the amber glow of the oil lamp, it was just how Mariah had imagined the surface of the moon when he had stared up in his saturnine melancholy so many times from the garden of the Colonial School.

As he looked at the shadowed sand beneath his feet, the long-forgotten September nights came back to him. In his mind he was taken back to standing on the grass banks of the Thames and looking out as the full moon rose up from the spindly fingers of the trees on the distant shore. Its light turned the sky to black and the world to shivering silver. Like a giant face it would stare upon him, pock-marked and frowning a sombre smile as it thinned in its rising. Mariah would look back and hope, knowing that it shone on others whose fate he could not guess. He would stand out the hour, his toes chilling as the deep dew crystallised the grass beneath his feet. Then he would turn his dazzled and moon-burnt face to the earth. There about him, standing like so many gravestones, markers of their own bereavements, would be many children. All would be in silence, as if the luminary had commanded them to join him in veneration. Mariah would say nothing; he knew their thoughts for their hearts burnt like his own. In the gloom, walking as if from the passing of a friend, he would tramp his way mournfully through the damp grass. Thoughts of a faraway place, a sanded desert that lit the sky, were etched in his mind. But as soon as his feet crunched the coarse grit that covered the drive of the Colonial School, all such considerations would be gone and he would set his mind on what was to come.

‘There should be another way,’ he muttered to himself as the world came back to him. ‘Check by the wall, I can feel a breeze but can’t tell which way it comes from.’

Sacha searched the shadows by the wall and moved her
hands across the stone along each line of mortar. Somewhere nearby she could feel the quick movement of the sea-tainted breeze.

‘Here!’ Mariah fell to his knees and held the lamp above a small pile of sand that bubbled and hissed as a strong draught fermented through each particle to form a small volcano-like mound. ‘Come and dig!’

Sacha began to scrabble in the dirt as Mariah scooped handfuls of hot sand away from the geyser of hot air that blew through the floor. Quickly they found a lattice of small stones that gurgled like a narrow stream as the air gushed through each one.

‘It must be a way to the floor below,’ Mariah said as he now picked larger rocks from the ever-widening hole.

‘Could be nothing there,’ Sacha replied. The rocks grew hotter and began to char her fingertips.

‘Listen,’ Mariah said, gesturing for her to be silent. ‘I can hear the steam generator.’

Coming from the hole was the sound of the generator. It was louder and more urgent than they had heard it before. It was as if they sat within the boiling tank of a large steamship that pushed its way against a high sea. The churning of the engine was timed by sharp jets of air that bubbled through the rocks. Mariah dug even quicker, picking the hot rocks with his reddening fingertips.

Then his hand struck against a strip of hot black metal. He perched himself upon a lintel of thick stone as he picked away the rocks from each side of a thick grate. ‘Must be an air vent to the generator,’ Mariah said to Sacha as she piled the stones from the hole behind her. ‘If I can get my finger around the bar and pull then we shall be able to …’

Mariah had no time to finish his words. Suddenly and without warning, the vent gave way and the hole quickly began to
deepen. He scrabbled for a footing as Sacha was sucked by the cascading stones deeper into the hole, slipping by him and into the darkness without a chance to scream. She vanished from his sight into the chasm that opened up beneath and swallowed her without a trace. With both hands he grabbed at the rocks, hoping to pull himself from the avalanche. It plucked at him as he teetered on the lintel, a torrent of shingle and sand dragging him deeper. Mariah could hear stones falling and clattering far below as they pelted through the opened vent. With every second he slipped deeper. The lamp that had lighted their progress spilt its blue-whale oil upon the rocks and this burst into bright flame all around him, catching his sleeve in a ghostly fire as his feet slipped from their perch.

Mariah reached out, away from the flames, his footing lost in the streaming rock. Falling, he grabbed the stone lintel that was buried deep in the sand. He dangled from his fingers as stone upon stone pounded his head. The rock burnt against his palm as he clawed and dangled in the blackness. One by one the tips of his fingers broke their grasp. Mariah hung like an old puppet.

From above his head he heard the sound of shifting stone as if the whole floor was beginning to move. The lintel juddered as it slowly tilted towards him. He gripped it tighter, finding a firm hold against a piece of jagged rock that fitted his hand. Mariah looked below. The darkness went on forever, clouded by billowing spouts of hot dust. Nearby, the throb of the steam generator hissed out its heartbeat.

‘Mariah!’ came a shout from below. ‘I’m trapped …’

He could hold on no longer. The heat loosened his grip, his sweated fingers slipped from the rock as hot blisters burst on each tip. In one breath he tried to scream, then fell silently into the bottomless pitch of the black hole.

T
HE wheezing of the steam generator appeared to come from somewhere nearby. Mariah sat in complete blackness, unable to see a hand in front of his face. He rubbed his palm over his eyes, hoping he could push away the dark veil and see the world again. It was no use; all was covered in smothering gloom.

The chamber into which Mariah had tumbled was much cooler and the subterranean breeze stronger. He sat on a pile of sand and shingle, breathing slowly and listening to the echoing sound as he wondered what he could do. The trickle of slipping shingle finally stopped as the hole above his head filled itself, the lintel holding back yet another fall of rock. A slow dribble of sticky blood seeped across his forehead. Instinctively he touched the wound with his raw-fleshed fingertips. He coughed loudly, the dust from the rockfall filling his nostrils and swirling about him.

‘Sacha!’ he shouted, the walls whispering back to him. ‘Are you here?’ There was no reply.

Wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his coat, Mariah slid from the pile of stones, knowing he would have to fumble
blindly to find an escape. His hands felt their way in the darkness, painfully touching each stone as he slithered sideways across the scree. He felt the gun in his pocket and clicked the hammer gently back and forth as he listened to the wind seething through the darkness. As he lay against the pile of stones, unaware of what was about him, not even which way was up or down, his mind whirred and tumbled and spun dizzily as he stared wide-eyed into sightlessness.

Something touched his chin. At first it brushed against him like a wind-blown web that fleeted by. Then it came again, bolder, firm, grasping his face as it scraped against his skin.

Mariah didn’t dare move. Whatever touched him was warm and soft. Like a lightning bolt he suddenly realised that this was Sacha’s hand buried in the mound of rock. He pulled at the stone and shingle, the sharp jags ripping at raw fingers. The rocks spilled ever downward as Mariah dug to set her free. In the sand and grit he could feel the contour of her face as he kicked away the tumuli of small boulders piled against her like an ancient tomb.

‘Sacha!’ he shouted as he lifted her from the grave with bleeding fingers. ‘Can you hear me?’

She coughed, spitting sand and pulling him close as she gasped for breath. ‘I was drowning in the shingle,’ she said, squeezing him as if she would never feel anyone alive again. ‘I could hear you shouting, but couldn’t speak.’ Sacha coughed in the darkness as they sat holding each other. ‘How far did we fall?’

‘Too dark to tell,’ Mariah said as he looked up, and then laughed to himself for his folly. ‘Do you have a Lucifer?’

Sacha tapped her pocket and, sitting back, opened the thin box and struck the match. In the sudden glare, Mariah could see the far wall of the room and glimpsed a rusted grate hanging by a broken hinge from the roof. To their right was a large stone vaulted entrance and a short flight of steps that ran down
and turned sharply to the left. In the brief moment of illumination it looked as if it were the entrance to an old church, etched in carved ivy leaves and with a gargoyle’s head looking down from the high arch.

‘Again,’ Mariah insisted as the match failed. ‘Light another.’

Sacha lit a Lucifer and held it tightly in her fingertips. ‘I haven’t many left,’ she said quickly. ‘We’ll have to find something more or we’ll be walking blind.’

‘At least we’re alive,’ Mariah replied. ‘I was beginning to think that this place was trying to kill us both.’

He pulled a long white handkersniff from his pocket, then wrapped and knotted it against itself to form a long wick. He lit the end aligned with the match and watched as it slowly started to smoulder and then burn. ‘Should last the hour,’ he said as he saw the surprised look on Sacha’s face. ‘We learn many things at the Colonial School.’ He smiled.

‘Me, I didn’t get the chance,’ she said curtly as the shadows criss-crossed her face. ‘Taught myself to read and write. Cleaned for the cleric and pinched his paper and quill pens. Easy, when you really have to. Didn’t feel bad about it either. Silly man, with spectacles that perched on the end of his nose. Squandered all his time swigging port wine, mumbling curses and scrawling in his book. Spent more time writing than he did on his knees. The Reverend H. F. Cataxian … He wrote
The
Incredible Adventures of Doblin the Goblin
.’ Sacha mimicked a squeaking voice. ‘Nearest he’ll get to Paradise was having his manse built next to it. You must have heard of him?’ Sacha seemed thankful to talk of something other than their plight. ‘My house is across the road from his. We lived clattered together in the rooms above the inn. He lived all alone in a house so big you could lose yourself for a week. So far to the privy that he would up the sash and do it out of the window.’

Mariah laughed, the sight of Cataxian gushing from the
window of his house etched in his mind. ‘I have the book, brought it with me from London. I’ve read it several times.’

‘Then when we get from this place …’ she said slowly as she looked to the ground. ‘Then, perhaps we could visit him.’

‘That we’ll do, and sooner rather than later,’ Mariah replied uneasily as he pulled her from the stone pile and walked towards the stairway. ‘I have this,’ he said as he showed her the gun that glistened in the flames. ‘Never thought there would come a day when I would think of this. If they were prepared to murder Otto Luger, then the same could come to us.’

‘Then it’s a chance I’ll take. Rather die for something than live for nothing. Felix knew there was treachery in this place. On the night before he disappeared he wanted to tell me a secret. He said he wasn’t safe, that Otto Luger had a box and it would change everything in the world. Felix said the answer was all in the stones and they would speak for themselves. Then he was gone.’

‘And we will find him, Sacha. He must be here somewhere. Him and all the secrets that this place contains.’ Mariah spoke quietly as they took the first steps down and then turned quickly as they spiralled the sand-covered treads.

Soon they reached the floor below. It looked as if it had been cut from the solid rock on which the Prince Regent had grown. The sound of the steam generator grew louder with each step they took along the narrow passageway just wide enough for them to walk arm in arm, linked against the darkness.

Mariah held the pistol in his hand as Sacha clutched the light above them, its smouldering wick illuminating the damp sandstone walls that oozed with tendrils of hot salted water. Coming from a hand-chiselled entrance was a shaft of bright amber light that sliced through the darkness ahead of them. Sacha moved quickly on, then waited for Mariah as she peered around the rough-cut edge of the small stone doorway.

Inside the large vaulted room was the steam generator. It was unlike anything Mariah had ever seen. A large green, polished pipe was screwed into the rock face with thick brass bolts. To one side was the steel piston that juddered back and forth along a bright rod fixed to the far wall. Behind this was an engine the size of a small house that chugged away like a slowly beating heart. Every so often it would spurt soft jets of steam from its ventilating valve and a rush of burning air would be sucked through a labyrinth of pipes around the room and then into the high ceiling. All was lit by a stand of blue lamps fixed to the high ceiling.

‘A steam engine,’ Sacha exclaimed.

‘Not one that I have ever seen. There’s no stoker, no firebox and no water. It’s as if it sucks the steam from the earth itself.’

‘Listen,’ Sacha said as though she had been spoken to by a voice beyond hearing. ‘Can you hear the crying?’

Mariah listened. All he could hear was the chugging of the generator and the whistling of the steam through the miles of piping that circled above him like the coils of some vast snake. The clanging pipes echoed through the cavernous chamber. He shrugged his shoulders and screwed up his face.

‘It’s there again … Can’t you hear it?’ she asked as a faint cry came yet again.

Mariah holstered the pistol in his pocket and bent forward. He cupped a hand against his ear and tried to listen. The noise of the generator and the garbled chuntering of his own thoughts filled his head. ‘Nothing,’ he said.

Sacha moaned to herself in deep frustration. ‘I’m sure I could –’ she said as the faint cry came yet again. ‘There – you
must
have heard that.’

Mariah shook his head as Sacha walked towards a carved doorway half hidden behind the generator.

‘This way,’ she said as she walked quickly, her hand grasping the key.

Mariah followed on, taking in the last sight of the steam generator that grew up from the solid rock floor into the high vaulted roof. The glistening of the arc lamps shone from the bright green and glimmering paint and polished brass bolts. ‘Amazing,’ he whispered to himself as he walked backwards. ‘Perfectly amazing.’

Sacha followed the sound of the whimpering that had called her into the long and brightly lit passage. Running far into the distance were a thousand tiny lamps with neither wick nor flame. She looked at the clear glass spheres that covered a thin burning wire. They glowed brightly without flame, dazzling the eyes. Mariah followed on, pistol in hand; every second pace he would stop, turn and aim at some imaginary creature.

Soon they passed into yet another vast chamber. They crossed a steaming pool of fermenting blue water on a high metal gantry suspended from the roof by thick linked chains. They swung gently back and forth with every step until they reached another stone-cut archway. It howled with a stiff gale that pushed them back with its ferocity. The wind shimmered the waters and spiralled mist into the heights.

The sound of crying seemed to be as far away from Sacha as ever. It was as if she chased a rainbow and no sooner had she stepped nearer than it had moved another pace away. But still the faint murmuring came again and again. Sacha turned to Mariah and he would just shrug his shoulders in reply, as if she were the only one who could hear the ghostly whisperings.

Mariah pulled the collar of his coat over his face to protect it from the wind. He pushed Sacha on as she struggled to keep upright in the air stream that hurricaned through the narrow tunnel.

‘It cools the steam generator,’ Mariah shouted, his voice carrying just above the howl of the gale. ‘Sucked from above – find where it comes from and we’ll be able to get out again.’

Sacha got to her hands and knees and crawled the last few feet of the corridor. As she pressed herself to the ground the wind beat against her head and peppered her with blistering specks of golden sand. Mariah staggered on behind, unable to look ahead as he cupped the pistol in his hand, holding it close to him.

There was a sudden tremor as the whole passageway juddered with the sound of sliding, grating metal that rasped against the stone. The gale squealed its final breath and then all was silent. From far behind, the shuddering came again as a strong metal door clamped firmly shut.

‘VENTS!’ shouted a voice from ahead. ‘CLOSE THE VENTS!’

There was another slithering of metal far away. The grinding and crunching of rock trilled through the passage. Sacha looked up to Mariah. She was covered in a thin layer of golden powder that lined every feature of her face and encrusted strands of hair against her skin. They crept forward, not knowing who was ahead of them.

From just beyond yet another stone archway they could see the light of a glistening crystal chandelier. It hung majestically from the hand-cut, vaulted roof of the chamber, at the same height as the gantry on which they now crouched, just out of sight of the people below.

Mariah peeked carefully over the metal rim of the elevated pathway that linked the two halves of the vaulted room. There below was Otto Luger, smartly dressed and very much alive. He wore the same crisp white shirt and neatly pressed jacket. His monocle was crunched against his nose; his hair was slickly greased back from his face. Monica fussed about a stone table, wiping piles of golden sand from its surface with a horsehair brush as she stood on a long stone bench that looked as if it was hewn from the floor.

Standing together by the large wooden doors were two men. Mariah recognised the ruddy-red face of Mister Grimm. He waited impatiently with his companion, his hand rubbing the top of a golden lion’s-head mahogany cane. The other man was tall and thin, with a white face, pinched cheeks, thin lips and a small black beard that tipped the end of a long and very pointed chin.

‘
Grendel!
’ whispered Mariah to himself.

Mister Grendel fiddled with his blue-lens spectacles. He took a fat silver timepiece from his pocket and checked it several times with agitated fingers. Grendel visibly twitched every sinew in his body, the muscles in his face shivering beneath his thin white skin.

‘Mystery, mystery, so much mystery. Why we can’t meet in an upper room and not far below the sea I’ll never know,’ Mister Grimm said quickly.

‘Is he ready to perform for us?’ Otto Luger asked as he sat at the head of the stone table and nodded for them to join him. Monica brushed the last of the sand to the floor. ‘This dreaming he does better find out who was in my room last night. I’ve a feeling they will be back and I have far too much riding on this caper.’

‘Have we ever let you down?’ Mister Grimm asked passionately as he took Grendel by the hand and led him to the seat opposite Luger. ‘Best he sits here and then he can see you face to face, Mister Luger.’

‘All I ask is he sees the one who is messing up my head.’

‘You are an impatient man, Mister Luger,’ Grendel said as he sat on the cold stone. ‘Projection is something that has to be learnt. It isn’t stumbled upon or bought, it is a gift.’

‘Thought it came in a little green bottle and smelt of lau-danum,’ Luger mumbled as he looked at his fob watch.

Mister Grendel laughed to himself as he scratched the hairs
on his chin and adjusted his spectacles upon the elfishly thin bridge of his nose. ‘That substance just takes me from this world and allows me to wander where I please. And it is
not
laudanum, nothing so crude or so vile and corrupting. Just three drops of this linctus and I am free of worldly passions and desires. There is nothing greater than to escape the twitching of this carcass of tremulous timidity. Just three drops, Mister Luger, and you could come with me. Could this be what is more powerful than
the sigh of the hard pressed creature – the
heart of the heartless world – a soul of soulless circumstances
? If Mister Hegel’s philosophy is to be believed …’