The Chronicles of Jonathon Postlethwaite: The Seed of Corruption (13 page)

Jonathon laughed with Rislo, the two partaking in a false bravado. Both would be risking their lives by entering the City              of              the              Tallmen.                                          Jonathon              looked at              Rislo's              construction approvingly now.

“Why did you make the machine Rislo? After all you refused to help Cornelius before, so why take the risk of building this?" The Tallman walked over to a small cupboard fixed to a roughly hewn rock wall and extracted a large flagon of wine. After he had taken a large swill he smiled wearily and sat down heavily at the table that occupied the centre of the room. His attention was fixed on the wine jar, his long, slender fingers wrapped tightly around its neck as if he were attempting to strangle it.

" When  your  Grandfather  came  to  me,  more  than sixty              years              ago,              the              Tallmen              were                            different.              Our leaders  did  discuss the human situation in the city, its corruption,  its  degeneration. They spoke of intervening, putting              things              to              right.              I              thought              that              eventually something would be done about it. I enjoyed speaking to Cornelius, contact with his mind did something for me, I felt refreshed, stronger after speaking to him." Rislo took a prolonged swig from the jar. "Despite my reluctance to act  against  my  own  people,  I  still  had  doubts  about what  they  would  do.  Cornelius  convinced me to build the machine. Anyway, after all I had it - no-one else could use it, and I found predictable stable gates  that  could take  me,  Cornelius  and  his  people  away  from here - should I have chosen to act. But I could not act against them........I  had  friends  here."  Rislo  began  to  tremble, tears  welling  up  in  his  eyes.  “You  cannot  desert  your friends, your own people can you?" he said apologetically.

                            A tear rolled from his eye. He took another draught from the flagon and wine spilled out of his mouth onto his chin. " I was torn between two peoples though, Cornelius and his friends and my own. When it came to it, couldn't do anything." he shook his head furiously, his face reddening and the tears flowing profusely now. He looked to Jonathon.

“What would you have done?" his question was aimed at his human ally, but he expected no answer. He knew Jonathon would understand the nature of his dilemma as Cornelius had done. "But things changed. I saw it happening gradually, corruption spread here like a disease. The evil in the city grew more intense, like it was actually a living being. The Elders saw nothing, or didn't want to. They lost any conscience they had, they retreated into themselves, - all that mattered was that they survived, it didn't matter how. As long as the city supplies  the energy for the machines they seem to care for nothing except  that  their  slide  into  depravity  be  as  long  and

pleasurable as possible."

                            Rislo he wiped the tears from his face with the back of his hand. "They had created  this  monster that has devoured Dubh, Jonathon, and now it is devouring them. Soon It will be master  of  Dubh!  And what do they care! Nothing  at  all.  Now  they  act  as the human beasts from the city do. They debauch human women by the hundred, they spend whole days drunk, drugged and helpless. They have lost, they Tallmen who fled here with their fine ideals, ideals which led me to join them, have surrendered to the most primitive forces in humans and Tallmen, they are sliding  back  to  the   pit   of   animal   barbarism.  It makes me so angry!" Risloo finished of the flagon of wine and thumped it down so hard on the table that it shattered into a thousand dark pieces.

                            He remained silent for a while, staring blankly at the tabletop and the broken pottery. He sniffed. “I waited for Cornelius to return. I had decided to act. I made plans, constructed the Imploder." he strode over to it. "I manufactured their destruction here in my spare time. Years of trial and error, years of toil. But Cornelius never returned, I tried to contact him, but there was nothing. I almost gave up hope.....then you came. I could have run

to many worlds alone, but I had to wait. I had to be sure that Cornelius and his people did not suffer from my actions. Now you are here and can answer my questions. How many are left?"

Jonathon shook his head.

" Only a few, Milly, Tefkin and Dale, I know of no others." Rislo rose unsteadily to his feet and began to pace the room. The plans he had formulated over many years, now whirring like well oiled machines inside his head.

“They must be brought here soon, we will choose the world we wish to flee to and complete the Imploder." He sat down heavily at the table his head held in his hands and added, " Before it's too late."

Jonathon walked over to the table. “Too late? "

The giant sighed deeply.

“Yes my friend, before it's too late. The evil that envelops this world seeks the flesh in which it can manifest itself. It lives now, it schemes. The energy the Tallmen require to support this realm increases daily. They do not know why, but I do. The beast drains it - weakens the Field Walls deliberately - if it can find no other way it will  tear  this  dimension  apart  and  move on to others. It is so strong now, I feel it and its work is almost complete. There are few left to corrupt and feed off. I cannot let it happen, as you cannot. I will not be responsible for its release beyond this realm. I have the means, it must be destroyed."

                            Jonathon was concerned about what he had heard, he had  experienced  the  power  of  city's malignant  soul  himself on the rooftops years ago when it had attempted to defile Milly and himself. But it would escape if Dubh was destroyed, it was trying through Flax he realised, but it would tear the dimension apart itself if he failed to open a door for it.

“But Rislo, if we destroy the Field Walls, won't it escape anyway, isn't that what it wants? "

Rislo shook his head.

“The way this machine will destroy Dubh will not allow it to escape. Remember, the Imploder will  drain all the energy of this realm into itself. The spirit of corruption is pure, dark energy - it will not be able to escape - it will be trapped forever. It will not have the strength to escape. All those who fed it will be dead, the energy it drains from the Field Walls will be gone, and it will be trapped in the power reservoir, lost between the dimensions."

                            Rislo spoke with authority, Jonathon felt  it  and was confident that his Tallman companion was right. Then the room grew cold. His thoughts became misty. Pictures began to form in Jonathon's mind. He saw child bound with ropes so tightly it could not move. To a grown man these bonds would have been snapped with ease. But this immature dark-eyed infant was trapped.

                            Jonathon suddenly felt dizzier. He  struggled  to the chair opposite Rislo. The visions would not  fade, they  developed their own momentum.

He began to sweat with the mental effort he was using to escape the hallucination that had developed a life of its own. Jonathon sensed it was metaphorical.

                            The room receded into darkness and Jonathon fell into the images that developed in his own, or some others mind. He found himself in a room with no doors or windows. The dark-eyed child struggled desperately against it bindings in a cot in the centre of the room. Its terrified cries pierced his heart. He was visibly alone with the child. But he felt that suffocating multiple presence he had felt on the rooftops all those years ago pressing in on him again. As  Jonathon  adjusted  to  the  surroundings  into which his consciousness had been drawn, he realised was not in a room at all, but standing in a sphere of light suspended in pitch darkness.

                            He knew too that the child was not a child, but even so its cries seared his soul, it touched him and drew him away from reality. He watched as the child screamed, its face turning blue, as its bonds restricted its circulation. Soon it would cease to cry and die. Just as the evil in the city would die as its source of sustenance was removed when  it  found  itself  trapped  in  the  Power  Reservoir. Jonathon  wavered  at  the  edge  of  reality  -  was  the child real  or  not?  He  began  to  weaken,  his  grasp  of the real and the unreal slipped slowly into one another. He felt a powerful inner compulsion to cease the  child's  suffering,  release  it  from  its  bonds.  But  he knew  what it symbolised and what such an act would mean for him.  This  was  more  than  a  mental  image. He  heard  a  murmuring  of  voices  and  could  see  a circle  of  shadows  detach  themselves  from  the  pitch blackness  which  had  him trapped. They advanced but

did not venture into the sphere of light.

A hysterical              woman's              voice              cut              through              the murmur. She pleaded with Jonathon.

“Release  the  child,  surely  the  goodness  in  you must  prevail, you cannot let it suffer anddie; you of all people." Jonathon detected a taunt of mockery in the voice. She continued, her tone starkly different now It accused him. “Does the good boy murder children then!" Voices from the darkness rose in agreement as the child's howling grew in intensity, it plaintive cries cutting into Jonathon's heart. He held firm. It was not real! he told himself. A man's voice rose above the growing tumult around him.

“Bah!" he spat. “You are no better than us then, does this avatar condone the murder of children.......what will you do for an encore......eat its sweet raw flesh? 'Tis you who are different Postlethwaite, you who are sick."

                            Jonathon felt a pang of self doubt, was it real? The circle of light around him drew in closer, the shambling, shadowy figures moving in towards him. Now he could see their grey faces, their dull red eyes lit by his own shining soul. He illuminated this place deep in the heart of darkness himself! And here were the faces of the dead, non-departed souls of Dubh surrounding him, gaunt and drawn skeletal faces, contorted into visages of pure evil and hatred.

They pressed inwards around him, his protective aura of purity flickered and wavered as they pushed against its borders.  They  were  intent  on  him.  Trying to break him down, to get him  to  doubt  who  and what he was. If he wavered from his cause they would engulf him and he would be lost. He would never return to the body which slept in Rislo's hideaway.

“Jonathon" a voice whispered, yet it cut the muttering accusing souls to silence. Jonathon looked in the direction of the child's cot to see an old man stooped over the child, a shining blade in his liver spotted arthritic hand. It was Cornelius. The old man smiled.

“It’s an illusion built from your own thoughts. The child must die." Cornelius brought the knife down in a savage arc into the infant's chest, the howling child jerked and convulsed and was silent. The spirits around them hissed, then  slowly  turned  their  backsand  retreated into      the  obscurity of the all-enveloping darkness.

                            Cornelius came across to Jonathon and stood before. "I have nothing to lose in my actions, if you had released the child you would have condemned yourself to inaction, your conscience would have been distorted. You would never have been able to carry  out your tasks." Cornelius smiled and attempted to touch his Grandson, but his spirit hands slipped through his Jonathon's outstretched palms.

“Forget              the tortured souls here, they are beyond              redemption, they built their own hell and forget me. There is no way you can help me here; and there is

much work I can do." Jonathon's Grandfather sighed and moved away, slowly walking back, to the spirit world of Dubh where

he would be imprisoned forever, if Jonathon succeeded in his plans.

                            Cornelius did not look back. Jonathon watched him go, transfixed as Cornelius merged with the darkness and then a voice echoed from the void.

“Do as you must and do not falter, you must brush these evil  beings  aside.  They  are  lost  and irretrievable,  destroying them is not an act of evil. "

The voice faded and Jonathon's mind blackened. He became aware of a vigorous shaking, fear washed over him in great waves, but it was not his own. Someone was shouting frantically and from the distance, a terrible, soul tearing howling, invaded his consciousness.

                            When he opened his eyes, it was Rislo who was shaking him, his eyes staring wide at him in fear. Jonathon awoke fully and heard the terrifying, soul chilling, banshee howl which reverberated in distant passageways.

“What is it Rislo?" He stammered.

“The Tallmen are coming." he blubbered in acute fear. “And they bring, they bring their Turkanschoner."

Chapter Ten

                            Rislo only half right with his statement concerning the presence of the Tallmen and the Turkanschoner. In fact only the beast he feared so much had now stalked him in the maze of tunnels beneath the Hall of Machines.

                            When the Captain of Rislo's watch had realised that the misfit in his platoon had deserted his post, he had considered pursuing him himself, but he had other ways with which to spend his time. Tonight, the human traders known as the High Hat's were due to  arrive  with  a fresh consignment of human females for their pleasure and the deserter Rislo would not prevent him from having  the  choice of the finest wench. No, the Turkanschoner  would  do  the  job efficiently enough alone he thought. No-one would mourn the death of the miserable misfit Rislo, so why waste time himself being dragged through cold, damp, underworld by a beast half crazed with hunger?