The Chronicles of Jonathon Postlethwaite: The Seed of Corruption (18 page)

Jonathon   peered   up   from   the   floor   of   the building. The concrete roof remained intact. He doubted his friends were up there now, but it seemed the right place to begin his search. He took to the blacked inner walls like a fly, his taloned gloves and bladed boots finding easy purchase amongst the cracked and fire damaged brickwork. Within minutes he was half way to his roof top goal.

                            Down     below     the     Turkanschoner     watched. From where  the  hunched and horned shape  hid  near the wellhead, Jonathan looked like a fly. The Turkanschoner watched in awe, his huge  jaws  agape with astonishment. His new master was indeed a talented one he mused. However, wherever he went the Turkanschoner would follow. He could not lose him, because to lose Jonathon was to lose the opportunity to continue to find himself.

                            Jonathon soon found himself close to the rooftop. He found a window and straddled the ledge. Down below he saw that several small fires now burned amongst the heaps of grey rags that surrounded the building on all sides and had once been its occupants. A group of Tans occupied with the cremation of the bodies below, laughed hysterically as one of their number accidentally set light to oil which he had spilled on himself and danced a frenzied jig as he attempted to extinguish the flames. No-one helped him, they stood and watched the new spectacle in state of intense, morbid amusement, as the unfortunate man slowly and noisily lost his battle with the engulfing flames.

Jonathon did not remain to watch the tragic outcome  of  a  battle  between  man  and   this essential element. As the man's pained screaming terminated he completed the final part his climb on the outside of the building and dropped on to the roof top.

                            In the centre of the roof the intense heat from below had burned everything combustible. The shack he had called home for so long had gone. The smaller tiled roofs around the rooftop had gone too, collapsing inward as their wooden supporting slats had burned through.

                            Slowly he skirted the roof edge where the concrete had not been so badly cracked. He found nothing to suggest that his friends had perished here. Despite the heat damage he knew that he would have found at least their bodies. Evidently, they had not been here, he decided.

                            As he prepared to leave the rooftop he checked that the trampet on the east side outrun was undamaged. It was not. Crouching and concentrating in preparation for his run up, he heard a stifled moan. Jonathon's heart pounded. He moved quickly around a chimneystack to discover a smouldering bundle of dark rags crawling slowly towards the roof edge. The charred, black coat and badly burned, still smouldering, hob-nail boots identified the man as a High Hat. Jonathon stepped in front of the man who peered up at him.

                            The luckless High Hat's hair had been burned away and his face was a mass of oozing blisters. His eyes widened in surprise when he saw the Whisperer and he managed to smile through painfully cracked lips.

“Flyer" he croaked. “We missed you then after all, ha ha."

Jonathon knelt down beside the man, holding a hand to his mouth and nose as the sickly smell of roasted flesh wafted up to him.

“What              about              the              others?"              Jonathon              asked              sternly,

although he felt some compassion for man. "Where are  they?" The High Hat coughed raggedly, spitting up blood and black mucus.

“Escaped, captured who knows? I don't care" he coughed, pain racking his body. “Soon as we roused 'em by settin' fire to the place, they flew over there - then the bastards below forgot us! Let us burn!"

                            The last words rattled in the man's throat, but he coughed life  back  into  his  body  again.  He  lifted  the gnarled,  blackened  stub  of  a  hand  on  to  Jonathon's knee,  the  protruding bones sticking into his thigh.

“Do us a favour mate," he groaned wheezing thickly. “  Just take me to the edge." Jonathon dragged the High hat to the edge of the building and propped him up to look across the smoke-shrouded city. “I can't move, I never asked no-one for 'elp before flyer-man. Now push me off! I can't do it me self" he pleaded. Jonathon hesitated. “How many flyers did you see?" he asked.

The badly burned man was pre-occupied with the pain  from  his  heat  crippled  chest  again,  but  he  heard Jonathon's question.

"Three. Three! "he gasped. "  Just  chuck me over you bastard" he groaned. The Flyer restrained himself from throwing the High Hat over the buildings edge. It was the humane thing to do perhaps, the High Hat would not last much longer, but he needed more information.

“Which way did they go" he asked calmly.

“East! East! you cruel bastard!." the slowly dying  man croaked. “Kill me now!" he wailed.

“Who did this?" Jonathon asked, his calmness was beginning to dissolve; a trap had been set here. He shook the High Hat by the shoulder, who howled in agony as his taloned glove blades slid painfully into his braised flesh.

“It was Caldecott. Amaril Bastard Caldecott." he grunted as pain reverberated through him. “Do it now.....Please." the smouldering High Hat gurgled, as a new haemorrhage of pain erupted in his withered lungs and sent a piercing shaft of agony through his chest.

                            Jonathon mused over the new name, Amaril Caldecott. He asked the tormented man, who had begun to wheeze even more noisily, who this person was. He began to answer, but the name he spat was enough to spur Jonathon into action.

" Flax's..."

                            The High Hat had no time to finish his explanation as Jonathon tipped him over the edge. The High Hat laughed as he fell, but his young executioner had no time to listen. Flax! Jonathon thought, why send his minions to attack the Whisperer's now? He could only be after him....

                            But  why  bother?  Apart  from  that   brief,   but intense, encounter years ago they had never met again. Why should Flax want to do this now? Unless, of course, he knew of his plans; the only way he could know was if the evil alliance Jonathon suspected existed between Flax and the soul of the city was more intimate than he thought.

Jonathon  shook  his  head  in  resignation.  Flax was  more  than  its  tool.  They  were  fearful   allies who co-ordinated attacks at both a spiritual and physical level. He realised that the closer came to his goal, the worse things would get - all his friends were vulnerable

- the City and Flax would try to get  to  him  through them, if he repelled their attacks. Who would be attacked next? Much depended on Rislo now, would It attack him. Could Rislo resist It.?

                            Walking backwards   carefully  to  the  centre  of  the roof,  fearing the badly cracked concrete might give way under his weight, he lined himself up on the eastern outrun. The High Hat's words concerning the fate of the Whisperer's echoed inside his skull. “Gone, captured, dead" Jonathon shuddered. He did not welcome the prospect of finding his friends or Milly dead. This Amaril Caldecott's plan had been clumsy, but effective. He had some how got men to risk the Leper colony and get on to the roof, and for good measure, set light to the Castle of Lepers to force his friends to flight. How many grinning High Hats would have been waiting for them on the surrounding roof tops, just waiting for his friends to leap into the trap?

Jonathon visualised them, a seething black mass of coats and top hats closing inas his friends took fled their sanctuary their grubby hands molesting Milly.

                            Anger flooded through his body. "Flax!" he snarled. He had again sought to deprive him of those he loved. Jonathon shook his head in fear and fury as tears rolled down his cheeks. A meeting was long overdue, he thought, he could no longer allow this creature to destroy all those he cared for. Then a terrible realisation struck him. If Milly, Tefkin and Dale were dead then there was only his recent acquaintance Rislo left, he had no other friends - Flax would have taken them all.

                            Jonathon sprinted hard towards the ledge and hit the trampet hard and accurately. Obligingly, it propelled him high into the space between the two buildings. Rolling himself into a tight ball to increase his momentum, he somersaulted twice, before spreading himself against the rushing air to glide onto the tiled roof before him. His taloned gloves drove into the tiles to anchor him securely. Jonathon lay still, listening  for sounds of movement around him. If the trap were still set, his arrival should have sprung it, but no sound of scrambling boots came toward him. No musket shots disturbed the still air.

                            The Flyer climbed to the roof ridge. A cough from below caused his heart to pound. A murmur of voices drifted up to him, indicating that at least two people were still present below him. Jonathon positioned himself carefully so that he could see down onto the parapet below, but took care that he would not to be visible from their position. There were to High Hats standing guard over two crumpled bodies at their feet. He could not see who they were or if they were dead or merely unconscious; but the way they lay was ominous.

                            There was only one way to find out Jonathon decided. Two to one were not bad odds if he took them by surprise. The two High Hats stood shoulder to shoulder, their backs to Jonathon. One had a musket slung over his shoulder, while the other prodded the body nearest to him with a short sword.

                            Jonathon calculated. If he leapt from the roof ridge he could hit them both and possibly immobilise them with the force of impact. He steeled himself for the leap, adrenalin began to course through his veins, his heart pounding so hard in his chest he felt they must surely hear it.

He took a deep breath and hurled himself down at them. The impact felled both High Hats. He hit them hard with arms outstretched. His gloved left hand struck the sword bearer in the neck as he instinctively turned around to face the danger that registered in his subconscious.

                            The Flyer's taloned glove hooked into his neck, tearing loose a lump of flesh and severing the jugular vein and brachial arteries. Jonathon's right fist caught the other less perceptive High Hat a glancing blow across the back of his head. With a loud clatter all three fell into the tiles.

                            Jonathon was himself stunned by the impact, but scrambled to his feet first and turned to face the fatally wounded High Hat who had managed to raise himself to his knees before him. His gaping neck wound pumped blood into the air as he struggled vainly to staunch the flow with his fists as his life drained from him. He  looked at Jonathon accusingly and gasped, gurgled and choked as the blood from his wounds poured into his severed windpipe. His lip curled in anger.

                            Jonathon was shocked and appalled at what he had done. He had naively hoped that he would have been able disable the two without inflicting such a hideous injury as he had done. The click of a musket hammer being cocked shook him back to his senses. The musket man smiled a mouthful of rotten teeth at Jonathon as he levelled the weapon at his head. He laughed and pulled  the  trigger.  Nothing happened. 

                            His smile drained away as he realised that the damp powder charge had failed to ignite. The High hat fumbled, cursing the perpetual Dubhian drizzle, attempting to cock the musket again but Jonathon's boot hit him hard in the groin and he doubled   up   to   be    hurled    into    unconsciousness by Jonathon's knee as it rose under the luckless High Hat's chin. Jonathon trembled after the speed and ferocity of his own reactions. A mixture of fear, triumph and regret caused his heart to pound hard in his chest again. He  in  panted  heavily,  but  it  was  a  few minutes  before his muscles stopped quivering and his legs    felt solid again. He sighed deeply. The dubious prize  for his success was the freedom to examine the bodies the two High Hat's had guarded. They were Flyers and they were dead.

                            He knew who they were before moving from where he stood. Dale was closest, doubled up, his white face drained of blood. As Jonathon moved toward him he realised that Dale's usually serious expression had been replaced by a thin smile. Death, it seemed, had released him from the shame of his secrets. He was truly at peace now and he had taken others with him judging from the amount of blood on his gloves and dagger.

                            Tefkin's pale face was much as it had been in life. His toothless grin greeted Jonathon as he turned over his limp body. His eyes were half open, but the intense sparkle he had possessed in his blue eyes had been extinguished by death.

                            A   brief,   cold   wind   blew   across   the   roof tops, quickening the tears, which were  beginning  to well in Jonathon's eyes. He remembered his  happy years with his two dead friends and the  fact  that they had rescued him from the clutches of Flax only, to die at the hands of his minions. Jonathon sat and stared in shock for half  an  hour  as  grief  began   to well up in  him,  then  crumpled  to  his  knees  and cried for them unashamedly until he drifted, exhausted into a shallow sleep.

                            In the dream, Jonathon ran with them across the roof tops laughing at the attempted pursuit of the High Hat's. The Whisperer's flew  like  birds  from  roof  ridge to  roof  ridge,  safe  in  the  knowledge  that  nothing could  touch  them; this was their world, their domain. But something had, a dark laughter invaded his dreams.