The Chronicles of Jonathon Postlethwaite: The Seed of Corruption (20 page)

                            The gently shifting layers of smoke from the now dead fire still lingered in slowly shifting layers over the wrecked possessions and smashed bones of the Tallman who had been laid to rest here. Rislo stared in disbelief, noting the clawed footprints in the decades of dust on the floor and wondered how such sacrilege could have occurred.

                            The Turkanschoner was as much part of the society of the Tallmen as the Tallmen themselves, even more so since he was under a strict mental discipline. Something was sadly wrong, but Rislo  realised  that that 'wrongness' was that which had saved him from a grisly death at the hands of the beast. The creature should never have been let loose in the tombs on  its own and its training  should have returned it directly to its cage in the Towers and it should never have accepted orders from anyone else but its handler.

                            Rislo looked around the desecrated tomb and shook his head in dismay then turned and continued his journey back towards the Towers and his mission there. He became extra cautious now. Soon he would be back within the grasp of  his  failing  brothers.  He was a fugitive from their justice which  demanded normally that he be captured and, if possible and returned to face a deserter's death in  the  time honoured tradition of the Tallmen - the garrotte.

                            The rebel giant avoided a direct route back and after he had passed through the Tombs, for he feared that he might run into maintenance crews beneath the Halls of Machines and so turned right until he entered  a small forgotten shaft that led steeply downwards to the lowest levels of the Dubhian underworld far below the Halls.

                            He squeezed down the passage and, after an hour or so, emerged into a maze of cobbled streets, illuminated by his orb light and revealing part of the original city annexed by the Tallmen hundreds of years ago, which spread out beneath the Halls and their city. Once  it  had   been   inhabited,   but   as   space in Dubh had become scarce, the great Machine Halls had been built over this place, almost sealing it off forever. The  roof  of  this  world  was  a  network  of hastily placed gigantic steel and concrete beams supported by the rows of deserted, terraced houses below. In places the houses and beams had collapsed and had been hastily jacked up with iron pylons and pillars,  creating  a  forest  of  steel  and  concrete  that

supported the levels above.

                            The people of this place had lived here  for  a while until they could no longer  stand  the  lack  of  air and light. Some had chosen to die here but nothing remained being devoured by the voracious rats who had made this realm their own. Rislo      could      see      them      now      hissing, squealing, scrabbling and dancing on their hind legs in the shadows outside of the puddle of light created by his orb. The Tallman rebel had explored here before and found little to trouble or interest him. Yet, as he now stumbled amongst the fallen debris from the unstable ceiling, he felt the pressure of surveying eyes. A cold chill rah through him causing him to shiver, as if he had been stroked by many icy hands. Yet no physical breeze lifted the dust of antiquity here.

                            He moved quietly, his desire  to escape this subterranean ghost town's streets  increasing  with every step he took. He stopped and looked around him. Countless pairs of dull red eyes surveyed him, blind watchers, their useless retinas reflecting back the light of his orb.

The  blind  observers  no  longer  scuttled  around him. From every vantage point on bare window  and door frames, piles of debris, even from perches high in the roof their sightless eyes watched, their pale and almost hair-less bodies, jostling for position to experience  a  rare  spectacle.

                            Rislo    heard    a    hissing    noise    which    was steadily growing louder and causing the hairs on  the back of his neck to rise. He realised what it was. It was the sound of air being sucked into millions of moist nostrils and through wagging whiskers pointed in his direction. On the stagnant air of this underworld street, every single rat examined Rislo, they saw the intruder with their noses as clearly as he saw them with his eyes.

As Rislo moved on, the  rats  escorted  him, leaping from their ledges to form one great rolling, rustling mass of hairless, scabby flesh that swirled around him just out of his circle of light until he paused again.

                            The giant stopped and studied them as they studied him. He was surrounded. Many of the rats were as huge as dogs. There had not been this number when he had last ventured here. They watched and, Rislo now  realised, were waiting.

                            They seemed reluctant to enter the sphere of light he stood in. He was sure that if the light was not here they would simply attack him. He chuckled confidently and twisted the orb's staff to reduce the diameter of the light circle, his sanctuary. The rats shrieked in delight and raced inwards toward him, following the receding edge of light inwards towards their prey  until  Rislo  reversed the beam and the light spread outwards, snaring a few within the sphere of light.

                            Their shrieks of expectancy turned to squeals of pain and terror. They leapt high into the air and fell squirming in agony to the floor when the light touched their sensitive skins and caused it to erupt rapidly into blisters and ulcers. There was a dull fizzing sound around him as the rodent's eyes exploded, and soon the ground within the light was littered with the dead and dying creatures, mist-like legions of fleas departing their bodies for a new living host.

                            When the pool of light reached its maximum extent Rislo sensed the sightless creatures’ attention shift from him to the new source of potential food he had created

around him. The rats waited patiently for Rislo to move on.

                            As he advanced and the darkness closed in behind him, Rislo heard the rush of advancing paws and the screech of the disabled rats as they were despatched by their brothers and sisters, whose ability to adhere as a social unit evaporated with the smell of burned flesh and the rising of the most basic instincts that told them that to eat was to live.

                            Rislo left the rats to feast upon one another and advanced directly beneath the Halls of Machines. Here the roof was supported by a great thick forest of huge vertical pillars of stone, concrete, iron and steel, a hastily erected, engineering Mirkwood. Here shadows slipped sideways and unseen things  slid  and  crawled  behind  the  cover of these  artificial   tree   trunks,   through   which   drifted a continual dust sent down by the vibrations of the multitude of engines which throbbed almost continuously above.The Tallman continued, confident in the maps and plans he had himself drawn up or stolen over the years, and soon found himself in a long, narrow alley that led underneath the Tallmens’ killing zone. The girders and beams thinned rapidly, since no great weight or important structures lay above. Ahead of him Rislo would find his entrance to the city of the Tallmen.

                            The buildings on either side of him were terraced houses, windows gone and door frames empty, the wood that had been there gnawed away and eaten by rats and the other unseen inhabitants of this realm years ago. A flicker of silver, grey light caught Rislo's eye and, his curiosity overwhelming him, he moved in search of its source. He crept to a house and peered through the doorway and gazed in surprise.

                            A circle of whirling light was lodged in the rear of the building. Rislo knew that this rainbow whirlpool of colour was a dimension door, one which had not appeared on the maps the Tallmen made when they detected Field Wall anomalies from their control centre. And that was another thing Rislo realised. It was not in the Field Wall at all where such things were usually located. It was here in the middle of Dubh! He simply had to investigate, it might prove to be the very door he was looking for, to a world he dreamed of, a world he could live happily in.

                            The Tallman advanced carefully into the dimension door. He felt the tingling of his cells being realigned with the vibratory rate of  the  passage.  Rislo  moved slowly, adjusting his  pace,  well  aware,  as  a  Tallman of the consequences of a hurried transit. A few minutes later he emerged into a cave, which was the door's exit in another world, and pushed aside the undergrowth to reveal the nature of this place.

                            A thousand new or long yearned for sensations hit him at once. The ground sloped away from the small cave to a bubbling brook at the foot of small, steep-sided valley. On the opposite bank thick scrub and undergrowth grew down to the edge of the narrow waterway, following it up and down stream as far as Rislo could see in the dim, silvery light of a new moon and the myriad stars above. At the top of the overgrown bank, opposite a narrow copse of tall thin trees was silhouetted by the neon night glow of a town - the top of a high, straight church spire confirmed its existence.

                            Rislo sat down on the dewy grass to take in all he heard, saw and smelt, touched and tasted. He laughed quietly to  himself, watching  his frosted breath  drift moon wards as he listened to the background hum of night traffic far off and the sound of  the  occasional voice from the town beyond the trees. If he had found this gate before, thought Rislo, he would have left the Towers and Dubh long, long, ago.

                            There had been other doors which he had investigated, but they were to either desolate or hostile environments. The place he looked at now was different, something appealed to him. Yes, it was inhabited, but this was not Dubh, but perhaps these people here could accept him. His talents and skills might be useful here if their technology was inferior to that of the Tallmen.  He  would  be  useful  and  accepted,  he assumed rationally and rather naively. This would be the place he ran to when the destruction of Dubh was set in motion, the others could come with him if they wished, and he doubted they would refuse.

                            Studiously, Rislo marked the position of this new door on his maps, although there was no need, and turned reluctantly to return to his tasks in the city of the Tallmen. He              re-entered              the              Dubhian              underworld and the  cold  blast  of  reality  and  fear  of  the  coming  hours hit him  hard.  His  visit  to  the  city  of  his  kin  would be  dangerous to say the least. To fail was to die. But there was no need to fail or die or even try he thought. All  he  had  to  do  was  to  strap  on  his  back-pack  turn around and disappear  out  of  this  world  forever.

                            But  there              was              Jonathon and Cornelius to consider now; he had vowed to help them, his conscience called  to  him.  Jonathon  had saved  his  life, Cornelius had saved him              from              a  life              of seemingly interminable              loneliness that              he might not have survived - both the Postlethwaites had given Rislo hope. He looked longingly at the whirling tunnel of the dimension  door  behind  him.  The  shadows  around him  deepened and he shivered.

"Go, save yourself. You are all that matters, friend, both the beast and the garrotte await you here, go while you still can.” a voice whispered in the darkness of his mind so clearly he thought it in the  labyrinths  with  him.  "Go! The only friend and ally you have is yourself , you owe no-one anything."

Rislo stood perfectly still, now he was convinced.

                            The City's soul had become more powerful than he imagined, it had spoken to him. He owed it to himself to fight it. All his  theories  had  been  correct,  it  was systematically  destroying and corrupting the souls of the Tallmen, his people! The city as a whole. He had to fight it.

                            A cold laughter echoed around the Underworld streets. "But Rislo, perhaps what you hear is your own voice, the voice of pure reason, rejecting the sentimentality of oath and allegiance. After all how can ‘nothing‘, that which has no body, no earthly vessel speak?"

Rislo screamed at the voice which was now inside his head.

"Be gone from me! I know you and you are not part of me!"

                            With this Rislo increased the power of his orb light which did little to sweep back the shadows around him and strode out purposefully into the dark street, then stood and  faced  the  darkness  in  which seemed  to  flow  in  deeper, darker veins far back in the thick forest of jacks and beam below              the Halls.              He              pointed              a              finger                            accusingly at It. "You may not be whole, but I can finish you forever! There is a great nowhere which can swallow you up and I can open the door!" he threatened the swirling blackness. Mocking laughter reverberated around Rislo.

“Die then fool, you will never escape this place and when you die you will be mine, coward. I have other business now, but I will attend to you soon. Till we meet again.......!"

                            Rislo was buffeted by a freezing wind which left frost crystals upon him and the area around him as they were swept by Its icy wake. For a moment Rislo shivered and then glanced back at the door again. He thought he heard Its laughter in the far distance. Its words began to repeat themselves in his mind.

                            Rislo screamed again and then began his journey towards the Towers. The rats did not reappear again as the Tallman walked slowly towards his goal. He knew that at the edge of this lost underground town there was a well shaft that was still in use by the Tallmen. In fact there were many which, unlike  the  poisoned  and  dry  wells of the Upper and Lower city, still produced drinkable water. But, at the edge of the Dubhian Underworld there was a shaft which led almost directly  up  to  the chambers where the Field Expanding equipment was housed and operated.