The Chronicles of Jonathon Postlethwaite: The Seed of Corruption (23 page)

                            She sensed a change in the atmosphere around her. It became charged, her body tensed and a dozen rats leapt out of the darkness towards her, their jaws agape and slobbering in anticipation of rending and devouring her  sweet  soft  flesh.  The  girl   reacted   instinctively and somersaulted backwards with a practised grace, back into the safety of the light.

                            Most of the rats reacted as she did when the light scorched their flesh and disappeared into the darkness appearing again only as hungry red eyes, but blind eyes, gazing from their womb and mother the darkness. Milly grimaced. She was trapped. The rats fled the light. She could not take the Tallman's light staffs because they protected him from the rats and he had saved her. But maybe he did not need them both. Milly picked up the

nearest light orb and repositioned the other so the giant lay safe within a circle of light. The orb and shaft she held was bright and cleared the way before her.

                            She left the house and stepped out into the street listening  to  the  mad  scrabble  of  scaly  paws  and sharp claws as the rats repositioned themselves outside of the light and where it might strike.

                            Milly looked behind her briefly, before she broke into a trot and moving quickly into the deserted town, guided by instinct, searching for a way upwards out of the abyss and back the roof tops where she knew Jonathon would be searching for her. If the darkness had not pressed in on her so closely at that moment she would have noticed that the swarm of rats, which accompanied all travellers in this place, had deserted her.

                            Now something else the rats had fled from now lurched along in her wake. It was not blind and it was not afraid of the light, it was not small and it was not furless. Yet, it had teeth and it had claws and it already worshipped her flesh. It hoped she would remain here in the darkness, long enough for it to taste. And if she did not, it would follow, because it was in love with the idea of her death.

Chapter Sixteen

                            Silus Flax was ready to go. Soon the moment he had yearned for, for what seemed a lifetime, would arrive. In a few moments the dimension door down in the depths of the city he had studied and guarded for so long, would be fully open and he and his two companions would venture into that world beyond. That place which held the key to his dark ambitions.

                            Flax's prophetic dreams had revealed the gifts of power he desired lay there, but he had no real idea of what lay beyond the cobbled courtyard that he had glimpsed only once when the gate had been open briefly for hat those few tantalising moments. Soon it would be open again and this time he had calculated that it would be open for at least seven days. Seven days in which he would build the foundations for a new kingdom.

                            Now he stood high on a thrusting concrete and brick hill of buildings that gave him a view of the city from where he watched the red glow across the city that belched a column of black smoke into the warm, air of the city.

There, beneath dark  plume,  he  knew  was  the Castler of Lepers burned itself out. He shook his head. The lunatic Caldecott seemed intent on burning down and suffocating half the city and had brought complaints from the Tan's and the Tallmen themselves had angrily complained to the Council of the Upper City that a Venting was now necessary.

                            Flax  sighed  deeply  as  he  watched  the  smoke plume levelling out and spilling under domed sky of Dubh. The boy was probably burned to a crisp or shot dead by Amaril's men by now. Still, he boy was dead and that was a satisfactory state of affairs even if he had been deprived of the pleasure himself.

                            He  turned  around  as  footsteps  approached  him from behind. It was the Scholar, one of his chosen companions for his forthcoming trip.

“What is it." Flax grunted.

“Your Eminence," squeaked the chubby little man, his small   eyes   peering   large   through   his   thick   glass perched on the end of his nose, magnifying his eyes to make him look like some predatory animal. “It is time.”

“Good man, then we shall go. Is Scoggins ready? “The Scholar nodded feverishly as Flax patted his bald liver spotted head. “And all the supplies and necessaries have been loaded as you instructed” the little man trilled, eager to please

                            Flax strode off with the Scholar in tow down to the bowels of the city and toward the High Hat stronghold that had been built around the dimension door. Soon they reached the Black Leopard and made their way down level after level now crowded with High Hats. They bowed as Flax passed and then moved rapidly back to their posts and tasks. An atmosphere of anticipation greeted them when they entered the great auditorium which adjoined Flax's personal apartments. All of the most important High Hat's had been instructed by Flax to attend, and all had, for this was the single most important day in the history of their organisation.  For soon they would be in a position to tear power from the hands of Tan's with the gifts their master had promised he would bring to them from the world beyond the dimension door.

                            Flax led an impromtu procession of the most important of his men through an ante-chamber and then into the privacy of his apartments and stood them in a semi-circle before the dimension door.

                            This particular tunnel of multi-coloured light led only a short distance and beyond its exit to a world in darkness which was clearly visible. It was night there and a most convenient cover for his arrival, Flax thought. He studied the scene beyond the door. A plain, cracked plaster wall obscured the view of what lay around the corner to the left of the exit point of the gate. The cobbles of the small enclosed courtyard were wet with rain and reflected the yellow light which washed the yard from the neon street lamps beyond.

                            It was raining furiously there, Flax and his High Hat's could hear the hiss of raindrops as they hit the ground, but despite the roar of the rain there was little else to hear apart from the occasional distant hum of moving engines.

                            Ivor Scoggins stood close to the door and peered in. He had donned his ankle-length leather coat already, its collar turned up to his pointy ears beneath his top hat which was pulled down over his eyebrows. He appeared bored and now pared his already perfectly manicured nails with a stiletto which he secured in the folds of his clothing as Flax approached.

                            Flax nodded a greeting as he too donned a long leather coat and top hat. He placed a hand on the masochistic assassins shoulder.

“Have you seen anything else my dear, any people?" he whispered. Scoggins shook his head disinterestedly and looked into the courtyard. This attitude would not have pleased Flax had it been the attitude of anyone other than his favourite playmate. Scoggins rarely spoke or indeed made any other sound which Flax knew from the many intimate hours they had spent in one another's company. Silus enjoyed inflicting pain and Scoggins adored being hurt – when he wasn’t the hunter himself.

                            Yet there was more to Scoggins He  was  a cold viscous and calculating killer, a man who enjoyed, not just inflicting pain, but extinguishing life. He had, on the rare occasions he spoke, told Flax that life was a disease and he was the cure. Scoggins was a twisted monster of the highest order. Even physically he was different. Flax knew that he was a freak of nature, a hermaphrodite. Physically he was closer to  a  woman. His face was a collection of pale delicate features, studded with pale grey eyes. His body was slim and soft, his limbs long and supple. He moved with the grace  and  elegance  of  a  woman, yet…

                            Flax knew the truth about what he described as Shemale. Scoggins could give him all he desired. He had chosen Scoggins because of his unquestioning devotion to him and Flax knew that Ivor would make sure that his beloved  master  was  deprived  of   no   pleasure   for the  duration of the time he was out of Dubh.

                            Whilst Ivor Scoggins was a practical luxury to Flax, the Scholar was a functioning necessity. He needed someone to advise him on the customs and laws of a society he would find himself part of for a short while. He realised  that  to  complete  his  tasks  without  drawing unnecessary attention to  his  activities.  He  would  need to be aware of what he could and could not do without flouting the laws and customs of this world he sensed was  subtly  different  from  his  own  and making himself vulnerable to  those  in  power  there. The Scholar would ensure that this did not happen, he hoped.

                            The  trinity  of  High  Hats  now  stood  before  the gate. Flax felt a tingle of excitement; his dreams were shaping into a reality. Scoggins remained his cool unaffected self. The Scholar was a bag of jangling nerves as his over-active brain churned into overdrive and his imagination plagued his logical mind with irrational fears.

                            Flax scowled at him as the Scholar's teeth chattered together noisily. All three had dressed the same. All dressed as they would for a normal day in their far from normal world, hoping that such dress would not attract attention in the world beyond the door. The  High  Hats  leader  turned  to  his gathered  captains and smiled a smile which made them all feel uneasy. “To your tasks then and remember that you are all being watched!" he said and his eyes commanded unswerving obedience. In a moment of swirling black cloaks they were gone, the heavy iron doors of Flax's personal apartment closed behind them and the three stood alone at the edge of the

portal.

                            Flax picked  up the  handles  of a  small,  but incredibly  heavy  cart,  which  carried   all   their 'supplies and necessaries' as the Scholar  had described the cargo, and set off at a measured pace into the tunnel of swirling light, Scoggins and the Scholar stepping in behind him. Inside    the    door,    light    whirled    in    violent vortices around them which captured their images and displayed them  in  a  maddening,  distorted kaleidoscope  around  them.  The exit seemed further away now as they became enveloped by the swirling tunnel above them, below them, all round them. Here they were, caught in a vortex where time itself became twisted and torn, displaying images of themselves as they had stood before the door, inside it and, unnervingly, images as they exited it before they actually had.

                            Step  by  step  they  marched  through,  their  pace measured slowed to the extent that it resembled a bizarre funeral march. A strange tingling sensation invaded their senses as flesh and bones adjusted slowly and safely to the vibratory rate of the realm beyond.

                            At last they emerged, to be greeted by a peal of thunder that shook the cobblestones beneath them. Each gasped as they took in lungfuls of the fresh, cold air around them, such a shock to their systems after their life times in the poor, degraded atmosphere of Dubh.

                            They moved out of the small outbuilding into which they had emerged and out into the unprotected yard. The rain hammered down unmercifully, drumming a manic tattoo on the cylinders of the top hats and splashing off the rims. Plumes of frosted breath poured into the cold air as they stood in the closed rectangle of the cobbled yard.

                            Tall flaking brick walls ran parallel left and right. The right wall was eight feet of weathered and flaky, moss ridden red brick, topped with a crown of cement and broken glass. The left was the wall of a house which had be hidden from view by the outbuilding wall. The house rose three stories high into a black night  sky  so  unlike  the Dubhian  canopy which never came close to real skies.

                            Opposite them was an extension of the building and another wall and gates, which bordered the roadway. It was silent there now, not even the sound of the moving engines, which intrigued Flax, disturbed the steady hiss of the winter rain. He signalled to Scoggins and the assassin moved along the left hand wall of the building, stopping occasionally to peer in to the long rows of windows that reflected the yellow neon of the town’s illumination, until he came to a door half way along the house wall.

                            Scoggins nodded to his master and Flax moved out across the courtyard's slick and uneven cobbles to join him at the door. Silent and secluded, this place was the ideal entrance point to a new and unfamiliar world. It was all that Flax could have hoped for. He smiled to himself, a shiver of excitement slid down his spine. The Scholar watched him nervously.

                            The door by which they stood now had been left slightly ajar. A pleasant aroma of pastry and cooked meat hit them as Flax pushed the door inwards. They both tiptoed inside. The small room was a compact bakery illuminated by the blue light of a lighted gas oven. The work top was strewn with unfinished pies and a multitude of empty bottles. This baker was a man of great skill and only his thirst for strong beers exceeded to his culinary talents.