The Chronicles of Jonathon Postlethwaite: The Seed of Corruption (28 page)

“Let us compare notes then, my man. The old bitch has filled us in on a few details about this place. She now thinks of us as foreigners, 'Albanians' in fact. Whoever they are." he laughed without  any  hint  of  humour  in his voice.   "There   are,  a  few  things   us   'Albanians', us 'foreigners', should  know  and  she  has  informed us of them." he smiled horrifically. “Let us see if  her grasp of reality corresponds with your hard and scholarly facts shall we?" His smile fell away, leaving his pock marked mien expressionless and he led a now nervous Pinky Makepeace up the stairs.

                            Seeing his companions depart, Ivor Scoggins left the table and donned the blue denim jacket Mrs. Lovenberry had acquired for him from the huge pile of 'jumble' that the Women's Institute stored in an unused room on her premises. He looked curiously at the old woman sleeping peacefully at the table. How had she ever been able to get so old he mused? Whatever world lay out there he was about to find out. With a final glance at the now softly snoring Mrs. Lovenberry and disgusted shake of the head, he slipped quietly out of the door and into the night.

                            The rain which had persisted during the day had now ceased and an icy breeze caused him to shiver. He stood for a while and looked up and stared open-mouthed for a while at the dark, star studded alien sky and then sniggered to himself.

                            This world was undoubtedly beautiful he thought, so different to the one to in which he had been born. Yet he felt no different here. His desires, his needs remained the same, yet the prospect of fulfilling them here excited him intensely. It was a challenge and the rewards would be so much greater.

Flax had told him in bed that there was an abundance purity, innocence here that he himself had only ever  experienced  in  one   individual   amongst the millions in Dubh. To desecrate and destroy it would drive him to an ecstasy Scoggins had never experienced before. Flax had told him of how he had been deprived of that experience in their home world and had now licensed his playmate to experience it for him, by proxy. His only warning had been to leave no trace and no trail back to the Cross Keys. Ivor Scoggins stepped out of the yard and instinctively sought welcome embrace of the shadows. Moving with the fluid grace of a feline predator, he slipped along the alleyway and out into the market square.

                            The street lights lit up the area here with a light almost as bright as day. Scoggins cursed softly to himself. Here the stalking of his victims would be difficult, no deep pools of shadow in which to become invisible, no protective cloak of darkness from which to surprise his prey. But there would be other alleyways and other places, like the one he had just emerged from, where the artificial light did not reach.

                            As he walked slowly across the market square towards  its  central  monument,  Scoggins   observed the movement of people and machines from place to place. There were plenty of people here walking in groups and pairs from the ale houses which were now alive with the sound of music and raised voices, shining like beacons to attract custom.

                            Scoggins scanned his potential prey, wetting his lips with the tip of his tongue.  He  sensed  the  purity Flax  had  spoken  of.  It  hit  him   as   whiteness, softness, a  smoothness  waiting  to  be  darkened, cleaved and corrupted. Not all had it and many bore the dark grain of life, had been tainted by it, though all were a thousand times more pure than their counterparts in Dubh.

                            The  assassin  sauntered  towards  a   street corner opposite the huge church and watched as a young couple approached him. The young man was powerfully built, his muscular frame displayed under a tight fitting vest. His dark hair was set in  a  mass  of collar length curls and his face was smooth and devoid of any hair. The youth was dressed in denim and,  as he and his female companion approached the stranger who loitered on the corner of the street, he looked  up at  Scoggins  and  laughed  as  she

whispered something in his ear.

                            They both looked at him as they passed by. The youth was confident and his look was intended to intimidate Scoggins who remained expressionless. His female companion smiled. She was attractive in her culture, but to Scoggins she was attractive because of what she was irrespective of any physical attributes or gender.

                            She was pure and untouched, yet despite the male on her arm and her innocence, her physical attitude, her body language, reached out to summon Ivor Scoggins. But it was not taking her virginity which aroused Scoggins, no minor physical rupture was his goal.

                            To fulfil himself he would have violate her soul then end her life in the slowest and most despicable way possible. Unconsciously, he sighed and fingered the knife belt strapped across his stomach and hidden beneath his baggy Motorhead tee-shirt.

                            As the girl passed close to him, so  deliberately close that he could feel the warmth of her body. She looked him up and down, her eyes teasing him, as did her  body  covered  in  skin  tight,  white  leggings   and an  equally  tight  body  stocking.

                            The assassin's heart began to pound. Her provocative attire did nothing for an animal which was neither male or female, or a libido which lusted not for its own  satisfaction  through  the  gendered  procurement  of pleasure. Scoggins arousal was centred on the simple prospect of inflicting pain and destruction upon the living flesh of another organism. The non-physical eyes that saw this prospect began to glow darkly; a voice spoke.

"I am the centre of all things."

                            The couple passed by and the youth cast another warning look at the assassin, who just grinned back unimpressed by the threat. Scoggins inhaled the perfume of her innocence as the object of his lust went by, his eyes watching her long blonde hair it gently caressed her shoulders. The youth tightened his grip around his companion’s waist as he looked back, now nervously at the stranger who he had failed to warn off and who remained at the street corner staring as they made their way across the street towards the churchyard.

                            She would be his. He would present no obstacle - him first, then her. He  waited  until  the  darkness  of the churchyard swallowed his prey then followed slowly. As the inky blackness enveloped him, Ivor Scoggins felt safe and at home. His eyes quickly adjusted to the darkness and he became tense and excited.

                            Moving with a practised stealth, he followed the couple as they wandered aimlessly amongst the gravestones toward the top of the river bank and thin strip of woodland on the bank top. He could not see them, but did not have to. He sensed her presence, the purity of her life force shone for his dark soul like a beacon, which he must extinguish.

                            Scoggins kept his distance, moving in the darkest shadows and always in complete silence, he did  not even seem to breathe, the couple blissfully unaware of that which stalked them. He was an animal of pure instinct now, his senses heightened by the hunt. He smelt the odours of human arousal as he slipped from the shadow of one gravestone to the next, crouching low as he did so.

                            He startled a cat which hissed when he materialised at its side. He silenced it automatically with a thin sharp blade that twisted skilfully through its skull. The couple, only a few yards ahead, became quiet, stopped and listened before they dismissed the sound and continued laughing and giggling towards the thinly spaced trees at the top of the river bank where soon they slipped to the floor wrapped in one another's embrace.

                            Despite the coldness of the night the youth's passion did not cool. They kissed noisily and gasped in the icy air. The youth's instincts had control of him now. His rationality had been used to make this moment possible, had become enslaved to his passion, he wanted her badly becoming more aggressive and, squealing playfully in mock protest, she pushed him off.

                            Then she looked at him and he knew that they had both been playing the same primal game. The girl peeled off her legging to reveal nothing beneath and lay back on the grass, her eyes holding him. Tonight would be her night. He raised himself to his knees and began to unbuckle his belt unaware, lost in the rising of  his animal passions, that a shadow rose  up  behind him and steel glinted in the starlight. But she could see everything.

                            The slim shadow solidified into a menacing human form against the moon. Time slowed, almost stopped. Her would-be  lover  smiled  at  her  terrified  expression,  he thought she was afraid of him, he himself unaware of the shadow's arms which had risen slowly above his own head. Two thin, steel blades glinted in the moonlight.

                            Time froze for her and her heart seemed  to stop, its pounding ceasing as she waited for the knives to descend in flashing silver arcs, each one aimed at weak spots in the skull of her naively, grinning boyfriend's temples.

                            The shadows mouth opened and a crescent of a smile appeared. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw three dark shapes emerged out of the dense undergrowth which covered the river bank. A horned beast stood upright and howled. The  smile  of  her  boyfriend  and  his  assailant

disappeared as their heads snapped towards the source of the chilling cry. The boyfriend's jaw dropped open in disbelief and terror and the shadows teeth flashed in a grimace of anger at the leading intruder which hurtled with an unnatural speed from the bank edge.

                            A split second later the horned intruder thundered into Ivor Scoggins. The assassin's knives flashed toward his attacker only  to  be  deflected  by  the  shield  it  held in front of it. The fist of Scoggins's attacker struck him in the neck and its sharp talons dug into his throat and he found himself lifted easily from his feet to hang in the air.

                            The fury of the attack released the shocked couple from the paralysis of fear and they stumbled to their feet and began to flee. He sprinted before her, forgetting her existence in his haste. She stumbled after him, leggings around her ankles, allowing herself only one brief glance toward the scene they had left.

                            There, behind her, three dark figures stood over a crumpled form which twitched on the ground in front of them. She  saw  a  impossibly  tall  and  gangly  man, a crouched  and  horned  monster  and  one  other figure standing over the body of the shadow which had meant to attack her and her would-be lover.

                            The scene then disappeared as a ragged grey cloud passed over the moon, deepening  the  shadows and covering her nightmare vision as she ran sobbing through the graveyard towards the sanctuary of the neon lights,    wondering    where    her    heroic    lover, who only moments ago seemed so keen on taking her virginity from her, had disappeared so quickly.

Chapter Twenty

                            Jonathon wiped the tears from his red rimmed eyes and shivered involuntarily as he  attempted  to  regain his composure. If he was to find Milly here in Dubh, he would have to his wits about him he realised.

The small tavern below was a hive of activity, its visitors exclusively High Hats. Unknown to Jonathon the great hall Silus Flax had built around his gate was several levels below the Black Leopard and on each level, at this crucial time, his minions swarmed like excited ants.

                            In the absence of Silus Flax, Edgar Morrell, the Chief of Assassins, ran the  High  Hat  organisation  in the Lower  City. Morrell was  a  cold  and  calculating,  yet intensely loyal individual. To him, as with his master, people were no more than commodities, tools, weapons and he used ruthlessly them as such to further his ends and those of Silus Flax, showing no emotion as he acquired and disposed of them on the basis of efficiency. Morrell had always been Flax's right hand and showed a devotion to him that exceeded all else. If his master had told him that to die, he would have done so immediately without thought or emotion and he expected the evotion and loyalty same from all his subordinates.

                            At present, he presided in the great ante-room to Flax's personal apartments and considered the fate of Amaril Caldecott who had failed to carry out Flax's wishes to the letter. Behind  Morrell  was  the  great barred door to the chambers in which the dimension door was now open and above it a huge clock  showed the time, day and date,  ticking loudly in the silence of the chamber.

                            Amaril Caldecott  stood  quaking before  his judge staring at his feet and listened to the wooden ticking of the clock which stretched out the seconds while he waited for Morrell to speak. The deputy High Hat leader stood and stared at his underling him through his one good eye, while his false eye attempted to imitate its working companion but failed miserably, appearing to gaze outwards and away from the working eye's focal point.

                            After fifteen long minutes of scrutiny, he sat down again on the throne-like chair positioned on a raised dais, his hands cupped under his chin. Morrell's massive hunched and muscular form terrified Amaril, not to mention his uncompromising reputation.