The Chronicles of Jonathon Postlethwaite: The Seed of Corruption (38 page)

                            Harris did and Santiago put the receiver down and sat staring into space for a moment. There was only the problem of advisers now, but that was easily solved. He would go himself. He laughed; this was a time for celebration. He still had thirty minutes to kill before he returned to the Cross Keys gave Flax the good news.

                            Reclining back on his bed and sighing, he then called room service, hoping that the pretty young waitress his attention had been drawn to was on duty to deliver his celebratory champagne.

Chapter Twenty Eight

                            As the happily motivated gun runner had left the Cross Keys yard, Flax had emerged into the cold morning air and inhaled deeply through  his  sensitive  organ. His nose told him that there was someone else here. As well as this person's scent he could feel his presence. He ground his teeth as his nose led him toward the bakery's dirty window. He peered in to try and pick out movement inside.

                            As Flax's profile loomed, huge and forbidding, outside the opaque window, Jonathan ducked down inside. A shudder hacked its way into the core of his being. After all these long years, he was now only yards away from his sworn enemy....... and  wished  he  were not.

                            He felt a fear like a thousand cold knives plunging into his soul and he could feel his strength ebbing away in the presence of Flax's corrupt spirit. He was aware of an energy flow from himself to that dark hole of a man which stood peering through the dirty window, from one opposite pole of humanity to another. He felt his vitality being leeched off by his adversary. But he could  not run. He was trapped. He heard  the  door  handle  turn and his hand ran across the rubbish strewn worktop to close around the filthy meat cleaver the baker had left there. Halting at the door, he tried to identify the scent. It was not the baker. But it was familiar, so tantalisingly

familiar. Memories. Dark streets, the city.....the boy.

                            His beautiful boy! He began to salvinate, spittle oozed out onto his thin grey lips. But here? Now?

Slowly the dreams and nightmares of this youngster standing between him and his destiny made sense. The prophecies had come true.

He  was  here!  Just  when  he  was  hours  from achieving his dreams the boy had come to attempt to thwart him! Flax grimaced, he should have made sure of his death before, his bungling servants had failed him. But he would not fail and the boy's demise would herald the beginning of his new life. Flax grabbed the nearest weapon, a rusty old grass scythe, and opened the door a fraction. Yes, the boy's scent was strong! Excitement surged inside him as he envisaged his prize, the sweet trophy he that had eluded him in that dark street all those years ago.

                            He pushed the door half ajar, stopped, listened and sniffed. There was no movement inside. No sound, only the sweet scent of mortal innocence. His muscles tensed as he prepared to enter.

                            Flax exploded, howling, into the half lit bakery, his scythe held above his head, ready to strike down his prey. His eyes were taking time to adjust to the dimness of the bakery and he knew that he was at a disadvantage. The boy could be standing in a corner ready to pounce.

                            The curved blade slashed through the air defensively, attempting to deter any sudden attack. Then he crouched low, a snarl  frozen  on  his  face, as  he  prepared himself for the attack. His eyes adjusted, the bakery now took on recognisable forms, light penetrated the filth stained windows in bright shafts which illuminated the millions of tiny dust motes, raised by Flax's frenzied entry and which now danced in the sullied light beams.

                            Looking around he realised that his quarry was not here. He clearly saw the baker's work top, the oven, the piles of beer crates. There was no boy. There was nowhere to hide. He searched under the worktop  and threw the crates aside, he wasn't here.

                            Flax  was  confused.  His  nose  was  normally  so reliable. The scent was strong amongst the smell of meat, pastry and beer. But surely his eyes could not deceive him. He was not here!

                            Flax shrugged his massive shoulders. This place, its new scents and sounds must have disorientated him slightly. He knew that he had been here though and not too long ago. Of that he was sure and it made him all the more determined that he pursue his goals with a renewed vigour.

                            Then again, perhaps it was              just his imagination. Perhaps coming so  close  to  fulfilling  his aspirations  had  some  bizarre psychological effect. He had   imagined it, scent and all. He raised the scythe above   his head and hammered it down hard into the door.  Either way there was no problem. He either wasn't here or had been and was gone. He was not threat now.  With one last glance over his shoulder into the deserted bakery, Flax left and closed the door behind him and made his way back to the house. He had other things to do, plans to make and then there was the problem of Ivor Scoggins's disappearance. He had still not returned and he was worried, for his plans required that he and his party go unnoticed here. He did not need the              complications ofthe              local              "police becominginterested. And because, because, he admitted to himself, Ivor was, well he was....... useful.

Yes, he was useful.

                            Inside the bakery's large oven, Jonathan stopped trembling as he heard the outer door to the building close. His grip on the meat cleaver relaxed, allowing blood to slowly return to his white knuckles. Jonathan realised that crammed into the oven as he was, he would not have been able to use the meat cleaver at all even if Flax had opened the door and found him. The monster would have probably stood there and laughed for a moment, shut the door, switched on the oven and giggled while he was roasted alive.

                            Jonathan cursed softly to himself as he slowly unfolded himself from the cramped position he had taken up inside the claustrophobic space. He shook his head. He was a coward. He had come all this way to challenge Flax and fulfil his oaths and his courage had failed him and he had failed everyone. But now was  not  the time. Flax was out of Dubh and Jonathan had misjudged his power.  Flax  was  no   ordinary   being.   It   had   to be in Dubh he consoled himself that was it; he would face him finally there.

                            His proximity to the monster who had been responsible for the deaths of all those he had loved had drained him spiritually and physically. If Flax had remained in the room much longer Jonathan felt that he  surely would have died. He had felt the will to live draining slowly out of his body to him.

                            They were not meant to live together in the same world. It seemed as if it  were  unnatural  that  these two opposites could not be allowed exist  together. They were postive and negative forces, and one would prevail. Jonathan could not face him here, on these terms. But now he doubted that he could ever face him. After all, he thought, why   would   things   be   any   different in   Dubh?

                            There would still be that weakening of the spirit, the searing pain which erupted in his soul by just being in his presence. Yet he had vowed he would face him, he had sworn oaths to others, to those who were now dead and all who he had loved. He had made vows and, but after today doubted that he could ever fulfil them.

                            These thoughts tortured Jonathan as he opened the door a fraction and peered out. It was empty now. He had seen Flax lead the grey haired stranger, whom he had seen in the car the night before, around the corner and who had emerged smiling moments later. Jonathan had been intrigued and decided to investigate, so checking again that the coast was clear he sprinted across the yard and around the corner.

                            In  the  brick  shed  behind  the  tarpaulin  sheet,  he found the dimension door and Flax's incentive for Santiago's involvement. He sifted through the sacks for a moment and then paused as he heard voices

behind him, crossing the yard.

                            There was nowhere to hide here. Only the dimension door offered a way out. But where did it lead he asked himself? Back to the city obviously, but where in the city. The voices came closer now and he decided that he had no option.

                            He glanced over his shoulder as he slipped into the swirling mass of colour to see Flax and a small bespectacled figure appear around the corner. As Jonathan walked slowly into the tunnel of trapped and distorted images he felt fear lance through him. Rislo had said that the other door was unstable, that it might collapse unexpectedly or its exit point change disastrously. Could it be true of this one? Had he thrown himself into the unknown? Would he ever see Milly and the others again?

                            He tried to make sense  of  the  muddled images snared in the vortex's timeless walls like memories. Hope sang inside of him as he saw Rislo and the Turkanschoner talking by the doorway in the derelict house, deep in the underworld, the house he had left only the  day  before  whilst  his  co-conspirators had gone off to their own tasks.

                            Here too,  was  the  image  of  the  great  High  Hat chamber he had escaped from even earlier. Yet in these images, which flickered in the walls of the dimension door he carefully traversed, it was filled with the milling top hats

of thousands of Flax's servants.

                            As he moved along the vortex the images of this hall intensified until the walls were exclusively filled with High Hats, grinning and staring into the dimension door; waiting. If Jonathan continued this way he felt sure he would find himself amongst them, out of the frying pan into the fire. Flax was behind him and High Hats in front.

                            He was trapped again, but decided he would rather face the mass of High Hats than Flax, he had a chance, after all they did not know who he was.

Slowly he edged towards the exit back  into  the High Hat stronghold in Dubh. Then, suddenly, the images in the side wall of the tunnel of light and colour flared briefly to reveal a rift from the main tunnel which led away from his exit point.

                            Jonathan looked in to the new tunnel and noticed that the walls were free from any images at all. Then his own image appeared and multiplied into the bare swirl of nothingness. He did not know here this led, but anything was better than a hall packed with High Hats and it might lead back to the underworld, if he was lucky.

                            He entered the new dimension door and in a short time  emerged  at  the  other  end. The emptiness of the realm he now found  himself  in took him by surprise. In Dubh there were buildings everywhere, people crowding every  level,  but  here there almost nothing at all. No buildings and no people.

                            Jonathan now stood on this world’s perfectly flat surface and looked around him. Large slabs of white stone extended in perfect symmetry to distant horizons which seemed to melt into soft and pale blue sky. A warm breeze blew steadily into hid face, bringing with it tiny grains of sand which stuck to his hair and clothing and irritated his eyes. From above him a bright, white sun beat down. Jonathan looked up at it shielding his eyes from it intensity.

                            This  was  not  what  he   wanted   or   expected. He needed to return to Dubh and this place was not it. He turned around in an attempt to find the dimension door he had come through to this place but, to his horror, it was no longer there. The only evidence for its existence was a set of indecipherable figures carved into a white stone slab. Now he was lost! Jonathan slumped down onto the warm stone, hoping that the door might open again, fearing that if he wandered from this spot he would lose any hope of ever returning, it here were any at all now. He decided to wait a while and see.

                            If the gate reopened, he would try and retrace his route steps back to the Cross Keys and then back to the original gate, as he should have  done  before,  if his curiosity has not got the better  of  him.  If the gate reopened, then perhaps he could avoid Flax at the Cross Keys and return to the place where he had originally entered the world and where he had spent the night. If it was still open. If, if, if. If not then...., well, he was lost, completely and utterly lost to everyone, he realised. He would never see any of them again. Never see Milly. He sighed deeply, close to tears. Why had he been so stupid, so selfish, he thought? His selfish desires had lost him everything.

                            The sand carrying wind had abated now. Jonathan looked up through eyes blurred by tears of regret and irritated by the wind borne sand grains. Something had changed in the sky. A mass of huge, billowing storm clouds had begun to collect on the horizon of the paved,  wasteland.  Below  the   clouds   bright   blue forks of lightening flashed down with an unusual ferocity, but with no thunder at all.