The Unhappy Medium 3: Wretched Things: A Supernatural Comedy, page 25
‘Er, … no,’ agreed Enrico. ‘I suppose not.’
‘So, it’s an instruction. It’s telling us to do something with the door. Maybe a code. See the repeating use of this symbol here?’ Newton pointed at the mess of scratches. ‘That’s a giveaway. Let me see now …. If that symbol is a one, then that one may be a two.’
‘Dr Barlow …,’ said Enrico.
‘Shhhh,’ responded Newton. ‘I think I may be on to something.’
‘But Signor Barlow ….’
‘See that group of symbols there? It’s a direct duplicate of that line there … and the one below. The only difference is the last symbol in each line and that arrow-like glyph. Has to be a quantitative system. “Turn the handle left twice”, or “turn the handle right three times”, that kind of thing. What do you think?’
‘I think,’ replied Enrico wearily, ‘dat the key was under da mat.’
‘Oh,’ sighed Newton, as the hermit held up the rusty old key. ‘Really?’
‘Sì, really. Why you think is gotta be so complex, eh?’
‘It is …,’ replied Newton defensively, ‘in the games,’
‘Is no game now,’ said Enrico, placing the key in the hole. There was a grumble of cogs as the rusted mechanism fought back, then a clunk as the lock gave in.
Newton and Enrico slipped through the doors and into the city.
Instantly, a jumble of buildings clustered around them. Ragged awnings drooped from broken frames, ancient doors hung from decaying hinges, and a multitude of alleyways radiated away into the darkness, none more obviously important than the next.
‘Bit of a maze,’ observed Newton.
‘Sì,’ agreed Enrico.
‘You’re the local. Which way?’
‘No idea,’ said the hermit. ‘I don’t remember any of dis.’
‘You said you came this way before,’ protested Newton.
‘I hadda da guide,’ replied Enrico. ‘Dis wassa long time ago. I can’t remember much; my shorta-term and my longa-term memories are justa awful.’
‘Of course, they are,’ grumped a frustrated Newton. ‘So, you can’t remember anything about which way the guide took you?’
‘Sorry,’ shrugged Enrico. ‘I wasn’t keeping da notes.’
‘I just love this organisation,’ griped Newton. ‘Am I the only person on the payroll possessing curiosity?’
‘What do you expect?’ sighed the hermit. ‘Road signs?’
‘Er, … yeah. Or a map? Anyway, even if we don’t have a map, we can stay on track if we balance our going lefts with our going rights.’
‘If you say so.’
‘Well, it’s worth a go, isn’t it?’ replied Newton. ‘Given how in the dark we are.’
Almost as soon as Newton said it, the lights blasted back on, a ripple of incandescence that pulsed above the city, coating the enormous rock-dome in a million spots of blue light.
Bennet’s search party had reached the power station.
Never one to leave a switch unthrown, Gabby had pulled the same lever as Newton and the hermit, powering the tunnels back up.
‘Woahh,’ said Newton. ‘Thre’s someone behind us.’
‘I think so,’ agreed Enrico.’
‘The German woman! The one who threw me off the cliff. I bet it’s her.’
‘This isa very bad,’ lamented Enrico. ‘Is serious enough a breach to hava da junior Purgatorian inna here. But a criminal? Is unthinkable!’
‘We’d better get our arses in gear,’ urged Newton. ‘Because they’ll have guns. She likes guns. All we have is my sarcasm … and your stoicism. Hardly shock and awe, is it?’
‘Where we go, exactly?’ asked the hermit. ‘Cossa there are seven offa da paths to choose from, and I ain’t gotta da clue.’
Newton closed his eyes, hoping for a logical solution. When there wasn’t one, he sighed wearily, then shot out his hand … randomly.
‘That one,’ said Dr Newton Barlow, unscientifically.
Chapter 21
Raiders
It wasn’t just Newton and Enrico who’d been struggling to enter the hidden city.
On the opposite side of the gigantic cavern, Dr Kraakenhausen and his team were running, falling and jumping like hopeless circus performers, inches away from certain death. Optimistically crossing a high bridge to the ramparts, they realised, almost too late, that they had stumbled into a trap.
Fifty feet across the cobbled viaduct, it began its orchestrated collapse, sending them scrabbling like startled squirrels back to their starting point. In the chasm below, a forest of wicked, rusty blades pointed up at them, asking for more victims. Astonishingly, they had only lost one of their number, the returned spirit of a Teutonic knight whose flabby host body now hung from the spikes below like last titbits at a 1970s buffet.
‘These host bodies are useless!’ wheezed the general, running his hand across his wobbling gut. ‘How did these fat slobs vin two verld vors!’
‘I’m not happy with my body, either,’ lamented Raynald de Châtillon. ‘It’s like running with sacks of grain around my ankles. My lungs are on fire, yet I crave the smoke of burning weeds! What madness be this?’
‘Smoker,’ explained Helena, leaning against an arch, panting. ‘Probably a forty-a-day man.’
‘Smoking?’ wheezed Raynaud. ‘Why would anyone want to produce smoke?’
‘It’s a fair question,’ replied Dr Kraakenhausen. ‘But von ve vill have to answer another time. Helena, ve must push on. Our rivals vill triumph if ve delay. I don’t care how many people ve lose along the vay.’
Helena looked at the hacking, puffing, gasping Crusaders. ‘These men have been dead once. A second time von’t hurt them. I say ve press on … take our chances vith the booby traps. Let’s get to the centre of this place before someone else does.’
‘Old man,’ called Dr Kraakenhausen, addressing the blind man. ‘You ready to move?’
‘I am not as weak as I look,’ said the blind man.
‘Votever,’ snarled Dr Kraakenhausen, grabbing the old man’s frail arm and shaking him inappropriately. ‘Vot do you … sense? Eh? Tell me … vot is here?’
‘If it is treasure you are hoping for,’ replied the Greek, ‘then yes, beyond this point, there are treasures. However …,’ he cautioned, pulling his arm away from the German’s tightening grip, ‘such treasures come with great danger. Are you pre–’
‘Ja, ja,’ dismissed Dr Kraakenhausen, waving the warning away like the gas from a small dog. ‘All very Lord of Der Rings, I’m sure. Your theatrical gibberish is vasted on me, Greek. I’m a professional, not some impressionable schoolchild. A good archaeologist is ready for anything. The unexpected is alvays expected. So, enough of your Gandalf Scheisse. Ve’ve lost enough time already. Ve go.’
The old man smiled knowingly to himself. Subtle as it was, this expression did not go unnoticed by Andronicus the Terrible. As the former emperor helped the old man back up onto his wobbly legs, he started digging.
‘You already know this place, don’t you?’ whispered Andronicus conspiratorially. ‘What’s here? Tell me … go on. Tell me. You’ve been here before, am I right?
‘A long time ago,’ answered the blind man. ‘It was different then.’
‘Gold?’ asked Andronicus, cutting to the chase. ‘How much treasure are we talking about?’
‘Treasure is a relative concept,’ said the old man. ‘To one man, gold is everything. To another, it is worthless base metal.’
‘I’m the former,’ declared Andronicus without thinking it over. ‘Gold gets you what you want.’
‘Power?’
‘Damn right,’ replied Andronicus. ‘Absolutely’
‘Silence back there!’ barked Helena from up ahead. ‘Ve need to get across this verdammt bridge. Fetch the ropes.’
‘It’s perilous,’ cautioned her father, handing them to her. He peeked over the edge, looking down at the bloodied body below. ‘Maybe there’s another vay?’
‘If it’s dangerous here, Papa, then it will be dangerous everywhere. This trap has been sprung … it cannot be sprung again. This is the devil ve know.’ Helena pointed to the large hole that had materialised in the centre of the bridge. ‘The trap vos in the middle. Not the sides. So … ve tie ourselves together and ve crawl along the parapets.’
‘A sound plan,’ agreed the general. ‘In the ranks of the Gerbirgsjäger we used the same method to cross the Alpine glaciers. Glorious days!’
‘I’m sure, General,’ said Helena, patting his appropriated body on the arm. ‘And in time, I vould love to hear of your adventures, but for now, get in line und get roped up. Qvick! Time is becoming shortened.’
*****
Britain’s finest Purgatorians had emerged from another tunnel on the south side to find a similar bridge to the ramparts. Pretty soon, this was also in the dry moat below, smashed into a thousand useless lumps of masonry.
‘Bugger,’ remarked Viv, as the dust clouds drifted away into the darkness. ‘Is there another way across?’
‘It’s hard to tell with the lights all out,’ replied Bennet. ‘This place is a proper obstacle course, and no mistake.’
‘Is trap of death,’ wailed Vasilakis. ‘We are not meant to be here in this place.’
‘We are where we are,’ Viv said. ‘Onwards and upwards and all that.’
‘Look!’ called Gabby from behind them. ‘Over here. There are steps.’
‘So there are,’ agreed Father Bennet, peering down a dusty stone staircase that vanished into the blackness beside the bridge. ‘One would trust they go somewhere useful.’
‘Well, yes,’ agreed Viv. ‘One would. Who’s first?’
The Bonetaker, not waiting for a consensus, charged past them, then tumbled down the rough steps in a controlled fall. Lost in the inky black, his Neanderthal grunts floated upwards as the giant moved downwards.
‘He’s big … but he’s nimble,’ Bennet reassured her proudly. ‘Never puts a foot wrong.’ Sure enough, as his friends followed gingerly behind him, the Neanderthal’s deep base tones rose up from the flat ground far below.
‘SAFE.’
‘Well, the moat isn’t filled with water,’ observed Father Bennet, stepping into the wide trench at the base of the citadel walls. ‘That’s something.’
‘Yeah, but which way do we go?’ asked Gabby, flipping her phone torch from side to side. ‘It’s seriously dark in both directions.’
‘Right is always good,’ declared Bennet. ‘When in doubt, I always go right.’
‘Fair enough,’ shrugged Viv. ‘As good a plan as any other. Right, it is.’
Edging cautiously forward in single file, they were no more than five minutes into their exploration when Gabby shot up her hand.
‘Stop!’ she whispered back at her colleagues. ‘Something up ahead.’
‘What sort of something?’ asked Bennet, hand feeling for the comforting lump of his Beretta.’
‘Square somethings,’ said Gabby. ‘I’m not sure. Lots of them. Look … there.’
Sure enough, just visible in the light of her phone were a collection of uniform cubes, each around seven feet tall, grouped in a jumble beside the city walls.
‘What are they?’ asked Viv.
‘Bonetaker, old boy, have a gander, will you?’ requested Bennet. ‘There’s a nice chap.’
‘CHECK OK,’ replied the Neanderthal, ambling into the shadows to investigate. ‘SAFE,’ came the eventual confirmation.
Reassured, Gabby, Viv and the priest edged forward to investigate.
They were perfect cubes, each decorated with hieroglyphs and geometric doodles, their sides ancient and weathered.
‘Odd place to leave a load of old stone,’ mused Viv.
‘Maybe it’s some kind of barricade?’ offered Bennet.
‘Against what?’ asked Gabby. ‘Fly-tipping?’
‘Goodness, there must be hundreds of them,’ said Viv, looking into the gloom. ‘Look, they’re strewn all over the place.’
‘Hang on. These aren’t stone.’ Gabby began picking at the nearest block, her fingers soon white with fragments. ‘What the actual …?’
‘Of course, they’re stone!’ laughed Bennet. ‘What else could they be made of?’
‘I’m no expert, obviously,’ replied Gabby, looking at a handful of white blobs. ‘But I’m fairly certain this is … polystyrene.’
‘Polystyrene?’ exclaimed Bennet. ‘But that’s absurd. This place hasn’t been disturbed since antiquity.’
‘Well, what do you call that then?’ asked Gabby, noisily snapping off a corner. ‘Nougat?’
‘But …,’ spluttered Bennet, his mind blowing. ‘But … that’s ….’
‘Ridiculous? Yes,’ agreed Gabby. ‘And a bit flipping mysterious, too.’
‘Leave them alone!’ ordered Vasilakis. ‘We shouldn’t touch anything.’
‘Why the hell would you put polystyrene cubes down here?’ wondered Viv.
‘I dunno,’ said Gabby, ‘But they’re bloody useful.’
‘Are they?’ asked Bennet. ‘How?’
‘Poor Bennet,’ replied Gabby. ‘Have you never played Tomb Raider?’
‘No, but I’ve seen the movies,’ said Bennet. ‘Not the finest action movies, I grant you. Made for kids, really. Not nearly enough guns. I was rather taken with Angelina Jolie, though.’
‘Were you now?’ laughed Viv. It was too dark to see Bennet blushing with embarrassment, mercifully hidden by the gloom.
‘Not the movies. The games,’ explained Gabby. ‘You are in these big tomb complexes with lots of traps and challenges. You have to solve puzzles; find things you need to get from one place to another.’
‘Er, … right,’ murmured Bennet, not really following.
‘Big feature in the early games were these stone blocks,’ continued Gabby. ‘Lara Croft had to push them around all the time, positioning them so she could climb up to grab cool stuff. Keys, secrets, health packs, stuff like that. A bit mad, if you think about it; the ancients seemed compelled to leave these big square climbable blocks everywhere. You know, like that would actually happen.’
‘Well, it’s happened here,’ Viv pointed out.
‘It is very odd.’ added Bennet.
‘It may be,’ agreed Gabby. ‘But who cares? There’s enough here to build steps up to the battlements.’ She put her shoulder to the block. Despite appearing as if it would be around the three-tonne mark, it slid effortlessly across the ground to the base of the wall. ‘Shall we?’
*****
Nahrapov, Astrid, and his goons had taken an altogether different approach to the death bridge challenge. After looking down at the skeleton-draped spines below them, the tech-heavy gunman merely unzipped their backpacks, loaded up their grappling hooks, and installed a zipline across the chasm, all in less time than it would take to storm an embassy.
One by one, the Russians whirred across, pausing only to watch Astrid’s theatrics as she screamed hysterically across the chasm and into the arms of her oligarch on the opposite side. Once Astrid had regained her composure, the gunmen fixed flashlights to their weapons and, with Dima on point, began to edge into the streets of the city.
No more than twenty feet in, Dima held up his fist. On command, the column stopped dead, guns trained left and right down the side alleys and coal-black shop fronts. Carefully, the one-time paratrooper began to study the ground below him.
‘Trail is good,’ said Dima, inspecting the boot prints in the thick dust. ‘They’ve been here alright. They’ll be easy to track across this stuff.’
‘Excellent,’ nodded Nahrapov. ‘Shall we …?’
‘Wait! There’s more!’
‘There is?’ asked Nahrapov, edging forward to check the ground over his henchman’s shoulder.
‘Da. There are other tracks.’
‘More people?’
‘Not people,’ answered Dima, pointing at a mass of tracks. ‘Look. Hooves. Tiny little hooves … everywhere.’
‘A goat?’ suggested Nahrapov.
‘If it can walk on two legs,’ answered Dima, ‘then yes. And over there, too. Look.’ Dima’s torch was picking up a mess of odd animal prints alongside the newer trace of Helena’s army boots.
‘What’s all that about?’
‘You tell me,’ replied Dima, standing and scratching his buzzcut scalp. ‘I’m a soldier, not a game warden, but I’m pretty certain it’s not the Kraakenhausens. They’re all army boots, cheap trainers and Hush Puppies. These are animal tracks.’
‘How can there be animals down here?’ asked Nahrapov. ‘This place is sealed from the outside world. Animals could never survive down here. Look around you. It’s dead.’
‘Seemingly not,’ said Dima, checking his magazine. ‘We need to be careful. Wild animals are rarely cuddly, in my experience. People you can predict. Animals? No way. I’ve been on missions where we’ve lost men to crocodiles, bears, soldier ants, and even fish. I’m taking no chances.’ He turned to address his team. ‘Guys. Keep your eyes peeled for beasts. If anything shows up, don’t pet it. Blow. It. Away. Ok?’
‘Oh, darling Boris baaaaby,’ cooed Astrid, shivering into Nahrapov’s linen jacket. ‘Little Astrid is a scaredy cat.’
‘It’s ok, my bunny,’ replied Nahrapov, jutting out his weak chin. ‘These guys are tough bastards. They not gonna let any woman of mine be eaten alive. Dima, you keep us safe, ok?’
Dima turned, cocked his weapon, then cradled it menacingly.
‘You got it, boss,’ he growled reassuringly. ‘If it moves, it dies.’
*****
Despite a confident start, Newton and Enrico were now hopelessly disorientated. Mere yards into the mess of streets and back alleys, they had become fantastically lost.
The despondent atmosphere of the place just added to the frustration. Awnings laden with the dust of the ages sagged despondently in the light of Newton’s Maglite while long-dead vines hung down from forgotten verandas. Empty pots and discarded tea chests lay everywhere, yet more evidence that the city had a history way more recent than his Purgatorian companion was willing to admit.
Here and there were anachronisms. These leapt out at Newton’s ever-investigative eyes immediately: beer cans, footprints from training shoes and, in increasing numbers, posters. These were simple affairs, motivational text-only designs, a variation on the British wartime classic, ‘Keep calm and carry on.’ ‘Careless talk creates lives,’ said one. ‘Just because it’s absurd doesn’t mean you imagined it,’ said another. They were also clearly printed using offset litho, which Newton could be confident the Minoans were a few thousand years from inventing. One was almost certainly a photocopy.
