Shadowsea

by Peter Bunzl

  “This is all my fault…” Caddy said suddenly. “If I hadn’t come back to find you…we wouldn’t be here.”

  “Don’t be silly.” Robert smiled at his sister. She wasn’t to know this was how things would end up. She was only nine, after all. “You’re not to blame for this, sprout. You did what you thought was right.”

  “But it wasn’t,” Caddy said. “And now we’re trapped down here with Miss Buckle and Dane.” She gave a sniffle. “He’s going to try to use the Ouroboros Engine and wake the dead on that Shadowsea Base at midnight and there’s nothing we can do to stop him. But it won’t work,” Caddy whimpered. Then she shouted at Dane, “If you turn on that machine, Dane, then bad things will happen. Remember the chaos and death it caused when Professor Milksop used it? That’s what the spirits were warning me of.”

  “I’m no more messing with the dead than my aunt was when she brought me back,” Dane said. “No more than your father was, Lily, when he brought you back from certain death. They both did it. And I intend to do the same, except I’ll be doing it for my parents.”

  “Caddy’s right,” Lily said. “It won’t work. When my papa brought me back,” she went on, “I was only gone for a moment. And the same when Professor Milksop brought you back. Your parents, they’ve been dead a long time, weeks and weeks. Think how dangerous it would be to try and bring them back now.”

  But Dane wasn’t listening. He was busy piloting the ship, following the Darkwater Oceanic Trench, which had appeared in the ocean floor, and ran like a long deep scar for miles and miles, outside their ring of light.

  Finally, after more hours travelling, they saw a hulking shape of the Shadowsea Submarine Base up ahead, balanced on the edge of an underwater cliff.

  The base was round in shape, half balanced over the seabed, half balanced over the edge of the trench. Passageways, like spokes of a wheel, ran from the exterior rim to a hub at the centre that was topped with a tower. At the summit of the tower was a turbine that rotated slowly in the underwater currents emanating from the trench. To Robert, it looked like a humungous rusted windmill.

  “We’ve arrived!” Dane’s eyes glinted white in the shadowy cabin, as if some bright hope was shining out from inside him. He cut the power to an absolute minimum and edged the Diving Belle around the gigantic base, casting the searchlight across the curved walls, as if he was searching for something.

  In the viewport, Robert saw that parts of the base were unfinished. The ties that bound it to the seabed were still under construction, fixed with rope and cable, in place of iron trusses. The base bobbed slightly in place, barely connected to the ocean floor.

  At last the spotlight found what Dane was looking for – a pair of adjacent airlocks for docking submersibles with metal hoops extruding from them.

  Dane manoeuvred the Diving Belle into a position where she might dock with the Shadowsea. He fiddled with a joystick on the control panel and a crane arm popped from a hatch on the base of the Diving Belle and sprang to life.

  Pushing his seat over from the steering wheel, Dane managed to turn the external arm outwards and open its claws. The arm grasped one of the metal hoops on the side of the Shadowsea and pulled them closer in, gradually aligning them with the pair of hatchways on the larger ship.

  Using the arm as a lever, Dane directly aligned the hatch atop the Belle with the left-hand exterior hatch on the side of the Shadowsea. His arm shook with the stress of performing such a delicate manoeuvre. But, finally, they were lined up perfectly.

  Then Dane pressed a button on the far side of the instrument panel and a metal tube extended from the side of the Diving Belle and clamped itself over the Shadowsea’s hatch.

  “What is that?” Caddy whispered to Robert.

  “I think it must be the airlock,” Robert replied, with a shiver. “It creates a passageway between this ship and the Shadowsea.”

  Dane flicked another switch on the dash and there was a humming sound. As the airlock began to expel water from its chamber, bubbles spun around the viewport windows, their edges laced in silver light from the headlamp’s beam.

  The external pressure-gauge indicator on the wall panel flickered encouragingly. Dane switched off the engines of the Diving Belle and the lights on the instrument binnacles blinked into darkness, leaving only the single weak red light from the interior lamp at the back of the cabin.

  Dane turned to Lily, Robert, Caddy and Malkin. “Welcome to the Shadowsea,” he said. His face glowed red and his voice brimmed with a crazy tinge of hysteria that made Robert draw back in horror. “Miss Buckle, make ready to go aboard!”

  “Aye, Sir,” Miss Buckle replied, and she reached out her long arms to undo the hatch to the airlock. There was a hiss as the rubber seals came loose and the door opened inwards.

  Dane stepped past them towards the door. His eyes glistening with excitement, he signalled eagerly to Miss Buckle to bring the others.

  With a shudder, Robert stared from beneath the rim of his cap at Lily’s pale face and Caddy’s and Malkin’s concerned dark eyes. The mechanical nurse freed each of them in turn from their bonds and forced them from their seats, out through the hatch of the submersible into the rubber and metal passage of the airlock. Whatever horrible things were hidden on the other side of it, Robert knew with an unnerving certainty they would soon be revealed.

  At the far end of the airlock was a barnacled wheel and a lever that opened the door into the Shadowsea Submarine Base. Slowly, Miss Buckle yanked the lever downwards then wrenched the heavy wheel anticlockwise. There was a screech as the stiff rusted wheel began to turn, followed by an ominous creak, as the door swung open, revealing a mouth-like entrance, cold, dark, still and uninviting.

  Electric lights along the walls strobed on and off in sickly patterns and the smell of something unpleasant drifted from inside, as if the base had bad breath.

  As Miss Buckle and Dane ushered them onwards through the door, the floor seemed to sway and shift beneath them. The binoculars swung around Robert’s neck and the hairs on his arms pricked up. The movement and the stench gave the place a horrible living feel, as if they were walking into the metal guts of some monstrous angry sleeping whale. He had no idea what their final destination would be, but he knew in his heart that something horrific was destined to happen aboard this base.

  Lily placed her feet carefully on the shifting floor, stepping through the hatch into the submarine base. The smell of the place assaulted her. It stank worse than the London sewers. Stagnant water, damp mould, rotten fish and…something else… Rank and pungent, like overripe fruit mixed with the smell of rotting meat. The wretched stink wafted on a cold wind from deep inside the base and it took a moment for Lily to realize what it was…

  The stench of death.

  It made her want to gag.

  She wrapped her scarf around her face, covering her nose and mouth.

  “Come on! Keep moving.” Dane hurried her, Robert, Caddy and Malkin further into the submarine base.

  Lily surveyed Robert and Caddy in the pulsing light. A curl of disgust twitched on Robert’s lips; a flash of horror in Caddy’s eyes.

  “I’m with you,” she whispered to them both, giving them a comforting smile. She held up her crossed fingers. “When I give the signal, we throw water over Miss Buckle and the machine to short-circuit them, then we force Dane to take her and us back to the Belle.”

  Robert and Caddy both crossed their fingers to show they understood. Malkin, who was stood at their feet, wiggled his whiskers to show he’d heard too.

  “Quiet!” snapped Miss Buckle. She was bringing up the rear, her hulking body blocking their escape, her right fist clutching the handle of the wooden case containing the Ouroboros Engine.

  “You know, you could still take us back any time you liked and everything would be all right,” Robert said to her and Dane.

  “Not for me it won’t,” Dane replied, his face crumpled in pain. “My ma and pa died down here. I’m gonna revive them usin
g the Ouroboros Engine. Because what’s the point of such machines if you can’t save the ones you love?”

  Lily watched as Dane peered through dark doorways, at cabin rooms filled with overturned tables and chairs. She assumed he was looking for some semblance of his past life here, and part of her wanted to help him, but another part of her just wanted to escape this place as soon as possible. She was terrified of what they might find.

  Something dripped on Lily’s bare head. She glanced up at pipes running along the ceiling above. Water seeped from their rivets in a misty spray, sloshing over their shoes in places.

  “This clanking place is worse than New York,” Malkin snarled, padding through the shallow puddles. “Up there my cogs only threatened to freeze to a standstill from ice and snow. Down here they’ll rust to a stop instead, from all this seawater.”

  “Hush, Malkin,” Lily whispered. She picked him up and slung him round her neck to stop the water soaking through his fur and footpads.

  Dane ignored their protestations and Miss Buckle, clanking along at the back of the line, merely ushered them onwards through the flooded corridors. With her long legs and thick metal body, she didn’t need to be concerned about a little bit of water. She seemed strong as iron, but Lily still couldn’t help hoping that the dampness might make her malfunction so they could grab Dane and sneak back past her.

  The further they got into the tunnels, the more Lily’s scars itched. The drift of the base was more prominent and pronounced here, and with each step the floor seemed to be shifting beneath them.

  They passed the hub, where all the passages met. At the centre of it was a large generator that hummed and pulsed with electricity. The vents on its side groaned as if the whole thing was on its last legs.

  Further on they happened upon a room filled with damp, bulbous diving suits that stank of the sea and heavy-looking oxygen tanks. Beyond the tanks and suits they glimpsed a hatch leading towards the exterior of the ship. It was painted with a sign that read: AIRLOCK.

  Then there was the abandoned galley kitchen – all the pots and pans and plates thrown about and smashed on the floor. Lily couldn’t bear to think of what hideous things might’ve occurred in there, and she didn’t want to stop and find out.

  Robert secretly checked his compass, trying to get a sense of their direction. He hadn’t been sure if it would work underwater, or with all the generators and magnets around, but it seemed to. They were heading south, it turned out. So, if they had to get back by themselves, he knew which way to head. He wondered what their final destination was, and how on earth he was going to get himself and his friends out of this petrifying predicament.

  Finally, they reached a point where the entire passageway was flooded. Dane waded through the knee-deep water and swung around, examining the various options. “Which way?” he asked Miss Buckle.

  “That one, Master Milksop,” she said, indicating the right-hand passage. “The Reanimation Lab’s down there.”

  They set off again. The strobing lights illuminated discoloured patches on the metallic walls, where barnacles and blisters of rust bloomed like flowers on the cross-beams and rivets. The smell worsened and the air in the corridor developed an unpleasant aftertaste, like when you drink stale water that has sat somewhere for a long time and there’s a dusty, metallic tincture to it.

  At last, they arrived at a room full of empty rodent cages.

  “This is the place I saw in my vision,” Caddy whispered to Lily and Robert.

  The water in here barely rose above the level of their shoes, perhaps because the doors were made of such heavy metal and Professor Milksop had shut them when she left. At the far end of the cage-room was a lead door with a sign on the front that read:

  Above those words was stamped a picture of an ouroboros snake, curled into a circle eating its own tail.

  Dane pushed open the door and stepped through. Their hearts in their mouths, the others followed. Miss Buckle, ticking quietly, still carried the Ouroboros Engine.

  The strobing lights revealed a space that was a nightmare to behold.

  A metal table, cracked tiles and a bucket in the corner, an observation booth, and in the rest of the room, bodies. The bodies of the crew were strewn around the lab, as if they’d been dragged in here.

  Lily’s stomach heaved at the sight of them lying there. So many people… Each had worked on the Shadowsea, each had been someone’s mother, father, brother or sister, and each of them was gone. She’d meant for them to try and make their escape here, while Dane and Miss Buckle were distracted, but the horror of what she saw pushed the idea right out of her head.

  A sudden keen and sickening sense of her own mortality shot through her, and she put her hand on the wall to steady herself. Her knees shuddered and her legs felt brittle beneath her. The sharp shock of fragility that jolted through her seemed almost as if it might lift her off the ground.

  She gazed weakly over at Robert and Caddy. Caddy was stiff with fright, her twiggy hair flattened against her head with sweat. Robert shook uncontrollably. Even Malkin round her neck shivered. Lily could feel the cogs beneath his fur all a-jitter. “We shouldn’t be here,” he spluttered. “This place is a tomb. Everyone’s been dead for weeks.”

  “Ever since the accident,” Robert said aghast. “When was that, Dane?”

  Dane thought about it. “I-it was around Thanksgiving…all the folks down here were getting ready to celebrate. That was the day I named Spook, made a cart for him.”

  “That’s over a month ago,” Malkin said.

  “Really?” Dane asked.

  “Yes, really,” Lily said.

  It seemed as if Dane was finally listening to them. Taking in what they were saying. Or was it the state of the bodies that made him think about what he was doing? Desperately, tearfully, he searched the faces of the slumped figures. “Where are my parents?” he asked, holding Spook tight against his chest. “I can’t see them.”

  “I know you think you can find them,” Lily said softly. “But they’re not here. Not really. They’re just bodies. Your parents, everything that made them who they were, that’s gone. But you have your memories of them,” she gently added. “Good memories. Better memories than this…”

  But finally, Dane spotted them. He fell to his knees beside them and clutched at their hands. He put his palm on each of their cheeks, but their skin was cold and grey. Their eyes vacant. “After the accident,” he said sadly cradling their hands, “my aunt brought them in here to use the machine to try and revive them. She failed. Spook and I were her last successes before she decided to evacuate the base with her machine and pretend none of this ever happened. I wish it hadn’t. And now I’ve a chance to right that.” He wiped his eyes and, setting his parents’ palms down carefully on the floor, he turned to Miss Buckle. “Set up the machine,” he said.

  “Yes, Master Milksop.” Miss Buckle placed the wooden box on the table in the centre of the room and unlocked it with a key to reveal the Ouroboros Engine within. A silver box, peppered with valves and rubber-coated wires, all twisted snakelike together. The four lenses on the front of the engine reflected the room in their unflinching gaze.

  With great difficulty, Dane dragged himself away from the bodies and stared at the engine. He clutched his head, as if he was trying to remember what had happened last time it was used. “If the machine worked on me,” he said, “then it should work on my parents…” He trailed off.

  “I-I’m not so sure.” Lily stared uncomfortably at Dane’s lost parents. Thin and skeletal, they no longer resembled the living people they must have once been. She thought then of her own ma, gone too. And of Papa and Selena, up on the surface. It had been more than twenty-four hours since she, Robert and Caddy had seen them. She hoped that Kid Wink and the other Cloudscrapers had told Papa where they were and that he and Selena and the police were looking for them now.

  Papa had been right, as usual. They should never have got involved in any of this, none of them. But s
he couldn’t help it – she had wanted to befriend Dane, to answer his plea for help. And despite all that had happened, she still did. She still thought there was a chance to change Dane’s mind.

  She couldn’t let him turn the machine on, not after all Caddy’s warnings about the dangers it would cause. Either it would kill Dane and her, Robert and Caddy. Or if it did wake the dead, she had no idea what they would become. Despite the sorrow she felt for Dane and what he was going through, she couldn’t let that happen.

  She held up her crossed fingers and nodded to Caddy and Robert to let them know that now was the time to fight back. Dane was about to start up the engine, when Lily took Malkin from round her neck and threw him towards the boy.

  The fox bit hard on Dane’s arm. While Dane was trying to fight him off, Lily threw her scarf around Miss Buckle to confuse her, and Robert grabbed the bucket from in the corner and scooped up water and threw it at the machine, trying to short-circuit its power. He threw a second bucket at Miss Buckle hoping it would still her clockwork, or interrupt her programming long enough for them to make an escape…but it did not.

  Miss Buckle tore Lily’s scarf away and shrugged the water off. Then she swung round and seized Caddy, grasping her by the neck.

  Caddy kicked out. Robert rushed to try to wrestle her from Miss Buckle’s grip.

  Dane scrabbled over to the observation booth and, throwing the door open, he wrenched Malkin from his arm and cast him inside.

  “Put them in there!” he shouted at Miss Buckle, who thrust Caddy through the doorway next and then Robert, slamming the door to imprison them both.

  Lily saw that her friends were trapped. She hesitated, wondering what to do next. She was about to try and make a second solo attack when Miss Buckle loomed over her, her eyes glinting red once more and then she saw that all was hopeless.