Agatha & the Scarlet Scarab

by Karl Fish

  ‘People of Ambledown. Bring me your children. OBEY! Bring me your children. OBEY!’

  As the smoke descended upon them, they inhaled the poison that coursed through their veins. The light from the fires lit up the suspended posters of the war campaign – We need you. Dig for Victory – all of them now displaying the illuminated and sinister eyes of RA. The large lettering of OBEY dominant across them all.

  The residents of Ambledown were powerless to resist and began to slowly sway and rock.

  ‘Bring me your children. OBEY! Bring me your children. OBEY!’ they began to repeat.

  Jennifer James returned the needle to the concerto. Calming violins sounded throughout the village. She removed the Sheriff’s loud hailer and marched down the Steep. The flames burned brilliantly as the war posters were feverishly lit up.

  ‘Bring me your children. OBEY! Bring me your children. OBEY!’

  *****

  ‘What the hell is that?’ Eric lurched forward trying to peer through the letterbox hole.

  ‘I can hear violins,’ Aggie said.

  Bang! Bang! echoed the thumping on the schoolhouse door through the brass ventilation system.

  Governess Dove was fully alerted. She had heard the music too. She had also heard Jennifer’s instructions. People would come for them soon. Ensuring her pistol was cocked, she crept silently in the darkness. Outside, a hooded figure in a cloak, wearing a gas mask, thumped relentlessly on the door.

  ‘Bring me your children. OBEY! Bring me your children. OBEY!’ could be heard through multiple droning voices outside as people moved slowly and relentlessly throughout Ambledown in their pursuit to deliver the children. Cries of children being dragged kicking and screaming, before they too succumbed, by the adults and marched towards Jennifer’s voice as she continued her walk towards Ambledown bridge.

  ‘Go away! There are no children here!? Dove shouted through the door.

  ‘Open up, Governess. Please, open up!’

  Dove had not expected that voice to reply. She unlatched the lock and peered through the gap in the door, her gun ready.

  ‘You? What do you want?’ she said to the hooded figure.

  Chapter 54

  The beginning of the end

  Thompson calmly replaced the handset. All colour drained from his face.

  ‘Sir, what is it?’ Jones questioned his superior observing the disconcerting expression staring back.

  ‘We have been betrayed, Jones. Duped on an epic scale,’ Thompson replied.

  ‘I need you to take us to the Hospital for Tropical Medicine. At least we can treat Professor Soames senior. He may have insight. I’ll gather my thoughts on the way.’

  The two men lifted Belle Soames and laid her across the rear seat of the black saloon. She semi-consciously wheezed in pain. Unexpected dark rumblings came from above. Thompson looked to the skies. The clouds had parted and the storms were long gone. Several screams began to cry out as above them low-flying planes with spotter lights repeated their plan from the previous hour’s trial run.

  ‘It’s happening again. Just like before,’ Jones informed his boss.

  Thompson dashed back to the phone booth. He dialled Number Seven, Whitehall on Wink’s secure line and waited patiently until it was answered.

  ‘Ma’am, it’s Thompson. We were wrong. Terribly wrong.’

  ‘Of course, you were,’ laughed the same man’s voice from before. ‘Guten abend, Mr Thompson. I really didn’t believe we would talk again. Let alone so soon. Good luck following protocol.’

  ‘Jones!’ Thompson cried, rushing into the car. ‘Shaftesbury, now.’

  *****

  The small room below Whitehall was a fog of cigarette smoke from both Hilary and Wink’s incessant puffing.

  ‘No doubt you have,’ Hilary replied, having passed the card around the table. ‘If you look very closely you will see its true meaning. OBEY!’ she advised, her stutter now completely gone. ‘OBEY! OBEY!’ she continued until Malling, James, and Waverley were sent into a hypnotic sway and their eyes glazed over with a violet film.

  *****

  ‘You look quite the part!’ Brain Louds complimented Professor Meticulous Meredith Malcolm.

  The blue and gold ceremonial priest robe, the opposite of a pure white line suit, dwarfed the entomologist. It was too large for the Professor’s slight frame. It was complemented by the half-feathered mask of Horus that had been placed upon his head. The professor was powerless to resist Louds’ plan.

  Professor Malcolm’s glazed, motionless expression, peered down on the restrained girl in the white gown on the ceremonial sarcophagus in front of him.

  Louds placed the gold dagger, encrusted with blood-stained rubies, into the Professor’s hand and bandaged it tight so he could not remove it. He then proceeded to gag the Professor, rendering him dumb.

  ‘Soon, at the first light of dawn, when the sun rises and lights your way,’ Louds informed him, pointing to the dormant anthropoid encrusted in crystal. ‘You will have the honour, Professor. You may sacrifice the girl.’

  *****

  The cloaked figure removed her mask and began to speak.

  ‘Please, Governess, allow me to enter. I was bringing you the cake I’d promised when, well, all hell has begun to break loose,’ said a nervous Nelly Parker holding aloft a lidded cake tin.

  ‘A cake?’ Dove replied, completely dumbfounded, and momentarily distracted from her thought pattern. ‘What are you talking about?’ she replied confused.

  Nelly jammed her toe into the gap of the door.

  Dove looked over Nelly’s shoulder and saw Jennifer James proceeding down the hill. Maintaining her orders, an everyday army of committed resources now searching far and wide for the children.

  ‘Bring me all children. OBEY!’ they spoke in unison.

  Dove knew it was only a matter of time before the schoolhouse either succumbed to the Ethereum or was ransacked by those consumed by it. She couldn’t risk Agatha slipping through her fingers, she needed an escape route and Nelly Parker knew this town better than most.

  ‘Do you know a secret way out of here, Mrs Parker,’ Dove asked. ‘I am fearful for my life.’

  ‘Likewise, and yes, I do,’ Nelly replied. ‘Let me in, dear. I can help.’

  ‘Quickly then,’ Dove encouraged Nelly through the doorway before bolting it and peering through the blinds to the chaos ensuing outside.

  Nelly passed her the tin as she entered. ‘Thank you, dear,’ Nelly replied, fully removing her gas mask.

  ‘I don’t want your cake,’ Dove replied motioning the tin back to Nelly.

  ‘Nor I,’ Nelly replied, raising her hand upwards and pointing a gun at the governess.

  Dove dropped the tin and went for her own firearm but Nelly deployed a round that ricocheted off of the tin lid, rendering the futile attempt useless.

  ‘Now about this secret escape,’ Nelly spoke softly. ‘Were you considering my sister and Eric too or just the young girl, Agatha?’ She smiled.

  *****

  ‘What can you see?’ Pop asked of Nathaniel Noone as he peered through binoculars towards the Institute.

  ‘Not much with one eye,’ Noone admitted.

  ‘Give ’em ’ere,’ Pop said and snatched them off him.

  The modernist structure had a clear benefit for them. The steel and monolithic glass gave a perfect perspective on what was occurring inside.

  ‘That’s odd,’ Pop advised. ‘It appears all the men are just sitting there, staring into space. Looks like supper time with food bowls.’

  ‘Just sitting there?’ Noone questioned.

  ‘’Old on. Ere we go. There’s a man walking around. Wait a minute, he’s feeling their faces. Moving from one to another. I know him. He drinks at Cecile’s. Definitely that man Goodfeller!’

  ‘I don’t understand what they’re doing,’ Noone replied again, confused.

  ‘He’s blind. He probably doesn’t know ’imself. I can’t see nuffink else. No guar
ds, nuffink.’

  ‘You,’ Noone spoke pointing to the orderly. ‘You, go ahead.’

  The orderly was terrified to do so but Luna’s guttural growl convinced him to comply.

  *****

  Jones floored the car as fast as he could. The bombers were coming and they had not heard the air-raid warnings. People were still lining the streets making their way home from the previous attack. Chaos ensued.

  ‘There, sir. Look.’ Jones pointed through the windscreen.

  A Messerschmitt dived through the darkness, peppering an ambulance with ammunition. The vehicle burst into flames. No show of dramatic pyrotechnics. More an autumn bonfire, and before his eyes, Thompson saw exactly what they were doing. The purple plume of flames turned to smoke and wafted through the air and across the city.

  ‘They’re targeting those ambulances!’ Thompson called out.

  ‘Evil, they’re animals, sir. Targeting the infirm,’ Jones responded.

  ‘No, it’s for another reason,’ Thompson assured him.

  People were too focused on running for cover from the planes. Their gas masks were scattered and left as they did so.

  ‘Posters!’ Belle cried from behind them.

  ‘Belle?’ Thompson turned to see her presenting the broken torch towards him.

  He snatched it quickly, it did not work despite his attempts to influence it. He fumbled through the glove compartment for his own torch. Removing and replacing the batteries from one to another and with subtle cajoling, it flickered to reveal the violet beam.

  He shone the torchlight revealing dancing plumes surrounding the outside of the car and being inhaled unexpectedly by unsuspecting passers-by.

  ‘Shall I stop?’ Jones inquired.

  ‘No, don’t you bloody-well stop. Drive as fast as you can.’

  Thompson trained the beam out of the window on to the recruitment posters and Kitchener’s dramatic stare. The eyes of RA lit up as poster upon poster that lined London’s street, expressed its image and were accompanied by orders.

  OBEY, FOLLOW, KILL

  The iridescent clouds of purple were sprouting up and filtering throughout the city. They were filling the lungs and entering the bloodstreams of its inhabitants.

  ‘Gas masks, now!’ Thompson ordered.

  *****

  The driver tentatively stepped towards the rear entrance of the Silvera Institute carrying The Lady in her box. His brow dripping in anxious perspiration, he slammed the solid brass knocker.

  Gideon Belchambers was well-hidden behind the wheel arch of the ambulance truck. His pistol was trained on the doorway, should the orderly have a sudden change of heart or his enemy be revealed.

  ‘Did you hear that, Professor?’ Brian Louds excitedly laughed at the catatonic Meredith Malcolm. ‘You will soon have your mask in all its feathered finery.’ Skipping excitedly up the stone staircase and through the stone-walled corridors of dim torchlight, Louds opened the doorway to greet his guard.

  ‘You have them?’ he asked enthusiastically, eyes trained on the box.

  The guard stalled and did not respond immediately. A drip of sweat fell from his brow and dispersed onto the box.

  Louds immediately opened the lid, releasing the black-and-white bird inside.

  ‘What is this, a mockingbird? Traitor!’ Louds screamed, slashing the man across the face with the poisonous spike on his ceremonial ring.

  The guard shook violently, slumped to his knees and fell into the doorway. Brain Louds moved to slam the door but the hulking figure of the orderly blocked the path. He let out an ear-piercing scream as he stepped over the body to pull it from the door.

  Gideon readied his shot and then caught the eyes of Brian Louds. His heart raced and he became breathless. His fears had come true. The rumours were real. Fourteen years ago, he had stared into those very same eyes. The man looked very different back then but his eyes were as evil as he had remembered. Gideon squeezed his trigger and sent the small metal bullet hurtling towards him.

  ‘Ahhhhhhh!’ came the deafening scream as the bullet hit its target and sent him tumbling back over the orderly and into the passageway.

  *****

  ‘Did you hear that?’ Pop turned to Noone.

  ‘Was it Gideon?’

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Come on,’ Noone replied, arming himself. He followed the safe passage to the Institute the orderly had carefully trod in front of them. He rushed to the glass window of the Institute and with short sharp thuds alerted Archie Goodfellow.

  ‘Who’s there? who’s that?’ Archie Goodfellow called out.

  ‘Your name Goodfeller?’ Pop asked muffled through the glass. He trained a gun at him, although the poor man could not see.

  ‘Archie Goodfellow. Wait, I know your voice. Braggan, right? You are Pop Braggan.’

  ‘Archie, my name is Nathaniel,’ Noone interrupted them. ‘A good friend of Professor Belchambers. Do you know of a young girl being brought here?’

  Archie directed them to a door along the external balcony. The steel and glass balustrades reflected the crashing seas from the cliffs as the moon shone down behind them.

  ‘I’m sorry, I have not seen, so to speak, or heard any child here,’ Archie confirmed.

  ‘What’s wrong wiv this lot?’ Pop questioned Archie, moving into the building. He examined more closely the hundred or so men who sat in silence staring aimlessly into space.

  ‘They change when the music comes,’ Archie explained. ‘I’ve never known them like this.’

  ‘Archie, how well do you know this place? Can you guide us?’ Noone asked.

  Pop flashed him a look and gestured towards Archie’s eyes.

  ‘I know this place better than most. I see beyond the walls,’ Archie confirmed.

  ‘Eh?’ spoke Pop, confused.

  ‘I smell things others do not sense. I feel draughts and breezes others do not feel. There are hidden doorways and corridors for sure. All is not as it seems.’

  ‘We’ll follow you then,’ Noone confirmed.

  ‘This place is giving me the creeps,’ Pop said, staring at the servicemen with their many scars and disabilities who remained motionless where they sat. ‘What d’ya suppose this stuff is?’ Pop asked, reaching over one of the stationary men, and holding up the pestle and mortar bowls with the remains of ground-down purple powder.

  ‘I don’t know, Pop. But this place is beginning to creep me out too,’ Noone replied.

  Following Archie’s lead, the men descended past the white-washed walls with the picture-less frames and the abundance of mirrors. Noone couldn’t understand them. The last thing he wanted was a constant reminder of how he looked.

  ‘The operating rooms, or so he calls them,’ Archie announced with an outstretched hand.

  ‘Who?’ Noone questioned

  ‘Dr Mialora.’

  *****

  ‘If you please.’ Nelly gestured to Dove to drop her weapon. ‘After you.’

  The governess duly complied and walked slowly towards the room where Aggie, Eric, and Sister Harvey were captive.

  ‘Slowly, very slowly. An old lady like me has very shaky hands,’ Nelly advised, threatening her with consequences.

  Dove unlocked the door. Nelly shoved her in with the point of the barrel.

  ‘It’s you.’ Aggie smiled, relieved.

  ‘Of course, it’s ’er.’ Eric laughed.

  ‘You knew?’ Aggie turned to him.

  ‘Course I knew,’ Eric smirked.

  ‘Nelly Parker, I am so pleased to see you.’ Agatha welled up as she spoke.

  Nelly removed her darkened glasses to reveal her dual coloured iris. ‘Nosey Parker, some might say.’ Nelly smiled.

  ‘Or the Priory Friar,’ Eric added, referencing her disguise.

  Aggie looked at him in disbelief. It had been her. Aggie had not imagined it to be Nelly, however, wrong her recollection was.

  ‘Such happy families now,’ Dove criticised spitefully. ‘They’re coming soo
n and no one will survive.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Nelly answered in a far more serious tone. ‘Well, talking of happy families, what have you done to my sister?’ She finished by cocking the arm of her gun and pressing it into Dove’s temple.

  *****

  Gideon approached the entranceway with caution. The contorted figure of the orderly lay half in and out of the building, foaming at the mouth. There was a pool of blood nearby where Gideon’s shot had maimed its target. The dimly lit passageway of candlewax torches provided just enough light for him to follow the bloody trail deeper into the inner sanctum of Silvera.

  The shattering of glass broke the eerie silence and Gideon’s heart rate increased. He edged down the corridor, deeper into the Institute. The carved blocks of stone that supported the walls, the shadowy use of old wax and torches, transported him back to the hidden tunnels of so many years ago. Wiping the stinging sweat out of his eyes, he hoped his contemporaries were faring better. A second shattering of glass alerted his senses and he composed himself as he crept nearer to their sound.

  He glimpsed through the open glass doorway towards a room completely at odds with its surroundings. Walnut and mahogany cases, full of books. Strange collections of insects that writhed in their enclosures of glass. An extended laboratory bench full of the most complete set of scientific instruments he had seen. A third crash of glass just feet away turned him to turn quickly and fire his gun into the darkness. A flap of black-and-white wings tore through the lab and hid amongst the inverted ceiling joists that pointed to the glass prims at its pinnacle.

  ‘Stupid bird, I could have shot you,’ Gideon whispered to himself as he stepped forward, looking up to the moonlit sky above.

  He couldn’t have seen the exposed trapdoor as his footing gave way. He slipped, falling through it. Dropping his gun at the realisation of his plight, he made a last chance attempt to grab the floor of the lab as he fell. The gun landed feet below firing off another round on impact and sparking up the marble room below.