The Map of Chaos

by Félix J Palma

  Murray tried to choose one of the many questions buzzing round in his head while they climbed a few more steps in silence.

  “But what the devil made you want to hold a phony séance in the first place?” he finally asked.

  “To stop you from killing yourself,” Doyle replied. “George was desperate . . . He felt he was to blame for the accident and for Emma’s death. It was he who advised you to come clean with her, remember? And he considered it his duty to help you finish what you had started. He thought it was the only way you would find any peace. When George came to my house and told me that the only way to save you was to let you communicate with Emma during a séance, I assumed he meant a real one, but he soon disabused me. George wanted you to talk to her, but he didn’t want to take any risks. He wanted to be in control of all the variables: the medium, Emma’s responses, her forgiveness of you . . . everything. He wanted her to command you to go on living, even to force you to be happy, insofar as you could be . . .” Doyle shook his head and gave a wry grin. “I don’t know how he managed to convince me to take part in one of those phony séances I have spoken out against so strongly . . . But damn it all, you know, I almost ended up enjoying it! You must admit we managed to build up a fairly compelling tale: the mysterious medium, the hand of fate . . .”

  “But I saw Emma in the garden!” Murray interrupted.

  “Oh, yes, that . . . ,” said Doyle, pausing to examine the trail of blood with a frown, like a housekeeper finding fault with the housemaid’s work. “The Emma in the garden was also our doing,” he confessed, resuming his ascent. “That was Miss Leckie, who kindly offered to help us out. With the aid of some of your servants, we got hold of one of Emma’s dresses and a parasol. It was all we could think of. We were desperate! Time was passing, and we had failed to persuade you to attend the séance with the Great Ankoma . . .”

  “So, when you challenged me to jump out of the window . . .” Murray reflected. “What you really wanted was for me to see Miss Leckie!”

  “Elementary, my dear Gilliam.” Doyle grinned at him.

  “Good heavens! . . . But what if I hadn’t seen her? What if I’d jumped?”

  “She was clearly visible,” Doyle said with a shrug. “Besides, I knew you wouldn’t do it.”

  “Good heavens . . . ,” Murray repeated, incapable of saying anything more.

  When they reached the top of the stairs, Doyle carefully examined the floor once more.

  “The trail heads toward the right wing,” he announced, signaling with his chin the long corridor receding into the darkness.

  “That corridor is a dead end . . . ,” Murray murmured with a distracted air. “All the rooms on that side are locked, apart from the one the builders use to store their plaster and tools.”

  “Then it won’t be so difficult to hunt him down,” said Doyle. “Though we could do with a bit more . . . energy.”

  From his pocket he plucked a small box of cocaine tablets with an image on the lid of two children playing innocently, and he offered one to Murray.

  “No, thanks, Arthur,” Murray said. “I think the rage I feel will suffice.”

  “As you wish.” Doyle shrugged. He took a tablet, put the box away, and with a show of bravado lifted his mace. “Let’s find that son of a bitch!”

  But before he could step forward Murray restrained him, clasping his arm.

  “Wait a moment, Arthur . . . I realize that this invisible monster isn’t another of your little hoaxes.” He reflected for a moment about what he was going to say. “No, of course it isn’t. Running poor Baskerville through with a sword would have been going too far, even for you. But”—he looked straight at Doyle—“what about what happened with the mirror?”

  “That wasn’t our doing either,” said Doyle. “We insisted on holding the séance at Brook Manor in order to practice the slate trick without anyone seeing; that would have been impossible at your house, and you spent much of your time at the Wellses’, and as for my place . . . well, I could never have forgiven myself if my wife or children had found out that I was helping to organize a fraudulent séance. But what happened with the mirror . . . how could we have managed a stunt like that?” he gasped, betraying his own unease at the memory of it. “What we saw in the mirror was truly incredible, a mystery we need to look into dispassionately. But first we must get out of here alive, don’t you agree?”

  Murray nodded but made no attempt to move.

  “And what exactly did we see, Arthur? Where was Emma?”

  “I can’t tell you that, my friend,” Doyle confessed, shaking his head in perplexity.

  “Was that the Hereafter you so often talk about?”

  Doyle lowered the mace to the floor and sighed wearily.

  “I don’t believe it was, Gilliam. I think what we saw in the mirror was . . . another world.”

  “Another world?”

  “Yes, another world. And the mirror must be an entry point, a sort of portal . . .” Doyle paused to reflect. “I was reminded of the hole the Reed People made in the air, weren’t you?”

  “Why, yes, of course.” Murray nodded with a knowing air.

  “If I’m not mistaken, that magic hole was also a portal, only it led to the fourth dimension, a vast pink plain filled with other portals to other moments in our past and future. But what if it wasn’t true? What if that plain wasn’t the fourth dimension but rather a sort of antechamber to other worlds? And what if mirrors are shortcuts, portals that lead directly into other realities, without passing through the great antechamber?”

  “Other realities?”

  “Yes, things that might have happened but for some reason didn’t, or vice versa.” Doyle was speaking hesitantly, as though thinking aloud. “I don’t know whether you noticed that in the reflection I was wearing a different suit.” Murray shook his head slowly. “Well, I was. The one I put on this morning, and that I changed for this one after spilling coffee on it. Do you realize what that means? It is as if we had seen a parallel world where things happened differently. I didn’t spill coffee down my front, and Emma . . .”

  “And Emma didn’t die!” Murray finished Doyle’s sentence, more perplexed than elated.

  “No, in that parallel world she wasn’t the one who died in the accident,” Doyle corrected Murray, staring hard at him. He watched Murray’s bewilderment give way to alarm as he gradually understood what that implied. But Doyle didn’t give him a chance to carry on thinking, for he needed Murray to be as alert as possible. He lifted the mace and peered into the shifting darkness at the end of the corridor. “But let’s put that to one side now, Gilliam. We have to catch an accursed ghost.”

  “And what does the invisible creature have to do with all this?” murmured Murray, not moving a muscle.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Does it come from one of those other realities?”

  Doyle exploded. “I don’t know that either, damn it!” For a few seconds, he peered anxiously into the corridor they were about to venture down, where an unimaginable horror was lurking, and then he turned to Murray. “But I can promise you one thing, Gilliam . . .” He took a deep breath, suddenly aware that this was the moment he had so longed for in his childhood dreams, the moment when he would behave like an authentic medieval knight. His hair was disheveled, he was wielding a ridiculous, rusty mace, and he wore a pitted sword hanging from his belt that could mutilate him permanently at the slightest wrong move; but despite all this, he was smiling the way only the heroes of old could. “I, Arthur Conan Doyle, father of Sherlock Holmes, swear to you, Gilliam Murray, Master of Time, that if we come out of this alive, I will spend the rest of my days trying to unravel that mystery, and if there is a portal somewhere that leads to your damsel, I assure you I will find it.”

  Murray nodded, touched and at the same time daunted by Doyle’s heroic attitude.

  “Then what are we waiting for, Arthur?” he exclaimed, filled with an almost childlike excitement. “Let’s go after the
Invisible Man!”

  But before they could make a move, they were startled by a rumbling noise from below. They both stared at the floor, which had begun to shake with growing intensity, and before the two men knew it, the floorboards had split asunder and everything collapsed with a deafening roar. Groping in the dark, Murray managed miraculously to grab hold of the banister on the balcony with one hand while with the other he hung on to the crossbow. He felt a terrible cramp in his left arm, and a wave of blistering heat scorched his face. He cried out as he felt the pain wrap round his body like barbed wire. When it abated slightly, he realized that he had torn away part of the banister as he fell and was dangling in midair, his body pressed against the jagged edge of an enormous hole, like the mouth of a volcano, spewing plumes of thick black smoke and searing heat. He was relieved to discover that between the crater and the banister a flimsy, narrow strip of floor had survived. He set down the crossbow as far from the edge as possible and made a supreme effort to haul himself up, scaling the piece of banister that had come away under his own weight. Each time he leaned his elbows or knees on the strip of floor, bits of it broke away, plunging into the flames below like a dreadful omen. Murray was terrified of falling, but with one last almighty heave he managed to reach the ledge, where he lay sprawled on his back, gasping for breath, his arms and legs covered in gashes. He discovered that the sword was gone, but he still had the second arrow. He would have preferred it to be the other way round, but clearly his opinion didn’t count for much in this situation. At least for the moment he was out of danger, though he could not afford to rest. He retrieved the crossbow, and, standing up as straight as he could on that ledge, which was little more than a foot and a half wide, he tried to glimpse something through the smoke. The gallery floor was now a gaping hole, although, fortunately, the strip of floor under him stretched as far as the stairs, assuming it would hold up under his weight so that he could reach them.

  His situation did not look very promising. But the worst thing was that there was no sign of Doyle. Murray had seen him fall like a lead weight, a stunned look on his otherwise stern face. He wondered whether he had been swallowed by the hole, vanishing into the voracious inferno, but something inside him refused to accept that the father of Sherlock Holmes could have met with such a fate. Perhaps he had also managed to cling on to something. Murray leaned tentatively over the hole, but at that precise moment a huge tongue of fire shot up from the floor below, forcing him to recoil from the edge. He resolved not to attempt that again.

  “Arthur!” he shouted, between splutters. “Arthur!”

  He continued calling Doyle’s name until he felt he was going to choke. He rummaged around in his jacket pocket, pulled out a handkerchief, and covered his mouth and nose as waves of dizziness and nausea threatened to overcome him. His throat was gripped with convulsive sobs. Surely it wasn’t possible. He couldn’t be dead . . . Mustering the last of his strength, he called out Doyle’s name one last time, feeling his scorched lungs beginning to fail. But no one replied. All he could hear was the fire’s insatiable roar, that voracious, wild clamor, that ghastly, interminable crackle, as if a monstrous creature were chewing up the whole planet. All of a sudden, a familiar chuckle rang out a few yards from where he was on the ledge, between him and the stairs.

  “So, your friend is dead . . . ,” the voice said, oozing a jubilant rage. “Then it’s just you and me. And you can’t see me . . . Now who is the hunter and who the hunted?” Murray heard the deranged laugh again, and it occurred to him that if he went on hearing it much longer, he would be infected by its madness. “I am Invisible Death, you fool! I warned you: you are all going to die . . .”

  “Damn you!” Murray shouted, aiming his crossbow toward where the laughter was coming from, though without daring to fire it, for he knew if he missed he would not have time to reload.

  The laughter fell silent as unexpectedly as it had burst out. Murray hesitated, pointing the crossbow nervously in every direction. He listened, trying not to cough, blinking furiously as tears streamed down his cheeks only to dry almost instantly with a faint hiss. He couldn’t tell whether the invisible man was standing or crouching, whether he had moved away or, on the contrary, had drawn closer, so close that he could reach out and touch him. Nor was there any way of knowing whether he was still bleeding, as the floor was now stained with his own blood and covered in soot and ash, making it impossible to perceive any trail. It occurred to Murray that he could aim at where the creature’s legs ought to be, but what if the creature was on the other side of the banister, the hallway side, possibly edging his way silently toward him, slotting his invisible feet between the bars? Then all he would have to do when he reached him was to push him into the hole, still clutching his stupid crossbow. Murray hurriedly slipped one of his feet between the banister bars and began sweeping the air furiously with his weapon, realizing that it was only a question of time before the dreadful push came. Any moment now his feet would slip from the floor, he would feel a sudden hollow in the pit of his stomach, and his body would plunge straight into the flames. But he did not want to die, he told himself angrily, not now that he knew Emma was alive in some parallel world and all he had to do was to find a way of reaching her.

  “Where are you, you coward?” he swore at the creature, waving the crossbow in the air. “Go on, keep talking! Let me hear your loathsome voice!”

  Murray peered carefully around him but was unable to see anything. If, as Wells described in his novel, the smoke the creature inhaled was revealing his breathing apparatus somewhere, it would be indistinguishable from the thick fumes obscuring everything. So, what could betray his whereabouts? Certainly not the soot and ash settling on his skin: that swine could be covered from head to toe in them and he would be just another shadow in the gallery, among the thousands created by the flames. To be visible, he must be covered with something reflective, like water or snow . . . With a sudden flash of hope, Murray remembered the sacks of plaster stored in the first room along the corridor. Yes, that was what he needed. If he could only get to them . . . But, alas, they were beyond his reach, because the moment he made a move, lowering his guard, the push would come that would send him plunging into the void.

  Then something very peculiar occurred. A word formed in his mind, or rather intruded into his thoughts, as if it had come from somewhere outside his own consciousness: Reichenbach.

  Murray’s body tensed. He fixed his gaze on the corridor beyond the flaming pit, where, after few seconds, he made out an indistinct figure charging toward him with what appeared to be a bulky object on its shoulders. Murray’s jaw dropped in astonishment.

  For a few seconds he couldn’t think who it might be, but when the figure reached the edge of the hole, with a mixture of astonishment and joy, he recognized Doyle. Doyle spun round several times, lifting the object from his shoulders like a hammer thrower and hurling it aloft with a great roar. Murray realized then that it was a sack of plaster. Before Murray had completely understood Doyle’s intentions, he raised the crossbow and fired at the sack. And as Doyle teetered on the edge of the precipice, flailing his arms comically in a frantic attempt to regain his balance, Murray’s arrow shot clean through the sack of plaster and a silent white explosion spread out in all directions. Doyle toppled over but at the last minute managed to cling on to the edge of the hole with both hands.

  “Arthur!” cried Murray.

  “Find him, Gilliam! Find the creature!” Doyle commanded, his legs swinging in the air as he tried to scramble back up.

  Murray screwed up his eyes and looked around. And then he saw him. The plaster, descending from the sky like a fine snowfall, had begun to settle on the creature, outlining his head and part of his shoulders against the sooty air, revealing a shape that although still hazy was clearly human . . . As Murray had suspected, the spirit, or whatever it was, stood only a few yards from him, clutching the banister on the other side. He realized it must have been there all the time, just
far enough away so that Murray’s lunges with the crossbow did not send him plummeting down to the hallway, waiting for Murray to tire himself out before pushing him over the edge.

  But now the rat was visible, and like a typical rat was fleeing, scuttling along the banister toward the staircase. Murray was afraid he would escape without anyone being able to stop him. Then he looked at the crossbow he was still clutching. From where he stood he had a clear view of the stairs and almost the whole hallway. Peering through the billowing smoke, he could see that Doyle was still struggling to clamber up onto the edge of the hole. Trusting that Doyle’s strength would not fail him, Murray began to tighten the string. Doyle had described the loading of a crossbow as difficult and time-consuming, but he had also assured them that the power of a crossbow’s arrow was unrivaled by that of any other type of bow, as it was almost impossible to miss a target with it, and that encouraged him. He placed his foot on the metal stirrup and, using all his strength, tightened the string, which moved up the shaft with exasperating slowness. He glanced again at the position of the creature, who had just leapt over a small gap between the ledge and the top steps and was beginning his descent. Murray had no time to lose.

  To his astonishment, the creature then stopped in his tracks and studied Doyle, who was still dangling pathetically above the hole; after a few moments, instead of continuing his escape, he retraced his steps and began to walk slowly over toward the author. Murray watched with horror as he realized that the monster, spurred on by the rage and the evil that possessed him, had decided that, before escaping to continue spreading his reign of terror through the world, he would take Doyle’s life. Murray swore. There was no way for him to reach his friend before the creature did. He could only finish loading the crossbow and fire it as quickly as possible. With a rasping cry, he tugged harder on the string, baring his teeth in a ferocious gesture. He could feel his neck bulging, and a sharp pain shot up his back, as if his spinal cord were also a string about to snap. Tiny lights started dancing before his eyes, but he managed not to flag. The bowstring moved slowly up the shaft. An inch or two more and it would slot into the notch on the revolving nut. With a mixture of despair and impotence, he watched the Invisible Man, whose outline was becoming gradually clearer as more plaster dust settled on him, pause beside Doyle, his chalky head moving from side to side, searching for something on the ground. Terrified, Murray saw him crouch down and pick up a heavy stone in his ghostly hands and raise it above his head. Then he dropped it angrily onto Doyle’s left hand. Doyle let out a fearful yowl as his fingers slipped from the edge. The creature picked up another stone, making ready to crush Doyle’s other hand, cackling like a madman. The outline of his mouth resembled a gash in the smooth white sheet that seemed to cover his head. Murray, too, gave a cry of pain as the bowstring finally slotted into the nut. Raising the crossbow, he aimed at the creature’s unfinished creamy silhouette, and before the monster could hurl the second stone at Doyle, he fired.