Stoker frowned. “Fire eats oxygen, and we do not know how plentiful it is. Besides, what would we use as kindling?”
“There’s a pile of sticks here,” said Bent, bending down a little way up the tunnel. “Almost as though someone’s left them here for that purpose.”
“They aren’t sticks,” murmured Bathory. “They’re bones.”
Bent leaped back as though burned. Stoker glanced at Trigger, knowing what he was thinking. “John’s bones?” asked Trigger in a whisper.
Stoker picked one up, and it crumbled to dust in his fingers. “They are immeasurably ancient. Tomb robbers from long ago, perhaps.” He looked at them. “I have heard tell that the pyramids of the ancients are replete with devices and traps to deter robbers.”
“Maybe they thought the curse was deterrent enough,” said Bathory.
Trigger crouched and ran his fingers through the dusty bones. “I pray the curse is real,” he said quietly. “I would give everything to die in John’s arms.”
As Stoker sorted through the bag and checked the weapons, Bent took him to one side and said, “The Countess is here to avenge her fallen husband. Trigger’s after his bum- chum. But what the eff are you and me doing here, Stoker?”
Stoker shrugged. “I promised to help Countess Bathory.”
“Get off it. You wouldn’t be putting your life at risk for a vampire you hardly know. Not a respectable married geezer like you.”
Bent’s words hit home hard, making the gulf between Stoker and Florence—seem more painfully acute. “So what is your reason, Mr. Bent?”
Bent shrugged. “Same as yours, at the end of the day. You’re expecting to get a book out of this, whether you admit it or not. I want the big story.”
Stoker made a thoughtful face. “That is how this enterprise began,” he admitted. “I was holidaying in Whitby, seeking inspiration.”
Bent laughed. “You’ve certainly got that. Bet you weren’t expecting to end up in some bloody tunnel in Egypt.”
“Art takes us where it will, Mr. Bent.” He looked briefly at Bathory, then at Trigger. “Just like love.”
“Art my arse,” sniffed Bent. “Deep down you’re the same as me. You want to spin a good yarn. Tell a good story. It’s in our blood. We’ll go to the ends of the effing earth if we have to— well, we’ve proved that. And we’ll put our lives on the line.” He paused, staring into the oil lamp’s flame. “Crackers, ain’t it?”
Stoker had to smile, despite himself, despite their situation. “Yes, Mr. Bent,” he said, looking at Bathory once more. “Thank you for putting it all into context for me. It is, as you say, crackers.”
And suddenly, very suddenly, he felt a stinging, aching sense of absence. Florence. He had put her to one side for a spell, forgotten she was as integral to him as his hand or, yes, his heart. Now, as the adventure unraveled without Mr. Gideon Smith, regret flooded him. How could he have set her aside? How could he have done that?
“You all right, Stoker?” asked Bent.
“Yes.” He nodded. “Just some dust in my eye.”
He handed out the rifles and pistols they had brought from Trigger’s home, along with others that Gideon had persuaded Cockayne to liberate from the armory of the Yellow Rose. He said, “Elizabeth, you are the only one of us who has really engaged these monstrosities hand to hand. Do you have any advice?”
She looked Stoker in the eye. “They are relentless. Keep firing, even when you are sure you have downed one. And if they keep coming . . .” She shrugged and turned away. “Perhaps you should think about turning those weapons on yourselves.”
“Never,” said Trigger. “Their reign of terror is at an end. It is up to us to stop them, for who knows what further carnage and misery they are plotting right at this moment?”
“The thing with a good story,” said Stoker thoughtfully as he holstered a handgun in the waistband of his trousers, “is that even the most foul villain needs some kind of motivation. What, I wonder, are the Children of Heqet about? Why have they been amassing these strange artifacts?”
“I’ll tell you what,” said Bathory. “We’ll ask the last one standing that question just before it dies. Now come on.”
They walked for two hours along the seemingly unending stone corridor. “We must be nearly effing there,” muttered Bent. “My fallen arches are effing killing me.”
Trigger, in the lead, held up his hand, and they stopped. Stoker said, “What is it?”
Trigger pointed, and they saw the corpse hanging from a cruel metal spike, protruding from the stone wall, that had penetrated its skull. He said, “John?”
Stoker rifled through the wallet in the dried body’s leather jacket. “Walton Jones. Wasn’t he one of Walsingham’s men, according to Reed’s notes?”
Trigger nodded vaguely. “He’s losing it,” whispered Bent to Stoker. “He’ll be about as much use as a chocolate fireguard when push comes to shove.”
Bathory crouched and inspected the floor. “There’s something different here. See how the tunnel has become squares of stone for as far as we can see?”
Stoker leaned forward with his lamp outstretched. “There are holes ranged on both sides of the wall, all along the passage.” He squinted in the gloom. “There appears to be a lever of some kind, perhaps fifty yards hence. There is evidently some fiendish mechanism behind these walls.”
Stoker emptied the rations from the hold-all and tossed it ahead of him, past the skeleton. As it hit the ground another metal spike extended from one of the holes in the wall at a frightening velocity, quivering as it reached its limit. Stoker turned to look at them. “Had that been one of us, we would have been skewered.”
He fell to his hands and knees and inspected the square stones. “There is evidently some kind of pattern to follow, to prevent the trap springing. The question is, what is it, and how do we decode it?”
Bathory sighed. “We do not have time. Gentlemen, avert your eyes.”
Stoker closed his eyes and tried to remember the words to a music hall song he’d heard a while back, begging himself not to weaken. From behind him he heard a strange, alien sound, as though something was being stretched and distorted. Bathory made a soft, animal growl, and he bit his lip. He heard Bent moaning, “I can’t do it. I have to look.”
The journalist evidently wished he hadn’t done so. “There’s an effing dog in here!”
Bent staggered back to the wall of the corridor as the beast, its jaws slavering, leaped. Stoker smiled. “Not a dog. A wolf.”
“That’s the Countess?” asked Trigger mildly.
Stoker nodded. Bent said, “I’ve heard of one or two women in Whitechapel who apparently have the reputations of dogs, but this is something effing else entirely.”
The wolf paused at the start of the booby-trapped corridor, sniffing the dry air, then bounded forward. As soon as the vast paws hit the ground, it leaped again, as a spike struck into the space it had just vacated. With two more bounds, and two more spikes, the wolf was at the other side. Bent picked up the lamp and squinted; he rubbed his eyes and shielded the back of the lamp so to better direct the beam. He swore softly. In the wolf’s place was the naked form of Bathory, crouched on all fours.
“I have died and gone to heaven,” he said. “Let those effing mummies take me now. I have seen a little slice of the great hereafter.”
“You shall die and go somewhere, for sure,” said Stoker, “if we cannot find a way to get the rest of us across.”
In the thin beam of light, Stoker saw Bathory haul on the lever set into the stone wall, and the spikes receded, the one nearest to him spilling the desiccated corpse to the floor with a dry smack. The dried head separated from the shoulders and rolled across the corridor. No spikes issued forth.
“Do you think it’s safe?” said Bent.
“Someone needs to test it,” said Stoker.
“Mr. Bent?” called Bathory from the other side. “Could you be a darling and bring me my clothes?”
Bent had pi
cked up the fallen skirts and was halfway down the corridor toward Bathory before he realized what he had done.
Trigger gave a lopsided smile. “It’s safe. She has disarmed the mechanism.”
Stoker applauded. “Excellent work, Countess! And bravo, Mr. Bent! Your courage knows no bounds.”
They gave Bathory a few moments to dress, then gingerly crossed the tiled floor, as Bent stood with his back to the Countess, his hands over his eyes, slowly counting to a thousand. “It’s all right, Mr. Bent,” said Stoker. “The Countess is decent.”
Bent grabbed his arm. “You won’t tell anyone, will you, Stoker?”
“Tell them what?”
Bent cocked his head toward Bathory. “That I finally found my dream woman.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “But she effing terrifies me.”
After seeing Countess Bathory’s bloodlust on the Yellow Rose, and now her supernatural ability to transform into a powerful- looking wolf, Stoker began to feel they might just have a fighting chance against the Children of Heqet. Looking forward, he almost tripped over something at his feet.
Stoker crouched and peered in the light of his lamp at one of Okoth’s helmets and air tanks. Trigger bent down and covered his mouth.
“John’s,” he said at last.
Stoker tried to smile. “Then at least we know he made it safely this far.”
“Perhaps this ancient sepulcher is John’s tomb also,” said Trigger hollowly.
They walked on in silence, and a sudden draft caused the flames in their oil lamps to flicker. Stoker peered ahead. “Fresh air. And I can see light, though it’s very faint.”
They hurried forward, and Stoker murmured to Bathory, “Are you well, Countess? You look paler than usual.”
She smiled, but thinly. “The transformation took more out of me than I expected. It is the harsh sun I have endured, and the lack of sustenance.”
Stoker stroked his beard. “If you really need to feed . . .”
She shook her head and pointed forward. “Some kind of open doorway ahead, Bram.”
“Careful!” called Bent. “Might be another effing booby trap!”
Stoke and Bathory paused by the stone opening through which the tunnel widened to a room, with a similar, darkened doorway some thirty feet opposite.
Stoker poked his head around the opening. “It is lit with torches,” he observed. “Set into sconces on the walls. Evidently, we are entering inhabited territory.”
“The Children of Heqet,” said Bathory grimly.
“Curious room, innit?” said Bent.
The floor, ceiling, and walls were composed of black and white tiles, though not symmetrically laid, and of quite a different nature than the stones in the booby-trapped tunnel. Some of the black tiles had smaller white squares set into opposing corners, giving an appearance that straight lines were in fact wavy, while tiles of diminishing sizes and rounded edges tricked the eye into seeing extended vanishing points where there were none, and swirls of tiles, though static, appeared to be rotating slowly, first one way, then the other.
Bent shouldered past Stoker for a look, then pulled back and pushed the pith helmet back on his head. “Giving me a fit of the vapors.”
“We know how fiendish these ancients were,” said Stoker. “It would be best to tread carefully.”
“Check your ammunition,” ordered Trigger, spinning the chamber of his revolver. “We’re close to them. I can feel it.”
Stoker looked around on the ground and found a few fallen stones, which he cast in a handful across the checkerboard floor. Nothing moved. Holding the pistol aloft, he took a step on to the tiles, then another. He turned and shrugged, and Trigger followed him, rifle in hands. The two men padded to the center of the room, then beckoned for the others to follow. The other doorway was ahead of them, doused in darkness. Trigger said quietly, “Whatever we want is through there. Keep your wits about you now.”
As Bathory and Bent joined them in the center of the room, Stoker cocked his head. “What was that?”
Beneath their feet, hidden cogs and gears began to turn, and the ground began to thrum with their regulated movement. Bent frowned and said, “It could be my imagination, but . . . is this room moving?”
27
Your Fear Is a Lie
“Tea!” called Okoth, clapping his hands and waving them at Mori.
Cockayne stared at Gideon, until he met the American’s eyes and said irritably, “What?”
Cockayne shrugged. “Wasn’t expecting that from you, Smith.”
Gideon looked at his hands. They were trembling. “I couldn’t,” he said in a small voice. “I just couldn’t.”
“What scares you?” said Cockayne.
“Leave him, Louis,” said Fanshawe quietly.
Gideon shook his head. “It’s the tunnels. When I was a small boy . . . I got lost. Underground.”
Gideon Smith first truly knew fear when he was nine-years- old. Oliver Thwaite had been reported missing a scant hour before, and the men were getting organised to comb the moors. Gideon knew where he was, though; Oliver Thwaite spoke of nothing else other than the pirate gold which lay within the catacombs of Lythe Bank. He’d tried to tell his dad but had been unable to penetrate the carefully-controlled panic infecting the grown-ups. So he decided to rescue Oliver himself.
Thanks to his already vast knowledge of Trigger’s stories, Gideon knew exactly what was required for a descent into the underworld. He would need light, of course, and had borrowed an oil-lamp from his daddy’s shed. Chasms or sheer stone faces would need to be traversed or scaled; he hadn’t dared take a rope from the Cold Drake but his mother’s spare washing line would do. A ball of string, tied to the entrance of the caves and unwound behind him would ensure he wouldn’t get lost. Gideon wasn’t sure why, but he did know brandy was something of a cure-all so decanted a couple of inches from his daddy’s bottle into a stone jug.
Gideon had never ventured inside Lythe Bank before, of course. As he stood before the black fissure he felt something inside his throat catch, felt his chest constrict. The crack in the high walls seemed to beckon him into a world not his, a world where thousands of tons of rock waited to press down upon him, a world without sunlight or fresh air.
Unfurling the string behind him and holding the oil-lantern high, Gideon sidled with ungainly crab-movements along the narrow passage, his back against the rough wall. He shouted Oliver’s name and the caves mockingly echoed his words. His adventure was not quite as thrilling as he would have hoped. The weight of his situation pressed down on him, all those tons and tons of rock gathered around his thin nine-year-old self. Gideon began to breathe quickly and shallowly, panic rising. One stumble, and the oil-lantern crashed to the sharp rocks. Plunged into blackness Gideon began to wail, then sob, and hurriedly retraced his steps along the string . . . which hung limply in his hands, sheared off by the angular rocks. He began to run blindly onwards, falling and scuffing the palms of his hands. He was, as lost as Oliver Thwaite. But more than that . . . he couldn’t breathe. The caves had lured him from the wide-open spaces. Gideon’s eyes bulged and he clawed at his throat, but it was no use.
He was dying.
He didn’t know how long he lay there, dying in the impenetrable black, before a faint glow appeared and grew into an oil-lamp carried by a frowning Arthur Smith, who picked him up and carried him back towards the light. With each step Gideon’s imminent death seemed to recede and his breath came in ragged rasps. Shame mingling with relief, he realised he had walked barely thirty steps into the tunnels, and in seconds Arthur had him out.
“You went to look for him? You’re a brave lad. Foolish, but brave. Promise me you’ll never go in there again,” Arthur said into Gideon’s hair. “I couldn’t bear it if I lost you.”
Then he frowned and put Gideon down, and looked back at Lythe Bank. Gideon knew what he was thinking. “I’d better get the men, though. If Oliver Thwaite’s in there . . .”
Arthur Smith knew
, and Gideon could sense, there wouldn’t be a second small boy brought out of those tunnels that day.
Cockayne nodded. “And this fear has lived with you ever since.” He ruminated for a moment, then said, “Your fear is a lie, Smith.”
Gideon frowned. “I’m not lying. You weren’t there. You didn’t see me. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move.”
“I didn’t say you were lying. I said your fear is a lie,” said Cockayne. “What, you think the walls are going to close in on you? The roof will collapse? You’ll be lost in the darkness forever?”
Gideon nodded. “All those things.”
Cockayne waved his hand. “We’re, what, thirty feet below the surface here? The submersible could crack. Water could pour in and drown us. Crocodiles could eat us. Those goddamn mummies could come back. Why the hell aren’t you curled up in a ball, whimpering for your mother?”
Gideon took a breath. “I don’t know.”
Cockayne smirked. “You flew from London to Alexandria strung under a balloon. That didn’t scare you?”
Gideon shrugged. Cockayne went on, “Your fear is a lie, Gideon. It only hurts you because you believe it. Stop believing it. Tell it to go jump in the lake.”
“What would you know about it?” asked Gideon, not intending to sneer but doing so anyway.
Cockayne stroked his moustache. After a long moment he said, “What do you think I’m scared of, Gideon?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m scared of being more than twenty feet off the ground.” Cockayne smiled.
Fanshawe laughed. “Louis, you’re a ’stat pilot.”
He turned to her and nodded. “Yes. And how do I do it? Because I stopped believing the lie.” He paused and looked back to Gideon. “When I was nine years old I lived on a farm in Connecticut. I had two brothers. We had a grain tower, and my brothers liked to climb it, play pirates. I was always too little. One day I followed them up the ladder and out around the rim. I looked down. I couldn’t move. I was frozen to the spot.”
Cockayne accepted a cup of tea from Mori and sipped at it, pulling a face. He handed it back. “Needs sugar, kid.” He looked into the middle distance. “Robert, who was my eldest brother, came up to help me. He climbed across the domed roof of the grain tower and tried to get me to scramble back to the ladder. I couldn’t move. He tried to grab me, told me he’d kick my ass if I didn’t move.”
Gideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl Page 26