So Below: The Trilogy

by Matt Whyman

  Without waiting to see what it is, he retreats by several steps, only to think twice when the figure at the mouth appears to pick up on all the activity. The muttering and cooing stop, replaced by grunts of suspicion. Yoshi freezes, trapped now from both sides. It leaves him no chance but to sidestep to the tunnel wall, and inch into the nearest bolthole. The children don’t sound like ordinary kids. More like excitable chimps with a mastery of basic English.

  “Do it again, Jenks Junior. Heh-heh! Show me how it’s done!”

  Cautiously, Yoshi dares to peer deeper into the tunnel. What he sees almost causes him to cry out. At first he thinks the two little loping figures are part of a freak show troupe. The way they keep dropping down to move using their hands in the same way as their feet is extraordinary. But these are no apes. Far from it. They’re wearing filthy aprons over their rags, with arching ears, snout-like noses, and wiry red hair pulled into curly tails. And yet it isn’t even their sightless, milky eyes that cause Yoshi to start. It’s the fact that he doesn’t even need the head torch to see them. For an eerie light is radiating from one of these ghostly-looking creatures, just like the glow that shines from Livia’s shoulders.

  “Show me, Jenksy, show me now!” urges the one without the aura, and draws breath through his nose with a snort. “Touch the magic brick.”

  “Shhhh!” replies his little friend. “Jenks Junior wants no more trouble from the elders. I don’t want it to go bang like last time! I only tried it the other night because it was got so noisy in the world above with all their celebrations and feasting. I couldn’t sleep, and was curious about what would happen. Now I wish I’d left it well alone.”

  “So be swift about it, then.”

  At this, the creature calling himself Jenks Junior reaches up as Yoshi had. On account of his short stature, however, he has to jump and strain in a bid to reach it. From his hiding place, Yoshi leans out for a better look. He sees Jenks make the connection with his hand, but has to shield his eyes and wheel around when a starburst of light gleams from the waypoint. It blasts across Yoshi’s back, rushing through his hair, and then an even stranger thing occurs. Right before his eyes, Yoshi sees a ghost of himself take off towards the tunnel mouth. It’s as if a transparent replica has just peeled away from his flesh and bones, an image which glows as it gathers speed. Nor is he the only one to witness it. For the presence at the tunnel mouth is lit up by the racing entity, and Yoshi doesn’t like the look of him one bit. As Yoshi’s ghostly image sprints right through the figure, the creature up there wheels around enraged. He shares the same startling features as the pair under the waypoint, from the white, sightless eyes to the apron and the upturned snout, but he’s larger, thicker-set and much older. Indeed, he seems so steamed up that his ears have pinned right back.

  “Jenks?” it bellows between each squealing intake of breath. “Jenks Junior? Heavens, child, you’ll give away our existence in no time! I swear I’ll fillet your liver if I catch you!”

  Yoshi hears the kid gasp, upon which the light from the waypoint recedes as fast as it appeared.

  “The elder! Oh no! We’re for it now!”

  “You said everyone was sleeping,” the one called Jenks Junior hisses to his friend, looking like a ghost wraith with his aura shining brightly. “Now we’re in great trouble!”

  “You touched it, Jenksy!” the other creature responds, and begins to retreat into the darkness. “Everyone knows that you alone can do it. No wonder everyone calls you a freak!”

  Yoshi witnesses the entire exchange, feeling strangely sorry for poor Jenks Junior, but only for a moment. For not only is this so-called elder still cursing the kid’s name. He can also be heard loping from the tunnel mouth now. Once again, the boy with a gift for remote viewing folds himself into the crevice, and wills his third eye to open.

  This time, the flash that goes off occurs only inside Yoshi’s mind. When it clears, there is Livia, with Mikhail and Julius. They’re no longer hiding, however, but standing on the bank beside the waterfall looking thoroughly shaken.

  “That was more than just an aftershock,” says Julius. Mikhail is close beside him, with both hands clasped over his red-spiked head.

  “It was a far-out trick!” he exclaims, as the old man rolls his eyes. “And at last I think I’ve worked out how it’s done.”

  “I doubt that very much,” says Livia under her breath.

  “Hologram projectors!” the young Russian declares, and snaps his fingers in the air triumphantly with a whip of the wrist. “When that beam of light shot across the abyss, we all know that wasn’t Yoshi racing along inside it. Yoshi would’ve dropped into the ravine like a stone, after all. And the hologram that chased him into the tunnel behind us was wild! It was like something out of a carnival, wasn’t it? Still, full marks for a most impressive light show. I think the pigs work best, though. This looked a bit over the top.”

  As Julius tries to explain what really happened, Livia’s attention is drawn away. She certainly can’t see Yoshi, tucked out of sight in the tunnel on the far side, but she has just picked up on the fact that he’s here on the psychic wavelength they share.

  “Were you behind that?” she whispers, anxious not to trouble Mikhail further.

  “Not exactly,” he replies from the crevice, seeing her clearly in his mind’s eye. “But I can confirm that it wasn’t an aftershock.”

  “Are you in trouble?” she asks, sensing something is wrong.

  “You could say that,” he admits, aware that the creature from the tunnel mouth can be heard advancing across the bed of bones towards him. And then, as his remote view begins to fade, Yoshi sees Livia turn with a start, and face the tunnel on her side of the abyss. She backs against the rock, tugging at the old man’s patchwork coat. Julius looks around along with Mikhail, and both share the same look of shock and astonishment.

  “Whatever’s going on with you,” is the last thing Livia tells Yoshi, “things just got twice as bad on this side.”

  30

  NOBODY COMES HERE, NOBODY LEAVES

  He had made it this far without a head torch, or any guiding light. Right now, as Aleister emerges from the lost river tunnel, and into the glow from Livia’s aura, it seems he had found his way through absolute darkness. The brute climbs onto the bank, glowering at them from beneath his great brow.

  “Billy told me I’d find you here,” he says, and shows them a scroll he’s been clutching in one meaty paw. “He introduced me to the Map Room, where I picked up these directions. The palace is a high point!”

  “What have you done to Billy?” Livia demands to know. “And where are the twins?”

  “Safe in the bunker,” he says, quite simply. “I suggested they remain on the Bridge, and even gave them something to care for just to take their mind off things.”

  “The snake?” says Julius after a moment, noting its absence from around the brute’s neck.

  “It would’ve suffered in conditions this grim,” Aleister replies with a shrug. “A snake needs warmth,” he adds, which is when his mouth curls into a sneer. “And regular feeding.”

  “Don’t test me,” snaps Julius, and jabs a finger at him angrily. “If any of them come to harm you will pay!”

  The brute locks his attention on the old man.

  “Well, that’s rich,” he counters, “coming from someone who has taken such risks with their welfare. You shouldn’t have brought them here, Julius. These children belong to me. They deserve to be in my care, not yours.”

  Julius steps forward to face the brute head on. “You’re too late,” he tells him, with his back to the waterfall and the great divide beyond. “Yoshi has reached the waypoint.”

  The brute raises one eyebrow quizzically, squaring up to Julius now. “Judging by the energy bolt that just flashed past me in the tunnel, it didn’t look like the boy had enjoyed much success. Indeed, it seemed to suggest he’s in great danger!”

  From the other side of the abyss, an anguished howl bri
efly drowns the orchestra. It draws everyone’s attention, and serves to overshadow all argument.

  “It’s true,” confesses Livia, concerned for Yoshi now. “When he views us remotely, I can pick up on his presence. This time I even sensed him communicating with me.”

  “What did he have to say?” the brute demands to know.

  Livia looks back across the abyss, where the howling has turned to squeals of panic and pain. “It doesn’t take a psychic to sense that something has gone very wrong.” When she faces round again, she doesn’t just appeal to Julius but Aleister, too. “But what can we do to save him?”

  Deep inside the former river tunnel, beyond the abyss that has starved it of water, Yoshi watches in horror at the cause of the uproar. For the loping elder had careered straight past his hiding place, tucked his knife behind his own apron strings, and promptly set upon the poor kid called Jenks Junior with his fists.

  “I warned you the last time not to meddle with the magic brick!” he roars, throwing punch after hammering punch. The glow around the howling, cowering child begins to flicker like a faulty light bulb, but it doesn’t stop this vicious onslaught. “Everyone wants you out, Jenks Junior. You’re different. You’re not normal for a slaughterman, and you’re not good for the sty!”

  “Leave him alone!”

  It takes a moment for Yoshi to recognise his own voice. Another one to see that both figures have stopped fighting and turned to face him. Just then, it seems to him that even the flies have ceased buzzing. Yoshi swallows dryly, aware that the cruel wretch behind this assault is still holding Jenks Junior by his pigtail. The poor kid just cowers at his feet, his head pulled back, looking terrorised for several reasons now. “Please,” says Yoshi fearfully, “let him go.”

  Still wheezing between breaths, the attacker stares blindly at a point just over Yoshi’s head. “Who’s there?” it asks. “What kind of monster is in our midst?”

  With his heart hammering, Yoshi steps out from his hiding place. “You’re hurting him,” he adds meekly. “He hasn’t harmed anyone.”

  This snub-nosed creature sniffs the air, and then snorts savagely. “A surface dweller!” he cries, jumping to his feet and bringing his young victim with him. “My brothers and sisters, we got ourselves a live one!”

  Yoshi’s eyes lock with the piggy-looking boy with the aura. He might be just as blind, but the shift in his expression tells Yoshi that he really could use some help. He steps forward, thinking perhaps he can just grab him from out of the blackness and make a run for it. But then the sound emerging from every direction keeps him rooted to the spot. He looks around, his twin beams riding over the brickwork in the tunnel. The light drops into a bolt-hole, pick out movement in there, before skipping to the next one. Inside that, he finds a pair of sightless eyes opening before the hog-like face emerges in full.

  Yoshi spins around with a gasp, and suddenly sees his surroundings in a new light. For this might have been a tunnel, a very long time ago, but he was wrong to think it no longer served a purpose. Judging by the swarm of mutant humans now crawling from the holes and the giant cracks, it functions as some kind of dreadful hive. A few are sporting striped and bloodied aprons, other are in ragged shirts with long-gone buttons, and breeches that have seen better centuries. They seem to stagger and stretch, as if rudely awoken, before their snouts and pointed ears pick up on his presence. He takes a step backwards, hears Jenks Junior squeal out in terror, and promptly ignores his instinct to flee.

  “Hold on, kid!” he cries, rushing for the pair. With all his might he barges into the fiend who had begun this battery, sending it sprawling onto the bed of bones. Before he’s even grabbed the little one, trying desperately not to flinch from its leathery skin, Yoshi finds it’s leapt onto his shoulders and is chattering in his ear.

  “Save me, sir! Save my worthless soul!”

  “Hey! You’re covering my eyes!”

  Yoshi wheels around, struggling under the fidgeting load, and blindly sidesteps an incoming creature. This one attempts to grab at Jenks Junior, who escapes by swinging around the boy’s neck now, and stationing itself on Yoshi’s other shoulder.

  “You mustn’t make a sound, sir,” it squeals into his ear. “If you create a din they’ll skewer you sharpish, and Jenksy don’t want to end up on no spit! Be still, I beg you. You can blink, but don’t dare breathe!”

  By now, the first assailant has struggled back onto its feet. It wheels around, furious at this ambush. Yoshi freezes, his eyes free from Jenks’s grasp, and finds two sightless eyes staring right at him. The wretch in question is too close for comfort, but there’s no sense of recognition in its face. Then its broad nostrils twitch, as if picking up on the boy’s scent, and its temples tighten so both lifeless eyes pinch up at the corners. Growling in suspicion, this freak of nature drops onto all fours, taking his weight on powerful shoulders. With his snout to the floor now, he seems to find Yoshi’s trail. The boy prepares to bolt for it, but stops himself when the creature follows the scent from his footsteps in the wrong direction, towards the passage that had first delivered him here.

  Finding nothing at the opening but a trail going rapidly cold, the creature gives up with a grunt, shaking his back as he does so like a dog in the wake of a soaking. With his heart galloping, Yoshi looks both ways along the old river tunnel. As far as his torch beams can penetrate, he sees these blind fiends pouring from their resting places. Most of them crawl out and then stand. Others remain in a crouching position, their snouts twitching as they test the air. Several carry piglets under their arms, while one or two brandish butchers’ knives. At one point, a creature with a knife collides blindly with its neighbour, who yelps and cowers from its path.

  “How do we get out of here?” whispers Yoshi. He’s wide-eyed with fear, but strangely thankful to be the only one with the gift of sight.

  “There is no way out,” the voice in his ear replies, sounding almost jaunty. “Nobody comes here, nobody leaves!”

  “Thanks,” mutters Yoshi, and scans the wall behind him for the steps that delivered him here. “You’re a great help.”

  His twin beams, coupled with the creature’s aura, quickly locate the ragged hole in the brickwork of the tunnel. It’s only a matter of metres away, but several of these enraged troglodytes stand in their path.

  “Nobody comes here,” Jenks Junior chatters into his lobe once again, “and nobody leaves.”

  “Well, I made it in one piece,” breathes Yoshi, wishing the crew were with him. Once they were over the shock, this band of young illusionists would know how to help out. Which is when an idea takes shape in his mind. It’s nothing fancy, just a basic principle of street magic, but it’s the only hope they have. Yoshi drops his gaze between his feet. There, his torch beams find a big thigh bone. The boy crouches quietly to pick it up. “We’re going to make it out of here,” he says under his breath, and hefts it in his hand. “What we need is a little misdirection.”

  With that, he turns and flings the bone over the heads of those troglodytes nearest to him. It can be heard clattering against the brickwork, some way behind the keystone. At once, as the grunts and squealing fall silent, the creatures turn to face the cause of the commotion. Then a cry goes up and they swarm towards it. Seizing the opportunity, Yoshi dashes for the passage, rounding the last of these sightless subterranean savages just moments before they realise what’s just happened and switch back in pursuit.

  “’Tis a trick!” the elder can be heard to cry. “After them, my brothers and sisters! Extra rashers for whoever catches the outsider! And be sure to leave Jenks Junior to me!”

  31

  UNDERGROUND SHOWDOWN

  The uproar in the tunnel resounds across the chasm. Swiftly, it serves to silence the stand-off between Julius and the brute. Having squared up to one another, they break off to face the tunnel mouth. For a second, standing shoulder to shoulder, they share the same expression of dread and outright horror.

  “My God,” b
reathes Julius, as the squeals echo throughout the cavern, “what have I done?”

  “Whatever God that might be,” replies Aleister, “Yoshi’s fate is in His hands now.”

  As soon as the noise erupted from the tunnel beyond the divide, Mikhail and Livia had rushed to the edge and urgently called out to their friend.

  “We can’t just leave him,” cries the young Russian now. “Something bad is going down on that side, and Yoshi is in the thick of it.”

  “He’s right,” implores Livia. “We need to be there for him.”

  Aleister shakes his head darkly. “All we can do,” he advises them over the din, “is get away from here while we still have the chance.”

  “No way!” Livia’s aura brightens fiercely. “I’m going nowhere without Yoshi.”

  Then something grabs the old man’s attention, causing him to start. “Over there!” Julius points at the ledge below the tunnel mouth, into which Yoshi had dared to venture. “I see movement!”

  A light can be seen shining from the passage. As it grows in strength, they see the steps that the boy had climbed before he disappeared from their sight. Then comes the shadow. It spills out at speed, followed swiftly by the source.

  “There he is!” cries Mikhail. “It’s Yoshi . . . wait a minute, what’s that thing glowing on his back?”

  With the last step in view, and knowing that the pipe across the chasm had sheared in two, Yoshi thinks ahead like the parkour that he is. What was left of the pipe from the far side now dangles steeply from the waterfall. Even so, the tip is way below the ledge, and a leap away from here. As a free runner, making his way across the city rooftops, his safety depended on focus as much as rhythm. Quite simply, he can’t afford to put a foot wrong, which is why he knows what happens next depends on perfect timing.