Stave took it on impulse and ran from the bus to the traffic cone, placing the ice cream in a hole in the top of it.
A cone on a cone. Seems natural.
Another gust of a dream wind. This time, more like a change in the atmosphere with another layer of reality taken away.
An origami bird fluttered from out of nowhere and transformed into a starling, the size of a dog, before flying down the tunnel.
A whispered utterance.
‘Where you going?’
He turned to see Quikso and Mariella outside, at the back of the bus.
‘Ah, you’re both there. Your guess is as good as mine,’ Stave replied quietly.
The bus driver heard him.
‘I hear you all, you know. Back on the bus, immediately. Feebly. Heebly-jeebly.’
‘Come with me, let’s all find a way out of here,’ Stave said to the pair.
They both shook their heads while Mariella clutched her bag of wooden fish wrapped in newspaper and Quikso gripped his bottle of champagne.
‘I’ll find my own way out,’ Mariella said and she looked insistent about that.
‘Me too,’ Quikso added.
‘Well, if you’re certain. See you, then,’ Stave replied, disappointed. ‘Take care, both of you.’
Far behind the bus, another origami shape fell. It was a simple, paper boat. It immediately transformed into a massive galleon, blocking the tunnel from the way they had travelled.
This is all getting more peculiar.
Without looking back, Stave climbed up onto a short wall and over the railing onto a walkway. He ran until he came upon a metal door inset into the curved wall, the word “Maintenance” painted neatly upon it.
Exit from turmoil, or entry to worse?
The concrete ribs either side of the tunnel had turned to huge, calcified ribs of some massive sea creature.
The agent of Tremelon had appeared again from behind his ice cream van and walked, with determination, past the bus. As he came upon the ice cream he snatched it from the traffic cone with a clawed hand and while striding towards Stave, held the blowtorch to it.
‘Not getting any better,’ Stave muttered, as he took hold of the door handle and turned it.
6 : FACTORY OF HOPE DEPLETING
The scratched door opened. Stave Swirler moved swiftly through, turned, and slammed the door shut. After clanging, it hummed like the sound of electricity running through a circuit. He was plunged into rich black with mauve amoeba shapes floating before him, projected from his retina. Fumbling onto one side of the doorframe and then the other, he found a switch. An orange-yellow light illuminated the small stock room. He put his ear to the door and, with one eye closed, listened intently for any noise from the tunnel.
He turned on his heels to view the room. There were aluminium racks lining two mauve walls, and piled plastic crates filled with equipment at the far end. On the racks were cardboard boxes marked “pending” in scrawled grey ink, and glass bottles, stamped with sinister designs, filled with blue and grey liquids.
He was trapped. The agent of Tremelon could come through the door at any moment brandishing a blowtorch, or worse, take his mask off.
There was nowhere to hide. No other exit for escape, an air vent in the ceiling too small to climb into, and nothing on the concrete floor except the crates and a toolbox. Stave had the idea of picking up a tool from the box to defend himself but considered that wasn’t such a good idea.
Escape rather than fight.
The only alternative was to move the crates over to the metal door, in the hope that the weight of them would be enough to prevent the agent from entering. Stave began pulling stacked crates from piles, placing them on the dusty floor and dragging them to the door.
There was another door with a key in the lock that had been hiding behind the crates. Stave removed the last of the crates from this exit and opened it quickly, locking it on the other side.
He was presented with a large room, a clattering conveyor belt running the length of it, carrying flattened cardboard boxes from out of a swirling blue globe. At the other end of the conveyor belt stood a man dressed in overalls. He busily made up the boxes before throwing them into a mock fire made of red and orange paper flames blown by air.
On all four sides of the room were organ pipes striping the walls, of varying lengths and thicknesses. They peeped and tooted at random.
Stave ran up to the worker.
‘Hey, what’s this about?’ he asked loudly, above the clamour.
‘Can’t stop at all, I’ll lose the sequence,’ the man said, continuing to make up the cardboard boxes from the flattened ones taken from the conveyor belt.
‘There is no sequence – all of the boxes are identical. Can’t you switch off the belt for a while? It’s very noisy.’
‘Look, out of my way, I work for a promise. Let me get on with it otherwise I’ll be behind schedule.’
‘What promise?’
‘Do I have to tell you?’ the man replied in a distraught voice.
‘No, not if you don’t want to.’
The stranger paused before saying, ‘A promise of dream heaven, a beautiful cottage for my wife and I. Living a life of simple luxury. But before that, I have to finish this important job, the first of many.’
Ludicrous, a pointless task. And I can bet I know who set the task for him. He is being tricked.
‘Don’t you realise you are being fooled, like everyone else, who has an encounter with Tremelon Zandar or his agents?’ Stave told him, as the tooting and peeping from the organ pipes on the walls grew in amount and volume. ‘You mentioned a cottage. What sort of cottage? I’m sure I live in a cottage too, I’m certain.’
The man remained silent.
But when Stave asked him the whereabouts of his wife, he answered, after drawing in breath, ‘They’ll release her, won’t they, when I’ve finished this task,’ and he glanced to the high ceiling. Stave looked there also, to see a mass of writhing, blue pipes. ‘Now look what you’ve made me do. I picked up the wrong flat box,’ the man said with annoyance.
‘But they’re all the same, I tell you,’ Stave answered.
‘To you, they may be. To me, there are subtle markings to identify which one to pick up before the other.’
‘So subtle they can’t be seen. I do believe you’ve been hypnotised in some fashion. You are making identical boxes and throwing them into a theatrical fire, the same way. What differences can there be?’ The agitated man refused to answer while continuing his futile and bland task. ‘All I can say is, if this is your dream world, it’s a drab one.’
At that moment, the pipes on the walls played the same jingle that had come from the ice cream van.
‘I’ve got to go,’ Stave said, sensing the agent was close.
Now the jingle played with more urgency, and Stave watched with alarm as the room filled with blue smoke coming from the ends of the organ pipes. The door that he had come through bulged, and blue spots appeared on its grey surface.
‘I must get out of here and I advise you to do the same,’ Stave said.
He glanced around. He noticed one of the cardboard boxes thrown through the paper flames slid onto a brass chute and disappeared from view. The only means of escape, he guessed.
Taking hold of the man’s arm, Stave pulled him but he struggled, and released himself from his grip.
‘Leave me alone, you’re spoiling everything,’ he shouted.
‘It’s not me spoiling everything, I can assure you,’ Stave replied loudly. ‘Please, don’t be a fool, follow me.’
The man in the overalls held onto the edge of the clanking conveyor belt as if expecting Stave to pull him away again.
The jingle from the organ pipes lining the walls became shrill and deafening. Billows of blue smoke were thickening. Both men coughed as it attacked their throats.
‘We have to go. I can’t leave you,’ Stave cried out and he ran over to the man.
He nodded,
finally convinced, and when Stave leaped into the mock fire flames and tumbled and slid down the chute, the worker followed shortly after.
7 : KEEPERS OF THE CHASM
After a short ride in darkness, weaving down the winding chute, Stave landed on a pile of cardboard boxes that crumpled beneath him. Many others were stacked neatly from floor to ceiling. There were skylights above, letting a diluted light penetrate the gloom.
Hollow and echoed metallic scraping noises emanated from the warehouse above, mingled with the reverberating fairground jingle from the organ pipes.
He got up with urgency and moved away from the end of the chute. Then he threw boxes in front of it, just before the workman fell from its end and landed on them. He stood, still coughing.
‘You unhurt?’ Stave asked.
‘What’s to happen to my wife now?’ he wailed, ignoring the question.
Stave moved closer to him and put a comforting hand on one of his shoulders.
‘I can’t answer that,’ he finally said. ‘But I do know that if you had been overcome in the warehouse then there would be no possibility of ever finding her.’ The man bowed his head. Stave added, ‘In the meantime, we must find a way out, then perhaps you can find your wife.’
‘Yes, thanks, I hope so,’ he said, as tears formed in his mournful eyes. ‘Tacie is so fretful without me. I’m Konie, by the way.’
‘And I’m Stave. Don’t give up hope.’
They shook hands and after a pause, both surveyed the claustrophobic place. There were no doors to be seen.
The noises from above ceased.
There was stillness in the dimly lit room full of boxes, and a deep silence except for the occasional chirruping as if made by a grasshopper.
A sense of being watched. But no, there’s no one else but us here, I’m sure.
Stave stood, motionless for a while, taking in the peculiar ambience of the place. Then, half hidden behind more piles of cardboard boxes, he noticed a sturdy wooden door with a stone arch above it.
‘There, this way,’ he said to Konie. They went over to it and after clearing boxes away, Stave turned the cast iron handle and pushed on the door. It opened a small way.
It’s stuck.
‘Give me a hand, will you.’
They both put their shoulder to the door, pressing their weight upon it. With a grating sound, it opened wide enough for them to slip through, then it shut behind them of its own accord.
They found themselves in a large, circular room. The continuous wall made of cream granite soared upwards to a point, high above, like a massive teepee might. Around the room’s circumference stood at least ten more stone-framed doors. Each had a massive, animated mouth upon it, moving with twitching motions while whispering.
Fascinating. Like the rustling of leaves.
In the centre of the stone tiled area was a cavernous crater, thirty feet or more in diameter. And placed equidistantly around its ragged edge were three figures with ebony faces, each one more than eight feet tall. All had long, purple beards, plaited and sculpted into the shape of an artist’s paintbrush. The strange characters pointed to the crater, to each other, or upwards. They were miming to an unheard beat, a mysterious, mystical semaphore known only to themselves.
The first figure, dressed in a cyan tunic, had a sphere upon his long-haired head. The second man looked identical except his tunic was magenta, and the shape on his head was a cube. The third man, with equally long hair and a paintbrush beard, dressed in a yellow tunic, adjusted his pyramid balancing on top of his head. They created an impressive dominance in the room and all three gently glowed.
‘Who are these incredible people?’ Konie asked in a low voice, as if in reverence to their extraordinary and distinctive auras.
‘I don’t know,’ Stave answered, ‘though they seem benign enough.’
There’s something special about these three giants.
There was a becoming fragrance in the still air and a modulated droning from out of the crater. Stave stepped boldly forward, towards the edge of it.
‘Go no further. Step back,’ the giant in magenta ordered, his voice deep and penetrating.
After a pause, the man in yellow said, in an identical voice, ‘Let him look; let him try to understand,’ followed by a third voice, matching the quality of the other two exactly, as if all had been the one person speaking, ‘Maybe he should look, maybe he shouldn’t.’
Stave was undecided what to do, then considered he should step backwards, away from the crater in this dreamy place, away from those strange attendants.
Stave was in awe of the three giants, feeling the urge to bow to them but he resisted the temptation.
‘Perhaps we should leave?’ he asked, looking up to their wise and ancient faces.
There was no answer from them. Again they started their silent gesticulations, with the large mouths on the doors whispering more urgently, and the droning from the crater now sounding like a mass of violin strings and bells.
Stave took the silence of the giants as an indication that they should leave. He called over to Konie in a low and respectful volume.
‘Let’s get out of here.’
But which of the many doors had they come through? Did it matter? Should they use any one?
While pondering, the giant man in yellow appeared to understand Stave’s predicament and he spoke, his bass tone seeming to tremble the air.
‘You are weary already, unsure of yourself, and still your dream journey has only just begun.’
‘Then that’s what this is, a dream journey we’re on?’ Stave said. ‘You can confirm that? So you must be a part of the dream cast, like the blacksmith and harlequin.’
The giant in the magenta tunic replied.
‘We are unlike either of those. We are the keepers of the chasm.’
With that said, he pointed to the gaping crater in the floor, and strands of light emerged from it, seen to vibrate as if strings of an instrument being plucked.
All three giants spoke at the same time.
‘We are the sculptors of blackness, of nothing. From out of nothing, something is created. The void made becoming. I am part of three. We are part of one.’
The giant man in the magenta tunic fashioned a paper bird from a sheet of paper which had appeared in his hands. The gentle sound of rain filled the room, though there were no drops to be seen. He threw the origami shape and it flittered into the chasm.
‘What is this gaping hole?’ Stave asked.
‘Your questions cannot be answered here,’ the man in the yellow tunic replied. ‘You must find yourself to answer yourself.’
‘With respect, you are talking cryptically,’ Stave said. ‘Can anyone help us?’
More urgent whispering from the door mouths.
The man in the magenta tunic spoke.
‘We are as trapped as you are but in a different form.’ He fashioned a boat from a sheet of paper, and like the paper bird thrown, it too was let go to fall into the chasm. ‘We are the time manipulators,’ he said.
Stave dared to step forward again to peer down into the great space.
The sides of the crater were in constant motion. They ran with streams of purple lava, flowing around jutting rocks that were constantly creating faces. Those visages smiled or frowned, or looked quizzical. Halfway down, Stave could see wreaths of coloured smoke, forming and reforming, covering and uncovering what looked to be the cells of a gigantic bee honeycomb. Each hexagonal cell was alive with movement.
By paying attention to any particular one of the cells, it would enlarge enough to cover the others. When attention was lost, it would reduce in size to its original dimensions.
‘A dream engine,’ Stave quickly said.
Now, why did I say such a thing?
‘You remember that much well,’ the giant in yellow said.
Stave continued to look intently at individual cells below, enlarging each time he did, to show a beautiful woman playing a piano made of s
ome glowing material within a field of wheat; a nest inside a tree trunk, holding rare, colourful birds; a bus in a tunnel.
‘Enough,’ said the man in magenta.
‘But I’ve just seen the bus I was travelling on.’
Konie went to Stave’s side. He too looked down.
‘I see my wife; there, can you see her too?’ he cried out.
The thunderous voices of all the giants: ‘We can only do so much within our time and space, constricted by the agents of Tremelon Zandar.’
Their sphere, cube and pyramid headgear began to emanate rolling clouds, looking like sea waves crashing onto a shore.
The impressive man in cyan continued, ‘Our realm has been infiltrated too. Like bedbugs in a bed. Like mould on fresh bread. Like a rash on healthy skin. Now it’s time for you to leave. You have caused an upset.’
‘I’m not sure how but even if we have, I can assure you it was unintentional,’ Stave replied. ‘And where to leave by; which door? And go where?’
All three of the imposing giants remained silent.
Climbing up the side of the chasm was the agent of Tremelon, gripping the rock face with his claws, purple lava running over them. A distinct smell of rotting food in the air, and the sound of an ice cream van jingle again.
The three ebony giants had transmogrified into petrified wood.
Stave glared at the agent with worry.
‘Quickly!’ he yelled to Konie. ‘Let’s go.’
He ran to the doors lining the perimeter of the circular room but there were no handles – no means of opening them – just those massive mouths upon them. And their urgent whispering became even louder, creating a dream wind, as strong as an ordinary wind. It buffeted and blew Stave closer to the chasm.
He grabbed onto the tunic of one of the wooden giants standing at the perimeter, and stared into the chaotic chasm with fear rising. The agent of Tremelon was climbing higher, his blank full-face mask beginning to gain definition of features.
Dread took hold of Stave as the whispered dream wind blew in hard gusts.
Turquoise Traveller Page 4