Konie was blown into the crater. He had desperately tried to cling onto one of the stone giants, but had failed; he fell, moving down in slow motion, as if sinking in water. The agent, clinging onto the chasm wall, lunged at him but missed.
Without warning, the agent reached the top of the crater and a clawed hand clamped tightly about one of Stave’s ankles. Stave yelled in pain from the vice-like grip. He was being dragged to the lip of the crater. He tried kicking the agent but the grip was too strong, restricting movement of his leg.
Finally, he lost balance and dropped into the chasm. The agent began to take off his mask, ready to expose the horror which lay beneath.
Stave turned away, his limbs flaying as though a drowning man.
Then he discovered he could swim through the air. Like Konie before him, he moved gently downwards as if through the water of a lake.
He continued down into the airy chasm, his arms now waving gently, the shafts of light shifting and splaying about him. He could see the cells far below had sealed with what looked to be blue wax. He felt the agent’s presence not far behind.
To his left, he spotted the opening of a large metal pipe leading from the scarred, lava-covered side of the crater. He air-swam to it and entered, and found his footing.
More whisperings from the plain curves of the tunnel. He stood upright and walked along it, avoiding old equipment – contorted typewriters and molten sewing machines amongst others – along his way.
The agent moved quickly along the tunnel behind him.
Stave broke into a run, finally coming upon an open sash window at the end: he climbed through it as quickly as he could and dropped down onto the pine floorboards of a noisy tavern bar.
8: SAND DRINKS ON THE HOUSE
‘Hey, who left that window wide open?’ someone bellowed above the sounds of brawling. A man wearing a gas mask came over to Stave. ‘Do you want to get caught as well?’ he said, his voice muffled by the mask.
‘Of course not. In fact, I’ve just escaped,’ Stave replied. ‘But he’s still after me, though.’
‘And your friend?’ the man asked, indicating to Konie.
Stave nodded.
‘Emergency measures,’ the man in the gas mask continued while pressing a button next to the sash window. A steel shutter descended and completely covered the whole of the wall with a clunk. There was an advert painted on it for The Yesteryear Bus Company, along with their logo, and a line of type that read, “Gets you nowhere fast.”
‘That about sums it up,’ Stave muttered.
The dulled voice of the man in the gas mask: ‘What did you say?’
‘The bus company. Ever since I’ve left the bus, I seem to be getting nowhere fast. Like here. Who are you, may I ask, and what is this place?’
Stave waved an arm at the tables and chairs that were half buried in drifts of yellow sand. Opposite those stood a curved bar area with bottles and optics behind it. A few men and women stood with glasses filled with sand in their hands. Several more customers were cheering and shouting at two gas masked figures rolling over piles of sand as they fought on the floor.
Above them, a ceiling covered in grass; at the end of the sandy bar, an old woman was busy using spider webs to weave, every now and then brushing particles of sand from the delicate cloth on her loom. Beside and behind her were masses of cobwebs, larger than a man, some even reaching the floor from the ceiling.
‘This is the sanctuary,’ the man finally said with a puzzled tone, as if it should be common knowledge. ‘Dream cast, wanderers, bad dreamers, the lost ones, all are welcome. I am the landlord of this fine establishment.’
‘Why all the sand? And why are most of you wearing gas masks and what are those two fighting about?’
‘Do you want all the answers at once or one at a time?’
If the man hadn’t been wearing a mask, Stave was certain there would be a wry smile on his face.
‘I’m not fussed,’ Stave said.
‘As to sand, I don’t see any. I’m not sure why you say that. Builders’ sand, sea sand, gypsum, coral sand, what sort of sand are you seeing?’
Stave looked down and kicked at the yellow particles with his leather shoes.
‘This sand, here. Oh never mind,’ he said.
‘Then I won’t mind. But you should mind, you and your friend, not wearing a gas mask. You should care.’
‘Why is that?’
‘The agents’ gas – their blue smoke. Highly toxic, don’t you know.’
‘I know as much,’ Stave said. ‘We’ve already experienced it at first hand.’
‘Having said that, we haven’t had an attack here in the pipes for quite some time,’ the man said, waving a hand in the air. ‘They tend to leave us alone to our own devices until…’ he tapped the fingers of one hand on his chest.
‘Until what?’
‘Until the calling. See that portal over there?’ The man pointed to a glowing blue disc – the size of a dustbin lid – hovering at eye level by one wall. ‘Where it goes when it’s chosen, nobody knows. Who it decides to choose – to swallow up – is beyond me. It chases certain people like a bad-mannered dog and doesn’t let up until it devours them. Then they’re gone.’
The brawling had ceased. The two men, who had been fighting on the sand piles by the bar, stood. Then they brushed sand from each other in camaraderie, and finally shook hands.
‘They seem to have made up,’ Stave said.
‘They were fighting over a pint. Plenty more here, I told them, but they wouldn’t listen. Still, as you say, all finished with. Would you like a drink?’
Stave was thirsty, after all.
‘Thank you, I don’t mind if I do.’
‘And your companion?’
Konie shook his head.
‘No thanks, I’m looking for my wife. Her name is Tacie.’
The landlord ignored him.
‘Brandy, sherry, wine, ale?’
‘A glass of red for me will be fine,’ Stave replied.
The man traipsed across the piles of sand, kicking some into the air or onto the few floorboards showing, and went behind the bar counter. There, he used a corkscrew on a bottle of wine and finally popped the cork. Then he poured into a glass and parked it in front of Stave. It was not liquid but sand.
‘Bottoms up, on the house,’ the landlord said.
‘Is this a joke?’ Stave replied.
‘I’m not sure why it should be.’
The man put his head to the side.
‘This is sand. Who drinks sand?’
‘Back to your sand again? Here, I’ll see if there’s any sand in it. Let me take a closer look.’
The man removed his gas mask. He had no features, just a blank head like an egg.
‘Whoa,’ Stave let out, and backed away.
‘What’s the matter now?’
‘Your face, what’s happened to your face?’
The landlord grunted.
‘Another of your sand tricks is this? Nothing wrong with my face.’
‘You must be dream cast, I’m guessing.’
‘I have my own dreams, thank you very much. Like the one where I’m living in a beautiful cottage set in a wonderful landscape. And—’
‘Not you as well…that’s not a dream, it’s a reality. The only reality I remember now. You’ve been given my memory, I’m certain, what little there is left of it.’
‘More sand tricks,’ the man without facial features said.
‘No tricks, just lost,’ Stave replied.
For some unknown reason, a shiver of coldness enveloped him.
Konie had been conversing with the men and women holding their glasses filled with sand, asking them if they knew where his wife could be found. None of them knew. Now he spoke to the old lady at the end of the bar, who weaved cobwebs in one of the corners.
‘She’s approximately five feet six, thick blond hair tied back, never wears lipstick,’ he was saying.
The old lad
y did not speak but gently shook her grey-haired head and continued her weaving.
Konie heard his wife’s voice.
‘Is that you, dear?’
It came from behind a mass of cobwebs. Konie leapt over to them and frantically pulled them apart, to discover his wife behind sitting on a stool. She jumped to her feet.
‘Oh Konie, I thought I had lost you for good. I’ve been so frightened,’ Tacie said, and flung her arms about him and hugged him.
Stave saw this from further along the bar.
‘Congratulations,’ he cried out. All of the patrons raised their glasses and in unison said, ‘Cheers,’ some dream cast pulling their gas masks away to drink their sand.
At that moment, the glowing blue disc began pulsating and sending out filaments of blue smoke. The landlord donned his headgear once more, as did some of the patrons.
‘I was convinced it wouldn’t last; knew it was too good to be true,’ he said loudly.
The disc hovered close to the faces of those assembled, one after the other, as though inspecting them. They seemed unconcerned and continued their conversations. Perhaps they knew the blue disc was not for them…
As it came closer to Stave, he made his way between the customers to move away.
The pulsing from it increased in rate and Stave could smell refuse, a deep and disturbing aroma clinging in his nostrils.
Stave turned to run as it neared him but accidentally bumped into one of the sand drinkers who said, through his gas mask, ‘Hey, calm down!’
He pushed Stave in the chest. Stave lost his balance and fell onto the bar. It crumpled as if made from polystyrene. He reached out to hold onto the back of a chair but that did the same – he easily snapped it.
‘Don’t fight it, dear,’ the old woman shrieked, as she pushed the shuttle across her weaving.
Stave ignored her, and ran around the far corner of the bar. But there were no exits to be seen. However, there was a large food lift – a dumb waiter – set in one of the walls.
He pushed plates of sand from its shelf, then climbed in.
Just as the blue disc hovered by the lift, Stave pulled on one of the cables, but it snapped; so did the shelf he was sitting on, and he dropped into darkness.
9: WHERE TIME IS STOLEN
Stave fell heavily into a large mound of silver sand. Half buried in the sand were broken hourglasses.
Always falling downwards.
He lay there for a minute, winded, before getting to his feet. Then he walked furtively along a plain corridor lined with brown cardboard boxes.
What is it with all these boxes everywhere I go?
At the end of the corridor stood an opulent and wide staircase, sweeping in a gentle curve. A long staircase too, with the end of it far down, disappearing into a haze. On each side were wooden carvings on finials, alternating with lit carriage lamps. The well-executed carvings were of boars, bisons, and beagles amongst others. On both sides of the banisters, the high walls were hidden by more stacks of cardboard boxes.
Shafts of clear, white light came from windows in the high ceiling and they picked out floating specks of dust which moved in strange patterns.
The plush carpeted stairs were littered with broken clocks. Grandfather and grandmother clocks lay with their backs broken. Mantlepiece clocks of all designs and types, pocket or wrist watches mangled, or their clockwork exposed, were all scattered about them. He kicked cogs, levers, and springs out of the way as he walked carefully down the stairs, avoiding wall clocks, and chronometers with their glasses punctured and even the occasional thermometer with its glass tube smashed, leaking mercury.
He felt compelled to count the steps as he made his way down, walking with care about the debris. A pungent odour of decay hung in the air. The wall far ahead of him peeled grey paint in shadows, strung with thick cables.
He had been glancing behind to check he wasn’t being followed. After a while, he decided all was as well as it could be.
I seem safe. I hope Quikso and Mariella are safe as well. I’ve no choice but to carry on.
Perhaps he could consider his situation as adventure, no matter it was a bad dream nor one not much set in reality. Indeed, that surely could be an advantage.
Halfway down the stairs, something caught his eye. Lying between the scattered clock wreckage was a miniature ladder. Stave bent his back to study it. The wooden object looked interesting and, after picking it up, he put it into his pocket with the four metal feathers.
He continued treading down, finally seeing the end of the staircase ahead.
On the penultimate step, grey paint on the carpet formed the words, “draw the line here”. And a violinist stood upon the final step, wearing a smock and leggings. He rasped and scraped his bow over the stringless neck of the violin that he held under his chin. Then he paused to say, ‘Seek the light, beware the darkness.’
‘I’m trying my best,’ Stave answered. ‘Don’t you see you’ve no strings on your violin?’
‘I hear the music in my head. Can you hear it too? When I played in concert halls, I reduced audiences to tears with the sheer brilliance and beauty of my sublime sounds.’
‘I can well believe it but I can’t hear your music, sorry.’
‘No matter. One day you will listen to the music of the spheres. When the adventure starts again.’
‘What adventure?’ Stave asked with interest.
The man did not answer but instead began once more to scrape the bow across the stringless neck of the violin. Tears formed in his sorrowful eyes from the lament that only he could hear.
Stave walked a step towards him and continued around him. Glancing back, the violinist was nowhere to be seen, only his stringless violin and bow remaining amongst the scattered clock pieces.
At the bottom of the staircase, Stave stepped onto a steel bridge that spanned large pipes, with ducts below them covered in silver-coated insulation. There were the sounds of rushing liquid, groaning and creaking, metal shaking and rattling. Up at one end – in a corner where the pipes disappeared into blackness – stood a brass lamp, its wick burning brightly, sending yellow light out to highlight double doors to a lift. And while making his way along the bridge, the lift doors at the end hissed open with the lift inside suddenly dropping from view. A few seconds later, it appeared again. It was obviously out of order, with the sound of fizzing electricity and sparks emanating from the bulb inside. It would be dangerous to use.
Below him, one particularly large pipe with other smaller pipes along its length looked like a massive, many-legged insect. He inspected it with suspicion: the ways things were happening lately, he almost expected it to scuttle off but it remained still. Next to it ran a wide walkway.
Halfway across the bridge that he walked upon was an aluminium ladder with a railing either side, leading down to that walkway. As he reached the ladder, he heard a voice that came from below.
‘Hey there, I hear you making a racket up there. Are you part of the maintenance crew? I doubt it, foul breath, deep growl. Come here, this instant. That is a command.’
10 : TWISTED SOUL AMONGST THE PIPES
After climbing down the aluminium ladder to the walkway, Stave confronted the person who had spoken.
‘That’s better,’ the man said, holding the lapels of his uniform, his head lowered, so that his cap cast a shadow across his face. ‘What do you think you’re doing? Only staff are allowed here in the pipes room. I’m guessing you haven’t even got a name badge.’
‘I found this place by accident. By the way, there's something wrong with your lift,’ Stave said, noticing then that the maintenance man, standing with his hands behind his back, didn't have any teeth.
‘So you’ve come to repair it?’
‘No, I’m down here to escape,’ Stave answered, adjusting his silk tie. ‘Sorry but I'm being chased. At least, I think I am, still.’
‘Who’s chasing you?’
‘A glowing disc, and an agent of Tremelon Zandar.
He’s after me with a dangerous weapon – a blowtorch.’
The maintenance man shook his head and licked his gums.
‘He’s just trying to scare you. It’s just for fun, that’s all. And if you’re talking about the Tremelon Zandar I know...’
He threw glances to the left and right.
‘You know him?’
‘I thought everyone knows him. At least, eventually. I’ve only had glances, indications, a taster. Helpful, thoughtful and kind to those who will give unreservedly. His nightmare to embrace via his agents is a test for the wondrous screaming dreaming to unfold.’
‘I recognise your voice now,’ Stave said.
The man lifted his head. Stave saw him with closed, wrinkled eyelids and a generous nose. The bus driver.
A hissing, and shadows moving over the pipes below the walkway.
‘Ah, and I thought it was you, the young man from the bus,’ the driver said. ‘I can see your neon outline clearly now; I recognise your life force. Very strong. Let me help drain it. Consider it a spiritual evacuation. On the house.’
Stave stared with bewilderment at the side of the man’s mouth: a small scar there wriggled like a beige centipede.
‘Keep away. And steer clear of my soul. Aren’t you aware of the fact you are going slowly mad?’
Beyond help, outside of Stave’s capacity to assist…
‘Then it’s a delicious liquorice of a madness,’ the bus driver answered. ‘Flavoured with the grey and blue to find the true sanity, my friend.’
‘Then I’m no friend of yours.’
‘Don’t you see? Can’t you try to understand? I have embraced the subtle recruitment, drawn the line between good evil and bad evil. My hands will be replaced – in fact, eventually, all of my body parts will be replaced with wonderment, to be the container for my newly cleansed and repaired soul. Give your bad evil in your pumping heart to the one and only Tremelon Zandar. Come, let us dance.’ The bus driver lurched forward, holding out crab hands that flapped feebly on the ends of his plump arms. ‘The dance of death of what you thought you knew, to a new life of vision and understanding.’
Turquoise Traveller Page 5