The Ruined City

by John Wilson

  Without warning, Ting spun away from Shenxian and leaped high into a perfect wushu move. Her right leg flashed out and connected with the bronze egg just below the closest dragon. For a moment the entire machine teetered, balls falling from the dragons’ mouths and bouncing onto the floor, and then the huge contraption crashed to the ground at the feet of the startled monk, shattering into a dozen pieces.

  “There,” Ting shouted triumphantly as she landed on the floor. “Now you won’t know when the mountains will fall. The emperor and Jingshen will defeat you.”

  Shenxian stood calmly to one side, a faint smile on his lips. “You stupid girl,” he said. “It is a shame that you have destroyed a thing of such beauty, but how did you think I was able to see what it was doing when I was with the Ma Zhang on the other side of the mountains? I have been watching and recording my machine for months. I don’t need it anymore. I already know exactly when the Min Mountains will fall.”

  “How much time do we have?” Kun asked.

  “Shenxian has been gone a day,” Jingshen replied. “The journey to the mountains and then across them will take another eight or nine days. With all their carts and baggage, the Ma Zhang soldiers will need at least that long again to get here, so we have seventeen or eighteen days—more if we are lucky.”

  “Will the plan work?”

  “Chen will be able to travel faster than the tribal army, so we will have warning of their arrival. How are our preparations coming along?”

  “Not well,” Kun admitted. “Our army is small, and it has not had to fight a battle since our soldiers’ grandfathers were children. They are brave, but the Ma Zhang are a warrior people. Fighting is their life, and they ride on those mysterious beasts they call horses. I don’t think our soldiers will do well against such an army.”

  Jingshen rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “It probably won’t matter. If all the elements of the prophecy come together, then it won’t be an army that will stop Shenxian. Did you feel the earth shake this morning?”

  “I did. Does that mean the Min Mountains are falling?”

  “Not yet, but soon. The shaking will be much greater when they fall.”

  Kun rubbed his forehead. He had lost weight, and his eyes were red with tiredness. “Is Sanxingdui doomed?”

  Jingshen nodded sadly. “I fear so.”

  “Then there is no point in organizing our army to fight the tribes from across the mountains?”

  “None.”

  “So why do we try?”

  “Because even if Sanxingdui is destroyed, our culture and people must go on.”

  “Are you saying we must abandon the city?”

  “Yes. It is the only chance for our people.”

  “Where will we go?”

  “Jinsha.”

  “But Jinsha is only thirty miles to the south,” Kun pointed out. “Shenxian’s soldiers could get there in two days’ hard marching.”

  “But they will not. Shenxian gains nothing by destroying our cities. The Chamber of the Deep and the Golden Mask are his goal, and they will always remain here.”

  “So we must all flee to Jinsha?”

  “Not we. Our people must, and they must take our most treasured possessions with them so they can begin once more. Our soldiers are enough to protect them. What cannot be taken must be broken and buried in the sacred pits.”

  Kun nodded sadly. “But we cannot remove the Golden Mask.”

  “No,” Jingshen agreed. “It must remain here in the Chamber of the Deep.”

  “Then we are giving it to Shenxian. You said that if he dons the Golden Mask, he will achieve the power he desires.”

  “And in doing so, he will open the way to the realm of monsters.”

  “And that will mean the end of the world.”

  “Yes,” Jingshen conceded. “That is why you and I must remain here to stop him.”

  “Just us two against Shenxian and his army?”

  “I suspect we will not be alone. But take heart—this is a battle that has been fought many times before and, I suspect, will be fought many times in the future,” Jingshen said enigmatically. “Remember the ancient prophecy.

  When that which is far comes near,

  That which is closed may open.

  When worlds bleed one through the other,

  That which cannot is.

  Doors that the power of the moon may open,

  The power of the sun shall close.

  Chen trudged along a narrow path above the huge Min Lake. He had been walking for days, and he was exhausted. Shenxian was not moving fast, and it was easy enough to follow the track that he and his men had left. They weren’t worried about being followed and had left plenty of signs. Besides, there was only one real road through the mountains.

  Chen looked down at the expanse of water below him and wondered, not for the first time, how such a thing could exist in the middle of a mountain range. He remembered the first time he’d seen it. He’d climbed a broad, grassy slope and been confronted by a seemingly limitless sea of blue. It had seemed magical then, and it still did.

  He raised his eyes to where the head of the valley cut a sharp line against the blue sky. It was at least a day’s walk away. He had never been this far into the mountains and assumed that across the ridge was another valley—this one leading to the plain of the Ma Zhang. He hoped this was the case. He longed for Shenxian to stop and give him a chance to rescue Ting and Fu.

  As he slogged up the path, he had the strange sensation that the air between him and the ridgetop was shimmering. Then the ground beneath him bucked and threw him off his feet. He dropped his bag and landed painfully on the slope. As the shaking continued, rocks bounced down the slope around him.

  Fortunately, no large boulders hit him, and he had only a few extra cuts and bruises when the shaking stopped. The clear view was gone, and the air was dusty. A few larger pieces of rock still trundled down the slope, splashing into the waters of Min Lake.

  Chen breathed a sigh of relief and stood up. For a moment he had thought that this was the mountains falling, but it was only a small earthquake. Still, it was probably a sign that the fall was not far off.

  AYLFORD

  BASEMENT DREAMS?

  The darkness was so thick that no light could ever pierce it. Yet Howard was aware, so he wasn’t dead.

  Was he mad? Was he lost in a dream world, just like his father? But Howard could remember, think and reason.

  Maybe he was in a coma. Perhaps a slowly exploding blood vessel in his brain was dooming him to lie for years in a hospital bed, hooked up to medical devices, alive but unaware of anything around him. Yet Howard was standing—he could feel the ground beneath his feet—and he was cold.

  He stretched out his arms to find walls on either side. They weren’t the smooth painted walls of the basement corridor, however; they were rough and wet and slimy. Howard shuddered at the feel of them. He stretched an arm above his head and discovered a dripping roof. Streamers of repulsive feathery slime wrapped themselves around his fingers. Disgusted and terrified, he tore his hand free. He reached behind and found another wet wall.

  In a sudden panic Howard lurched forward, scared to death that he was trapped in a tiny, foul cave. But there was no wall in front of him, and he fell to his knees. He let out several gasping sobs. He wasn’t dreaming, dead, mad or in a coma—he was alive and aware in a gross stone tunnel. But how had he gotten here, where was he, and how could he get back? Where were Cate and his dad?

  Howard called their names as loudly as he could. He yelled. He screamed. It was hopeless. The darkness and the walls swallowed all sound. In frustration he struck out and scraped at the walls around him. It did no good, but the pain at least confirmed that he was alive. Exhausted, he slumped on his haunches and wept.

  He sat for seconds, hours, days, years—time meant nothing in this darkness. At last his tears ceased. He took a deep breath of the dank air and stood. He had never been so afraid. He listened hard, praying f
or a noise of some sort—then praying that there was nothing in the darkness to make a noise. The silence was as complete as the darkness, and Howard’s mind filled both with barely imaginable horrors.

  What was this place? It was real—Howard had no doubt about that. It felt like no nightmare he’d ever had. The walls, the sloping floor, the slime—they all felt too real, too solid, too genuine. And everything was consistent. Nothing changed the way it did in dreams. Howard was rational. Could he even think this way in a dream? In a dream, could he question that he was in a dream?

  Was his physical body somewhere other than the AIPC basement? Had he blacked out, and was he now awake somewhere else? If so, where? When? Why? Had he been abducted by aliens? There were no answers.

  A wave of anger overwhelmed him, pushing aside the rising terror. “This is impossible!” he yelled into the silent darkness. “It’s not real. I can’t be here. I’m not here. I’m standing beside Cate and my dad at the end of a corridor leading to the boiler room in the basement of the Aylford Institute for Psychiatric Care.” His voice rose. “There’s a slow cooker filled with vegan chili simmering on the counter at home. My mom’s somewhere with a bunch of flakes learning how to get in touch with her inner self through cosmic harmony.” He was screaming now. “I’m about to wake up in the institute basement or in my bed at home—I really don’t care where. Just let me wake up. Pleeeeeeeease!”

  Howard opened his eyes…to darkness, cold walls and dripping slime. He felt overwhelmed, helpless, powerless. But as he calmed down, he became aware of cold air against his face. It was coming from the tunnel ahead. Was this a way out?

  Shuffling his feet, he stumbled forward. What else could he do? He kept his arms out, feeling his way along the repellant walls on either side and the roof above. Gradually he noticed that the walls were edging in and the roof was lowering. Howard had to crouch to prevent the tendrils of slime from dragging across his face. What if the walls and roof narrowed so much that he had to crawl? What if he got stuck? He’d be trapped in this hideous tunnel until he died of thirst or starvation—or lost what little sanity he had left.

  He heard a soft, rhythmic rattling sound, and there was a smell, faint but unmistakable. Aylford and the AIPC were miles from the coast, but Howard could smell the salt tang of the sea and hear waves breaking gently on a beach.

  He had the strange feeling that the tunnel walls were gone. Gingerly he straightened and stretched. He took several steps forward and found himself standing on a rocky beach, his feet sinking into the round, wet stones, his view illuminated by a low full moon. Small waves broke with a whisper.

  Howard gaped at the inky expanse of ocean. To his right a dark peninsula stretched out to sea. It appeared to be pointing at a vague white blotch near the horizon. A movement there caught Howard’s attention. As he stared, the surface of the ocean seemed to bulge. It rose to impossible heights, and then violent, white torrents of water cascaded off, revealing a black island.

  In the bright moonlight, Howard could make out the shattered remnants of a colossal ruined city scattered over the slopes of the hill that formed the center of the island. Massive blocks of polished black stone, cut in intricate shapes that seemed to defy geometry, lay everywhere. The smooth stone surfaces were covered with deeply incised hieroglyphs that he somehow knew were words in an ancient language that no human voice had ever uttered.

  In the center of the awful wreckage, several of the blocks were interlocked, each fitting exactly to its neighbor along mortarless joins and surrounding an arch of impenetrable blackness, out of which blew an icy wind.

  As he watched, mesmerized, Howard noticed movement. The fallen blocks and pillars were covered with a host of loathsome sea creatures, many crawling on all fours, their disgusting swollen bellies dragging over the stone. Others were slithering into the water and swimming toward him with powerful strokes, the crests on their heads and backs cutting through the waves like shark fins.

  Unable to tear his eyes away, Howard watched in horror as the repulsive fishmen swam closer. A cloud swept across the moon, plunging the view into blackness. Frozen in terror and shivering in the icy wind blowing off the sea, Howard gradually became aware of a sound, just audible above the hissing waves. It was a soft, piping sigh at the very extremity of hearing. Howard stared harder but could see nothing. The unearthly whistling was rising and falling, and getting louder, drowning out the sound of the waves on the shore. Then another noise joined the chorus. It was deeper than the whistling, almost more felt than heard. A dragging, scraping sound, as if something—or some things—grotesque and monstrous was slithering and crawling over the cold, slimy stones.

  A wave, larger than the others, crashed over Howard’s feet. From it a hand reached out and grabbed his ankle. Howard screamed and kicked out wildly. His foot connected with something, and the hand let go. The force of the kick made his other foot slip on the shingle, and he fell heavily to the ground. Something lurched upright out of the shallow water and loomed over him.

  A painfully bright flash of light illuminated the scene. It lasted for only an instant, but it imprinted on Howard’s mind a vision he would never forget. The creature was vaguely human but covered with coarse scales. A fin ran along the crown of its head and down its back. The head was hunched forward, and a pair of large, bulging, sickly eyes stared at Howard. The face had no nose, but there were lines of slit-like gills pulsing on either side of the neck. The wide-open mouth revealed rows of razor-sharp teeth and a red, slobbering tongue, which licked eagerly over drooling rubbery lips. It was a creature from a nightmare, and it wasn’t alone. The flash had revealed hordes of the hideous beasts trudging from the surf, dripping and seaweed draped, all reaching their eager webbed hands hungrily forward.

  Howard thought his thumping heart was about to explode from his chest, and he had to fight to drag air into his lungs in short, painful gasps.

  The whistling rose to a crescendo, and the crawling noises intensified. For a dreadful moment, Howard thought the things were rushing at him, but the noises faded. They were fleeing.

  “What were those?” said a voice.

  Howard turned to see a rectangular light bobbing toward him.

  “They were utterly gross,” the voice continued. “Did you see those mouths? And that smell. Ugh!”

  “Who are you?” Howard gasped.

  The light tilted up to reveal the face that had haunted many of his dreams.

  “Madison! What are you doing here?”

  “That’s a stupid question,” Madison said as she came over and stood beside him. He rose unsteadily to his feet. “If I knew what I was doing here, I wouldn’t be wandering around in the dark. This is the craziest dream, eh? One minute I’m at Leon’s, getting stuff ready for the party. Next thing I know, I’m here. I mean, like, it doesn’t make sense, right? Okay, maybe I’ve had a couple of drinks, but Leon’s being such a jerk these days. Do you think he spiked my drink? If that idiot put something in my drink, I’ll kill him. Hey, what are you doing in my dream, anyway?”

  Howard stared at Madison, her face lit by the pale glow from her cell phone. He felt the urge to both laugh and cry. Her inane babble was so ordinary compared with the situation they were in. On the other hand, she had thought of using her cell phone as a light source, something that had never occurred to him.

  “This isn’t a dream, Madison,” he explained.

  “What are you talking about? Is this one of those nerdy online games you lonely people spend your lives playing? I just want to get back to the party. I’m outta here.” She turned away from him.

  “Wait!” Howard shouted. “How will you get back?”

  Madison stopped, shuddered and slowly turned back. She was wearing the same blank expression she’d had outside the school.

  “Chuanguo gongmen,” she said.

  “What does that mean?”

  Madison’s brow furrowed with the effort of trying to think. Then her face relaxed. “No idea. It must not be impor
tant.” She began to turn away again.

  “Is it Chinese?” Howard asked. “Like what you said before, when you told me that I should read a book?” His voice was rising in frustration.

  “What? Chinese? You’re too weird.”

  “What book was it? And why should I read it?”

  Madison shook her head. “You’re the geek—you decide. This is getting too creepy. I’m going back to kill Leon for spiking my drink.” She turned and strode up the beach.

  “How will you get back?” Howard repeated.

  “Duh. Through the door.”

  He rushed after the fading glow of Madison’s cell phone. “What door?”

  “The one I came through. God, you’re such a dork.”

  In front of him, the glow from Madison’s phone disappeared. He yelled again for her to wait, but there was no reply. He struggled up the shingle in the darkness and crashed into a stone wall. There was no door.

  Howard worked his way to the right and the left but found only cold, wet stone. He slumped exhausted onto the beach and wondered what to do. The view brightened as the clouds moved away from the moon. The island was still there, but there was no sign of the creatures. The white blur was now closer and had resolved itself into an old-fashioned sailing ship.

  What could he do? He was trapped here in this dark and terrifying world.

  Just then he heard a voice: “Huilai! Xinglai! Huilai! Xinglai!”

  He dragged himself to his feet and spun around, trying to locate the voice. “Help me!” he howled. “Where are you? Help me. I’m lost.”

  Howard was beginning to feel dizzy, but he kept turning, searching for assistance. Sparks of brilliant white were exploding like a thousand suns behind his eyes. He was stumbling, staggering, falling. His shoulder made painful contact with a concrete wall, and he landed on his back.

  He looked up to a face hovering over him. It was the same long, narrow Chinese face he’d seen at the end of the basement corridor just before he blacked out. It wore the same unsettling smile as before. Howard wasn’t sure if he was still in the nightmare world.