The Infernal Aether Box Set: All Four Books In The Series

by Peter Oxley

  “Everyone thinks it was over when we closed Andras’ portal,” I continued. “Just need to mop up the demons which came through it. But it’s even easier now for demons to come through from the Aether; something to do with cloth. No: fabric. That’s it: fabric of reality. It’s really weak now, thanks to the portal, which means we don’t just have the demons Andras let through, but there are more coming through every day. Which begs the question: why the hell do I bother? I’m like the little boy with his finger in the hole in the dyke, trying not to notice the water pouring through all the other holes around me.” I blinked. “That’s actually quite good: I should write that down.” I fumbled in my jacket for my notepad and pen. Having finally extricated them from pockets which seemed to have shrunk since I started drinking, I placed them on the table and stared at them, trying to remember why they were there. I shrugged and took another swig of ale.

  “You want to know why I drink?” I asked. “My days are a long stream of hell and exertion. I drink to forget; then I get ashamed that I’m falling back on narcotics, hating that I’m so weak, so I drink to numb my self-loathing; then I drink to forget that. And on and on. Sometimes I wonder if I ever actually escaped from the Aether; maybe I’m still there, stuck in purgatory.”

  This stream of self-pity was interrupted by the door to the tavern being thrown open. A woman burst in and cried: “Help! Demons!”

  I pulled myself to my feet with a resigned determination and a hushed silence descended on the room as I made my way toward the girl, drawing the runic sword as I did so. “Where?” I asked.

  “Oh, Mr. Potts; thank goodness,” she said, and then pointed out the door. “Up Kirby Street.”

  I stepped out into the darkness and the change in atmosphere, combined with the narcotics pounding through my system, was like a hammer blow to my senses, with the world adopting a crisp otherworldly feel. I contemplated putting my fingers down my throat to make myself sick and remove some of the laudanum before it could severely impact on my capabilities. A shout from the direction of Kirby Street made up my mind; I did not have enough time and would have to rely, as always, on the restorative powers of my runic sword to get me through this battle.

  I made my way through the slush as swiftly as I dared, careening off walls and lampposts as I strove to keep a forward momentum. Even in that addled state, I realised that I was in no fit state to enter a fight, but equally I could not allow innocent people to suffer without at least trying to help. If nothing else, a bitter part of me said, I would offer some form of distraction to let the victims escape, and my sacrifice would mean that my endless struggles would finally be at an end. The thought of such blessed release warmed my drunken soul and I stumbled forward quicker.

  Thus it was that I rounded the corner onto Kirby Street to be faced with a short, thin weasel-faced man who grinned wickedly at me. Before I could react, a blow to the back of my head made the world flash a red hotness before all was dark; blissfully dark.

  I awoke bruised, bloodied and shivering in a darkened room, desperately fighting for sense or—better still—a way out. I scrambled around for my sword, panic rising as I realised that it had been taken from me. Feeling so very, very powerless, I curled up into a ball and let out a low moan.

  The door opened and my eyes clamped shut against the glare from outside. A faint part of me which was still sentient hated myself for the animalistic, subservient way in which my body responded to this threat, cowering and whimpering away into the darkest corner. Laudanum had never brought out the better aspects of my nature, and it was clear that that day was no different.

  “Looks like ’e’s still away with the fairies, Mr Spencer,” said a sickeningly familiar voice.

  “Aye, seems so, Mr Bart,” grunted another voice from my past. My mind swam as I thought back to when I had last encountered these thugs, what felt like aeons ago in the East End, when it had been only N’yotsu’s tricks of the mind which had saved me from abduction and a beating at the hands of these thugs. Visions of that day swirled before me, of the demon which had killed my friend Eve, not to mention its bizarre demise at N’yotsu’s hands, forced through solid concrete so that it effectively drowned in the foundations of the building in which it sought to kill us.

  A boot to the stomach brought me back into the room, but only just. I let out a low moan, willing my body to respond but to no avail.

  “No use,” said Bart. “No fun in beatin’ a drunkard.”

  “Our employers want ’im to suffer,” said Spencer. “Bet ’e’ll be back with us by mornin’—we can bring ’em over to join in the fun then.”

  I felt my head being pulled back by the hair, my addled senses dimly aware of the sensation but mercifully muffling the pain. Spencer’s weasel-like face filled my vision, leering at me with his rotten teeth, pock-marked skin and poorly shaven chin. He spat in my face and threw me back down, my head connecting with the stone floor in a red hot flash.

  The door slammed behind them, their laughter disappearing into the distance, and I gratefully slid back into warm oblivion. “Merry Christmas to you, too,” a bitter voice rang out from some deep recess of my mind.

  ***

  “You know, it really does not become you, lying down there in your own excretions,” said a voice from somewhere nearby. “In fact, I am almost impressed at how much you have managed to excrete; assuming, of course, that all of that belongs to you.”

  I looked up dimly and wiped a trail of spittle from the side of my mouth. “N...” I tried, then ran my tongue around the inside of my mouth in readiness for the second attempt. “N’yotsu. Thank. God.” I slowly levered myself up to something approximating the vertical. “You here to save me?”

  “Unfortunately not,” he said, squatting in front of me. He held a hand in front of his eyes and examined it. “If I am not much mistaken, I do not believe I am really here.”

  I groaned and slumped backwards against the slimy wall. “Of course, the laudanum. You are just an hallucination.”

  “More than likely. Of course, such things are not unusual; you must have encountered similar in the past, given your extensive use of narcotics.”

  “More than you would know,” I muttered. “Although none quite as potent as the one I am experiencing right now.”

  “Ah,” he said with a sardonic bow. “But then I have always been something of a special case.”

  “So, if you are not here to rescue me, then why have I conjured your likeness? To keep me company until I get beaten to within an inch of my life? To bore me with endless anecdotes about mysterious fakirs and sorcerers?”

  He shot me a hurt look. “Possibly. Or maybe your mind has summoned me to keep you company and retain your sanity whilst you prepare yourself for whatever fate your captors have in mind for you. Or maybe I am a symbol of how you are sliding down into insanity.” He squatted in front of me and I found myself marvelling at how solid and real he looked. “Or maybe I am here to throw a mirror in front of you, to help you analyse your recent behaviours and their impacts on others: on everyone.”

  I rolled my eyes. “In that case, I shall take the insanity option, thank you very much.” I crossed my arms to indicate that the conversation was now over.

  It seemed that this imaginary N’yotsu was as impervious to such subtle signals as his real life twin. “Do you not think that this reaction is indicative of the whole problem? Surely your apathy just proves the point that you need to be shown what you are doing? The way that you have been behaving?”

  “And how is that?” I asked. “This ‘way’ that I have been behaving?”

  “At our time of greatest need, when your friends need your strength—” I chortled at this but he pressed on regardless: “—when we all need your strength, you allow yourself to descend into this... this...” He waved his hand at me.

  I glared at him. “Am I so low that even my own imagination is scornful of me?” His look of reproach was all the answer I needed and I let out a resigned sigh. “S
o what form of ‘mirror’ do you intend to throw in front of me?”

  “There is no substitute for seeing and experiencing with your own eyes, so I will take you to witness the impacts of your actions in years gone by. Before the morning you will be joined by two others, who will show you the consequences today and also in the future—should you continue along this path.”

  I frowned at him. “To clarify: you are a vision, an apparition. And you will be showing me the past. Christmas past maybe?” He inclined his head in a short nod. “And then there will be two other ghosts? And at the end, am I supposed to finally know the true meaning of Christmas?”

  He blinked. “That is not my primary purpose, but if it helps you to come to your senses...”

  A trail of laughter-filled expletives passed my lips. When they finally subsided I looked up to see him staring back, straight-faced. “My God,” I said. “You are not joking.”

  “I never joke,” he said. “It is a part of my charm.”

  “So you are a Christmas ghost,” I groaned. “How positively Dickensian. Are my talents so limited that even my hallucinating mind openly mimics other authors?”

  “I am not here to comment on your talents, just your state of mind.” He held out his cane so that the end was pointed toward me. “Take hold of this, and let us begin.”

  ***

  “I am intrigued,” I said as we marched through a snowdrift. “What has prompted this intervention?”

  “It is Christmas Eve and where were you?”

  “Kidnapped and squatting in some dingy cell,” I said. “But that was hardly through choice, you know.”

  “No. Before that. You were sat in a pub, on your own.”

  “Surrounded and ignored by raucous, arguing people, drinking myself insensible whilst battling with self-loathing. Sounds very much like the Christmas spirit to me.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Now who is lapsing into well-worn cliché? In any case, here we are.”

  ‘Here’ was a tall dark house in a smart, tree lined street. It took me a few moments to recognise it, as it was much smaller than I recalled. “This is the house I grew up in!” I exclaimed. “Why, it looks just as it did, all those years ago.”

  “That is because we are in fact back all those years ago. Spiritually, if not physically.”

  It was my turn to roll my eyes. “Do not try to pretend that there is some form of spiritual time travel taking place here. We are merely replaying my memories, with my imagination fuelled by an excess of intoxicants.”

  “Does it really matter?” asked N’yotsu. “The affect is the same.” He slammed his cane on the ground and, in an instant, we were in the sitting room.

  Whilst the dimensions were again much smaller than I recalled, it was still the same room I remembered from all those years ago. Mother’s tastefully coordinated decorations adorned the room, with greens, golds and reds dotted at regular intervals: as though the idea of celebrating Christmas was something she had read about but never truly understood. Which, frankly, was the embodiment of the whole season as experienced in her household.

  Mother sat in her favoured armchair just as I remembered, embroidery on her lap and eyes only for Maxwell. Max sat at her feet, a precocious boy of eight or nine years’ old, patiently working through a large book. Father was immersed in some papers, no doubt something from his work at the Admiralty, whilst I sat in the darkest corner of the room, playing with a wooden soldier.

  “Even at that young age,” said N’yotsu, “you preferred to isolate yourself in company.”

  “Take a look at this scene,” I said. “The ‘golden boy’ there is all they care about, the oldest son and heir, the source of all their hopes and dreams. I was always the irrelevance.”

  N’yotsu hefted his cane and tapped me lightly but firmly on the head. “No. Look closer.”

  I glared at him as I rubbed my head, but then complied when he threatened to hit me once more. At first I could only see the same depressing scene, but when I pulled myself away from focusing on myself, a slightly different picture emerged. Rather than her attention being solely dedicated to the child sitting dutifully at her feet, I noticed that mother kept stealing glances at me. Was that concern, worry, or maybe even affection that I saw in her eyes? She shared a glance with father, who had not turned a page of the papers in front of him. Instead, he watched me with something which could almost have been taken for pride.

  “Well, I never,” I muttered.

  “See?” grinned N’yotsu.

  “Yes. If only they had deigned to show me some of that to my face. Instead they let me think I was unwanted and unloved.”

  “Maybe they thought it was character-building: you seem to have grown into a relatively balanced man.”

  I turned to face my friend. “Earlier this night I drugged myself into oblivion. I am penniless, friendless and with no career to speak of. My only true companions are you—whoever you really are, I am still trying to fathom that mystery—as well as my indifferent brother and his acerbic maidservant. I spend the rest of my time battling creatures which should be purely mythical. If that is what you call ‘balanced’ then I think I would prefer disproportion.” I turned to the door. “In any case, my formative years took place long after my parents shuffled off this mortal coil. Unless you wish to make me even more melancholic for the affection and attention denied me by my nearest-and-dearest, I wish to leave this place.”

  “Very well,” said N’yotsu, and with a flourish of his cane the room melted away around us.

  ***

  Drunken singing rang round the steel corridor in which we found ourselves.

  “I am no expert in these matters,” frowned N’yotsu. “Are those Christmas carols?”

  “Not quite,” I said with a grin. “The church tends to frown on songs containing quite that level of nudity and fornication.” I hummed along as we made our way toward an open door, the memories making me chuckle.

  We stepped onto the bridge of The Old Lady, a space festooned with makeshift decorations which, to the untutored eye, might have been confused with bottles of rum and empty tins of food.

  In the Captain’s chair sprawled Freddie, one hand on the wheel and the other grasping a bottle of rum, whilst a semi-naked woman sat between his legs. My younger self—did I really look that young and naive?—was leaning against the viewing window, an arm round another woman whose skin was the colour of caramel. As I looked at her I was reminded of how I felt when I first set eyes on her: that she was the most strikingly beautiful thing I had ever seen.

  “Priya,” I grinned.

  N’yotsu was staring out the window. “This ship is in flight?”

  “But of course,” I said, my eyes still focused on Priya.

  “But none of you are sober or paying the slightest attention to where you are going.”

  I grinned. “Freddie, for all his faults—and they are as multiple as they are manifest—is the finest airman in the world, even when drunk. Do not mistake his raucous behaviour for inattention; the old dog never switches off, even for a second.” Bitterness swept over me in a wave. “I learnt that lesson very well indeed.”

  Almost as though he could hear me, Freddie ended the song with a flourish and then raised his bottle in a toast. “Never get distracted, boy,” he bellowed at my younger self. “Never let down your guard—you’ll never know when you’ll need your wits about you. And if in doubt, never forget the power of a good woman!” At this, he let go of the wheel and reached down to squeeze his woman round the waist (for the life of me, I could not remember her name, so fleeting had been her stay on The Old Lady). She responded with a giggle and a playful slap to his bearded cheek.

  I chuckled, ignoring N’yotsu’s disdainful glances, as Freddie and I launched into another song which at least had pretensions toward the season, being set to the tune of Good King Wenceslas. “I thought that your trip overseas was a penance for your sins, an experience made all the more miserable for your separation from frien
ds and family,” said N’yotsu drily.

  I forced my attention away from the happy scene. “Well, a lot of it was. This is Christmas, after all.” I grinned. “Happy memories. These were the good times, before it all went sour. Just before, if I am not much mistaken.” Melancholy swept over me as I noted the way in which Freddie leered at Priya, a foreshadowing of the destruction of our unlikely friendship. I wanted to intervene, to warn my younger self of what was to come or to somehow discourage Freddie from his lustful actions. I knew, though, that this would be a futile exercise, as they were totally unable to see or hear me.

  My mood thus darkened, I frowned at N’yotsu. “I thought you were supposed to provide some insights, or invoke some form of remorse in me? So far, all you have managed to do is depress me. You’re not very good at this whole ‘ghost of Christmas’ thing, are you?”

  “You conjured me out of your own imagination,” sniffed N’yotsu. “I would argue that the success or otherwise of this venture says more about you than it does me.”

  “Touché,” I admitted. “But is there a point to this? Aside from making me miss being carefree and airborne?”

  “Your brother facilitated and funded your escape overseas, did he not? Covered for you whilst the hue-and-cry was raised and all were shouting for your head? Let us see what he was up to whilst you were making merry in the skies above the subcontinent.”

  With a flash, we were in a library which was lit by a solitary candle, an island in the midst of mountainous stacks of books. I fancied that the walls and shelves flowed in and out like waves in the weak, flickering light, an illusion which served to make me feel claustrophobic, in spite of my being accustomed to dark and confined spaces after all of those years aboard The Old Lady.

  In the centre of that meagre point of light sat Maxwell, surrounded by books and scraps of paper. The sounds of the town could be heard dimly in the distance, as the residents settled into a night of celebration. Such noises seemed a world away from Maxwell’s enforced solitude, and for a moment I was struck with the parallel between the scene before me and that which my physical form was enduring at that very moment, back in the grimy cell.