by N. J. Mercer
Johnny and his companions were very much on the defensive now and he didn’t like it. Baccharus’s intervention had bought a little time. Enough! he thought and stood up. Using his will, Johnny manipulated psychic energy into a broad wavefront of Presarium, creating a speeding arc of power aimed at his adversaries. The arc pushed a column of rushing air before it. The cultists became unsteady on their feet, and their hooded capes flapped in the psychic wind. A second later, the arc itself made contact. The first of the charging knifemen suddenly found his momentum reversed. No longer was he running towards Johnny and Sascha, he was instead hurled backwards twenty feet through the air. Before he even hit the ground, Johnny’s Presarium wave had struck each of his fellow Disciples with the same devastating effect, lifting them up and hurling them away to land painfully on the lawn, winded and incapacitated. With its energy expended, the wavefront of psychic power dispersed. Except for the moans and groans of those who had been on its receiving end, the night was quiet once again.
“Look! They’re not all human; some of them are blue-skins!” exclaimed the sharp-eyed Baccharus. Johnny and Sascha went to investigate and saw that a few of the defeated Disciples were indeed the pale blue demon-men they had encountered in the night attack on the motorhome, helpers summoned by Edward Devilliers from the worlds of Disorder. As the three of them examined their felled opponents, one of the human Disciples, injured but still alive, managed to sneak away unseen back to the house.
“C’mon, guys, let’s get going before their friends come along to join the party,” Johnny said.
“Where to?” Baccharus asked.
“We go into the house, and then we find a way to go underground,” Johnny replied, recalling the old woman Theodora’s words about the location of the portal. “Baccharus, you go and keep a look out – silently as possible. Sascha, follow me.”
Baccharus flew up high, an eye in the sky to guard against surprise attacks. Johnny and Sascha ran through the devastated garden towards the old mansion.
Chapter 35
Nude bodies writhed and gyrated in the vast underground cathedral to Disorder. The dance of the cultists produced the psychic energy required to activate the parasitic wormhole that linked the world of Orbok, Demon King, to Earth.
At the centre of this manic activity stood Edward Devilliers, his body steadily rocking back and forth, his eyes closed. His face was contorted and it resembled the hideous gargoyles that adorned the lectern from which he directed the night’s proceedings. Beads of sweat dripped from his forehead and off the end of his nose onto the stone floor. His hands moved like a mime artist grappling with a great imaginary weight; doing this helped him manipulate the psychic energy generated by this most ancient of ceremonies. Occasional sparks of electrical charge leapt from his fingertips and were drawn through the air to be swallowed by the glowing purple centre of the portal. There were even a few particularly energetic moments when a continuous bolt of lightning arced from his body along that same route.
As the ceremony progressed, the steady feed of psychic energy generated by the Disciples of Disorder continued to power the hidden wormhole and alter the very character of the portal. Already, its flawless sparkling purple substance had taken on the form of a rotating vortex, one that became increasingly funnelled the quicker it turned; it was as if the purple matter was being shifted by centrifugal force. This was only the beginning of the transformation. The longer the ceremony went on, the faster the vortex rotated, until the funnel at its centre finally widened into a tunnel, the end of which was so far away that it seemed to terminate within the very centre of the planet. In fact, it reached much further than this, into an adjacent dimension. The glowing purple matter was now confined to the walls of this spinning tunnel, and its translucent substance was veined with forked lightning that danced, crackled and leapt across its centre – the portal was now altered completely, and the wormhole was active. Each of its rotations was accompanied by a deep and low-pitched noise, creating a pulse, the vibrations of which coursed through the whole underground cathedral complex.
Occasionally, a golden globe would come bursting through the wormhole, and it would fly through the walls and ceiling of the underground chamber. Each globe represented a living entity from the world of Orbok, the Demon King, unwittingly sucked through the altered portal in the form of pure energy. It travelled across dimensions in this excited state and would become solid living matter once more when it came to rest. The many rooms in the disused wing of the mansion house had been painstakingly prepared as cells to draw in these globes and contain the materialising beasts, while complex incantations guarded the doors. The system was not perfect, and there was every chance that demons would appear in corridors or even the gardens; hopefully, they would be the exceptions. The Disciples planned to round up all of these entities later and either nurture or dispose of them, depending on their usefulness.
Another flash of brilliant forked lightning arced from Edward Devilliers to the wormhole. The whole hall was now synchronised in its swaying and chanting; all present remained focused on the generation of psychic energy.
**
In a separate chamber, accessible via the large and ornate Gothic arch a few metres behind Edward Devilliers, was another group, removed from the events taking place in the main body of the cathedral. While the High Lord was engrossed in conducting the ceremony, the responsibility of directing cult affairs came down to this important gathering of Disciples. Amongst them was an old man with long white hair, swathed in leather ceremonial garments. He was accompanied by four of his initiates; caped youths whose faces were permanently hidden beneath voluminous cowls. Earlier on, they had all been active participants in the ancient rites of the ceremony to summon Orbok; now, they were required to take care of other matters.
Arkkun was an old and much trusted companion of Edward Devilliers, a business partner who had combined much of his financial interests with those of the High Lord’s family many years ago. Impossibly old, his psychic ability and the secrets he had divined from the cult of Disorder allowed him to outlive a normal human life span. He was a dedicated servant of Disorder and had been one of the tutors to the child Edward and his father before him.
Not far from Arkkun stood a figure dressed in black; taller, broader and more terrifying than any other Disciple present tonight, possibly with the exception of Edward Devilliers. A fierce-looking beast covered in short, shiny black fur was crouched behind him. Arkkun, sinister and intimidating though he was in his own right, felt much safer giving Mr Kreb and his familiar a wide berth; he could sense that his initiates felt the same way. Like the rest of them, Kreb had been projecting his psychic energy to help power the wormhole, but Arkkun had requested that he accompany him instead to deal with those matters that had started going awry.
Various Disciples entered and left this relatively small chamber through a separate arched doorway from which steps ascended by a convoluted route to the surface; they were runners, and much to Arkkun’s dismay, they were bringing bad news. The chanting from the main cathedral hall changed into a new, alien blend of words and sounds. Arkkun recognised it as the next stage of the ceremony; the time to put things right was diminishing rapidly. He had already received reports about the girl, Rachel, disappearing. It appeared that she may have escaped out of her window; nobody knew why, she had no reason to be afraid. After all, everyone had managed to keep the true meaning of tonight from her – hadn’t they? To find her again was critical. Without her the ceremony would not be completed. Earlier on he had ensured that men and dogs were out looking for her.
There had been some short-lived good news; the servant of the Grimoires who aided the psychic agent had been captured outside the house. It seemed he had had an accident on the road as he went about his mischief-making and was found by the Disciples. The plan was for the High Lord himself to probe the man’s mind, glean his knowledge and, with any luck, zombify him in the process. This, unfortunately, would no longer be happenin
g because the intruder had escaped from under their very noses and killed the Pharmacist in the process! The outrage!
Lord Arkkun was displeased; the High Lord would be even more unhappy. No doubt, as second in command, a portion of the blame would lie at his feet. He would therefore find out who was supposed to have been guarding the biker and dispense suitable punishment – he would not shoulder the blame alone.
Chapter 36
They stood before a narrow, innocuous door; its surface was covered with peeling and yellowing white paint. Reaching the entrance to the coal cellar, without being discovered by the Disciples, felt like a small victory to Boyd and Rachel.
Both were shaken by their earlier brush with death at the clutches of the deformed monstrosity. Neither of them knew the origin of that particular horror, nor did they doubt there were more like it within this house. Try as they might, they could not forget what they had seen, and neither could they vanquish from their memory the chorus of inhuman voices that had called to them from behind closed doors upstairs. Despite the assault upon their sensibilities, the pair had managed to make it through the house to stand just outside their goal.
Boyd grasped the dulled brass knob and pulled ajar the cellar door; with Rachel having already forced it open earlier, it provided little resistance. He stood for a moment, looking down onto the rickety wooden staircase that descended towards his right and into darkness; there was not much that could be seen as the cellar space actually started halfway down the steps. The dirty ground-level window through which Rachel had originally entered hardly let in any of the pale and distant moonlight. Boyd wondered how she could possibly have made her way through the cellar and into the house without injuring herself in the darkness, and he commended her efforts; now it was time to retrace her steps.
“Rachel, I’ll go in first to check things out. You close the door and wait here at the top step.” Rachel hesitantly agreed and moved in behind Boyd. With eyes well adapted to the dim light in the house, Boyd noticed an old worn cord dangling by the door. He pulled on it and a light bulb covered in dust and cobwebs flickered to life at the foot of the stairs; it threw odd shadows and failed to provide adequate illumination to the cellar beyond. He started to walk slowly down.
“Wait,” said Rachel urgently after he had only taken two steps. Boyd turned to face her. “When I came through here earlier, something didn’t seem right. It felt like there was somebody watching me, and it was so cold; I just wanted to get out of there.”
Boyd nodded and looked down the staircase into the darkness again; he could not see anything. He wondered if turning on the electric light had been such a good idea after all; his eyes would have to readjust to darkness again once he entered the cellar proper. There was a fleeting sound like a scrape from the depths of the darkness; it made his heart leap, and it added an ominous quality to what Rachel had just said. It was a sound that might have been ignored under normal circumstances; however, in his state of heightened alertness, it was alarming. Boyd wished he still had the long-bladed dagger; it probably remained where he had left it, embedded in the demon upstairs. He needed a weapon and knew Rachel still had the length of lead pipe. He turned to her and saw she was clutching it along with the amulet. He asked her for the pipe before he went into the cellar and felt terrible about doing it; she seemed only too pleased to give it up.
The sound of his feet and the creak from each step he took on the way down cut through the quietness; he pressed on steadily. The length of lead was raised above his shoulder, ready to swing down hard on anybody or anything that looked hostile; he managed to reach the foot of the stairs without incident. Boyd looked up at Rachel and smiled as if to say “so far, so good”. She had been watching him closely as he went down. He was about to enter the zone of darkness beyond the light of the old bulb, and it took only a couple more steps for him to be swallowed by it completely. He knew Rachel wouldn’t be able to see him now.
Once he was down there, Boyd found the darkness was not as absolute as it had appeared from the top of the stairs, and he could just about see the walls of the old cellar. It was a small place and contained a few scattered items of junk, mainly old furniture, and there was little room for anybody to hide in it. His initial visual inspection did not reveal anything untoward, then he heard it again, a hissing sound this time; it came from the blackness beneath the staircase.
“Boyd, what was that?” cried Rachel from the top of the stairs.
“Quiet!” Boyd replied curtly, trying to keep his voice down. He was focused entirely on trying to see what was beneath the stairs. He walked slowly and purposefully towards where he guessed the noise had come from, lead pipe ready; his wide-open eyes looked wild and alert. Boyd squinted into the darkness; he noticed a series of pipes running along the wall, and he started to relax. Old plumbing, so that’s what it was, he thought to himself, and just as soon as he did so, there was a sudden, palpable drop in temperature; not just a draught – it was a real biting cold. A shiver ran down his spine. There was no obvious reason for the uncomfortable chill and he started to back away slowly. As he did so, he became aware of a shallow layer of mist unfurling about his ankles. It appeared from the darkness beneath the staircase, spreading outwards as if it were being blown from a smoke machine; soon it covered the entire floor of the old coal cellar.
Boyd nervously watched this phenomenon while the temperature in the room continued to drop. The chill started to penetrate his flesh and enter his bones; it felt worst around his legs, especially below the knees where the mist touched him. He knew that old buildings could be cold, particularly in their damp cellars – this was something else, totally disproportionate even to the temperature outside. That it was not natural was the only conclusion he could reach as he started to shiver uncontrollably.
“Boyd, what’s going on down there? What’s that hissing?” called Rachel from the top of the steps once again.
“I don’t know. There’s something very strange here. I don’t think this is as safe a place as we thought.”
He took a few hasty steps back to the staircase. As soon as he moved, there was another sudden hiss, the loudest yet. The cloud of mist that had been spreading across the floor burst upwards from the ground in a column that engulfed his entire body, and he was surrounded by freezing vapour; it was as if it had moved of its own accord. Boyd let out a stifled cry as cold, biting frost collected over his clothing and skin. The blood in his veins seemed to freeze, and his muscles stiffened to the point that he was hardly able to move. The nearest experience he could compare to it was falling through a thin layer of frozen ice and into a garden pond as a teenager. The sudden freezing shock that had taken his breath away then was what he experienced now, all over again.
Boyd swung the lead pipe back and forth at the mist, the frigid muscles of his arm made the movement awkward and clumsy. He was not expecting his desperate actions to have much of an effect on the vaporous substance, but it was all he could do.
“Boyd, is everything all right?” called Rachel in a trembling voice.
Boyd couldn’t reply. He wanted to call out and tell her it was all fine; knowing full well that it wasn’t, he said nothing. He heard her feet echoing and creaking on the bare wooden steps.
“Don’t come down, Rachel!” he managed to cry out with great difficulty through chattering teeth. “Stay up there!”
Rachel’s response was quick; he heard her take two steps back to the top of the stairs. By now, Boyd was frozen to the spot; the mist danced around his body and wherever it made contact with his skin, he felt the blood drain away. Every breath became an effort as the cold air contracted his airways, at times choking him; all he could do was stiffly thrash his arms and the pipe about in unsuccessful attempts to dissipate the bewildering haze. Intent on leaving the cellar, he managed to stagger forwards a few inches at a time, forcing his cramped leg muscles to respond to his brain. Engulfed by this mist that seemed to have a mind of its own, he did not get very far. It curled
and wound its way around him, encircling a leg here or an arm there, essentially disabling the limb. Ice crystals had already formed on his clothes, hair and face; one of his eyes was frozen shut. He fought to keep the remaining eye open, afraid that he would eventually have to blink.
“Boyd! Boyd!” whimpered Rachel. He could just about hear her through painful ears. The exposed areas of his skin turned from pale pink to sickly purple-blue, and maintaining circulation to his tired, frozen limbs was all that mattered now; if he stopped trying to move then it would be the end of him.
He stumbled and staggered backwards. His swinging lead pipe succeeded only in parting the hostile mist for a few seconds at a time, and he eventually dropped it with a clang onto the hard floor, his hands having lost the dexterity even to grip this crude weapon. No longer able to stand, he was now on his knees, and still, the mist swirled and danced around him. He thought of the girl; he feared for her in this place of evil.
**
Rachel, in defiance of the previous warning and through concern for her friend, quietly descended into the cellar. She gasped in terror halfway down the stairs. From here she could see Boyd on his knees, shivering helplessly, covered in a layer of glistening frost. He looked back at her with his single open eye and tried to speak; the only sound that came from his frozen mouth and stiff tongue was an unintelligible moan. Rachel wanted to run. Controlling the panic that was building up inside her, she hesitantly edged closer towards him; she could not leave the poor man to his fate. In response to this encroachment, the mist, with a sudden blast, arranged itself into a wall between the girl and Boyd. It swirled and drifted until it took on the form of a dark and menacing face, filled with hatred. Eyes that were black holes stared straight into Rachel’s soul, and its gaping mouth produced an angry hiss. It was a face of uncontrolled fury. Rachel stumbled backwards onto the stairs, her eyes fixed on the terrible apparition. She only looked away when she noticed icy mist curling over each step, drifting towards her. The petrified girl screamed and turned to run back up the old staircase. She heard a thump from behind her and glanced over her shoulder to see Boyd toppled over, lying still on the cellar floor. Not knowing whether he was dead or alive, she climbed the steps quickly; the ice mist caught up with her as she neared the cellar exit. Straight away, she could feel its cold fingers grabbing at her ankles and reaching up her legs. She fell just before reaching the top of the stairs, certain she was doomed.