Agent of Equilibrium

by N. J. Mercer

  The cellar door, only a few feet away, burst open suddenly. Rachel screamed at the new terror that confronted her: filling the doorway was the silhouette of a huge man dressed in a long black coat and wide-brimmed hat, a sight more frightening and menacing than even the ice mist. Horrified, she noticed an animal of sorts moving frenetically from side to side on all fours behind him; it barked and produced a sound so loud and deep that it sent vibrations through the very staircase on which she lay. From the recent readings of her mother’s diary and distant memories of the police investigation, she had a good idea who the pair looming over her were.

  The tall figure spoke a single throaty word, “Bikhalas.”

  Rachel watched as the ice mist receded down the stairs and she instantly felt some warmth return to her body. She gasped as the giant took a single step through the cellar door, swung his mighty arm around, and scooped her off the staircase. It was all too much for Rachel, and she lost consciousness. The last thing she could remember was the smell of decay from the figure as he held on to her body.

  **

  Mr Kreb prised the Qrwshan amulet from between Rachel’s limp fingers. The amulet may have hidden her psychic signature, but Mr Kreb was sensitive to all forms of psychic activity, including that from the demons Boyd and Rachel had disturbed upstairs. The agitation he detected amongst these wild beings had guided him to the abandoned part of the house from where it was easy for his Firehound to pick up the scent.

  Chapter 37

  Johnny dashed across the ruined garden to the house with Baccharus and Sascha in pursuit. He kept close to the uprooted trees and shrubs for cover while avoiding metres of dead tentacle along the way. He guessed it would not be long before another wave of defenders arrived, and so the sooner they were all out of sight the better. The subterranean creature had been an unexpected obstacle, and it had slowed him and his friends down. The struggle against it had drawn the attention of the cultists; to try to regain the initiative was now paramount. On reaching the house, he crouched beneath one of the windows, his back to the wall.

  “Can’t you warp us to where we need to be, Johnny?” asked Baccharus impatiently as he joined him.

  “I don’t know where we need to be! Besides, it’s much more difficult negotiating a warp through complex structures like a building!” Johnny replied, equally impatient. “Right now I’m open to suggestions.” He was frustrated by the difficulty of trying to sense anything beyond the barrage of psychic energy from the Disciples’ ceremony.

  Sascha, who was also crouching beside Johnny, frowned. “The old woman said that we needed to be underground, didn’t she?” he asked.

  “Yes,” confirmed Johnny, “the summoning of Orbok will be taking place in a chamber that used to be a cave which contained the original portal.” He watched Sascha reach into his rucksack and pull out a weighty electronic device, like many of his designs, its appearance was crude. Johnny knew its beauty would lie in its function.

  “What’s that?” was the obvious question, and Baccharus was the one to ask it.

  “What we have here is a multiple frequency radar and detector. I reckon I can use it to do some geophysics work.”

  “Do what?”

  “Observe.”

  “Okay, just make it quick! We can’t be hanging around here much longer.”

  Johnny stayed put under the window and let his friend get to work beside him. Sascha powered up the radar device, and holding it just above the ground, he started sweeping it from left to right. Johnny watched the colourful images on Sascha’s small LCD screen. To him they looked like random patterns; he could see that it all meant something far more profound to his friend.

  “With some luck, this gadget should detect the presence of underground anomalies that might direct us to the lair of the Disciples,” declared Sascha. To cover as great an area as possible (whilst continuing to hold the radar inches from the ground) meant walking around doubled over; with Sascha’s lanky stature, this was no mean feat. Johnny watched him move both swiftly and awkwardly around the perimeter of the house, oblivious to everything except the graphics on the tiny display in his hand. Baccharus had started hovering high overhead as a lookout for any threats coming their way while Johnny relied on both his eyes and the psychic field he was projecting to do the same, conscious all the time of the difficulty in sensing hostile Disciples through the plethora of psychic signals surrounding him. His mind remained open to any sign of Boyd’s aura or even that of the girl, Rachel; for now, there was none.

  Sascha continued to circle the house with his improvised ground radar and when he was about to move out of sight, Johnny followed him. They continued like this for several nerve-racking minutes, trying to find an entry point to the underground chambers. Johnny had often admired Sascha’s supreme concentration and did so again on this occasion. His friend, who had been attacked by extraterrestrial beasts and mad cultists, appeared unshaken, completely absorbed by the readings from his device. Finally, Sascha stopped beside a ground-floor window; it had a light on inside. Johnny listened to the results of his survey.

  “I have located some underground chambers linked by tunnels. One or two of them look pretty big. They all seem to be leading to somewhere, possibly a larger chamber; it’s far too deep for me to tell for certain. If we were to enter the house through this window, we won’t be far from the surface entrance to one of the main passages,” Sascha said.

  Johnny used his mind to detect the presence of any life-forms in their immediate vicinity, especially inside the room beyond the window. This type of close-range psychic perception could still produce an informative picture even with the aberrant background energy. Satisfied that they were alone, he gave the all clear and Baccharus immediately descended to peer directly through the window into a rather spacious and unexpectedly domesticated family kitchen.

  “This all looks quite normal. I was, at the very least, expecting an altar with a blood sacrifice at the ready,” he said with a hint of disappointment in his voice.

  “Johnny, why don’t you get us inside,” suggested Sascha, bracing himself for travel via space–time warp. Johnny nodded, stood with his back against the window and raised an arm. Sascha waited for the hand on his shoulder and closed his eyes, only to open them again suddenly at the sound of shattering glass. He winced as Johnny used his elbow to send the few remaining pieces of the windowpane he had broken flying into the kitchen where they smashed on the floor.

  “Okay, let’s go in,” he said, crawling through the frame.

  “That’s not quite what I had in mind,” mumbled Sascha, following him. He swung his long legs through one at a time and into the kitchen. Baccharus hovered behind both of them, chuckling.

  “So, how do we get underground?” asked Johnny as he brushed glistening diamonds of glass from his clothing; there was no response. Sascha was already scanning the floors of the house with his ground radar device, attempting to pick up the readings from the subterranean passage he had detected outside. Johnny watched him intently and continued to project a psychic proximity field. He still carried the Qrwshan, although he suspected that this close to the wormhole all their psychic signatures would be near enough impossible to detect even without it. Sascha, still hunched over his device, drifted out of the kitchen without discussion; Johnny cast Baccharus a worried look, and they both followed.

  “Somewhere around here,” murmured Sascha to himself thoughtfully, his eyes still locked onto the screen of his device.

  “Everything okay, Sasch?” Johnny asked; again, there was no reply. He had seen Sascha like this before, and it was dangerous. He was too distracted by what he was doing to show any concern for being discovered.

  They found themselves in a broad, long corridor that led to a distant and impressive-looking hall; above them was a high, rendered ceiling, and on either side there were walls of polished wood panelling lined with doors. It was an old-fashioned interior; its grandeur made an impact not achieved in modern buildings. Johnny c
ould see that all these details were lost on the single-minded Sascha, who was bent double and moving with his device like a bloodhound on a fresh trail. After a few minutes of scanning the corridor floor, the ground radar echo pattern led him to another door, which he pushed open to protests from his friends.

  “Wait!”

  “Hey, man, don’t!” warned Johnny and Baccharus, barely able to contain their alarm.

  “What?” asked Sascha, looking slightly annoyed at the interruption.

  “Just let us know if you’re about to do something or go anywhere, Sasch. I mean, it’s great that you’re so into this trail, but try and remember that we’re amongst the Disciples now; there could be anything waiting for us here … especially behind closed doors,” said Johnny.

  “I thought you guys would sense it if there was any trouble. That’s your department, right? You know what I mean?”

  Baccharus intervened. “The whole building is awash with psychic signals; they’re bouncing everywhere so it’s kind of difficult to detect anything, even where the hell your own friends are, let alone any enemies. Just slow down a bit, amigo, that’s all.”

  “Okay – point taken,” Sascha replied.

  They all proceeded through the contentious door into a small room filled with old cleaning equipment and washing machines; it was the disused utility room, Edward Devilliers’ favoured entry point into his network of underground chambers. At first inspection, it looked like an insignificant part of the house, just as it was supposed to. Johnny even suspected his friend had taken a wrong turn; however, undaunted, Sascha pressed on past the clutter and around the corner of the L-shaped room where he found, and opened, the storage cupboard. As Johnny and Baccharus watched, he rechecked the display of his ground radar device and then tapped the cupboard’s false wooden back, producing a hollow resonant sound.

  “It’s behind here,” he said simply as he tried to push and prise the false back away. With a puzzled look, Johnny helped him, and eventually they were both able to slide the back of the cupboard sideways to reveal the unexpected sight of a massive steel door. A structure like that in a humble utility room was wholly inappropriate, and it confirmed that they had found something important.

  “This is it – this is the way down,” said Sascha.

  Every stage of the journey that brought them closer to the portal had been accompanied by fresh tides of progressively stronger aberrant psychic energy, and the discovery of this door was no different; beyond it, Johnny could sense a vast psychic disturbance – the vibration of Disorder. He focused his mind to see if there were any unwelcome surprises on the other side. It took a few moments to do this; when he was satisfied that the coast beyond was clear, he gripped the massive, cold steel handle and attempted to open it. Sascha, who had already put his radar away, took a step back and drew the revolver. Nothing happened – a couple of quick shoves confirmed that the door was firmly locked. They had not come this far to be thwarted by such means. Johnny focused a tight beam of psychic energy into the door handle and its locking mechanism; both started to give off light whiffs of smoke before glowing red, then pale yellow, and finally turning a bright white, at which point the metal became visibly softer and pliable. He shoved the door once again. The almost liquefied metal of the lock and handle offered no resistance this time, and the mighty steel barrier swung lazily backwards on its hinges. To perform this feat, Johnny had used the same principle that lit the candle in his bedroom magnified many times over, something that could only be achieved following his strange experiences with Theodora.

  Johnny and Baccharus almost recoiled at the wave of disordered psychic energy that rushed out of the opened door. It overwhelmed them with a flood of sensations and emotions; the effect was similar to Mr Kreb’s earlier psychic assault, although on a lesser scale. With deep concentration, keeper and familiar cleared their minds of the influence of Disorder. Sascha, who was less sensitive in such matters, remained largely unaffected, except for a passing sensation of his skin crawling, particularly over the scalp. There was an electronic bleeping and Sascha reached into his pocket. He took out a small device and observed the miniature screen on its topside before sliding a switch to silence it and putting it away again.

  “What was that?” Johnny asked.

  “It measures ambient Presarium. The curve was off the scale.”

  “Damn right it was,” said Baccharus.

  The opened door gave them all their first exposure to the sounds of the ceremony, a distant murmur that was carried to them through the complex network of underground tunnels. Johnny listened to the illogical melodies and alien phonetics superimposed over the faraway and palpably vibrating pulse of the portal. At times, all he could discern was a cacophony of random screams and shouts, and yet there was no escaping the possibility that underlying it all was some sort of musical structure. Just when he thought he had recognised the form, it would elusively slip away again. The entire effect was very disorientating; such was the way of Disorder.

  “What is that?” asked Baccharus, listening carefully.

  “I don’t know. It sounds pretty fucking evil to me,” was all Johnny could offer. Sascha nodded in agreement. Having come this far, there was no choice except to venture further until they faced whatever lay ahead.

  Johnny peered through the doorway and down into a great chamber. The floor of this enormous stone hall was many metres beneath them at the foot of an unenclosed stone stairway hewn masterfully out of solid rock. They were so high up at present that Sascha’s head almost touched the ceiling. The old woman, Theodora, had told Johnny that the Devilliers’ house was built on the foundations of a medieval castle. Until now, this had not really registered. Standing in the doorway, looking down into the vast stone space lit by the flickering glow of several flaming torches, it felt as if he had taken a step back in time. It was an impressive sight, and the longer he observed the more detail he noticed, and the more impressive it became.

  “Well, well … what have we here, then?” said Johnny, placing his foot on the first step, which was worn smooth through centuries of use; the rest followed him as he descended into the strange world beneath the foundations of Edward Devilliers’ mansion, the same foundations that once supported the ancient castle of the lords of Hilvern.

  Sascha commented on how the many different surfaces here joined seamlessly into each other, and he noted the absence of any building block, leading him to conclude that the whole structure had been carved into bedrock. To Johnny, and indeed any other psychic, the very walls here radiated ancient wickedness.

  Two mighty pillars stretched from floor to ceiling at the centre of this immense chamber. Light from flaming torches brought the ornately carved stone gargoyles and friezes that decorated the walls to life. Scenes depicting men and hideous beasts were animated by the dancing flame, and for an instant, the three friends were lost in the hypnotic imagery. All around them, the noise of faraway chanting persisted along with the rhythmical pulse of the wormhole; intimidating though these sights and sounds were, the companions were not discouraged. Awestruck, they continued onwards until they reached the floor of the chamber. They were drawn to the pillars, which, like the walls, were also decorated with carvings; these depicted humans and non-humans worshipping vile alien deities. The unnatural ecstasy of surrendering the soul to Disorder was captured perfectly in their etched features. It was art that intrigued and repelled in equal measure, and had there been any doubts in their minds, it also confirmed that by confronting Disorder they were on their way to doing something right as judged by a more universal standard.

  The blazing wall-mounted torches made the great chamber very warm, and it would have been uncomfortable to remain there had it not been for a gentle draught that kept the temperature in this new environment bearable. There was some confusion amongst the friends regarding the source of this underground moving air until closer examination of the walls revealed a series of channels ending in vents incorporated within the stone frieze
s and carvings. It was through these that the air, alongside the chanting and pulsing that accompanied this new world, travelled.

  In a corner of this huge chamber, opposite the stone stairway by which they had entered, were steps cut into the floor, descending further into the ground; the same ones Edward and Elizabeth Devilliers had been using earlier. Tentatively, Johnny led his companions down them, deeper into the lair of Disorder; it was the only way to go without turning back. Like the entrance chamber, these steps also seemed to have been chiselled painstakingly out of solid rock.

  The passage they now proceeded along was a claustrophobic affair. The way was lit by lanterns sitting in functional and undecorated recesses in the walls; looking further ahead, Johnny could see what appeared to be two distant landings with doorways leading off to either side. The inordinately long passage continued way beyond them, and it was not yet possible to see where it ended.