Jane Doe and the Cradle of All Worlds

by Jeremy Lachlan

  But this time I’m not alone.

  Dad’s here. A woman, too – my mum, I’m sure of it. They hold me. Kick at the tentacles. Take me back to the surface and swim as hard as they can, away from the island.

  A white flash and we’re out of the water, clear of the storm.

  Dad’s running through the Manor with me in his arms. Mum’s by our side. Dad charges through a door and turns around in time to see Mum trip over. He runs back to help her, but the door slams shut between them. When he opens it again, she’s gone. We’re looking at an entirely different room. He screams, and the dream changes.

  The Manor sharpens all around us, every detail becoming so much clearer. The joins in the stone-block walls. The grain of dark wood on the door. It’s like I’m waking up inside the dream. Conscious, but not in control. Dad’s scream echoes down the corridor and I travel with it, weightless now, bodiless, no longer in Dad’s arms. I’m flying down corridors and around corners. Through archways, doorways and halls.

  Another flash. There’s water again – water inside the Manor – a half-flooded corridor, like a river – but I’m flying over it this time, alone, speeding past two enormous statues holding swords, soaring over rapids and a big flooded hall. I fly over the edge of a waterfall – I’m the one screaming now – and plummet down to the surging whirlpool at its base.

  I plunge into the water, swallowed by darkness.

  Let go, a voice whispers. A woman’s voice. Mum’s voice, I can feel it.

  I cry out to her. Water fills my lungs. I’m choking, drowning, and then –

  Then I’m back in the shack, wet with sweat and shaking on the floor. But I still can’t breathe. Hickory’s leaning over me, hand clasped over my mouth, breath hot on my face, whispering things. I try to fight him off me until I finally work out what he’s saying.

  ‘Calm down. Be quiet. They’ve found us.’ Hickory nods as if to say Got it? so I nod Got it back.

  He lets me go.

  ‘Tin-skins or Leatherheads?’ I whisper. I can’t see anything out the window.

  ‘Both,’ Hickory says, ruffling through an old chest now, stuffing ammo into his pockets. ‘They’ll break through soon.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ And then I hear it. A thud in the dark. ‘How much time do we have?’

  ‘Long enough. Maze’ll keep ’em busy.’ Then he says, ‘No idea how they found –’ and stops because he’s just grabbed his shirt, noticed my blood staining its back. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Um. I dunno.’

  ‘Is this your blood?’

  ‘Maybe. Yes. I kind of opened the cut on my hand when I fell outside your door. But you said the black stuff –’

  ‘Puts ’em off. Smell enough blood and they’ll brave it.’ Another thud echoes through the dark. Hickory shoves his head into his shirt and glares at me. ‘The Tin-skin that stayed behind went to get its masters. And you’ve bled a nice trail right to us by the look of it.’

  Hickory grabs a rifle as the sound of gunfire echoes through the maze, followed by a whole lot of barking and howling. The Leatherheads have shot their way inside.

  ‘Out the back,’ he says, throwing me the rifle. ‘Shoot anything that gets close.’

  ‘Right,’ I say, ‘shoot,’ but what I’m thinking is How does this thing even work?

  There are stacks of jars, barrels and chests behind the shack, all filled with the black goo, far as I can tell. I may not be able to see any Tin-skins out there in the darkness of the maze but I can picture them all too clearly, frothy-mouthed and snarling, clawing their way over the network of stone bridges.

  We’re being hunted.

  I glance back at the shack. Hickory’s rounding the corner behind me, slinging a knapsack over his shoulders. He’s carrying a wooden club. ‘Middle one,’ he says, pointing the club at three thin stone bridges a little to my right. I can see two tiny flickers out there in the dark. Torches lashed to a chandelier.

  ‘Is there another door out there?’ I ask. ‘Another way out?’

  ‘Locked door,’ he says. ‘On the far wall. Never been able to use it before. Hurry now.’ He swings the club and smashes the jars, kicks over chests and topples barrels, coating his little island, his home, in the rancid black stuff. ‘Go,’ he shouts.

  I walk quickly but carefully, rifle slung over my shoulder, heading for the lights. Hickory follows with a small barrel in his hands, spilling a trail of goo in his wake.

  ‘Bit late to cover our scent, isn’t it?’ I almost overbalance on the bridge. Pause for a second, find my footing. ‘It’ll lead them right to us.’

  ‘Counting on it,’ Hickory says. ‘Move.’

  The bridge gets wider the closer we get to the pool of torchlight, eventually turning into a second, smaller island directly beneath the chandelier. No wall. No door. A dead end.

  ‘Where to now?’

  Hickory dumps the last of the goo, throws the barrel over the edge, and pulls a bundle of rope from his rucksack. Rope with a mangled piece of metal tied to one end. A grappling hook. He swings and snags it on the chandelier, pulls it tight. ‘We climb.’

  ‘And once we’re up there?’

  ‘Swing to the next one.’

  The Tin-skins have found the shack now. About twenty of them, I reckon. Frenzied, ravenous, darting around the island and tearing the place apart as if it were made of twigs. Wary of the black goo but slipping through it nonetheless. I grab the rope. Grit my teeth as my left palm throbs and burns. Climb and clamber up through the bars of the chandelier.

  Then my stomach drops.

  One of the Tin-skins has found the trail of goo.

  ‘Um. Hickory?’

  The Tin-skin barks and bolts right for us, leading the whole goddamn pack. Some of them slip, yelping, over the edge. Others get knocked over in the rush.

  Most never miss a step.

  ‘Shoot,’ Hickory grunts. He’s only halfway up the rope.

  I shift on the chandelier. Fumble the rifle, take aim. Squeeze the trigger and – click.

  ‘Crap.’

  ‘Shoot it,’ Hickory yells. He gets a hand onto the chandelier. ‘Shoot it now!’

  ‘I’m trying!’ I squeeze the trigger again – click, click – but it’s useless. The Tin-skin’s about to leap for Hickory’s legs so I throw the damn rifle instead. It whooshes as it flies. Clatters on the stone and trips the Tin-skin up. The sucker goes howling into the darkness.

  ‘Got it,’ I yell. ‘Hickory, I got it!’

  But Hickory doesn’t look impressed when he hauls himself up beside me. He just looks from the skid-marks below to my empty hands and back again. ‘Where’s the gun?’

  ‘Uh …’

  ‘You threw away our only gun?’

  ‘I had to stop the bloody thing somehow, didn’t I?’

  ‘Just’ – Hickory grits his teeth – ‘swing.’

  We throw our weight together, pushing forward with our legs and leaning back, swinging the chandelier. The Tin-skin pack crowds onto the island beneath us. Barking, jumping, snapping at our butts and heels. The next chandelier emerges from the dark with every forward swing.

  ‘Get ready,’ Hickory yells, plucking both torches from the chandelier. ‘Get set.’

  The ‘Go’ never comes. A bullet ricochets off the chandelier, and we duck.

  The Leatherheads have come to play.

  There’s a whole troop of them stalking around the shack now, guns blazing and pa-cheowing, the glassy eyes of their gas masks glinting with every flash and bang. They click and clack at each other, the trunks of their gas masks amplifying every sound.

  Click-click-clack-click-clack.

  ‘Was this part of your plan too?’ I shout.

  ‘Is now,’ Hickory says. He drops one of the torches as we swing forward over the island of Tin-skins once more. ‘Jump!’

  We launch ourselves into the air, hit the cold metal of the next chandelier along and swing again with the force of it, the platform behind us erupting in a blaze. Tur
ns out the goo doesn’t just stink – it’s flammable, too. The Tin-skins yelp, squeal, and smash into each other, leaping into the dark to flee the fire. It burns back along the path quick as gunpowder, heading right for the Leatherheads, the shack, and the stack of explosive goo.

  The Leatherheads scatter, glassy gas-mask eyepieces alive with reflected fire. The whole platform’s engulfed in seconds and Hickory’s shack explodes moments later, lighting up the dark. A handful of Leatherheads go flying, but we don’t hang around to watch the show. We swing together, count together, and when we jump, we jump as one, chandelier to chandelier. The remaining Leatherheads shoot when they get the chance. From our left, our right, at our backs. We cop bruises and scratches, knocks to our heads, but every successful landing comes with a sense of exhilaration. A feeling of triumph that numbs the pain.

  The Leatherheads are falling behind. We’re getting away.

  THE GRIP

  ‘Sorry your house exploded.’

  ‘Don’t be,’ Hickory says after a while. ‘Just a cage in a cage.’

  He’s trying to figure out where we are from his symbols carved into the intersection a little further down the corridor. I tried to read them, find some method to the madness, but they might as well be chicken scratchings. Now I’m hanging back, keeping watch.

  We only just made it out of the maze alive. Swung down from the last chandelier, unlocked the mystery door on the far side of the maze and bolted through as bullets peppered the walls all around us. As soon as I locked the door behind us, everything fell silent. No more gunfire. No more Leatherhead clicks and clacks. Slowly, carefully, I opened the door again and gasped.

  The maze had disappeared.

  Hickory was right. The Manor rooms really can shift. There’s nothing behind us but an empty hallway now. I’ve left the door ajar so the rooms don’t shift back, and kept the key at the ready just in case. I can’t shake the feeling we’re about to be attacked again.

  ‘You gonna tell me what the gooey stuff is now?’

  Hickory sighs, shifts the pack on his back. ‘Scum.’

  ‘Scum from what?’

  ‘Spectre.’

  ‘And what’s a Spectre?’

  ‘Big, scary beast made of bright, white light.’

  I frown. ‘A beast made of light? You mean, like, a ghost?’

  ‘Not a ghost,’ Hickory says, ‘but yeah, looks ghostly, I s’pose.’

  Great. As if we didn’t have enough weird things trying to kill us.

  ‘No idea which world it came from,’ Hickory adds. ‘All I know is I never wanna go there. Scum gets left behind whenever it flies through a wall. Only thing Tin-skins and Leatherheads fear apart from Roth. I find deposits now and then. Scrape ’em, collect ’em, store ’em. Starts off clear but goes black over time. Accidentally dropped a candle in some once. Burned my eyebrows clean off. You know how long it takes eyebrows to grow back?’

  ‘No, I –’

  ‘Long time. Ages.’

  I triple-check the door behind us. Creak it open a little wider. The hallway’s still the same. Long and empty, nothing but grey stone and flickering candles.

  Still, I shudder.

  ‘You’re pulling my leg, right?’

  ‘Nope. They really do take ages to grow back.’

  ‘I don’t care about your eyebrows, Hickory. I’m talking about the Spectre.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘You’ve actually seen it?’

  ‘Oh, I’ve seen it, all right.’ He crosses the corridor to another set of symbols. ‘Sucker caught me one day. Came outta nowhere. Just the one in here, far as I know – thank the gods.’

  ‘How can something made of light catch you?’

  ‘All predators got their tricks. Snakes spit venom, spiders spin webs.’ Hickory pauses a moment. ‘Spectre gets inside you. Right through your eyes. Feeds on your fears. It doesn’t last long – I mean, it feels like it does, but …’ He shakes his head, struggling to find the words. ‘You’re paralysed, but you don’t know it coz your mind’s taken to a different place. A place where your nightmares come to life.’ He swallows. ‘I call it the Grip.’

  Hickory goes quiet then. I consider asking him what he saw in the Grip – what form the nightmares of a thousand-year-old guy take – but then I figure it’s probably one of those things people like to keep to themselves. I know I would. The thought of being trapped in my nightmare makes me sick, what with the water and the tentacles and the island that doesn’t get any closer and all. I reckon I’d die of fright. On the other hand, it’d mean I could see her again. Because it was her, wasn’t it? My mum, right there in the water with me and Dad – and after that, running through the Manor with us, falling behind. It had to be.

  Let go, she told me, but why?

  If only Hickory hadn’t woken me up. Maybe I could’ve seen or heard more.

  I clear my throat. No point dwelling on that now. ‘How did you get free?’ I ask instead. ‘How did you stop it?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Hickory says. ‘The Spectre just … released me. When I came to, I saw it hovering over me, like a flash of white-hot steam. I felt it watching me. Waiting.’ Hickory stares down the corridor, as if he can still see the damn thing floating there. ‘Monstrous thing. Huge. I was sure it’d Grip me again – finish the job – because I’m sure it could’ve broken me, sure it could’ve killed me – but it didn’t. The Spectre turned and flew away.’

  ‘Maybe it thought your nightmare was boring,’ I suggest. ‘Or maybe it was full.’

  Hickory ignores me. ‘My body was weak. I could barely move. I felt like I’d been in the Grip for a lifetime, but the embers of a fire I’d made before getting caught were still smouldering beside me. I was only out for an hour or so. Took me a long time to recover, though. The Grip never really lets you go.’ He blinks the bad memories away. ‘You ever see a big white light, Jane, you run. You run as fast as you can and you don’t look back.’

  ‘You reckon we’ll run into it on the way to Roth’s place?’

  ‘Knowing our luck?’ Hickory shrugs. ‘Probably. But I hope not.’

  Another question pops into my head. ‘Hickory, why are you doing this? You want to get out of here, you want the key – I get that – but you could’ve just stolen it. You could’ve ditched me way back. Why stick around when you know how dangerous this is?’

  Hickory ignores me, scratches at his almost-beard and nods at the symbols on the wall. ‘Good news is we’re a long way from my hideout. Bad news is we’re still a long way from Roth’s fortress. Nine long marches, maybe more. If we take this corridor here –’

  ‘Hickory.’ I stand in his way. ‘I need to know. Why are you helping me?’

  His eyes meet mine, but only for a second. ‘Manor’s taken everything. Honour’s one of the few things I have left.’ He steps around me. ‘I’m helping you because I said I would.’

  LEECHWOOD HALLS

  There are no clocks to judge the passing of time in here. No day or night skies to track suns, moons and stars. All I have is the ache in my shoulders and the lead in my feet.

  Nine marches, Hickory said. I think he meant nine days. We haven’t even finished the first yet and I reckon we’ve already walked the length of a mountain chain. Door after door, room after room, upstairs and down. Long corridor after long corridor, the slabs of stone cool and smooth underfoot, undulating slightly now and then. We barely speak. Have to change our route three times on account of the Leatherheads. A whole troop marching beyond a closed door. One standing guard at an intersection. A handful skinning some sort of animal carcass five storeys below us in the centre of a pillared hall. Hickory plots a different path each time.

  It’s exhausting, but the strange thing is I never get hungry or thirsty. At first I think it’s adrenaline fuelling me, but then I figure there’s no way I’d be this tired if that were the case.

  ‘I’m not hungry,’ I say as we descend a tight, spiral stairwell. ‘Or thirsty. But I haven’t had anything to eat
or drink in ages.’

  ‘Manor gives life,’ Hickory says again.

  ‘So you haven’t had anything to eat or drink in, like, forever?’

  ‘Eat or drink when I find something worth eating or drinking. Stray animals from Otherworlds. There’s a river in here, too, you know. Water flowing through a gateway. Long way away. But you don’t need to eat or drink. Manor sustains you. Keeps you going.’

  ‘I tried some snow. It’s kind of like eating and drinking at the same time.’

  I’m actually enjoying this, shooting the breeze and all. I’m about to ask if Hickory wants to play a game. Twenty Questions or something, I dunno. But then we reach the bottom of the stairs and freeze because we’re standing at the edge of a forest. An avenue of thick, autumnal trees soaring right up to the high, vaulted ceiling, stretching as far into the Manor as we can see. The tree trunks are gnarled and twisted, their branches like crooked arms. Thousands of tiny spores hover in the air, floating up, drifting down, settling on the branches and the crimson leaves and the tangle of tree roots on the floor. They glow like little specks of moonlight in the living, breathing silence of the wood.

  I draw in a deep breath, smell the dying leaves. Something sweet, too, like honey.

  ‘I’m guessing this isn’t supposed to be here,’ I say.

  Hickory nibbles a fingernail, shakes his head. ‘Another gateway must’ve started failing since I was last here. Been a while. Long while.’

  ‘But it’s okay, right? I mean, they’re only trees.’

  Hickory nods slowly, deep in thought. ‘No choice anyway. We have to go through.’

  We move quietly into the forest, ducking under the branches and their red, star-shaped leaves. Some of the glowing spores cling to our clothes and hair. If I didn’t know any better I’d say we’d stepped out of the Manor and wandered into a night-time glade. The tree roots are so jumbled it’s impossible to tell where one ends and the next begins.