Catacombs of Terror!

by Stanley Donwood

  Delicately I eased myself into a standing position. Parts of me definitely hurt. But I could walk. I made my way out of the field. The lay-by was empty. Yeah, well. Wearily I trudged to the edge of the road and stood with my back to the city for a time. I had nowhere else to go, so I faced the oncoming traffic and stuck my thumb out. I wasn’t an ideal hitcher. I was wet through, muddy, and didn’t look very happy.

  After about three centuries a pickup truck slowed to a halt. I ran to catch up with it, stated my destination, and made to get in the passenger seat. The driver, a squat sort of guy with a checked shirt and a strong smell of engine oil about him, pointed at my clothes and shook his head. I climbed into the back of the truck, ready to enjoy some more weather.

  And me in my best suit, I said to myself. The truck got me back to town, more or less. Okay. I had to get back to my flat. I couldn’t do anything in this state. I needed a shower, new clothes, and perhaps something to eat. Scratch that. I needed a very large drink. The walk back up to the flat was pretty much unremitting agony, but I got home in the end. My place was still a tip, but in a sort of comforting way. It wasn’t unexpected, intriguing, or interesting. It didn’t ask me impossible questions or beat me up in remote fields. And for that I was deeply grateful.

  Chapter 12

  Seriously Bad News

  By the time I felt okay it was nearly 6 P.M. The flat was okay, but it wasn’t any kind of place to think. That was one of the reasons why I had an office. And that’s where I went. I’d learnt one thing from the little guy with the emotionless voice and the big friends. So I dug out an umbrella. I bought some supplies on the way—whiskey, cigarettes, and I nipped in to the house of a guy I knew and picked up some cocaine.

  I had a feeling that I might be needing it. But I only had time to do about five minutes’ thinking when I got down to the office, because the thought I had after five minutes was that I was supposed to meet the famous Stonehenge T-shirt at 7 P.M., which was now about a quarter of an hour away. Okay. I looked at my furniture. I had a quick whiskey and locked the office again.

  Saturday night is not a calm night anywhere in the world. So I was expecting it to be busy, even early in the evening, but it seemed to be pretty mellow in the Old Green Tree. There were a few old colonel types drinking in the public bar, and a couple talking quietly in the lounge. That was it. No Stonehenge T-shirt. I ordered a pint of lager and sat down in the lounge, trying not to overhear what the couple were talking about. Sounded pretty interesting until I realised they were discussing EastEnders.

  I lit a cigarette and stared at the wall. And I carried on with the thinking I’d been intending to do. Okay. ScryTech and KHS were one and the same thing, I figured. Barry Eliot had something to do with it all, but I couldn’t tell what. The Charlcombe dig was not about archaeology, at least not in any normal sense. KHS were obviously withholding data and hiding finds. Okay. I decided that firstly I was going to call Karen Eliot and get her to tell me all about Barry. And I was going to go back up to Charlcombe with a flashlight, a camera, a fresh half-bottle of whiskey, and my wrap of Charlie.

  I was going to check out those tunnels. I guessed that Saturday night was a good time to do it. Those ‘archaeologists’ would probably be far away, down the pub somewhere. The warning delivered by the smartly dressed bastards with their fucking shiny shoes was not an issue. So—I was fucked if I did anything. But the same applied if I didn’t.

  I’d just got my mobile out to call Karen when a big fat guy wearing a beard and a slightly stained Stonehenge T-shirt came in. He went up to the bar and I heard him order a pint. Real ale. That figures, I thought. Then he turned around and walked straight towards me, pulled out the chair opposite, and sat down. He took a massive swig of his ale. Without looking at me he took out a packet of tobacco and made a rollup. He lit it with a battered Zippo, took a huge drag, and exhaled the smoke in my face. Then his eyes met mine.

  I sighed, ran my hands over my face, and said, “Panto. Very nice. Why an Ugly Sister though? You’d make a great Cinderella.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Hmm. For someone in as much trouble as you are, you’ve still got a sense of humour. Look after it. You might not have much else after Monday.”

  “Look,” I said. “I’m very tired. I’ve been very busy. And it hasn’t been easy. Some big men have been nasty to me. Almost everyone else has been elusive, insulting, and generally difficult. And it never stops fucking raining. So, listen . . . I’d really, really appreciate it if you just state your business, tell me whatever it is you’re here to tell me, and then leave me the fuck alone. Is that too much to ask?”

  “You been up to Charlcombe yet? Have you any idea what’s going down?”

  “I’ve been up. I’ve been down. I’ve been all over. You know what?” I was suddenly very bored. “You know what? If the next sentence you utter doesn’t grab me, I’m gone. As of that moment. I’m gone. Are you hearing me? Catching my drift?” I lit another cigarette and closed my eyes for a couple of heartbeats.

  “Hey.” He looked a little perplexed. With that I could identify. “Calm down. I’m here to help you. Help you. Understand?”

  As you can imagine, I’d had enough help to last me a long time. None of it did the job though. None of it helped. All it did was get me deeper into something I had no wish to even dip my toes in. “Okay,” I said. “Help me then. Yes, I’ve been up to Charlcombe. They’ve got a big hole there. It goes a long way in a direction I don’t like. Who, exactly, are you?”

  “Think of me as your friend. My name’s not necessary for you to know. I’ve got some information for you. Now, do you want it?”

  I sighed, again. I ran my hands over my face, again. “Yes,” I said, exhaling.

  I stared at my empty glass for a little while, realised he wasn’t going to offer to get it filled up again, excused myself, bought another pint, and sat down again.

  “Look,” I said patiently. Well, yeah. Impatiently. “Before you begin, just by sitting here with you I’m implicating myself in this further and further.”

  Maybe I should have just ignored the note, the e-mail, I thought. I shouldn’t have gone to see that woman in the Star. I shouldn’t have gone to the dig at Charlcombe. I should have avoided the CCTV place like the plague. But I didn’t. I went and got all intrigued about it. Then I got myself a kicking in a farmer’s field next to the motorway. I sighed again. The practice was improving my delivery.

  “Okay,” I muttered, lighting another cigarette, “tell me what you know.”

  “Listen. There’s something under the city. It’s been there a very long time, since, well, maybe forever. A darkness. But it’s a darkness people have been using, or trying to use, for, well, a long time. Thing is, now they’ve worked out how to use it. For real. And that? That is seriously bad news.”

  “Whoa there. Two things. Who are ‘they’? What is ‘it’?” I interrupted.

  “They are . . . they are kind of—the elite. I’m not talking about the old ‘Establishment’ here, not the Bilderbergers, not the oligarchs. They are just . . . dilettantes, compared to this lot. No one name describes them or does them justice. They are the folks who really run things. The top dogs. They are very powerful people who can never get too much power. They call themselves AFFA. In their own tongue, in a language from a very long time back, AFFA means ‘nothing.’ It isn’t an acronym for anything. It is—just a word. If you call yourself nothing, no one knows who you are. Or what you want.

  “They—AFFA—always want more. And now—right now—They have the means to change the world. I want you to think about what I’m saying. Power has always been fought for. Next king, next queen, next pope, president, whatever. It’s a fight, a very, very dirty fight. Power, by any means necessary. These people are above morals. Morals are there to keep the likes of us in line. But They, the elite, AFFA, will do anything at all to get and keep power. And now, after centuries of work, the ultimate power, the absolute power to do exactly as they please is fin
ally within Their grasp.”

  “I know all about this,” I said, “because I watch The X-Files. Next. Next please. What is ‘it’?”

  The man sighed. Nice. His turn. I felt better all of a sudden.

  “It has had many names. None of them do it justice. I guess you’ve heard of alchemy, of the Philosopher’s Stone, through your avid TV watching? The Philosopher’s Stone is an agent of transmutation. To turn lead into gold—that was the stated goal of the alchemists. But physical transmutation is a metaphor. Alchemy—the use of the Philosopher’s Stone—is actually about controlling everything. It’s about controlling the world.”

  What a fucking joker. He sounded like some kind of zealot. Or something. I didn’t trust him to the end of my pint.

  “You said that your name isn’t important. Maybe it isn’t. So don’t tell me. But tell me why I should even waste my time shooting the breeze with you. Because you’re sure as hell not whoever you’re pretending to be.”

  He glared at me for a little while before he answered.

  “I will,” he said in a low voice, “after you tell me what you know so far. Tell me your thoughts. Tell me what you’ve found out.”

  “Why the hell should I tell you? I’ve done the hard work so far, in my opinion. Finding stuff out, climbing down holes. I got abducted. I got a kicking. By fucking Tweedledum and fucking Tweedledee. Not you, mister whoever you are. It hurt a lot. Why should I tell you anything at all?”

  He grinned. It wasn’t a smile. I got to see a lot of his teeth.

  “What else are you going to do with what you know? With what you have? What else can you do but tell someone who might believe you? Who else can you tell?”

  He had something there. What was I going to do next? I was sunk badly into a situation that I seemed to have less control over with every hour that passed. He was right, really. Who else could I tell? Here was mister Stonehenge T-shirt, right in front of me. He was part of this, whatever it was. Not for the first time, I took a look at my options and felt the usual growing dismay. All of this buzzed around my brain for, well, about three seconds. I put on a pensive, intelligent expression for another minute or so, just to save face.

  “You’re right, I guess,” I said. It wasn’t a thing I said often, and my voice caught a little as the words came out. Lack of practice.

  “So?” he asked. I took a deep breath or two and told him. About what had happened so far. About my suspicions about KHS and ScryTech. About the deep hole at Charlcombe. About the slight strangeness of my ‘interview’ with the CCTV operatives and Murnau. About being followed, and gave a vehemently described account of my time both in and outside of the shiny, expensive car. Then I asked him, also pretty vehemently, who the fuck he was. I think I asked him to tell me without delay. Something like that.

  “I’m an academic. I was asked by a close friend to speak to you. I must apologise for the subterfuge. We needed to know if you were as reliable as we’d hoped you’d be. You should also know, by the way, that the woman you met last night in the Star was an actor, a former student of mine . . . . Now then, we are very concerned about what is happening. Very concerned. And I’m sorry about the violence you suffered today. Their security is even tighter than we imagined.”

  “We? They? I guess ‘they’ are ‘them.’ AFFA. Who are you calling ‘we’?”

  “Perhaps we shouldn’t talk here. Perhaps your office might be less . . . public?”

  “Okay,” I said, “but one thing before we go. I came in here last night and made some enquiries about you. I spoke to a barman. He’s not here tonight. But he didn’t seem to like you too well. Any ideas why that should be?”

  “Tall fellow? Dark hair? Eyebrow piercing?”

  I nodded. The guy grinned again. Teeth again. “Monty Cantsin. One of my students last year. He was hoping for a First. He got a Third, and he wasn’t very happy about it.”

  I nodded, slowly. It sounded just about believable. Not much else did. I finished my pint and lit a cigarette. I nodded towards the door.

  “Okay. Let’s go to my office.”

  Chapter 13

  Biological Weapon

  We didn’t speak on the way. It was getting dark too early because of the rain. The street was crowded with people. Most of them had the weekend glint in their eyes. Alcohol, and lots of it, was on their agenda. Then sex or violence or some drunken species of misery. I kind of envied them. Even their misery would most likely be gone by the morning. Mine had legs though. Stamina. And it just kept on getting more nourishment.

  We sidestepped the puddled vomit in the alley and I let us into the office. There was a message on the phone from Colin Kafka, asking me to call him urgently. Yeah, well. There’s urgent and there’s urgent. My main urgency was to find out what Stonehenge had to say. I checked the time. 9 P.M. Already. Something about the day was nagging at my mind. It was the guys in the car, mainly. I’d been followed, shoved into a car and driven out of town and interrogated, sort of. But would they have done that to just anyone? What if I’d been legit? Polite apologies and a lift back into town? Somehow it didn’t quite gel. No, it didn’t gel at all. They must have known very quickly that I wasn’t who I said I was. That visual mapping thing . . . .

  I remembered the CCTV camera I had looked up at after leaving the control room. If they had doubts about me, they could have taken a zoomed-in still of my face, run it through their database, and—what? What could they have seen that would make them want to warn me off the whole deal? Did they have me on file already from somewhere else? If so, then where from? Maybe the cameras at Charlcombe had got me. I couldn’t be sure that I’d avoided them all, especially on the way out from under the tarpaulin. Unless there’d been cameras actually down the hole. Infrared cameras? But why? I was getting nowhere. I got out the whiskey and poured a couple of glasses. I turned to Stonehenge and passed him one. He was sitting on the couch. I grabbed my remaining chair, pulled it over, and sat down facing him.

  “You were going to tell me. Who’s ‘we’?”

  “This might come as something of a surprise.”

  “Oh, goody. I like surprises. I’ve had more than my share recently, and you know what? I’m getting to like them. Now. Who is ‘we’?”

  “Barry Eliot and myself. Barry is, or rather was, closely involved with Them. Almost one of Them, you could say. He became involved through his wife. Through Karen. Who I think you know. Rather closely, I fear.”

  He had been right about the surprise. Except it was more of a shock. A jaw-dropper. I stared at him. I was paralysed. But it wasn’t very long before it stopped being paralysis and became potentially fatal for my only chair. I might have said, ‘Excuse me,’ before I hurled it across the room, but I probably didn’t. I did some swearing and only just stopped myself from throwing my drink after the chair. Okay. I could probably speak now. I looked back at Stonehenge. He was watching me. Warily, I thought. Well, yeah.

  “Barry Eliot?” My words were choked.

  He nodded. “Barry Eliot.”

  “You’re asking me to accept that you and Barry Eliot are the good guys? Barry threatened to kill me two weeks ago. He threatened to get my licence revoked. And he plays golf. These are not the actions of a good guy.”

  “He walked in on you having sex with his wife. What did you expect him to do? Pat you on the back? He doesn’t care about you sleeping with Karen. He hates her. But he can’t let her know that. His is the only direct contact we have with Them. I assure you, Barry’s outburst was entirely for Karen Eliot’s benefit.”

  “You’re kidding me,” I said, but somehow I felt he wasn’t. He shook his head slowly.

  “Karen Eliot is one of—Them?”

  He nodded again. I went over and picked up by chair. It wasn’t broken. Thankfully. I sat down again. I needed to. I drained my whiskey. I looked around, a little wildly I think. Stonehenge leant over and handed me his still untouched whiskey. I drank that, too.

  “Karen Eliot is one of this elite? O
ne of these—AFFA fuckers? Who are about to have this ultimate power, whatever the fuck that is? Okay. If I’m going to believe this—any of it—you’re going to need to tell me more. A lot more.” I lit a cigarette and got another whiskey, in what order I don’t remember. I don’t expect you’d remember either, at a time like that.

  “Yes. Karen Eliot isn’t who you may have thought she was. She is one of a central core, or cabal, of twenty-three individuals concerned with—er, conducting business—under the city. What else would you like to know?”

  “Okay. Okay.” I thought for a minute. “Under the city? You said something about that before, in the pub. What is it? What is under the city?”

  “Tunnels. Caverns. Labyrinths. They’re very, very old. Some of them predate the Romans. A lot are medieval. Some are more modern. They are not widely known of, for the good reason that They keep it that way. Every drainage system, every pipeline laid, every new building . . . everything, anything, that disturbs the surface, is vetted exhaustively to ensure that there is no chance it will impinge on the tunnel system. The tunnels themselves are extensive. We don’t know how far they extend, but the excavations being carried out by KHS at Charlcombe suggest that the network may run even as far as that.”

  “They do. At the bottom of that hole there were maybe three tunnels radiating off in different directions. It was all paved with flagstones or something. I couldn’t easily tell. I didn’t have my flashlight.”

  “Three tunnels? Interesting. There are probably the same number radiating from a cavern underneath the Circus.”