by Madoc Fox
“I think we are getting close to the end of this tunnel” Vergil finally announced. “And if memory serves me correctly then we are nearing the electroplant. This way Oscar.” He gestured towards a rough flight of stone steps, at the top of which Oscar could see a faint sliver of light. They must have spent most of the past night in the sewers, he concluded, stepping up the pace in anticipation of being finally back above ground.
Chapter 15
Oscar followed Vergil over to a rusty gate that had been left ajar at the top of the stone steps. Stepping through, they exited onto an empty street within the town. It was approaching dawn and a dash of colour glowed on the horizon. They emerged hesitantly, alert for the wolf riders, but none were to be seen. Breathing a sigh of relief Oscar followed Vergil along the empty street that led to the towering electroplant.
The building sat dominant at the end of the road. A colossal brick chimney fifty yards in diameter reached skyward, transporting vapours from the incinerators below and belching them out as billowing plumes of smoke. Positioned around the chimney were the grand turbine houses, which roared in unison. It was one of the most spectacular buildings Oscar had seen in Etiainheim: the chimney dwarfed the buildings all around. Here and there around the turbines more conventional dwellings could be seen. Some looked a lot like bunkers capable of housing many beings at once, while others seemed like smaller individual homes. Regardless of size, all were separated from the chimney and turbines by tall metal fencing. At one point along this border stood a gatehouse which Oscar and Vergil now made their way towards.
Just as they neared the entry point, a whistle pierced the silence, the shrill sound making them jump. In an instant, Itse of all sorts started pouring out of the station on one side of the street, whilst on the other a line of souls trailed from the bunkers and dwellings over to the border point. A myriad of Itse were lining up to check in at the gate house. Vergil and Oscar stood stock still as the activity streamed all around them. Few souls paid them any attention, most just stood in file at the checkpoint or left for other destinations which lay outside the plant.
Seemingly ignored by those around him, Oscar stared with undisguised curiosity. The Itse that travelled to and fro from the station all had a rugged, weathered appearance; whether it be a soot coated gorilla in raggedy overalls or a stout, bearded dwarf whose face was lost in hair. They all had the character of one who was defined by continuing labour and toil.
“The scent is strong here, Oscar”. Vergil interrupted his observations. “It leads into the electroplant. I suppose we ought to follow, but, well... I don't understand it. Why would he have come here?”
“I have my suspicions.” Oscar replied with a frown. An explanation of kinds had struck him, though he did not offer it to Vergil for fear that if he voiced what he was thinking it might turn out to be true.
“Ok” Vergil said, giving Oscar a searching look. “Well, follow my lead.” With that the rat marched into line with the Itse who queued at the gate house. Oscar waited for a suitable gap before sneaking into the line between two Itse. Just in front of him stood a tattooed woman with buffalo hind legs She was interacting flamboyantly with the dressed gorilla he had been staring at earlier. She mimicked his actions, beating her arms against her chest, though the significance of this gesture was lost on Oscar.
Meanwhile, in the line behind him a short, mechanically driven tin man was hopping from one foot to the other. He puffed steam with every movement and his body shook with the process, a small mole-like creature on his tin flat cap bobbing in response. Occasionally the man would stop moving and delve into his metal pocket to retrieve a nut for the mole. It was bizarre and eccentric and Oscar could not shake the feeling that some deeper communication was taking place between these souls which he simply could not understand. Not for the first time he longed to see his own soul. What form could it possibly take, he wondered.
The line shuffled forward. Each time, the Itse at the head of the queue would approach the gate house and stand before a giant observation contraption. It looked like an enormous magnifying glass; a series of lenses that projected the image of each approaching soul to the Itse in charge of the checkpoint. Looking up, Oscar was surprised to see it was a small dormouse who was regulating the process. Standing on a wooden platform high above, the dormouse peered at each approaching Itse through the magnifying lenses. Once satisfied with its inspection the dormouse would pull a tiny lever, that through a series of cogs and pulleys winched up the solid barrier to allow access to the electroplant. It was a laborious process but one which the dormouse seemed to relish, apparently absorbed by the power it wielded.
Oscar watched with curiosity as Vergil neared the front of the line, waiting for the soul directly in front of him to be admitted. Glancing quickly from side to side to check he wasn't being observed, the rodent suddenly vanished in a puff of mist as per his usual style. He soon reappeared on the other side of the fence, looking smug. Oscar stared back at the rat in frustration. What was he expecting? How did he expect him to copy that? But there was little time for thought as the tattooed
buffalo woman directly in front of him approached the barrier: Oscar would be up next.
Oscar readied himself to dash across, hoping that if he was quick enough he could skirt around behind the buffalo woman as she passed the barrier. The dormouse inspected her through the lens for a moment and then turned to flick the lever. The cogs whirred, pulleys winched and the way was clear. The only problem was the dormouse, who stared at the path expectantly. There was no way Oscar would be able to sneak through without being seen.
Fortunately, at the exact moment Vergil intervened. He appeared on the platform in a puff of smoke, kicking one of the lower view lenses out of alignment and rendering the dormouse effectively blind. Making good the distraction, Oscar dashed across, barging past the buffalo woman as he went. Vergil reappeared alongside him, smiling at the successful evasion. Yet their celebration was short lived: before they could make their way inside the plant itself an alarm rang out. The sound was disturbingly reminiscent to the bombing raid sirens in Oscar's own world.
Two wolf riders emerged begrudgingly from within a neighbouring building. Bleary eyed, the bald dwarf riders coerced their blind wolves toward the gate house. As the two riders passed along the line of souls they shoved and barked at those in their way, occasionally warranting a shove back from the larger and more hardened souls that were present.
Oscar and Vergil quickly ducked behind the huge gorilla in overalls. It had turned back to see what the commotion was, as had many of the souls who had been admitted through the barrier. Once the riders had made their way into the gatehouse, the dormouse leapt across from its platform to reside on the wolf's head, whereby it proceeded to clamber up the coat of the rider until it rested upon its shoulder. Leaning close into the rider’s ear the dormouse appeared to be recounting what had happened, all the time bristling in agitation. The rider listened patiently then turned its attention back to its steed. After some sort of order, the two wolves sniffed at the air and growled at a few surrounding Itse. Yet despite their disgruntled manner, they seemed content with the absence of threat.
In one swift movement the rider plucked the dormouse from his shoulder and hurled it back onto the wooden viewing platform, whilst one of the wolves knocked the wayward lens back into alignment with a paw so that the tools of inspection were restored. Shaken and positively disgruntled, the small mouse dusted itself off before resuming its duty. It was true to say it did so with a far greater degree of hostility, for each inspection took twice as long as before the alarm and some Itse were turned away altogether. As the wolves sloped back towards the building from whence they came, the shuffling of those already through the barrier resumed. The trail of authorised Itse made their way into the electroplant, allowing Oscar and Vergil to creep inside once again under the cover of the sooty gorilla in overalls.
Upon entering the electroplant itself, Vergil and Oscar were jostled
through countless small offices before entering the main work room. There they were confronted by a wave of activity bombarding each of their senses as the soul employees busied themselves across the huge space. The line of work started high up on the gangways where a chute deposited coal rocks onto a conveyor belt. Larger souls either side of the chute painstakingly smashed the rocks, each successive hammer blow growing audibly in volume. As the coal emerged from the group only tiny lumps the size of marbles remained. These fell in a constant stream like oversized grains of sand, gathering in a giant heap in the middle of the workspace. An ant’s nest of smaller souls whizzed around the mound with carts, catching and scooping the fuel and delivering it to the furnaces. Here other souls monotonously shovelled the black rocks into the fires that roared with heat and light, casting dancing images across the walls. The entire atmosphere was suffocating and a thin veil of smog pervaded the air, doing nothing to improve the working conditions.
“Which way?” Oscar choked, wafting away the smoke in order to address his question to Vergil.
“I don't know. My senses are utterly bombarded here. I feel like I have slept in an ash pit.” The rat replied, wrinkling his nose with disgust.
“Well let’s just get through here as quick as we can then. Perhaps once we are out you can get back on track.” Oscar said. Attempting to hold his breath, Vergil only nodded in agreement.
Making their way cautiously across the work floor, the boy and the rodent traced a path as carefully as possible between the smaller souls that sped around pushing carts of coal. Nevertheless, one Itse - a small colourful toy jester – was forced to swerve to avoid Oscar, causing his cart to overturn. Small pebbles of coal spilled all over the floor and the small Itse anxiously scurried to retrieve the wayward cargo. Just as Oscar moved over to try and help, from out of nowhere a giant stone golem twice his height stepped in. Despite his monumental size, the golem’s eyes glowed with a gentle concern as it picked up the cart in one hand and sat it upright. With the other huge stone hand the golem scooped up all the coal and replaced it inside, before gently patting the jester on the head and continuing on its way. The jester sighed emphatically and skipped off pushing the cart. As it vanished round a corner Oscar thought he caught a glimpse of a small curly tail protruding from the rear of its brightly coloured trousers. Shaking his head at the strangeness of it all, he was about to turn away when a remarkable idea occurred to him, stopping him in his tracks.
“Is that Piggy?” he blurted out. Looking around now for Vergil he asked again. “Vergil, was that Piggy, the little jester thing?”
Vergil turned to look at him with a faint smile.
“Err, well, I do not know a 'Piggy', but that looks to be that rather rotund friend you had at the Institute. I saw him with you before.”
“He was my only friend, for a while. He came to work at the electroplant.” Oscar looked hopefully around for the jester lest he reappear. It was Piggy! Buoyed up by the thought that at least one friend was close by, Oscar turned back to Vergil.
“Come on Vergil, we need to keep moving else we’ll never find Josie”.
They left the main work hall through a door at the end which led them along a long corridor full of copper pipes. The pipes gurgled and steamed, radiating heat to such an extent that condensation dripped down the walls. Skirting past them with care Oscar and Vergil followed the corridor for several minutes until they reached the far end, which opened out into one of the turbine halls they had first viewed from outside.
Neither Oscar nor Vergil could hear what the other was saying on account of the humming noise that emanated from the turbines. The noise was so extraordinarily loud that they could feel it shaking the very foundations they stood upon. Though Oscar attempted to speak to Vergil as closely as possible, they soon abandoned any notion of speech, instead relying upon exaggerated gestures as their sole means of communication. Looking about, Vergil sniffed the air trying to get a scent but the pungent aroma of lingering smoke and machine oil dominated the atmosphere so that they remained without direction.
The giant stone golem had entered the turbine hall directly behind them, though to Oscar’s disappointment he was not accompanied by the little Piggy-jester. The golem ignored them and busied about bashing his fists purposefully at various pieces of machinery.
After a short while a small creature resembling a gnome in a suit approached the golem. It was peddling a cart mounted with a cash register and loaded full of mechanical calculators. As he moved, the register whirred and emitted reams of blank paper which trailed behind the cart like unimaginative party streamers. The gnome had a long nose with pince-nez spectacles balanced precariously on the tip. He looked derisively up at the golem and performed a series of exaggerated gestures; presumably indicating some financial affair as he constantly rattled keys on the calculator before pointing toward the papers trails that issued from the register. Oscar watched as the two Itse gestured to one another, coming to some kind of understanding as to what the problem was. Yes as they moved apart once more, he had a clear view through to the door from which the gnome had entered. Catching a brief glimpse of movement, Oscar jumped in surprise as an orange blur whisked out of view.
“There Vergil, quick, I think I saw Josie!” He yelled at the top of his voice, but it was no use. Vergil could not hear a thing: the ambient hum drowned him out completely. Instead Oscar rushed over to where the rat sat sniffing the air, crouched down to poke him and pointed wildly towards the exit. Looking hopeful, Vergil nodded and the two dashed off in pursuit. They ran through a series of corridors, long past the point at which they could see the direction the cat had taken. Fortunately though, the distracting factory scents had lessened slightly and Vergil was back on the trail. Better still, the deafening hum of the turbines had receded to such a degree that they could once again hear themselves speak.
“This way! The Maere, it’s near now. I can sense it,” Vergil urged Oscar on, hurrying through an increasingly bright series of rooms until they burst out into the coal loading yards behind the electrostation. Here, heaps of coal rock lined the horizon and trains chugged to and fro around the loading bays, their innumerable carriages holding heavy loads. Oscar paused only for a moment to take all this in before he noticed the blur of orange again. Before he could give chase, Vergil appeared on his shoulder, stopping him in his tracks.
“Wait Oscar, Edmund’s Maere is close. This could be dangerous.”
Oscar looked sideways at the rat, impatient to get to Josie now that they had finally caught up.
“Well then, what would you suggest?” he asked.
“Come, this way.” Vergil led the way over to the far side of the yard so that they approached the orange, cat shaped blur on the flank; the railway acting as a protective barrier between the two. As the carriages rumbled past Oscar caught snippets of the scene through the gaps in between them. The brief glimpses of Josie in between carriages were getting clearer and clearer, but the image was somehow wrong. The cat had lost all her glow; a paler shadow of what she was before.
Yet her subdued appearance wasn’t the worst of it. The cat squirmed and wriggled, constantly moving so that she was difficult to see properly and it was a while before Oscar realised with horror that she was being assaulted. Though she struggled against it she was coerced along by the very same toys Oscar had seen at the Institute during his first encounter in Etiainheim. A little tin soldier poked the cat with a bayonet while she was being dragged along by a scruffy stuffed bear and a toy train. The bear had lassoed the cat’s tail using a doll’s pull cord and held onto the train to tug them along. Other toys surrounded them too, pulling and pushing the poor Itse, which mewed in pain.
The strangest thing about the scene though was the way in which the toys approached their task. Although they were aggressively dragging the cat along, not all seemed to want a part of it. Some were constantly looking around as though seeking approval for their actions, whilst others were positively reluctant to be involved. A
few darted forward to tug at the cat, before retreating within seconds and circling the group uncertainly. Further still, the toys were themselves in worse condition than they had been at the Institute. All were grey and broken, showing signs of deterioration and neglect. Yet despite all this they were slowly managing to drag the cat further and further out of sight.
“Quick Vergil, there’s no time to waste.” Oscar had seen enough and now made a break for it, darting out between the carriages and toward the pack of toys. Yet it seemed there was something he had not anticipated, for Vergil urgently cried out to the boy as he sprinted away.
“Duck, Oscar.” Vergil commanded with all his authority.
Without question the boy fell to the floor, lying flat on his stomach just in the nick of time. A pair of razor sharp talons sailed overhead, just brushing his hair as they passed. It seemed the vultures had followed them; like a pack of blood hounds they had never lost the sight of the boy and the rat, just bided their time, readying for attack. The vultures landed between Oscar and the cat, touching down heavily. There were five of them and together they formed a grotesque feathered wall, the stench of carrion forming a first line of assault. Climbing to his feet Oscar’s mind raced, searching rapidly for a means of attack or escape.
The vultures eyed Oscar hungrily, stepping forth in unison and shrieking with gaping beaks. Yet at the same moment another noise interrupted the ear splitting harmony: the clang of metal on stone. From behind a carriage next to the birds a rusty knight emerged. On one arm he carried a solid iron shield, but the other arm hung limply from a couple of rusted metal links so that it could not wield the sword which sat uselessly in its scabbard on one side. Despite the clear disability the knight stood before the vultures, his shield held out in a defensive stance. As Oscar watched, the knight strode forward, a rusted figure unerringly marching to engage the committee. The birds ruffled their feathers in anticipation, clicking their beaks and readying for attack. When the clash finally came, talons scraped at the iron and the knight flailed his shield, battering away each coming assault.