The Chronicles of Jonathon Postlethwaite: The Seed of Corruption

by Denny, David S

  They searched the room quickly, but the baker was not sleeping off an afternoon binge here. Pulling Scoggins away from the stack of crates in the corner, they crept out into the yard, moving like a pair of silky shadows to the door at the far end of the wall.

  As they slid along the wall, they passed large windows that were evenly spaced along its length. Flax peered in through the rain washed glass. It was an ale house he deduced. He saw tables and chairs, strange furniture was stacked against the walls. An odd beer glass stood pathetically alone and deserted on a dusty table.

  It was much tidier than any ale house Flax had ever visited. In Dubh were never empty and furniture was reserved only for those which served only the most affluent and powerful clientele. This one was empty and remarkably clean, except for the thick layer of dust which covered everything. This had been an ale house once, but no longer had he deduced. They now stood at its door. The stone step had been worn concave with the feet of the many visitors who had come this way over decades. Flax pushed his large and sensitive nose to the keyhole and sniffed in air like a blood hound.

  His delicate organ informed him of the absence of the usual smells of an ale house - sweat, beer, blood, vomit and urine. The place was definitely no longer in use, he thought. Flax tried the door handle and found it locked. He gritted his teeth and sniffed the door seams. There was someone here, although the scent was strange.

  The air inside was warm and there was a faint

  aroma of perfume, but the woman's scent here smelt like no woman he had ever run his nostrils over. At least he knew there where no men here, only this strange woman.

  His mind raced. What should he do? Kick the door down perhaps? He turned around and beckoned the scholar. The small, fat man scurried to his side at his signal. Flax held him by the neck.

  “There’s a woman of sorts inside, will she be armed? How do we get in?”

  The little man rapped hard on the door, causing both Flax and Scoggins to jump back behind the wall for safety.

  “Let me handle this, just keep quiet." he commanded Flax, something twinkling in his eye. A humorous irony, thought the Scholar, that he had the power to order his 'Eminence' Silus Flax to be quiet. He stifled a chuckle.

  Flax was flabbergasted at his servant's cheek, but his plans hinged on the intellectual qualities of the small, bald bespectacled man and he indicated that Scoggins put away the knife he was aiming at the Scholar’s kidneys. Ivor mouthed an objection, but Flax waved it down. It was acceptable at the moment, but the Scholar would eventually regret what he had just done, he would pay for his moment of amusement at Flax's expense and the price would be high. After what seemed an eternity of knocking, a light inside lit up the door frame.

  Scoggins leapt back from the keyhole. The door opened a fraction, a security chain ensuring that it opened no further than necessary.

  A small, round heavily wrinkled and worried face pushed itself up to the gap.

  "Yes?" said a voice quivered with age and fear. The scholar moved quickly into the light, his bespectacled smiling face seeming to reassure that these three, strangely dressed men at her door in the early hours of the morning, meant her no harm.

  The scholar spoke.

  "Ah, my gracious lady of the inn, my sincere apologies for awakening you from your well earned slumber, but we are travellers in sore need of lodgings on this foul night.....would you have rooms to let?" he said injecting a tone of desperation into his voice. Then as an after thought; “We will pay you well."

  Agnes Lovenberry considered her position. She was alone here, she was eighty-eight years old and half crippled with arthritis. These people had obviously mistaken her home for a hotel or inn. It was true that this place had once been an inn, then a public house, but it had not seen a customer for twenty-eight years.

  “Oh, dear." she mumbled to herself. Such a dreadful night, Oh, Well perhaps they could use the empty rooms upstairs, they had beds and sheets although generation after generation moths of would have made a meal of them by now.

  The nice mannered man had also said that they would pay her well and the pittance the government paid her as a pension was hardly enough to keep her from starving. A little cash would help her this week,

  after all, that drunken baker had forgotten his rent again. She took the door off the security chain and opened it wide to allow the three strangers in. As they entered, Agnes Lovenberry wondered if in fact whether she was not still asleep.

  The three men in black top hats and long coats looked very much like undertakers. A shiver of fear ran down her spine. Perhaps she was not asleep at all, perhaps she was actually dead and having one of those out of body experiences she had read about in Take a Break magazine and these three had come to take her away!

  The confused thought resided, for a while, in her sleep muddled mind as she pinched her self hard and finally pulled herself back together as gust of cold wind and rain blew in from the doorway and convinced her that she was still very much alive. She slammed the door against the storm and turned to face her guests. They had removed their hats and she indicated that the hat stand was vacant. Obediently and without, a word the three trooped to the indicated object and considered it as if they had never seen one before.

  It was a relic of pointlessness to them, hats went on the floor or tables or chairs, but never on a strangely carved piece of wood. The scholar however, figured out what they were to do and placed the hats on the hooks and removed his own coat, then the coats of the others, and hung them on the adjoining coat pegs.

  Mrs. Lovenberry was wide awake now and observed the three men intently as they disrobed themselves. Without their long coats and hats the image of undertakers faded. The little chubby man wore baggy, black trousers and a dark blue waistcoat over his scarlet shirt. He was untidy and slightly dirty she noticed as he fumbled with his pocket watch.

  The large shouldered man with the huge nose amnd large teeth was crisp and clean. He trousers were of a good cut and quality and he too wore a waistcoat over a white ruffle necked shirt. But he made her extremely nervous, he had not taken his penetrating eyes off her ever since he had entered the house. He looked at her as if he had never seen an old woman before.

  The other man, if it were a man she thought, wore clothes which were of a feminine nature with frills of lace and embroidered flowers every where. He moved like a woman too, which added to her suspicions and his

  feminine features and well manicured, long fingernails finally convinced her that this was not a man at all or he was some sort of 'Nancy Boy', although of course you couldn’t use such names nowadays. He was the first to turn and move toward her. He bent down close to her face, his eyes looking directly into hers.

  “Are you ill?” he asked in a contradictory deep male voice. “I have the cure for all known ills." he licked his lips and smiled sympathetically at her. A loud throat clearing came from the area of the hat stand and Scoggins scowled and moved away from the old woman.

  Mrs. Lovenberry returned to her observations of the three men's attire and noticed their footwear. The two normal, if they were normal men, wore heavy hobnail boots, the other, slim pointed ones. Then she felt a sudden recognition of what she was seeing, it was like her childhood memories, her life was filled with memories of heavy boots, waistcoats, ruffs and top hats too! It was as if part of the past had come through her door tonight and stood in her parlour. The men stood now watching her and, realising that she was staring at them, she coughed nervously.

  “Oh I beg your pardons, your rooms of course." she said." Silly me, I nearly forgot" Agnes laughed nervously. "Follow me gentlemen."

  The plump old lady hobbled to the bottom of the stairs, her arthritic hips and knee joints cracking loudly in the near silence. Flax wondered whether or not to kill the freakish woman now. How could she have become so old, she was an abomination! In Dubh a woman was lucky to survive to her thirtieth birthday, the only way she could have survived, Flax reasoned, was that she had never been a rea
l woman at all or she would have been burned out by childbearing and male usage years ago, after all that was their purpose as women wasn't it?

  Then he realised that this wasn't Dubh at all and he had to be prepared for such strangeness, such perversity. Erring on the edge of caution, Flax decided that the old woman could live, at least for the time being. She might be missed and, after all, killing her wouldn't be much fun.

  Staring around him Flax realised he was now in a bar room. The tables were absent and had been replaced by an old and worn settee and two armchairs. The three High Hats followed Agnes Lovenberry as she made her way painfully across the well worn carpet into a small hall way between the bar room and the rest of the public house. Flax was suddenly hit by the silence in this place. Not even the sound of the pouring rain reached here and the absence of the familiar hum of machinery, which had always been part his life, unnerved him. He was used to the clamour and noise of the city, this tranquillity disturbed him. This was a strange world, he mused as he reflected on his short exposure to it, a quiet place where the men allowed their women to grow old, or more disturbingly, perhaps there were no men here. Not a nice place at all.

  Mrs. Lovenberry was now staggering half way up the stairs assisted by the Scholar. They chatted together as the Scholar skilfully extracted information about the old woman and her circumstances.

  He was doing well, Flax thought. Information was what he needed if he was to succeed in his mission here. He quietly congratulated himself on his choice of companion here. The Scholar already knew that she lived here alone, was a war widow. Her only contacts were a mad, drunken butcher called Victor and Mrs. Simpson, the infrequently visiting, interfering and perpetually nosey, or so Mrs. Lovenberry had said, social worker.

  She warned them about Victor. He was a big, aggressive, short tempered man who was at odds with the whole world and everyone in it, it seemed. They must avoid his bakery for it was a sacred place to him. No mortal, except he, could walk there, especially if they were from the environmental health office. On no account must they argue with him when he was drunk, which was most of the time of course.

  They had reached the landing now and Mrs. Lovenberry opened a door of flaky, green paint to her right. Scoggins inclined his head towards her suggestively and gave his master a thin smile. Flax knew what he meant and shook his head. Scoggins ground his teeth together again, his displeasure openly displayed.

  The door opened onto a long corridor which ran along the wall they had crept under and above where the bakery was situated, terminating in another green, brass handled door. The carpet in the corridor had been removed years ago and the bare floorboards groaned and squealed under their weight.

  The old woman opened the first three doors on the right, revealing three single rooms as she switched on the electric light in each, a surprise for all three, since such a form of illumination was rare in ordinary dwellings in Dubh.

  In the rooms all the furniture was covered in dust sheets which had been placed there twenty years ago. Mrs Lovenberry removed them with the Scholar's help, which raised clouds of dust into the air. Agnes coughed and sneezed profusely, attempting to apologise, and promising to clean up in the morning.

  All three rooms where the same, containing a dressing table, washstand, mirror, bed, small wardrobe and an armchair. Scoggins took the first room nearest the stair, Flax the second and the Scholar the third. Mrs. Lovenberry yawned and apologised for doing so, then wished them a good night before she retired to her own rooms through the door at the end of the corridor.

  After her light was extinguished, the second door opened and Silus Flax crept out of his room bootless and shirtless. He smiled contentedly to himself. It had been a good day, one that demanded celebration. He was here at last and safely ensconced in a strange world without any problems.

  He peered through the rain spattered first floor windows which gave him a clear view of the centre of the sleeping town. Strings of pearly white and amber light lit the streets, he was quietly surprised at the liberal use to which these people put their energy - either they had ample supplies or they were afraid of the darkness he much so loved. In Dubh, the Upper City had such light when excess energy was available, which was now seldom, and the Lower city depended on the use of oil lamps. Here it seemed all had the benefit t of such power. n the centre of the town the street, on which the 'inn' they were to spend the night stood, led to an open square in the middle of which stood a strange obelisk. It was obviously a giant stone phallus, Flax thought and gave it no more consideration. Beyond the square there was a great church, its tower and spire lancing into the darkness of the night sky. Another phallus he decided. The clock on the church tower struck three.

  Flax could remember the church bells of Dubh, it was not since his infant years that he had heard them. But now the churches and their bells had been silenced, empty forgotten husks devoid of congregations, consumed by Dubh's physical expansion and drained by its spiritual degeneration. The prospect of pleasure was the only thing which drew a congregation in Dubh now. The new Church of Hedonism, unshackled from any slavish morality, now the only religion.

  The sound of the bells receded and the memories of his childhood in Dubh too. So long ago it seemed, but now he was close to his goal. What made Flax different from the rest of the hedonists of Dubh was that he made his own rules, no Tan or Mek council ruled him and it was not just pleasure he pursued. It was that which made pleasure possible and that from which pleasure exuded - Power.

  Flax had power, but craved more and nothing and no-one would prevent him from having all the power he wanted, although, in truth, he knew that he could never be satisfied. He stared at the floodlit church. The poor wretches here were still slaves to false moralities which denied them their real essence, but their pain, fear and innocence would taste so sweet on the palate of evil beings such as him. Here he could be a god in his own paradise. He moaned at the prospect of what he might do to the unsuspecting here, then he laughed a single single syllable laugh. Tonight he needed a little celebration and he had brought it along with him, in the form of Ivor Scoggins.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The Scholar was woken early the following morning by a loud cursing from outside in the yard below. He dressed quickly and looked down into the courtyard to see an enormous, red faced man in a dirty red and

  white apron who was hurling small, blackened objects violently against the gates.

  “Fucking bollocks, fucking shit bollocks!" he howled in a highly agitated state. "They're ruined, fucking ruined" he almost sobbed as he examined the charcoaled remains of

  yesterday's work.

  With an unintelligible grunt, he turned his reddened face up to the window, where a puzzled spectator stood watching. The scholar looked into the visage of Victor the Mad Baker in full fury. His face was almost purple now, except for the red, bulbous, porey nose which contrasted with his wild shock of white hair.

  The baker's bloodshot eyes narrowed when he saw the fat, bald man looking down at him. He held up a ruined pie at him and shouted.

  "What d'you think y'staring at runt! Want a pie for y'fucking breakfast, eh!" he screamed, baring his brown teeth, and hurled the burned offering at the now frightened observer.

  The burnt pie rattled off the window frame and the scholar withdrew from the window taking in a deep breath. He turned and saw Mrs.Lovenberry shuffling down the corridor from the direction of the stairs and in the process of tying on a pinafore.

  “Ah " she said.” Good morning. Did you want breakfast, Mr. er, What was your name again." she inquired, unsure of whether they had been introduced the night before. “Scholar." said the pale faced little man who still had his eyes on the baker who had now begun to take out his frustration on the yard gates with his boot.

  “Ah, yes, Mr. Scholar of course, Breakfast?" she inquired.

  Mr. Scholar, as he had been newly titled, was tempted to explain that 'scholar' was not in fact his real name, just something that Flax
called him. His real name Pinky Makepeace, but he decided that he would keep the new title. It seemed to have a ring to it. “Yes, breakfast." Pinky replied, still watching the baker who now sat down by the gates with a bottle to his mouth." Breakfast" he repeated.

  He followed Mrs. Lovenberry down the stairs and into a room behind the bar. Agnes apologised for forgetting her guest's names, even though they had never given them to her, and inquired of the names of her other two guests.

  Even though she had not heard the names before, she repeated them after the Scholar with a false familiarity. It was old age she said, it played tricks with her memory. Would his friends be down for breakfast soon? she asked.

  Pinky the Scholar shook his head. They had along journey and were very, very tired, he explained. No, he thought, definitely not, judging from the moaning and groaning that had come from Scoggins's room the night before. They would be completely exhausted.

  At breakfast, Mr. Scholar wolfed down the somewhat alien food with relish. It was good, despite its unfamiliarity he thought, and continued to extract as much information about the place he found himself in by asking the old woman subtle questions.

  Mrs. Lovenberry was very obliging. Soon Mr. Scholar knew enough about the geography of the small town of Bramston to plan a trip to the local library. The old woman had mentioned it several times during his interrogation when stumped by some of his strange questions. It was “a place of books and knowledge, if you

  needed to know anything, you should go there." she had suggested.

  For her part Mrs. Lovenberry had many questions of her own to ask, but found them all adequately answered by the Scholar who had composed a cover story for thier sudden nocturnal appearance which he hoped the old woman would find plausible.