Mariah Mundi

by G. P. Taylor

  ‘And look here,’ Mariah said pointing to some missing mortar where the new met the old. ‘I can smell the sea and feel the breeze.’ Sacha stepped forward, the candle suddenly blustering in the whistling draught that seethed through the narrow slit. ‘A way out,’ he boasted. ‘Should be easy to knock our way through and see what is on the other side.’

  ‘There could be nothing,’ Sacha moaned. ‘Could be full of rubble or sand.’

  ‘It could be a way out. It’s either this way or fighting old Pagurus,’ Mariah said earnestly as he flicked out several pieces of damp mortar with his fingertip. ‘If I just get one brick free then the rest should follow.’

  ‘And the whole place fall upon our head,’ she moaned again.

  ‘Pagurus?’ Mariah asked. He held out his hands to mimic two large claws as if this would give steel to her decision.

  Sacha handed him the candle and took the broken pick from the rubble-covered floor. ‘I’m Irish, born with a pick in my little fingers and English persecution on my back. Never give a boy a man’s work.’ Sacha smiled as she swung the short handle of the rusted iron claw and with a sudden sharp blow smashed it into the bricks. ‘There,’ she said in a satisfied voice as rubble and mortar fell to the floor. ‘That’ll be your first one out of the way.’

  Mariah looked through the small hole that had appeared at waist height in the brick wall. In the light of the candle he could see several stone columns, each one supporting the floor above. He could hear the sound of the steam generator close by as it huffed and pumped faster and faster.

  Sacha pulled him clear and in two swift strokes had forged a hole big enough for them to enter in. She dropped the pickaxe and wiped the dust from her hands on Mariah’s sleeve, then she struck another Lucifer.

  Mariah walked ahead on the hot dry sand that covered the floor. From the meagre light he could only see a few feet ahead and it looked as if the ruins went on into the distance. Following some inner feeling, he instinctively allowed himself to be drawn in the way of the steam generator. Every other pace he looked to see if Sacha followed. There she was, an arm’s length behind, key in hand.

  They threaded their way through the stone columns, the hiss of the steam calling them on and the heat reddening their faces and wetting their brows. Mariah held the melting candle above his head, hoping that the light would claw its way further into the distance and that he would see some other light. After a short while he looked behind like he had done so many times and realised that he was alone. Sacha had gone. A sense of panic rushed through his body, setting his senses on fire and stealing his breath. He turned suddenly as a shadow chilled him, like a hand about to strike. The sound of the generator quickly turned into the breath of a beast as his wits twisted, each wheeze and exhalation becoming its grunting.

  Shadows danced from the flickering candle as his eyes invented strange creatures from benign gloom. In two paces he could feel the blood drain from his heart and his lip began to quiver. In the half-light of the flickering wax candle he tried to call out Sacha’s name but all that came was a sullen murmur.

  ‘Sacha …’ he said again as he clawed the spittle back into his mouth and coughed to free the icy grip that had seized his throat. ‘Sacha …’

  In the ruins there was complete silence. Mariah pressed himself to the wall, fearfully looking this way and that to catch some glimpse of his friend. It was then that he saw a glow many yards away. By the base of a stone column was a small fire. Hunched over the glow was a dark figure.

  ‘Sacha?’ he asked, hoping she would turn and smile at him and he would no longer be alone.

  She turned and waved him to her with one hand. Mariah ran quickly from column to column, stopping at each before he took another pace. He saw that what at first he had thought to be a fire was an old glass lamp, full to its brim with blue-whale oil. It gave a warm light and lit her face. Sacha sat quietly looking into the gloom.

  ‘Why did you go?’ he asked.

  ‘When I struck the match I saw something. It glinted. You had gone ahead and I just had to come and see.’ In her hand she held a black leather wallet encrusted in salt. It was stuffed with crisp five-pound notes all neatly folded. ‘I found this,’ she said as if the value mattered not. ‘And something else.’

  Sacha pointed to the wall that stood four paces behind. In the deep dusk, Mariah saw the outline of a man lying in the sand, a salted top hat placed next to him. He raised the candle and cast its light upon the body. It shone against the crisp white bone skull and glistened upon the skeletal fingers.

  ‘He’s dead,’ Mariah said with a degree of certainty.

  ‘He’s certainly not well,’ Sacha mocked. ‘And more than that, he’s supposed to be running this hotel.’

  Mariah didn’t ask what she meant. Sacha was already holding out a calling card in its neat silver case and a folded envelope.

  ‘Otto Luger,’ she said as she gave the card to Mariah. ‘I glanced at the letter – it’s to him. I think he was murdered.’

  Mariah looked again at the corpse. It was picked perfectly clean. Every ounce of skin and tissue had been gnawed from the bone. The suit of fine clothes lay in a tattered pile upon the thick bones. The jaw of the skull had fallen open and the once proud head had tilted to the side. There to see were three small round holes neatly placed in the temple.

  ‘The knife again?’ Mariah asked, not afraid of the pile of bones. ‘Who could have done something like this?’ he asked, unable to take his eyes from the corpse, lured by its deep fascination. It was as if the skeleton had never walked, talked or had life. Lying there in the hot sand it was as hard as the stones that lay about it and as lifeless. It held no threat, only allurement. The gore had been dried or eaten or had soaked away. There was no trace of the stench of death and those bones that were visible shone as if they had been washed in egg glaze.

  ‘How can it be Otto Luger?’ Mariah asked.

  ‘I found the hat. It’s inscribed with his name and the letter too. It has to be him.’ Sacha sounded certain as she looked at the crisp piece of white paper in her hand. ‘It’s to Luger and it’s not signed. Listen.’ Sacha began to read the missive. It was scrawled in an unsteady hand in shaky black ink. The paper was embossed with a crown and two lions, and in the murk she could make out the words Claridges Hotel. She coughed before she spoke. ‘Dear Otto, something has brought dissatisfaction to my door. I need to see you urgently. If we are to continue in our venture then you must meet me tonight …’ Sacha held out the note for him to see. ‘It has to be Otto Luger, and whoever is running the hotel is …’ She didn’t say another word. Mariah had gone to Otto’s carcass and lifted the hand. He carefully slipped a gold ring from its third finger and held it to the oil lamp.

  ‘It’s the same as Luger’s, a ring with a swan crest. A gold sovereign, wedged on his fat finger. Two the same – one on a dead man, the other on the living,’ Mariah said as he put the ring in his pocket.

  ‘Leave it Mariah, you can’t take from the dead.’

  ‘I’m sure he wanted us to find out who did this to him. When all this is over we can do what is right and give him a proper send-off. Captain Charity would see to that, I’m sure he would.’ Mariah spoke quietly as he looked at the glistening bones and wondered what he would have looked like. From the cut of the fine suit he could see that the corpse would have been the same size as Otto Luger and dressed in the same elegant style. Even the shoes bore a remarkable similarity to those that had squeaked along the corridor when Mariah had hidden away behind the aspidistra. Whoever was the owner of the Prince Regent, they had a strong resemblance in height and frame to the skeleton that now rested against its foundations. ‘We better search him for anything else,’ Mariah said as he got to his knees and rifled the pockets of the empty suit.

  ‘Done that,’ Sacha gasped as if she wanted to hide something from him.

  ‘And?’ he asked in expectation.

  ‘It’s this.’ She opened the palm of her hand and there,
glowing like a bright full moon in a dark sky was a large cream pearl the size of a chestnut. ‘It’s a sea pearl. I found it in his pocket.’

  ‘You can’t take from the dead, Sacha,’ Mariah scoffed.

  ‘It must be worth a hundred pounds. With that and the money in the wallet it’s more than I would earn in a lifetime’

  ‘Enough for a man to die for at least,’ he said as he picked the pearl from her palm and held it to the light. ‘But it wouldn’t be come by honestly. Better to starve than steal your bread.’

  Her face shone like the bright pearl as together they gazed upon it. In her heart she said goodbye to all that she dreamed it would have brought her. As Mariah held it in his fingers, the desire slowly left her. She felt as if she had held the answer to her meagre life in her hand, that the shackles of poverty had fallen from her. Now in her honesty she felt as if she had picked up the manacles and placed them back upon her wrists, double-bolting them to remain for life.

  ‘If I had sold the pearl,’ Sacha mumbled, ‘I could have left this place and never worked again.’

  ‘And forever had the image of that corpse dancing in your dreams to remind you of where it came from,’ Mariah said as he gave the pearl back to her. ‘Take it, change your life and see what good it would do you.’

  Sacha held the pearl in her palm and felt its warmth. Holding her hand to her mouth, she squeezed it deeply into her skin.

  ‘A pearl of great price,’ Mariah said as he searched the floor where the body lay. ‘There must be something to tell us what happened here.

  ‘He was murdered,’ Sacha gasped out.

  ‘Well, but not for his money, all that and a pearl.’

  ‘For the Prince Regent?’ she asked.

  ‘And whatever secret this place keeps locked within its walls,’ Mariah said as the candle finally melted away in his hand. ‘If this really is Otto Luger, then the man who masquerades in his identity is the one who did this to him. Do you think you could find this place again?’ he asked as he bent to examine the body once more.

  ‘I could try. But for what reason?’

  ‘So we can show Jack Charity. He’ll know what to do. He’ll tell someone who can sort the whole thing out,’ Mariah replied as he opened the coat and looked at the crisp white shirt that lay beneath covering the boned ribs. Just above the heart were three small puncture wounds cut into the fabric; around each was the slightest smear of faded blood. ‘He died quickly. Not much blood.’ He pulled the shirt to one side. There, tucked into the trouser belt was a pearl-handled pistol. ‘Otto Luger carried a gun,’ Mariah said as he carefully picked the pistol from the belt, blew from it a thick covering of salt and checked the chamber. ‘And he never used it. So he was either surprised by or knew who would kill him. Brought down here and then killed for what he had.’

  ‘So why did they leave him?’ Sacha asked.

  ‘Bricked him into here and thought he would never be found. If it hadn’t had been for the Pagurus we would never have come this way. There must be another way out …’ Mariah lifted the oil lamp and watched the lamp flame flickering in the unseen draught. ‘We can’t go back.’

  He turned and walked on with the lamp, this time checking that Sacha was still near by. Sacha quickly stuffed the wallet into her deepest pocket. She patted her frock coat and gripped the pearl in her hand. In the distance she could see the light picking its way through the stone columns into the darkness. She followed on, every now and then putting the pearl to her lips as Mariah traced the breeze.

  Soon they had reached the far wall of the ruin. It was made of the same hand-cut stone that had been Otto Luger’s tomb for so long. Here there were just two granite columns holding up the roof. A thick covering of hot sand swathed the floor. In the amber glow of the oil lamp, it was just how Mariah had imagined the surface of the moon when he had stared up in his saturnine melancholy so many times from the garden of the Colonial School.

  As he looked at the shadowed sand beneath his feet, the long-forgotten September nights came back to him. In his mind he was taken back to standing on the grass banks of the Thames and looking out as the full moon rose up from the spindly fingers of the trees on the distant shore. Its light turned the sky to black and the world to shivering silver. Like a giant face it would stare upon him, pock-marked and frowning a sombre smile as it thinned in its rising. Mariah would look back and hope, knowing that it shone on others whose fate he could not guess. He would stand out the hour, his toes chilling as the deep dew crystallised the grass beneath his feet. Then he would turn his dazzled and moon-burnt face to the earth. There about him, standing like so many gravestones, markers of their own bereavements, would be many children. All would be in silence, as if the luminary had commanded them to join him in veneration. Mariah would say nothing; he knew their thoughts for their hearts burnt like his own. In the gloom, walking as if from the passing of a friend, he would tramp his way mournfully through the damp grass. Thoughts of a faraway place, a sanded desert that lit the sky, were etched in his mind. But as soon as his feet crunched the coarse grit that covered the drive of the Colonial School, all such considerations would be gone and he would set his mind on what was to come.

  ‘There should be another way,’ he muttered to himself as the world came back to him. ‘Check by the wall, I can feel a breeze but can’t tell which way it comes from.’

  Sacha searched the shadows by the wall and moved her hands across the stone along each line of mortar. Somewhere nearby she could feel the quick movement of the sea-tainted breeze.

  ‘Here!’ Mariah fell to his knees and held the lamp above a small pile of sand that bubbled and hissed as a strong draught fermented through each particle to form a small volcano-like mound. ‘Come and dig!’

  Sacha began to scrabble in the dirt as Mariah scooped handfuls of hot sand away from the geyser of hot air that blew through the floor. Quickly they found a lattice of small stones that gurgled like a narrow stream as the air gushed through each one.

  ‘It must be a way to the floor below,’ Mariah said as he now picked larger rocks from the ever-widening hole.

  ‘Could be nothing there,’ Sacha replied. The rocks grew hotter and began to char her fingertips.

  ‘Listen,’ Mariah said, gesturing for her to be silent. ‘I can hear the steam generator.’

  Coming from the hole was the sound of the generator. It was louder and more urgent than they had heard it before. It was as if they sat within the boiling tank of a large steamship that pushed its way against a high sea. The churning of the engine was timed by sharp jets of air that bubbled through the rocks. Mariah dug even quicker, picking the hot rocks with his reddening fingertips.

  Then his hand struck against a strip of hot black metal. He perched himself upon a lintel of thick stone as he picked away the rocks from each side of a thick grate. ‘Must be an air vent to the generator,’ Mariah said to Sacha as she piled the stones from the hole behind her. ‘If I can get my finger around the bar and pull then we shall be able to …’

  Mariah had no time to finish his words. Suddenly and without warning, the vent gave way and the hole quickly began to deepen. He scrabbled for a footing as Sacha was sucked by the cascading stones deeper into the hole, slipping by him and into the darkness without a chance to scream. She vanished from his sight into the chasm that opened up beneath and swallowed her without a trace. With both hands he grabbed at the rocks, hoping to pull himself from the avalanche. It plucked at him as he teetered on the lintel, a torrent of shingle and sand dragging him deeper. Mariah could hear stones falling and clattering far below as they pelted through the opened vent. With every second he slipped deeper. The lamp that had lighted their progress spilt its blue-whale oil upon the rocks and this burst into bright flame all around him, catching his sleeve in a ghostly fire as his feet slipped from their perch.

  Mariah reached out, away from the flames, his footing lost in the streaming rock. Falling, he grabbed the stone lintel that was buried deep in the sand. H
e dangled from his fingers as stone upon stone pounded his head. The rock burnt against his palm as he clawed and dangled in the blackness. One by one the tips of his fingers broke their grasp. Mariah hung like an old puppet.

  From above his head he heard the sound of shifting stone as if the whole floor was beginning to move. The lintel juddered as it slowly tilted towards him. He gripped it tighter, finding a firm hold against a piece of jagged rock that fitted his hand. Mariah looked below. The darkness went on forever, clouded by billowing spouts of hot dust. Nearby, the throb of the steam generator hissed out its heartbeat.

  ‘Mariah!’ came a shout from below. ‘I’m trapped …’

  He could hold on no longer. The heat loosened his grip, his sweated fingers slipped from the rock as hot blisters burst on each tip. In one breath he tried to scream, then fell silently into the bottomless pitch of the black hole.

  [ 19 ]

  Camarilla

  THE wheezing of the steam generator appeared to come from somewhere nearby. Mariah sat in complete blackness, unable to see a hand in front of his face. He rubbed his palm over his eyes, hoping he could push away the dark veil and see the world again. It was no use; all was covered in smothering gloom.

  The chamber into which Mariah had tumbled was much cooler and the subterranean breeze stronger. He sat on a pile of sand and shingle, breathing slowly and listening to the echoing sound as he wondered what he could do. The trickle of slipping shingle finally stopped as the hole above his head filled itself, the lintel holding back yet another fall of rock. A slow dribble of sticky blood seeped across his forehead. Instinctively he touched the wound with his raw-fleshed fingertips. He coughed loudly, the dust from the rockfall filling his nostrils and swirling about him.

  ‘Sacha!’ he shouted, the walls whispering back to him. ‘Are you here?’ There was no reply.

  Wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his coat, Mariah slid from the pile of stones, knowing he would have to fumble blindly to find an escape. His hands felt their way in the darkness, painfully touching each stone as he slithered sideways across the scree. He felt the gun in his pocket and clicked the hammer gently back and forth as he listened to the wind seething through the darkness. As he lay against the pile of stones, unaware of what was about him, not even which way was up or down, his mind whirred and tumbled and spun dizzily as he stared wide-eyed into sightlessness.