Mariah Mundi

by G. P. Taylor

  ‘But it’ll be worth it, Mister Luger. We will find your tormentor, and I have had news from London. Associates of mine have found the man you were looking for and are bringing him here right now. He was located on the steps of the Claridges Hotel and is now enclosed in a carriage that tramps the roads to this very place.’

  ‘What of the Panjandrum?’ Luger enquired cautiously, pulling nervously on his moustache. ‘The telegram was obviously vague. We cannot have our secrets displayed for the world,’ Grimm said. He pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket. ‘It says … all is well … bringing our friend from Claridges – surprised to find a postcard of the Prince Regent in his pocket.’

  ‘Someone is here. It all begins to fit into place. Sleep on, Mister Grendel, and find the thief and the Panjandrum,’ Luger commanded wistfully. ‘There is every chance he will be found and my suspicions confirmed.’

  ‘I tell you, Otto, it’s Bizmillah. He’s the one Grendel should be scoping out,’ Monica insisted.

  ‘Leave it to the master and he will soon have the answer. Mister Grendel is not dreaming, he has left his body and walks in another realm. He can see that which we cannot with our veiled eyes and there are those who also walk in that world who can show him the way to tread to find your answer,’ Grimm murmured, as if he did not want to be overheard by souls unseen to their eyes.

  Monica blushed and shuddered at the same time. She looked uncomfortable and stared around the room.

  ‘You say he can see things from the other side, things that ain’t human?’ she asked nervously.

  ‘Indubitably, Miss Monica. If there were a single ghost, ghoul or spectre then he would see it, and not only that but tell us where it had been. You see, all creatures leave behind them a trail,’ Grimm said as he took out a long case from his pocket and withdrew a pair of spectacles from within. ‘With humans it takes the form of heat. See, I have these spectacles that when tuned correctly can see the footsteps of someone long gone. All I need is to have the merest piece of the suspect, a hair or fragment of clothing, and I can stalk their track days after they have walked that way. These are said to have once belonged to an angel that tramped the streets of London, but that is just an improbable fiction.’

  ‘And when will he wake from his sleep?’ Monica asked feebly as she stood from the table and walked to the doorway.

  ‘Not long, he never takes long. Time is not time where he walks. It is compressed, shortened and of a spiral nature. Today and tomorrow are of the same place, linked sideways and not in a continuum. Moments here can be a lifetime elsewhere. Wherever elsewhere is, of course …’ Grimm spoke quickly, hoping his words would cover his own confusion.

  ‘CHILDREN!’ screamed Grendel viciously as he lurched from his dreaming. ‘What are you doing to the children?’ he sat bolt upright, staring at Luger. ‘All is not as it appears, Mister Luger. Bizmillah argued with one of your guests as your room was invaded by children.’

  ‘What?’ asked Luger urgently.

  ‘Two of them, a boy and a girl. They know more of this place than you would think. They are near, Mister Luger, very near. That is not all, is it, Miss Monica?’ Grendel said shakily as he stared at her.

  ‘Where are they now?’ Luger asked.

  ‘There!’ Grendel said calmly as he took his lion’s-head cane and pointed the tip to the gantry above their heads. ‘They are hiding and have listened to everything you have said.’

  Luger spun around and looked up, not noticing Monica slowly slipping from the room. ‘I can’t see them – are they ghosts?’

  ‘For the moment they are alive, Mister Luger, very much alive.’

  Mariah had heard enough. He pulled Sacha and ran across the gantry to the stone doorway on the other side.

  ‘Quickly!’ shouted Luger, bolting from his seat. He waddled as fast as he could, urging Grimm and Grendel to follow. Monica had vanished, slipping from the room and into the dark corridor. ‘There are stairs to the left. We must stop the children.’

  ‘They will not go far, Mister Luger. Not from London’s finest detectives.’

  [ 20 ]

  The Pearl of Great Price

  MARIAH didn’t wait for Sacha to run. He scuttled swiftly along the gantry like a chased rat, moving on all fours and keeping his face to the wall. From below he heard the sound of the slamming of the chamber door as Luger and the detectives rushed into the darkened corridor in an attempt to cut off their escape.

  ‘They have Felix – it’s true,’ Sacha said, holding the key she had been given by Old Scratty. ‘We have to get them out.’

  ‘They have Perfidious Albion as well. Did you hear them? That’s what we saw in the Panjandrum,’ he said as they stopped at a junction of four narrow tunnels just wide enough for one person to pass at a time.

  ‘It’s true what was in the cards about Felix and the oysters,’ Sacha said as she rested against the wall to regain her breath. ‘Which way shall we go?’

  Mariah looked this way and that. Far away he could hear clanging metal doors and footsteps beating against the stone. The sounds shuddered against the cold air as if coming from three directions at once.

  ‘That way,’ he said pointing to the narrowest tunnel that dropped steeply away and pushing Sacha ahead. ‘Grimm’s so fat he’ll never get down this way.’

  They ran on, flickering past the glistening lights that hung from the ceiling. The walls pressed in against them, narrowing to the width of their shoulders.

  ‘I don’t think this goes anywhere,’ Sacha said as she felt the rocks pressing in and stealing her breath. ‘If we go much further we’ll be trapped.’

  ‘Look at the floor, Sacha – footprints, all going the same way. Something has to be ahead of us.’

  Sacha felt the iron key twitch in her hand as if it wanted to be free. It seemed to pull her onwards as it searched for the lock that it knew was close by.

  ‘The key,’ Sacha said as it began to twist free from her fingers. ‘It has come to life.’

  Mariah looked on as the salt-rusted metal twitched and snagged back and forth, trying to break her grip. ‘Every key must find its lock,’ he said as the words appeared in his mouth. ‘Follow on. Let it go.’

  Sacha hooked her finger into the large rusted ring and let her grip loosen. It pulled quickly against her hand like a divining rod, as it dragging her on towards its lock. They followed on, the sound of Luger and the detectives coming nearer. The lights of the passage began to flicker and dim as they went deeper. The key pulled her forward like a wild horse in full flight, lifting her to the tips of her toes.

  Mariah followed, turning back to see if they were being pursued. The noise of the chase had fallen away. The chuntering of Grimm and Grendel had subsided into a far whisper. The slope on which they now ran steepened, the rocks breaking up under their feet into loose gravel. They were far away from the steam generator, and yet the throbbing of the machine reverberated through the solid rock. Every few paces, chunks of falling grit and stone crashed to the floor, smashing into tiny splinters like exploding shells about them.

  Sacha ran on, the key taking her deeper and darker into the tunnel. It juddered frantically, vibrating in her fingers and singing like a tuning fork. Piece by piece the fragments of crispy salt rust fell from the key as the pitch grew louder and louder. Far ahead they heard the note reply an octave lower, rumbling like a double bass.

  ‘We’re there,’ Mariah said as he chased behind her, clutching the pistol in his hand and wondering if he could ever use it against Grimm and Grendel. ‘Look ahead …’

  Forty feet away was a turn in the narrow passage that opened out into a hallway cut from the stone. It was as if a fault in the rock had split in two, opening into a small cave that had been hewn by hammer and chisel into a vaulted room. In front of them was a metal door with a large iron lock set in a wooden frame. In the centre of the door was a glass bull’s eye.

  The key knew it was home. It sung merrily to itself, altering its pitch to that of a
n excited song-thrush. In return, the mortise housing the lock hummed and buzzed loudly, awaiting what was to come. Sacha was dragged across the vault as the key slipped itself into the lock. It clunked home and shivered, turning itself several times in delight.

  The door slowly opened, creaking on two rusted hinges as if pushed by an unseen hand. A smell of sewage billowed into the cave as a sea-green mist leached across the floor.

  ‘Do you think there is another way out of here?’ Sacha asked as she tried to pull the key from the lock to no avail.

  ‘It’s a chance we’ll have to take, but I can’t see Luger being able to get in here through that tunnel. It looks as if the walls of rock were being pushed closer together.’

  Sacha went inside the narrow stone entrance as Mariah carefully examined the lock. He twisted the key back and forth, and with one taut shift it sheared in half, giving out a feeble twitter that melted away to nothing. He held the metal in his hand as he looked at the lock. The keyhole moulded into the metal plate as if it had never been. To his surprise, the key grew another head, the iron glittering with a blossom of sparks as if fresh from the foundry.

  ‘Look,’ he said as he held out the key to Sacha. ‘It’s just snapped off in the lock and now look at it.’

  The key looked fresh and newly made, the scaling rust all gone. It chirped in a higher note, warbling like a wagtail. Sacha took the key from him and pressed it into her pocket.

  ‘Changed to another lock?’ she asked as she felt the shape. ‘It’s different than before, just one solid piece.’ The key warbled as if in agreement, then, as quickly as it had sprung into life, fell silent again.

  ‘Whatever it’s doing, once we close this door it will never be opened from the outside,’ Mariah said as he slammed the thick metal plate against the rough stone. The door sealed them into the tunnel. Gone was the lanyard of bright lights and now they were in shadows of gloom, dimly lit by the blustering tallows that smouldered on bone plates stuck into the wall like a hundred teeth. Each was smeared in thick wax from the remnants of a thousand candles. All were at a height just above the floor, so as Mariah and Sacha walked by their flickering shadows were cast against the roof of the tunnel.

  Here there was no breeze. The heat was intense and a soft glowing mist threaded between their feet. They stumbled on; Mariah took off his jacket and slung it over his shoulder. In one hand he held the pistol, the metal cool and smooth against his ruddy-blistered fingertips.

  ‘So we go to find Felix?’ Sacha asked as she led the way. ‘He’s been a prisoner all this time.’

  ‘Chosen by Luger because he found out what was going on,’ Mariah replied.

  ‘Then it’ll be the same for us,’ Sacha said quickly. ‘Wouldn’t be surprised if there are two wax manikins already, one for me and one for you. We’ll end up as slaves. Shovelling poop and up to our knees in oysters.’

  ‘Then at least you’ll be with your Felix,’ Mariah said cuttingly.

  ‘So why the manikins?’ Sacha asked, ignoring his remark. ‘What do you think Luger could be doing with wax dolls?’

  Mariah didn’t reply. He thought for several paces as he mulled the image of the wax doll over in his mind. The sarcophagus was filled with black sharp sand, and the manikin fashioned to look like a boy. He looked down and saw a pool of tallow melting on the hard white bone of a candle-holder, seeping across its surface in long thin dribbles.

  ‘Luger’s smuggling the pearls out of England inside the manikins,’ he said, as if he had suddenly discovered some wonderful secret. ‘It has to be that. Just think, here we are in a seaport. Ships come in and out every day. Luger sends the pearls to France by boat disguised in the waxworks and hidden in the coffins. Who’d want to look in one of those to check if something had been hidden inside?’

  ‘My father…’ Sacha said softly. ‘It’s his job to check the cargo of everything that comes and goes from the harbour.’

  ‘But I thought he was a coastguard?’ Mariah asked.

  ‘That and a customs officer. It’s all part of the same job. Defending the coast and stopping the smugglers,’ she said. ‘Sometimes he’s been known to turn a … blind eye.’

  ‘To the smugglers?’ Mariah asked.

  ‘To everyone. It’s a small place and we have ways of doing things you wouldn’t understand. Doesn’t make him a crook, letting the odd gallon of brandy come from the sea and over the pier wall,’ she said indignantly. ‘How do you think I really got the job here? It wasn’t because of my hard work. Luger knows my father; they drank together and played cards. Ever since he came they’ve been pally. Only stopped drinking away the night when Miss Monica turned up. An American and an Irishman – Luger said they had something in common.’

  ‘It looks like it was more than a sniff of the barmaid’s apron,’ Mariah snivelled as he pushed past and went on ahead.

  The narrow tallow-lit passage soon opened out into a large cavern, criss-crossed by metal gantries that ran across the high vaulted roof. It looked like the inside of an idle factory built into the side of an immense cliff. Sacha and Mariah stood on a high metal platform overlooking a brown lagoon of steaming water. All was quiet except for the gentle lapping of small waves that spilled from a faucet in the rock wall. They looked about them; there was no sign of Luger or the detectives.

  On the far side of the cavern was a small wooden door with an even smaller metal grate cut into its centre. Mariah could make out a shadowy face pressed against the bars as if to suck at the stagnant air that filled the chamber. Two white hands gripped on to the thin metal lattice as the face peered out.

  ‘Felix,’ he whispered to Sacha. ‘Over there, behind the door.’

  ‘FELIX!’ Sacha shouted, her words vibrating around the cavern. ‘We can get you out.’

  ‘No,’ came the muttered reply. ‘Not safe …’

  Sacha looked frantically for a way from the gantry. To her right was a narrow flight of metal stairs that fell steeply to a shingle path leading to the door. She ran quickly and scurried down the steps, clattering against each tread.

  ‘NO!’ shouted Felix as he rattled the grate, pulling against the door. ‘Go back, go back!’

  Sacha pressed on, ignoring his shouts, taking the metal steps two at a time as Mariah raced on behind her. In the hot muddy water a single eye, woken from its sleep, peered up at her. It squinted just above the surface of the water and with a swish of its long tail moved silently closer.

  ‘Stay back!’ Felix shouted again in desperation, knowing what was to come. ‘Ixion will find you – a crocodile, in the water.’ His words echoed around the vault.

  Mariah stopped and stared into the thick brown pool looking for a sign of the beast. The water was still but for two insignificant ripples that shimmered for a moment and then were gone.

  ‘Sacha, stop!’ Mariah shouted, knowing that below the dark surface lay the waiting beast. ‘Come back.’

  There was a sudden sharp blow that knocked Sacha from her feet, pushing her to the waters edge.

  ‘Ixion!’ shouted Felix as he rattled helplessly on the door.

  The beast fell back into the water in a swirl of mud, turning to strike again. Sacha got to her feet, unaware that the creature was about to assail again. High above, Mariah aimed the pistol at the churning water. Ixion launched itself again from the pool, pushing higher, teeth-filled mouth gaping wide and hopeful. There was a dull thud as the pistol let its shot. It cracked around the cave like a bolt of thunder. It stilled the moment and the beast fell across the shingle path, staring at Sacha. It panted, unperturbed by the blood that trickled from the cut across the side of its cheek. Then it raised itself to the tips of its dragon’s legs and stood as if it were a racing hound ready to give chase.

  ‘Stay still,’ Felix said softly. ‘It can only see with one eye. Luger cut out the other with a sword when it attacked him.’

  Mariah turned the chamber of the pistol and pulled the hammer to fire again. There was a dull click as the hammer struck
the spent cap. He aimed the gun and pulled the trigger four more times. Each one clicked the sound of its emptiness, its shell spent and fire gone. ‘No more bullets, Sacha. I can’t help you …’

  She stood motionless, staring eye to eye with the crocodile. It grinned its crocodile smile and shed a single tear from its eye. Then, with dragon steps, it paced slowly towards her as it sniffed the air.

  Sacha stepped back towards the staircase of the gantry, holding out her hand to grasp for the rail. The crocodile paced faster, sensing she was there, somewhere very near. Grunting to itself, barking like a dog and dribbling mucus and spit from its multitude of razor teeth, it crunched closer along the path.

  Mariah crept along the gantry and down the steps as silently as he could, crouching as he stalked towards Sacha.

  Ixion drew even closer, giving a final sniff to the air and hunching his long scaled back as he prepared to strike. He twitched and shivered, bristling his sharp scales and stiffening his tail. Sacha screamed and stumbled backwards, knowing what was to come, sensing the anger as the creature stared at her and flared its nostrils.

  There was a scrabble of shingle as Ixion leapt at Sacha. Its skull twisted as the two long jaws quickly opened, ready to snap at her neck. The crocodile leapt its own length in a single stride as it pushed forward. Sacha fell backwards and the creature soared towards her.

  With one hand, Mariah suddenly pulled her back and on to the staircase. Ixion fell short and his jaws clamped shut. He landed upon the shingle and then slipped into the mud, scrabbling against the side of the oyster lagoon with his claws. Sacha got to her feet and turned to run as the creature snapped at the air and pulled itself from the water. She panicked as it gripped the bottom rung of the metal staircase, twisting and shaking it and writhing back and forth.

  Mariah dragged her higher, shouting and screaming for her to run. She was stiffened with fear, every part of her refusing to obey her mind as her heart raced faster. The crocodile pulled itself from the lagoon and on to the staircase. It gurgled and spat muddy water from its thickset jaws, appearing to smile at the fleeing girl.