by Daniel Diehl
“Odd.” Merlin seemed to be talking almost as much to himself as to the others; stroking his beard and staring at the ceiling. “I’m sure I remember hearing that name somewhere before.”
“Well, dearie, if you have I’m certainly impressed. Almost nobody knows about Haeferingdune. There was another village built here later, called by the name of Haveringdown – a corruption of Haeferingdune - but it was a different place entirely.”
“No. I mean Haeferingdune. I’m sure I’ve heard that name and just can’t place it. Ah, well. I’m sure it will come to me eventually.” He offered a small, apologetic smile to Mrs Rainbird. “I’m sorry, please continue.”
“Actually, that’s about it. Oh, but you wanted to know about the caves, didn’t you?” When the others all urged her on, she continued. “Well, the caves were already old when the Dashwoods came here. They date back to Neolithic stone age times when they were some kind of mines, or something, and later the Romans used them as mines, too. But I think the troubles started sometime after the Romans left around 350 AD.”
“Troubles?” Jason posed the simple question but all three of them leaned forward expectantly.
“All I know – all anybody seems to know - though almost nobody else will talk about it - is that between the end of the Roman period and oh, shortly after the year 600 when St Birinus converted everybody here about to Christianity, there was some kind of pagan site of worship either here on Haveringdown Hill or down there.” She pointed one index finger directly toward the flagstone floor.
All eyes followed her finger but it was Jason who looked at her and asked, “Hell?”
Mrs Rainbird laughed until she had to wipe tears from her eye. “Good gracious no, lad. You’re as bad as some of the locals. I mean the mines – Francis Dashwood’s caves. They’re right directly under us, inside the hill. People liked Sir Francis but it terrified them to work in his mines, but they had no choice. Without the work they would have starved and the only work was in the mines, quarrying stone for the road and then carving out his gents club.”
Three pairs of eyes locked on Agnes Rainbird but it was Merlin who spoke. “Madame, do you mean to tell us that we are, quite literally, directly on top of the Hellfire caves?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. That’s why people round here go all funny when you ask about the caves. See, there’s always been something not quite right about them and it bothers folks to think that their village church stands on top of them. Makes them all uneasy, like. It’s not Sir Francis Dashwood that frightens people; it’s the other things, old things, bad things, things best not brought up.”
Merlin leaned forward and very gently laid his hand on the woman’s arm. “Madame, are these caves open to the public?”
“Oh, my, no. They were, on and off, years ago. But it just never worked out somehow. Too off-putting. People didn’t like going there. Nobody’s been there now for donkey’s years.”
“Do you happen to know who owns them?”
“No idea. Local council keeps them boarded up and pays one of the gamekeepers to check on them now and again but I’ve no idea who actually owns them; I don’t think anybody knows any more. I can tell you how to get there…although I’ll also tell you it probably isn’t wise to go.”
“You’re very kind, and we appreciate your concern, but we really need to see those caves. Can you tell us where, exactly, the entrance is?”
“The road’s mostly all grown over so you might as well leave your car here and walk. Just follow the roadway back down the hill and walk round the base of the hill till you come to the ruined abbey.”
“There was an abbey there?”
“Oh, no. That was just one of Sir Francis’ little jokes. It was just a folly he had put up for his Hellfire club friends.”
Mrs Rainbird hardly finished speaking before Jason, Merlin and Beverley were putting on their coats, thanking her effusively for the information, and heading toward the door.
Halfway down Haveringdown Hill the overgrown remains of a crudely cobbled road branched off to the left, meandering through the trees where it was quickly swallowed by undergrowth and bracken. With Jason taking the lead, the three stepped over the vines, weeds and creepers growing through cobblestone pavement that would probably have been drivable but the Mini would have struggled not to bottom-out in the chuckholes.
They had circumnavigated nearly half of the hill’s diameter when their destination appeared on the left, nestled deep into the hillside. On a huge shelf carved into the chalky hill stood what appeared to be the ruins of a medieval chapel. Backed by a steep cliff covered with ancient yew trees and cascading undergrowth, a single arched gable punctuated by an ornate, three-panel window abutted the hill; sidewalls pierced by round windows, arched doorways and what appeared to be the remnants of still more buildings, extended forward on either side of the folly’s central wall. In the middle of the main gable wall a doorway leading directly into the cliff face had been crudely boarded over with a sheet of plywood. Once kept as neat, tidy and well-tended as any rich man would expect his garden to be, the neglected folly’s profusion of overgrowth made it look even more like a ruin that it had during the hey-day of the notorious Hellfire club. When they first spotted this monumentally elaborate garden ornament, Jason, Beverley and Merlin all stopped dead in their tracks, staring in wonder.
“It’s brilliant.”
“Brilliant, indeed, my dear. I must say, our warrior who was not a warrior certainly knew how to create a monumentally effective first impression.”
Crunching through the tall grass and underbrush, Jason pushed aside a few errant scrub trees, calling over his shoulder “I guess I better see if I can find a way into this place. We do want to go in, don’t we?”
“Absolutely, my boy.” Merlin followed Jason’s footsteps through the weeds while pausing to extend a steadying hand to Beverley. “Confirming our suppositions is the whole purpose of this little journey.”
Examining the edge of the decaying plywood, searching for a loose nail or gap in which to insert his fingers, Jason paused long enough to turn toward Merlin. “So what, exactly, do we expect to find in here? I mean, how are we supposed to find an invisible gateway?”
“I don’t think finding the gate is necessary today. All we need at this point is proof that dragons have passed through here at some time in the past.”
Closing his eyes and shaking his head, Jason countered “How is it that you always manage to sidestep logical questions in favor of illogical answers?”
“I have never given you any reason to assume that wizardry is logical because it’s not. It’s intuitive.”
Jason shook his head again and began tugging on the plywood sheeting, causing his voice to come in short, ragged breaths. “Amazing. Just amazing.” On the third tug the nails holding the old wood in place began pulling through the rotted surface of the plywood. “We’re supposed to save the world not with logic,” tug, tug, “but with intuition.” Finally the wood released its fight to keep the caves sealed and came away with a wet, tearing sound, before crashing to the ground. Catching his breath and offering a low, sweeping bow, Jason extended one hand toward the gaping black hole in the hillside. “Your cave awaits.” Then, arching one eyebrow as he helped Merlin and Beverley across the slimy sheet of fallen plywood, he muttered “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.”
In front of them a low, vaulted passage, its walls hewn nearly smooth by long dead workmen, extended into the bowels of the hillside. Within fifty feet of the yawning entrance the feeble February light gave up the effort to illuminate, surrendering the tunnel to complete darkness.
Standing in the mouth of the cave, Beverley stared at Jason. “Ok, so did you happen to bring a torch? I didn’t.”
While she waited for an answer, Merlin pulled back one coat sleeve and flexed his fingers.
“Watch this.” Jason said, nodding toward Merlin. “He did this in Mongolia; it’s really cool.”
As th
e old mage slowly rotated his wrist, two tiny points of pale, golden incandescence appeared in the air ahead of him. While Jason and Beverley stared at the dots of light they grew and expanded, increasing in brilliance as they enlarged. In less than a minute the twin floating orbs had become bright enough to illuminate a thirty foot section of tunnel.
“Come. Follow the light. We don’t need to keep up with it; it will adjust its pace to ours.”
Squealing with delight, Beverley gave Merlin a quick hug and fell in line between him and Jason.
Even in the shimmering half-light, they could see where centuries of calcium-laden water had run down the walls, leaving black, slimy trails flecked with dark, nasty looking fungus and blooming with cancerous looking blotches of lichen. The deeper they moved into the cave the thicker and more abundant the unhealthy looking blemishes became. When they had traveled nearly a hundred feet into the mountain, the tunnel narrowed slightly, the offset on either side bearing a carved likeness of a hideous grotesque head that glared at passersby with huge, blank eyes.
“Oh, look. It’s Boris Karloff doing Frankenstein.” Beverley grabbed Jason’s arm and pointed to the ugly carving.
“More importantly…” Merlin stepped forward a few paces, indicating another carving slightly higher up on the tunnel wall. “”Look here. It’s the Roman numeral for twenty-two that your friend Mr Bunny was telling us about.”
“But this one doesn’t have the letter ‘F’ after it. Maybe Bunny was wrong about that.”
As they progressed deeper and deeper into the tunnel, they found dozens of the carved grotesque heads and an occasional Roman numeral XXII – sometimes followed by the letter F and sometimes not. The deeper they went the quieter it became; the only discernible noise being the constant, hollow plopping sound of water dripping from the cave ceiling to pool on the floor as it leached through the chalk hill under the cemetery of St Lawrence Church far above them. At nearly two hundred feet deep, and again at six hundred feet, the passageway split, first forming a ring shape, like a donut, and later dividing into a number of small niches that Merlin identified as probably being Neolithic or Roman era catacomb tombs. It was in the catacombs that Beverley first thought she heard the tiny squeaking sounds.
“What is that?”
“What? I don’t hear anything.”
Just as Jason stepped next to her, putting a comforting arm around her waist and straining to hear what she had heard, the sound came again. This time it was accompanied by three tiny pairs of shiny red eyes moving around near floor level, at the furthest edge of Merlin’s floating light. As the fairy lights approached, the eyes scurried left and right, anxious to stay in the darkness but refusing to surrender their ground.
“Oh, God, Jason,” Beverley screamed, jumping backward, clinging to Jason’s arm. “Rats.”
“Hey, Merlin, are these rats real or not?”
Ignoring the scurrying, squealing rodents, Beverley stared at Jason like he had lost his mind. “What are you talking about? Do something; chase them away.”
Merlin stepped around the corner of a catacomb and looked at the ugly little creatures. “These rats are real, Jason.”
“Oh, fuck, I thought…”
“Here, here. Calm down, both of you. They won’t hurt you.” Merlin stepped forward, knelt down on the floor and quietly called the trio of rats toward him. He leaned forward, whispered something to them and before he could stand up they had disappeared into the darkness. “Happy?”
“I thought…”
“What the hell did you mean ‘are these rats real’? What did you think they were?” Beverley punched him on the arm twice in frustration.
“In Mongolia the rats weren’t real and he just made them disappear.”
Scowling in the darkness, Beverley shook her head and mumbled, “You must have had a very strange time in Mongolia.”
“You really can’t imagine, Babe.”
“Come on, you two. We have work to do.”
With Merlin leading the way out of the catacombs, the trio followed the tunnel as it made a sharp right turn and began a steep assent for less than a dozen yards before opening into a massive, circular chamber with a high domed ceiling. Pacing off the room, Jason guessed it had to be at least forty feet in diameter and it was certainly higher than it was wide.
“I guess this must have been the dining room; what do you think, Merlin?” When he received no answer, Jason shifted his gaze from the ceiling to scan the room. “Merlin? Hey, where’d you go?”
“Back here, my boy.”
Following the sound of the old man’s voice toward a series of small passageways clustered along one wall, Jason found himself in a maze of tiny closet-sized compartments where Merlin stood poking his head into one cubicle after another. “What the hell is this?”
“I have no idea. Never have I seen such an odd structure with so many apparently meaningless spaces. Ah, well, no time to contemplate the vagaries of rich men’s fancies. Shall we go?”
Following Merlin out of the warren of little rooms, Jason motioned to Beverley as they exited the huge, circular space on the opposite side from which they had entered, moving into another downward-sloping tunnel for fifty or sixty feet until they came to a T junction.
“Which direction now?”
All three of them looked first one way and then the other and finally both Jason and Beverley looked at Merlin.
Waving a hand to his right, Merlin said, “Jason, you and Beverley go that direction, I’ll go this way. In no more than five minutes we will all turn around, retrace our path and meet back here. Then we can compare notes and make a decision as to which is the best course to follow.”
“It’s going to be dark down there.”
Merlin reached out a hand and motioned toward one of the floating balls of light. Like a friendly, obedient dog the glowing orb came to him, allowing him to push it gently down the dark, right-hand passageway.
“Now that’s just too cool. See you in five.”
In less than a minute’s walk, Jason and Beverley’s tunnel made an acute left turn, and in less than another minute they saw a dim light in the tunnel ahead and it was obviously coming in their direction. Before they could decide whether the oncoming light meant they were approaching an exit or indicated some kind of danger, they saw Merlin following in the light’s wake.
“What the hell was that all about?”
Smiling, Merlin approached the spot where they stood staring at him. “Apparently the tunnel breaks into a triangular shape. We came in about the midpoint on the long side and rejoined here, at the apex.”
“Well that’s just stupid.” Jason was wearying of the caves and wanted some evidence to indicate whether or not this was the place where the dragon gate was located.
“I think it’s fun. Come on, lads, follow me.” Grabbing Jason’s hand, Beverley forged ahead.
“Wait.”
Beverley and Jason halted, turning back to look at Merlin who had stopped a few paces behind them and was now holding up a cautioning hand. “I hear water.”
“We’ve been hearing water since we came in. It’s dripping everywhere.”
“No. This is different. Listen.”
Holding one finger to his lips for silence, Merlin stepped around the others and took the lead. Within a few steps no one could deny that they were coming closer to the sound of running water and less than three minute’s walking brought them to the edge of a twenty foot wide strip of ink-black water that extended nearly fifty feet in either direction before disappearing into the soft, chalk walls of the cave. Above them, and on the far side of the river, the sound of the burbling river echoed back from distant stone surfaces that were invisible in the soft light of Merlin’s orbs.
“And this must be Sir Francis’ version of the River Styx.” Beverley bent down near the water’s edge, staring into its depths, but unable to see her reflection in the dark surface.
“Are either of you aware that the word styx translates fr
om the Greek as both ‘hate’ and ‘destination’?”
“That’s kind of weird. I mean, it makes any kind of a trip sound really ominous.”
“Indeed it does, Jason. According to Greek mythology, the River Styx separated the land of the living from the land of the dead; no one who crossed it could ever return to the land of the living; in fact, once across the Styx and you lost all memory of your previous life.”
“The waters of oblivion.”
“Precisely. And for some reason, the Styx simultaneously symbolized hatred, fatality and unbreakable oaths. The first two are fairly obvious in this context, but I never understood the ‘unbreakable oaths’ part.” Warming to his subject, Merlin began pacing back and forth, hands clasped behind his back, like some university professor deep in lecture mode. “For some obscure reason, the Styx spiraled around the perimeter of Hades nine times. Its water was supposedly so corrosive that it could not be stored in any container because it would eat through it instantly.”
“So why didn’t what’s-his-name’s boat dissolve?”
“Ah, a common misconception. Charon – the ferryman – did not take the dead across the Styx. He took them over the Acheron, which they came to after they had crossed the Styx by some magical method which I can’t remember at the moment.”
“Well, that’s a pretty weak ending to your story.”
“I don’t think any of it really matters. After all, it’s just ancient myth. No one really cares anymore. But…”
“But what?”
Merlin had begun pacing again, this time scratching his head and shaking it from side to side.
“Something I should be able to remember. It’s just beyond the edge of my memory and I can’t quite grasp it.”