Frivlok (Appointments on Plum Street Book 2)

by Eli Ingle

  “I don’t know the way,” Laurie announced. Rigel took a moment to appreciate that Laurie was never ashamed of his own ignorance.

  “Well I don’t,” she replied.

  “Don’t look at me,” muttered Rigel.

  “Well how are we going to get there?” asked Laurie, looking exasperated.

  “I know the way,” an oily voice floated down the stairs.

  They looked up to see Bry standing by one of the bannisters, looking down at them. He caught Rigel’s gaze and scowled, making the Light One look away.

  “Excellent!” cried Laurie, missing the teacher’s look. “Lead the way.”

  Bry slid down the bannister and landed without a sound on the marble floor. Turning left, he began walking down a corridor. The group picked up their bags and hurried after him.

  Following some strange twisting route, they eventually arrived in a cylindrical room with a cream and burgundy mosaic pattern on the floor. In the middle was a rickety lift that looked like it belonged in a mineshaft. Thick cables tied it to the roof, where a rig of machinery controlled the descent.

  Bry moved over to the lift and pulled the wire doors open with an echoing bang. As he stepped in, the whole thing swayed. Rigel eyed it uneasily.

  “All aboard,” their teacher said, grasping the control lever.

  Laurie stepped inside gingerly, making the lift sway even more. Rigel and Rona followed, setting their suitcases on the floor and grabbing the sides. Bry pulled the door shut and jammed the lever down. There was a high-pitched whining as the motors came to life and suddenly they were descending into the black pit.

  The blackness was absolute and the sound of the motors echoed down the shaft. The occasional line of halogen lamps passed them, but their brief flash of blinding light was no more comforting than the darkness.

  A faint glow appeared at their feet, followed by a strip of light that gradually grew to fill the door as the lift settled at the base of the pit. The motors whirred to a stop as Bry replaced the lever in its upward position. Rigel peered out at the enormous hallway beyond the metal door of the lift. Thick cables the size of small tree trunks trailed down from the roof and were laid on either side of the floor, twisting together like black rubbery pythons. Bry snatched the door open and spread his hand out.

  “Enjoy your trip,” he smirked.

  “Aren’t you taking us in?” asked Laurie.

  The desensitisation teacher gave him a scornful look. “It’s only at the end of the hallway,” he replied. “I’m sure you’ll manage.”

  The three stepped out of the lift, clutching their bags. Bry pulled the lift door shut again and ascended. The whirr of the motors grew fainter until he disappeared completely from sight. Rigel shivered, a mix of nerves and the chill air bringing his skin out in goose bumps.

  “Come on,” said Laurie, “let’s get on with it.”

  The hum of the cables was so strong it made Rigel’s teeth ache and he felt as though his muscles were buzzing. He glanced at Rona and burst out laughing as he saw all her hair was standing on end.

  “What are you laughing at?” she asked, grimacing and rubbing her teeth.

  “Your hair!” he replied, pointing.

  Reaching up to feel it, Rona yelped as it gave her a static shock.

  “Whatever they’ve got going down here, it feels awfully dangerous,” Laurie commented uneasily.

  “Nah, it’s just where they keep Tink’s beard trimmer,” replied Rona. Laurie snickered.

  They reached the huge doors at the end and pushed them open. If possible, the hum of electricity in the air grew even more intense. Rigel winced as he felt his eyeballs begin to tingle. A circular platform stood in the middle of the room, raised like a dais with steps leading up to it. At the far end, pairs of Tesla coils stood, randomly giving off bolts of electricity. Boxes that looked to Rigel like computers (although they could have been anything) stood on either side of the dais, flashing with coloured lights and reeling spools of tape. Technicians wearing suits of full rubber were attending to these machines and also checking the tree-trunk cables and writing things on clipboards.

  “Hello, you lot!” said a cheery voice, muffled by a rubber suit. The owner of the voice was wearing a red suit with a clear plastic square over the face. As Rigel peered in, he realised that it was Alcor. His magnificent moustache was crowded into the tiny space, bent into a weird shape. A figure in a blue suit was standing behind the King, apparently shouting at a technician. Rigel guessed it was Mizar. “Excited?” Alcor asked.

  “Nervous,” Rigel replied.

  “Ah you’ll be fine,” the King replied, thumping him on the shoulder. “The others are already here, so we’re ready when you are.”

  Rigel looked around and saw Erdiz and Jhoan looking unhappy with a pile of boxes beside them.

  “If you’re ready,” a technician called, “then we’d like you to stand in the middle of the dais, please.”

  “Come on, kiddywinks,” said Laurie, holding them by the shoulder. Rigel was glad Laurie was coming with them. It was like having a parent, and rightly or wrongly, Rigel felt they would be much safer with him than if they were going alone.

  The group stood in the middle while the technicians piled the boxes and suitcases around their feet before stepping away from the group and towards the controls. Alcor and Mizar stood at the front, watching them intently.

  “In one minute,” called the technician, “I’m going to pull the lever and open the portal. There’s going to be even more of an energy build up than there already is. So needless to say, don’t touch anything! I wish you all good luck.”

  With a deafening burr, the tesla coils blasted out rippling ribbons of electricity into an arc above their heads. Rigel’s teeth ached and he was getting a killer headache. Machinery groaned as revolving fans and gears whizzed around in a blur. The sixty seconds seemed much longer with the agony, noise and adrenaline they were experiencing.

  Finally, with a horrific tearing noise, the portal opened, revealing a listless grey plain beyond.

  “Now!” cried the technician, throwing down his upraised hand. Another suited figure pulled a lever and the dais rotated, spinning the group out of Kozenia and into the other world.

  With a crackling roar and bang, the electricity dispersed into the atmosphere and the portal sealed itself, trapping them in the Realm.

  Chapter Five

  The Three walked towards the area of the palace that Frivlok reserved for his experiments. Even the Shapeshifter and the Commander were forbidden from entering it, although they had little interest in doing so. A rhythmic, hoarse screaming could be heard echoing down the hallway.

  Opening a door, Frivlok led them into a black, tiled room accented with a line of glowing red tiles across the middle. On a raised block in the middle, a cage made of dark iron bars was fixed from floor to ceiling. The screaming rose to a higher pitch and something huddled on the floor shrank away from the light, scrabbling against the iron bars on the other side of the cage.

  “Hush now, child!” said Frivlok in a faux friendly voice. “I’m not here to play today. There’ll be plenty more time for that in the future! No, today we’re going for a little walk!”

  The hoarse screaming continued in a rhythmic pattern. “Huuuh! Huuuh! Huuuh!”

  The Commander stepped closer to the cage. “What is that thing?” he asked in what could be considered a very disrespectful voice, turning to Frivlok.

  Frivlok chose to ignore the tone. “Well, do you remember our little friend Zeph? That Light One we managed to capture not so long ago? Well, I was sat there after and I was thinking and thinking until I remembered something from the Dark Wars.”

  This was new. None of them remembered anything about that time. Well, almost.

  “‘Fallen Ones’ is what we tend to call them now – those things flying around between dimensions causing trouble.”

  “The undying bats?” asked the Comman
der. “What of them?”

  “Have you never wondered what they are or how they got there?” asked Frivlok.

  “Many a strange and unexplained creatures roam this place,” replied the Commander, his eyes straying to the veru. “I do not think on most of it.”

  “So it would seem,” replied Frivlok wryly. “As I was saying, I remembered. And what I remembered seemed more significant than any other plans we are currently undertaking. What if I were to tell you that the Fallen Ones were created – by us?”

  There was silence in the room as the revelation sunk in.

  “Not only that, but we created them from fallen Light Ones, those we captured and tortured.”

  “For what purpose, sir?” asked the Shapeshifter.

  “Purpose? You’ve seen what even a weak Light One can do. Filling the air with light and warmth and spreading blankets of flowers across the ground and all those vile tricks. Now imagine that amplified, pinpointed and directed towards our purpose. And that is our current plan with our little Zeph here.” Frivlok stepped towards the cage and pressed one of the red tiles. The cage retracted smoothly up into the ceiling. “But we did not call them Fallen Ones then. We called them Hell Children. And here is the first one we have to change the world to the way our Zero intended it.”

  Chapter Six

  With a final sonic boom, the portal shut behind them, sending out shards of electricity that dispersed into the atmosphere. Rigel’s headache did not immediately disappear, but like taking a deep breath after swimming under water, the relief came about half a minute after they arrived. Their clothes were slightly scorched, but despite their apprehension about the trip, they had avoided being fried by the gamma rays.

  Staggering to his feet, Rigel looked around the landscape that surrounded them with bleary eyes. Grey slate stretched for miles in all directions, flat, dry and unwelcoming. Towards the distance, he could just make out some columns of the stuff, eroded into strange shapes by the wind. That was it. The scene could probably be made more depressing by the addition of a few skeletons, but it would be a close call.

  “What in the stars is that?” asked Rona. Rigel turned to her and followed her gaze. Looming above them from where the portal had just disappeared was a huge multi-coloured billboard. A man wearing a mask with a lunatic’s grin was staring down at them. In gaudy letters, the sign read:

  Ludo Ijosi’s Carnival! Food, Drinks, Prizes! It’s the KEY destination for any traveller. Open 7pm until LATE. Free Admission!

  “That’s rather odd,” said Erdiz, looking up and lighting a cigarette.

  “And that’s an understatement, Professor,” Laurie smirked. “Although this place isn’t anything like I imagined. Where will we even start to be able to find what we’ve come looking for?”

  “I think,” said Erdiz, exhaling a plume of red smoke, “that Rigel and Rona will be drawn to the weapons. From the small amount of information we have, there’s a certain magnetism that draws the Light Ones and their weapons together, as they are not supposed to be apart.”

  “What do you think, kids?” Laurie asked.

  “Go to the carnival,” replied Rona, still staring at the poster.

  “Rigel?”

  “Yes.”

  “Go there?”

  “Yeah.”

  He did not share Rona’s apparent certainty that they should go there, but considering that there appeared to be nothing else on the horizon, it seemed to be their best option.

  “Alright, we’re off to the carnival then.”

  “And how are we going to get there?” asked Rona, pointing up to the sign. “It says it’s twenty-five miles that way.”

  “Oh, come on Rona,” laughed Laurie, “you should have learnt that we think these things through by now.”

  “Well that’s one way of putting it,” she muttered.

  The Captain walked over to the pile of luggage they had brought across with them. Removing a layer of boxes on top, a long rectangular box was revealed, about the length of two adults lying down.

  “If you’d like to stand back,” he instructed. Rigel and Rona took a step backwards. “More than that.” They took several more. “Thanks. Okay, let’s see ….” He groped around under the box until he found something that made a clinking sound when he pressed it. “There we go.”

  With a ratcheting sound, the box split in half and formed a deck. From this, railings sprung up around the edge. From under the deck, four wheels unfolded and clunked into place, forming a rudimentary cart. The mechanism fell silent with a faint creaking noise.

  “Very impressive,” commented Rona.

  “Yes, I think so,” smiled Laurie. “Now, there’s just a few pieces left.”

  Opening one of the trunks, he pulled out several planks of wood, a steering wheel, several sheets of metal, one which looked as though it would form a dome.

  “Jhoan, if you put this wood together it will make a staircase that goes on the back. Professor, if you take that steering wheel, there are some grooves on the deck it slots into and I’ll make up the boiler.”

  The whole operation took about an hour. Once it was finished, the cart looked like a strange mixture of a horse drawn cart, an early model steam train and a boat. The stairs on the back could be retracted with the supporting ropes. The boiler was controlled by a single lever, dictating the speed depending on the amount of steam let through.

  Their luggage was placed on board, with crates forming seats and the gaps between the luggage forming spaces where they could sleep. A water-butt was placed in the back left corner and other useful items such as coils of rope and tools were hung off the sides for easy access. Laurie caught Rigel’s expression and grinned.

  “What?” he asked. “You didn’t think we were going to walk, did you?”

  *

  The cart rattled and bumped along the slate floor. There must have been some kind of suspension underneath, however, because despite this, the ride was smooth. It was not until they started moving that Rigel finally realised that the place had no variation in the atmosphere. There were no clouds, the temperature was cool but seemed invariable, and there was no wind. He commented on this to Erdiz, who apparently had no theory to why it might be.

  The day passed but they soon realised that they would not arrive at the carnival before nightfall.

  As twilight bloomed across the sky like a bruise, Laurie pulled on the brakes and the cart slowed to a halt. Dinner was cooked over the flames of the boiler, which was then shut down for the night.

  Crawling under his blanket on the deck of the cart, Rigel looked up at the black night sky and gasped as it was simultaneously lit up by stars. As he squinted up at them, he realised that they were not stars at all, but lightbulbs, casting a faint twinkle in the sky. While he lay there, trying to sleep and looking up at the scene above him, he could not help but wonder what kind of world they had stepped into.

  The next morning, Rigel was woken by the swaying motion of the cart as they continued onwards. Sitting up and yawning, he saw Laurie by the driving stick, while Erdiz was sitting at the back, cigarette in one hand and steering wheel in the other. Rona and Jhoan were resting on the crates eating breakfast. Spotting Rigel awake, Rona handed him a bowl of porridge, which he ate whilst propped against the side of the cart.

  The day passed amidst the relentless, depressing slate landscape. The highlight of the afternoon was when they passed under an arch of weathered stone. Rona would occasionally correct their course with the intuition she was getting about the location of the carnival. The route, however, was more or less a straight line.

  Their first glimpse of the carnival was at around five o’clock, when the huge pavilion tent loomed in the distance. An hour later they arrived at the front gate, which, to their disappointment, was shut.

  Laurie parked the cart and Rigel lowered the stairs at the back. Hopping down, he looked up at the carnival.

  It was surrounded by a chain-link fen
ce, giving it the appearance of a compound. The gate at the front held a copy of the sign they had seen on the huge billboard when they arrived through the portal. There was no indication as to whether it was open or not. A ticket booth stood in darkness to the left of the gate. Beyond, the stalls and main pavilion lay in darkness.

  “Well, this is creepy,” Rona commented.

  “You don’t say,” Rigel replied. “Is it really shut? I mean, we’ve come all this way.”

  “It’s not seven o’clock yet,” said Erdiz. “We are early.”

  “You’re telling me you think it’s going to be open in less than an hour?” Rigel asked. “The place looks abandoned.”

  “Whatever it is that I’m drawn to, it’s in there,” said Rona. “I can feel it.”

  “But it doesn’t look like there’s been anyone here for months.”

  “We could just break in,” said Jhoan, looking up at the tent with his thumbs tucked into his belt loops.

  “What’s wrong with you, man?” asked Erdiz, lighting another cigarette. “We’ll wait an hour, eat, and at seven see if anyone appears. If they don’t then maybe – maybe – we can look at breaking in after that … if Rona is certain there’s something in there that we need.”

  “Alright,” the bandit replied companionably, climbing the stairs of the cart. “I’ll cook.”

  “Since when do you offer to cook?” snorted Laurie.

  “If we’re committing dastardly crimes, I need my energy. I don’t trust that what you cook will be up to scratch,” Jhoan sniffed.

  “Yeah, yeah, funny man,” said Laurie, scaling the stairs and joining him by the boiler. “Do you want me to show you how a saucepan works? Or shall I just sit on the side and make snide remarks?”

  “Whichever you like, pumpkin.”

  Rigel was not listening to the conversation taking place on the cart. He was watching Rona, who had walked up to the gate and wrapped her fingers through the chain link, the early evening sun giving her green hair a vibrant gleam. He walked over to her and pressed up against the gate, trying to get a better look inside.