by Eli Ingle
They spent the next few minutes removing the crates and boxes from off the cart. Rigel began to ferry the luggage over to the other side of the bodies whilst Jhoan disassembled the boiler and packed up the cart into its transport mode.
Placing the final box down on the floor, Rigel looked up at the sky to see the fluffiest cloud he had ever noticed. It appeared to be in the shape of a smiley face. He smiled right back at it. He was suddenly surprised at how tired he was feeling. His eyelids began to droop. Opening them again he saw the face hovering in the sky, smiling down at him. He smiled right back up at it and decided he would have a lie down after all. Crawling up next to Rona, he rested his head on her belly and shut his eyes, thinking before he drifted off to sleep that he had never felt happier, warmer, softer or safer than this.
He did not want to wake up from this. Ever.
Jhoan picked up the packed-up cart by the handle and slid the disassembled under his other arm. It was awkward, but he wanted to leave the gorge as quickly as possible. While he was unaffected by whatever enchantment was wrapped inside the walls, he was not naïve enough to presume it would not begin to start working on Rigel. Jhoan wanted to be well away from it before it had a chance to take hold. Looking after Laurie and the others was going to be difficult enough.
Gingerly climbing over the bodies – and trying to avoid stepping on too many fingers – Jhoan arrived at the other side by the pile of boxes Rigel had just ferried over.
Putting the cart down and pressing the button, he watched it quickly reassemble itself. Now getting the hang of things, he put the boiler back together and placed the boxes and crates back on the cart, wondering why Rigel had not hurried back over yet.
Glancing at Rona and the others, the bandit swore as he saw Rigel lying beside them, fast asleep.
“Gods damn it!” Jhoan cursed. “Rigel! Rigel! Wake up!” he demanded, shaking the boy.
Not being asleep for very long must have reduced the effect on Rigel, as he woke relatively easily, peering around and looking confused.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“You tell me. Don’t you go falling asleep like that – I need you!”
Rigel yawned. “It was only for a little bit,” he said. “It was so nice.” His head was creeping back down again.
“Oh no you don’t!” snapped the bandit, grabbing him by the collar and hauling him to his feet. “You stay with me, mister.”
“You get off me!” shouted Rigel, hitting Jhoan’s hand away. He was already trying to lie down again.
“Stop it!” shouted Jhoan, pulling him back up and slapping him. Rigel recoiled before fire sprung up in his eyes. He dived for Jhoan and pulled him to the floor. The bandit was so surprised that he did not react at first and was struck in the face several times. After a moment, he recovered, pulled Rigel off him again and shook him. “Stop it, Rigel! Think about what you’re doing!”
The boy suddenly went limp and stared at him.
“Oh God, you’re right. I’m so sorry. It’s like … like there was some fog in my head and all it made me want to do was sleep …. It just felt so nice and warm and ….” His eyelids were drooping again.
“Rigel!”
“Sorry, sorry!” He snapped up again. “Let’s get out of here. I don’t like this.” Knuckling his eyes and shaking his legs, Rigel attempted to remain alert.
Once they had righted the cart and restocked the boxes, they laid out blankets and pillows on its floor. They dragged the others between them, up the steps and onto the cart. Deciding there was not much they could do to help Rona, Laurie and Erdiz at the moment, they lay them out comfortably on the bed they had made. Looking down at them, Rigel could not help but feel his previous envy of their walk through Bliss Gorge ebb away. He was starting to think that Nightmare Gorge was preferable to this.
“Full steam ahead,” said Jhoan, pushing down the lever and steering them out of the gorge.
Rigel sat at the back with the steering wheel, looking over the edge. It was difficult to avoid the bodies but on the whole, he did a good job of it. He was concerned, however, that he might have run over several fingers ….
The unnatural allure of the gorge now held little appeal for Rigel and the bleakness of the Realm beyond was starting to look much more promising. At least out there they knew that what they were seeing was real. Despite this, Rigel still had a difficult time remaining awake and he knew that had he not been steering, he would probably be comatose again. One thought that was bothering him, now that he had time to think these things through, was why Jhoan had not been bothered by the gorge. From the start, he had not seen any of its appeals nor been drawn into it. Everyone else who had ever set foot there had fallen asleep and never woken up again, begging the question as to why that had not happened to him. He knew that had it not been for Jhoan he would still be unconscious on the floor, but somehow this did not make him feel much better.
Eventually, they arrived at the split in the gorge and emerged into the bleak wilderness of the plains. The light seemed dull and the colours faded after the vivid brightness of the gorge, despite the knowledge that it was just fakery.
Clear of any obstacles, Jhoan pushed the lever forwards and the cart hurried along the flat ground. Rigel breathed a sigh of relief as he felt the numbing effects of the gorge seeping out of his body. Each breath was like a splash of cold water, his thoughts regained clarity and his overwhelming desire to sleep disappeared the further away from the gorge they travelled.
There were still no life signs among their friends lying down on the floor, which did make Rigel uneasy, but then he reasoned that after spending several days under the influence of whatever enchantment on the Gorge, they could take much longer to wake up again.
The sun was drawing low in the sky and turning an even darker shade of blood red. Rigel could not help but notice that it looked bigger than when they had last seen it after exiting the Nightmare Gorge.
Several hours later, Jhoan decided to call it a night and drew the cart to a stop. They were running low on water so they would have to make scouting a priority for the next day. They also decided that there was little point in waking the others as sleeping off their sickness would probably be the gentlest cure for them anyway. Curling up under his own blanket, Rigel looked up into the sky just as the fake stars were lighting up and fell asleep smiling to himself, thinking that even without the ecstasy of the gorge, now that they were reunited and safe, life was good.
*
“They’re gone!”
It was the next morning, and Rigel was tired and cold. The blanket had crept upwards and left his feet exposed. He bent them up and bunched the blanket around them before rolling over and falling asleep again, ignoring Jhoan. The bandit was muttering to himself, and when he realised Rigel was not listening, he came back up to the cart.
“Oi!” he poked him in the ribs. Rigel growled and rolled away from him. “I said: they’ve gone!” he repeated.
Something in the back of Rigel’s mind took some notice of this. He opened one eye cautiously and peered up at the bandit.
“Who’s gone?”
“The Dalai Lama.”
“Huh?” Rigel had a brief moment to wonder how Jhoan knew about the Dalai Lama, followed by an amusing image of his Holiness travelling between dimensions, before Jhoan interrupted the thought process.
“Rona, Erdiz and Laurie, you idiot! They’ve disappeared.”
“Where?”
“Well I don’t know, do I?! Or we wouldn’t have a situation.”
Rigel sat up with his eyes shut and stumbled to his feet. After a moment of standing he managed to open them and peer around but Jhoan was right – they had gone.
“Well, this is just great. Now, what?”
“We’re going to have to go and look for them, aren’t we?”
“Oh, just what I wanted to spend my time doing ….”
“Yeah, you and me both, Rigel. Come on
and we might be able to find them and still have time to travel for the rest of the day.” Jhoan turned away and started walking back in the direction they had come from yesterday.
“Er, Jhoan?”
“Yes?” asked the bandit without turning around.
“We could just take the cart,” said Rigel, pointing to it.
“Right … yeah, the cart.”
Rigel shook his head as he fired it up and waited for Jhoan to climb on. Once the steps were raised he pressed the lever forwards. Steam hissed and the piston pumped, sending the cart forwards. Jhoan spun the wheel and sent them back towards the Gorge.
With his foot resting at the front for support, Rigel looked out over the plains with the field glasses whilst Jhoan continued to steer. In the barren wilderness he would have suspected that it would have been relatively easy to find the others, but amidst the scrub bushes that had started to spring up and the rocks dotted about it was hard to tell a person from a shadow cast by the bloody light of the sun.
They had been driving for around three-quarters of an hour when Rigel finally saw something suspiciously human-like on the ground, and there were three of them. He hailed Jhoan and hurried the cart along until they drew level with them before pulling to a stop. Laurie, Erdiz and Rona were crawling along the ground back towards the gorge. Their eyes were shut tight and they were panting as if they had run a marathon. Dark circles ringed their eyes, which were in stark contrast to the pale, waxy quality their skin had taken on. Sweat trickled down from their foreheads and dripped onto the dusty floor. As they clawed along the floor, Rigel could not help but be shocked at the determination they put into the movement, despite appearing to have no energy at all.
“What on Earth is going on here?” asked Rigel.
Jhoan came to the front and joined him, looking down at the three. He tutted. “They’re certainly in no fit state now, are they?” He shouted them. “Laurie! Erdiz! Rona! Come on what are you doing? Get up, come on!”
Aside from some pitiful whining, the three made no other attempt to alter their actions and continued their frantic, weak scrabbling along the floor.
“Oh screw this,” said Jhoan, jumping down from the cart. He picked up Rona by the scruff of the neck and began hauling her towards the cart. Suddenly her eyes opened and she screamed – a sound full of horror and pity – so heart wrenching that Jhoan dropped her in his surprise. The moment she hit the floor she resumed her scrabbling along with the others.
“Come on, Laurie,” said Rigel who was now starting to feel seriously spooked. “It’s me, Rigel. We need to get going again.”
“It’s … it’s … cold …” muttered Laurie from the floor.
“What did he say?” asked Rigel. Jhoan moved closer and lowered his ear to the Captain’s mouth.
“It’s … so cold …,” he said.
“He’s saying he’s cold,” the bandit reported. “We’ve got lots of nice blankets on the cart, chief. Come on now, let’s get you up there.”
“No! No … it’s cold … so very cold ….”
“Not where you’re going! We’ll get you nice and warm.”
“I’ll … never be warm … never be warm again …” said Laurie, his eyes still tightly shut. “Got to … get back to the gorge ….”
“Gorge!”
“The Gorge!”
Erdiz and Rona chanted almost reverently as soon as they heard the word.
Jhoan stared down at them, his mouth set in a line of worry. Slowly his gaze met Rigel’s.
“The gorge,” said Rigel.
“Gorge!”
“Gorge!”
“Gorge, gorge, gorge!”
“I knew they were going to have trouble waking up after we left,” Rigel mused, “but I honestly wasn’t expecting this – it’s like a drug affecting their minds.”
“Don’t worry, you lot!” said Jhoan, obviously inspired by a sudden idea. “We’ve got the cart so we can take you there quicker. Come on, this way to the gorge!”
“Gorge!”
“Gorge, oh the gorge!”
They crawled pitifully towards Jhoan’s voice. Once they reached the back, he scooped each of them up in turn and laid them gently onto the floor boards before covering them with a blanket.
“There you go, nice and warm now.”
“We’re going to the gorge?” asked Laurie, his eyes opening just a little. Rigel felt sick at the joyful hope he saw there.
“Yes, we’re going there now. Don’t you worry about a thing.”
Rigel was shocked to see that the bandit had tears in the corners of his eyes as he looked down at his friends.
“Let’s go.”
Rigel nodded and pushed the lever forwards. Jhoan spun the wheel and set them back on a course away from the Gorges and the mountain range.
Despite being glad that they were back on track, Rigel could not help but still feel uneasy that his friends had been so badly affected by their trip through the gorge. Going through Nightmare Gorge really had seemed like a nightmare but at least there had been no lasting effects on him that were damaging in any way.
The further they travelled away from the gorge, the more restless their new patients became. It seemed as though they could sense it slipping away from them. If their colour had been pale before, it was nothing compared to now: their skin had gone as white as chalk, taking on an unpleasant shiny appearance and tautening as though it were being stretched over the bone. Sweat was breaking out over their bodies and they began writhing under their blankets.
“This is horrendous,” said Rigel as he stared at them. They had started stretching out their arms and moaning. “Have we got any medicine we can give them?”
“I don’t think medicine is going to help them, Rigel,” said Jhoan. “They’re suffering withdrawal from some kind of spell that affected their minds. Giving them medicine could actually make it worse. Anyway, do you really think medicine is a cure-all for everything?”
“It is where I come from.”
“Maybe that’s why you have so many problems there, then.”
Rigel stopped talking and looked ahead, wondering what else they could do to help.
“You could try putting the radio on?” he suggested. The bandit shrugged and clicked the dial on. The valves crackled as they heated up, and after a few moments some soft music Rigel had not heard before floated across the air. At first, it seemed to have no effect, but after a few minutes the patients grew quieter and began muttering less to themselves. Finally, they grew quiet and began to sound at peace.
“Good suggestion!” commended Jhoan. Rigel smiled slightly and looked ahead, a sudden thought striking him.
“Where are we actually going?” he asked.
“I’m sorry?”
“I don’t actually know where we’re going. Either Laurie or Erdiz is usually guiding us. I have no idea if I’m going in the right direction or what.”
The bandit frowned and scratched his nose with his thumb. He looked around one-handed, trying not to let go of the wheel.
“Is there a map or anything they were using?”
“I don’t think so – this is uncharted territory isn’t it?”
Jhoan frowned again and peered ahead.
“Well, we’re running in the opposite direction to the gorges that we’ve just come out of and we were travelling north since we got here so if we get the compass and have a look ….” He pointed to a crate at the side of the cart. Rigel walked over and opened it, pulling the metal disc out. After orientating it, he checked their position against the reading.
“We’re more or less going north,” he nodded. “I guess we just keep straight on this course until they wake up ….”
“If they wake up,” said Jhoan, looking grim.
“Don’t say that!”
“Well it’s true and it certainly is a possibility.”
Preferring not to think about this, Rigel returned to his post at
the front of the cart and kept a lookout.
Time passed and the day was growing old when Rigel realised that the music was having less of a soothing effect on the others than earlier. They were growing restless and uneasy again, shouting out and waving their arms around. Their skin was even paler (he would not have thought it possible) and their eyes looked shrunken and dull.
“We’re going to have to take watches,” said Rigel, his heart sinking as he realised that would be no alternative. “If we don’t, they’ll just go and start trying to crawl back to the gorge again. We’ve gone much further today than we did yesterday but seeing as it’s obviously still having an effect on their minds I think it would be dangerous to leave them because, given half a chance, they’ll probably start at it again.”
Jhoan nodded in agreement. “I wish you weren’t right,” he said, “but I know you are. Who wants to go first?”
“Can I?”
“If you like.”
“I’m awake and don’t feel tired really. Shall we just make it easy and say half a night each? It’s not like there are lots of people we can put on the watch and do a couple of hours between us.”
“Sounds fine to me.”
“Do you want to go to sleep now then?” asked Rigel. “Then you’ll get a bit longer than if you stay up sitting around doing.” The bandit nodded again.
Settling himself into a corner, Rigel found one of Erdiz’s less complicated looking books and started reading it for some entertainment. Not all of it made sense, but with the lack of other entertainment he took what he could get.
The sunset illuminated the sky in a wash of red before fading to a vivid purple and then to midnight blue and then black. He noticed that the sun set much later here and realised that they must be making some progress, albeit slow. The lightbulb stars turned on and twinkled down at him as he read the book by the light of the lantern. He woke Jhoan half way through the night and they swapped duties.
Rigel was grateful that despite their increased protests, the patients were not attempting to escape. Maybe the distance away from the gorge was already having a positive effect on their minds. Hopefully, another day’s travelling away from it might even be enough to wake them up again.