Mysterious Mysteries of the Aro Valley

by Danyl McLauchlan

  Everyone froze. Danyl on his knees; Sophus looming above; the Goatman with his glowing syringe. They all watched as a massive shadow filled the doorway. The shadow stooped to enter the room and boomed, ‘I’m looking for my girlfriend?’

  Danyl stared in horror. The giant wore huge blue jeans, a navy wool duffel coat and black leather boots with blood-red stitching. Its eyes were swimming behind thick, gold-rimmed glasses. It clutched a blue envelope in its massive hand. The giant must have seen the clues Joy left on her kitchen table. It had gone in search of her and found one of the blue envelopes, somehow, and now here it was, seeking answers.

  ‘Your girlfriend. Yes.’ Sophus released his grip on Danyl’s shoulder and hurried across the room to meet the giant. ‘I think I know who you mean. A very pretty girl. She is in here,’ Sophus assured the giant. ‘With us.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘We are the Cartographers.’

  ‘Are you some kind of cult?’

  Sophus laughed. ‘Of course not. We’re scholars. Simple mapmakers.’

  ‘Did you guys break into my house and booby-trap my bedroom?’

  ‘Sir—’ Sophus placed his palm on his chest, the picture of wounded pride. ‘I’m a mathematician.’

  ‘Did you though?’

  ‘No.’ Sophus drew closer to the giant and whispered to him. As the giant listened, Danyl sat on his mattress, watching, reassuring himself that the giant wouldn’t recognise him. It hadn’t seen his face, or heard his voice. It had no way of knowing that it was Danyl who booby-trapped its bedroom. Yet he had a sick certainty that he would do something stupid and reveal himself somehow. While he waited, trying not to attract the giant’s attention, he gazed around the room.

  He took in the two men beside him. Now that Danyl was close to them he could observe their blindfolded heads moving back and forth: tiny, jerking movements as if they were looking about for something. And he noticed something else.

  The candles in the room were flickering, bowing away from the open door towards the dirty curtain on the opposite wall. And when the giant stepped into the room and closed the door, the flames danced then straightened and the curtain billowed then sagged back into place.

  There was a hidden opening in that wall. A second way out of the room: a possible escape route. That must be where Verity had gone. Maybe the giant would create a distraction, somehow, and Danyl could slip away unnoticed. A perfect plan.

  Then the giant said to Sophus, ‘Give your blue compound to that guy first.’ He pointed a massive finger at Danyl. ‘I want to see it work.’

  Sophus smiled. ‘A sound idea, friend.’

  Sophus and the giant stood over Danyl. He wanted to protest, to beg for freedom, or even to turn and run towards the curtain, but he was frozen in place by his fear of the giant, too terrified even to speak. His eyes shifted towards the goat-faced man who was closing in on Danyl, his syringe dripping fragments of sky, his yellow goat-eyes gleaming.

  Then Danyl’s gaze shifted again: the curtain at the back of the room billowed, like a drunken ghost; then it parted and three figures wearing camouflage clothes and black masks over their faces walked through it. Only Danyl saw them. Sophus, the giant and the Goatman were all oblivious; intent on Danyl, who sat motionless with fear, watching as one of the masked figures crept up behind the Goatman and touched a small rectangular object to his back. It made a clicking noise: the Goatman bleated in surprise and pain and dropped to the ground; the air filled with the smell of ozone.

  As Sophus and the giant whirled around, the Goatman’s attacker brandished a taser and cried out, ‘Death to the agents of the Real City!’

  17

  Terrible things happen

  The only sound in the room came from the Goatman’s syringe, which rolled across the concrete floor in an arc. The arc began at Goatman’s outstretched hand and ended just beside Danyl’s mattress. Danyl huddled in the shadow cast by the giant.

  ‘No one touch that.’ The voice of the foremost masked figure rang out in the silence. He stepped towards the syringe then called over his shoulder to his comrades, ‘Seize the suitcase.’

  A second masked man hurried to the table. He closed the suitcase, snapped the latches shut and called out, ‘Gassior. Blizey.’ Danyl didn’t know what that meant, and neither, evidently, did the first masked man, because his forehead, visible above his mask, furrowed in confusion. He looked backwards. That’s when Sophus pushed past him and threw himself towards the suitcase. The man holding it turned around at the last second and gave a little cry of alarm, then pressed the trigger on his taser. Sophus ran straight into it and slumped to the ground, arcing his back in pain.

  The first masked invader took another step towards the syringe, but this brought him within the shadow of the giant who stood with arms folded, watching everything with faint boredom, its glasses glinting in the candlelight. The invader stopped and took in the creature’s scale—perhaps in the half-light he’d previously mistaken it for a pillar or giant statue—and the eyeholes in his mask went white with fear.

  Sophus saw this. He rolled onto his side, pointed at the masked man and hissed, ‘Him. Them.’ He gritted his teeth against his pain. ‘They broke into your house. They booby-trapped your bedroom. Stop them.’

  ‘What? That’s a lie! I didn’t—’ The masked man broke off when the giant lumbered towards him; he fled towards the curtain but the giant crossed the room with a single mighty bound. It grabbed the man and flung him high into the air, then held him upside down by one leg and shook him. ‘Who are you?’ the giant asked in a reasonable voice. ‘What’s going on?’

  The upside-down masked man did not reply. Instead he attempted to stun the giant with his taser but the giant merely extended one arm and the masked man flailed around in the space between them. Then he let his arms dangle below his head. ‘Comrades!’ he cried out. ‘Help! A gigantic agent of the Real City has me!’

  His comrades, standing back watching the scene unfold, were aware of this. They approached the giant, who turned to face them. The upside-down masked man gave a squeal of fear that dopplered into higher frequencies as the giant swung him about in a low arc, driving his comrades back.

  ‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ the giant said. ‘I don’t care about your fight with those guys.’ It tipped its head in the direction of Sophus, still prone on the ground. ‘I’m just trying to find my girlfriend.’

  ‘Gorgon’s Cartographers have taken your girlfriend,’ one of the masked men explained, keeping a wary distance. ‘They’ve drugged her with DoorWay and imprisoned her in the Real City.’

  The giant considered this for a second, then replied, ‘I didn’t understand a word of that. Make sense, please, or I will pull your friend’s elbows out of their sockets.’

  The third masked man stepped forward. ‘There’s no need for that.’ He held the suitcase in one hand and stooped to pick up the dropped syringe in the other. His voice sounded familiar to Danyl. He tried to identify it but he was too confused. It was all he could do to watch the scene unfolding.

  ‘Things are not as they seem,’ the third masked man said. ‘But there’s no time for explanations. More Cartographers might arrive at any second. And this’—he held forth the blue syringe between thumb and forefinger—‘will answer your questions.’ The giant stared at the unearthly glow of the syringe, and fumbled as the masked man tossed it to him. Danyl saw a flurry of movement and cried out, but it was too late. The other masked man had crept up behind the giant and now he stunned it with his taser.

  The giant grunted in pain. It spun about and struck its assailant, sending him flying across the room and crashing into a set of shelves. The man with the suitcase dropped it then lunged at the giant, striking its back. The giant stumbled, letting go of its upside-down captor, who fell and rolled to his feet, then plunged his own taser into the giant’s armpit and shocked it a third time, then a fourth and fifth.

  The giant roared and sank to its knees. Its foes darted
about, shocking it then retreating. The giant covered its face and flailed about with its free hand. It gripped the jacket of one of his assailants—a green military surplus overcoat—but succeeded only in tearing off the pocket. Finally, another fusillade of taser strikes laid the giant low.

  The masked men picked up the fallen suitcase, parted the curtain and left the room. Danyl glimpsed their torchlights dancing down a long tunnel receding into blackness. Then the curtain swung shut and they were gone.

  The room was filled with bodies. Sophus was groaning in pain. He struggled to his knees and crawled across the floor to the Goatman. ‘Get up!’ he yelled, shaking him. ‘They took the suitcase! They have the compound!’ Then he doubled over, coughing.

  The Goatman bleated. He and Sophus stood and dusted each other off while exchanging a series of angry whispers. Then they stumbled off down the darkened passageway, leaving Danyl alone with the giant and the two motionless guys with blue-stained lips. Danyl cowered on the floor as the giant clambered to its feet.

  The giant glared around the room. It was like a lighthouse beaming out rage. Its gaze swept past Danyl and fixed on the wooden bookshelves against one wall. It bared its teeth and tore a crossbeam from the shelf and raised it up like a club: three long, bent nails gleamed in the half-light. The giant strode to the curtain and ripped it down with a contemptuous flick. Then it was moving through the tunnel. Its roars echoed out of the darkness.

  OK. Time to flee. Danyl rolled onto his hands and knees and crawled towards the exit door. He wasn’t thinking clearly. He had no plan except to get out—get away from the giant, the glowing blue liquid, the goat-faced man.

  But he saw something on the floor. It was the patch of ground where the giant had fought with the masked invaders. A scrap of wool lay there: the pocket the giant had torn from his assailant’s jacket. Screwed up inside it was a piece of notepaper covered in handwriting. Danyl picked it up and read:

  The pocket of emptiness is deeper than the hand of wisdom

  He looked at the door leading back to the alleyway. He looked at the piece of paper again. He turned and looked at the tunnel in the far wall. It was long and dark, extending far beyond the dimensions of the apartment building. Scattered lights danced in its depths. Sophus and the Goatman. The giant. The masked invaders, one of whom carried an incomprehensible aphorism about pockets in his jacket pocket. That could mean only one thing.

  One of the fleeing points of light was Steve.

  18

  Splash

  Danyl activated the display on his stolen phone. It lit the passageway with a ghostly radiance, revealing that the cinderblock walls beneath the apartment building had been replaced by decaying concrete joists patched with sections of brick. He was in the basement of another building. Still the tunnel continued. As he progressed, he passed entrances into unlit rooms. The ceiling lowered then raised again. He felt a blast of warm air from one doorway and heard the rumble of a furnace. Another apartment block. This passage connected to the basements of at least half the shops and tenements on Aro Street. But who built it? And why?

  Danyl tripped. He caught himself and aimed his light down, revealing another wooden bookshelf tipped on its back. He played the light along the wall, revealing more shelves. Some were waist-high, others towered over his head. They were all empty. He ducked his head as he passed into the subterranean confines of yet another building.

  He was moving deeper into the valley, travelling roughly in line with Aro Street. From far ahead came a faint but rising roar: the Waimapihi Stream; it went underground at the end of Holloway Road and ran all the way beneath Te Aro. He heard a flurry of shouting ahead of him.

  As Danyl walked, he thought. What was the glowing blue drug? One of the masked men called it ‘DoorWay’. When Danyl and Verity first met, they both worked for a wealthy lunatic who manufactured a mysterious drug, the formula for which was invented by a shadowy chemist. The same chemist, Danyl now suspected, who hid on the farm near Verity’s childhood home. The name of the drug was DoorWay. It and the chemist were connected to all of this. But how?

  The tunnel came to an end. It opened onto an underground passageway wide enough to drive a truck through. Most of it was taken up by the stream: dark icy waters flecked with foam, surging just below Danyl’s feet. Narrow accessways ran alongside it on both sides. The roof of the tunnel curved overhead. The shouting came from upstream. Torchlight played against the walls. It shifted and dimmed; shadows moved against it.

  Danyl crept onto the accessway. The shouts separated into distinct voices and almost audible words. He rounded the bend and saw two groups standing at opposite ends of a narrow bridge spanning the dark water. The bridge led to an opening in the far wall; its shadows suggested a stairway.

  Two of the masked invaders stood in the opening. The third occupied the midpoint of the bridge which, as Danyl crept nearer, revealed itself as a large unsecured wooden plank. On Danyl’s side of the bridge stood Sophus and the Goatman. The Goatman shuffled across the plank, which sagged under his weight, but he scurried back when the lead masked man menaced him with his taser.

  Danyl inched along the wall until he was close enough to make out the shouting.

  ‘Go away,’ the masked man on the bridge yelled. ‘Stop following us.’

  ‘Give us back our suitcase.’ That came from Sophus, who stood on the accessway some distance behind the Goatman.

  ‘You have three seconds to go back,’ the masked man replied. ‘Or I’ll kick this bridge into the river.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. We’ll still follow you.’

  ‘Through that water? You’re crazy. It’s freezing.’

  ‘Do you know where that suitcase came from?’ Sophus demanded. ‘What’s inside it? Do you know who you’re stealing from?’

  ‘We’re not afraid of Gorgon.’ The speaker was another masked man. Danyl recognised the voice. The man stepped onto the bridge just behind his accomplice. Sophus shone his torch at him, lighting him up. The pocket of his woollen jacket was torn. It was Steve.

  Steve. Suddenly Danyl had tears in his eyes. He’d been so lonely in the months since he’d left the valley, and he’d spent the last two days of his return in a state of perpetual confusion. Now Steve was here. Steve knew what was happening. Steve was stealing suitcases and shocking people with tasers and leading groups of masked men through secret tunnels.

  Sophus shouted something but Danyl didn’t hear any of it. He walked towards the bridge, his eyes fixed on Steve, desperate to reunite with his old friend. He opened his mouth to call to him, but suddenly a massive black shape detached itself from the darkness and pulled him down onto the cold concrete path. A voice hissed in his ear, ‘Stay low.’

  The giant had been hiding on the accessway just a few steps along from Danyl, who’d been too distracted to notice the huge patch of shadow adjacent to him. Now that shadow pinned Danyl to the ground and told him, ‘Wait and listen.’

  Danyl nodded to show he understood. He was overjoyed to see Steve but, now that he was unable to move, he realised that blundering into the middle of a stand-off on a narrow bridge involving angry people, tasers and a swift, dark stream might be a mistake. He craned his head and watched.

  Sophus and Steve stood in the middle of the bridge, speaking in low voices. After a minute of this they both nodded and shook hands, then returned to their companions on the opposite banks. ‘It’s all right,’ Sophus said to the Goatman. ‘They’ve promised not to—’ But the Goatman cried out as Steve kicked his end of bridge off the edge of the step. It splashed into the black water and the current swept it away.

  ‘Hey!’ he yelled across the stream. ‘You vowed.’

  ‘I don’t make deals with traitors to reality,’ Steve replied.

  ‘You’ll pay for this.’ Sophus spat into the stream. ‘We’ll find you.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Steve admitted, his voice cheerful. ‘But it’s a big valley and not all of it has fallen to Gorgon. Goodbye, Cartographers.’
He turned, then paused on the bottom step and called out, ‘You call yourselves Cartographers because you think you’re discovering something. Exploring. Mapping new territory. But you’re wrong. When you cross over to the Real City you’re not exploring. You’re not mapping anything. It’s you who are being explored. You are the territory.’

  Danyl lay on the concrete and the giant lay on Danyl, a vast warm bulk pressing down on him. It felt quite nice, actually: being pinned to the ground, face down, completely powerless. Not in a sexual way. It was more that while he was trapped beneath the giant Danyl didn’t have to make any decisions about what to do or say. He felt safe.

  Steve and the other masked men were gone. Sophus and the Goatman stood on the edge of the accessway arguing. Eventually Sophus took out his phone. ‘I’ll call the Apostle. She’ll know what do to.’

  ‘You won’t get a signal down here,’ the Goatman warned.

  ‘There are relay sites all through the catacombs. Gorgon had them installed years ago.’ Sophus held up a cautioning finger. ‘It’s ringing.’

  Danyl waited eagerly. Yes, he thought, beaming encouragement into Sophus’s brain. Call the Apostle, whoever that was. Explain everything to her. Unravel the mysteries of the basement and the Real City. And if there’s anything we still don’t understand, this giant will torture it out of you when we reveal ourselves.

  These happy thoughts distracted Danyl from the sound of music, at first faint, then rising, now clearly audible over the roar of the stream. When he finally noticed it, it was because of the vibrating sensation coming from his left hip, which was also the source of the music.

  It was the stolen smartphone in his jacket pocket. Eleanor’s phone was ringing! Because Eleanor was the Apostle! They were calling Eleanor!

  The giant rumbled, ‘Is that you?’ and shifted its weight.