by W.S. Lacey
“Do you remember what time it was when we got here?”
“Half past- hello, my watch has stopped- half past nine. Why do you ask?”
“Why is it getting dark already?” A pall had indeed fallen over the forest and North looked up wonderingly.
“I don’t think it’s nightfall; I expect it’s a storm coming.” The sky was a heavy flat grey that seemed pregnant with snowfall. “We should get back before it starts.” Even as they turned back and began to retrace their steps to the tower, large white flakes began to fall lazily through the air.
“We can’t be far now,” Spender said, looking down at their tracks, which were quickly being obscured.
“We aren’t.” North had stuffed his patch into his coat pocket and was navigating them through the trees. (The trees, had circumstances changed at some point, would have been in slightly different places. These hypothetical trees were in a constant state of flickering movement to North’s eye and, as a result, he was able to fix on the tower which, though distant, could be clearly seen with only the occasional disquieting blink of nonexistence.)
The gently falling flakes began to come en masse in a white, soft flurry that Spender and North would have found quite beautiful were they not preoccupied with their fell pursuer. They came to a wide circular clearing and North stopped.
“Spender, can you see the Door?” Spender squinted through the snow, which was coming down so thickly that he could barely see the far side of the clearing.
“No, I can’t.”
“Neither can I” North said grimly.
“Surely it’s just a little farther on.”
“This is where it’s supposed to be. It was here a moment ago.” The Door had gone, much like their packs, for no apparent reason. North brushed snow from his shoulders and looked lost. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I’m just at a bit of a loss right now.”
“Well,” Spender said, “the Thing is back there, so I vote that we go in the opposite direction. At least we won’t go hungry; I’ve just found a bit of hardtack in my pocket.”
#
As their watches had stopped, Spender and North had lost track of time, though, if the gathering darkness was any indication, the sun was setting behind its grey shroud. They did know that the early breakfast they had had at Spender’s was long ago and they were obliged to divide the hardtack between them.
“I’m afraid we aren’t keeping a very straight course,” North said. “I don’t have anything to navigate- what’s that?” He slipped in the snow, regained his footing in an instant, and began pulling at Spender.
“I don’t-” As Spender spoke, a hulking, furry form came out from behind a tree. Spender’s heart leapt into his throat as it loped directly towards them. In a moment, it hallooed them and, to their immense relief, resolved itself into a man with an overcoat and beard all rimed with snow and ice.
“Bad night,” the man said. “No good staying out in it. Follow me.” They trudged through the deepening snow for the better part of a mile before they reached an open space much larger than their clearing. In the middle was a small cabin that was almost buried in a deep snowdrift. A blizzard had begun in earnest and Spender and North were grateful when the man led them inside.
“Thank you,” Spender said. North, who had hurriedly put his eye patch on when he had seen their host in the woods, stood just behind Spender and said something suitably grateful-sounding. The man regarded them both with what might have been a smile.
“You’ll want to get those boots off. Put your feet up by the fender.” He nodded over at the hearth, which blazed invitingly.
“I’m Lewis Spender and this is Roger North; pleased to meet you.”
“I’m the Trapper,” the man said. “I’ll have some stew on in a minute. Have a seat.” As they sat in the warm dark fastness of the Trapper’s cabin, they felt the cold leach out of them and life return to their fingers and toes. North also felt a growing unease.
The Trapper went into a back room and returned with a cast iron pot that he hung over the fire on a blackened hook.
“What kind of stew is that?” Spender asked. The Trapper only laughed and crouched in front of the fireplace to prod at the cinders. While his back was turned, North furtively lifted his eye patch and looked round the room. With a peculiar look on his face, he put the patch back over his eye just before the Trapper turned around, smoke billowing behind him.
“I’ll be getting firewood. Won’t be long now.” The Trapper slung on his fur-covered coat and went out the door. North grabbed his boots and began lacing them up at speed.
“Spender, we have to leave.”
“What do you mean?”
“We have to hurry. I’ve just had a look around. He’s got a lot of bones in the walls and under the floor. The skulls are all-” The door banged open and an eddy of snow skittered across the threshold as the Trapper strode back in with an armful of split wood. North quickly crossed his booted feet and stuck them back under his stool. The Trapper dropped his load and, taking a ladle from its place on the mantle, stirred the contents of his cook pot. Without knowing why, Spender looked up and saw for the first time a dozen or more pairs of shoes all hanging from the rafters. He felt a prickling sensation at the back of his neck. The Trapper looked at them.
“I’ll be right back. Sit tight.” As soon as the Trapper went into the other room, Spender pulled on his boots.
“Go on ahead,” North whispered to him, “I’m going to shut him in that room to give us time.”
Outside, the snow fell in a nearly impenetrable flurry. Throughout the clearing, the blue shadowed snow rose and fell over hidden stumps and holes. Spender took the briefest moment to brace himself against the cold before striking out for the black tree line. When he had made it half way to the trees he looked back at the Trapper’s cabin, the view of which was already being diffused by the snow into a soft haze. As he watched, light from the open door spilled across the snow and North darted out, his eye glinting in the dark. North sprinted across the snow, yelling. His voice was carried by the wind and Spender could hear, “Run!” Spender turned and staggered towards the edge of the clearing. North scrambled after him with considerable agility.
From inside the cabin there issued a muffled bellow and the Trapper exploded out into the snow. Neither Spender nor North had ever seen a bear charging through snow; if they had, they would have been struck by the similarity such a thing bore to the Trapper’s advance. North had caught up by the time they reached the woods. His breath streamed out in the dark and, as they plunged into the trees, he gasped, “Run!”
Spender ran. It was all he could do to keep up with North who, it turned out (and as we already know from his subterranean adventure), was astonishingly fast. They threaded through the evergreens, dodging snow clad branches with the Trapper behind them all the way. Very gradually, the Trapper began to lose ground and fell back. Spender, for whom every breath was an agony, felt that it came not a moment too soon. They slowed to walking which somehow made the going a little harder. The snow had stopped falling and the ragged edges of the clouds had drifted away from the moon, revealing its pale gibbous form, which shone in the startlingly clear and sharp way that the moon does on very cold nights.
The Trapper burst out of cover just to their left and lunged at them. Spender and North fled in terror with the Trapper at their heels. That he had managed, in complete silence, to catch them up and outflank them without North seeing him was enough to give them pause. Spender doggedly stayed just behind North, all the while thinking, “It’s toying with us”. They were both of them reasonably sure that the Trapper was not human. These thoughts did nothing to make them less anxious when it suddenly cut off its pursuit. They stopped and Spender looked back with the air of a nervous animal.
“Can you see it?” he said.
“No,” North said, “but that doesn’t necessarily mean that he isn’t there. It seems like something’s blinkered me.
It feels like there is something very-”
“Malevolent,” Spender said. A branch snapped and they both started violently.
“Come on.”
#
They had been going in silence for a while so that Spender nearly bolted when North spoke.
“Are there still trees for you?”
“What?” Spender said, sounding a bit querulous (and pardonably so).
“Are we walking through pines and whatnot?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“The trees are going, for me.”
“What’s there instead?”
“I don’t know exactly what to call it. A thicket, I suppose.” And as he said it, it was. Spender could never say how things happened on the wrong side of the Door, but happen they did. They were in the midst of a dense thicket made up of dry brown stalks that stuck up through the snow in the inconvenient way that weeds do when the snow has done a poor job of covering them.
“I really wish things would stop being so strange,” North said. They pushed through the thicket, which seemed to go on and on, far beyond what one would expect of a normal thicket. After they had pushed and trampled and pushed some more, they broke out into a bare spot in the middle of the Impossibly Wide Thicket and there saw the strangest thing yet.
It looked something like a horse and was made of closely woven twigs that stuck out in places. It was not, in fact, particularly well made and had an awkward, stiff-legged appearance.
“Hello,” it said, “who goes there?”
“It talks,” Spender said unintentionally.
“Of course I do. I wouldn’t be of much use otherwise.”
“I’m sorry,” North said, “but what are you?”
“I’m the Wicker Moose,” the Wicker Moose said.
“What are you doing in the middle of this thicket?”
“I’m guarding the hole.” The Wicker Moose nodded towards a dark hole in the snow.
“Whatever for?”
“I don’t know. I know I was made to guard it and prevent anyone from going down it.”
“You were made to protect that hole in the ground?”
“Recently. I’m quite a young Wicker Moose.”
“Who made you?” The Moose thought for a moment and looked as solemn as anything made of wicker can.
“The God.” North looked at Spender meaningfully.
“I see. How do you keep people from going down the hole?”
“I tell them that it’s a bottomless hole from which they will never escape. It is nothing but eternal darkness and falling. As far as I know, that’s exactly what it is. Truth be told, I haven’t had to guard it from anyone yet.”
“Please excuse us,” North said. They removed themselves a ways and spoke in low tones.
“It was Odd, I think. It’s his hole,” North said.
“I thought so, too. D’you suppose it’s a trap?”
“If it is, it’s a very peculiar sort of trap.”
“Should we chance it?”
“It’s either that or continue wandering until something pounces on us. The Trapper could be anywhere.”
“Right.”
“I say,” the Wicker Moose called out, “what are you two talking about?”
Spender and North walked back to the Wicker Moose.
“We’re going down that hole,” North said firmly. “Don’t try to stop us.” The Moose hobbled towards them.
“It’s a bottomless hole from which you will never escape. There’s nothing there but eternal darkness and falling,” it said, sounding quite alarmed.
“We’ll take our chances,” Spender said.
“No!” It rushed at North. The Wicker Moose collided, bounced off ineffectually (being made of wicker), and tipped over into the snow where it lay with its legs sticking out at odd angles. Spender and North looked at each other.
“Should we help him up?” Spender said.
“If you do I’ll trample you to bits,” the Moose said.
“That’s not very sporting,” North said. “Let’s go.”
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you!” the Moose bawled after them.
The hole certainly looked bottomless. As they peered down, a bit of the edge crumbled away and fell. Spender backed away.
“I don’t think it’s bottomless,” North said. “There’s something down there.”
“What does it look like?”
“I can’t say, exactly. Whatever it is, I think it’s something unpleasant.” North looked back. “I’ll go first.”
“Wait a-” but it was too late. North disappeared into the hole and Spender had no choice but to follow.
Chapter Fifteen
As they fell, it occurred to North that they could very well end up in the same place he had ended up after slipping through the earth. He found himself wishing that he had thought of this before jumping gallantly down a strange hole and he attempted to twist around in midair and warn Spender. There was an awful lot of wind, though, and Spender couldn’t make out very much.
Long before they reached bottom, North could see that his idea was both true and not true. He could see better in the Down Below, almost as if a visor had lifted, and the land beneath was revealed to him in its entirety. The ziggurats and pyramids of before were still there, but missing were the laborers and their terrible overseers. The hellish glow had become a pale cold light that made even the rough stones look somehow antiseptic. Their momentum was almost imperceptibly arrested and Spender shouted something as the dead city came into his view.
They dropped onto the side of a pyramid and North caught hold of Spender’s coat, saving him from a nasty fall. Spender ‘thank you’d’ as one does and made sure of his footing.
“Is this the same place?” he asked.
“It is and it isn’t,” North said. “It’s a good deal safer than it was last time, but we’re no closer to getting back home.” They each thought of their own warm beds and something better to eat than hardtack.
“Well,” Spender said, “what should we do?”
“We’ll go that way,” North said, pointing towards the vast vague shadow of the great pyramid. They descended with care and began to navigate towards the squares and avenues of the innermost part of the city.
“It’s not so very bad to look at,” Spender said at one point.
“I suppose it isn’t,” North said. They walked on. “Spender, if we find Odd- what then?” Spender set his jaw.
“I don’t think that I have much of a choice. We know how he would receive us and there is the matter-” North thought he heard Spender say, “of my mother” but he couldn’t be sure.
At the foot of the central pyramid were the remnants of what seemed to be an encampment. Pieces of tents and odd utensils were left lying alongside the ashes of dead campfires. North picked up a red waistcoat that was in need of a mend. He flipped it around and held it at arm’s length.
“Some of Odd’s soldiers wore these, remember?”
“What are they doing down here?”
“Couldn’t say. I think they’re ahead of us, in the dark passage.”
“That’s the way you went before?”
“It is. Spender, I don’t want to mislead you. I haven’t any idea of what I’m doing.”
“You have some idea and we can’t very well sit still and wait for something to happen to us. Maybe Odd will be in there and we can meet him on more equal terms than last time.” North thought of his vision and the strange distracted man that stood unharmed in an inferno. He thought that they weren’t at all likely to get equal terms, but didn’t say so.
“You’re right. There’s no way back so we might as well press forward as best we can.”
They walked down the passage, shoulder to shoulder. It was much less daunting the second time around, North thought, and more companionable. Unlike Spender, he could see how far they had to go in the darkness and almost wished that he couldn
’t. After they had both gotten used to walking in the dark and Spender had overcome the nagging sensation that he was about to walk into something, they set a good pace and were able to reminisce about the seaside and Margaret and Charlotte.
“It was when we were at the Bastables,” North said. “The girls were holding a coin in one hand and I had to guess which one- you know the game. Naturally I was getting it every time. Then, young Bastable came over- Phillip, I think it was- and said, ‘It’s a simple trick really. You hold the hand with the coin up to your head and he can tell because the blood’s gone out of it.’
“It was nothing of the sort, so I invited him to try his luck and got five in a row. Then he tried cheating and, after I turned back around, I said, ‘You look guilty, Bastable, like you’ve just put it in your back pocket’.”
“What did he say?” Spender asked.
“He didn’t say a thing. He just gave the coin to Charlotte and spent the next half hour trying to find the reflective surface that I saw him in.”
“Have you ever used it to win at cards or something like that?”
“Lord, no.”
Whether it was the dark or the realization that they had woken up ages ago, Spender and North had become rather tired. After trying to push on a little while longer, they gave in and were soon sleeping on the stone floor of the passage.
#
If you have ever been awakened by hunger, you know that it is a very disagreeable thing. Spender and North were woken up in just such a way and, as a result, were put in very low spirits. They continued on, in a bad mood, for the last leg of the journey and came out, blinking, into the light.
“Look!” North said. Sabers and feathered shakos and antiquated muskets were littered around the rim of the well and voices echoed up from below. Lying down flat and crawling to the edge, they looked over.
There was a fire lit at the bottom of the well and by its light they could see a band of soldiers. They sat or knelt on the ground, with bayonets fixed and pointed towards the doorway.
“I won’t,” they faintly heard one say, “you can’t make me.”
“I can and I will. Go in there!”