Unspeakable Secrets of the Aro Valley

by Danyl McLauchlan

  Danyl checked the bathroom, looking for signs of habitation. Nothing. Nothing in the lounge. Nothing in the closet. The bedroom was neat and orderly: no personal effects, bed neatly made, positioned in the exact same spot Danyl’s old bed once stood. He frowned. Another mystery: why move Danyl’s belongings down to the storeroom and buy new things for an apartment no one lived in?

  But suppose the High Hierophant was real. Who could it be? An immortal Wolfgang Bludkraft? Danyl still considered this unlikely. Sutcliffe Parsons? Maybe the apartment was empty because the High Hierophant was still in prison? Not bad, not bad. Or perhaps the sinister old man whom Danyl had confronted in the street last night, the man pretending to be Parsons, ran the Order?

  Who could say? Who could divine the twisted workings of the Campbell Walker’s twisted mind? Danyl stood beside the bed, lost in thought.

  Campbell lay on the bed, screaming, clutching Danyl’s arm. Danyl screamed back. They screamed together until Campbell released his grip and Danyl stumbled and fell backwards, hitting his head against the wall. He stopped screaming and said, ‘Ouch.’

  Campbell sat up and looked around. His eyes were wild. He said, ‘Writer! How long was I out?’

  Danyl hadn’t paid attention to the passage of time. He guessed. ‘About half an hour?’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  Campbell rubbed his eyes and ran his hand through his greasy, tangled hair. ‘It seemed like days. Oh, writer.’ He sat up. His hands shook and his usual haughty contemptuous manner was gone, replaced by a haunted contemptuous manner. ‘Did I say anything while I was under?’

  ‘No, you just lay there. What happened? Did the drug work? Are you smarter?’

  ‘Smarter?’ Campbell squeezed his eyes closed and then opened them again. ‘No. Am I wiser? Oh yes. Horribly, horribly wiser.’ He sat for a minute, blinking, then his chest heaved and he burst into tears. He clutched Danyl’s hand again and wailed, ‘Writer! What have I done?’

  ‘I don’t— Listen, Campbell, I really have to go. Can you help me move this couch?’

  ‘I was tricked,’ Campbell spluttered, his face a river of mucus and tears. ‘He used me. Played me for a fool. I’m so ashamed.’

  ‘He? You mean the biochemist?’

  ‘Biochemist? Ha!’ Sobs punctuated Campbell’s speech. ‘That’s what he calls himself, but what kind of scientist—?’ He tightened his grip on Danyl’s arm and tried to calm himself, taking long, deep breaths. Presently he said, ‘I need to stay focused. I need to think.’ More deep breaths. More sobs, although they sounded less hysterical, and he said, in a more composed voice, ‘Do you have any alcohol? Brandy? Whisky?’

  ‘There’s rice wine in the kitchen. Campbell, what happened?’

  Campbell wiped his tears on his sleeve, stood and strode through the apartment, ignoring Danyl’s questions. He entered the kitchen, found the rice wine in a row of bottles beside the stove, uncapped it and drank half the bottle. The vinegar-scented liquid coursed down his neck and soaked his shirt. He poured the remains into a large steel saucepan, then took a black notebook from his jacket pocket and began tearing pages out, screwing them up and throwing them into the pan. He snapped at Danyl, ‘Fire. Bring me fire.’

  ‘I’m not—’

  ‘Do as I command!’

  Danyl kept a lighter next to the stove. He tossed it to Campbell and said, ‘What are you burning?’

  ‘The DoorWay Project.’ Campbell touched the lighter to the alcohol-soaked pages, which lit with a low rush. ‘The chemical formula is gone. The stocks are stolen, but all traces of DoorWay must be eradicated. No one must ever piece together what we’ve done here.’

  ‘What did we do here?’

  ‘What indeed?’ The flames danced in Campbell’s eyes. ‘The biochemist manipulated me, writer. He claimed he’d discovered a compound that would change our perception and increase human intelligence, so I suggested the name DoorWay as a metaphor, symbolising the passage to a new species. How he must have laughed behind my back.’

  ‘So what does it actually do?’

  ‘It’s a poison. A poison for the mind. It makes you believe that—’ Campbell stopped himself. ‘It doesn’t matter. Best for you that you never know. I was aware that this biochemist was wanted by the police for terrible, terrible crimes. I’m beginning to think that was a sign that he wasn’t to be trusted.’ He crossed the kitchen and slapped Danyl on the shoulder. ‘Come. We have work to do.’

  ‘Work?’ Danyl was falling asleep on his feet. He could barely think. All he wanted was to escape the tower then go lie down somewhere.

  ‘We need to terminate the DoorWay Project,’ Campbell explained. ‘Shred papers. Erase all records. Go down to the labs and pour out all the chemicals. Switch off the freezers and let the frozen rats decay into sludge, just as they deserve. We’ll start with this.’ Campbell picked Danyl’s laptop up off the table. He strolled to the window and tossed it out into the empty night air.

  Danyl gasped and rushed to the window. The falling laptop triggered the security lights mounted around the front entrance to the tower, and they lit up as it exploded on the concrete far below.

  ‘All traces of DoorWay must be destroyed,’ Campbell intoned. He fixed Danyl with a penetrating state. ‘Follow me, writer. To the labs. We’ll rouse the DoorMen on the way.’ He turned and swept from the room.

  Danyl followed, stumbling behind on autopilot. He stopped at the threshold to the hall and looked back at his lounge. Things were moving too fast: he had a sudden premonition that he would never see his apartment again. He should take any essentials with him.

  He grabbed his deodorant and toothbrush from the bathroom, then hunted around for his wallet before he realised it was in his jacket pocket. Next he ran back into the bedroom and stuffed spare pairs of socks and underpants into his jacket and zipped it up to keep them in place.

  ‘Writer! Attend me!’ Campbell’s voice carried through the empty rooms. Danyl ran to the front door and paused for a probably final look at his apartment. His eyes fell upon his satchel, sitting on the couch, lit by a shaft of light from the hall. His latest draft and the notes for his ending.

  All traces of DoorWay must be destroyed. If Campbell discovered them he’d lose his work, his brilliant ending. Should he take the satchel or leave it here?

  ‘Writer!’

  ~

  Danyl opened his eyes and sat up with a start. He was dazed with post-sleep disorientation. Where was he? He looked around and his confusion dissolved. He was in his room in Campbell’s tower; it was lit with a lopsided yellow radiance.

  Wait—didn’t he leave the tower? Didn’t he go live with Verity? Then he remembered. He did, but she left him, then he stole a box and hurt his ankle; he peed in Campbell’s van, his ankle was healed, he went on a date and now he was here again, back in Campbell’s tower, trapped and hunted like an animal.

  He rolled onto his side and fumbled on the floor for the torch. It must have rolled there while he was asleep. Lucky it didn’t break. Lucky, he thought, with a sick feeling in his gut, that Campbell’s cultists didn’t find him while he slept, curled up like a kitten. How humiliating that would have been.

  He checked the time on his phone. He had slept for almost an hour so there were just ten minutes to go until Steve started his diversion. Assuming that Steve made good on his word. Danyl figured the chances of that happening were around forty-five per cent.

  Where was the damn torch? His fingers grasped and fumbled and closed around a small tube-shaped object. What was that? He held it up to the light. It was a used syringe, with a muddy-coloured mould growing inside. He blinked with surprise. It was the syringe Campbell had used to inject himself with DoorWay—it had to be. It must have rolled onto the floor and lain there all this time. He screwed his face up and dropped it back onto the carpet. Disgusting. Who k
new what diseases lurked on that rusty old needle?

  But didn’t that prove there was no High Hierophant? Campbell must have just moved Danyl’s old things out and the new furniture in. He didn’t even bother to clean up. A real High Hierophant would never tolerate that kind of slovenliness. The apartment was just for show. It was all a scam. Campbell would never share power with anyone.

  Having settled that matter to his satisfaction, Danyl leaned his head over the bed and located the torch. It had rolled right under: its beam was directed at the far wall, lighting up the door to Danyl’s old closet.

  He stretched out his hand for the torch, but his attention lingered on the closet and an impossible idea seized him.

  What if all his old clothes were there? He had left almost everything behind when he fled the tower a year ago. He lost several pairs of trousers on that terrible night and his wardrobe never recovered from the disaster. What if they were still there, overlooked when the apartment was cleared?

  His heart pounded. Didn’t he deserve a break? He had fought his way to the top of the tower, defeated Campbell and stolen Stasia’s box back—but to win back a pair of pants would be the greatest victory of all. He crossed the room, put his hand on the door and slid it aside, hoping against hope. His torch lit up the dark recesses of the closet. He gasped in disbelief.

  His old clothes were all gone. Hanging in their place, shrouded in plastic, were a dozen identical red silk ninja outfits.

  28

  The panther

  Danyl hung in the darkness, his fingers gripping the ledge of the fire escape, his SSS robe billowing around him in the breeze, and his feet kicking in the void. He took a breath, tensed himself and let go.

  And landed on the concrete path running alongside the base of the tower, steadying himself with the tips of his fingers. Catlike.

  No. Panther-like. Yes, that was more apt. He smoothed back his hair and prowled to the end of the wall, drinking in the cool night air. Steve’s plan had worked. So far. Danyl had climbed down the fire-escape, unseen by any cultists, and now he was on solid ground, free of the tower. He was giddy with exhaustion and the taste of victory. He was going to make it.

  The courtyard at the back of the building was deserted, an expanse of darkness—but the horizon above the far wall was pale and washed with dawn. The sunrise was minutes away. Danyl hurried to the gate, terrified that a spotlight from the tower above would light him up, expose him to the eyes of a dozen watching cultists. But he reached it and swung it open, and it revealed the empty pathway curving around the hillside.

  He stepped through and looked back at the tower. It loomed above him, vast and terrible. There was movement in the windows, deranged cultists still searching for him. Now he had slipped from their grasp forever, Stasia’s box safely in his possession. He gripped it to assure himself it was still there, nestling in a pocket in the inner folds of his robe. When he touched it his grin of triumph faded.

  Was Stasia the High Hierophant? Why else would her red silk ninja outfits hang in the Hierophant’s closet? If she was the Hierophant it would solve a few mysteries: why Campbell funded the EZ Wellness Heal U Centre, why the Hierophant’s rooms were unoccupied—but why would the Deputy Hierophant steal the box from the head of his Order? And if Stasia was the High Hierophant, why would she send Danyl to rob her own cult?

  He took the box from inside his robe and opened it. Inside was a letter, handwritten on a single sheet of paper: the secret message from her starets, smuggled out from a prison somewhere in the wastes of Russia.

  Except, Danyl couldn’t help noticing, the letter was written in English, not Russian. It was in pale blue ink; the light from the dawn was too faint to make out the words. He took it out of the box and turned it around.

  On the other side was an old photograph showing a woman standing in front of the half-completed Temple of Thrice-Wise Hermes. It was the same woman he had seen in the photograph on the back of the letter he had found tucked in the back of Wolfgang Bludkraft’s biography, which had led him on the trail to the Priest’s Soul.

  He put the letter back in the box and closed it. He tapped his fingers on the lid.

  So. Stasia was probably the High Hierophant. The SSS were looking for the Priest’s Soul. Stasia and Campbell had fallen out, somehow, and Campbell stole the letter in the box, which contained a clue leading to the Priest’s Soul. Stasia lied to Danyl and tricked him into stealing it back.

  What did he do now? Return the box to Stasia? How could he trust her? Who was she? How did she heal his leg?

  What was the Priest’s Soul?

  He turned to leave, taking one final glance at the tower, and his eyes fell to the bottom of the building. He looked at the ramp descending into the basement, a deeper darkness in the architecture of the night.

  He thought about the campervan locked in the far corner, and the cultists wearing robes and breathing masks taking photographs inside it at midnight. He remembered Stasia’s warning about the campervan: some secrets are best kept secret.

  Whatever was in there linked Stasia to the SSS and the Priest’s Soul—which was the source of her healing power. Danyl was sure of it. The campervan was the key to the mystery, the secret at the heart of things.

  He hesitated, gripping the frame of the gate, ready to shut it behind him and flee from the tower forever. But of course he couldn’t. How could he leave without looking inside the van?

  He glanced up at the sky: the clouds were filling with light: he had only moments before the sun rose, leaving him exposed to the eyes of the cultists in the tower. But a few moments were all he needed. He loped across the courtyard and down the ramp. The basement was deserted. Sounds drifted down the elevator shaft: footsteps, raised voices. Danyl grinned. The SSS still thought he was trapped atop the tower.

  He approached the cage, took Campbell’s key from his pocket and turned the lock. The roller-door rattled as it slid up. He reached out his hand and stroked the front bonnet. At last.

  He tried the driver’s-side door. Locked. Passenger door. Locked. He walked to the back of the van. Also locked. He shone the torch through the windows, but they were blacked-out. Impenetrable.

  The gears at the bottom of the lift shaft clicked and groaned. Danyl jumped at the sound. The elevator was descending. He had no time to lose. He took the box from his robe and tapped it against the window in the rear door: the glass fragments chimed as they dropped and shattered on the concrete. He put his face to the gap and shone his torch inside.

  And recoiled, dry-retching in disgust as a vile, toxic stench belched forth from the vehicle’s interior. Poison! Danyl clutched at his throat, his eyes bulging as he stumbled backwards, overwhelmed. Poison gas! But . . . it smelled familiar, somehow. He clutched the bars of the cage for support and took deep, shuddering breaths, wondering if he was going to die. He could still smell it: a stinging, concentrated nitrate stench. Should he run? The sound of the elevator grew louder.

  Then he recognised the smell. It was the odour of his own urine from four days ago: his own waste, left to ferment and condense in the warm, confined darkness of the van. That explained the breathing masks. The cultists wore them to protect themselves from the lethal stench of Danyl’s spoor. He felt a surge of disgusted pride at his own potency.

  But he was running out of time. His instincts told him to run, but he pulled the front of his robe up over his mouth and nose, held his torch high and advanced on the van, step by steadfast step. He was about to learn Stasia’s secret: the dread mystery behind her healing powers, her cult, her web of deceit. He held his breath and pressed his face into the empty window.

  And saw nothing. It was an empty compartment. No seats. No cargo.

  Danyl frowned and directed the torch beam into the corners. More nothing. He reached through the window, unlocked the door and pulled it open. Spider-webs, emptiness, dust. He climbed inside.

&nb
sp; The elevator hummed in the silence. The lift was getting nearer. He had to leave. Now. Whatever was once inside the van was now gone. The cultists with the breathing masks must have moved it. Danyl was too late.

  But . . . He shone his torch on the floor of the compartment. He could see the footprints left by the cultists, but the dust in the rest of the van was undisturbed. They moved nothing. They took nothing.

  The elevator was almost here. Danyl was rooted to the spot, overcome with despair. He thought about Stasia laying her hands on his leg: the pain, her nipples, her eyes. Her story: it was the secret wisdom in the letter from the starets that brought me here, to Aro Valley. He remembered standing in the ruins of his house after she healed him. He remembered Campbell’s warning: she is more powerful than you could imagine.

  But she had no power. Stasia was a liar, not a healer. She had tricked him. There was no secret inside the van, no answer to her mysteries, no solutions to her riddles, because the riddles themselves were a hoax. There was only deception and the stench of his own urine.

  And then a terrible pain jolted him out of his thoughts. A spasm ran through his ankle and he felt a terrible tearing sensation deep inside his soft tissue. His anterior talofibular ligament—which Stasia had healed, or tricked him into thinking she’d healed—felt as if it was tearing itself asunder. Again. He cried out in agony as the leg gave way beneath him, and then he pitched over and dropped his torch. It rolled to the end of the compartment, through the door and down onto the concrete, and the light vanished with a sharp crack.

  Danyl crawled after it. He dragged himself down from the back of the van as the elevator arrived and the doors rattled open, admitting the voices and torchlights of a squad of cultists into the basement. He lay on the ground, concealed inside the cage: a panther whimpering and scratching in the grime as the hunters drew near.