by John Luxton
But tonight this must not happen – if the firebrand was to be snatched from the bonfires of eternity it would not be for the people of this earth, it would be for the adherents of the Brotherhood of the Serpent. And these dark pilgrims on the downwards road would then use the isotope they had stolen, to navigate the Tunnels of Set where Quilothic and demonic entities were lurking; waiting to cross over into the mauve zone, their aeons of banishment would be ended and once again they would tread upon the earth.
Eddie also knew that giant semi-aquatic carnivores who usually snack on fish, rodents, birds, dogs or very occasionally people, are best kept on the right side of the dividing line between famished and sated, when expected to participate in social occasions where the other participants are keen to be excluded from the menu. With this algorithm in mind he had the unconscious personage of the old oxygen thief brought down with the idea of feeding him to the Anacondas. The handler was agitated by the suggestion, saying that a couple of live rats would be sufficient, but Eddie insisted that it was Alan’s turn to die.
“Interfering old fuck,” he said and had his men dump the inert Alan in the nearest tank.
He watched for a while and then stalked off in disgust after the larger of the two anacondas failed to erupt into a gastronomic frenzy but simply chewed on the old man’s leg for a couple of minutes before sliding away to the other end of the tank.
“Take him out and throw him down the chute,” he ordered.
His men moved to obey, to cast the old man into the deep pit that the Vertical Abyss straddled, where the detritus of the Blake Organisation’s activities was flushed away into oblivion.
Simon Magus was off taking a nap before the big occasion so Eddie headed for the anteroom to watch as Lorna was anointed with scented oil of his own choosing. Ambergris and patchouli were the main components of a fragrance that was formulated to inflame and produce waves of euphoric olfactory pleasure throughout the rite, at least for him. As the masseur worked the amber liquid into Lorna’s torso and limbs Eddie found that he was simply unable to watch, such was the frisson of excitement rising through the quick of his being.
He was mesmerised by the rise and fall of her breasts, by the proportions of her hands and feet, by the splendor of her brow. She - the priestess of Isis who would soon bend to his will. He rubbed his right eye; his tick had reasserted itself due to fatigue, the eyelid flickering uncontrollably. He rubbed again, this time harder, but it did no good.
In the end he took the elevator to his own quarters to imbibe Cuervo Gold and fine Columbian in order to cool down sufficiently until the appointed hour arrived.
Chapter 22
WALBROOK WHARF
Like a dark pirate of the night the small boat slipped beneath the southern span of the bridge. Two men, one with white knuckles gripped the twisting wheel, the other, stationed in the prow, leaned into the hurricane blast. Unseen but rising above was an anomalous super-cell, exponential in all senses; it was an unwanted and unpredicted weather event that had attained code red on the metrological index of significance.
Two minutes earlier Detective Z and I had had to figure out how to switch over to the reserve diesel tanks when the engines coughed and died as we pitched and rolled in the open water between the final two elevations that conjoined the lives, commerce and shores of the metropolis.
As we emerged from the shadow of Tower Bridge the engines were again running smoothly, Captain Z brandished a ragged sheet of paper at me that he had torn from a tack on the wall of the wheelhouse.
“It’s the Walbrook Wharf,” I said after studying the map. “And right there is an entrance to subterranean river – a sewer outflow to be sure, but once a bona fide river that progress has obscured – runs right under the Bank of England. It’s one of the lost rivers of London.
“It runs beneath the Vertical Abyss too,” added Captain Z.
“The River Walbrook, I think they found the remains of a temple dedicated to the Goddess Diana, from Roman times, down there.”
“Spare us the history lesson, what is there now?”
“A waste disposal facility, if my memory serves me correctly,” I answered. “We must be close.”
There was no one else on the river. In fact the only evidence that we were in a densely populated city were the pinpricks of light - yellow, orange, silver – that made it through the sheets of rain hammering against the wheel house window.
“You are going to have to go back out on deck and guide me – I can’t see fuck-all through all this,” complained my Captain.
“If I get swept overboard, it will be a privilege to have served with you,” I said and gave a mock salute.
As we closed in on the north embankment I could discern the towers of mammon rising like grey sentinels above us. We passed a row of container barges, bucking and booming on their moorings and then beyond was the docking facility where there were more barges and overhead hydraulics for lifting the garbage containers on and off the barges.
The place was in darkness and the entrance that led to the Walbrook Lagoon, a covered area of greasy looking water behind a massive sluice gate, was padlocked shut. I waved my arms around in order to direct my captain to a safe haven. As we edged closer to the wharf I hurriedly pushed the fenders in place and then with a clunk and some scrapping we made contact with the wharf. I jumped onto the concrete wall and looped my rope around the nearest capstan.
It was good to be back on dry land but now our journey had stalled, as the entrance to the lost Walbrook River was only accessible from the foreshore at low tide. Together, Detective Z and I set off down deserted streets towards a point that was marked on our map as the Vertical Abyss, knowing that ‘the map is not the territory’ but with more than a vague expectation of finding that dark tower that hovered between worlds. As we walked I fancied I heard a bell ringing far away in the night, but perhaps I was mistaken.
Chapter 23
ET TU EDDIE
At midnight they had rolled back the pyramid’s shutters and a million pinpricks of stellar light pierced the blackness. The storm had blown itself out and the sky was clearing from the west, the winds had ceased and the constellations seemed twisted into a morphic entity suggesting the form of that creature of atavistic resurgence and sinister foreshadowing – the Avian Cryptid, with Algol, the Satan star, pulsing red – the creature’s single baleful eye surveying it’s prey, those who might seek to thwart the approaching advent of perpetual dominian.
Dieucifer, the master of the astral causal, had arrived at the Peristyle in his deep red robes. The elite of the Brotherhood were assembled into four quadrants, their faces hidden by the hoods of their black cloaks; one by one they passed through the Peristyle, a multi-dimensional crossroads where the barriers between the manifest world and the Mauve Zone were breached; very soon lurking entities would emerge from the Tunnels of Set to animate the adorants of the Serpent Noir and humananity would be subsumed by the reversionary appetites of this ancient MUD cult and its denizens via the final apocalyptic enactment of Chaos Magic.
As the last Black Brother returned to his station, a line of women began to file into the room – compliant handmaidens of perversity, the imminent receptors of the demon seed as they writhed in the black slime of the twin gods Danbhalah and Aida Wedo.
In the PerIstyle Simon Magus had begun to undo his red robe, whilst at his side Eddie Brocade reached for the dagger. At the same moment Lorna Z emerged from her chemically induced coma and her eyes flicked open to take in the scene; she quickly closed them and allowed the sensory information to consolidate. It was by far the single largest WTF moment of her life so it took a short while to collate, comprehend and consciously formulate a strategy that might suitably expedite some other outcome than the one that the Brotherhood of the Serpent had planned for her.
“Ago Ye. Ogou Balin’dio.”
Came the chant, reverberating from the foursquare, triangulated temple walls.
As the cocaine, LSD and Viagra b
egan to kick in the one hundred and one chelas began to lose control.
“Release the serpents,” someone shouted.
Eddie saw that the Dieucifer’s promise was in tatters – once again it would be sloppy seconds for him. His scowl rearranged itself into a grimace of anger and disgust combined and he turned away stifling a scream of annihilatory repugnance whilst tightening his grip on the dagger in his red right hand.
Miasmic forms began to gather at the apex of the pyramid and spinal marrow started to splatter onto the upturned surface of the mirror-pole that was positioned in the centre of the Peristyle. A tide of chaos was ripping through the multiverse as the Vertical Abyss transformed itself into the dark singularity of dominion for which it was purposed.
To all intents Lorna was alone in the Peristyle with two madmen both armed with ceremonial daggers – one of steel, one of mutton. From outside there came screaming – of pain and ecstatic release as the angry serpents tumbled from their tanks in a snapping frenzy. And so it was, that as the two deranged progenitors of Lorna’s original abduction, and of her imminent staring role as Erzulie Miroir Zu in the mystere of Ati Bon Legba, turned away from their fragrantly oiled and seemingly unconscious prize to watch from the Peristyle doorway, the anacondas tearing a pathway of blood and entrails through the chelas towards them, she rolled from the table, vaulted through the window and ran naked through the hall towards the elevator. No one seemed to notice.
Simon Magus let out a mirthless laugh as he pushed the door shut; he had seen it all before.
“Those chelas...” he started to say, and then faltered as he felt a bee sting at the base of his neck. He rubbed it with his hand and immediately felt wetness. There was also an unfamiliar sensation running through his body. He did not turn to confront his oldest and most trusted disciple but tried to open the door that he had just closed; he tried but failed as his sense of balance became compromised by the rapid fall in his blood pressure.
So this is what the dying of the light feels like, he thought. All my life I have fed myself, my soul, to the shadows and now that is all that is left of me – darkness, darkness, darkness.
* * *
There was a dark stain across the front of the red robe. The chelas who were still standing turned away from their activities and stared in shock and awe at the new Dieucifer.
“The priestess has escaped, find her,” shouted Eddie Brocade. Adding, by way of further explanation – “she has slain the Master.”
The shock and awe was replaced by puzzlement and then anger. Not at the murderous actions and subsequent flight of the woman, but that the new Dieucifer’s command required a cessation of their own activities; to step down from the carousel of pleasures on which they had planned to ride, gorging themselves until the dawn or until a hungry anaconda stopped them.
Chapter 24
CRUEL WORLDS
Cruel worlds crush the spirit - to paraphrase Proverbs, chapter 15, verse 4. I was only now beginning to comprehend the complexity of suffering that such a phrase could encompass. I was also beginning to realize that I had for a long time been overrating my own suffering quotient. Snug and secure in Alpha world all my life, I reminded my suddenly wiser self of Antoshka from the Russian nursery rhyme sung to me by my mother. Antoshka: the insolent urchin of a child, content to laze in the meadow all day munching on sunflower seeds whilst his industrious class mates joyfully and enthusiastically dug up potatoes on the communal allotment. Antoshka: turning up with his oversized spoon in the expectation of sharing their lunch, only to be shocked to discover that his gargantuan tureen contained only a distressed frog.
Anyway as Detective Z and myself stood on the corner of Cheapside it appeared that if there were any spirits that might need crushing then The Vertical Abyss looked like home to those who specialized in such things. In normal times a place to be shunned by an Antoshka such as I – but Detective or myself had traveled too far and our considered appraisal of the situation was that these were far from being normal times. He was searching for his daughter and a serial killer, and I by contrast was searching for a way to negate the hellish vision that I had glimpsed in the dark mirror. Looking at the ugly corporate HQ of the Blake Organisation I wondered if perhaps both of us were delusional in our ambitions, for the place looked impregnable.
So we just rock-up in the Alembic Valise and ask for our marbles back? This was the question that I was posing, but only for myself, as Detective Z had gone non-verbal on me and I was reluctant to break into his train of thought with my distracting blather. Maybe he was on the verge of an investigative breakthrough as he paced backwards and forwards turning his grizzled head one way and another as if straining to hear a faraway sound. To my surprise he then dropped to his knees, as if in final proof that it had all been too much and he had gone doolally. Then I saw that he was kneeling by a grating set into the pavement and peering down into the darkness, as if the answers were all down there in the subterrania of old London.
“Hear that?” he asked.
“Hear what?” I replied. Then I heard a distant rattle and hum. “Is it the underground?”
“Close, it’s an underground railway but a narrow gauge system used by the Post Office to move the mail around between sorting offices.”
“And you think it will give us access to this place?” I queried.
“Don’t know for sure, but a building like this,” he waved his hand at the dark entrance to the Vertical Abyss. “Is sure to have extensive sub-floors, and it’s my guess that this railway runs right beneath it.”
He rose to his feet.
“Are you going to give me a hand or just stand there?”
I felt impelled to agree to the former part of his request, as ‘just standing there’ seemed like the Antoshka option.
It took fifteen minutes of grunting and groaning to lift the metal grating after first unscrewing a pair of bolts using the metal shield on Detective Z’s key fob. With the torch app on my cell phone we could see concrete steps. Lowering the grating back into place above our heads, we began our descent.
The steps quickly leveled out and we found ourselves in a service tunnel, this led to another service tunnel, which led to another; soon we were lost. Various sounds echoed out of the darkness and my cell phone’s battery power, that was illuminating our way, began to weaken. At which point my fellow explorer extracted a cigarette lighter from his pocket and we were able to carry on down yet more tunnels until we eventually found ourselves facing a padlocked metal door.
“Do you know that incarcerated criminals often nowadays spend their sentence devising ways to extend and expand their skill base of nefarious talents? Then post informational videos chronicling their progress on the Internet in the hope of gaining employment as security consultants when released from jail,” said Detective Z.
I hoped there would be some relevant outcome to this declaration so I tried to look curious as to what that might be. I was, however fighting with the feeling that whatever it was, we would still be lost in an antique and cloacal labyrinth.
“I remember one such demonstration of safe-cracking showed how to open a high-end safe by hitting the lock in a particular way with a King Edward potato,” he continued.
“Haven’t got one of those to hand, unfortunately,” I pointed out.
“Take off your boot, either one. It doesn’t matter which,” requested Detective Z.
“But I need them both,” I said.
“Of course you do,” he replied as if talking to a child.
I knew nothing of root vegetables favored by safecrackers but I did know that a biro could be used to open a Kryptonite D lock. This was because my local Crime Prevention Officer had told me so when lecturing me on the foolishness of expecting my bicycle to be protected by such a device. I kept my boots on and went to work with one of the three biros that I carried at all times; blue, red and green. For the task of entering the bowels of the Vertical Abyss, green seemed like a reasonable choice, and so it proved
, for to my surprise the padlock fell away and Detective Z and myself were able to open the door.
We found ourselves next to a loading bay in an underground car park. It was dimly lit and we could see that there was no loading going on, just rows of cars and vans; at the far end stood three Bentleys with blacked out windows.
The door to the service elevator was open – presenting an invitation to step inside, which we accepted. Detective Z went to punch the button that would rocket us to the top-most floor, but I stayed his hand. He looked at me angrily but it was his turn to listen to me – after all I had listened patiently to his King Edward potato nonsense.
“There is a tower to the east made of glass and titanium – it serves as a pylon for the ingress of demonic entities. And another to the west where angel magic once unsealed divine forces; but that was centuries ago. Between these twin pylons the voodoo ray will arc when it is midnight on earth, then JoKanu will sail away and from the depths new outriders will emerge.
At this time - the bells of the abandoned tower between vineyard and tinderbox - must once again awaken the sleeper. The taproot of the Yddrasil runs deep beneath the London soil.”
He looked at me blankly.
“Have you never read the Alembic Valise?” I asked. He shook his head. “When it’s midnight on earth, we must descend into the abyss,” I stated.
No longer Antoshka – I was now Theseus.
“It’s the only way to save Lorna,” I added.
Anger flashed in his eyes. He punched the button. Our destination was Level: Minus 13.
The elevator descended slowly as if we were entering a zone crowded with spirits from the past and the future. A ‘Brig Fair’ of demons and angels, working out their eternal conflict without the constraining metric of the hourglass that we humans laboured under. Here in the shadow realm was the engine room of evolutional destiny. According to the Book of Enoch: in this lower realm were chained the earth-born branch of demons that had survived the flood, these progeny of fallen angels imprisoned by God in the ‘dark places of earth’ but still able to release their demonic and evil legion into the lower realm and thus tempt mankind into unconscionable acts of sin, predominantly of the deadly variety. And yet beneath this circle of hell ran the roots of the ‘World Tree’ that energised all life – etheric and physical.
