by Grey Durose
George surveyed the carnage: the man with the knife in his back had now expired. With the passing of his mistress, the power she'd granted him was gone too. He set about cleaning up the mess, the pit in the middle of the room proved a convenient place to put the bodies and, from the faint smell coming from it, it wasn't the first time it had been used for just such a purpose.
Once the remains were in place, George sprayed the hole with the last of the fuel in his improvised flame thrower. The fuel drizzled down the hole for what seemed an eternity, like a bright comet in the blackness of space. He'd noticed how long the corpses seemed to fall but presumed they'd made a soft landing, now he gained some perspective of the true depth of the hole. The fuel hit the bottom some fifteen metres below, the flames took, just a flicker then bursting in to a roaring blaze, illuminating the well like a starburst. As the flames roared up, there was a strange squealing and George could see the scurrying forms of dozens of rats caught in the fire. The flames flared then quickly subsided.
Now the hard part was done, he turned his attention to the back rooms. Through the veiled door at the back of the dais, was a small access area with more doors leading off. The door straight ahead led in to a storage room; the walls were lined with shelves supporting a plethora of jars, bottles and boxes labelled with lists of their contents. The collection was a mixture of chemicals, rare and common animal parts and extractions, and other items used in ritual magic and conjurations. It reminded him of his own basement, the smell of cold wax and sulphur.
The room to the right of the entrance was a library, the books mostly comprised a collection of widely available texts from the last three hundred years but mixed in with them were many books on human history, politics, sexuality and torture. There was nothing there of any use to George, he already had his own - far more extensive - library but it was a sign that the cult had been researching here as well as in Iraq, perhaps looking for clues which might lead them to the remaining part of the Nameless One that, for some reason, seemed to hold more significance than the rest.
Through the last door, was the bed chamber to which the creature had alluded. It was a large room, well suited to a creature which must have spent much of its time confined here. Along the wall to the left, were a row of antique wardrobes, each he estimated to be at least two centuries old and crafted by the masters of the time. The walls were painted a deep red, lending a darkness to the room, even with the light on. The floor was stone but covered by thick, beautifully woven rugs with patterns in of purple, red and gold. The bed was an enormous four-poster, the posts supporting a solid mahogany canopy, carved on the underside with scenes of torture and debauchery which would have made the Marquis de Sade blush. The mattress was draped with aubergine silk sheets and a heavily embroidered duvet, with matching over-sized pillows lying untidily across it. A quick search of the bed revealed nothing save some reasonably fresh pale stains (George chose not to speculate as to the source) to the sheets and some chaffing on the corner posts.
George turned to the row of wardrobes: the first contained a selection of clothes; leather, rubber, silk, fishnet and chain featured with unusual frequency, the kind of things you might find in any good fetish establishment. The second wardrobe contained various instruments of constraint, ropes, chains, handcuffs, as well as bespoke wrist and ankle restraints, complete with metal bars to keep them separated by whatever distance was desired. George took his time examining the restraints, he’d had reason to create many different devices for his stage performances and he wondered for a moment if they might be useful. A snort of laughter escaped from George as he opened the next wardrobe to find an array of whips, paddles, nail-boards, thumbscrews and a pile of rather painful looking sex toys at the bottom. Each to their own, he thought.
The middle Wardrobe had three drawers at the bottom: the top two contained tiny vials of liquids, of varying colour and viscosity, in wooden racks. The bottom drawer was empty save for a pile of documents, including lists of the current membership of the sects and, more importantly, where and how to find their lairs. George took the lists and placed them in his bag with a grin. With Matravers's demise hitting the news the rest of the sects would be in touch, only to discover that the Sect of the Tail and of the Serpent were no longer contactable, which would most likely put them on guard.
George left the bed chamber and made his way back through the meeting room, which was getting quite smoky. He walked quickly in to the cloak room, closing the double doors behind him. George realised he had to get out of this place without appearing on too many security cameras, the square was home to various international bodies and some of them took security quite seriously but were equally unlikely to want to share their camera footage with the UK authorities. His clothes could be followed from camera to camera and the police would leave no stone unturned. He racked his brain for an exit plan but escape through the front door could possibly lead the authorities straight to his door. Then it came to him, the rats. If there were rats in the well there had to be a way in and if there was a way in, there may be a way out.
George went back in to the meeting room, the fire was out now and the remains below would soon be cooled by the inherent dampness of any pit dug that deep under London. He got a length of silk rope out of his bag, tied one end to the balustrade and dropped the rest down the side of the pit. George began to lower himself down the smooth bricks that lined the side of the well. Step by slippery step he got closer to the bottom. He landed on the partially festered remains of a large number of victims and the slightly charred bodies of the cult. There was a crunch of breaking ribs below one of his feet and a squelch below the other, as his foot threatened to slide out from under him on the wet flesh.
He switched on his torch and circled until he saw it: the corpses were piled so high that he almost missed it but it was just visible. To his left, the bricks in the wall of the well changed their pattern from standing flat on their bottoms, to forming the top of an arch. George began to move the corpses in front of the arch, they were in varying degrees of decay and moving them stirred the rancid stench which had been masked by the burning. Pieces of flesh, freshly warmed, slid clean away from bone, and joints gave way as he pulled on them, he was more grateful than ever that he was wearing gloves.
After he'd moved four of the self-disassembling bodies, he'd created enough of a gap to slide through. He squeezed over the bodies and in to a cramped, brick-lined tunnel. There was barely enough room to squat in the tunnel and there were three inches of water on the floor which seemed to be flowing in to the well behind him. There was a slight breeze coming from somewhere further up the tunnel and George could faintly smell the salty waters of the tidal Thames. ‘This must have been some sort of forgotten escape tunnel.’ He decided. He squeezed back in to the well and set light to the silk rope. If worst came to worst he could always climb the brick surface.
George began to slowly waddle along the tunnel, there was a slight upward slope which made progress even more painful but he'd been trained to deal with confined spaces and had developed all the right leg muscles for the job. He left the stench of corpses behind and was almost glad of the foul brown water streaming around his hands and ankles. For two hours, he pushed along the stream in the tunnel, which occasionally flattened out before rising again. At last, the tunnel began to dry out, he could see a glimmer of daylight and soft gusts of wind were carrying brisk fresh air in to the tunnel.
George came to an iron grate, as he’d expected the tunnel ended at the river, high above the waterline but still below street level. Looking down, he could see a mud flat, exposed by the receding tide. He gave the grate a bang with the heel of his hand; it gave a little. George rocked back, bracing his hands on the ground behind him and, lifting one foot up and kicking out with all his strength. The grate gave way, breaking free of its rusted securing bolts and landing with a loud slap on the wet mud below. He crawled up to the edge of the tunnel and lowered himself down on to the grate, sitting like
an island in a sea of alluvial soil and the litter from centuries of human off-casts.
George saw some stairs to his right and, with one almighty leap, just about made it to the bottom step without ending up knee deep in mud. Back on the surface, and a little disoriented, George turned his jacket inside-out and hailed a taxi. After offering an extra-large tip, he persuaded the reluctant driver to take him, in his muddy and slightly smelly condition, back to the edge of Belgravia.
By the time George got back to the car he'd already received a ticket. He ripped it from the windscreen and tossed it inside. He wouldn't be using this car again and he'd have to use a few contacts to get rid of it when the job was done, he was just glad he’d avoided getting clamped. He drove home listening to the news: Matravers had been discovered in the early morning by his cleaner; he’d hired her to turn up first thing in the morning so she could have her work done before he got up. The police were describing it as a ritualistic killing, possibly related to Matravers work. He allowed himself a feeling of relief, his night's work was done and now he could rest easy for a few short hours.
Chapter Fourteen
George looked up to find a quite horrifying sight. Henry was leaning over him, or at least what had once been Henry. Instead of the face he'd been accustomed to, he found himself looking at a loosely held together mask of mouldering flesh. There was a hole developing on Henry's left cheek and it oozed with a thick, translucent fluid which collected in to a large droplet on his dangling jawline. His greenish pallor and heavy odour had both become stronger features since the last time George had encountered him. His milky eyes were rimmed with fresh yellow pus.
'You're awake at last! Or should that be asleep?' Henry said in an almost celebratory tone.
'Why do you keep coming back, Henry? You're dead, it's time for you to rest.' George entreated.
'I'll never rest, George. I can't, it won’t let me.' Henry said with a heavy sigh that gurgled in his wet chest.
'It killed you, I know, but surely death released you from any hold it had.' George replied.
'It drained my body, yes, and when death came it felt like the most tremendous relief from the agony of being sucked dry, but the blood it took is only a part of the story.' he began to explain, his face deeply lined where his skin had lost all elasticity and sagged like a half-filled sack.
'What do you mean, Henry? It took more than your life?' George asked.
'Exactly! The blood is just the physical side; it took my very essence along with it. The aspect that was Henry, my spirit, or soul, or whatever else you'd prefer to call It was drawn in to the creature, too.' He continued, a sadness appearing in his festering eyes, even though George could recognise the familiar academic excitement in his voice.
'Is there no hope of escape?' If he could free Henry he would, but he had other priorities.
'You can't escape from yourself, George. I'm it and it's me.' Henry said.
'So, when you come to me like this, I'm really just talking to the creature?' George was confused, if Henry was an expression of the beast he'd rather not see him at all.
'No, it's still me. For some reason it can't quite control me. Maybe it's because I'm new, it hasn't had time to fully integrate my consciousness, or maybe because I didn't view it as the all-powerful God or Demon the other poor souls in here already believed it to be when the damn thing consumed them. Either way, I'm like an arm that won't do what it's told. For now.' He was trying to rationalise his vague sense of his experience inside the beast but no matter how he struggled, the right words were hard to find.
'There are others?'
'Oh yes, many thousands as far as I can tell. Some've been trapped in here so long they can't tell themselves from the beast. Tens of thousands of years, George! Can you imagine what that must be like?' He began shouting, the idea of an eternal prison understandably terrified him.
'You mean to tell me the creature has been around that long and it didn't manage to subjugate humanity before now?' He'd felt sure the appearance of the beast in Eridu had been close to the scene of its arrival, or its birth, and that had been less than ten thousand years ago.
'That's just it, George, it did. It conquered all of us long ago but it took many generations before it was strong enough and, thanks to men like you, it could never hold on to power.' Henry divulged, a cloudy tear rolled down his cheek but George couldn’t tell if it was spawned by emotion or rot.
'My predecessors have been doing this job since the middle of the ice age?' He asked, not sure if he was really all that surprised. He knew the tradition stretched back long before the memory of the Masters but he scarcely suspected it could be as old as that.
'The name has changed a little over time but I've heard such legends, from far away and long ago. Lost to man but preserved in the crowded mind of the beast itself.' he enthused.
'If the beast can remember, how come the vampires don't?' George countered. If the vampires were from the same source, how could they not know everything the Nameless One does? he pondered.
'The vampires? Oh, you mean the other parts. I know very little of them. When the beast was dismembered it lost not so much parts of its body, as parts of its mind. Some of what they know it no longer knows and vice versa. All I do know, is that it can reach out to them now, just as I can reach out to you; it can sense them on the other side and it's trying to convey something to them, all is not well. I can sense anger, it seems not all of them are as happy to be reunited as others.' He explained.
'Civil war?' George ventured.
'Of a kind... Wait, I have to go, it's searching for me!' Henry's face scrunched up in pain and a bundle of twelve tendrils came bursting from his chest, spilling out on to George, biting and writhing across the bed clothes. They quickly retracted again, grabbing at Henry and dragging him backward. The room went black.
George awoke to drawn blinds and an empty room. Poor, poor, Henry, he thought. Henry had brought this on himself but had had no idea what he was doing, now he was doomed to an eternity of maddening captivity; unless George could prevent it. The only way to free him would be to destroy the beast and to do that he'd either have to go to where it had been contained or bring it here, to his world. He moved to get up, then collapsed back on to his pillow. His body was a mass of bruises and, from the clicking noise in his chest and feeling of weakness in his left arm, he was sure that he'd cracked at least one rib in the encounter with the cultists the morning before. He lay there for a few minutes, mulling over the dream he'd just had. It was apparent that these were not just dreams, Henry really was communicating to him and trying to aid him in his cause, though how long he could continue to trust what Henry had to say was something he'd have to consider further along the road. Henry himself had implied that, sooner or later, the Nameless One would bring him under Its control and when that happened It may seek to use Henry to misdirect him.
He rose from his bed, a little more tentatively this time, and wandered downstairs in search of food and much needed hot, black coffee. He collected his bag, fished out the lists he'd acquired and began to scan the names and places. It was apparent to George that if he got this wrong he'd quickly find himself in a prison cell at best or a morgue at worst. These were not the kind of people and creatures that he could face in his current condition and he decided to take a few days off to heal up his injuries, before setting off for Paris. The city of love had a dark heart and George was now set on cutting it out. It was home to the Sect of the Left Leg, there were five men and seven women and as much of a mixed bunch as the Sect of the Tail had been.
George spent the next couple of days with his feet up, studying the members of the sect, memorising their faces and home addresses and getting a working knowledge of their habits and backgrounds; looking for anything that might give him an edge. Also over the course of the next two days, the story of George's activities unfolded on the news. First, the mysterious disappearance of a number of public figures, a day later the car of Sir Edward Jameson
spotted outside an address in Belgravia and, finally, the discovery of the remains of a large number of people in the basement and two, badly dehydrated, security guards. Forensic tests had identified the most recent bodies but many of the remains were in such an advanced state of decay they would take longer to weeks identify. Since George suspected that the sect would have chosen victims who wouldn't be missed - the homeless or people who chose solitary lives - they may not have been recorded as missing at all.
Police were at a loss as to what such an unusually diverse band of people were doing at the address, or how they came to be slain. All they did know was that two distinct firearms and a large blade had been used and then the corpses had been burnt and dumped in a hole. Though the older corpses showed no signs of weapons being used on them or any burning close to the time of death, they were still treating it as the scene of a single crime.
It seemed George had bought himself some time and he used it to dispense with the car he'd used that night and destroy the clothing he'd worn, the firearms were easy enough to get rid of, re-drilling the barrels and dumping them in a deep body of water under cover of darkness. He didn't expect the police to be able to trace the events of that night back to him but it was best to cover all the bases, just in case one of them had a blinding stroke of luck or inspiration.
George packed his bags and put them in the boot of his second car of the week. He only took the bare essentials, he kept a safe-house in almost every capital city in Europe and Paris was certainly no exception. He drove down to Folkestone where he joined the Eurostar to Calais, beyond there he chose to drive himself. He knew the roads to Paris well, as he'd spent a lot of time travelling between his homes in England and France over the years. The language was no problem either, there had always been a lot of Business in France and other francophone countries and he'd been taught to read French - modern and medieval - from an early age.
