So Below: The Trilogy

by Matt Whyman

  “Wow!” Yoshi whistles, still unsure whether to believe what he is hearing, but impressed nonetheless. “The man in the mink might count as my worst nightmare, but I don’t think he’s come all the way from Mars.”

  “The mute boy’s powers allowed him to visualise things around the city,” continues Julius, “but then, like you, he was young and showed potential. Judging by some of the sketches he did for me, it was clear people thought he had a long way to go.”

  “So what did they show?” asks Yoshi, pawing anxiously at his tags. “These sketches?”

  Julius looks to his lap, sighs deeply, and then rises to his feet. “They showed enough for me to keep them to myself,” he says. “I didn’t want to alarm the crew, you see. For if they’d known what scared him so, they might have feared that their days in the bunker would be numbered.”

  “Take me to these pictures,” demands Yoshi. “Wherever you’re hiding them, I need to see them right now.”

  14

  IN THE PICTURE

  “Play it again please, Billy.”

  Mikhail is lying on his back in the Bridge, directly beneath the big screen. A panel hangs loose from the underbelly. Up inside, he’s tinkering with circuit boards as thin as wafers. Only his lower legs are visible, and also a hand that reaches out every now and then for a screwdriver or soldering iron. The two boys who had been hoping to get to grips with Billy’s video game now find themselves handing the young Russian whatever he requests.

  “I’ll run it from the top,” says Billy No-Beard, still sitting behind the controls. “If it doesn’t stop blurring this time, I think we’ll have to admit defeat.”

  “Never give up,” mutters Mikhail. “Without street cams we can’t make magic.”

  “I do realise how important they are for setting up tricks,” replies Billy, sounding increasingly troubled by the situation, “but we can hardly complain to New Scotland Yard. If the police knew we’d patched into their traffic-monitoring system, I very much doubt they’d send a nice man round to fix the problem. We’d end up in care, or worse still with our real parents. Mikhail, it’s been years since I felt the sting of my father’s belt, and I’m never going back!”

  Mikhail slides out now and sits up to face him. “Will you relax? Save the drama for the stage, huh? Even if we can’t sort the problem right now, we’ll find a way. I’ve reloaded the software, and that’s fine – so it has to be the hardware. A loose connection, maybe, or a problem with the graphics card. I’ve checked everything, and even cleaned the fan, so I can’t understand why it’s still playing up.” He turns, along with his two helpers, to look at the screen. The crowd shot on hold up there is zoomed in on the man in the mink with the dreamy trail behind him. “People just don’t do that, after all, and the computer isn’t wired for special effects.”

  “There has to be an explanation,” says one boy, and glances nervously at his friend.

  “Don’t look at me,” the other lad protests. “I came here to score goals. Instead I’m just spooked.”

  “OK, here we go.” Billy taps softly at a key. In response, the footage begins to rewind. The crowds jitter backwards as expected, but the figure in the middle of the frame continues to confound them. He moves in reverse along with everyone else, but there’s no stuttering with him. Instead, the man smoothly reabsorbs the blur he had created.

  “I don’t like the look of this one bit,” mutters Mikhail. “The cameras capture one shot every ten seconds, but this guy is on film all the time. I just don’t see how it’s possible. As an illusion, it’s impressive.”

  “It can’t be an illusion,” says Billy, still watching the slow-moving image. “If it was a trick, we’d know how to do it ourselves.”

  The two boys helping Mikhail face one another again. “I was joking when I said we were looking at a ghost,” one squeaks, “but d’you think it could be for real?”

  Billy stops the tape, and shares his look of concern. He clears his throat, attempts to say something, and then dismisses the idea completely. “Of course it isn’t a ghost!” he declares, as if to convince himself. “Imagine if the new boy heard you talking like that? This is the freak of nature that chased Yoshi here in the first place, remember? It would scare him half to death to think he wasn’t of this world.”

  “Billy’s right,” says Mikhail, toying nervously with the screwdriver in his hand. “But no matter what we think, perhaps we should put the boss in the picture.”

  Julius Grimaldi looks around the bank vault thoughtfully. He presses a finger to his chin, his snowy eyebrows seesawing as he considers one wall of deposit boxes then the next. “If I remember rightly, we won’t have to go far to dig up the mute boy’s pictures.”

  “You left them in here?” splutters Yoshi.

  “Robbers emptied this place years ago,” replies Julius, squinting to read the numbers on the boxes. “In many ways it’s probably more secure now than it was under lock and key, because there’s no reason for them to return.” With that, his eyes zone in on a box across the vault. It isn’t locked when he tests it, but the dust that falls away tells Yoshi that it hasn’t been opened for some time. With great care, Julius lifts out a plastic tube. He pops the lid like a champagne cork, and looks quietly pleased when a roll of papers slips out intact.

  “I was tempted to destroy these pictures at the time,” he says, moving to flatten them out on the upturned safe. “The poor boy became distressed as soon as he put pen to paper,” he adds. “What I never found out was where it had taken place, which is why I held onto them. Now, why don’t your familiarise yourself with them, my boy? Tell me if the location seems familiar.”

  His curiosity fired, Yoshi peers over the first drawing. His first response is how sparse it is, just a series of pencil traces. His second impression is the haste in which it has been scribbled onto the page.

  “It’s a room,” he says cautiously, in case he’s missed something. “A room with very high ceilings, and a wonky chair.”

  “We’re not looking at a work of art, Yoshi. It’s a remote viewing. What you’re looking at is a visualisation from a very special mind.”

  “All I’m saying is the legs aren’t drawn straight.”

  “Just look at the picture underneath,” sighs Julius, as if this is not the first time a crew member has poured scorn on his interests.

  Yoshi does as he is told, sees the same roughly drawn room and chair, but this time with a figure in the seat. “Is it supposed to be him?” he asks, referring to the mute lad. “Whatever special gift he might’ve had, drawing faces certainly wasn’t one of them.”

  “Remote viewers don’t see themselves,” says Julius. “Nor can they see into the future or the past. What they see are events as they occur. The distance might be no object, but sometimes they can feel as if they’re right there at the scene – and that can be traumatic.” He turns the picture to study it briefly. “The identity of the youth drawn here remains a mystery. Even if the boy had found his voice, he became way too disturbed to communicate with me as the drawings progressed.” Julius taps a finger on the sheet of paper clearly blotted with old tears. “Keep going, Yoshi. There are more pictures to get through.”

  Yoshi turns to the next sheet, sees the same scene but with some big machinery sketched in behind the boy. He studies the pencil swoops and markings on these hulking great additions, and figures they must be dials and switches.

  “Are they monitors of some sort?” he asks, to no reply. “They look like old monitors to me.”

  The sheet underneath shows the addition of a web of strings, or wires, running from the machines to a cap on the boy’s head. “Is he in hospital?” asks Yoshi.

  “He’s certainly undergoing some kind of test,” says Julius. “But this is no hospital.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Keep going.”

  The next page includes what must be a doctor or technician. He’s wearing a long coat and holding a clipboard in his stick hands. On the fo
llowing page another figure joins him. This one is heavier-set than them both, with a circle for a body instead of a thin trunk. His features might be hastily drawn, but those tight eyes, broad brow and bald head are unmistakeable.

  “That’s him!” cries Yoshi. “The man in the mink!”

  “Right there in the frame,” agrees Julius, watching Yoshi closely as he turns the page. In the picture underneath, the brute has reached for a switch on one of the machines. “You’re nearly there,” the old man assures him. “You might want to prepare yourself for the way this finishes.”

  Yoshi glances at Julius, concern gathering in his expression. Then, under the glow of the lamplight, he slowly peels away the sheet that covers the last one in the sequence.

  15

  FAR FROM IT

  What Yoshi sees isn’t just unexpected. It’s so startling that he steps back to take it all in. Everything from the previous drawings is featured – from the kid in the hot seat and the surrounding machines to the doctor and the brute Yoshi knows so well. What is different is that this sketch has been obliterated by the mute boy’s own hand.

  Such is the violence with which the picture is scribbled out that in places the pencil has ripped through the paper.

  “It looks like an explosion,” breathes Yoshi.

  “Indeed it does.” Julius pauses there, and waits until he has the lad’s full attention. “An explosion of the mind.”

  Yoshi examines the picture once again. This time he touches the obliterated sketch of the boy in the chair. “An explosion of the mind,” he repeats to himself, feeling strangely connected to the plight of both the subject of this remote viewing and the psychic artist himself. “Do the scribbles mean something happened when that brute flipped the switch?” he asks Julius.

  “I had so many questions to ask the poor lad about this picture. Sadly, just drawing it upset him so acutely that I had to pull him away.”

  “So what do you think it means?”

  “I was hoping you could answer that,” replies Julius.

  Yoshi turns to the storm of pencil strokes once more. He has to blink to focus this time, and shake his head to clear that weird static crackle now interfering with his thoughts. Doing his best to ignore it, he turns to the last page in front of him. There’s nothing on it, however. Just a blank piece of paper . . . a white sheet that seems to trigger an overwhelming flash right there behind Yoshi’s eyes.

  “Oh!”

  “What is it?” asks Julius, concerned by the way his young charge sits up sharply. He waves a hand in front of Yoshi’s eyes. With no response, he grips the boy gently by the shoulders. “What do you see, my friend? It’s happening, isn’t it? Paint a picture in your mind for me.”

  “I see a room.” Yoshi is aware of the old man’s voice. Even so, he is consumed by the image forming in his mind’s eye as the flare begins to fade. “I see the same chair. Some high-tech stuff, too: flat screens and keyboards. There are no dials and switches.”

  “The equipment has advanced,” breathes Julius, struggling to contain his excitement. “It must be happening now!”

  “I see people entering the room. Some are wearing lab coats, but a couple look more like businessmen, and there’s . . . uh-oh.”

  “What?”

  “Our friend in the mink,” whispers Yoshi, scowling to himself now. “There’s a girl with him. Long, dark hair. High fringe. Pale skin. Black dress. About my age, maybe a year older. Fourteen, perhaps. She has lots of bangles on her wrists and one heck of a frown on her face.”

  “Hey!” says Julius. “You’re good. You may not remember much about your past, but I’d suggest you’ve done this many times before. There’s no faulting your powers of description.”

  “He’s leading her to the chair now,” Yoshi continues, still speaking under his breath as if fearing he might be heard by them. “She’s making a big deal about wearing the metal cap with all the wires, but it’s in place now all the same. I don’t like it, Julius. It seems so real.”

  “That’s because it is real. You’re experiencing a remote view of a scene that is actually taking place as we speak. But can you pinpoint the location?”

  “Something is happening!” Yoshi stops him with one hand, and then closes his eyes quite suddenly. Lines of concentration tighten into his expression. “This girl,” he breathes. “This can’t be right! She seems to be . . . glowing!”

  “Can you go into detail, Yoshi? Paint this picture for me.”

  “It’s like a haze of light spreading out around her body.”

  “An aura,” whispers Julius, nodding now. “What you are witnessing is a field of psychic energy. Such a phenomenon surrounds us all, although very few people can see it.”

  “Wow. I know I’ve lost my memory, but that’s still news to me.”

  “Then you must be viewing one gifted girl if she’s able to express her aura to the untrained eye. Yoshi, it seems you’re not the only special child in town right now!”

  “It’s glowing purple and blue, like a bruise.”

  “Which would suggest she’s not feeling particularly sunny right now.” Julius paces around the boy, hands behind his back now, watching him all the time. “The colour is often believed to mirror a person’s emotional state.”

  “I told you she looked cross,” says Yoshi, his eyes still shut. Then he seems to start and grimace as if in pain. “Oh no,” he says. “I have to put a stop to it. Something is about to happen that’s upsetting her. She’s in real distress!”

  “Yoshi, it may feel as if you’re there, as if you’re even feeling what she’s going through, but it’s an illusion. A psychic trick, if you like. Without knowing the location, there is nothing we can do.”

  “Leave her alone!” The boy’s eyes snap open. For a second he looks totally lost, like someone who has just escaped a nightmare and found themselves bolt upright in bed. “Where are we now?” he asks breathlessly, and turns to look around.

  “The vault,” replies Julius, and tips his head. “Have you lost your memory again?”

  “Far from it.” The boy comes round full circle, a glint of determination in his eye. “Do you know what’s above us, Julius?”

  “I believe we must be in the banking district,” he says, with a note of intrigue. “Threadneedle Street, at a guess.”

  “Can you see a big dome from there?”

  “A dome? That’ll be St Paul’s Cathedral! The famous Sir Christopher Wren was the architect, though I must say the work of his lesser-known apprentice remains much overlooked by the general public. Sir Chris had little interest in astronomy, you see.”

  “So,” says Yoshi hesitantly, aware that he’s talking to a figure with a lifelong passion here. “Is that a ‘yes’? Can you see the dome from Threadneedle Street?”

  “Can’t miss it!” declares Julius. “The crown of the dome looms large to the west of the banking district. In fact its shadow falls over many of the streets and courtyards at the end of each day. We’re talking basic archeoastronomy.” He pauses there, fiddles with the cuffs of his jacket. “This isn’t about banking though, is it?”

  “Not exactly.” Yoshi touches his temples with his fingers, as if to soothe away the last of a headache. He frowns to himself, still picking over what he has just seen. “But there may be a saving in store,” he adds, pacing the floor now.

  Julius looks set to press for an explanation, only to curse when a series of loud, abrasive bleeps blare from inside his coat. “Do excuse me,” he mutters, and begins to search his pockets. “Now where is the infernal thing? Whenever it goes off I feel like a slave to the modern age.”

  “Is that a phone?” asks Yoshi, wincing at the volume. “I’ve never heard such a ringtone.”

  Julius pulls a face, signalling his own displeasure, and then finds what he is looking for. “I tend to leave the cutting-edge technology to the younger generation,” he says, revealing what at first looks like a large, black brick with buttons on it. “But my crew insist I carry some
thing portable so they know where I am. They fear I might take a fall and need to call for their assistance.” He extends a telescopic aerial, and then ponders which button to press. “It’s entirely unnecessary, of course, but they will worry.”

  “Julius, that thing looks the same age as me!”

  “Which is no time at all, in the big scheme of things.” He shrugs, holding what must be one of the earliest mobile phones in history with both hands. “The only reason I agreed to use such a newfangled gadget is because it works underground, you see.”

  “I bet it does!” the boy declares, feeling charged up now his head has cleared. “Are you sure it’s safe? If you can receive a signal down here, imagine how it must be scrambling your brain!”

  “Nonsense, boy.”

  “I’m surprised your head isn’t glowing,” adds Yoshi, still haunted by his vision of the girl with the aura.

  “I might not enjoy using state of the art gadgets,” says Julius, and punches a button that stops the ringing, “but this has done me no harm.” He hoists the phone to his ear, clearly struggling with such a weight. “Hello? Yes . . . you have? When was this? You should have sent for me immediately. We’ll be right there!” He stabs at another button. When a second attempt to switch it off fails, he hands the whole thing to Yoshi.

  “Who was it?” asks the boy, noting the lack of a caller display. He selects the only red button on the panel, feels this ancient model actually power down in his hands, but decides against teaching Julius how to use it correctly right now. All he can think about is the final reel of his remote view into that room . . . and the girl screaming in protest.