by Matt Whyman
“Enough with the theatrics, comrade. Just do it!”
Billy registers his remark, rolls back from the shoreline, and then throws the rope end high into the air. It just about reaches the roof of the tunnel, upon which it appears to gain a sudden rigidity. Billy grasps the base and holds it like a staff.
“The Indian Rope Trick!” he declares. “I’m just hoping I can modify it now to save you all.”
“So do we,” says Livia whose aura is flexing as if it is struggling to be free of its owner. The bandage strips are still slung over her shoulder. They’re so heavy with this porridge-like sand, however, that she might as well be caught up in seaweed.
“You’re losing your audience!” the twins shout as one.
“Not me!” Mae Lin points out, despite the fact that she’s close to being the first to go under. “I love a magic show!”
Billy calls across to Yoshi and Jenks, summoning them to his side. “As my assistants,” he says, “I want you both to help me out here before I drop this thing!” Immediately, the pair place their hands on the base of the rope and find its solid as a steel cable.
“How did you do that?” asks Yoshi, straining with Jenks to keep the rope upright.
“You should’ve worked it out by now,” says Billy. “It’s not the first time you’ve seen it performed, after all!”
“Hurry!” cries Blaize. “Please!”
“We really don’t have time for explanations,” adds Scarlett, who is sparking now like a television in a bathtub.
“We need to ease this rope into the quicksand,” says Billy, straining to keep it balanced. “Just let it down nice and easy. We don’t want to go hitting anyone on the head with it. That would just make a bad situation much worse.”
“Let’s do it,” says Yoshi. “For once I’m happy to follow your orders.”
With great care, the trio begin to tip the rigid rope over the quicksand. Billy walks the top end down until it sinks through the surface, just in front of Mae Lin, and then urges her to grab hold of it. Pulling her free isn’t easy. Billy and Yoshi heave with all their might, while Jenks reaches out from the shoreline with one swarthy hand. Finally, with a sound like someone’s just popped a finger from their mouth, Mae Lin finds herself back on solid ground, where she picks herself up and immediately joins in with the rescue operation. One after the other, every member of the floundering party finds themselves fished to safety. Mikhail is last, winding up on his hands and knees in front of Billy’s rollerblades.
“Thanks,” he says, gasping for breath. “You did a good job.”
“I know,” says Billy proudly. “At least one of us isn’t short of a trick or two.”
The young Russian spits a glob of quicksand from his mouth, and glowers up at him. “It wasn’t that good, Billy. Everyone knows how the Indian Rope trick works.”
“I don’t,” Yoshi volunteers. “But all that matters is that it saved your lives.”
“It was a lucky escape,” says Livia, who faces the quicksand again now. Her aura shines across the surface. It isn’t so far before the stones and river refuse reappear on the surface, though this treacherous trap could’ve marked a grisly end to their journey. Yoshi’s twin beams join in next, penetrating further into the dark tunnel.
“You’re right,” he says, as his lights sweep across what lies beyond: a forest of wooden crosses, each strapped together by straw and skewed at odd angles. “I really don’t think any of us want to end our days here.”
25
Into the back of beyond
As a final resting place, it was foreboding. At least, this is how Mikhail sees it once the party have crossed the quicksand. The young Russian had been the one to suggest using the packing crates they’d passed as stepping stones. Yoshi had gone first, demonstrating how important it was to establish a rhythm in order to reach the far shore. Even Mae Lin had made it without a hitch, while Jenks simply dropped to all fours and scampered from one wooden island to the next. Right now, Billy is the last one across, having demanded a run up to grind each crate with his rollerblades. He’s also the first to suggest they turn around and head right back again.
“This isn’t just foreboding,” he whispers fearfully, as the full extent of the underground graveyard falls under their torchbeams. “This has ‘go away’ written all over it!”
The crosses are wreathed in cobwebs, and stretch back as far as they can see. As for the riverbed here, it follows a gentle incline, which leaves the party feeling as if they’re facing a grandstand of death. It’s only when Jenks stands before them like some ghastly tour guide that they remember why they’ve come this far.
“This must be the Back of Beyond,” he wheezes.
“Too right,” agrees Billy. “It’s seriously grim.”
Jenks catches his breath and frowns. “No, it’s what we call this place. The Back of Beyond is where we bury our dead.”
“Oh!” Billy wheels around for another look. “So is this the back or the front?”
“We are not permitted to venture out here,” Jenks continues, ignoring the Executive Deck Hand, “but it means we’ll find what we’re looking for just over this rise.”
Billy nods to himself, as if this has put his unease to rest. “I see,” he says to Jenks finally. “Though I doubt they’ll welcome us with open arms and a party.”
“So, we tread carefully,” says Yoshi, who is first to weave his way between the crosses. “Billy, you can always keep watch here. Once we’re inside the lair, I don’t plan to hang around. We’ll be in and out in no time.”
“That’s the best suggestion you’ve made since we started out on this adventure,” Billy confirms, and steps back to allow everyone else to pass. He watches them go one by one, each taking a source of light with them. Finally, left only with his torchbeams, Billy decides that perhaps they might need his help after all. Even if the bogeyman that Jenks has described proved to be an urban myth, this isn’t exactly the kind of environment where you’d want to lie back and take a nap.
The party snake their way up the incline in silence. Their surroundings seem to demand an air of solemn respect, and that’s exactly what they give. Nobody touches any of the crosses, or treads across the raised mounds they mark.
“This must be very strange for you,” says Yoshi finally, as Jenks lopes close behind.
“Jenks has only ever heard of this place,” he replies. “It lies beyond the far wall, and that is guarded at all times.”
As he speaks, Yoshi’s twin beams hit something solid in the darkness up ahead. He stops in his tracks, raising his hand so that everyone follows suit. Mikhail’s torchbeams join his now, revealing a wall fashioned from what looks like railway sleepers, and cut to fit the tunnel snugly.
“Here we are,” Yoshi whispers, as his torchbeams pick out a door as big as a drawbridge. From the other side, a muffled crunching sound can be heard. Had Yoshi not trodden on that river of bones himself, he’d wonder what on earth could be behind it.
“The gate keepers,” Jenks whispers fearfully. “Oh my! When one of our number passes away, they take their bodies here to bury, but nobody is permitted to come back in.”
“Even the dead?” This is Livia, whose aura glows now like a lightbulb has just fired up in her mind. She’s still carrying all the bandages over her shoulder, which she dumps on the ground before Yoshi. “I have a plan,” she tells them all. “Billy and Mikhail might be at odds with one another about the standard of their street magic. I thought perhaps it’s time us psychics showed you how it was done.”
The twins glance at one another, mystified. Livia awaits only one person’s response. When Yoshi finally breaks from her gaze, he does so with a shrug and a smile. “Very well,” he says, standing aside. “The stage is all yours.”
26
Who’s that knocking?
The brute has grown used to killing time. Since his capture, Aleister could spend endless hours in darkness and solitude. The only break would come in the form of foo
d. It would be delivered without fail when this lost tribe awoke, along with a bladder of brackish water.
Right now, two things have killed Aleister’s appetite. The news that Yoshi was on his way with Jenks should have filled him with hope. Instead, having just learned that the Elder was still alive, he can’t help thinking that something very bad could happen if both parties come face to face. He breathes out long and hard, still turning this prospect over in his mind, when a thudding sound breaks out behind him. It draws him from his contemplation, even persuades him to turn around for a better look. He isn’t alone, which is no surprise because such a noise is most unusual in this long forgotten tunnel section. As the thudding continues, so more troglodytes emerge from their boltholes. Some brandish burning torches, as if to protect themselves. Others simply blink blindly and let their razor sharp hearing guide them.
“What is going on?” one asks. “This is most unusual.”
All Aleister can do is watch as they flock past his cage, and then recoil as they do when a rectangle of bright light opens up in front of them.
The brute may be alone in having his sight, but the heat accompanying this spectacle is enough to stop the tribe in their tracks. Shielding his eyes with one hand, Aleister dares to peek at the cause of the commotion, and sees a carpet of fire spread fleetingly from the open doorway.
“Good lord!” Aleister attempts to rise up within his confines, only to bump his skull on the bars.
With the flames hot on their tails, the two gate keepers who have just opened the door retreat in a panic. Only when they sense an arresting presence lumber into their lair do they wheel around and squeal in horror.
“’Tis the Jenks Catcher!” one cries, and scrambles from its path. “Flee for your lives!”
What they’d see, with the gift of sight, is a mummy. But not just any old embalmed Egyptian zombie coming at them with both arms outstretched. This one is glowing through its ragged bandages, and moaning something about returning a prodigal son to the fold.
“You shall not harm him,” the mummy groans, though not a single member of the tribe hangs around to register Jenks himself pop his snout around the doorframe. His ghostly aura simply adds to the spectacle, and further fuels the panic that now grips the inhabitants of this forgotten tunnel section.
“Get away, my brothers and sisters! Save yourselves!”
The troglodytes rush back the way they came, some vaulting the brute’s cage in their bid to find cover. Aleister had overheard them swap stories about this folk devil, and now here it was in the flesh. He smiles to himself as the mummy staggers into the tunnel. The glare slicing through every gap in its bandages is wholly convincing, as well as the tracks of fire burning out behind it. As an illusion, this is second to none. It could also mean just one thing. Grasping the bars before him, Aleister focuses on the open doorway where Jenks now stands, and calls out a name that’s been on his mind for some time.
“Yoshi! I do hope you’re behind all this. Otherwise, I’m in trouble!”
The brute detects some movement in the gloom through the door. Then several torch beams swoop into view. The party behind it are hard to make out. At first they’re simply silhouettes, until each one dips through the door and into the wraith-like light surrounding the waiting mummy and the wretch beside it. Aleister recognises them in turn; there’s the boy on rollerblades, followed by the young Russian with the red spiky hair. Those hot-headed twins are next through the door, looking pleased with the smouldering trails they have just laid down. Then comes the little old lady from the dim sum store in Chinatown. Her presence baffles the brute, but doesn’t concern him for long. Nor does the sight of the mummy unwinding its bandages, to reveal a girl whose aura just refuses to be hidden from view. Finally the figure he’s been waiting for emerges. Yoshi’s wearing Aleister’s white mink. It’s a coat the brute believed he’d never see again. On Yoshi, it reminds him of the man he used to be.
“We made it!” The boy has been waiting for this moment. He strides towards the cage, with the beam from his head torch spotlighting the prisoner inside. At first, Aleister turns from the glare, but when Yoshi crouches in front of the bars he meets his gaze directly. “The eyes are the windows to the soul,” he tells the brute, “I’ve come here to look into yours.”
“This is not the time or the place,” the brute replies, and glances anxiously into the gloom that hides the tribe now. “It isn’t safe here for any of you.”
As he speaks, they hear a squeal of surprise. The pair turn to see one of the younger troglodytes emerge cautiously from the darkness. “Jenks? Could it be true? Is that you my friend?”
Jenks responds with a gasp, and then scuttles into the arms of his old buddy. They wheel around one another in delight, right there beneath the waypoint in the brickwork, which serves to bring Yoshi back to the matter in hand.
“I think you’re bluffing,” Yoshi says. “If we leave you here with Jenks, my guess is you’ll have him fire up the Faerie Ring in your name before we’ve even closed the door behind us.”
“I’m asking you to take Jenks with you. The Faerie Ring can wait. Your lives are more important.”
The way Aleister addresses him, so gruff but with such sincerity, gives Yoshi pause for thought.
“I always thought you were the bad guy,” he says next, coming closer to the bars so as not to be overheard. “We all did. The way you lured us into your Foundation, and virtually kept us prisoner just so you could harness our psychic powers, it’s no wonder I find it hard to trust you.”
The brute bows his head, seemingly ashamed. “I did what I believed to be necessary, for the sake of this city. There’s only one man you can’t trust in all this, Yoshi.” He stops there, as if unable to say his name out loud, and brings his gaze upon the boy once more. “Set me free so I can help you escape, and I promise I will explain everything.”
Yoshi glances at the key hanging from the nail. “I don’t know,” he says uncertainly, and then strains to focus on a disturbance in the gloom behind Jenks and his friend.
“You’re running out of time,” the brute insists. “Trust me, Yoshi. These savages won’t hide out for long. Once they’ve worked out that you’ve tricked them, you’ll wish you’d stayed away!”
Yoshi keeps his eyes fixed on the gloom, and a cry dies in his throat when an all-too familiar shape begins to form.
27
Old friends, new tricks
The Elder wheezes like any other wretch down here. He sports the same grotesque features as every sun-starved, bat-blind troglodyte, from the sharpened ears to the milky eyes. His wiry ginger hair may have turned grey with age, but he still moves with a purpose. The way he stalks into view, it’s clear he rules the roost.
“I smells a traitor!” he snarls, looming over Jenks now, and swings a club out of the darkness. “And traitors must die!”
Yoshi might’ve seen it coming, but it’s too late to act. The poor thing hits the ground in a heartbeat, leaving his friend to howl and scuttle away. In horror, Yoshi turns to Aleister. This time, he doesn’t need to be persuaded to slam the key into the lock and twist it free.
“At last!” The brute emerges to rise to his full height now. The way he turns to glower at the party at the door strikes fear into the boy. He retreats from Aleister, unsure of what he might do next, and finds himself cowering with his friends.
“What have I done?” he asks in a whisper. “I thought he would help us.”
Livia rests a hand on his shoulder. “Let’s pray that we can trust him,” she replies.
“He’s been eating his greens,” observes Mae Lin appreciatively. “That’s for sure.”
Beneath the waypoint, the Elder is focused on the wretch he has just felled. He pokes Jenks with his club, but he doesn’t move. The only thing to stir is the fog of psychic light enshrouding him. They could be looking at light reflected from a pool of water that is slowly draining away.
“I should’ve finished you off the first time,�
�� he wheezes, and swings the club over his shoulder. “You’re a freak!”
Before he can bring it crashing down, a great paw slips the club from his grasp. The Elder grunts in surprise. He wheels around to find Aleister glowering at him.
“You took the words right out of my mouth,” the brute hisses, and a vengeful glint enters those tight blue eyes.
Yoshi looks away on instinct, as do his friends, all of whom wince at the sound of the skull-shattering crunch to break over them. Hearing a dragging sound, Yoshi dares to turn, and sees the soles of two pink and leathery feet seemingly being sucked into the gloom. He knows Aleister is behind it, hauling the body into the tunnel as if to warn the tribe to keep away, but that doesn’t concern him now. It’s the sight of the little creature sprawled on the tunnel floor.
“Jenks!” At once, the wretch is surrounded. Yoshi, Livia, Mae Lin and the twins crouch to care for him, but Jenks himself declines their attention.
“It’s too late,” he tells them in a whisper. “Jenks’s been bashed around many times, but now my time has come.”
“No way,” protests Yoshi, and presses a palm to the creature’s cheek.
“Please, Yoshi. Leave me be.” Jenks lolls his head to face the boy directly. The smile he offers does little to mask the fact that he’s clearly in pain. “You’ve been a good friend. Jenks wouldn’t be home if it wasn’t for your kind help. What more could I want? It’s been a grand adventure.”
As he speaks, his aura begins to flicker and contract.
