Dark Seed

by Simon West-Bulford

  My indignation boiled over at what I believed to be superstitious rubbish, and I laughed derisively at both of them. “What nonsense! He obviously left it out for a reason, and we need to find out why.”

  And with that, I reached over, took the box, and left the room. It was the worst mistake of my life.

  Moon Box Segment Translation 15

  To my children come

  The archaeological diary of Edward Cephas Hargraven

  15th September 1891

  Joseph has returned with news of his journey through the channels. I confess I am relieved that he has come back safely; Haynes’s stories of demons and ancient gods in some small way afflicted me with an unhealthy dose of superstitious fear, and I am glad to have had a sensible measure of reality injected back into our explorations. That is not to say Joseph’s report is ordinary in any way. His account is quite remarkable.

  He shuffled for what he judged to be almost half a mile, down and down, farther and farther, shivering in thin musty air that probably had not been breathed for thousands of years, with only his gas lamp for company. Eventually the channel opened out into an enormous hollow. He claims it might have been the size of a stadium (he could find no end to it as he wandered in his small radius of light) and that he felt like a termite finding its way back to the center of its hive. What he witnessed was a vast honeycomb network, some sort of central hub, veined with numerous twisting, fossilized roots. Dozens, if not hundreds, of tubular tunnels led away from the hub to who knows where. At the very center, he came upon a tall pillar from which more of the fossilized roots sprouted and which may have been the source. He climbed it almost thirty feet and found that it led through a hole in the floor of one of the city’s chambers. He said that it was as if a huge plant had punched its stamen through the floor. It was from here that Joseph made his way through a series of chambers back to camp.

  I have ordered an immediate investigation of this area, and though reluctant to hear more of his ravings, I have requested that Haynes come with us. After his attempt to explode the entrance to the city, I am not sure that I trust leaving him alone.

  16

  Our party of five regrouped in the drawing room near the end of the colonnade. Breswick’s first priority was revealed by his direct attention on the drinks cabinet. He found an unopened bottle of whiskey and five tumblers and proceeded to fill each one halfway. After what looked like a silent prayer, he lifted a tumbler to his lips, tipped his head back, swallowed the contents of his glass with a wide grimace, and filled it again. “Here, anyone telling me they don’t need a stiff drink after all that is off their head,” he said, but I eyed him without disguising my concern.

  By now, the ache in my own head had become a familiar companion. It was a permanent discomfort, as though a great slug had taken residence in my skull and slowly consumed its contents. I welcomed the alcohol as I sank into the leather chair cradling the Moon Box. Rather than dull my senses, the bitter taste and the burning comfort in my gullet prevented me from yielding to the pain and fading into restless apathy. Beatrice tended my wound again and seemed pleased that it had not worsened. I neglected to admit that the drowsiness and pain had not subsided.

  Now that the adrenaline of dark discoveries had subsided a little, each of us fell back on our personal distractions to sustain composure. My head wound was enough to hold my focus, Breswick had prayer and alcohol, Beatrice had diverted her attention to our needs rather than her own, and as for Elizabeth, I can only assume that her thoughts had withdrawn to the labyrinthine mysteries that occupy the female mind when it begins to unravel. Her attention was at one moment silently but intensely focused on Stromany—which he met with his own hostile gaze—and in the next moment, through unknown stimulus, she seemed consumed by the need to rehearse lines for her production. She did this not as a disturbance to the rest of us; rather she paced up and down the room, taking short, sharp inhalations from her cigarette as she muttered her lines.

  Stromany, however, seemed not to have such personal distractions to help him. He was damp with sweat, and the whites of his eyes were completely visible around the iris, so that he held an expression of constant fear. His knuckles were pale from gripping his scalpel too tightly, the point of which he was teasing into his leg to cut small tears in his trousers and draw blood. It was a sign of extreme stress that made us all more than a little nervous, especially Breswick, whose gaze drifted sharply from him to the body of Charlie Nubbs in the corner and back again. Like Elizabeth, Stromany refused to sit. He hovered near the door, and I could understand his angst. If it was indeed he who had killed Nubbs, the body was a painful reminder of the fact.

  The tension was mounting as each of us privately considered the options, each with a unique agenda and questions, and I became increasingly concerned that the fragile cohesion of our fellowship was breaking down. I was not grateful when Breswick eventually broke the silence.

  “That damned box will be our undoing if you don’t get rid of it, Drenn.”

  “What is it?” Elizabeth asked.

  “It’s a Moon Box,” I said. “It’s a rather elaborate means of storage, something like a mechanical advent calendar, I believe. I am hoping that Hargraven left inside an explanation of our invitations, and perhaps even a way out of our predicament, but our chaplain would rather I left it alone.”

  “And with good reason,” Breswick said. “It is an occult artefact and most likely the root of our troubles. It was certainly something that Hargraven was reluctant to—”

  “I think Hargraven wanted us to find it,” I said.

  Beatrice crossed her arms. “That man was either mad or evil. You saw what he was doing in that laboratory of his. We can’t trust anything from him, especially if it’s anything to do with the occult, so if Theo doesn’t think it should be opened, I don’t think so either,” she said.

  “I can’t believe Hargraven was mad or evil,” I said. “And I don’t believe this has anything to do with the occult. It’s just a box. A sophisticated box—if what Hargraven told us was true—I’ll grant you that, but a box nonetheless. We cannot allow our fears to hold us back. If this truly is the root of our problem as Breswick says, then we need to pluck that root out.”

  Breswick closed his eyes and pursed his lips in a moment of frustration. “What Drenn perceives as sophistication is another way of saying that he doesn’t understand how it works, but from my conversations with Hargraven”—he pointed his glass at me and some of the whiskey slopped onto the carpet—“I know more about it than he does, and I can tell you that it is constructed by a civilization as old as mankind and is almost certainly a product of demonic worship. It should be destroyed.”

  “Errant nonsense,” I said. “Why must your kind always resort to supernatural explanations for things you don’t understand? We should—”

  “Nonsense, Drenn? Have you not been paying attention? We are surrounded by demons and—”

  “We’ve been over this,” I said. “We don’t know if they are demons, Chaplain. Those things—”

  Breswick laughed aggressively. “The age-old cry of the academic, ‘we don’t know,’ as if that excuses you from ridiculing someone who believes he does.”

  “Does it matter how it works?” said Elizabeth. “Surely it’s more important to know what’s inside. How do you . . . ?” She cocked her head. It was a twitch, as if something sharp had entered her ear. “Beautiful. You have such an angelic voice.”

  Still irked by Breswick’s comment, I was disinclined to consider the significance of her last sentence, and I failed to acknowledge that she was falling into the same dreamy state that had possessed her earlier in the kitchen. I was more interested in my debate with the chaplain and in the Moon Box.

  “From what I understand, its inner compartments are triggered primarily by the date. A different section of the box unlocks on different dates, usually on whatever day of the month the particular compartment was sealed.”

  “But even if we di
d want to open it, how does that help us?” Beatrice said. “We need to know everything now. We can’t wait a whole month to find out what this is all about.”

  “The chaplain is right,” Stromany said. His voice was agitated. “We should destroy it and the laboratory. We should burn down the school and everything inside. Burn it all.”

  “Oh, excellent idea!” Breswick’s sarcasm was fueled purely by whiskey. “You propose we remove our only safe haven? Damned fool!” The insult was muttered under his breath.

  Stromany took one step forward, glared at him, and twisted the scalpel in his hand. Thankfully, he made no further move.

  “Beatrice is right,” Breswick said, watching Stromany closely. “It would take too long to open every compartment, and even if only one date was important and Hargraven had left us a clue about which one it was, the passage of time is unknown to us, and I for one have no idea of today’s date, do you?”

  “We could try each compartment anyway,” I said. “Any information may help us, even if it is one day at a time.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting what he told us? If you open a compartment on the wrong date, it has the power to drive you mad. And what exactly do you expect to find in there anyway?” Breswick said. “I can’t imagine there would be anything inside that could help us against the demons.”

  Breswick was right: I had forgotten. But I was disinclined to believe his supernatural explanations anyway. “We won’t know unless we try, will we? I’m sure there’s some way of determining the—”

  “It does not matter,” Stromany shouted. “We must destroy it.”

  “Where is Elizabeth?” Beatrice said, rising from her chair and looking around the room.

  I rose too. She was nowhere to be seen. “She must have slipped out of the room in the heat of our discussion.”

  “Stupid girl!” said Breswick. “We need to find her at once.”

  A commotion erupted as Stromany took advantage of our distraction and leapt for the box. I tried to keep hold of it but was unsuccessful. He shoved me aside hard, and as he ran from the room with the box clutched to his chest, I fell awkwardly across the chair. My head snapped back before I landed face-first on the hard floor. My vision swam as I watched Breswick chase Stromany, and in my already weakened state, I tried to stand, dizzily reaching for Beatrice as she shuffled with indecision. She took my hand to steady me but looked anxiously at the door, trying to lead me out.

  I held her back and grasped my face. “Wait.”

  She shook her head, apologized, then clutched at her skirt and hurried out.

  “Beatrice, wait!” I called.

  Dazed but regaining my faculties, I staggered out of the room to see her running the length of the colonnade. With my head swimming, I staggered toward the east wing, but was forced to pause for a number of minutes to clear my head, and took the opportunity to look through the windows of the colonnade. The pyres still raged higher than the treetops, and the beasts continued their revelry amidst the flames. My muscles struggled against the tremor of fatigue as I continued on through the door and into the foyer. Someone had snuffed out the candles along the corridor that led back to the dining room where I had first arrived. I had no idea where any of the others were, and I wavered uncertainly at the foot of the stairs that led up to the first floor.

  “Beatrice!” I cried. “Where are you?”

  “Drenn!” The call came from Breswick, from the direction of the kitchens. He sounded desperate.

  With renewed haste, I braved the dark of the steps that led to the servants’ areas and the corridor toward the kitchens. There I found the chaplain leaning into the table, breathless. Beatrice was beside him, one hand on his back to comfort him.

  “What happened?” I said, moving to help.

  Breswick straightened up with a grimace and gingerly placed his fingertips to his right cheek to find a cut there. A bruise was forming around it. He stretched his jaw.

  “Easy does it,” said Beatrice, holding him steady.

  Breswick examined the blood on his fingertips. “He overpowered me.”

  “Hardly surprising. What did you think you were doing, going after him like that?” I said.

  “As much as I would like to see that box destroyed, I don’t trust him, especially after his comment about burning the place down. He’s unstable, Alex, not thinking rationally, and I fear he might do something we will all regret.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “I don’t know. He was searching the kitchen.” He waved a hand toward the drawers behind Beatrice. “I think he took some matches. I tried to stop him, but he gave me quite a belting. If Beatrice hadn’t arrived, I think he might have tried to use the stove to burn the box and start a fire in here. Have you seen Elizabeth?”

  “No, and I didn’t see Stromany either.”

  “If you didn’t pass him, he must have headed back the other way, toward the dining room. That’s a dead end.”

  “The candles were out in that direction. Why would he do that? Did he have a lamp?”

  Breswick shrugged.

  “Yes, he did,” said Beatrice. “Almost hit me with it on his way out.”

  “We should thank the Lord he didn’t kill us,” said Breswick. “He still has that scalpel. If we don’t find—”

  A female scream sounded from somewhere above us but was cut off before we could discern its direction.

  “Elizabeth!” cried Beatrice. “Oh, God! He’s found her!”

  The lamp on the kitchen table was almost out of oil and would provide little illumination, but I grabbed it and hurried out of the kitchen. Beatrice and Breswick followed me back to the foyer, which was now shrouded in darkness but for the small radius of my dwindling lamp. The sound of heavy footfall and the vague impression of a dark shape ahead froze me to the spot. Beatrice screamed long and hard, causing me to almost drop the lamp, and the shape quickly disappeared from view. We three drew close together in terror of an expected attack. My heart beat hard against my chest, and my head throbbed deeply, so that I could scarcely compose a coherent thought.

  Breswick responded in anger. “Who was that? Was that you, Stromany?”

  “Elizabeth?” Beatrice called out in tears. “We’re coming. Where are you?”

  “Why has he put the candles out?” Breswick asked.

  “The dining room,” I said. “I think she’s in there.”

  “Quickly then,” said Breswick.

  Terrified that Stromany would leap out at us from the dark but determined to find Elizabeth, I hurried into the corridor. My foot slipped on something wet, and I glanced down to see small puddles of what looked like blood. “Oh no! Elizabeth!” I called, but there was no answer.

  We reached the open door of the dining room, and I held the lamp out as far as I dared. Partial relief came with the flickering glow of two candles, but my hope was instantly crushed when I saw Elizabeth slumped in the corner chair. At first I had the foolish impression she was asleep, but the illusion was shattered by the darkened cavity below her brow. There was no doubt she was dead. Stromany was standing over her, a crazed expression distorting his features as he stared at her body, wide eyed. He was carving lines into his leg with his scalpel. Beatrice, stricken with shock, wailed and fell into a seated position on the floor beside me.

  “What have you done?” I cried.

  Stromany turned, and as my eyes met his, a thrill of fear shuddered through me. The same wild-eyed madness that I saw when he first came to us possessed him now. He trembled as he held the scalpel upward, warning us away. “I committed no crime. This murder was not my doing,” he pleaded.

  Breswick marched toward him, enraged purpose overcoming sense and fear.

  “No!” I yelled, and I had to resist closing my eyes in anticipation of a second murder, but to my surprise, Stromany dropped the scalpel and drew back against the wall with his hands raised. “I did nothing! I heard her scream when we were separated, and I came to help her.”

  Looking up
on Elizabeth with dismay, I did not know what to do. Her once beautiful eyes were gone. They had been gouged from their sockets to leave gory holes and tears of blood that crept over her cheeks into her sagging mouth. Sloppy and brutal. Evidence, I thought, that the act had been performed in a hurry and with not a hint of conscience.

  Breswick, almost a foot shorter than Stromany, had the man by the straps of his vest, pressing him into the wall. “Liar! You murdered this poor woman.”

  Beatrice rushed over to the body, wailing, “Lizzy! Oh, Lizzy! What has he done to you?”

  “I did nothing,” Stromany insisted. “By the time I got to her the murderer had already gone. I would not have had time to do it before you both entered. Please, you saw me. It must have—”

  “What!” said Breswick, still holding him. “It must have what?”

  Stromany’s eyes flicked to each of us. “It must have been one of you.”

  The accusation seemed ridiculous and desperate, but if Stromany truly was innocent, his blame would certainly be directed toward us, and the figure that frightened us in the lobby could easily have been Stromany running to Elizabeth’s aid, just as he asserted, for I could not remember in which direction the figure was headed. I was now doubtful of the strongman’s guilt and, paralyzed by indecision, I remained still when Stromany suddenly pushed Breswick away.

  “He could have killed you, Theo,” I said. “In the kitchen, when you found him. He could have stabbed you then, but he didn’t.”

  Stromany slid down the wall and sank his head into his hands, mumbling into his palms that he had not murdered her. Breswick, reluctant at first, perhaps even doubting his own accusations, glanced at me before turning his attention to Beatrice and poor Elizabeth.

  Whilst Breswick did his best to comfort Beatrice and pull her away from Elizabeth’s body, I scanned the room on a whim that I might see something which could provide more evidence of what had happened, perhaps something that would reveal motivation for the killing. I spied the Moon Box cast aside near the debris of the fireplace and deduced that Stromany intended to burn it there. Perhaps Elizabeth tried to stop him, inciting Stromany’s retaliation, but this seemed unlikely to me, and I could think of no rational explanation for why Stromany would be so specific about cutting out the poor girl’s eyes. It seemed that his explanation of events was the most likely to be true, but this conclusion cast a dark shadow over my thoughts. If not him, who murdered Elizabeth?