by Mike Mannion
“So you’ve been taking this stuff, Hex, for ten years now?” said Arthur.
“Every month or so I have to come here and get another little ebony box filled with six glass phials. But it’s getting more and more expense. The Professorship doesn’t pay too well, but I’ve brought a lot of money tonight, every penny I've got...”
“And what happened to this Simon dude?” said Arthur.
“Next day he was taking a group of students to an archaeological dig. He set off in the college van with his study group, but didn’t even get out the college grounds before crashing into a tree. The students in the back were unharmed but told everyone that Simon’s skin was smoking, his skin was blistering, he was screaming. They said he jumped out the van and ran away across the college grounds. The rumour was he was taken away by Professor Nox. And that’s the strangest part of all. Simon simply vanished. I search, asked around, did everything I could to find him but with no luck. I found out about Professor Nox’s history, about his involvement with a secret society called the Apostles. I vowed to get in with them, join them and find out about Simon. So I graduated, worked hard and eventually came back as a professor. After years of careful persuasion and lies they allowed me to join, never knowing I was cursed...”
The Professor lifted the sleeve of her black tunic and showed them a tiny writhing salamander tattooed on her forearm.
“It was then I found out about Brimstone Manor and what they do there. That’s where Simon was taken. I don’t what to imagine what they did to him but he ended up as a cask of ceare in the cellar of Conatus Chapel.”
“If only you’d have told us this earlier!” exclaimed Ophelia. “We didn’t know Simon Drew meant so much to you. We wouldn’t have taken Percy.”
“Stupid girls! You ruined my plan at the final stage. I’ll never see Simon again.”
The Professor glared at Ophelia, who shrank back in her chair.
A huge burly man in a cheap tan suit came into the room. He looked very menacing. His black shirt was partly unbuttoned, revealing a hairy chest and a medallion. He gave Ophelia, Arthur and Bill a suspicious glare then turned to the Professor.
“What are these kids doing here?” he said in a gruff voice.
“New clients, ready to buy.” The Professor had lost her usual gruff tone and sounded surprisingly timid.
“I see,” said the man after a moment’s deliberation. “He’ll see you now. Follow me.”
They followed the huge hulking man out of the room.
Sitting alone at a table close to the alcove was the woman who’d followed them. She had listened very carefully to everything the Professor had said. Despite the stiflingly warm atmosphere she still wore her hat and wispy scarf.
The Professor and the students followed the man through the bustle of the crowd and over to a smoky wooden bar in the corner. The barman handed the man a glass of milky green absinthe. He took a slow sip then made his way over to a door in a side wall with the word ‘PRIVATE’ stencilled on it in smudged red lettering. He unlocked the door with a long brass key.
“You know where to go,” he mumbled to the Professor, ambling back to the bar.
The Professor opened the door and they went through into a close corridor lined with tatty wallpaper. They passed a couple of doors and stopped at a spiral staircase in an alcove.
“He’s up there,” said the Professor. “Are you ready?”
Everyone nodded but looked very frightened.
Bill was very apprehensive. He didn’t like this place or anyone in it. He felt trapped and vulnerable. They were deep inside the monsters’ lair, and for all he knew the Professor could be taking them to the chief monster! He told himself he was here to save Lilith, but another part of him remembered how she’d stabbed him in the gut...
He looked at Arthur and said in a quiet voice, “You okay?”
“I’m a Dark Pagan hunter ready for battle,” replied Arthur with a very hesitant grin. He fumbled inside his denim jacket and pulled out an envelope opener.
“What’s that?”
“Protection.”
They climbed the creaky stairs and onto a circular, wood panelled landing with a stained-glass skylight high in the conical roof. They could no longer hear the music and chatter downstairs.
The Professor struggled getting up the stairs and was panting desperately for breath. Her pale scalp, clearly visible through her fine hair, was drenched in beads of sweat. The others wondered if she was about to collapse.
Ophelia touched her arm.
The Professor scowled. “I’m fine girl, don’t fuss.” She raised her stick and rapped on a nearby door.
The door opened and a large man with a fat stubbly face looked out at them with cold beady eyes. He was dressed in a similar style to the man downstairs: grubby tan suit, partially unbuttoned purple shirt.
“It’s Jareth,” he said to someone, “and the new clients.”
“Excellent. Show them in, Mister Clover,” said a soft sinister voice from inside the room.
Mister Clover stepped aside and held his thick arm out to invite them in. The Professor hobbled slowly forward into the room. The others didn’t move. Bill, Arthur and Ophelia exchanged dubious looks. It was easily the most dangerous situation they'd ever been in.
“Come in or get lost!” snapped Clover, glaring at them.
“Calm down my man, we’re cool,” said Arthur in a tremulous voice, bravely stepping through the door.
The other two reluctantly followed.
Clover closed the door behind them and stood in front of it, arms folded, blocking their escape.
The room was surprisingly large and well stocked with furniture. There was a pool table to their right, where two other burly men in tan suits were playing. To their left was a bar stocked with spirits and there were leather bound chairs and a card table.
A chubby middle-aged man sat in front of them behind a desk. He was severely balding but his greying ginger hair was shoulder length and wiry and he had a large bushy moustache. He wore a black shirt, partially unbuttoned and a very ostentatious gold medallion. He looked like a fat, well satisfied orangutan.
“And what do we have here?” said the man. “A school outing?”
“Who are you?” blurted Arthur.
“My name is Vince Velvet and I would watch your mouth boy.” His fat face split into a creepy leer, revealing a row of wide yellow teeth. There was a large book opened on the desk and he was running a chubby hand full of gold rings down the page. “Jareth... Jareth. Ah, here we are. It says here you came here only a few days ago. I do hope you are not selling it on. That would not be nice... for your legs.”
Velvet looked up from his book and gave the Professor a questioning look. When the Professor didn't reply he sighed wearily, opened a drawer in the desk, pulled out a handgun and placed it on the desk.
“No Mister Velvet,” stammered the Professor, her eyes fixed on the gun. “The phials got broken.”
“What a very stupid... and very expensive mistake to make.”
The Professor pulled out a large wad of notes from her pocket and put it down on the desk with trembling hand. “We just want two Hex Boxs and two cases of Vita Dantis.”
Vince Velvet chuckled when he heard this. “Why do you insist on calling it Vita Dantis? That stuff is far too expensive for the likes of you. I’m selling Hex.”
The Professor scowled. She’d read about the history of people like Vince Velvet, scum who preyed on others for a quick profit. The recipe for Vita Dantis was somehow acquired by underworld gangs in the 1920’s and had been sold illicitly ever since. But over the years it had been cut down, doctored, made a cheaply as possible and sold under various other names. The Professor knew that what she was buying wasn’t Vita Dantis in the purest sense and she shuddered to think what Vince Velvet had diluted it with. There were rumours of abattoirs, funeral homes. But it worked and she had no other choice. It kept her as human as she could be, but suspected her prolonged use of
such a contaminated substance was why she was arthritic, feeble and old when only in her early thirties. She hated her life but what choice did she have? Suffering the curse of dark paganism was both illegal and immoral.
“I know what it’s called,” said the Professor. “Can you just get it please?”
Velvet signalled to one of the men at the pool table, who nodded and went over to a safe built into the wall. He turned a page in his book and picked up a fountain pen.
“If they’re going to buy then I need their names. Anyone not in my book doesn’t leave this room.” He looked at Bill with cold piercing eyes. “Who are you?”
“Bill Blackthorne,” said Bill in a faltering voice, “and this is Arthur Small.”
“And I’m Jane Pettigrew,” said Ophelia.
The man came over from the safe with two black bags. He handed one to the Professor and the other to Arthur. He then gave each of them a business card with a telephone number on it.
“Ring when you want some more and you’ll be told a price,” said Velvet. “And if you try to buy from anyone else you’ll be sorry, very sorry. I know you're students, and the Professor will tell me where you live.”
Professor Jareth said nothing for a second. He teeth were clenched and she had gone even paler that usual. When she realised Vince Velvet was waiting for an answer she said, “I will Vince.”
The door behind them was opened and they were bundled out onto the landing. A moment later it was slammed shut in their faces.
Arthur breathed a huge sigh of relief. “That was so intense!” he babbled. “I wish I’d thought to give a false name. And the gun, did you see when he pulled out the gun!”
“It was horrid! Let’s just get back to Lilith,” said Ophelia.
“We don’t have much time before she wakes up,” said the Professor, “and it's a long walk.”
Bill was numb with shock. Only a few days ago his entire life experience had consisted of slow and careful study with Miss Spital, time spent with mother in odd conversation and occasional visits to Arthur in Underwood. The idea of a place like this, and people like Vince Velvet were so far out of his frame of reference as to be inconceivable. He desperately wished for his memory back, to know who he was and what he understood. He felt more lost than ever.
They went down the stairs and back into the pub.
The mysterious woman was still sitting at her table. She been waiting and was now eyeing them surreptitiously through her bug-eyes glasses. She watched closed as they walked past and went across the pub towards the exit. As soon as they’d left, she went over to a public telephone on the wall. The wispy scarf was pulled back, the glasses removed and the hat taken off, revealing a pale face, soft perm, diamond drop earrings and copious red lipstick. It was Bill’s mother, Beryl. She picked up the handset, dialled a number and put money in the slot.
“The boy Frank has done some excellent work. We have found the leader – It’s our own Professor Julia Jareth, a lying sinner who’s betrayed her sacred vows to the Apostles. She’s one of the Devil’s Bane!” Beryl listened to the voice on the phone with mounting anger, her hands growing white as she gripped the handset tightly. “Tell me how we failed to suspect she was in the thrall of Satan, when she was also a trusted member of our sacred organisation? And now she has dragged the boy and two others into her conspiracies. The boy William! Our most valuable asset!” Beryl wanted to rage down the phone but had to be quiet in public, so instead talked very slowly and deliberately. “She must be taken immediately and with great force. Bring her to Brimstone Manor for questioning. I don’t care what it takes, how much this pitiful creature suffers, we must not flinch in our duty. We must find out where she’s hiding Lord Valentine before it’s too late. Before Middenmere is consumed!”
Beryl put down the phone and clenched her teeth. She was shaking with rage and her eyes shone with evangelical fervour. She imagined the noble work she was going to do in the cellar of Brimstone Manor – raining down God’s gloriously frightful punishments on that most traitorous of sinners, Professor Julia Jareth.
Chapter Twelve - Captured
I have solved a most intractable problem. Vita Dantis must be mixed to a certain consistency and delivered at a particular temperature. If not done then the subject experiences cellular degeneration. I have constructed what I call a Hex Box. There is a pump and bellows and it is rather big and cumbersome, but I have plans to construct a smaller version, no bigger than a portmanteau…
– Extract from The Journal of William Whitebeam
– By William Whitebeam, Professor of Occult Biology, 1872.
Professor Jareth pulled a Hex Box from out one of the black bags, placed it on a table besides Lilith’s bed and switched it on. It began to hum quietly. Bill studied it carefully, fascinated by its construction – a cube containing a complex array of metal pipes, wires and relays with a silver bowl on the top and a plastic tube coming out of the bottom. He couldn’t recall ever seeing anything like it before, but it workings and mechanisms were somehow familiar.
The Professor held a small ebony container. She opened it and showed it to the others. Bill, Arthur and Ophelia studied the inside of the velvet lined box. There was a row of six glass phials with a long needle lying across the top. The Professor handed the box to Ophelia, who tentatively pulled out a phial and removed the stopper. The clear liquid inside made her nose twitch with its acrid smell.
“How can she drink it when she’s asleep?” said Arthur.
“You don’t drink it, you inject it,” said the Professor, attaching the needle to the end of the long plastic tube.
“Pour that in there,” she said to Ophelia, indicating the silver bowl on top of the box.
Ophelia poured the liquid into the bowl. It began to heat up and swirl down a tiny hole in the centre. The liquid crept along the plastic tube until it stopped at the needle.
“Now for the tricky part,” said the Professor.
She pulled back the bed sheets, revealing Lilith in her nightdress, with tangled hair and blood smeared around her neck and on the pillow. Her cheeks were white and waxy and her face looked strained, like she was in the throes of some nightmare.
Professor Jareth gently stuck the needle into a vein in her arm. Lilith’s eyes flicked open and she sat bolt upright with a terrible glare of anger.
“Try to stay calm,” said the Professor. “The horrible voice will subside, I promise, after you ingest the Vita Dantis. Fight the hunger! This is most important. Fight it with all your power!”
Lilith looked shocked when she saw the needle sticking out of her forearm. With a loud screech of revulsion, she yanked it out. “What makes you think I want to be like you, you broken down old hag?” she hissed as she jumped up out of bed.
“But you must take it,” said the Professor, shocked at Lilith’s reaction. “it’s-”
“For scared little cowards, desperate to conform! Got to fit in! Can’t be noticed! I have no intention of hiding my gift. It’s glorious!”
Lilith clenched her fists, lifted her head and let out a guttural growl. To Arthur it sounded like nothing more than a young girl showing off, pretending to be dangerous and daring, but to Bill, who perceived Bestia Marcam, it seemed impossible that a human being could make such a terrible sound. He took a few steps back. The halo around her head began to glow with a dazzling intensity, her ears were long and pointed like bats wings, and her skin was alabaster white and red veined. The sight of a pretty young girl transformed into such a beast repulsed and shocked Bill.
The Professor picked up the long plastic tube and found the needle on the end. She reached forward and tried to insert it back into Lilith’s arm. “Please, let me help you,” she said.
Lilith grabbed the Hex Box from the bedside cabinet and swung it at the Professor, who staggered back with blood pouring from a wound on her forehead. She fell to the floor unconscious.
“Lilith!” exclaimed Ophelia, gazing in disbelief at the Professor’s slumped body, the
n said to her friend, “Do you know what you’re doing? You’re possessed! You have to fight it!”
Lilith gave her a mocking smile. “Ophelia, my Dark Pagan sister! You of all people should understand.”
“I don't want to be like you anymore.”
“But it’s what we’ve always wanted. All those clothes we bought, the jewellery, Rowena’s journal, the sacrifice! You don’t know how glorious it feels to be consumed by Arddhu Og! If you did you’d be happy for me.”
“Lilith, you need to take the medicine, please put that needle back in your vein!”
“I can hear a voice, even now, at this moment. It's calling me to make you join us.”
Ophelia shook her head slowly. “You’re crazy.”
“But my dear deluded sister,” said Lilith with a strange smile, “we’re in this together. We are going to be his witchy girlfriends, the two of us. Don't you love him?”
Lilith moved slowly forward, advancing towards Ophelia.
“Leave me alone!”
Within an instant Lilith latched her mouth onto Ophelia’s throat and was drinking her blood. She lifted her head and muttered a strange incantation. Ophelia’s eyes fluttered. She went limp, powerless to resist.
Bill and Arthur rushed forward and tried to pull Lilith away, but it was impossible. Lilith lashed out with an arm that seemed to grow stronger by the second. She grabbed Arthur by the scruff of the neck and threw him hard onto the floor. Bill tried to pull at Lilith’s shoulder, but it was like a pillar of rock. He looked on in absolute horror as he saw a halo of light begin to form around Ophelia’s head, saw her eyes turn from soft brown to a milky yellow, saw tiny red veins spread like a spider’s web across her frightened face.
Lilith released her grip and Ophelia fell to the floor unconscious.
“I’ve never felt more alive,” said Lilith with a look of triumph. “And now I must go to join Percy, the bringer of Og to Earth!”
