The Fallen (The Sublime Electricity Book #3)

by Pavel Kornev

  I didn't stay long in my apartment. I just got dressed and put my purchases in the satchel. I holstered the Luger, clipped it onto my belt and hid that under my shirt. I placed the knife, loaded Cerberus magazines and extra Luger clip in my pockets.

  After that, I spent a long time standing near the front door, gathering my resolve but, in the end, I decided against it and went out the back. I could no longer ascribe all the recent events to mere coincidence, and was firmly resolved to figure it all out before the avalanche caught up to me and pulled me under. Just who might have set it off?

  The coming of darkness did little to dampen the revelry in the town center. In fact, after spending all day in the hot springs, the vacationers were drinking, dancing, and just soaking in the innumerable entertainment options the little town had to offer. The most popular events were performances by fakirs, yogis and other exotic foreigners.

  The boulevard was lit by bright streetlamps, but crossed a series of dark silent alleys. I walked past the electric streetcar ring and went along the quay to the Maxwell mansion. Soon, the lake was behind me and the road was taking me uphill. I quickly lost my breath. Thankfully, my new boots fit well and didn't chafe.

  Ten minutes later, I was already sneaking along the fence, looking for a loose bar I'd noticed earlier. I meticulously moved it aside from the stonework, threw my satchel into the garden and walked in after it. Beyond the trees, the gloomy colossus of the mansion shone out with its dark silhouette like a beacon. No lights were on in the windows. I knew that the gates of the estate were locked for the night and just one guardsman remained to maintain order.

  I was hoping that, like any normal guard, he would be sleeping on the job.

  I followed a winding path through the trees to the pavilion I was in earlier, stopped and looked carefully from side to side. It was quiet, but from somewhere, I suddenly smelled tobacco smoke.

  "Well blow me down!" sounded out in the darkness of the garden, and my heart nearly jumped out of my chest. After that, it started pounding like a madman's. My face and hands covered in perspiration.

  "Woah, you scared me!" I exhaled and cursed: "Albert, what the devil are you doing?"

  The poet emerged from the pavilion with a bottle of wine.

  "Drinking," he told me. "And you? What are you doing here, Leo?"

  "I wanted to check something," I frowned, not wanting to delve into the details, and grew suspicious: "Wait up, what the hell are you doing drinking here?"

  In the darkness, the pavilion glowed from the bright tip of a cigar. I smelled smoke again.

  "It was my idea," declared the leprechaun who hopped out to join us with a proud look, and began whinnying. "Bugger! Look at the mug on you!"

  I stared at the poet with unhidden surprise and asked him:

  "You can see him?"

  "Yes, he sees me. He does!" The pipsqueak ran outside, lightly clinking his bottle with Albert's and putting it to his lips. Unlike the poet, it was no wine he was drinking, but rum.

  Brandt chuckled:

  "He's a tiny little bugger, but he drinks like a horse!"

  "Easy!" the albino warned.

  "Shut your mouth!" I demanded. "Come on Albert, you're wasted!"

  "Bugger! News to me!" the leprechaun gargled and left us in the pavilion.

  Albert took my hand and led me down the path.

  "You see, Leo," he began from afar, "at first, I figured I was drunk and seeing demons, but then, I remembered that little goober snatching a bottle of absinthe from me. At that time, you weren't surprised in the least. So I stopped doubting my own judgement. We drank on it and decided you would need help."

  "Help?" I didn't understand.

  "Uhhh, yeah!" the poet confirmed. "You do want to break into the Maxwell mansion, after all, right? Why the devil might that be, if you'd be so kind as to let me know? Actually, it doesn't even matter! My help is to dissuade you from this ill-conceived adventurism!"

  "It won't work!" the leprechaun suddenly dove out from under a bush. "He's as stubborn as an ass."

  The absurdity of the situation was beyond all imaginable bounds, but I still held back and calmly asked Albert:

  "Go home."

  The poet took a seat on a bench drowning in a thick shadow and shook his head:

  "Not before you tell me everything."

  With a fateful sigh, I sat down next to him and, when Brandt handed me a bottle, I took it and turned it upside down. With a glug and a quiet lapping, it spilled onto the grass.

  "It's no use," Albert noted philosophically.

  "A saboteur, bugger!" the leprechaun supported him. "Dog in the manger! That benefits no one, you least of all! Jackass!"

  "Shut up!" I barked and pointed him to the poet. "That..."

  "No, Leo," Albert suddenly interrupted me, "don't get off topic. I'm wondering what ungodly little creature has gotten under your skin to make you come up here."

  "Ungodly little creature?!" the albino was offended, jumped onto the bench, booted the poet under the knee and instantly dissolved in the darkness of the garden. "I thought we were drinking buddies..." was all I heard from the bushes.

  "You malevolent little shit," Brandt whispered, rubbing his bruised leg and demanding: "Tell me, Leo! It's not like I'm that drunk. Or maybe I am drunk, but I don't know it, so that's why I'm thinking clearly? It doesn't matter! Let's skip the sophistry, just let me in on what's going on! What happened in that basement?"

  "A suicide."

  "Then why are you here?"

  I thought for a long time, then said:

  "Because I shouldn't have been there."

  "Is that right?"

  "Someone lured me to that event tonight. I’m sure of it, and I want to know why."

  Brand touched the empty bottle with pity and suggested:

  "Let's go back to the suicide."

  "The death of that scallywag was no mere coincidence," I said, telling him the theory that had brought me there. "Something infernal reached out to his consciousness and forced him to kill himself. Either that or he killed himself in horror, such a thing cannot be counted out."

  "Where did you get that idea?"

  "I was there."

  "That is not an answer!"

  "Albert, his blood flowed up the floor. And it was no optical illusion – later, I saw water flowing in the proper direction."

  "What does that matter to you?" the poet wondered with surprising sobriety.

  I sighed and tried to select an answer that would not attract more follow-up.

  "It matters because of the girl."

  "The buxom brunette?" Brandt smiled, tracing a female figure in the air with his fingers. "You’ve got fine taste!"

  "Albert! Go home!"

  "I can't just leave you alone! I'm obliged to help you! We'll be like Holmes and Watson in The Worst Man in London! 'Watson, have you got a revolver with you?"

  "Enough!" I cut the poet off. "Enough! It's not funny anymore!"

  Albert Brandt pressed his face in his hands and suddenly suggested:

  "Leo, did it not occur to you that it might have been the fallen one? Maxwell's demon?"

  A chill ran over me.

  "Nonsense!"

  "Not at all. If you believe the accounts of contemporaries, the demon was last seen just a few months before Maxwell's death. They might have imprisoned the fallen one in the basement of the mansion, and your idiotic spiritualist seance disturbed his slumber."

  "Stop your yammering!" I demanded. "Albert, go home!"

  "Either we go together, or no-one goes," Brandt stated his ultimatum and got a police whistle out of his pocket. "I blow this, and we’ll both run our asses off. Don’t believe me?"

  I wasn't remotely planning to spar with the poet all night, so I waved my hand in vexation:

  "To hell with you! Let's go!"

  In the end, Albert was able to stand firmly. He really might come in handy. He could at least keep watch.

  We ran over to the back door. As expec
ted, it was locked. I took out a sheet of flypaper from the satchel and stuck in on one quadrant of the glass. After that, I lightly tapped the crow-bar and heard a low crackling. The flypaper held the glass shards in place, but as soon as I pushed, the glass fell in. Not wanting it to crash to the floor, I pulled it outward with my thick leather gloves.

  I unlocked the door, walked into the building and listened. Silence. The only sound was the measured ticking of a wall clock. It was soon joined by the noisy breathing of the poet behind me.

  "We're burglars, Leo!" he whispered with unhidden elation.

  I placed a finger to my lips, calling my friend to silence. I tried to sense any kind of presence of the otherworldly, but couldn't. Then, I waved a hand and led the poet after me.

  The entrance to the basement was affixed with a wax police seal. I tore it off carelessly and prepared to use the crowbar, but didn't find it necessary. The door wasn’t even locked. I turned on the torch and pointed it at all the dark corners.

  "Close the door!" I asked Albert. He complied and hurried after me.

  Our adventure put the slightly drunk poet into an indescribable ecstasy. But it put me beside myself. There was still an echo in my ear of the way the blood squirted out of the medium’s throat.

  The beam of the torch illuminated the poorly-washed blood on the floor and I pointed my friend to the neighboring door.

  "We were in that room."

  "And what are you planning to do?" Albert Brandt asked.

  I was planning to see how far the trail of blood went. That could easily have been the key to the mystery. But, first, I decided to look around the room.

  "Just imagine it! Behind one of these doors is a fallen one!" the poet whispered into my back.

  "Stop!" I demanded and walked into the room the spiritualist seance had taken place in. The heavy smell of the perfume from the high-society lionesses had already wafted away. In its place, there was now a complex aroma, repellent and attractive at the same time.

  The candle had been removed from the room, but the wax drippings remained on the table. I scratched at one of them with the knife, sniffed and passed it to Albert.

  "What do you say?"

  The poet rubbed the piece of wax between his fingers, sniffed and declared authoritatively:

  "Hashish and opium. And something else I can't make out."

  "Excuse me?" I snorted, leaving the room. "You don't know who invited that out-of-towner to the reception, do you?"

  "I don't know, but I'm sure they'll never find the ends now," Albert answered, then a quiet rustling came down the hallway.

  I practically went gray. I turned sharply, threw up the torch, jerked my pistol from the holster, but it was the leprechaun pouring rum on the floor and watching the ruddy liquid with interest as it flowed toward the stairs.

  After observing the clear confirmation of my theory, the pipsqueak stopped pouring the alcohol, took a sip from the half-empty bottle and held out his hand with his thumb and pointer finger formed into a ring.

  "Bastard!" I cursed out, not re-holstering the Luger.

  I just didn't want to be caught 'with my pants down,' as they say, but the leprechaun had his own interpretation of my cry, and disappeared back into the darkness. All I heard was the clacking of his heels on the stone floor.

  I meanwhile, shining the torch on the poorly-cleaned blood on the floor, walked down the hall. The trail led to the very end, where even the servants were wary to go. A small brownish puddle was drying on the floor there.

  "I never even imagined there was so much blood in a person," Albert cringed.

  The ghoulish atmosphere sobered the poet up, and bit by bit, he began to regret accompanying me on this doubtful endeavor. But as he didn't want to return all alone through the empty mansion, he decided to try and talk me out of further investigation.

  "Who knows what's there? What if it's a fallen one?" Brandt whispered.

  "If the demon hasn't gotten out all these years, it won't get out now," I noted weightily, even though I was experiencing no certainty on the matter. "Well, if we do stumble upon the demon, just imagine all the unbelievable adventures you'll be able to spin into the ear of your next great passion."

  "I am true to my wife!"

  "Puh-lease, Albert!" I drew out skeptically, holstering my pistol and handing the torch to the poet. "Light my way."

  I started knocking on the wall with the crowbar, because it occurred to me that there might be a barely noticeable crack leading down, and that some unknown force was trying to get blood to drip into it. To my utmost disappointment, I was not able to detect any hollow spaces. Then, I began to study the masonry and soon noticed a strange line. I blew the dust from it – it was a crack in the stone, hardly thicker than a hair.

  No matter how I tried to wedge the blade of my knife into it, it wouldn’t fit. Then, I tried to find the presumed secret path on the other side and found confirmation: the second crack was noticeably wider. It wasn't just a crack, but a groove that went all the way from the floor to the ceiling.

  After a few unsuccessful attempts, I managed to work the split end of the crowbar into it and leaned in, using it as a lever. At first, nothing happened, but by the time my eyes began to cloud over in exertion, I heard a sudden cracking in the wall, and the stone slab slightly moved aside.

  Albert and I together managed to widen the gap and the poet shone the torch to reveal the broken end of a bolt.

  "Corroded through."

  "Lucky us," I chuckled, getting my pistol back out. The steps of the stone stairwell went down into the darkness. What was there, I had no idea.

  "There are rumors that Maxwell ordered a subterranean path dug to the power plant," said Albert, recalling an old tale.

  "Mhm," I agreed, "and the builders were put in a boat and drowned in the lake."

  "No," the poet disagreed, recounting another variation of the story: "They were electrocuted."

  "Not much better," I sighed, taking the torch from my friend and going down, lighting the way.

  "Maybe we'd better not?" Brandt asked with precarious hesitation. The pendulum of his mood was clearly swinging to the other side once again, and now the poet was torn to bits by curiosity.

  "Just imagine it! Maxwell’s own secret passage! What a topic for a new poem!"

  "Let's close the door."

  The two of us returned the stone section to its place and started down. Ten steps later, there was a small landing, then another and another. In the end, by my estimation, we went around five meters down below the mansion basement. Incidentally, that didn't mean we were so far below town, because the mansion was on a hill.

  After that, we found a rusty grate with a hanging padlock. It didn't deter us for long: the metal, which wasn't of the highest quality, had long lost its sturdiness in the damp of the vault. What was more, I didn't dance around the problem, just leaning into it with the crowbar with all my might. There was no way any guard would be able to hear us now.

  A low narrow passage began beyond the grate with walls at uneven angles, which completely corresponded with Albert's theory, if not for one "but": the floor was clearly sloping down, not up. There was simply no way this passage could lead to the powerplant, which was up the mountain from here.

  Dried blood ran in a black stripe on the floor, gradually growing narrower until it stopped completely. The distance was too great. No matter what force was drawing the blood, it hadn't gotten anything from the death of the medium.

  A few minutes later, we emerged into a round room with a cupola-like ceiling. The walls here were incomparably straighter, and in some ways reminiscent of the works of antique stone-masons. In the distance, the passage got lost in the darkness, but it was no longer straight. The builders must have been accounting for some natural feature.

  "Stunning!" the poet whispered, dumbfounded, and suddenly jerked his head. "What is that? Leo, point the torch over there!"

  I raised my torch and immediately realized what it was
that had drawn the poet's attention: there was an uneven hole gaping in the middle of the cupola and, from it, a thick cable emerged into the vault. It was very reminiscent of those that ran from the power plant to the electric-streetcar line. To be more accurate – there were two cables, but one was dangling, severed.

  I shined under my legs and saw the fragments of housing, shards of stone and a bit of earth.

  Albert walked to the far exit from the vault and started studying the cables that led there: both intact and severed.

  "The cut is clean and the copper hasn't gone dark yet," he determined.

  "Don't touch it!" I warned. "It may be live."

  "I doubt it," the poet muttered. "You know, Leo, it smells horrible. I think we've found a service area of an electric streetcar power station. If we're accused of something illegal..."

  "Come off it!" I brought my friend down a peg. "Remember, the electrical grid is all above ground. This is something different. Let's go!"

  "Hold on!" he shuddered. "Do you hear that?"

  I listened and caught a strange trembling. It was quickly growing stronger and, soon, the floor underfoot was vibrating. Not long after, soil started trickling out of a hole in the ceiling right onto our heads. But I didn't give in to the panic. I saw a look on Albert’s face as if he wanted to run for his life, but I held him in place.

  The walls stopped shaking just as fast as they’d started, but the poet didn't fail to express his disapproval:

  "Your instincts are absolutely wrong, my friend. That puts me on guard."

  "Well, I'm not relying on instinct, but sober calculation," I parried and went further down the passage. "You know what that was?"

  "A streetcar?" Brandt asked, a lightbulb flickering on in his head. "Have we reached the rails?"