The Society of Dread

by Glenn Dakin

  ‘Stay calm!’ Fairchild cried, but there was a hint of hysteria in his clipped tones.

  ‘Please to standing still, humans,’ requested a polite crelp voice. ‘We come – coming to harvest you now.’

  One of the creatures lashed out with its tentacles, and a man on the rim of the squad was dragged, screaming, into the surrounding horde. Fortunately, it was too dark at the edges of the chamber to see what happened to him.

  Rakhim nudged Theo forwards with his muzzle and gave a deep, angry growl. The animals were eager for action.

  ‘Can we take them?’ asked Lady Blessing, glancing towards the crelp. A small note of discomfort could be heard in her smooth tones.

  ‘One way to find out,’ said Chloe, taking a step nearer and producing an eradicator from under the torn folds of her black jacket.

  She stopped. From across the cavern, there was a loud hiss, and a ripple of alarm surged though the crelp. Beyond the surrounded men, something was happening at the gate to the Well Chamber.

  Dark shadows, like pools of ink, were slipping through the iron bars.

  ‘Colonel!’ shouted one of the Orpheus officers. ‘More of them!’

  Fairchild went white. Even from his distant vantage point, Theo could see the terror in the nervous movements of the men.

  ‘Black crelp?’ wondered Lady Blessing, peering over towards the gate.

  ‘Smogs,’ said Theo, a gleam of excitement in his eyes. ‘I’ve seen this kind of thing before.’

  The black squirming shapes squeezed through the gate, and plopped on to the chamber floor. Then they began to rise upwards, forming the shape of shadowy imps.

  ‘Skun’s done it,’ Theo cried. ‘He’s assembled his smog army! Now we’ve got them surrounded!’

  Rakhim could wait no longer. With a bloodcurdling roar, the Caspian Tiger sprang forwards, followed by the wolves and Trogontheriums. Theo was almost knocked over in the tide of fur and claw that hurtled past him.

  ‘Do something,’ Chloe elbowed Theo. ‘Something to scare the crelp witless!’

  Theo raised an arm and with all his willpower made a bolt of green light flare up from his hand to illuminate the great chamber.

  In the flash of tripudon lightning, the crelp saw, with horrible clarity, the ferocious stampede heading their way. Bulbous eyes rose on stalks, glancing this way and that, wondering which peril to face first. Some edged towards the canal, seeking escape from the new threats.

  Then it happened. The black waters of the pool began to bubble. A scaly claw scrambled for purchase on the stone edge of the pool. A fanged snout emerged from the depths.

  ‘Phytosaurs!’ shouted Theo as he raced down into the chamber. Out of the canal they came, monstrous prehistoric crocodiles with baleful eyes and glittering scales. In their midst, a dripping human figure emerged in a vast, ungainly diving suit.

  Swiftly, the extraordinary figure lifted off its bulky helmet. The Dodo had arrived. Two other divers followed him ashore, carrying a big metal trunk. Theo hardly knew where to look.

  Smoglodytes in gangs were dragging crelp by their own tentacles towards the crocodilian horde. Teratorn were swooping to rake their talons across gelatinous crelp eyes. Theo and Chloe arrived by the dark pool just in time to see a Phytosaur bite a crelp clean in half.

  Orpheus forces, too astonished to act, looked on as their seemingly deadly foe were ripped to shreds on all sides. Colonel Fairchild gazed up at the Dodo, who cut a more outlandish figure than ever, with his grotesque hook-nosed face, peering down from his antiquated diving suit.

  ‘We’re the Society of Dread,’ growled the Dodo. ‘We’ll take over now.’

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Descent

  ‘I don’t care how extraordinary the circumstances are,’ said Colonel Fairchild, ‘I can’t hand over a police operation to a Victorian villain, a tribe of mythical creatures, a teenage boy and a glowing woman.’

  The crelp had been scattered or torn to shreds by the terrible onslaught of the Society of Dread. The Dodo had produced an ancient key to get them through the great barred gate – and now they stood on a ledge at the top of the Well Chamber. They had reached the final stage of their quest.

  ‘Don’t forget, sir,’ Chloe said, giving the colonel a stern gaze, ‘Theo is Lord Gold’s special operative. He’s been given a free role to act in any way he sees best. I’m guessing it’s within your discretion to let him take the lead.’

  ‘Th-thank you, Sergeant Cripps,’ Fairchild replied, nodding vaguely. It was clear to Theo that the colonel was rather overwhelmed by events. The Orpheus reinforcements, their smart black uniforms now splattered with crelp slime, walked side by side with the shadowy army of child-sized smoglodytes, each side eyeing the other warily. Theo, Skun, Lady Blessing, the Dodo and Chloe led the strange cavalcade. Colonel Fairchild trod alongside them with an air of some misgiving.

  They gazed down into the dark, smoky pit that lay before them. This cavern had been used by alchemists for centuries past as a giant crucible to perform experiments on an unimaginable scale. Now it was a spectacular ruin. The chamber was acting like a huge chimney funnelling smoke upwards from the furnace level, and dispersing it amongst the fissures and cracks in the cavern roof above.

  The Dodo pointed downwards.

  ‘At the foot of the Well Chamber there is a crater concealing a stairway, which will take us to Dr Pyre. I can smell his vile presence already. A great battle no doubt awaits us.’

  They began to make their way down the ancient stairway carved into the walls of the chamber. The smoglodytes sprang from rock to rock, more nimbly than their human allies. Skun, perched on a crag, suddenly stopped and cried out, ‘Look! More disgusting unbogoglia!’

  He beckoned Theo to take a closer look at the cavern wall. Theo gasped. The dark surfaces were alive: thin tendrils, like little snakes, were crawling everywhere. Theo peered at the glistening, trickling shapes. Once you had spotted the things, you noticed them everywhere, slipping down the rocks silently.

  ‘It looks like pieces of crelp,’ he said wonderingly.

  ‘A perceptive observation,’ said the Dodo. ‘We shall make a zoologist out of you yet.’

  The Dodo picked up one of the slimy forms to study in the palm of his hand.

  ‘Cellular regeneration,’ the Dodo commented, watching the tendril writhe.

  ‘Like cutting a worm in half,’ said Chloe slowly. She looked troubled.

  ‘Exactly,’ the Dodo replied, tossing away the tendril. ‘My creatures have been destroying the crelp, ripping them apart – but in fact we’ve been increasing their numbers. The severed pieces re-grow.’

  Theo frowned. ‘So none of the ones we killed . . . are dead?’ His voice trailed away anxiously.

  ‘Call me an old worry-guts,’ Chloe remarked, scowling deeply, ‘but I’ve got a bad feeling about this. These things aren’t just wriggling about – they’re all heading downwards – fast – like they have a purpose.’

  After a long, gloomy march accompanied by the endless rumblings of the furnaces below, they finally reached the broken plain at the foot of the chamber. Smoke hid the crater they sought, but the Dodo’s front line of wolves and rats pressed unerringly towards it, followed by the loyal keepers. As they drew nearer their destination, Theo looked enviously at his companions.

  There was Chloe, glowing with bioluminescence. She would probably be joking about that tomorrow. And there was Skun, bossing his tribe about and strutting along, proud to be one of the Society of Dread. He’d be boasting about that for ages afterwards.

  But for Theo, a battle with Dr Pyre had been planned. Lord Gold insisted upon it, and Theo had to do what his new boss decided. Didn’t he?

  Other people had lives. He had only a fate. It weighed heavily on his heart as he plodded forwards. Now the crater was just metres away. ‘Sir!’

  A sudden cry brought Theo to a halt. One of the Dodo’s keepers was running back towards them through the drifting smoke.

  �
��We – we’ve got trouble,’ the keeper said. ‘We’ve sighted the enemy but our creatures are a bit spooked – look!’

  Theo peered ahead and saw a solitary human figure standing in their way, as if forbidding them access to the crater. Theo was puzzled to see Rakhim backing away from it. The figure was stumbling towards them in a lurching, awkward manner.

  As the figure drew nearer, Theo’s blood ran cold.

  It was a skeleton, a mockery of humanity, built out of a shattered skull and supported on a crazy framework of ill-matched bones. Theo staggered backwards, revolted by the sight.

  Climbing out of the crater, more ghoulish figures emerged – ghastly, shambling wrecks of jumbled bones, some with cracked, ancient skulls, some with glistening fresh bone.

  ‘Harvessst,’ hissed a thin, eerie voice.

  ‘Stay – stay where you are!’ shouted Fairchild from behind. His men raised their eradicators.

  Theo gazed in astonishment mixed with dread. He knew that voice. These skeletons were just coverings for the crelp. They had been collected, re-built . . . reanimated. Glistening crelp eyes could be glimpsed through the gaping eye-sockets in their skulls.

  ‘We are like you now,’ the thin voice said.

  ‘Now we can taking your world.’

  The firing and the screaming began. Theo stared, preoccupied with one thought.

  So that’s why they wanted all those bones.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  The Collectors

  ‘Down!’

  Chloe pushed Theo to the ground as the Orpheus reinforcements unleashed the deadly beams from their eradicators. The lasers chipped skulls and split bones, but seemed to have little effect on the crelp within. They kept coming.

  ‘No!’

  Theo looked in horror as the skeletons grappled with the Orpheus officers in hideous hand-to-hand combat. Human flesh was no match for cruel, raking, bony hands.

  ‘Forward!’ barked the Dodo. ‘We must drive a way through them!’

  He strode on, but his creatures did not follow. The crater ahead was still disgorging skeletons like a nest of unthinkable horrors. And the full grisly truth was now unfolding.

  The crelp were not merely armoured in the human bones they had collected. Emerging now was a horde of horrific, skeletal beasts: composites, their armour made from the remains of the creatures raided out of the Dodo’s own caverns.

  It was a vile sight; skulls and gleaming bones, assembled in an ugly jumble, swaying and stirring with a life that was not their own. Horns glistened, bony plates rippled and claws flashed in the darkness. The globular eyes of the crelp peered from behind.

  The Dodo’s creatures backed away.

  ‘The animals can smell their dead comrades,’ the Dodo muttered. ‘The horror is too – too great!’

  Theo could only watch as a monstrous creature with the skull of a rhinoceros, the ribcage of a Giant Tree Sloth and the hind leg bones of a Great Elk charged into the ranks of the Orpheus reinforcements, crushing human flesh with ease. Screams filled the air.

  Smoglodytes sprang by, squealing and crying in a language Theo could not understand. Through the wreaths of smoke it was hard to see if they were attacking or retreating. One smog was ripped in half by a skeleton with the skull of an Elephant Bird and the claws of a great cat.

  The Dodo called for his insect bomb, long held in reserve. Two of the keepers heaved it into view in its great metal case. With a grunt, the Dodo hurled the bomb towards the crater.

  It disappeared in the thick black smoke that choked the air. There was a hiss and cry from the massed crelp, but Theo had no clear view of what had happened. His eyes streamed with tears. He scrambled across the rocky floor, suddenly aware that he had become separated from Chloe.

  ‘Fall back!’ Colonel Fairchild was screaming as his men threatened to be overwhelmed by the army of skeletons. One of the Dodo’s keepers crashed into Theo as the man tried to flee from the attack of a skeletal sabre-toothed tiger with bulging crelp eyes.

  ‘The insect bomb hasn’t worked!’ the keeper cried. ‘We’re finished!’

  ‘Chloe!’

  In the midst of all the panic, Theo could only think of finding his friend. Darkness and smoke confounded him. He strode forwards, raising both hands and casting the brightest glow he could muster.

  Then he saw it. Nestling against a bank of ashen debris was the smooth sphere of the insect bomb, its glass case glistening in the light from his hands.

  It didn’t break open, Theo realised, his mouth dry, his heart pounding. It didn’t work because it didn’t break open.

  Theo picked up the sphere, his hands trembling. Ahead, the bony crelp host shambled forwards.

  ‘Please to standing still,’ one thin voice whispered. ‘Nice and still while we can killing of you.’

  Theo gritted his teeth. With all his might he hurled the bomb into the middle of the enemy ranks. This time it shattered. For a moment, the crelp faltered, looking with curiosity at the broken glass in their midst.

  ‘Fall back, Wickland!’ He heard Colonel Fairchild scream. ‘Fall back!’

  But Theo didn’t move. Something was happening. The crelp had stopped fighting.

  Theo saw the biggest crelp monster begin to shake its great horned skull up and down. At first it appeared, almost comically, to be nodding. Then it began to wave its skull around crazily. Another creature, a skeletal man with a wolf’s skull, began thrashing around on the floor.

  A thin wailing sound emanated from the crelp ranks. The leading monster stopped its frantic nodding motion and tore its own skull clear off, hurling it against the ground with a smash. The crelp within stood exposed, its glistening eye stalks wincing and blinking erratically.

  ‘The parasites!’ Theo cried. ‘They’re infesting the crelp! It’s working!’

  The crelp clawed at their own limbs in a frenzy of agony and bewilderment. Bony plates and horned skulls crashed to the ground as their occupants wriggled free. Suddenly the enemy was exposed and vulnerable again.

  Rakhim let out an ear-splitting roar. Wolves joined in a bloodthirsty howl. Teratorn screeched and Trogontheriums bounced ahead, razor-sharp teeth at the ready.

  ‘Attack!’ shouted Theo. ‘Attack!’

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Goodbyes

  Bones littered the floor of the Well Chamber; not a single crelp monster was standing. The insect bomb had done its work, and the Society of Dread had taken full advantage of it.

  The Dodo held up a cracked human skull and studied the tiny flea sitting on top of it.

  ‘My, the little Saurops were hungry, weren’t they?’ the old man said with a twisted smile.

  ‘But look!’ cried out Skun, pointing to the ground at his feet. ‘More unbogoglia tricks!’

  The crelp, driven from their skeleton shells, torn to pieces, blasted by lasers and melted by Theo’s hands, were now just pools of green slime.

  But the slime was moving.

  One puddle slithered to join with another. Dark drips crawled across fallen bones to combine with others.

  ‘Whatever they’re doing,’ Chloe shouted, ‘stop them!’

  But it was too late for that. The pools combined to form a large blob, which expanded and began to bubble upwards.

  ‘Not good!’ wailed Skun. ‘Not good!’ He tried to stamp on a puddle of slime, but it slithered under his foot to add itself to the growing blob. The crelp were forming themselves into one giant mass, blocking the way into the crater.

  ‘Destroy it!’ gasped a haggard-faced Colonel Fairchild, waving his officers forwards. ‘Before it gets any bigger!’ Theo covered his ears as eradicator fire tore ineffectually through the dark, treacly mass of slime that now covered the whole entrance.

  ‘A dirty trick,’ complained Skun, peering upwards.

  The unified mass of slime rose like a great bubble and towered above the approaching army, swelling outwards, forming colossal tentacles and sprouting stupendous, glistening eye-stalks.

>   ‘It’s as big as Empire Hall,’ Theo gasped.

  The Caspian Tiger let out a low, guttural growl. Suddenly the Dodo’s beasts were restless with alarm, faced with a living creature so very much larger than they.

  ‘Remarkable,’ breathed the Dodo, coming to stand beside Theo. ‘A perfect group organism, pooling cells to one dominant DNA configuration. They can truly be as one. If I had but known this, I –’

  He did not finish his sentence. In one horrifying motion, the Dodo was snatched up by a gigantic tentacle and cast, screaming, into one of the smoking pits.

  The shocking moment had happened in almost the blink of an eye. A cacophony of screeching and roaring broke out as the Dodo’s creatures ran amok, hurling themselves in futile rage against the pulsing wall of slime.

  Then followed a chilling moment of realisation. The creatures that had attacked the wall of living jelly could not pull themselves away. Theo watched, horrified, as a great Phytosaur found its jaws caught in the sticky body of the colossal crelp. The reptile struggled, twisted its great bulk from side to side, but to no avail. The slime began to absorb it.

  ‘Retreat,’ shouted Colonel Fairchild. ‘Retreat to –’ He was given no chance to finish his words. Another tentacle, the size of a falling oak tree, swept the Orpheus officers aside like toy soldiers. Smoglodytes yelped, leapt and scattered into the shadows.

  Theo looked around for Chloe but could not see her. Orpheus officers were taking cover, darting through the black smoke belching from the pits all around him. All was chaos. Theo turned to run, but could not move. Slime had oozed around his feet and held him firmly in place.

  Theo felt the hideous jelly sucking him in. His hands were already covered in its slime before he had had a chance to summon his power. He wriggled desperately. In moments his head would be engulfed.

  Theo focused. He refused to die in this way – without the chance to face his own fate and to free himself from the threat of Dr Pyre. His friends needed him too. Everybody needed him.

  Pain racked his body as the crelp slime began to crush him, sting him, attempt to break him down and absorb him.