The Infernal Aether

by Oxley, Peter

  “Because they were stifling your brother’s creativity, making things far too nice and happy. You, Maxwell, needed that push to turn you in on yourself, to make you insular and interested in what I needed you to focus on.”

  “You monster,” muttered Maxwell, looking as numb as the rest of us.

  “I fail to see what all this has to do with N’yotsu,” I said.

  “That was my masterstroke, my one great push,” Andras said. “You see, until you encountered us in Hyde Park, young Maxwell’s research was stalling and going down useless dead-ends. You were getting too distracted by all that Newtonian rubbish, pulling away from the occult. N’yotsu has been the perfect guide for you.”

  “No,” said Maxwell. “It was all my own work.”

  “But N’yotsu was a useful sounding board, was he not?” grinned Andras. “Of course, he could only help you on the theoretical side of things, directing your hand, as he could not actually create or manipulate your devices. But he did make you think of different applications for your work, alternative ways of viewing the Aether. All of those ghostly and demonic encounters also helped hugely, I have no doubt.”

  “That was all you,” said Kate.

  “The very same, Madame,” the demon bowed deeply.

  “This is all lies,” said N’yotsu. “I had no such intentions. I was merely helping a friend, doing something useful until my memories returned.”

  “But of course that is what you seemed to think,” said Andras. “The mind is a wonderful thing. When I sent you out into the world I gave you some very clear instructions, buried deep within your mind, namely to help Maxwell and to use your—our—knowledge to get him where we are today: with a fully functioning Aether Portal Creating Machine.” It frowned and rubbed its chin. “I need a better name; that’s far too much of a mouthful for such an important creation.”

  “What do you mean, ‘sent him out into the world”?” asked Kate. “Are you saying you created N’yotsu?”

  “Even better,” grinned Andras. “You see, my kind have a rather special gift. We are able to split off aspects of our being, turn them into physical beings of their own right. My time spent in your horrible little domain, around you humans with your grubby emotions, meant that some of that rubbed off on me, a bit like the Pox. So I merely split off those less savoury aspects of my persona, things like a conscience and feelings,” it spat these last words out before gesturing at N’yotsu. “And, lo and behold, N’yotsu was born!”

  “So he’s not like you then,” said Kate. “He’s different. He is human.”

  “Don’t fool yourself,” said Andras. “He’s a demon, just like me. And, as hard as you try, you can never hide your true nature. Is that not right, Augustus? To all appearances, you are just another ne’er do well, a wastrel, the dissolute younger brother. But, just under the surface—”

  I turned away, not wanting to see the reaction on my friends’ faces.

  “—you’re so much more. A killer, a creature of rage. Have you considered how much of the character which you present to the world is merely an attempt to avoid facing that wonderful truth?” The demon grinned. “I created Maxwell, formed him to act in my interests, but I didn’t do too badly with you either, did I?”

  I turned to face the demon but, before I could retort, it picked up Maxwell’s device. “In any case, that is enough sowing of discord for one day. You have been an interesting, if useful, diversion but now I have greater plans and you have all outlived your usefulness. As you’ve probably guessed I shall be stranding you here in the Aether, leaving you to the mercy of our friends out there. No doubt we will see each other again, although by then I warrant that you will all be driven mad by this place. What is left of you, in any case.”

  Andras put a foot through the portal and then turned back to leer at us. “Don’t worry though—you have your friend and hero N’yotsu with you. You can trust him, can you not?” The demon cackled as it stepped through the portal with the device in its arms, and with a ‘pop’ the portal closed in on itself, stranding us in that unending, misty void.

  CHAPTER 29

  We looked around, the demon’s words momentarily forgotten as the noise from the creatures outside the room grew in intensity.

  “What now?” asked Kate.

  Maxwell darted over to the side of the room and started rifling through a pile of miscellaneous scrap. “I believe I can create another portal.”

  “You have another one of those machines?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “But there are enough prototypes here to enable a working portal to be created. It won’t be stable or particularly long-lived, but it should be enough to get us home.” He set to his devices, roping them together with all manner of tubing.

  Kate and I busied ourselves once more with checking the fastness of the makeshift barricades over the doors and windows, trying to ignore the sound of the creatures which seemed to extend along every wall, surrounding us, filling our ears. Once again, our industry was a welcome relief from the dark thoughts which threatened to overwhelm us, made even starker by Andras’s words.

  “Max,” I shouted over the rising noise. “How much longer?”

  “Not long,” he called back.

  “It is just that I am not sure how much longer before they break through.”

  “I will be much quicker if you stop talking at me,” he snapped.

  I held up my hands and backed away, raising an eyebrow at Kate. N’yotsu was seated in a far corner of the room, staring without focus into the middle distance, and I watched him, remembering the demon’s parting words to us.

  “Do you think Andras was telling the truth?” asked Kate. “About him being... you know?”

  “I have no idea,” I said slowly. “It would be in keeping for Andras to lie to us but, then again, there was much about what the demon said which rang true.”

  “So you do believe that stuff?” she asked. “About N’yotsu being some weird bit of Andras and it planning all this all along and it...”

  “Killing my parents. Yes, I think I do. Or at least, certainly the parts about how we have been played by the demon all our lives. It does explain a fair bit, including why we have constantly encountered the creature over the past few months. And it does seem to have now got what it wanted.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said softly, looking down.

  “For what?”

  “About what it did to your parents; that must have been hard to hear.”

  I smiled as bravely as I could muster. “It was worse when it actually happened,” I said. My words were a mere cover over a well of pain which I had managed to keep stoppered for so long but which now overflowed with long-forgotten reserves of anguish. My mind wandered long and wide over this sea of torment and inevitably landed upon Rachel’s face—had her death also been somehow orchestrated by Andras?

  “But what about N’yotsu?” Kate asked, a welcome distraction to my thoughts. “He can’t be a demon, or even a bit of one, can he? I mean, he’s fought the creature alongside us all this time.”

  “That does not necessarily provide us with proof either way,” I said. “After all, each time we encountered Andras we failed to land a fatal blow and instead led the demon closer to its goal.”

  “Yeah, but even so... he’s N’yotsu. He can’t be bad.”

  I scrutinised our friend’s face as he sat there with his unfocused gaze. Was it my imagination or did he appear slightly more demonic than before? I shuddered and clenched my fists. “Maybe not,” I said. “As you noted, he effectively embodies the human traits which Andras was so keen to divest itself of. But what Andras said does explain his rather unusual abilities and powers.”

  “So, we trust him?” asked Kate, her voice brimming with uncertainty.

  “We keep a very close eye on him,” I said quietly. “And keep weapons to hand until he satisfies us of his real nature.”

  Kate nodded and then stepped toward N’yotsu. “You all right, mate?” she asked.r />
  “I am not planning to grow horns or maniacally disembowel you, if that is what you were wondering,” he said with a weak smile. “Or at least I think not.”

  “Well...” started Kate, before stopping when she registered the look on my face.

  “How do you feel?” I asked.

  “Shocked, confused, horrified,” he said and then looked up. “Angry.” I took an involuntary step backwards as he continued, his voice rising in volume as he spoke. “That creature has taken my good name and thrown it into a spin, daring to demean me by tainting me with the word: ‘demon’. That foul creature with its hideous lies, I would rip it to pieces, I would—”

  He stopped as he finally registered the looks on our faces. I opened my mouth and then closed it again, not wanting to say anything which would further inflame his fury.

  “I am sorry,” he said. “But you do know that it is not true, that it could not possibly be true. I cannot be a demon. Look at me—I am flesh and blood, just like the rest of you. You do believe me?” He stood and stepped toward us, eyes wide and hands outstretched.

  With incredibly fortuitous timing we were disturbed by an urgent yell from the other end of the room. We turned to see Maxwell stepping back from a ragtag collection of devices, a series of boxes tied together with more tubes than was sensibly justified. For once, I cared not for matters of aesthetics; all that mattered was that the hastily assembled machine worked.

  Maxwell bent down to connect one final pair of tubes together, joining the general mess which formed the main part of the device to an improvised lever mechanism, situated a few feet away. With uncustomary agility he leapt across the room and slammed the lever down firmly. There was a hum followed by a splutter and then nothing.

  “What happened?” asked Kate.

  “It should have worked,” said Maxwell, running round the devices and checking each one. “I do not understand.”

  The sound from outside grew louder, the tables barring the doors rattling violently. I braced myself against one of them, fighting to push it back against the forces without. Kate threw herself alongside, helping me to hold back the tide. “Do something!” she shouted.

  “I...” Maxwell frowned as he knelt down in the centre of the devices. I felt my feet start to slip against the floor as we were pushed back by the press of bodies outside of the room.

  N’yotsu stepped forwards and held out a disc. “You forgot this,” he said.

  Maxwell grabbed it. “Thank you,” he said, connecting the disc up to the base of the lever and then pushing it down into place once more.

  This time the humming continued and grew stronger, rising to a crescendo which made my teeth ache. Maxwell leapt away from the device as a point of light appeared within, growing to the size of a plate, then a window and then a door. This seemed to be the limit of its growth and it hung there in the air, wobbling, growing and shrinking as it turned slowly on its axis. From within it we could see a mess of stones and mist.

  “Is that home?” asked Kate.

  “I hope so,” said Maxwell. “In any case, it is better than here. Shall we?” He held out his hand. When none of us moved, he shouted: “I do not know how long the portal will remain stable. We must go—now!”

  They jumped through and I followed, abandoning the desk. The portal started to shrink as I approached it, the passage of the others seeming to have somehow disturbed its fragile equilibrium. I threw myself at what was left of the window to that other place, holding my breath as I did so. Released from my control, the table broke inwards behind me.

  *

  Stars swam around me, a whirlpool of colours and lights which coalesced into a greyness which was reassuring in its familiarity. I landed with a force which blasted the air from my lungs and found myself reborn into a world full of overwhelming sensations; after the muted putrescence of the Aether this new place was almost sickeningly intense, with its noises, colours and smells. I looked down at my bleeding knees and hands and found myself exulting in the feeling, this confirmation that I was alive and existing in somewhere that was somewhere, as opposed to the decaying limbo that had been the Aether.

  A sound heralded Maxwell and Kate stumbling through the rubble to help me to my feet and this in turn caused me to look around, blinking at our surroundings. It took a few moments for me to realise that we were stood in a rubble-filled cavern in the centre of Maxwell’s house, an island of insanity within the startling normality of the remainder of Bedford Square, which was just visible through the half-collapsed walls which had once enclosed the room we had left behind in the Aether. There were shouts and then other people came to assist us, strangers who had long ago given up hope of finding survivors from the mysterious collapse that had put paid to the bulk of that once-grand house. Shouted queries flowed around me as I stepped down onto the firmness of the road and my legs gave way, my body finally succumbing to the ordeals which it had endured.

  N’yotsu stood not too far away, motionless, while beyond him I could see a crowd of people surveying the scene. There was no sign of the portal which had deposited us back home.

  “Are you all right?” Kate asked N’yotsu.

  “I do not know,” he said as he stared into the distance, an unreadable expression on his face. I watched him, sharing in his pain and confusion as I remembered Andras’s words and how the creature had seemingly manipulated mine and Maxwell’s lives for so long. A shadow of a smile flickered across N’yotsu’s face, immediately replaced by a frown, and I found myself fearing for his sanity; after all, if Andras had spoken true, then N’yotsu was in fact one of the nefarious creatures which he had sworn to destroy. My heart desperately wanted to deny the claims, to believe in N’yotsu’s humanity, but my head told me a different story. Battling one demon had been a tough enough task; surely two demons would be an insurmountable challenge.

  PART EIGHT - WORLD’S END

  CHAPTER 30

  Things were particularly painful during the first few weeks after our escape from the Aether, as my body fought to recover from the rigours imposed on it by the many trials I had undergone, not least of which Andras’s attempt to steal my soul. Indeed, I found myself time and again wondering whether I had truly been fully restored to my old, whole self. The world which Maxwell’s portal had deposited us into seemed to me a little less real, as though I were regarding it through a finely woven veil. However, whilst this should have driven me toward alcohol and laudanum, my usual methods of finding colour amongst the greyness of real life, I instead found a sense of purpose in pure action. Such action was directed toward making sense of the madness which Andras had thrust upon us, and was for once unimpaired by any form of intoxicants.

  We had all responded in different ways to the experiences and revelations which had been thrust upon us in the Aether. Kate had thrown herself into her usual pragmatism, although this time it was tinged with an almost vicious intensity. Maxwell and N’yotsu, on the other hand, had descended into a despondency which overshadowed even my own most maudlin moods of times gone by.

  In the face of the raw, black desperation being suffered by my nearest and dearest my instinct, as with so many things, was to rebel and take the opposite track, to become a beacon of optimism in the face of their despair. However, it was not just against the prevailing mood which I was rebelling. Andras’s revelations had made me realise that all my troubles, all my instabilities and childhood traumas could be traced back to the demon and its insane plotting. To give in to those feelings would be to give in to Andras, and I resolved that I would find some manner of purpose out of that terrible chaos.

  Maxwell’s dark moods had driven him away from his experimentation and scientific reasoning, no doubt—as with my own rebellion—because that was what Andras had effectively driven him toward in the first place. This was not a complete loss, for he focused his energies into practical action, aiding Kate and I as we pounded the streets of London and beyond in search of the demon.

  As for N’yotsu, he cla
imed to have no recollection of the past which Andras had claimed was his, and assured us that he was completely human; as far as he was concerned, Andras had lied in an attempt to make us distrust our friend. We chose to believe him in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, although his dark moods suggested that he was more affected by what the demon had said than he chose to let on. Regardless, it was an unspoken agreement between Maxwell, Kate and I that we would keep a close eye on our friend, just in case he started to display any unfavourable characteristics.

  Then, just a few days after our return from the Aether, we awoke to find N’yotsu gone, with no indication as to where he had fled. At first we assumed he had gone for a walk but, as the days went by, we realised that the worst had happened and our friend had abandoned us. As a result we found ourselves searching for not one but two individuals, trying not to think about the possibility that our friend had gone running into Andras’s arms.

  A fortnight later Kate, Maxwell and I found ourselves in my sitting room, together as a group for the first time in days, and compared notes from our latest sorties.

  “Not a sausage,” Kate said with her customary frankness. “No sign anywhere. It’s like Andras has disappeared. Same goes for N’yotsu.”

  “Same here,” I said, and Maxwell nodded in agreement. “So we are still no further along.”

  “Maybe Andras played with the device and ended up trapped back in the Aether,” said Kate.

  “It is possible,” mused Maxwell. “Or maybe the demon has actually just returned home. Then again, the creature cannot manipulate the device itself—it told us as much when it spoke of its aversion to all things scientific—maybe it is having trouble finding a willing assistant.”