Mariah Mundi

by G. P. Taylor

  Something touched his chin. At first it brushed against him like a wind-blown web that fleeted by. Then it came again, bolder, firm, grasping his face as it scraped against his skin.

  Mariah didn’t dare move. Whatever touched him was warm and soft. Like a lightning bolt he suddenly realised that this was Sacha’s hand buried in the mound of rock. He pulled at the stone and shingle, the sharp jags ripping at raw fingers. The rocks spilled ever downward as Mariah dug to set her free. In the sand and grit he could feel the contour of her face as he kicked away the tumuli of small boulders piled against her like an ancient tomb.

  ‘Sacha!’ he shouted as he lifted her from the grave with bleeding fingers. ‘Can you hear me?’

  She coughed, spitting sand and pulling him close as she gasped for breath. ‘I was drowning in the shingle,’ she said, squeezing him as if she would never feel anyone alive again. ‘I could hear you shouting, but couldn’t speak.’ Sacha coughed in the darkness as they sat holding each other. ‘How far did we fall?’

  ‘Too dark to tell,’ Mariah said as he looked up, and then laughed to himself for his folly. ‘Do you have a Lucifer?’

  Sacha tapped her pocket and, sitting back, opened the thin box and struck the match. In the sudden glare, Mariah could see the far wall of the room and glimpsed a rusted grate hanging by a broken hinge from the roof. To their right was a large stone vaulted entrance and a short flight of steps that ran down and turned sharply to the left. In the brief moment of illumination it looked as if it were the entrance to an old church, etched in carved ivy leaves and with a gargoyle’s head looking down from the high arch.

  ‘Again,’ Mariah insisted as the match failed. ‘Light another.’

  Sacha lit a Lucifer and held it tightly in her fingertips. ‘I haven’t many left,’ she said quickly. ‘We’ll have to find something more or we’ll be walking blind.’

  ‘At least we’re alive,’ Mariah replied. ‘I was beginning to think that this place was trying to kill us both.’

  He pulled a long white handkersniff from his pocket, then wrapped and knotted it against itself to form a long wick. He lit the end aligned with the match and watched as it slowly started to smoulder and then burn. ‘Should last the hour,’ he said as he saw the surprised look on Sacha’s face. ‘We learn many things at the Colonial School.’ He smiled.

  ‘Me, I didn’t get the chance,’ she said curtly as the shadows criss-crossed her face. ‘Taught myself to read and write. Cleaned for the cleric and pinched his paper and quill pens. Easy, when you really have to. Didn’t feel bad about it either. Silly man, with spectacles that perched on the end of his nose. Squandered all his time swigging port wine, mumbling curses and scrawling in his book. Spent more time writing than he did on his knees. The Reverend H. F. Cataxian … He wrote The Incredible Adventures of Doblin the Goblin.’ Sacha mimicked a squeaking voice. ‘Nearest he’ll get to Paradise was having his manse built next to it. You must have heard of him?’ Sacha seemed thankful to talk of something other than their plight. ‘My house is across the road from his. We lived clattered together in the rooms above the inn. He lived all alone in a house so big you could lose yourself for a week. So far to the privy that he would up the sash and do it out of the window.’

  Mariah laughed, the sight of Cataxian gushing from the window of his house etched in his mind. ‘I have the book, brought it with me from London. I’ve read it several times.’

  ‘Then when we get from this place …’ she said slowly as she looked to the ground. ‘Then, perhaps we could visit him.’

  ‘That we’ll do, and sooner rather than later,’ Mariah replied uneasily as he pulled her from the stone pile and walked towards the stairway. ‘I have this,’ he said as he showed her the gun that glistened in the flames. ‘Never thought there would come a day when I would think of this. If they were prepared to murder Otto Luger, then the same could come to us.’

  ‘Then it’s a chance I’ll take. Rather die for something than live for nothing. Felix knew there was treachery in this place. On the night before he disappeared he wanted to tell me a secret. He said he wasn’t safe, that Otto Luger had a box and it would change everything in the world. Felix said the answer was all in the stones and they would speak for themselves. Then he was gone.’

  ‘And we will find him, Sacha. He must be here somewhere. Him and all the secrets that this place contains.’ Mariah spoke quietly as they took the first steps down and then turned quickly as they spiralled the sand-covered treads.

  Soon they reached the floor below. It looked as if it had been cut from the solid rock on which the Prince Regent had grown. The sound of the steam generator grew louder with each step they took along the narrow passageway just wide enough for them to walk arm in arm, linked against the darkness.

  Mariah held the pistol in his hand as Sacha clutched the light above them, its smouldering wick illuminating the damp sandstone walls that oozed with tendrils of hot salted water. Coming from a hand-chiselled entrance was a shaft of bright amber light that sliced through the darkness ahead of them. Sacha moved quickly on, then waited for Mariah as she peered around the rough-cut edge of the small stone doorway.

  Inside the large vaulted room was the steam generator. It was unlike anything Mariah had ever seen. A large green, polished pipe was screwed into the rock face with thick brass bolts. To one side was the steel piston that juddered back and forth along a bright rod fixed to the far wall. Behind this was an engine the size of a small house that chugged away like a slowly beating heart. Every so often it would spurt soft jets of steam from its ventilating valve and a rush of burning air would be sucked through a labyrinth of pipes around the room and then into the high ceiling. All was lit by a stand of blue lamps fixed to the high ceiling.

  ‘A steam engine,’ Sacha exclaimed.

  ‘Not one that I have ever seen. There’s no stoker, no firebox and no water. It’s as if it sucks the steam from the earth itself.’

  ‘Listen,’ Sacha said as though she had been spoken to by a voice beyond hearing. ‘Can you hear the crying?’

  Mariah listened. All he could hear was the chugging of the generator and the whistling of the steam through the miles of piping that circled above him like the coils of some vast snake. The clanging pipes echoed through the cavernous chamber. He shrugged his shoulders and screwed up his face.

  ‘It’s there again … Can’t you hear it?’ she asked as a faint cry came yet again.

  Mariah holstered the pistol in his pocket and bent forward. He cupped a hand against his ear and tried to listen. The noise of the generator and the garbled chuntering of his own thoughts filled his head. ‘Nothing,’ he said.

  Sacha moaned to herself in deep frustration. ‘I’m sure I could –’ she said as the faint cry came yet again. ‘There – you must have heard that.’

  Mariah shook his head as Sacha walked towards a carved doorway half hidden behind the generator.

  ‘This way,’ she said as she walked quickly, her hand grasping the key.

  Mariah followed on, taking in the last sight of the steam generator that grew up from the solid rock floor into the high vaulted roof. The glistening of the arc lamps shone from the bright green and glimmering paint and polished brass bolts. ‘Amazing,’ he whispered to himself as he walked backwards. ‘Perfectly amazing.’

  Sacha followed the sound of the whimpering that had called her into the long and brightly lit passage. Running far into the distance were a thousand tiny lamps with neither wick nor flame. She looked at the clear glass spheres that covered a thin burning wire. They glowed brightly without flame, dazzling the eyes. Mariah followed on, pistol in hand; every second pace he would stop, turn and aim at some imaginary creature.

  Soon they passed into yet another vast chamber. They crossed a steaming pool of fermenting blue water on a high metal gantry suspended from the roof by thick linked chains. They swung gently back and forth with every step until they reached another stone-cut archway. It howled with a stiff gale that
pushed them back with its ferocity. The wind shimmered the waters and spiralled mist into the heights.

  The sound of crying seemed to be as far away from Sacha as ever. It was as if she chased a rainbow and no sooner had she stepped nearer than it had moved another pace away. But still the faint murmuring came again and again. Sacha turned to Mariah and he would just shrug his shoulders in reply, as if she were the only one who could hear the ghostly whisperings.

  Mariah pulled the collar of his coat over his face to protect it from the wind. He pushed Sacha on as she struggled to keep upright in the air stream that hurricaned through the narrow tunnel.

  ‘It cools the steam generator,’ Mariah shouted, his voice carrying just above the howl of the gale. ‘Sucked from above – find where it comes from and we’ll be able to get out again.’

  Sacha got to her hands and knees and crawled the last few feet of the corridor. As she pressed herself to the ground the wind beat against her head and peppered her with blistering specks of golden sand. Mariah staggered on behind, unable to look ahead as he cupped the pistol in his hand, holding it close to him.

  There was a sudden tremor as the whole passageway juddered with the sound of sliding, grating metal that rasped against the stone. The gale squealed its final breath and then all was silent. From far behind, the shuddering came again as a strong metal door clamped firmly shut.

  ‘VENTS!’ shouted a voice from ahead. ‘CLOSE THE VENTS!’

  There was another slithering of metal far away. The grinding and crunching of rock trilled through the passage. Sacha looked up to Mariah. She was covered in a thin layer of golden powder that lined every feature of her face and encrusted strands of hair against her skin. They crept forward, not knowing who was ahead of them.

  From just beyond yet another stone archway they could see the light of a glistening crystal chandelier. It hung majestically from the hand-cut, vaulted roof of the chamber, at the same height as the gantry on which they now crouched, just out of sight of the people below.

  Mariah peeked carefully over the metal rim of the elevated pathway that linked the two halves of the vaulted room. There below was Otto Luger, smartly dressed and very much alive. He wore the same crisp white shirt and neatly pressed jacket. His monocle was crunched against his nose; his hair was slickly greased back from his face. Monica fussed about a stone table, wiping piles of golden sand from its surface with a horsehair brush as she stood on a long stone bench that looked as if it was hewn from the floor.

  Standing together by the large wooden doors were two men. Mariah recognised the ruddy-red face of Mister Grimm. He waited impatiently with his companion, his hand rubbing the top of a golden lion’s-head mahogany cane. The other man was tall and thin, with a white face, pinched cheeks, thin lips and a small black beard that tipped the end of a long and very pointed chin.

  ‘Grendel!’ whispered Mariah to himself.

  Mister Grendel fiddled with his blue-lens spectacles. He took a fat silver timepiece from his pocket and checked it several times with agitated fingers. Grendel visibly twitched every sinew in his body, the muscles in his face shivering beneath his thin white skin.

  ‘Mystery, mystery, so much mystery. Why we can’t meet in an upper room and not far below the sea I’ll never know,’ Mister Grimm said quickly.

  ‘Is he ready to perform for us?’ Otto Luger asked as he sat at the head of the stone table and nodded for them to join him. Monica brushed the last of the sand to the floor. ‘This dreaming he does better find out who was in my room last night. I’ve a feeling they will be back and I have far too much riding on this caper.’

  ‘Have we ever let you down?’ Mister Grimm asked passionately as he took Grendel by the hand and led him to the seat opposite Luger. ‘Best he sits here and then he can see you face to face, Mister Luger.’

  ‘All I ask is he sees the one who is messing up my head.’

  ‘You are an impatient man, Mister Luger,’ Grendel said as he sat on the cold stone. ‘Projection is something that has to be learnt. It isn’t stumbled upon or bought, it is a gift.’

  ‘Thought it came in a little green bottle and smelt of lau-danum,’ Luger mumbled as he looked at his fob watch.

  Mister Grendel laughed to himself as he scratched the hairs on his chin and adjusted his spectacles upon the elfishly thin bridge of his nose. ‘That substance just takes me from this world and allows me to wander where I please. And it is not laudanum, nothing so crude or so vile and corrupting. Just three drops of this linctus and I am free of worldly passions and desires. There is nothing greater than to escape the twitching of this carcass of tremulous timidity. Just three drops, Mister Luger, and you could come with me. Could this be what is more powerful than the sigh of the hard pressed creature – the heart of the heartless world – a soul of soulless circumstances? If Mister Hegel’s philosophy is to be believed …’

  ‘Drink and have done with it,’ Luger barked as Monica sat down at table, the words echoing around the vault. ‘Have your dream and be paid well. Tell him, Mister Grimm. I have to find the one who was in the penthouse.’

  ‘Then I shall, I shall. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to leave this present company. But first, tell me, is there anything that you don’t want me to see – for once I am projected there is no door that is closed to me and no wall that can keep me out. Secrets will be a thing of the past. Do you understand?’

  Luger looked to Monica, hoping she would say something. She smiled at him and shrugged her shoulders, tilting her head to one side like a cooing dove.

  ‘There … there are many things that I would not like the world to know and hope you would keep secret. I am sure we can come to some sort of agreement?’ Luger spoke as if aware he had unleashed a creature that would cost him more than he ever knew.

  ‘Shall I see what I can find and then discuss a price?’ Grendel asked as he unscrewed the top of a small glass bottle that he had quietly removed from his hip pocket. ‘I assure you that we can keep many secrets and our prices are very reasonable.’

  ‘It’s insurance, Mister Luger,’ Grimm chipped in nervously as he wiped sweat from his brow and cast a sly look to Mister Grendel to say no more. ‘Consider it an investment. We would become guardians of whatever we found, with the promise that the secrets would die on our lips.’

  ‘I would prefer if you kept your nocturnal wanderings to the rooms above the ground,’ Luger replied as he again looked to the silent Monica for help. ‘I have a business venture in which I am cultivating certain things …’

  ‘Of value?’ Grendel asked as he sniffed the neck of the bottle.

  ‘Of significant value, and beautiful,’ Monica interrupted. ‘Tell ’em, Otto. If he’s gonna see through the walls then he’ll see the kids and the pearls – so have done with it.’

  ‘Monica!’ Luger bristled as her words zimmered upwards.

  ‘We’ll cut you in on the deal,’ she said briskly, avoiding Luger’s staring gaze. ‘Otto is cultivating pearls. Far below this room is a cavern stuffed with oysters. He feeds them on …’ She paused and looked to Otto Luger, whose face was reddened in a deep blush and whose neck swelled in the confines of his tight white collar.

  ‘Steam and ordure,’ Luger chirped.

  ‘Or-what?’ Grimm asked, his face so screwed up that his spectacles dropped from his shrinking nose.

  ‘Excrement – poop – jobbies. Whatever else you would like to call them,’ he moaned.

  ‘And you feed it to the pearls?’ Grimm asked, amazed that the creatures would survive such a diet. ‘Now I know why my mother told me never to eat shellfish.’

  ‘They adore the ordure,’ Monica chortled to herself.

  ‘It’s steam-heated, taken from the town sewer, filtered and then fed into the cavern. Twice the heat they would be in the sea, and tended by kind loving hands. Just think – super size,’ Luger said, as if offended by the tone of Grimm’s voice.

  ‘You get people to work down there?’ Grimm said as he loose
ned the tie around his neck.

  ‘They have no choice. How can I say this in the kindest way?’ he asked Monica.

  ‘Slaves,’ she said cutting to the chase. ‘Mister Luger gets a particular type of brood to work in the hotel. Ones where the family has no care or concern for them. They have been well paid for and they come here. The strongest are selected and disappear from upstairs to go and work … downstairs.’ She giggled and pointed below with her long glove-clad finger, and gave a little shiver of delight.

  ‘And the pearls?’ Grimm asked, his voice falling to a whisper as he slavered over the words. ‘They are disposed of … locally?’

  ‘Let us just say that the ladies of Paris are adorned with the finest molluscs that hot, steaming sewage can grow,’ Luger said as he smiled at Monica, raising a thick black-dyed eyebrow.

  ‘Smuggled?’ said Grimm cautiously as Mister Grendel put the green bottle to his lips and sipped the linctus.

  ‘In a way that you would never expect.’ Monica chuckled.

  Grendel quietly convulsed in his chair as the linctus seared through every vein in his body like hot lead. He coughed gently, an issue of deep red blood dripping from his lip and trickling through the fibres of his beard. With that he closed his reddened eyes and slept.

  There was a sudden swirl of sand that spiralled up from the floor beneath the table as if disturbed by someone’s passing. Monica shivered, pulling her feather boa high around her milky-white neck as her eyes searched the room.

  ‘How does he dream?’ Luger asked sarcastically. ‘This is the most expensive sleep I’ve ever paid for.’