The patrol car pulled up alongside the entrance to Greyfield Park, at which point we sought to abandon the vehicle, though only after Jill retrieved her backpack and a shovel from the trunk. We then hurried across the field, over the stream, and towards the wreckage. Navigating based on the image of the floor plan drawings on her camera she led us around the back of the west wing, beyond our previous point of entry. The spot, we found, had been overgrown and covered with dirt, perhaps washout from excessive rainfall. I helped her lift a few large planks of splintered wood, the watched as she used her steel-toed boots to kick away a few stones and mortar. Then, as I continued to peruse the vicar’s notations, she began to dig.
“So...what else ya got?” she asked, puffing away.
“Not much,” I replied. “There is a lot of gibberish here. Garbled text. Could be a cipher.”
“Cipher?”
“A model of encryption. What may appear as nonsensical text could actually be a code that requires a decryption key. The most basic involves running the letters of the alphabet against a reverse sequence. The letter in the forward alphabet is then replaced with the letter of the reverse alphabet. A becomes Z. B becomes Y. There are other simple methods of encryption, such as substituting a letter with the thirteenth letter down the line of the alphabet. In that case the A becomes...” I hesitated for a moment. “...N. You get the idea. It’s really quite simple. Childish, really.”
“So...why’s he trying to hide what he’s written?”
“That’s the interesting thing,” I said, flipping the page to look at the back, where it continued. “It doesn’t look like he’s encrypting text, but decrypting it. He has a few scribblings underneath, notes about pulleys and wheels. I think he was attempting to translate something.”
“A bit hot out...wouldn’t you say?” she asked, removing another load of dirt.
“Yes, quite,” I replied. I removed my handkerchief, wiped my brow, then returned it to my pocket. Her next shovel load of dirt landed near my feet. Wary of another such error, I brushed off my trouser leg and took a step back. “Be careful, please.”
She muttered something, but I care not to guess what it was, nor would I care to write it down. “So...what are the wheels and pulley’s for? Seriously...what the hell is this guy up to? Is he...inventing torture machines...for the people who confess horrible crimes?”
“Or more to the point, is it all related? I would hate to see ourselves waylaid from our course by lesser conundrum.”
It was then that I caught sight of a word amongst this encrypted text that rang a few reminiscent bells.
Orffyreus.
Jill struck a hard surface.
“I found the door.”
“Marvellous,” I said, checking my pocket watch. “We’ve still some time then before the evening sets in.”
“You know you really are a...”
“Come now, let us open the door.”
She cleared the rest of the dirt, at which point we both reached down and lifted the handles. It took some effort, and I know that young Jill was likely afraid that she would not be able to manage, but with my assistance we were able to open the doors. It gave way with a sudden crack, sending her back and falling into her freshly moved pile of dirt. I offered her a hand, but she refused, probably embarrassed by her fall. Once she was back upon her feet we stood at the edge and looked down. It was a darkened staircase, much like the conventional stairs, but this one led us much closer to the disturbance. I deduced this easily as there was a dim pink light emitting not far away. Accepting a flashlight from Jill I led the way down through the storm door that had not been used in at least fifty years.
While this storage area of the cellar was quite large, we almost immediately came face to face with pink wall of light, which was now turning into a slightly darker shade. My new-found knowledge of the basement layout enabled me to postulate how large the disturbance was, yet I had no way of determining its interior volume, or whether it complied to the dimensions of the area it occupied.
“I want to go in,” Jill said, though it sounded as though she spoke against her very own judgement.
“I don’t think that’s wise.”
“Are you going in?”
“Of course.”
“And how is that wise when it isn’t for me?”
I sighed. Putting my hands on her shoulders, I turned the girl around and opened her backpack. “How many lengths of rope do you have?”
“Two,” she chirped.
“Alright. Fine. On your head be it. Just ensure you fasten yourself to something, lest we get lost in the void.”
Taking my lead she tied one end of the rope around her waist and the other to one of the support columns. We tested the security of each others knots and, once satisfied, we both stood side by side before the wall. Jill seemed to be having second thoughts and, although I had done this once already, my nerves were being tested.
“Do you wish to hold my hand?” I asked.
“I dunno,” she said in an unintentional whisper. “Do you want to hold mine?”
With neither responding we held out our hands, locking our fingers. I gave her a quick reaffirming squeeze, at which point I led us in the first footfall forward. Once we stepped through I immediately looked to Jill, who had closed her eyes just as I had upon my first entry. I squeezed her hand once more, hoping to indicate that all was well. Warily she opened her eyes and looked about. I did not say much nor lead her anywhere at first, for I knew that it was a lot to take in and I wanted to allow her a moment to absorb what she saw before I began to bombard her with facts and theories.
Before us was the cellar, only it was in good repair and filled with bales of hay and other such supplies. An elegant lady, likely the mistress of the house, was having relations with a young farmhand amongst the hay, while to our left and right, merging seamlessly, were wide vistas upon which both large animals and hominids with low sloping foreheads roamed. Jill glanced over to me, then back behind us where the old fire-damaged cellar could be seen through what looked like a long curving window which arched in each direction, lost into the horizons.
“Where are we?” she asked. She was startled to find that her voice was almost formless, as though in a vacuum. Her question travelled quietly down the lengths of the vista, then came soaring back moments later, albeit in subdued volume.
“We are experiencing condensed time,” I explained, allowing a moment for my words to be relayed. “Time does not exist here. Every moment that ever transpired on this spot is collected into one moment, in one singularity. Past and present, all as one. Null time.”
She looked around again, watching the mistress and the farmhand fix their clothing, as well as seeing the cavemen club a small bipedal mammal to death.
“Cool.”
“Time did not pass for me here, though my watch still operated. That is why I seemed to be gone only a moment to you, when in truth I inhabited this space for a few minutes. We could spend a year in here and emerge having only been gone an instant.”
She hesitated, undoubtedly comparing our communication with a poorly dubbed foreign film, or some other pop-culture reference. Upon collecting my entire statement, or drawing an apt conclusion from the pieces she gathered, she rallied her own thoughts.
“Would we age?” she asked.
“I am not sure,” I admitted. “While my watch continued to operate, I do not know if our cell structure would continue to self-substantiate. I suggest we do not linger in order to find out, however. It could be dangerous to stay here too long, and I lack the proper instrumentation to discern our safety.”
Having said that, I was in no great rush to return. I took a step forward, as did Jill, and as we did so every scene changed. Cavemen were replaced with primitive traders, and the mistress and farmhand were replaced with cattle. It was a very disorienting experience, having every step you take alter your reality and surroundings to such a degre
e. We held each others' hand for safety and support, as the disorientation threatened us both. I continued, uncertain of whether our steps within the void were to be limited by the dimensions of the basement. Logically we would have to reach something tangible at some point. Our ropes were slowly becoming taut when something came into view. We saw two figures approach us - mirror images of ourselves which looked back through a lucent surface. My first conclusion was that we had reached the opposite perimeter of the void, however as I scanned the distance to my left and right I realized that the curve of the wall was convex. It was curving the same way as the wall we had passed through. This was not the opposite end, but rather another wall on the path to the centre of the disturbance.
I noted that our breathing became shallow, and I was not sure if it was due to the excitement and uncertainty, or whether it was due to the thinner air. I turned to Jill and gestured back, to where our ropes expanded out and seemed to vanish into a blue sky. The signal was clear and she complied. Like two deep sea divers walking upon the ocean’s surface, we slowly and cautiously made our way back, thrusting ourselves through the intangible glass wall.
We both required a moment to regain our breath and our senses, leaning against the concrete wall and wheezing. I had not spent as long in the field last time and did not expect such a suffocating sensation to overwhelm us.
“Are you alright?”
She coughed and hacked, but nonetheless raised one thumb, which I assumed was an indication that she was coherent.
“...what...” she attempted to speak long before she was prepared to, “...the hell...was that all about?”
“My best assumption,” I began, taking yet another deep breath of full and fresh (albeit dank) air, “is a Tipler Cylinder.”
“Yeah, I just saw a caveman, Fugit. Tipler thingies are going to require a little bit more explanation.”
“Dante described Hell as circular, expanding outward with nine successive rings, each one acting as it’s own territory and abode for punishing certain crimes. The worse the sin, the closer ring to the centre you spend eternity in. The Tipler Cylinder, in essence, is much the same, only there are four rings. The first ring is the one we inhabit every day - Forward Time. Time flows forward, and everything is as it should be. The second ring is the one we just encountered - Null Time, a place where time does not exist, or rather it is all accumulated into one single moment. The next ring, the one we faced but withdrew from, is perhaps the most interesting - Reverse Time. A place where the entire flow of time retracts, from the Big Bang when the universe was created to the Big Crunch at which it will all once again retract into the same singularity. Time flows forward, but yet it is believed that once it is finished, the line of time will loop around, a complete three hundred and sixty degree turn, and complete itself once again, only in reverse. A time line where people are born from the dead and return to the womb. A time where things are forgotten rather than discovered. A place where things are raised from the ashes.”
“Sounds snazzy. Mostly.”
“The fourth ring is referred to as the Deadly Zone, a place where nothing, not even time, can exist. It is, as its name suggests, an anomalous aberration and a clear example of chaos. It is the only thing that separates us from the centre, where the cylinder itself lies, spinning with almost unlimited mass and speed, distorting space and time.”
“This...this is so not what I was expecting...”
“As I have always claimed, what one’s eyes behold is not always a clear definition of what one sees. For every unexplained event there is always a clear and scientific explanation, no matter how ostentatious it may be.”
“So all these hauntings...all the ghosts that I wanted to protect...”
“Where never truly ghosts, or at least not as you define them to be. They are merely temporal imprints, echoes of the past. I would theorize that as the field grew stronger over time the apparitions grew stronger. As we saw in the cellar, some were able to leave the null-time zone and substantiate themselves for a few moments before dissolving. The ghostly image of Lady Morrow on the main floor was just an extraordinary projection that managed to sustain itself, repeating it’s historical impression indefinitely, or as long as the field maintained its strength.”
“But why?” she asked, and rightly so. “Who would build such a thing?”
“Never mind the who and why,” I replied. “I’m more interested in uncovering the ‘how’. In order to operate, the Tipler Cylinder must spin with a nigh-infinite speed and mass in order to distort time and create the ripple effect that gives births to these subsequent rings. How is this so?” I asked, fearing that I would never know the answer. “Who can conceive and perpetuate such a thing.”
To which a voice replied; “I can.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Daedalian Muse Page 14
