by Walter Moers
So that was it, the end of the line - my own end too, in all probability. But, dear readers, at that moment I feared nothing, not even death. I allowed my shout to fade away and prepared to fall, to plunge into the darkness and smash myself to smithereens on the floor of the cave. The Rusty Gnomes’ railroad station was a grandiose place in which to die, a colossal monument to the futility of all endeavour. Here in the heart of the catacombs my bones would bleach and decay amid those iron skeletons. Death could have chosen no better moment, no better place, to make an end of me.
But then came a surprise. No, that’s an understatement: several surprises at once. Six of them, to be precise.
Surprise No. 1: When I got to the end of the track it didn’t end after all. Instead of plunging into space I continued my descent. No fall, no downward plunge - no, there were still rails beneath my wheels and showers of sparks trailing behind me. I was still bowling along at high speed.
Surprise No. 2: I heard a series of splattering sounds. Around a dozen of them, and they sounded like chunks of meat being hurled at a brick wall.
Surprise No. 3: The song of the Harpyrs ceased abruptly.
Surprise No. 4: My brain unknotted itself.
Surprise No. 5: The sounds around me took on an entirely different quality from one moment to the next. All at once they sounded dull and muffled, devoid of spatial depth and resonance.
Surprise No. 6: The Harpyrs, together with the entire station and its fauna, had suddenly vanished.
It took me a few startled seconds to grasp what had happened: the track had simply dived into a narrow tunnel.
My infernal bellowing had disrupted the Harpyrs’ guidance system to such an extent that their acoustic coordination had failed. Unable to detect the massive rock face ahead of them, they had flown towards it as fast as their powerful wings would carry them. While I was entering the tunnel, all twelve had run smack into the rock. It was probably safe to assume that none of them had survived the impact.
If the gradient hadn’t been so steep I might now have been able to relax a little. After all, I had escaped the Harpyrs, avoided going insane and remained on the track - a threefold triumph.
Cramped surroundings add greatly to the sensation of speed. Here in the tunnel the wheels rattled and screeched more loudly and the sparks rebounded off the walls like ricochets. And then my blood ran cold: something had gripped my ankle like a vice.
For the first time since entering the tunnel I looked back. There, crouching on the bookshelf behind me and visible in the flashes generated by the flying sparks, was a Harpyr. I couldn’t have sworn it was the one whose slumbers I’d disturbed, but that, curiously enough, was the thought that ran through my mind at the sight of it - I say ‘curiously’ because it was a matter of supreme indifference which of the twelve monsters had clung to the bookshelf in the nick of time and been carried into the tunnel with me. Whichever it was, it opened its beak and snarled.
I snarled back, surprisingly unimpressed by this new threat. If the Harpyr wanted a fight, here of all places and now of all times, it could have one.
Evidently unaccustomed to defiance, the creature released my ankle. It might have a brain the size of a pea, but instinct seemed to tell it that this was an extremely inopportune moment for a fight. We were both too busy trying not to fall off the bookshelf.
The walls enclosing us suddenly receded. We had left the tunnel and were entering a long cavern whose floor was largely covered with pools of water. Luminous green droplets rained down from the roof and there was a smell of rotting vegetation.
The blind Harpyr had also detected the change in our surroundings. It jerked its head to and fro and swivelled its ears in all directions. At length it uttered one of its strangled cries. Was it summoning others of its kind? Fortunately not: the only response was an echo that rebounded off the rocky walls and faded away to nothing.
The track was now dead straight, the gradient almost imperceptible. Our speed steadily decreased. The Harpyr rose to its full height, uttered some more strangled cries, and spread its leathery wings. Then it started groping for me with its talons.
I shrank back as far as the shelf allowed and looked down to gauge how big the drop was. Big enough! I also saw that the track supports were in a far more decrepit condition here than elsewhere. Many of the trestles and tie-bars had snapped or buckled, with the result that the rails were cripples on crutches, so to speak. I couldn’t help noticing that one or two cross-ties became detached and fell off into space as we passed over them. The straining metal creaked and groaned, the rails shed nuts and bolts, and fine clouds of luminous rust showered down.
Quite suddenly the Harpyr went over to the attack, and it did so in a way I would never have dreamt of. I had been expecting it to go for me with its talons or beak - to try to punch a hole in my head or sweep me off the bookshelf with its wings - but not to assail me with its tongue!
The tongue came darting out of its mouth, and I could scarcely believe how long it was. Two or three yards of it emerged from the creature’s jaws, encircled my body in an elliptical orbit and wound itself round my neck. Then, with a slurping sound, the Harpyr retracted it a little, brutally squeezing the air from my lungs.
At that moment the mobile bookshelf tilted once more and sped downhill. The Harpyr hung on tight with its talons, still maintaining its stranglehold. The tips of its forked tongue appeared in my field of vision disclosing that they were equipped with pairs of needle-sharp teeth.
We had already come to another uphill bend. I could no longer breathe, my eyelids were fluttering and the Harpyr was preparing to sink its teeth in my neck. A sudden silence ensued. No rattle of wheels, no trail of sparks, no metallic squealing or screeching, just the faint whistle of air rushing past my ears.
I knew that something crucial had happened. The Harpyr seemed to sense this too, because it relaxed its stranglehold and retracted its whiplike tongue at lightning speed. I clutched my throat, gasping for breath - and spotted the reason for the sudden hush: I saw the track receding behind the Harpyr’s back. That, of course, was an optical illusion, because we were receding from the track, not it from us. The rails had stopped short in the middle of the uphill bend: we were soaring into space complete with the bookshelf.
We soon reached the apogee of our flight and hovered there absolutely weightless for a moment, the Harpyr, the bookshelf and I. Then several things happened at once.
First, the bookshelf took leave of us. It followed a route of its own, a long, descending trajectory destined to end on the cave’s rocky floor and reduce it to splinters.
Secondly, the Harpyr spread its powerful wings and proceeded to flap them.
And I? What did I do? Well, I possessed wings too. However, those stunted appendages inherited from my ancestors might have been sufficient to impress the Ugglian owner of an antiquarian bookshop, but they were no use for flying. My only recourse was to cling to the Harpyr - which is precisely what I did: I grabbed its ankles and hung on tight. It uttered a startled squawk and flapped its wings violently to remain airborne. Fortunately, the laws of anatomy precluded it from slashing at me with its beak at the same time.
I heard a crash as the bookshelf landed on the rocks far below. The Harpyr now seemed to grasp that the quickest way of getting rid of its irksome passenger would be to jettison it, because the creature went into a nosedive. The closer we got to the ground, the greater my hopes of surviving this involuntary trip aboard what was probably the most singular form of transportation any passenger has ever used.
But the Harpyr’s only motive in diving was to smash me against the stalagmites protruding from the floor of the cave. I just managed to avoid colliding with the tip of one of these, which was as tall as a church spire, by drawing up my legs - only to crash into another moments later. The impact was so violent that the tip snapped off and hurtled into space, but I felt no pain and continued to hang on like grim death. The Harpyr was at last showing signs of fatigue. Our contest was
sapping its strength, just as it was mine, and it may have dawned on the monster that my dogged determination to survive was the equal of its own. Its wing-beats became slower and more feeble, and when only a few feet separated us from the floor of the cave I plucked up courage and let go.
I scarcely felt myself hit the ground, although the impact was considerable and I turned several somersaults on landing; the pain didn’t filter through until later. Quickly, I scrambled to my feet and looked up. The Harpyr was hovering in the air only a few feet overhead, flapping its wings and screeching in an attempt to determine my location. Its pea-sized brain was obviously debating whether to launch another attack or simply fly away.
Having decided on the former course of action, it landed on the rocky ground not far from me, then opened its hideous jaws and extended its long, toothed tongue once more. I bent down and reached for a lump of rock, intending to hurl it at the creature’s head, only to discover how weak I was after all my exertions. Although I managed to grab hold of the rock, I hadn’t the strength to pick it up and throw it. It slipped through my paws and fell to the ground.
The Harpyr circled me with outspread wings and talons extended, its tongue lashing the air like a bullwhip. I clasped my throat with both paws, which was all I could think of to do in self-defence. Our aerial struggle had left me utterly exhausted.
At that moment the cave was pervaded by a sound that put me in mind of a ghostly sigh whistling down a chimney on a stormy night. It seemed to jolt the Harpyr like an electric shock. The monster retracted its tongue and wrapped its wings round its talons and beak as if to conceal those deadly weapons from the gaze of someone who had given it a hard time in the past.
It preserved this submissive pose a few moments. Then, with another vicious snarl in my direction, it uttered a piercing cry, spread its wings and took off. It disappeared into the darkness with a protracted screech that seemed to me to convey relief as well as fear and rage.
Like the Harpyr, I recognised the author of that terrifying sound because I’d heard it once before: in Hunk Hoggno’s pied-à-terre. It was the sigh of the Shadow King.
Denizens of the Darkness
I headed in the direction from which I thought the sigh had come - not that really felt it was a good idea. Most of the decisions I’d made down there had landed me in even bigger trouble, so it seemed fairly certain that this one would also have disastrous results.
I stumbled over uneven, rocky ground through gloomy, lofty caverns in which ubiquitous pools of fluorescent blue water emitted little domes of light that helped me to find my way. Although I heard occasional rustles and squeaks in the darkness, I was pretty inured to such sounds by now. Not long ago they would have scared me to death. Doubtless it was only some harmless catacomb creature fleeing in panic from me and the noises I was making.
For all that, I couldn’t rid myself of the uneasy feeling that I was being watched. Are you familiar with that sensation, dear readers? You’re lying in bed late at night, having just blown out the candle and settled down to sleep, when you suddenly feel that there’s something there in the dark! That, however improbable it may seem, you aren’t alone in the room! The door hasn’t opened, the window is firmly shut, you can see nothing and hear nothing, but you can sense it, can’t you, that menacing presence? You light the candle again and there’s no one there - naturally not. Out goes the candle, the uneasy feeling subsides, you chide yourself for your childish fears - and there it is again, the sinister certainty that there’s something lurking in the dark. Now you can even hear it breathing. You hear it coming nearer, slinking round the bed . . . And then you feel an icy breath on your neck. With a shrill cry you sit bolt upright, panic-stricken, and light the candle yet again - and yet again there’s no one there.
What lingers with you is the dismaying suspicion that darkness conjures up things that shouldn’t really exist. That extinguishing the light creates a magical realm in which invisible beings can run riot - beings that need darkness the way we need air to breathe. And you spend the rest of the night fitfully dozing by candlelight, don’t you?
Hardened though I was, such were the sensations and premonitions that continually stole over me down there. The expanse of darkness surrounding me was too immense for there to be nothing, absolutely nothing, lurking in it. I saw long shadows loitering among the stalagmites, tall dark figures that dissolved into thin air as I drew nearer. I saw rocks that swayed like poplars in the wind. I heard the rustle of paper and heavy breathing, echoing footsteps, unintelligible murmurs, giggles. Were those my own footsteps? Was I talking to myself, was I giggling to myself in a half-demented fashion without realising it? Or was something really stalking me? If so, was it the Shadow King? Why was he taking the trouble to spy on me, why didn’t he simply show himself and make short work of me? A creature that struck terror into Harpyrs and Bookhunters need hardly be frightened of a would-be author from Lindworm Castle.
I stopped to rest beside one of the pools. I resisted the temptation to drink some of its luminous water, but I was glad at least to be able to see my own paws. I noticed to my surprise that they were clutching the manuscript. I must have taken it out instinctively and was clasping it to my chest with both paws as if it could protect me. At first I was shocked by my childish behaviour, but then I breathed a sigh of relief. Of course, all those noises - the rustle of paper, the breathing, the footsteps, the giggling - had been made by me. I alone had produced them and scared myself stiff. There was no one here but me.
It became steadily lighter as I went on. The rocks, too, were now coated with luminous blue algae. I felt I was walking at night under a full moon, in that strange blend of frigid light and darkness. And then I saw a scrap of paper floating on the surface of a small blue puddle. I stooped and picked it up, stared at it for a long time. Feeling dizzy, I leant against a rock to preserve my balance.
It resembled one of the pieces of paper I had found in the vicinity of Hunk Hoggno’s grisly abode, the trail that had guided me to the Booklings. This piece, too, had a bloodstained edge and bore the same indecipherable characters. Peering into the gloom, I caught sight of another scrap of paper lying just beside another puddle. I tottered over and picked that one up too. Further on I saw a puddle with yet another snippet of paper floating on it. The Shadow King had laid another trail.
But how could he have followed me throughout that breakneck ride on the Bookway? Not even a phantom could have done that. I wiped the cold sweat from my brow, pocketed the manuscript and gathered my cloak around me. Then I drew a deep breath and continued to follow the bloodstained trail.
The Symbols
Sulphur and phosphorus fumes drifted about me as I made my way through the next few caves, obediently following the snippets of paper I never failed to find lying on the ground every few yards. The unpleasant smells came from volcanic springs. Pools of magma and boiling water were bubbling on all sides, but more violently than the contents of the modest crater the Booklings called their Devil’s Kitchen. These pools seethed and hissed, and I had to take care where I trod because even the water in an innocuous-looking puddle could be unbearably hot.
The temperature and humidity had risen considerably, and the heat was comparable to that prevailing in the vicinity of a smelting furnace. It had grown appreciably lighter thanks to the golden-yellow glow of the molten lava, which lit the lofty caverns from floor to vaulted roof. I inferred from the volcanic conditions that I had penetrated even deeper into the catacombs. I couldn’t be absolutely sure of this, however, because my knowledge of geology was too limited.
The further I progressed through these caves the less natural they seemed. The walls and floors looked as if they had been artificially buffed and polished, and I soon began to notice ornamental designs and symbols that could only have been handmade. Someone equipped with tools had carved, engraved or milled patterns into the rock, but none of them reminded me of any well-known civilisation or art form. Nowhere could I discern a familiar shape.
These were abstract symbols, and even they looked alien because they did not embody conventional geometrical shapes and dispensed entirely with squares, circles, triangles and the like.
I was now making my way through caves of which every square inch was occupied by these symbols. Covering the floor, walls, roofs, stalagmites and boulders, many of them had been carefully painted in shades of red, yellow and blue. Seen from a distance they made a strangely, beautifully ornamental impression. If I stared at these coloured patterns for any length of time they seemed to move, to revolve and dance around. They rose and fell like the ribcage of some huge, sleeping beast, together with the walls on which they were inscribed.
Could the walls be my own cerebral cortex? Was my demented psyche roaming among them and were the symbols my own insane ideas, which I myself was past deciphering?
I couldn’t help rubbing my eyes again and again. This, I thought, was what it must be like to discover the remains of an alien civilisation on some distant planet. I pictured the former inhabitants of these caverns as a race of intelligent giant ants able to climb all over the walls and roofs and carve or etch their symbols into the rock with endogenous tools and acids. There seemed no other explanation for how they had managed to reach so many inaccessible places.
The caves became steadily wider and higher, and I felt smaller and more insignificant at every step. Nature alone had never had that effect on me - I had never been overly impressed by lofty mountains or broad expanses of desert. It was artistry on such a vast scale that induced this feeling of humility in me. Was this the manifestation of a very early literature? Of writing that was still ignorant of paper or printing? Were these not ornaments at all but a form of script? If so, I might be making my way through a very primitive type of book, a colossal subterranean tome in which each cave represented a chapter.
