The Chronicles of Jonathon Postlethwaite: The Seed of Corruption (9 page)

                            Two arms enveloped his shoulders, yet no lust arose in him now, only the warmth of love which had arisen in their mutual struggle. He looked into the tear stained face of the girl he had treated for years as a sister, she smiled and held him closely.

“I could not hold it back Jonathon" she sniffed. “I wanted what the city demanded, but it was truly not me."

Jonathon shifted to put an arm around her waist.

“It could not have us like that, we would not truly have had one another.....It was devouring us. I never conceived of Its real power before tonight. It lives and preys on the humanity we build around us to cage the beast we have in us all. It is as I have feared. It is running out of humanity here in Dubh to consume and Flax will make way to new pastures for It to harvest, I must stop it. "

Milly kissed him gently on his sweat drenched forehead.

“I saw and felt it too. I was in Dale's dream, it tries to destroy him through his dream. It tries to destroy us all. We must destroy it Jonathon." she implored

                            Jonathon nodded at her simple statement and realised that Milly no longer spoke in whispers, her childish dialect was gone. The child had left her too. Nothing physical had occurred, but she was now a woman, she had fallen in love with Jonathon in the wake of their mutual crisis and that love, that real and pure emotion, untainted by asexual lust, had confirmed her sexual humanity.

                            Together they sat high on the roof ridge and watched as the Tallmen's mimicking of the dawn cast its wan light over the city. It was strangely beautiful. They felt strong, they had fought together and won, reinforced by a powerful, untainted love.

                            The malignant soul of the city had been defeated, it had retreated. Now it watched and waited. These two could not be tolerated, their seed could spread. It had failed once, but there were other channels to use, other means to defile them and destroy them.

Chapter Six

                            In the dark alleyway where Silus Flax had encountered Jonathon Postlethwaite for the first time, seven top-hatted men came across the prostrate form of their leader.

                            The High Hat search party had ventured into the Lower city following information on Flax's whereabouts from Bolster, now struggling to rectify a failed engine in hall nine, and the city gate guard and the two Tans who had challenged him on his exit from the city.

                            The High Hats had news for Flax which necessitated the normally taboo disturbance of when he was at play. They had a good idea of where and why he was here, but his prolonged absence from the Halls of Machines disturbed them a little, as was  his  shocking state when they found him.

                            After a few moments of attention, Flax began to regain consciousness.  His insensible  eyes  opened   to  regard the black coated, High Hatted men, who stooped anxiously over him, with a confusion brought on by the concussion he had received. He sat stupefied for a while, mumbling incoherently, until eventually he regained his senses. Now he could recall the events immediately prior to his enforced sleep.

                            The disfigured body of the street woman had been removed by his minions so as not to attract the attention of the rats, at least what the their vanguard number had left of it and, to avoid the questions from any Tans who might come this way during the morning shift round up. Her remains had now joined the many other hapless victims of the  nightly  ritual  of  murder  in  Dubh,  who  floated anonymously in the stagnant mortuary of the black river. Flax felt his blood encrusted head gingerly. “Where’s the boy?" he demanded.

                            The  surrounding  High  Hats  shook  their  heads and shrugged their shoulders. Flax remembered the moments before he was struck senseless.  The  wild and unsatisfying woman, the smell  of  warm  blood, the boy's sweet aroma of innocence and purity, the odours of his own growing excitement brought about by his contemplation of his forthcoming pleasures, then.... Flax growled - then the scent of two others above him.

                            He leapt to his feet, punching the nearest High Hat to vent his anger. Deprived! Flax took in a deep breath as the High Hats around him cowered away, expecting another outburst of violence from their master.

Instead he laughed softly. Another time, another place he thought. He would never give up a prize such as the boy. He was something special. He would find him again and those who had deprived him.  He  knew their scents, he knew where they had gone. He peered upwards toward the rooftops high above.

A High Hat, with one eye and a scarred cheekbone,

cleared his throat and spoke. “Your Eminence, we have news." Flax turned to the man.

“News?  What  now!"  howled  their  leader.  The  one eyed  man  bowed his head, avoiding the angry glare of a fuming Silus Flax.

“Your Eminence, we have found another promising portal, it is unusual, it has a multi-ported entrance and channels which lead to more than one exit. But one of               them leads to a place such as you have asked us to look for."              A broad grin slashed across Flax' face,  revealing his large yellow teeth. He chuckled quietly   to himself,  then  his  laughter  grew  into  deep resonating  guffaws stretched with an ironic tone.

" Haaaa!" he spat. “Every cloud has a sliver lining." he said as he hugged the High Hat whose nose he had broken. The assembled High Hats looked on confused at Flax's sudden mood change, clouds and silver linings meaning nothing to them.

Flax strode quickly towards the Upper City, his minions falling in obediently in line behind him. Not even the pouring pre-dawn rain could quench his growing excitement and happiness. It had to be the one, it had to

be!  Suddenly  he  stopped  and  turned  to  his faithful  servants, the smile dissolving from his face. The High Hat line blundering into one another as he stopped.

“Wouldn’t it be a good idea if one of you showed me the way to it you greasy, pea-brained morons! “ he shouted with amusement and a tinge of humour.

Chapter Seven

                            The unusual dimension door, reported to Flax by his High Hats, turned out to be as exciting as he sensed. It was located deep within  the  city,  far  below  the surface streets of Dubh, in a long forgotten, rat infested street which had been walled off long ago. Flax's surveyors had found it by speculating that the cordoned off area, marked on the Tan maps they possessed, hid something worth their investigation. Such a blank, uninhabited area, usually found at the periphery of the city, had always proved in the past to be evidence of the position of a dimension door. Even though this anomaly was situated well within the boundaries of the city, his men had persevered and been well rewarded.

                            The  High  Hats  had  heard  tales  of  the  'doors opening dating back several year ago. A local inhabitant had told them of its eerie light which occurred, shining through cracks in the wall which hid it, at regular intervals. He had thought it a sign from some divine spirit to go forth and procreate and told them that he would be soon venturing into the city to find a new slave to bear his seventh child since his nearing again. His knew when to the day and hour. He had watched and recorded and waited and never been wrong. Now  the  High  hats  felt  confident  that  they had  found a stable and predictable portal and Flax had been informed so that he might inspect this one for himself.

                            When he did inspect it he found that the dimension door was indeed unusual, not only because of its location, but because there were in fact two openings. The larger of the two was approximately the height of three men high and wide and its companion a third of its size.

                            By the time Flax arrived the exit points and rate of travel through the tunnels of fluctuating light had been established and reports had been compiled for his examination.

                            Silus Flax's elation turned to frustration when he arrived at the scene, for the twin doors collapsed shut before his very eyes before he had the opportunity to explore them. His frustration deepened when he was informed, by the local resident, that they would not open fully again for several years and that, although the door had been open for three days, his minions had been reluctant to inform him until they  had  been  sure  of this 'doors' importance.

The High Hat leader knew that this was the one, he sensed it and the scouts reports of what lay beyond the larger of the portals was highly promising. The civilisation was there and the evidence of the technology he needed too, all he had to do was wait and. Just wait. Soon Flax instructed his organisation to move its headquarters to the location of this gateway to another time and place,  his  own  residence  becoming  a  shrine to the ,door' and the prized portal to the fulfilment of his dark ambitions.

                            After much reorganisation and rebuilding of his High Hats headquarters around the door he placed a great throne like seat, in which he sat for hours daily, facing a blank wall where the door would eventually open again. Day after day he sat and stared, waiting for the moment when its re-opening was predicted. For more than six years nothing happened, six long years since his disappointing encounter with Jonathon on the streets of the Lower City.

                            But Flax had not forgotten Jonathon. There destinies were entwined he knew, his dreams  still featured the young boy as the  'guardian  of  the  gate' and now, as the time approached when Flax  would enter it, the  nightly  images intensified and he resolved to find the him again and remove the threat Jonathon posed to his ambitions.

                            One day Flax had returned to his dwelling from a lone expedition to  the  Lower  City  and  was  greeted by a wall which shivered and trembled in and out of existence. As he watched the 'door' stabilised and, for a teasing moment, he could see directly into the world beyond the larger of the openings. The exit point opened into a small concreted yard strewn with beer barrels and empty bottles, a scene of secluded dereliction and neglect.

                            Opposite the exit there was a brick wall blocking any direct view of the world beyond or indeed the portal from the other side. On this occasion it was night and the world beyond the wall lit by a strange orange glow. Voices occasionally called out into an eerie emptiness and the sound of distant, moving engines occasionally punctuated the darkness.

                            A gust of cold, clean air blew  from the  strange world Flax observed, sending a shiver up the watcher's spine. Once again this was only a tantalising glimpse as the portal to his ambitions became quivered briefly and collapsed.

                            Flax ignored the smaller aperture, his explorers had informed him that it led back into the underworld of the city and was dangerously narrow with other unexplored and unstable branches. He would concentrate his attention on the larger of the two.

                            At the time of this opening however, Flax knew that this brief glimpse was to be the first of many, the records secured by bribing and torturing of the local witness of the door indicated such openings prior to the usual three day occurrence. The next time, when the gate stabilised again, he would be ready to move. The meticulous records of his High Hats proved to be correct.

              As  the  months,  then  years,  passed  by  and  the appointed time for the door to stabilise approached, the larger of the aperture began to open as a crescent at thirty day intervals, as the smaller one did too, each time growing wider until Flax could accurately predict the width of the breach in time and space and when it would become fully open and traversable.

                            He began to plan, collect together provisions and equipment for his expedition, a horde of gold, drugs and jewels. He hoped that gold and jewels would have the same value in the world that he had glimpsed as it held in Dubh. There  were  humans  in  that  new   world,   he had smelt and heard them, if he had not actually seen them and weren't all human beings the same?

                            Drugs would be useful too, if not already in use there Flax could corrupt the mind of any human here, create a reliance on such things as many of his High Hats had, a desire and that would bring him useful allies and dependants.

Flax became excited, soon he thought, soon! But then, just as he felt as high as he had ever done in his life before, the spectre of the 'guardian of the  gate' arose in his dreams again and again, with a new and frightening intensity.