The Grimmery

Chapter Five - O.I.: Organic Intelligence

2010-10-17T20:15:00.015+11:00

I actually feel guilty for leaving this next chapter for so long. Rightly, I suppose. I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but it doesn't matter because its here now. Say sorry.

If you'd like to hear an excuse for why this is, I've been working on a tangentially-related-to-this-story short story for possible submission to an internet fiction magazine. Watch this space, I'll be sure to update if it comes through.

On an unrelated note, I've recently found that I've run out of books to read, and am currently in the market for a new book or serial, web-based or otherwise, to get stuck into. If you have any suggestions, I would love to hear them!

Anywho, here is the gripping resolution to last chapter's cliffhanger in Chapter Five. Enjoy!

*EDIT*: And in my rush to get this up, I completely forgot to put in stuff like italics, boldness, and links to previous chapters while switching it over from my Word document to here! Now you'll know when people are thinking! Sorry!

Chapter Five - O.I.: Organic Intelligence

The laughter never stopped. It changed – it shed its layers – but it never stopped, instead shifting, as if a switch had been turned off, from the booming, maniacal cackling of an all-powerful tyrant to the genuinely-amused tittering of an elderly man. It wasn’t malicious or cutting; it was simply the mirthful chuckles of somebody’s grandfather, perhaps entertained by the antics of his grandchildren. Anton wasn’t sure which voice was worse; the first was fearsome, but the second was... patronising.

Then it occurred to him. Something wasn’t right. I can still hear the laughter, he thought to himself. I’m still thinking. I’m still feeling. I’m still alive.

That didn’t make sense. The sky was falling not a few seconds ago. Where was the crash? Where was the pain? Being crushed by a chandelier was sure to bring some kind of pain, wasn’t it?

He opened his eyes, but the room was still dark. He was laying on his back now, the marble beneath him cool through his shirt. His arms were outstretched beside him, his legs flat on the floor, and his hand still clutched his pocket watch. He could feel his heart thumping in his chest, faster than the ticking of the watch. He could feel the cold sweat on his body as if he had just woken from a nightmare. Perhaps he had.

“Anton?” It was Desmond. “Anton, are you okay?”

And so his hopes that this was all just some horrible dream were dashed. “Apparently,” he replied; his voice sounded surprisingly flat and calm to his own ears. “I mean, as okay as I could possibly be, all things considered. How about you guys?”

“All accounted for,” Cassandra’s voice came. “No-one hurt. Just a little fright, is all.”

Anton would have laughed at that, but he didn’t much feel like joining in with the old man’s giggles. He had yet to cease.

“Maybe you should... get out from under there,” Pandora suggested. “In case it...”

He didn’t know what she meant for a second, but his eyes had adjusted to the dark, and he could see now why he hadn’t been crushed: the chandelier had never reached the floor, but it had come within an inch of doing so. There was so little space between it, him and the floor that, if he turned his head a little to the side, a line of crystal beads would brush his nose.

“I... I would,” Anton told them slowly, his eyes never leaving the extinguished lanterns and twisted gold above him, “but I think you might understand that I don’t completely trust the integrity of my legs right at this moment. Perhaps a little assistance...?”

He felt hands grip his arms, and let himself be pulled away from the brink, surrounded by the other three as they crouched or sat around him. “Thank you,” he muttered, still in that unbelievably cool voice. He felt like he should be screaming or crying, or raging or... something.

“Your faces! You should’ve... you should’ve seen your faces!” The old man’s voice apparently could manage a few words between fits of laughter.

“Where is it coming from?” Pandora wondered aloud.

A light flickered on behind them, as if in answer to her question, and all four turned their heads to see what it was. A rectangle of white had switched on to the right of the doors they had entered through, around shoulder height.

“A screen,” Desmond said with certainty.

“It never gets old,” the voice wheezed. “No matter how many times I bring the roof down on people, it never gets old! Never! Ha-haa!”

Desmond rose first, and pulled up Pandora with him. It took all three of them to get Anton on his feet, and Cassandra had to serve as a crutch to help him to the screen; his legs still felt like water. Or perhaps something even less viscous than water, if that was possible. He couldn’t remember much of his high school science classes, but he was sure-

What is wrong with you? Common sense, despite being pushed away earlier, was not completely absent from his mind. Thinking about the viscosity of your legs at a time like this! Snap out of it, man!

“Actually, I probably can show you your faces,” the voice said ponderously as they gathered around the stark white glow of the screen. “In glorious technicolour, too.” The screen flashed from blankness to moving images. From a high angle, the video showed them enter the room, showed them recoil in fear as the lights changed, and thoughtfully shifted to night vision mode to show Anton collapse on his back and the chandelier stop suddenly on its golden chain a few seconds before his eminent doom. Without sound, it did seem slightly ridiculous. None of them – except the voice, of course – were in the mood for laughing, however.

“Again?” it asked them cheerfully.

“No,” Anton said firmly.

The screen changed again, this time to a symbol, the heptagon in silver, slowly revolving and turning on a black field.

“Oh, lighten up,” the old man’s voice said. When it spoke, a wavering line like that of an oscilloscope appeared across the screen in glowing green. “It was a joke.”

“Oh, it was a joke, was it?” Anton enquired mockingly. The raging was kicking in now. “Well, excuse me while I stop having a heart attack!”

There was a sound like a scoff. “Some people have no sense of humour,” the voice claimed.

“I’ll sense of humour you,” Anton cried, and tried to lunge at the screen, but Cassandra managed to hold him back.

“What’re you gonna do, smash my screen?” The green line peaked and troughed in a decidedly smug manner. “Computer does not equal monitor, Bucko.”

Before Anton could throw a fist and do exactly that, Cassandra put a finger to his lips. “Shh,” she said simply.

Before the voice could make fun of this, a grown man being restrained by a little girl, she placed another finger on the green waves. “Shh.”

The line went flat.

“Now, let’s all just take a deep breath and calm down. We have more important things to talk about.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” Anton mumbled behind her finger.

“I suppose I could... answer some of your questions,” the voice complied. Not sounding particularly happy about it, though.

“Perhaps we should start with introductions,” Pandora suggested. “Who... are you, exactly?”

“Why, I told you before,” the voice said. “I AM GRIMMERL, THE GREAT AND TERRIBLE!” The lanterns spurted out more green, blue and violet flames, and the four had to quickly press themselves up against the wall to avoid the tongues licking at their ankles.

“Oh, sorry,” it added. “Sometimes my theatricality runs away with me. And I forget how fire, uh... burns you.”

“Grimmerl,” Cassandra said ponderingly. “That’s an odd name.”

“Then where are you?” Pandora went on, crossing her arms. “Why don’t you come out here and talk to us in person?”

“I would,” the voice told them. “If I had any arms. Or legs. Or a head, or a body.”

The four traded similarly worried looks at this.

“... What?” Anton wondered how many times more he would ask that exact question before the night was out.

“I don’t have a person to talk to you in, simply put,” the voice explained. “No corporeal form. I’m all around you, though. In the walls, in the roof, under the floor. Behind this screen. Where I’m not wireless, of course.”

“You... you are the network?” Desmond asked, perplexed. But not for the obvious reasons, it seemed: “Who names their network ‘Grimmerl’?”

“Actually, it’s GrimmERL,” GrimmERL corrected, pronouncing the ‘ee-are-ell’ to make his point. “That stands for ‘Electronic Research Locator’.”

“‘Electronic Research Locator’?” Anton repeated, and laughed. “So let me get this straight.... You’re a glorified search engine?”

GrimmERL was silent for a few seconds. Then the chandelier let off another burst of flame, and he replied, “Clearly not.”

“Stop doing that!” Anton cried, clawing at the wall now, standing again on his own two legs. He had had quite enough fire within the last day to last him a life time. “Please.”

“Well, because you asked so nicely.” The chandelier rattled, and slowly began to rise again, rocking and turning gently as it did, the golden chain steadily sliding back into the roof. The lanterns on it, and those lining the room and archways, also slowly lit up again.

“Finding information is but a single function I perform,” GrimmERL explained. “I have innumerable responsibilities and applications. I help maintain the illusion that keeps this place hidden. I monitor security, which is how I knew you were here. I can help navigate the facilities. I perform calculations. I record and store information in my vast, vast, incredibly vast data banks. I can access and control any piece of hardware or software in this place, not to mention information outside the facilities and on the internet. I can recite ‘pi’ to five trillion and two decimal places. I instruct, I ponder, and I adapt. I slice bread. I can turn the lights on and off. In short, I am very, very useful and very, very clever.”

“Modest, too,” Anton muttered under his breath.

“I can also hear and see everything that is said and done in this place,” the screen added pointedly.

“You’re a... oh, what do they call them... an artificial intelligence, then?” Pandora tried.

“No.” This from both GrimmERL and Desmond.

“It’s strange,” Desmond said. “It-”

“He,” GrimmERL interjected. “You may address me as ‘his Excellency’, ‘his Greatness’, ‘his Wise-ness’, ‘He with the Power to Rival that of a Thousand Suns’, or just ‘he’, if you must.”

“He,” Desmond went on, “shouldn’t be operating at all.” He placed a hand on the screen, and shut his eyes. “There are... gaps. Wires that lead nowhere. Signals originating from emptiness. Parts that I just... can’t get my head around. Not like anything I’ve encountered before. Not that I’ve encountered much in twenty-four hours, but I know what doesn’t work. I can’t interface properly. I can’t even hear what he’s thinking.” He frowned as he opened his eyes again. “Plus, he certainly isn’t talking or acting like a computer should. I don’t much like that.”

“There are other reasons why that term isn’t strictly accurate,” GrimmERL added. “But that’s not important right now. What is important is who you people are, and why you are here. It’s clear from Skinny’s somewhat-apt description of my composition that you aren’t exactly... regular folk. Would I be correct in assuming that?”

“We were regular folk,” Anton pointed out. “Until today.”

“It... it doesn’t really work like that,” GrimmERL said. “You’re either regular folk, or you’re not. You can’t become irregular folk. Unless...” He trailed off, muttering inaudibly, seeming to debate with himself.

“The thing is,” Pandora explained over him, “we, uh, we’ve all been having some memory troubles of late.” The old man’s voice went on mumbling. “Um... Mister GrimmERL?”

“Yes.” He was back. “Memory, you say? Hm. I wonder...”

The symbol on the screen began to revolve out of view, and a white outline of a hand drew itself in its place.

“It is true that I have incredibly vast data banks,” GrimmERL explained, “but there have been... complications... It’s difficult to explain. I just need you to put your hand here, so I can double check something.”

“How do we know you’re not going to electrocute us for giggles?” Anton enquired wryly, eyes narrowing towards the handprint before them.

A sigh. “You’re not going to let that drop, are you?”

“I’m sorry that I don’t take attempts on my life so lightly. There must be something wrong with me.”

“If it makes you feel any better, I do that to everyone that comes in unannounced.”

“But we weren’t unannounced,” Cassandra pointed out. “I knocked.”

“... You did?”

All four of them nodded.

“Oh. Well then, I officially and most sincerely apologise for frightening you and giving you the impression that you were about to die. Happy?”

“No,” Anton said, “but I’ll bring it up a little less now.”

“Just put your hand here,” GrimmERL said wearily.

Anton moved closer to the screen and raised his hand.

“Left hand,” GrimmERL corrected. “I only ever scan left hands.”

“But-”

The hand outline promptly flipped, so that the thumb was on the right, and the pinkie the left.

Anton just rolled his eyes and placed his left hand in the outline. He could see where an argument like that would lead without having to start it.

“Now this might feel a little... odd,” the voice warned. “The important thing is to not struggle.”

“Struggle?” That was all he managed to get out before the white outline began to flash, and his hand began to sink into the screen. His eyes widened as he watched his fingers disappear, swallowed up by the black behind the screen. The feeling left his digits; it was as if his hand wasn’t even there anymore.

“Don’t try and wiggle,” GrimmERL said with a small chuckle. “It tickles.”

Ding. The sound of an oven timer finished cooking. It did nothing to negate Anton’s worry; he half expected his hand to come out stripped to the bone, if at all.

In the top corner of the screen, two words flashed in green: MATCH CONFIRMED.

“Ho-ho, we have a response,” GrimmERL said, clearly proud of himself.

“Match? Match to what?” Anton asked, slowly pulling his hand out. The feeling returned as he did, and it came out cleanly enough – with all its original skin, flesh, hair and nails, thankfully – except for a small electric zap as his middle finger, the last part of his hand, left the screen, much to GrimmERL’s amusement. “Ow! You said-”

“You ask too many questions,” he interrupted. “Which irritates me. Plus, I wanted to see if it would make me giggle. And now we know.”

“Asking too many questions is in my job description,” Anton muttered, rubbing his finger vigorously on his sleeve. “Now what match?”

“You have a file,” GrimmERL told them simply. The handprint disappeared, and a short loading bar slowly and smoothly filled up with green. Then a single image popped up, which flew to the top left corner, and lines of text began to type themselves down the screen. “Name: Anton Macquarie. That’s you, right?”

Anton didn’t respond. Instead, he moved closer to the screen, eyes focusing on the picture. It was a boy, not far into his teenage years, short dark hair and green eyes, dressed up like an adult in a white business shirt, black vest and violet tie. He was smiling, but there was something off about it. His brow was creased; was it worry? Or perhaps fear?

Regardless, he recognised the face instantly: It was him. A young him.

“Where did you get this?” Anton asked quietly. His nose was nearly pressed against the screen now.

“Name: Anton Macquarie,” GrimmERL read aloud, ignoring his question. “Age: 21, Classification: Warlock, Rank: Acolyte, Department: Translation, Retrieval Unit Number: Seven, Status: Alive.”

“Where did you get this?” Anton repeated. If he tried to even begin to think about which of the other million questions that were buzzing around his brain, he feared head might explode. Or his body would shut down. Either one would be counterproductive.

“It’s routine for all new members to have their pictures taken for their file on their first day,” GrimmERL replied. “I had a hunch, to be honest. You say you’ve had memory troubles, and you think you’ve only been seeing things from this morning. Well, the two are connected. At least, I’m fairly sure they’re connected.”

“You look good in a tie,” Cassandra commented whimsically. “Purple becomes you.”

“You see, like I said, you can’t just wake up one day and start experiencing the unseen world. You’re either regular folk, or you’re irregular folk. And I suspect you’ve always been irregular folk. You just can’t remember it.”

“Stop saying ‘irregular folk’,” Desmond said. “It makes us sound abnormal and... anomalous.”

“Sensitive, then,” GrimmERL amended. “I suppose that’s the politically correct term. Doesn’t change the fact that you are anomalous, and you are abnormal. Of course, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.”

“No,” Anton said bluntly. “I don’t believe you. That photo was taken years ago. I’m only missing memories from the last month.”

“No no, you think you’re only missing them from the last month. The mind is a fickle thing. If there are gaps, it’s going to try and fill them, even if what it fills them with isn’t exactly true, or real.”

Even now you’re mind’s making things up to fill the holes. If you want to remember, you better do something soon. Mr Hicks had known.

“And what is a warlock?” Anton went on, not missing a beat.

“A boy witch, simply put,” GrimmERL said. “To elaborate: a practitioner of the magical arts, specifically through the use of spells, both written and spoken, charms, and potions.”

“That’s ridiculous!”

“Any more ridiculous than anything else you’ve seen today?”

“Yes, actually!” He laughed a harsh, delirious laugh. “Why on earth should we trust you? You’re clearly mad!”

“Quite mad,” GrimmERL agreed. “But I’m the only one you’ve got left to trust.”

“I’m sure we can find someone who is sufficiently less insane and less impossible to answer our questions, thank you very much.”

“Really, boy, what will make you believe?” GrimmERL asked. “If you’re not going to believe your own eyes, if you’re not going to believe the accounts of three others who’ve gone through exactly what you have, if you’re not going to believe hard evidence smacking you in the face, if you’re not going to believe me... What are you going to believe?”

“That’s not fair,” he argued.

“You told me you had accepted what you saw as real,” Cassandra said quietly.

“I do!” Anton said desperately. “It’s hard to ignore. But why can’t I remember seeing dead people? Why can’t I remember being a... a warlock? Why can’t I remember ever coming to this place? Why can’t I remember anything?!”

“Someone doesn’t want you to remember,” GrimmERL said plainly.

“Who? Why?”

GrimmERL was silent; the green line went flat.

Anton looked at the pocket watch in his hand, and frowned. It had stopped again, at five minutes to midnight, but that wasn’t why he frowned. He had pondered the possibility that he might have lost more than he realised. The watch was not just a watch. And, it seemed, he was not just a man looking for answers.

“That’s a nice piece of kit you’ve got there,” GrimmERL commented blithely, obviously trying to put their thoughts to other matters. “Communicator, personal computer, scanner, camera, internet browser, calculator, compass, music player, timepiece...”

Anton had to stop himself from saying it was just a pocket watch, and that’s all it ever was.

His profile faded from the screen, and the hand print reappeared. “Okay, next hand.”

Pandora moved forward, and again carefully rolled back the sleeve reveal her sunburned hand. “Be careful,” she told the screen. “It still hurts.”

“Why, I’m always careful, ma’am,” GrimmERL said courteously.

Ding.

The picture appeared, and unlike Anton’s, Pandora’s image was almost unrecognisable. Her hair was dyed black and purple, short in a pixie cut with a long fringe that almost obscured her darkly-outlined eyes. Her clothes were monochrome and her skin was pale; the only glimpse of a warm colour on her was the thin gold chain around her neck. To say she didn’t look particularly happy was an understatement.

“Must have been taken during my goth phase,” she commented. She didn’t add any sort of explanation.

Anton and Desmond glanced at each other, both of them with the same expression of disbelief; Pandora was perhaps the most un-goth person they had ever met, right down to her bright orange sense of fashion.

“Name: Pandora McArber, Age: 20, Classification: Vampire, Rank: Acolyte, Department: Research and Development, Retrieval Unit Number: Seven, Status: Alive. Well, no big surprise there, really. Tell me, do you have an aversion to garlic? Ever gotten sick after being around religious objects? Have trouble crossing running water?”

“Vampire?” Pandora gasped, her free hand flying to the empty vial around her neck. “You mean... you mean I’m gonna start biting people and... and drinking their blood?!” She glanced around at her companions, panicked, and covered her mouth, as if she feared her teeth would start biting them of their own accord.

“There are ways of getting around that particular drawback,” GrimmERL said. “Honestly, if you don’t feel hungry right now, there’s probably no reason to worry about it. And vampirism isn’t all bad. You can remove your hand now.”

Pandora’s worry was quickly replaced with pleased amazement; her left hand was back to normal now, all traces of its volatile red burns gone. “How did you do that?” she asked, mouth gaping open as she turned it over and over again.

“It’s probably better if you don’t think too hard about that,” GrimmERL concluded. “Just don’t be worried. Being a vampire in this day and age is like... having a nut allergy, or something. Completely manageable, as long as you carry an umbrella everywhere and don’t trip around pointy wooden things. Next hand.”

She slowly backed away, still inspecting her hand, and Desmond stepped forward.

Ding.

If Desmond looked like a kid now, he looked like an infant in his picture; Pandora went so far as to “Aww!” at it, to his embarrassment. His clothes didn’t help much: he wore a cap that was too big for him, sitting wonkily on his head, and a shabby jumper with sleeves going past his hands. He had a small smile on his lips.

“Name: Desmond Jones, Age: 20, Classification: Telepath, Sub-Classification: Technopath, Rank: Acolyte, Department: Research and Development, Retrieval Unit Number: Seven, Status: Alive.”

“Awesome! I was right,” Desmond said cheerfully, pulling his hand back. “But, uh, what does ‘Rank’ mean, exactly?”

“A figurine in that hallway back there called me ‘acolyte’ too,” Anton said, sounding distant, lost in his own thoughts.

“Oh, that. Essentially, your rank determines how many years you’ve been down here and how high you are in the pecking order. ‘Acolyte’ is only a step above ‘novice’, which is the entrance level. You’re a novice for five years, and then you’re promoted to acolyte, and judging from your profiles, I’d day you’ve been acolytes for around... two years, give or take a few months. I could go on all night about hierarchy, but that’s not particularly interesting, is it?”

“And what about ‘Retrieval Unit’?” Desmond went on.

“They’re just small groupings of members who work together towards a common goal,” GrimmERL defined rapidly, sounding slightly bored with this line of questioning. “Usually six or seven people each.”

There will be six, all together. Now there are four.

“Wow, that was... fantastically vague,” Desmond laughed. “But seriously, ‘Retrieval Unit’ implies, you know, retrieving things. What?”

“It depends. Whatever needs retrieving, really. Rogue sensitives. Mischievous spirits. Bits of magical artefacts that have fallen into the wrong hands. And then there are... the more serious matters.”

“And so far we’ve all been listed as the same Unit,” Pandora pointed out. “Does that mean we all... knew each other?”

“It’s difficult not to know your own Retrieval Unit,” GrimmERL explained. “You’re together from novicehood, and if you don’t get along, you’ll probably end up dead.”

Anton was pulled from the questions filling his brain to look at the faces of his new friends. Or maybe not-so-new, he thought to himself. He hadn’t recognised any of them, and neither had they; they were strangers, and they’d introduced themselves to each other as such. And yet they had apparently been together, been friends, for seven years now, give or take a few months. He wanted to remember them; it made him sad that he couldn’t.

“Come on, little lady. Last one. Hand here.”

Cassandra moved forward, putting her tiny hand in the centre of the print.

Ding.

Her image didn’t look all that different from how she looked now; the same light blonde hair, the same yellow dress, the same golden ribbons. The same big grey eyes. But she must have been younger in the photo, Anton convinced himself. She must be.

“Name: Cassandra... and there’s no listed last name. Hm. No age, either. Classification: Oracle, Level: ... That’s odd. I’ll just assume Acolyte. Department: Translation, Retrieval Unit Number: Seven, Status: Alive.”

“Why are there parts missing?” Anton asked.

“That’s one of the complications I was talking about earlier,” GrimmERL said uneasily. “I, um... I was somehow... shut down and tampered with the other night. Information was deleted, files were corrupted, and... more personal memories were taken away from me. Not dissimilar to what’s happened to you, I suppose. I don’t like talking about it. I haven’t had to reboot in... in a long time.”

“So that means you can’t be sure of everything you’ve told us?” Desmond questioned.

“No, I can tell when and where things have gone wrong. Everything I’ve told you and shown you has been verifiably true. I don’t know why anyone would want to fiddle around with this file, though.”

“The people,” Cassandra said suddenly.

“Hm?”

“The people. The other people that come here. There are lots of them. Where are they?”

“Oh. I’m not sure. The place was completely deserted when I rebooted. But I can...”

Cassandra removed her hand from the screen, and her file faded. More script appeared in the corner: Opening Mortality Database... Searching... Searching...

Ding.

“Dead.”

No-one spoke for a minute. They glanced at each other and at the screen, wondering if they had heard correctly. Wondering if they had heard anything at all.

“What?” Anton asked.

The screen began writing up a list in red. A list of names.

“Dead. The people that come here are dead.”

The list began slowly scrolling down, adding more and more names in red. Hundreds. Perhaps thousands.

“...Dead?” Cassandra asked quietly, voice quivering. “H-how?”

“Capricora Benitas, Status: Dead. Anthony Trumble, Status: Dead. Aurelia Deautant, Status: Dead. Elias Finnton, Status: Dead. Olivia Potts, Lifetree: Unresponsive, Status: Dead.” GrimmERL read it as if it were simply a list of grocery items; without emotion, without importance, and without interest. “Mildred Zinema, Status: Dead. Balthazar Smith, Status: Dead. Alexander Va-”

“Stop!” Pandora cried. Her eyes shined with tears, barely held back. “Just stop!”

GrimmERL stopped, but the list scrolled on, only brief flashes of green where their own names were listed. There didn’t seem to be any order or reason to them; it was just the jumbled record of the deceased. And who was going to argue? They were dead, after all.

“We knew these people,” Pandora mumbled. “We knew them, and we can’t even remember who they are. And now they’re...” Her knuckles were white around the tiny glass vial, the other hand clutching the wall.

“This... this won’t stand,” Desmond said solemnly. “People are going to notice so many people gone so quickly, at the same time. And- and the people who did this. They won’t... they won’t...” He was lost for words again. He stared at the list of red names, eyes narrowed, brow creased, fists clenched.

“Who would do this?” Cassandra asked silently; she didn’t cry, but her voice was so full of sadness that she might as well have been bawling. It made Anton’s heart ache to hear it. “Why would anyone do this?” She looked desperately around, as if for answers to her questions. And then: “What did they do to deserve this?”

No reply came. The green line remained flat.

And when GrimmERL didn’t answer, they all looked to him again, tearful, angry, pleading. He wondered once again how he had gotten into this position. But he wasn’t going to let them down. How could he?

They knew too little. They could talk all night, and they’d still know too little. The only way they were going to find anything out was if they started asking for answers. And Anton was the man with all the questions.

Then he would start with the simple questions. Start at the beginning. Start where they should have begun.

“GrimmERL.”

“Yes?”

“... What is this place?”

There was a brief pause. It seemed to stretch for eons. The list of the dead faded away, replaced again with the silver heptagon symbol, revolving slowly on its field of black. Then the green line waved again.

“This is the Grimmery,” the quirky network with the old man’s voice told him. “But you don’t realise how much you’re asking with those four words. I think it would be easier to show you, actually. Come, children. Let’s go exploring.”

Click here to read Chapter Four - Shattered Glass and Broken Magic

Chapter Four - Shattered Glass and Broken Magic

2010-08-21T20:17:00.010+10:00

I am so very, very sorry about such a long gap between chapters, dear readers (however many of you still remain, that is), but it totally isn't my fault. And I'm quite aware how that may appear to be me dodging blame, but I can tell you that the person whose fault it is has told me he is also very, very sorry, and if you track him down, he has promised to bake you some Swiss delicacy, I've just decided. Two apologies and a possible pastry right there. So, onwards and upwards. The show goes on, and all that jazz.

However, I must say that I am very pleased that there are people who have commented kindly on chapters, and even complaints as to when the next chapter will be coming out! Special thanks goes to James and The Iconoclast, the first two followers of 'The Grimmery'. Pressing the 'Follow' button to your left not only shows me that you are reading and liking what I write (and lets other know that you read it too), but it also allows you to know when I update without having to check back constantly, which can be tedious some times (especially when it takes several months).

In any case, I haven't been completely idle in the intervening time. I've been writing and plotting, be sure of that, and I've been tinkering with the site. I added little opinion buttons to the bottom of each chapter so those of you who are reading, but are too busy (or perhaps too timid, which I don't blame you for - I, too, have been a lurker) to post your opinion, can simply click to tell me whether or not you did or did not like what you read (or, as the case may be, if you thought it was mediocre, which is perhaps the reply I fear the most). And I added breaks in the chapters on the site's front page, to make it appear less cluttered and long-winded. And I accidentally reset the whose.among.us widget in the bottom left corner about a month ago, because I thought it was broken, but it wasn't, and now shows who is and was here perfectly. So those are all good things (or at least not-bad things) that came from the brief ('brief' in the loosest definition of the word) hiatus.

As per usual, I ask that you comment (or just click 'Awesome!' or 'Awful' or however you wish to respond). As well as adding opinion buttons, I also have buttons that allow you to share chapters on Facebook and Twitter, among other social networking or blogging services, because, right now at least, word of mouth is my best adverstising tool. I need you, dear reader, to tell your friends and families about 'The Grimmery', so that you might share the joy. If your feeling particularly adventerous, you could even review or vote for 'The Grimmery' at the many places I've listed it (two coming to mind immediately are Web Fiction Guide and Muse's Success). Even just voting to place 'The Grimmery' on ErgoFiction's Web Fiction Wednesday list would make all the difference (and make me the happiest person in the world for that Wednesday, and any subsequent Wednesday that it might appear there). As Captain Planet says, the power is yours. Except in this case, instead of totally awesome elemental powers (and Heart), you get... the satisfaction of knowing you've helped a struggling web fiction writer find an audience. Which aren't dissimilar, really.

But enough of this blibber blubber. You have a new chapter to read (and taking the advice of you kind commenters and people wiser than I, it is significantly more bite-sized in comparison to earlier installments), and I can promise the next one will come much, much sooner than this one did. (Which shouldn't be hard anyways, because... yeah, you get the point.) So, read on!

Chapter Four - Shattered Glass and Broken Magic

The darkness was short-lived; as soon as the four had taken two steps inside the vault door, lights began to flicker on above them. A line of light bulbs hanging from the roof illuminated the way, though some were shattered and broken while others exploded while trying to turn on. Pandora squealed, and clutched Desmond’s arm. It seemed to be a reflex; when she noticed what she had done, she quickly let go. Desmond took on a private smile, and his cheeks began to subtly redden.

“It’s alright,” Anton said soothingly, although he could not say he believed his own words. “They’re just motion-sensor lights. Nothing strange about that.” He had a feeling that would be the last time he would say that sentence in a long time.

As the bulbs warmed up, and as his eyes adjusted to the sudden brightness, he began to realise where they were standing. To their left and right, taking up the walls of the square corridor they now found themselves in, were glass display cases protecting dark wooden shelves. Most of them, like the light bulbs above, were broken into jagged shards or shattered completely, littering the deep green hallway runner with glittering pieces of crystal. Resting on the shelves was a... strange collection of objects, some valuable, others commonplace, others still completely unidentifiable.

“What happened here?” Desmond asked the room. The room didn’t answer.

“It’s like a... a museum, or something,” Pandora commented, glancing at the shelves.

“Well, there’s no point just standing around,” Cassandra said after a moment. “Let’s go.”

They stood still for a while, hesitant, before Cassandra started down the hallway, glass crunching beneath her slippers as she walked. Pandora bolted after her, and Anton and Desmond followed more slowly.

Before they had taken more than a few steps, though, the familiar rumbling of the door rolling shut – and, now that they were on the inside, the whirring and clanking of the mechanism which drove it – met their ears. Anton whipped his head around, but only glimpsed the door as it slid to a halt with another hollow – and decidedly final – boom. A large clamp slammed around it, and a small light flickered from green to red; nothing was going to make it budge any time soon.

“Well, that decides that then,” Cassandra said, not missing a beat, not even a trace of worry entering her voice. “Onwards!”

Anton turned back to look at her, to point out that they might be locked in this place with no way of getting out, but she had already started down the hallway again. He sighed. Well, there wasn’t anything else to do now but go forward.

As he walked, his eyes moved from the glass-covered rug to the display case to his left, and he stopped to look properly at its contents. The glass was jagged around the edges, creating a starburst-shaped hole in the case, most of the shards having fallen inside rather than out. But what made him stop was what he saw within.

A powder-blue stone statuette, perhaps a foot tall, sat in the middle of the shelf, the image of the classic wizard: hat, robe and all, he stood resolute, staff crossed defensively in front of him. At the head of his staff was a polished crystal sphere only slightly smaller than his head, and his eyes were tiny blue jewels – sapphires, perhaps – set into the carefully-carved, bearded wilderness of his small, angular face. The edge of his robe was lined with flaking gold leaf.

Without really thinking about what he was doing, Anton reached through the shattered hole, careful not to catch his sleeve on the glass, and took the statue in his hand. As soon as his fingers wrapped around it, the crystal orb at the head of its staff began to glow. He jumped, taking a sharp inhale of breath, and relinquished his grip; it toppled over onto its side, and the light faded.

But the figure did not stay down. Anton’s eyes only widened further has he watched the statue begin to move, begin to change from its solid state into one more fluid; the staff’s orb began to glow again, and the stone seemed to become a clear, gelatinous blue liquid, but the figure retained its shape, the gilding staying in its place around the edges. The staff began to rise up, and it came down sharply on the shelf, making the glass around it jump, keeping its solid consistency. The wizard groaned audibly as he pulled himself up, knees bending and joints creaking as he did.

When he finally came upright, he shrugged in his robe – which seemed to act like real fabric, rippling as he moved – and shifted his staff into his other hand. It was then when he noticed Anton staring at him, mouth agape. His sapphire eyes regarded him, unimpressed with what they saw, his free hand on his hip. “What are you looking at, acolyte?” he asked in a rasping voice. Then he spat, a small glob of the gel-like blue substance he consisted of flying from his mouth. His aim was true, and the blob hit Anton’s chest, rolling down his waistcoat. The wizard harrumphed, shook his head once, then solidified, turning back to stone.

Anton’s face was frozen aghast. What had just happened? Thoughts raced through his head, questions popping in on top of one another, and none of it making sense. Acolyte? Talking, creaking statue? Spit? What? How? WHAT?!

And then he forced himself to slow down, and realised what was important: Other... things... here might be like that. Might be annoyed. Might be angry. Might be dangerous. I have to tell the others.

He shook himself, ridding the stunned look from his face and with it the remaining confusion from his head, then turned to see where the others were. They had all spread down its length, and they had all gotten his same idea, looking at things of interest to them. Reaching out to touch them. No!

He rushed over to Pandora, who was closest to him, just across the hallway, and tapped her on the shoulder. She turned around, and Anton saw that she had an earthenware jar in her arms. Small and rough, and painted black with white runes carved in a spiral around it, its lid appeared to be sealed with some lustrous wax-like material. Pandora had one hand clutched around the lid, and held the jar locked in the crook of her arm. He had caught her in the act of trying to open it.

“What are you doing?!” Anton cried, quickly snatching the jar away from her.

“What does it look like?” she replied. “Give it back!” She tried to take it from his hands, but Anton moved it out of her reach, high above her head.

“We have to be careful down here,” he told her. She still struggled to take back the jar, but Anton was taller than her, and he had been told before that he had the arms of a monkey. “Who knows what could be inside this thing? There could be... I don’t know. Plagues or ills or... something like that. Something bad.”

“What makes you think that?” Pandora asked, finally giving up trying to get it back and crossing her arms, pouting stubbornly.

“I accidentally tipped over a statue back there, and it got pretty angry with me,” Anton explained, slowly bringing his arms back down and pointing a thumb over his shoulder, keeping the jar securely under his other arm.

Pandora’s eyes shifted from his to his chest, distracted, and she plucked something from it; she held it up to him, and he saw it was a tiny ball of the blue stone of the wizard statue.

“It spat at me as well,” Anton added. She gave him an odd look, but he went on. “The point is, we can’t just be picking things up and playing with them like they’re toys. Like you said, this place is a museum. You don’t waltz into a museum and start fooling around with the items on display, do you?”

She flicked away the stone, and frowned at the jar, before shaking her head in reluctant agreement. “I was just curious, is all,” she told him, still gazing longingly for the jar beneath his arm. “I wanted to know what was inside.”

Anton sighed. “I can understand that.” Had he not listened to his own curiosity, he wouldn’t be standing where he was now. And he wasn’t sure whether or not that was a good or a bad thing. Not yet, at least.

A sudden smile flashed across Pandora’s face. “Hey, you can read those crazy letters, right? What does it say?”

He shifted the jar into his hands, and turned it over slowly in his hands, following the spiral of characters around the jar. Once again, his eyes seemed to shift focus as he did, and he saw through the runes to what they truly meant. “It says...” He frowned. “It says: ‘No Trust, No Restraint, No Grace. Only Hope Remains. Curiosity Is Death.’” The words fell out of his mouth without even thinking of their meaning.

“Oh,” she said flatly. She seemed to study his face, perhaps looking to see if he was joking or not, and apparently finding no humour, a crease appeared in her forehead. “Perhaps you were right to take it off me, then. You didn’t just make up that last bit to teach me a lesson?”

Anton shook his head, and placed the jar warily back in its stand behind the pane of shattered crystal to his left; those words only confirmed his theory that whatever was inside that thing might be unsafe, perhaps even deadly. And that whatever else was stored behind these windows might be deadly too. “Come on, we have to tell the others.”

“Hope doesn’t sound too bad though, right?” she said as they walked towards Desmond. “I’d prefer to have hope remain than nothing.” She managed a smile, a warming glimmer of sunshine in the deep dark underground. It made him smile as well.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Me too.”

Desmond was next closest to them, and his back was turned toward them. He was looking down, and his hands were hidden by his body; he had already picked something up.

“Des!” Pandora called to him. “Put that down!”

Desmond quickly turned on his heel. He had, held to his face, an old-style camera, painted a faded black and tooled with tarnished chrome, the leather bellows lens fully extended. The huge flash bulb sprouted from it like the eyestalk of some alien creature, reflecting the light above into their eyes. “Say cheese!” he cried gleefully. His finger hovered above the button, daring to click down. And who knew what would happen if he did?

There was no time to warn him; Anton had to take action immediately, right then and there. He blindly swung his arm and slapped the camera out of the other man’s hands. It tumbled from between his fingers, falling to the green-rugged floor and colliding with it, bouncing a few feet away. Something clicked as it did, and the flash went off, but as it came to a stop, a compartment in its side snapped open and its roll of film popped out, unravelling along the floor.

There was silence and stillness between the three for a moment. Then, “If you didn’t want your picture taken, you could have just said so,” Desmond said dryly, looking with a frown towards where the camera had dropped. Apart from the unwound film, it seemed intact; the carpet had cushioned most of the impact.

“It might have been dangerous,” Pandora explained. “Some of the stuff down here’s just plain creepy, but some of it is...”

“It’s magic,” Anton finished gravely.

No-one had said the ‘M’ word up until that point. Somehow, despite all they had seen and all they had experienced, no-one had even mentioned the possibility of magic. Magic was a childhood belief, a storybook fantasy, and more, it was supposed to be a force of good, an unlimited power able to make wishes and dreams come true. But this, what was happening to them, was real. To think that this was magic...

“We don’t know what most of these... things... are capable of,” Anton went on. “For all we know, that camera could have taken our... our souls, along with our picture.”

“Oh, that’s not a real thing,” Desmond said dismissively as he went and picked up the camera, and Pandora crouched down to collect up the film. “That just came about when settlers showed primitive native cultures their technology. They didn’t understand how they made pictures that were so... so true to life. So real. So identical.” He collapsed the bellows and clipped the camera shut. “Add to that the fact that they believed a person’s name or image was enough to have power over them and... What’s wrong?”

Pandora was holding the film up to the light between two fingers, distorted colours shining onto her face. But her face had shifted gradually from squinted interest as Desmond had spoken to wide-eyed, disturbed horror. She opened her mouth to try and say something, but nothing came out; she just gaped like a guppy and shook her head slowly.

“What is it?” Anton asked, bending to look over her shoulder, Desmond joining them on her opposite side.

Each and every cell of the film held an image of a face, and, while each of the faces were different – men and women, young and old, of many races and complexions – they were all pale and gaunt, and they all had the same expression plastered on them. The same horrified, anguished, hopeless expression as they looked down the barrel of the camera and screamed, their empty, bloodshot eyes seeming to cry out louder than their cavernous mouths ever could, or ever would again. Help, they were howling. Help me. Let me out.

And... Did he just see that woman’s hair move? Had that man’s eyebrow just quirked the tiniest fraction? Had that boy just blinked?

Was it possible that he had hit on the truth of the camera’s function, completely by accident?

“That...” Anton tried, but he found he too was lost for words. He had known the story behind the cameras taking people’s soul, but he had also thought he knew that there were no such things as ghosts, and that magic wasn’t real, and that the future was unknown to everyone. Every single one of those things had been proven wrong in the past few hours. The truth was he couldn’t trust anything he thought he knew anymore. Certainties were fluid now. Impossibilities were merely preposterous.

“That can’t be real film,” Desmond said finally. “That isn’t how real film works. Holding it up to the light like that shouldn’t let you see...” He trailed off as he continued to stare at the faces, at their hopelessness and terror. “What kind of people put things like this on display?” he asked quietly, almost a whisper. “What kind of people make something like this?”

“Maybe...” Pandora started. She dropped her hand, breaking them away from their trance, and started rolling the film back up again. “Maybe the people that put it here didn’t know. Maybe they just thought it was a camera. An old camera. And maybe...” Her voice trembled as she gazed at the roll, then she shook her head and shut her eyes. “Put it back,” she said, holding the film out to them, away from herself. “Just... just put it back.”

Desmond took the film and placed it back inside the camera, then shoved it back onto its shelf, dusting his hands off and wiping them on his shirt. “I shouldn’t have touched it,” he said, glancing at Anton. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologise,” Anton told him. “I did the same thing. Exactly the same thing. Now come on. We need to warn Cassandra.”

The boys started down the corridor at once; Pandora stood still for a moment, gazing at the camera, her eyes still wide, her mouth set in a frown.

Anton noticed. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” she said briefly. Then she looked up at him, and it was clear she didn’t believe what she had just said. “No,” she admitted. “I’m fine,” she said with a small smile, but to Anton it seemed... broken. Fractured. Not at all the sliver of sunshine she had shown before. “Let’s go.” She brushed past him, hurrying after Desmond.

“If you say so,” Anton shrugged, moving after her more slowly.

Cassandra was already at the end of the hallway, watching them as they approached her. From her right hand hung a porcelain doll, pre-loved and tatty; its dark hair was held behind a hole-filled pink bonnet, the hem of its red and white-chequered party dress fraying and ragged, and a shard of its blushing cheek was missing. Its blue eyes were wide open, surprisingly – and disconcertingly – human in their lifeless gaze. If it was lifeless, that was.

“Why are you frightened?” Cassandra asked them, concerned. “Did you see a spirit?”

“No,” Desmond said. “Well, not exactly.”

“We think...” Anton started, looking from Pandora to Desmond; they shared loaded glances, and he reassessed his choice of words. “No, we know some of the things down here are dangerous, and we think it might be best if you just... put the doll down. Now. Please.”

“Alright,” Cassandra said, nodding as she took the toy in both her hands, holding it up to her face. “But I don’t think Sissy is dangerous,” she added contemplatively. “Just lonely. She’s been down here behind the glass for such a long time...”

“How do you know that?” Pandora asked. “And how did you know her- its name?”

“She told me,” Cassandra replied, sounding slightly confused. She said it as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. She placed the thing carefully back onto the top shelf to her left.

When she did, it felt as if a great weight had lifted from Anton’s shoulders. Now they were all safe. Now, as long as nothing decided to gain a mind of its own, they would be out of harm’s way. He glanced at the doll; its eyes were now shut. Its eyelids must have slid down when she had put it down on the shelf.

But that sudden relief made him think. He hadn’t known these people for much longer than an hour, but already he was concerned for their safety. General compassion, general humanity, could explain why he didn’t want any direct harm to come to them, but it was stronger than that. Why did he feel he was responsible for their protection?

Perhaps because he was the eldest amongst them. Perhaps because they were the only people he could relate to concerning their... situation. Perhaps because he was terrified of what might happen if he didn’t try to protect them. Perhaps simply because he was terrified and acting on adrenaline. He decided it didn’t really matter at that moment. What was important was that they were safe, and that they could leave this corridor of shattered glass and broken magic.

Their exit, double doors standing just a few feet away, suddenly gave Anton a rush of déjà vu. They looked so similar to the doors of the Morgue at work that it made him double-take. The same grainy ebony wood panels. The same greening copper doorknobs. The same sense that, somewhere behind them, there would be the answers to all his questions. The same sense that there might be a search before the answers...

For all its similarities, though, it had a difference. Impressed across its black wood panels was a shape, a heptagon, flat at the bottom and pointed at the top, its seven sides equal and even. And each of its corners was connected with internal lines, branching across the centre of the shape and creating a jigsaw of triangles, pentagons and quadrilaterals, with another heptagon at its heart. All of it was lined with delicate silver gilding, polished to gleaming.

Anton glanced around at his unlikely companions. Desmond was frowning at the doors, seeming to look through them rather than at them, deep in contemplation. Pandora was looking at Desmond, but when she noticed Anton looking at her, she started running her fingers through her tinted auburn hair, pulling out her headband and readjusting it needlessly. Cassandra was staring at him, with a small smile on her lips, her big grey eyes unblinking in their gaze. Her hands were joined at her waist. It took him a little while to realise why; she was waiting for him. To do what, he had no idea, but that’s what she was doing, he was sure.

“Well then,” he said, if only to break the silence. “I suppose we should... see what’s on the other side of those doors, eh?”

“That sounds like an excellent idea,” Cassandra agreed, nodding.

“Wait,” Desmond said, moving towards the doors first. He turned to the side and pressed his ears against it, near one of the corners of the heptagon, his eyes narrowing in concentration. “Just in case someone’s on the other side,” he explained.

“I think we may have heard or seen them if there were any people down here,” Anton pointed out. “We made quite an entrance.”

Desmond nodded in agreement, but only pulled away when he was satisfied. “I think there might be something electronic on the other side, maybe part of a larger network, but I couldn’t hear anything living. Unless they’re being very quiet. Or asleep. Like, dead-to-the-world asleep.”

Or just dead, Anton thought, a cynical notion.

It is true that there is life within it, Cassandra had admitted to him. That doesn’t mean there isn’t death, either.

Something about that made him glimpse back at the doll, and he found that it now had one eye open, in an eerie wink. How...?

Cassandra moved beside the other man, and lifted her right fist to the door. She rapped it against the wood seven times in quick succession. When she noticed her cohorts giving her identical looks of confusion, she replied simply, “It’s rude not to make yourself known when you’re entering someone else’s home.” Once again, Anton wondered what she was holding back, what she had to hold back, but he had no time to follow that train of thought. She was already turning the knobs and throwing open the doors.

Before the doors had even finished their wide outward arc, there was an audible fwoom, and once again the four found themselves blinded by the sudden, intense light from beyond the threshold; compared to the dull, flickering globes in the corridor, it was like the sun.

When the spots of colour had faded from his eyes, Anton saw its source; a huge chandelier hung from the centre of the high roof of the room beyond, what must have been a hundred gas lamps sprouting from and hanging beneath its many golden arms, shining with their surging technicolour flames, their light reflected and refracted by thousands of crystal beads.

But for every one that did flicker to life, there were two that did not, their glass covers broken or gone completely, their branches squashed or twisted out of shape. And for every string of crystal beads that hung from it, there was at least one that had been cut loose, their lines hanging limply from the chandelier like the limbs of an octopus out of water, their beads strewn across the floor.

The room itself was perhaps one of the largest any of them had ever seen. Roughly cubic in dimensions, the high roof was painted black and dotted with nebulas of silver stars and a continuous cycle of gold moons stretching its width, each shining in the chandelier light. The floor, white- and golden-veined black marble, was buffed such that it reflected like a mirror, and was dotted with more shattered glass and crystal drops that winked like tiny fallen stars from the heavens above.

Ahead of them, across the room and to their left and right, there were tall archways, each lined in a different colour and each with a different rune at their peaks. Anton could spy a spiral staircase a little way down the hall opposite them, lined again with gas lamps of myriad colours.

The room was huge, but apart from the chandelier, it was completely empty. Not a place for stopping and sitting, then. This room, it seemed, was a kind of crossroads, a lobby of sorts for whatever facility this was. And if the lobby was this big...

All four of them stood in the doorway, slightly wary and slightly scared, but too far gone to turn back now. They stepped together into the huge, empty room.

They were silent as they slowly made their way to the centre of the room – none of them had suggested doing this, and none of them knew why they were going to the centre, but none of them objected – the only sound being their footsteps on the hard floors, echoing around them. Cassandra was a little ahead of the others, smiling with the fascination only a child could muster in such a situation, eyes sparkling in the chandelier light, but her expression changed as they drew nearer to the middle. Pandora glanced from archway to archway, seeming to check each of them to see what might be lurking down them. Desmond’s eyes remained unfocused, not seeming to notice the room around them, lost in his own thoughts – or perhaps the thoughts of the ‘network’ he could sense. Anton kept his eyes on the chandelier; it already appeared to be in a condition of doubtful maintenance, and he could imagine it collapsing on top of them as soon as they walked beneath it.

“This is wrong,” Cassandra said suddenly. She looked left and right down the archways. “This place is supposed to be busy. Like it always is.” She sounded more concerned than frightened. “Where are all the people?”

“How do you know there are meant to be people here?” Anton asked her. He didn’t take his eyes from the chandelier. They were getting closer...

“The room has a feeling,” she told them. “Like... like emotion has worn off on the marble after being so close to them for so long.” She stopped and bobbed down, brushing away glass and beads and placing an open hand on the floor. “Stress. Hurriedness. Exhaustion. Relief. People going home, people coming in, people rushing through to get where they’re going and to get their jobs done. People. All the time, people. So where are they?”

“It’s pretty late,” Pandora said absently. “Maybe they decided to punch out early. Catch some z’s...”

They were at the centre now, and they could see another heptagon, this one grey marble, inlaid into the floor. Directly above them, the chandelier gently rocked, warm coloured flames still shifting from hue to hue.

“Hey Anton,” Pandora began to ask, “what do those-”

“HALT! WHO GOES THERE?!”

The double doors they had entered through slammed shut, echoing along with the huge voice that had spoken. The lanterns down the archways all shut off at once; the ones above changed from technicoloured to a uniform green, and flared up angrily into jets of flame to cast ghastly shadows on the terrified, pallid faces below. The crystal beads rattled along with the golden chains.

Pandora fell to the ground in fright with a shriek, which was enough to break Desmond from his daze and go down on his knees to help her. Anton glanced back at the doors, but he knew already that they would be locked, and he instead looked to Cassandra; she was staring up at the lanterns above, not a shred of fear or panic on her face.

Anton himself felt about ready to empty his bowels. A disembodied voice, one that sounded very angry and seemed to be able to control all the fire around them, was interrogating them while they were under what looked like an extremely heavy and extremely flimsy chandelier. And still, his mind went to questions. Whose voice was it? How had they changed the lights? Could it be the owner of the burning hand, luring them in and trapping them here?

“I want to go home,” Pandora moaned from the ground, clutching one knee to her chest and rocking slightly. “I want to go home!”

“Anton, answer!” Desmond hissed, trying to calm the other woman down. She just shrugged from his grip when he tried to help her up, and he resolved to just sit beside her in comfort. “Say something!”

“Me?!” Anton asked incredulously. “Why me?!”

“WHO ARE YOU?” the voice boomed. It was male, that much was apparent, and sounded... layered in its amplification. Distorted. “WHO ARE YOU?” The lanterns shot more bursts of verdant fire, and Anton could feel their heat on his cheeks.

“Who are you?” Cassandra retorted curiously, still looking up. Anton grabbed her hand and pulled her down next to the others, out from beneath it. Desmond clamped a hand around her mouth to stop her from asking anything else.

“WHO AM I?!” the voice asked, outraged. “I AM GRIMMERL, THE GREAT AND TERRIBLE!” it replied, punctuating its claims with more flames. “NOW WHO. ARE. YOU?!” The flames were so intense now that some of the lanterns exploded, raining shards of red-hot glass and pieces of metal onto the floor below.

Anton felt a nudge on the back of his legs; Desmond was pushing him forward with his foot, towards the chandelier – it was the only ‘face’ for the voice they had. The others were looking up at him too, expectant. Looking to him for action. How had he gotten himself into this position?

He swallowed dryly, and took a few more steps forward. “I-I’m...” he tried, then cleared his throat, and thought. He had to be polite. He had to be diplomatic. He had to be flattering. Suddenly, all the books he had read about mad rulers being persuaded by heroes and cosmic delegations addressing hostile aliens came to him. “If you please,” he said formally, giving a little bow, “I am Anton, the, uh, the sm-”

“SILENCE!” the voice demanded; blue flames joined in with the green ones now. Anton snapped his mouth shut. Apparently it didn’t appreciate his choice of words. Of course it didn’t; those books always ended in wars, or worse, regardless of how polite the heroes were. “HOW DID YOU GET IN HERE?”

Anton fumbled around in his waistcoat pocket, and pulled out his pocket watch, holding it up by the chain to the now-cyan light. The stars and moons seemed to match those on the roof above, twinkling in unison. “We used this,” he managed. His hands were clammy, and his brow was slick with sweat, from the heat and from the tenseness of the situation.

The voice didn’t say anything for a moment; Anton assumed it was scrutinising the watch, but with what eyes he didn’t know. Then, “AND WHERE DID YOU FIND THAT?!”

“It’s mine,” Anton replied, a little more confident now. “I’ve had it for years.”

Silence again. He didn’t dare lower his arm.

“HOW DID YOU FIND THIS PLACE?”

“I was directed to come here,” he explained. “By a... an apparition. He-”

“LIAR!” the voice cried; violet flames appeared among the green and blue, rising higher than they ever had before. “I DO NOT TAKE KINDLY TO UNINVITED GUESTS WHO LIE TO MY FACE! GOODBYE!”

Chnk. Something above, something metal, had just broken. Anton raised his head, and saw exactly what he had predicted, exactly what he had feared, playing out in horrifyingly slow motion; the sky was falling.

“MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

The room went dark.

Click here to read Chapter Three - The Waif, the Nerd, and the Woman in Orange

Click here to read Chapter Five - O.I.: Organic Intelligence

Chapter Three - The Waif, the Nerd, and the Woman in Orange

2010-05-16T13:03:00.012+10:00

It's a long one today, and packed with new important characters too. Well, longer than previous chapters have been. Which are already pretty long. Hopefully it's interesting enough for you to read without getting tired or bored. That is my ultimate aim, after all.

Once again, I implore you to leave your comments at the bottom of the chapter, if you are reading. If you've found your way here from ErgoFiction, welcome! (For those of you that don't know, ErgoFiction is an e-zine dedicated to web fiction, and the girls there were nice enough to post an excerpt of 'The Grimmery' as part of their 'Most Haunted' issue. I highly reccomend it, and if you like web fiction in general or are just looking for stuff to read, you should definitely subscribe to it.)

Also, as I post this chapter, I will also be adding 'The Grimmery' to the listings at the Web Fiction Guide. If you have been reading, but have been too shy to comment, feel free to post a review or critique at Web Fiction Guide. (Once again, if you're looking for something to read, the Web Fiction Guide is one of the most extensive databases for online writings. Their forum-goers are pretty friendly and helpful, too.) I'll post a link to the listing here when I do it. *EDIT: Here it is! Ready for your commentaries and critiques!*

So, without further ado (and on schedule, although only my personally enforced schedule), here is Chapter Three - The Waif, the Nerd, and the Woman in Orange.

Chapter Three – The Waif, the Nerd, and the Woman in Orange

“Hello?” Anton called again, and this time he was certain that the voice had spoken before he had. It was the voice of a girl, the voice of the figure at the centre of the dome of floating lights. She had said exactly what he was about to say before the words had even left his mouth, three times in a row now. And she seemed to attract these mysterious, firefly-like lights.

Mr Hicks had said that coming here would help him get his memory back. Maybe he had meant that this person, this girl, whoever she was, would help him. There was only one way to find out.

“Can I-” he started, but not before the girl said exactly the same thing, just a millisecond before he did. “How-” he tried again, but she had already said it. “Will you stop doing that?” he managed to get out, but she had finished the sentence first. She began to laugh. So it wasn’t just coincidence; somehow, she was figuring out what he was going to say and then saying it before he could. But how?

“Come over here,” she said playfully, between her girlish giggles. Anton was still standing a far way away, just outside of the dome-like shape the circling, spiralling balls of light were making around her.

“They won’t... hurt me, will they?” he asked, gesturing to the lights. As far as he could tell, they were sentient, if not particularly intelligent. Two of them had led him here, and he could pick them out from the others by their distinctive colours. They still danced around each other as they flew in a tight circle around the girl.

“I don’t know,” the girl said, and he saw her silhouette tilt its head in thought. “They aren’t hurting me. If you’re good and kind, they won’t hurt you.” She laughed again.

That cryptic statement, combined with her amusement, didn’t exactly fill Anton with confidence.

“Come on!” the girl called.

He frowned, but agreed with her. He had to get over there and talk to her properly. He braced himself, screwed up his face, and took a step into the dome.

The balls of light moved out of his way as he stepped forward, avoiding his touch. He took another step forward, and they began to move behind him as well, encompassing him into their hemisphere. He was inside, and they didn’t seem to be biting or harming him in any way; he breathed a small sigh of relief. In fact, when they realised he was intending to move to the centre, they made a sort of tunnel for him, as tall as he was and just a little wider. He stood in amazement as they did. Perhaps they were intelligent.

He slowly made his way towards the centre, glancing around at the glowing balls of light that surrounded him. Their light, all together, was not blinding, nor was it warming, but in such great numbers it seemed to evoke a sort of safety in the dark of the night. And it was beautiful, besides. Like walking inside an aurora.

He could see the girl clearly now, illuminated by the technicoloured lights swirling around both of them. She couldn’t have been much older than sixteen, by Anton's reckoning, unless she was simply very petite, and probably only came up to his chest. Her hair was a very light blonde, and was braided in two long pigtails, bows of shiny gold ribbon tied neatly at the ends. She wore a pale yellow dress, skirt reaching her ankles and sleeves cut above her shoulders, her waist tied with another strip of gold. Her shoes, slippers the same colour as her dress, were covered in ash, as was the hem of her dress in some places. Her skin was milky white, pale and smooth and unblemished, like porcelain. She stood facing him, regarding him as he approached.

And, as he got closer, he noticed her eyes. They were very light grey in colour, and big and wide in her face, the innocent eyes of youth. But there was something wrong about them. Something off. They looked... he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. They just didn’t fit.

They stood in front of each other silently for a while, the light and shadows constantly shifting and changing across their faces. For some reason, it seemed to Anton that the girl was the dominating presence. She obviously knew more than he did. And there was still the question of how she had known what he would say...

“You should be wearing a tie,” she said suddenly.

It was an effort for Anton not to sigh exasperatedly at that, but the annoyance quickly drained away when he realised who he was talking to. Everyone he had spoken to today had known him. So how did this girl know about his tie?

“Are you a... a ghost?” he asked her cautiously. She was dressed oddly enough, even if he couldn’t see a means of death as he had for other spirits. Perhaps that was why her eyes didn’t seem to match her face.

The girl shook her head, and laughed mirthfully again. “Of course not, silly! At least, I don’t think I am. Are you?”

“Oh, no,” Anton replied. “I don’t think so." He added jokingly, "I might have died in my sleep and just not realised it, but...”

“No, you aren’t,” the girl clarified, her eyes sizing him up. “You aren’t like the others I’ve seen.”

“So you’ve seen them too?” He should have assumed as much; if he asked anyone else if they could see the lights, they probably would have said no. But he could, and so could she. Finally, some answers, he thought to himself.

She nodded, but became distracted by one of the balls of light. It touched her hand, and she smiled as it spiralled around her body and her head. “They’re very playful, aren’t they?”

“Do you know what they are?” he asked, looking around at them. No matter how they spun, he didn't become dizzy looking at them, nor did they tire his eyes with their brightness. They did seem to be playful; he noticed one bumping into his fingers, trying to lift his hand. But when it tried to touch his black metal manacle-like bracelet around his wrist, it flinched, then flew rapidly in the opposite direction. That was strange.

“I think they’re called...” She paused, her eyes narrowing in concentration as if she were listening for something, then finished, “... wisps.”

“How’d you figure that out?”

“They told me.”

“Well, how come I can’t hear anything from them?”

“Maybe because you aren’t listening.”

Anton just looked at her, one eyebrow raised, puzzled.

“Right now,” she explained, “you feel uncertain, confused, and you still doubt what you’re seeing. If you begin to accept it, though, a lot more will open up to you.”

“How do you know what I’m feeling?” Anton asked sceptically. What she had said was exactly true, but he didn’t have to admit that.

“Because I’ve learnt to accept what I see as real, and not just a hallucination. Now will you just try and listen?” Her voice took on mock annoyance, and she put her hands on her hips, but she was smiling. “Just try it.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, looking at his shoes. “It’s just... this has been a bit overwhelming.”

She nodded understandingly. “It’s been difficult for all of us. Just close your eyes, clear your mind, and listen.”

All of us? Anton wondered, but he shut his eyes and tried to chase all the thoughts out of his head. The voice of common sense refused vehemently at first - it wouldn't indulge in such nonsense! - but it stopped its nattering eventually. He slowly inhaled and exhaled, his breath making mist. He was truly calm for the first time in what seemed like an eternity. There was only himself, the dark, and the silence.

Minutes dragged on like hours, and he heard nothing. He sighed, and opened his eyes. “I guess they don’t want to talk to me right now.”

The girl shook her head, pulling on one of her pigtails. “Doubt is still there. I can feel it. You can’t just think you’ve accepted it, you have to believe it as well. Shut your eyes again.”

He did, reluctantly.

“Now think about what you’ve seen.”

His mind flashed through all the things he had seen in the past 24 hours, beginning with his own unfamiliar reflection in the mirror, to the packed streets, Mr Hicks’ form disappearing in spreading light, and the burning hand, the limping boy with the red balloon, the squashed elevator operator, the wisps, and now the girl with the strange, strange eyes who claimed she could see and hear it all...

“I’m here to tell you that, while you might try to explain it all away with logical justifications or explanations, there’s no escaping the fact that it’s real. It’s all real. And it isn’t meant to be frightening or upsetting. It’s a whole new world full of wonder, and magic, and life. And it’s all there, just beyond your fingertips. Just beyond the corner of your eye. Just outside the light.”

Her words echoed around him, but all he felt was the cold, and all he saw was the darkness behind his eyelids. It didn’t seem like a world full of life opening up to him. It was more like a world full of fear, and insanity, and death.

But, now that he had admitted that to himself, he recognised why he was trying to shut it out.

“I’m scared,” he whispered.

“Do you want to know a secret?” the girl asked.

Anton nodded, his eyes still clenched shut.

“So am I. We all are.”

And, for some reason, that made Anton feel a whole lot better. He had tried rationalising with himself, and had succeeded before because he wanted it to be untrue; all these things happening to him could only mean bad things, any way he looked at them. But now he had someone else in front of him telling him he wasn’t mad, and that he wasn’t dreaming. Most importantly, though, he wasn’t alone. As long as there were other people going through what he was, other people he could relate to and talk about these things to, everything would turn out okay. He hoped.

There was no all-covering explanation, he knew that now. There was just him, and the girl, and the world of wisps all around him. And, he found, he was alright with that.

There was no sudden click like turning on the stereo; it was more like turning up the volume on something that had been muted before. In the darkness of his mind, a light began to glow, a cool blue light, crossing the empty black of his mind and leaving its luminescent trail. It was joined by a second, green light. And he thought he could hear... whispers. The two lights were murmuring to each other in the voices of children, speaking softly after lights out lest their parents or teachers hear. But what were they saying?

... Do you think he can hear us yet?

I dunno. This one seems a little thick, to be honest.

Hahahahaha! That’s awful! Just because he’s taking a little longer...

Anton glared towards where he thought the two balls of light were flying, his eyes still shut.

Oh, I guess he’s tuned in now. Finally.

Hahahahaha!

Other voices were speaking up now, and he began to see more lights in more colours crossing his vision, some talking to each other in their hushed voices, others humming or singing, others still laughing as they danced and played with each other. A smile began to spread across his face. Just when he thought it couldn’t get any more amazing...

He opened his eyes, and found it was not much different to having them shut; all the wisps were in exactly the same place. He could still hear them, too. And they seemed to glow that much brighter.

“See?” the girl asked.

“I do now,” Anton replied.

“Good,” she said, nodding.

He was content with that for a few moments, but then the inquisitive reporter in him began questioning again. “That doesn’t explain what the wisps are, though,” Anton pointed out.

“I’m not exactly sure either,” the girl admitted. “But they give me a sense of not being quite... whole. They gather together, like they are now, to try and make themselves whole again. But there’s only one place they can go to be complete once more.”

“Where’s that?”

“I don’t know.” The multicoloured glows reflected in her too-big eyes as she stared into his. Her gaze gave him goosebumps, and it was an effort not to shiver visibly, both from cold and from eeriness.

“How much do you know about this stuff?” was his next question, after he pulled his eyes from hers to a trio of warm-coloured wisps making oscillating patterns in the air.

“Only what I’ve heard today,” she said, and Anton believed that she was telling the truth. “I... I’m having trouble remembering some things. I woke up and...” She trailed off, then shook her head as if to rid herself of that thought. “You ask a lot of questions, and you seem to be accepting what I tell you fairly easily. But you aren’t dumb, and you aren’t gullible...”

“I’m a writer,” Anton explained. “Uh, investigative reporter for the Apollo Sun by day, fiction author by night. I guess that might have something to do with that. And believe me, its been a challenge to make myself believe this much. I’m Anton Macquarie, by the way. Rude of me not to introduce myself first.”

“I’m Cassandra,” the girl said. “It’s nice to meet you, Anton Macquarie." She offered a small hand, and Anton shook it politely. "I understand why you didn’t start off with the usual pleasantries, though," she went on. "You haven’t come here because you’re doing a story, have you.” It wasn’t a question so much as it was a statement of fact.

“No,” Anton said, “I was led here by... well, it was my first encounter with a ghost. My boss died recently, but he came to me this morning and said to come here, because..." Now he said it out loud, it sounded even more ridiculous, but Cassandra wasn't laughing and wasn't judging; she seemed genuinely interested in his story. "To be honest, I’m missing some memories as well. The last month is blank for me. He said coming here might help me remember.”

“You’re saddened that he died,” Cassandra told him.

“Yes,” he said, looking down. She was awfully blunt about that. Then again, she was only a kid, and an odd one at that. He wouldn’t dwell on it. He still had so many questions, and this girl was the best source he had. “You said you knew what I was feeling because you’d learnt to accept what you see. So how come I can’t figure out what you’re feeling?”

“I guess we don’t have the same gifts,” Cassandra said, twirling one of her pigtails with a finger.

“Gifts?”

“I don’t know,” she retracted. “Sometimes I get feelings from people. Sometimes I see things before they happen, like before when I was saying all the things you were going to say. You haven’t experienced anything like that?”

Anton shook his head. “Nothing apart from seeing spirits. And this,” he said, twisting the black bracelet on his right wrist. He held it up, and some of the wisps flying close to him sped away. “Can you see it?”

“The cuff thing?”

Anton nodded, and smiled. “No-one else can see it but me, and now you, I guess.”

Her big, grey eyes scrutinised the thing intently, but she didn’t touch it. “I’m sure the others will be able to see it as well,” she said after a moment, nodding. “It’s definitely not normal. Invisible to everyone, except us.”

“You mentioned others before,” Anton said. “And I saw other tracks in the ash. There are other people here? Are they... like us?”

Cassandra nodded, a small smile on her lips. “I left them down below, because I knew more were coming. There will be six, all together. Now there are four.”

Anton nearly hit himself. He had been about to leave because he thought there was nothing left standing; it hadn’t occurred to him that the warehouse might have had a basement, or lower floors. And two other people! Surely, between all of them, there would be more than enough answers.

“They’re working on trying to open the door, but I know we need you to do it,” she added.

“How do you know that?” Anton asked.

Her small smile turned into a small frown as she thought. “It’s like... you know that the sky is blue, and that the grass is green, and that water is wet, and that the night is dark. You don’t need to be told these things, because they’re obvious. You see and feel them for yourself. Well, for me, it’s just like that. Since I woke up this morning, I’ve known what people are going to say next, and I’ve known what they’ll do, because it’s obvious. To me. I can see it for myself, when the time is right.”

He could not imagine it. It must have been frightening, to just simply know what came next. And on one so young, it must have been a terrible burden, the ability to peak into the future, even if it was only a few seconds. Perhaps that was what was in her eyes; the knowing.

“It doesn’t bother me all that much, though,” she said reassuringly, as if she had read his mind. Had she? Her smile was back, her face sunny again. Anton had the feeling that perhaps all was not as calm and happy as she pretended it was. Something in those eyes.

“And what about the feelings?” he asked her. “Is that just the same, or is it different?”

“Different. It’s more like... there’s emotion flowing out of everyone and everything, and each emotion has a different feel. Different temperature, different taste, different colour. I can’t see it, I can’t taste it, but I can feel it. I feel what other people feel. So when you feel sad, I’ll feel it too.”

“Empathy,” Anton said.

Cassandra nodded. “I’m sorry if I’m sometimes frank about what you might be feeling. It’s just, sometimes, I get the emotion, but I don’t understand why you might be feeling that.”

“That’s alright,” he said, nodding. “Do you think I’ll be able to do things like that?”

“Maybe,” she said thoughtfully. “Maybe not. The others have displayed some amount of ability, but different from mine.”

“Are they as...?” Anton stopped short.

“As strange as I am?” Cassandra finished. She didn’t seem offended, instead snickering at the question. “Yes, they are,” she laughed. “Come, let’s go see them.” She grabbed his right hand.

One of her fingers – only one finger, touching only for a second – brushed the cool black metal manacle on his wrist, and suddenly her face contorted in pain, or perhaps simply disgust. She recoiled a few steps back, holding her hand carefully with the other, eyes darting from it to the cuff rapidly.

“What’s wrong?” Anton asked, but before she could answer, he noticed something. The lazy, spiralling paths of the wisps became erratic and jagged, and their voices changed from laughter and singing to panicked shrieks and squeals. For the most part it was unintelligible, but two words were common among their cries: Bad magic.

And then it started to become darker. First they disappeared one at a time, vanishing as if a switch ahad been flicked off. Then they started to leave in groups, larger holes in the dome appearing until it was more darkness than light. Then there were only two left: the blue and green wisps that had led him there. They were spinning around both him and Cassandra, faster and faster. The green one was sobbing incoherently. The blue one was whispering almost beyond hearing, but Anton caught its words:

No no no no no no no no no! Not again! No! NO!

And then they were both gone. All the wisps had disappeared, their comforting glow leaving with them. They were all alone in the cold, dark night.

They were silent for a few minutes, then Anton asked, “Where... where did they all go?”

Cassandra looked up from her hand, as if just noticing the lights were out. “It must be their bedtime,” she said simply.

“But what happened?” he asked worriedly. “You touched this,” he indicated the manacle, “and then they just disappeared!” He saw her inspecting the hand that had touched it. “Are you alright? You aren’t hurt, are you?”

“I don’t know,” she said quietly. “That thing,” her eyes were drawn to the manacle, “doesn’t feel... it doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t feel right. I don’t know what, or why, or how. It just does.” She sounded shaken.

He looked again at the bracelet around his right wrist in a new light. No-one could see it but Cassandra and him; the wisp had turned tail and ran when it touched it; all of them had vanished when she touched it; and now she said it didn’t ‘feel right’, whatever that meant. When he touched it, he felt nothing but cool metal. And he knew he couldn’t get it off. What was wrong with it? What was wrong with him?

“Oh, no, don’t be scared,” Cassandra said, having pulled her eyes from the black metal band around his wrist. “I’m fine, really. Not hurt, no marks.” She touched his arm with comfort, but he noticed it was her left hand, the one that had not touched the manacle. “It was just a bit of a shock. Where did you get it?”

“I had it on when I woke up this morning,” he told her. “I can’t remember if it was there before or not. I can’t get it off, either. Although I’ve yet to try bolt cutters or welding tools or anything...”

She laughed, but he could tell it was only half-hearted. She was withholding things from him, that was clear now, but whether it was out of some warped sense of bravery or something more mysterious, he did not know. This girl knew far more than she was letting on.

“Come on, let’s go meet the others.” This time, she took his left hand with her right, and started pulling him. “Come on.” He found his legs were pillars of stone, but eventually they gave way, and he moved after her.

They walked in silence through the dark, hand in hand, the little girl leading and the grown man following. Without the comforting light of the wisps surrounding them, and with the puffs of ash and smoke ever reminding him of the burning hand ghost, Anton couldn't help but feel vulnerable. And though it seemed all the ghosts had disappeared for the night, he couldn’t help but think there might be something out there lurking in the darkness. He doubted neither he nor Cassandra could defend themselves properly if it did come to that.

He kept his eyes on the ground, and noticed the trails he had seen before had picked up again. The deep, straight trail and the wavy, tiptoed footprints still moved onwards; the sporadic steps – who he realised now belonged to Cassandra herself – had two trail, one going forward and the other coming back.

After following these trails for a few minutes, Cassandra stopped suddenly and turned to him. “When we go down there, there will be a man and a woman,” she said, looking up seriously. “Both will treat you kindly, but the man will ask you for something close to you. Do not hesitate in giving it to him, though. He will be very careful with is, because he understands its importance. Okay?”

“Is this one of these things you just know?” Anton asked her.

She smiled, and nodded. “You’re catching on quickly.” She turned, and pointed to the ash-covered ground before them. “We’re going under there.”

He looked from her to the floor a few times, staring quizzically. “Is there a trap door, or...?”

“Even better,” she told him excitedly. “There’s an illusion in place. It's like a form of camouflage that reflects its surrounds. There are stairs that lead to a tunnel right there, but you can't see them. I’m telling you this so you don’t fall in, like the man down there almost did. That was how we found it, actually.” She smiled at that thought. “Just follow me.” She took his hand again, and started moving slowly and carefully towards the area she had pointed out.

As they approached, Anton began to realise there was something odd about the ash in that area. As far as he could tell, it looked exactly like all the ash around it, but he realised that was exactly what was wrong with it; it was too similar, too identical. The straight, wavy and patchy paths continued on over this patch, but he found on further inspection that it was just a stretch of the trails repeated, until they abruptly stopped a little way away. And, now that he had discovered the secret of what he was seeing, the patch began to shimmer and fade until he saw it for what it really was: a circular pit, about five metres in diameter, with a flight of stairs descending around its edges, into its darkness.

“Are you sure it’s safe?” he asked warily. “I mean, I know you said it was a... a world full of life, one we shouldn’t be frightened of, but...”

“I, uh, I might have... bent the truth a bit when I told you that,” she said carefully.

“What?”

“I think there are things in this other world that you would be wise to be afraid of. It is true that there is life within it. That doesn’t mean there isn’t death, either.”

“You might have left that until after we got down there,” Anton said dryly.

“Oh, of course it’s perfectly safe. Don’t be silly.” Cassandra was indeed an oddity. She could seem to be wise beyond her years one second, and then turn around and just be a regular giggly girl the next. But Anton trusted her. For some reason, though he knew she was holding things back, he trusted her. They started down the spiral staircase together.

---

After the first seven hundred steps – he was beginning to think his life would be forever cursed with never-ending stairs, after the day he had had, and he knew he would have to walk up them again later – Anton broke the silence. “So... who exactly are these other people?”

“I can’t tell you,” Cassandra replied, still lifting her skirts to get down the stairs without tripping.

Light was not a problem; gas lamps which curved overhead had flickered on after a few minutes walking downwards, causing Anton to jump at the sudden flames. He was still on edge about the burning hand ghost, and he knew it was still out there somewhere, though when and where it would appear next was still a mystery. The lamps, though, after the initial scare, began to slowly shift colours from orange-red to gold, to green, to blue, and to a myriad of other shades and hues. It reminded him of the comforting wisplight.

“Well, why not?” he questioned, jumping three steps to walk beside her.

“Because.”

“Because why?”

“Because... because.”

Anton groaned inwardly, and realised to whom he was talking: a child. But this child – despite her outward immaturity, her pigtails and her giggles – had hidden depths. And she was doing a very good job of saying a lot, but revealing little.

“So you say you can see the future,” Anton clarified, “but you won’t tell me who I’m about to meet. Is that because you will not or because you cannot?”

“Yes.”

“Yes to which?”

“Both.”

Anton thought about that for a minute. “... What?”

“I cannot tell you, because I will not,” Cassandra explained. “I cannot, because I know I will not.”

“So... you already know how this conversation is going to go? How every conversation is going to go?” Anton thought that must become tiresome, knowing what you and anyone else you will talk to will say before you even meet them, like rehearsed lines in the performance of your life.

“Oh, of course not,” she told him. “Don't be silly. Only sometimes. Like before, for instance. I was saying what you were saying at the same time as you were saying it, because I had seen that you were going to say it, but after that, I wasn’t able to guess what you might ask. The... the knowing... comes and goes.” She put a finger to her lips in thought. “I suppose the things I see, the things I know, can’t be changed, otherwise I’d see everything all the time... Does that make sense?”

Anton nodded. He thought he understood, at least. “And what... what determines when you know something and when you don’t?”

Cassandra said nothing for a few steps, and Anton waited for an answer patiently. Finally, she replied: “Fate.” Another small smile lit up her face.

“Well, a great lot of good that does me. You can’t tell me who these people are because fate demands it of you,” Anton said sardonically.

“Are you really going to argue with fate?” she asked him. “After all, it was fate that brought you here, fate that let us meet, and fate that will let you meet the others.”

“I brought me here. It was a coincidence that we found each other.” His words lacked conviction; the existence of an unseen world of spirits suddenly being open to him had probably done something to shake his previously conceived assertions.

“Coincidence, happenstance, chance, luck, call it what you will,” she said, counting the words on her fingers, “it all adds up to the same thing. Really, given what you’ve seen and heard today, I would have thought you would have been a little more open to a concept like fate.”

“Yeah, well, old habits die hard,” he muttered.

The end of the stairs was – much to Anton’s relief – now in sight. They must have been a far way down, he reckoned, below the sewers at least. It was much warmer the further down they went, and he took off his overcoat, carefully folding it and placing it in his bag.

The spiral staircase wound out into a patterned, mosaic floor of metallic and mirrored tiles in concentric shapes; its centre was a solid, circular mirror surrounded in a blue metal triangle, which was in turn surrounded by a chrome-red square, surrounded by a metallic green pentagon. It continued in this pattern, changing colour and adding another side, until it became indistinguishable from a circle.

The floor had seen better days, however; the central mirror was shattered from the centre in jagged fissures, and some of the tiles, where they weren’t rusting away, had been pried up from the floor. Ash from above had sprinkled down, spreading across the pattern, marring it with grime, no longer reflecting the undulating, multicoloured gas flames from the lamps lining the chamber. There didn’t appear to be any fire damage, though. The blaze that had ravaged the warehouse had not made it down this far.

Opposite the end of the stairs was an archway, and Anton could see a tunnel of grey stone stretching off into the distance, pairs of lamps keeping it well-lit. He couldn’t see the end, but he knew there would be a door there. And the people there would need something he had to open it. He didn’t think he had the keys on him.

“I suppose we go that way?” he asked, pointing down the corridor.

Cassandra said nothing, instead taking the lead and walking carefully over shattered tiles and ash towards the arch. Anton followed.

As they continued on, Anton tried to imagine where they were in relation to the city above. He thought they were still walking in the same direction he had begun in, diagonally into the block of 79 Moy Street, and he knew that was at the edge of the city. So, if they were walking in a straight line, at that angle...

“Hang on, there are no underground tunnels beneath Mount Temmar,” Anton pointed out, stopping in his tracks.

Cassandra didn’t stop moving. “Clearly there are,” she called back to him. “You’re walking in one. You know what they say: ‘All roads lead to the mountain.’”

That was a hard argument to rebut. Once again, he quickened his step to catch up with her. “But how come I’ve never heard of them before? Paved, well-designed, illuminated, intact, heated tunnels don’t just sit under the city without people knowing about it, not in this day and age. And I like to think I’m a pretty well-informed guy.”

“Tell me,” she said ponderingly, “what do you think the warehouse that used to be up there held?”

“I... I don’t know. I was hoping there would be something left to try and figure it out. Or maybe that you would know.”

“And tell me,” she went on, “you didn’t see the entrance to the stairs immediately, right? Because of the illusion.”

“Yes...” Realisation washed over him. “Oh, I see. What was in the warehouse doesn’t really matter. It was just a hiding place for the entrance. And... The tunnels are hidden in the same way as the stairs were?”

Cassandra nodded, giggling. “Very good, Mr. Investigative Reporter.”

“Ha,” Anton replied sarcastically. “Well, that’s all well and good, but why does this place need to be hidden so well? For that matter, what is this place?”

“It’s a secret to everybody,” she told him. “We’ll find out when we get inside, won’t we?”

They went on in silence.

---

Anton had noticed that the corridor was – ever-so-slowly and steadily – getting wider and taller as they walked. They were reaching the end.

He had begun to lag behind Cassandra, so when she stopped suddenly, he accidentally walked into her. He was about to apologize when he noticed the hallway had stopped; it had climbed to more than six metres high and wide while he wasn’t looking, and now a solid wall of grey stone stood ahead of them.

Set within it, and taking up most of the wall, was a rather impressive vault door, or at least something that looked like a vault door. A round, almost cog-like metal door of enormous diameter and width – and, from the look of it, weight – stood before them, magnificent in its starkness and severity. A spirographic pattern of crisscrossing lines was engraved into the centre of the giant metal cog, and on each of its teeth, a character was engraved, although from what language Anton could not say.

But... for some reason, some insane reason, he thought he understood them. They were foreign to him, but it was like... it was like he could see them for what they truly were, like he could see through the strangeness to their true meaning. And if he read them the right way, he thought they made up a word. Maybe even a sentence.

He gazed at the door for a moment, and a thought occured to him: he had willingly come along with Cassandra, down the stairs and along the corridor, with only a vague promise of answers and others she claimed were like themselves, but Anton still had no hint on where they were going. They were deep beneath the city, deep beneath the mountain, but he had no clue what might be behind this door. And no idea how he was supposed to open it.

Cassandra looked over her shoulder at him, then indicated in front of her with a nod. Anton leaned sideways to see what she could see.

He saw the man before he saw the woman. He was on all fours, seeming to peer at something in the wall obscured by his body. He wore a red beanie over dark locks poking from the edges, and a scarlet t-shirt above grey jeans. His once-white and red sneakers were now covered in ash, and Anton recognised the pattern on their tread as the hard, straight footprints from above. His belt, maroon-coloured leather and dotted with tarnished metal studs, held several tools, and as he brought a hand back from whatever he was doing, Anton saw a screwdriver held carefully in his fingers. He was skinny, no doubt about that, and perhaps only a little shorter than himself, but Anton could not be sure with him on the ground as he was. Regardless, he seemed to have caught the attention of the lady.

She was standing a little distance ahead of them, facing the vault door, and Anton didn’t know how he hadn’t seen her first; she was clad in eye-wrenching shades of orange. Her pumpkin-coloured skirt was cut above her knees, showing her legs encased in stockings striped in shades of tangerine and rust-coloured leather boots that reached halfway up her lower leg. He could see the back of her head, could see her deep auburn hair streaked with highlights of varying shades of red and gold, long and gently curled, reaching to her shoulder blades. She had an hourglass figure, round hips and a curvaceous silhouette. The only part of her outfit that wasn’t a jarring shade of orange was the ill-fitting crimson hooded jumper, with hem almost encompassing her skirt and sleeves coming down around her hands; Anton guessed she had borrowed it from the man. She seemed to be staring at the man on the floor, her head tilted slightly as she gazed. More specifically, she was gazing at his backside.

Cassandra cleared her throat loudly to get their attention.

The woman squealed and quickly turned on her heels to face them. Her face was a mask of fear and panic, but when she realised they were not a threat, it melted away into relief and embarrassment. Anton could see her clearly now: her curled, colour-streaked hair was held out of her face with a bright orange headband. Her face was round and plump, but kind and cheery, her smile warm and bright. Her cheeks were rouged, her eyes, a mesmerising shade of amber, were coloured with mascara and bronze eye shadow. The red jumper, shown to be zipped at the front, bordered a low cut horizontally-striped shirt in coral and tangelo. While she was clearly older than Cassandra, closer to Anton's own age, she was only a little taller. He also noticed, around her neck, was a thin golden chain, and hanging on her chest was what looked like a tiny glass vial. It was empty.

The man, at her shriek, quickly brought his head up, turning to look over his shoulder at them for a few moments, before standing up. As he walked towards them, he dusted his hands on his shirt, which Anton now saw had a square, pixelated smiley face in white on the chest. While he was clearly an adult, he had one of those baby faces that made him seem much younger than he actually was. His hazel eyes looked towards the newcomers with interest. He was, as Anton had correctly guessed, only a little shorter than himself, and skinny; his arms had a little muscle definition, but other than that he was pretty weedy-looking. He spun the screwdriver in his fingers with surprising dexterity, though, and Anton could now see what he had been working on; a metal panel had been unscrewed to reveal what looked like a circuit board.

“Oh, it’s only you, Cass,” the woman in orange said breathlessly, holding her chest with one hand as if to still her beating heart. Her fingers crept to the empty vial, which she clutched with her right hand. The other arm hung limply at her side. “You scared me half to death!” She laughed, a hearty, infectious laugh, and her eyes moved to Anton. “Who’s this?” she asked with a kind smile in his direction. “Is he one of the ones you were talking about before?”

“Yes,” Cassandra said. “This is Anton.”

Anton held his hand out to shake, but she ignored it; she threw her arms around him, and hugged him tightly. “Welcome,” she said to him, pressing her face to his chest. “You’re safe now.”

Anton was stiff for a moment, but put up a hand and patted her on the back; he had a feeling the hug was for her as much as it was for him.

After a final squeeze, she relinquished her grip. “I’m Pandora,” she said. “Pandora McArber. It’s great to meet you!”

“You too,” Anton said, coughing a little from the air she had wrung out of him.

The man now stood beside Pandora, and he sheathed his screwdriver and offered his hand first with a smile, which Anton shook. “Desmond Jones,” he named himself. “I own a small computer shop not so far away from here.” He gave a firm handshake, and when Anton took his hand back, he realised there was a card in his hand. White cardboard printed in black, grey and red, it read:

Desmond Jones
Information Technology Guy
Reality Bytes, 14 Apothecary Road, Temmarin, 3124

Below that was a business and mobile number. Anton laughed at the job description and the pun in the shop name.

“I also dabble in magic tricks,” Desmond told him with a smile. “Although I suppose they might be a little... lacklustre, what with...” He trailed off, simply gesturing all around them.

“I like your tricks,” Pandora said, stuffing her hands into the jumper’s pockets.

“Thanks,” Desmond said, a shy little smile on his lips. They watched each other, perhaps for a little longer than was necessary, then seemed to come to their senses and tore their eyes away, looking at their shoes or around the room.

Cassandra gave Anton a surreptitious glance, before smoothly changing the subject. “... So, how goes things with the door?”

“Oh, I haven’t gotten anything out of it,” Desmond said with a weary groan, rubbing one eye with his fist. “It keeps asking me for a key, but when I try to ask it anything about the key, it just repeats itself. I tell you,” he said with a glance at Anton, “after working with them for this long, I never thought computers would be so... difficult.”

Anton was, once again, confused. “I’m sorry, you were talking to the door?”

“Yep,” Desmond replied, absently spinning the screwdriver again.

Anton looked to Pandora and Cassandra, and neither of them seemed to bat an eyelid at this claim. “Um... How exactly do you do that, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Like I was telling you before,” Cassandra explained, “it’s an ability a bit like mine. Desmond can communicate with machines and technology with his mind.”

“In comic books, they call it technopathy,” Desmond told them. “It was a bit freaky when I found out I could do it, actually. You know talkback radio?”

Anton nodded.

“Well... the radio talked back. I was listening to it while I was in the shower, and the DJ was struggling to remember the name of a song. So, as I turn on the water, I call out the name of the song, not really expecting anything to some of it, but then the voice says, ‘Oh, that’s right. Thanks, Des.’ I slipped on my back and ripped the shower curtain down from surprise.” He was smiling as he recounted this story, and rubbed his back as he remembered his fall. Pandora was chuckling with a hand to cover her laughter.

“How do you know someone else named Des didn’t whisper it to them in the studio?” Anton asked doubtfully, folding his arms.

“Well, when I had gotten up, I incredulously asked the radio, ‘What did you say?’. Without missing a beat, it replied, ‘I said thank you for reminding me of the name of the song, Desmond Jones. Are you deaf?’ Needless to say, I quickly threw the radio out the window and began fearing for my sanity. It only got worse when I moved into the kitchen. My microwave hates me, by the way.” Pandora’s chuckle had bubbled over into outright fits of laughter.

“Well, I can relate to fearing insanity,” Anton admitted, nodding. The story wasn’t any less odd than his own experiences. “What about you?” he asked Pandora as she was coming down, catching her breath.

“Pandora has the ability to glamour,” Cassandra informed him. “But there have been other oddities around her as well.”

“Glamour?” Anton asked. He wasn’t familiar with the term.

“Oh, I’ll tell you a story,” Pandora said. “This morning, after I had gotten up and all of that, I found I only had one outfit in my wardrobe, and it was pretty drab and dark, so I decided to go shopping. So I was just browsing outside on Lillyvale Street, just window shopping, when the clouds parted for a second and the sun came out. I was under an awning, or at least most of me was... I had one hand on my hip, and I was standing on my side. So the sun came out, and suddenly I felt this searing hot pain on my hand. I screamed, and when I saw my hand, it was... well...”

She winced as she carefully rolled back the long sleeve of Desmond’s jacket with her right hand. While the rest of her skin was relatively pale, her left hand was almost as bright as her clothes, a throbbing, sunburned red. “And that was only from overcast sunlight for a second.

“Well, people walking down the street started to gather around me to see what was wrong, but I just wanted to get out of there. I looked one man in the eye and just said, ‘Get out of my way,’ and he jumped – literally jumped - onto the road. Nearly got hit by a car, too. Created enough of a distraction to let me leave, but I quickly got to a chemist and bought some sunscreen. I say some. I bought a lot. Cass here figured out what I had done to the man to make him jump. Glamour is the ability to... influence people. Mesmerise them, I guess. I don’t know. It creeps the hell out of me.” She pulled the sleeve back over her hand and crossed her arms, shaking despite the warmth.

“What’s happened to you?” Desmond asked him.

Anton sighed wearily, and explained to them the events of his day, or the important parts at least. Pandora hugged him again when he mentioned how Mr Hicks had died. He told them, apart from seeing spirits, nothing much else strange had happened to him.

“But...” He pointed towards the door. “Those runes. I’ve never seen anything like them before, but I think I know what they mean.”

“What?” Cassandra asked. This was obviously one of the things she didn’t know.

“How?” Pandora questioned.

“I’m not sure how,” he admitted, “but they seem to make sense. To me, at least. Maybe this is one of those gift things. Is that possible?”

“Of course,” Cassandra said, giggling again. “I’m sure everyone who will show up here will have some aptitude or other.”

“Well, what does it say?” Desmond asked him.

“It says... I think it says...” He cleared his throat, pointing to each rune as he said their meaning. “‘Protection’... ‘Innocent’... ‘Contain’, but stronger than that, maybe ‘Imprison’ ... ‘Many’... ‘Evil’, or ‘Evils’ ... and ‘House’. No, not house. ‘Home’. And then they repeat again.” He scrutinised the characters over for a moment, then nodded.

“Maybe,” Cassandra said, “what you have is a gift of tongues. Being able to read, write and say things in other languages, even if you’ve never learnt them.”

“... Where did these abilities come from?” Anton asked. He was playing with the manacle again. If he could read the runes on the door, why couldn’t he read the ones on the bracelet? “I certainly don’t remember being able to read random words in different languages before.”

None of them said anything, because none of them could say. The sudden appearance of ghost, the sudden abilities, the sudden dangers, were fearsome enough as they were now. Why they were happening was a different thing altogether. It was one thing they could not answer, even all together.

“Have you seen the... ghosts?” Anton asked. Both Pandora and Desmond nodded.

“What about fires,” he went on. “You haven’t had any encounters with fires? No surly appliances trying to light up? No spontaneous combustions from being out in the sun?” Both of them shook their heads.

“Have you been having trouble remembering stuff?” Pandora asked. Anton was about to ask the exact same thing.

“Yes!” Anton said, nodding profusely. “A whole month. How about you?”

“Oh, yeah,” she replied. “I’d say it was a month, too. Weird, huh?”

“Desmond says he can’t remember either,” Cassandra said.

Anton glanced at the other man, but he was already staring intently at him. At the chain coming from his waistcoat pocket. “Sorry,” he said when he saw he had been noticed. “I was just... I thought I could hear something.”

“It’s just an old pocket watch,” Anton told him, producing it from his pocket. It shone in the now-violet gaslight, the crescent moon and stars on the lid catching the light just so. The small semicircular window displayed the slow moving cogs of the watch.

Desmond’s eyes seemed to widen when he actually saw the thing, with interest and with surprise. “No, I don’t think it is. At least, I don’t think it’s just an old pocket watch. May I?”

Anton’s hand, reflexively, clutched around the watch. He had almost broken it once today, and now an almost complete stranger was asking for it.

He felt a light touch on his arm, and turned to see Cassandra looking up at him. Her big grey eyes told him all he needed to know. She hadn’t been wrong yet. He nodded.

“Here,” he said, holding it out for Desmond. The man in red cupped his hands, and accepted it graciously. “But be careful with it,” Anton added. “It’s very precious. To me.”

“Don’t worry,” Desmond reassured him, “I think I understand its importance.” Anton nearly shuddered with the exactness that Cassandra had predicted their words.

Desmond turned the pocket watch over in his hands, feeling every groove, tapping the glass window on the back. He flicked it open – a little less carefully than Anton himself would have, causing him to wince a little – to see its face, and watched the second hand tick slowly for a moment. All the while, his face had an intrigued and... confused look on it. Like something wasn’t quite right. Nothing was quite right anymore, in Anton’s honest opinion.

“It’s strange,” he said quietly. “It looks like a pocket watch, but it thinks like... like something different. Something bigger.” He looked up at Anton. “You haven’t hid anything in here, have you? A mobile phone, or a USB or something?”

Anton shook his head. “I wouldn’t even know how I would go about doing that. It’s just a pocket watch. That’s all it’s ever been.” But... What if there was something in his missing month that had changed that? What if there was something beyond that missing month, memories lost that he didn’t even realise were gone? If the pocket watch could be something else, then maybe so could he. That scared him more than the ghosts burning down buildings, and knowing what will come next, and talking microwaves, and sunlight causing severe burns in seconds.

Desmond held the pocket watch to his ear with his right hand, and shut his eyes. “I wonder...” He lifted his left hand to the watch’s crown, and began to turn it slowly.

“Hey, you’ll screw up the-” Anton started, but another touch from Cassandra stopped him. Something was happening.

“What do you hear?” Pandora asked.

“Before, it was quiet,” Desmond told them, still slowly turning the crown, the winding mechanism clicking as he did. “But I think it got louder when I turned it. No, it’s gotten quieter again.” He tried turning it the other way. “That’s better...”

Anton couldn’t help thinking of the old heist movie cliche, where the thief takes out a doctor’s stethoscope, holds it to the safe and tries to crack it, listening for the small click at the right number in the combination. If Cassandra was right – and he had a feeling that she would be right a lot – then that was exactly what he was doing.

“Almost there...” he said between clicks. Anton found he was holding his breath, and quickly exhaled.

Desmond stopped, and peeked an eye open. “Did it-”

He couldn’t finish his sentence. The moon and the stars on the watch had begun to glow, pulsing not with reflected gaslight, but their own internal, silver light. They only throbbed slowly at first, but soon they gained speed.

“Look!” Cassandra said, pointing.

They all turned around to see the runes on the cog-door beginning to glow with the same silvery light as the watch, and they too were pulsing in the same beat.

“You did it!” Pandora squealed happily, and she threw her arms around Desmond. He hugged her back, the watch still in his hand. Then they pulled apart, Pandora looking away and scratching her cheek, Desmond clearing his throat and crossing his arms.

He then realised he still had the watch in his hand, and handed it back to Anton. Anton’s eyes darted from the watch to the door very quickly, perplexed and a little worried.

The pulse had become so fast now that the spaces between were nearly indistinguishable. When this happened, the crisscrossing line pattern in the centre of the door began to be traced with light, and when the whole web was illuminated, the rumbling began.

The gas lamps lining the room – and when Anton turned around, the ones lining the whole corridor behind them – began to waver and fade, and the whole room seemed to shake. The only light left was that of the door, and that of the pocket watch. The four stood together, shadows dancing across their faces, watching awestruck at what was to happen next.

There was a heavy, hollow boom from somewhere behind the door, and it began to roll aside slowly, to the left. For the first few moments, it did so smoothly and quietly. When it reached the second tooth, the one marked ‘Evils’, a high-pitched, whining, scraping noise pierced the air. Its smooth path became jittery and hindered, but the door rolled on. Either this door hasn’t been oiled for a while, Anton thought as he clamped his hands to his ears, or there’s something trying to stop it from opening.

The progress was painfully slow, the sound painfully loud, and it crescendoed as sparks began to explode from behind the door, ephemeral shooting stars in the darkness. Then it was silent; the rumbling had stopped. The door was open.

All they could see beyond it was the dark. The now-open aperture gaped wide, like the maw of a hungry, toothless creature. Anton felt a cool breeze on his cheek, like distant breath. In the dark and quiet, he silently swallowed.

“Let’s go,” Cassandra whispered with childish fascination, and he felt her hand grab his again, pulling him forward. The pocket watch, in his other hand, still glowed.

And so, the little girl with the strange eyes and the knowing, the goofy IT guy with the radio that talked back, the cheery woman dressed all in orange with skin that burnt in the sun, and the bewildered reporter who could read a language not of his known world, entered through the heavy, glowing door deep beneath the mountain, into the unknown. The only way to go was forward.

Click here to read Chapter Two - Investigating a Fire

Click here to read Chapter Four - Shattered Glass and Broken Magic

Chapter Two - Investigating a Fire

2010-04-23T20:14:00.014+10:00

Chapter Two is here! Not much to report, other than Chapter Three is already coming along swimmingly (imagine that, I'm actually ahead! Perhaps I could keep this up and maybe even develop a schedule). If you are reading, remember to comment. I'd love to hear from you.

... And on that desperate note, here is Chapter 2. Enjoy!

Chapter Two – Investigating a Fire

Anton unlocked the stall door and slowly made his way out of the bathroom, clutching one hand to the wall and the other to his head as he did. He had a lot to think about, his mental health being the most important, and why everyone kept asking him about his tie being the least. In between that was whether or not he had just seen his dead boss’ ghost, whether or not there was a fire at 79 Moy Street last night, and whether or not going there would help him regain some of his missing memories. Then again, all these things could be linked back to his doubtful, probably ailing mental health.

He shut his eyes and groaned; he was thinking in zigzags and loops. He needed to think straight.

He turned to the bathroom mirror, grasping the basin beneath it. An hour ago, perhaps less, he had not even known the face that now looked back at him. He looked awful, his skin pale and his eyes bloodshot. He felt awful too, disorientated and sick. He took some deep breaths and splashed his face with water to try and refresh himself, but he knew any reprieve from what he was feeling would be fleeting. And he knew he couldn’t leave now. He had a job to do. He had to find out if the fire was real or not, even if it was just to put himself at ease. If it was real... well, how much was a promise to a dead man worth?

He stared at himself in the mirror for a long time, contemplating the answer to that question. On one hand, he felt obligated to fulfil a dead man’s last wish. On the other, he could have imagined the whole thing, and so was obligated to do nothing. No, he would not think about that now. He had to get back to work.

He left the bathroom and re-entered the office. As before, the usual noise and movement of the room had been replaced by a subdued quietness and reverence in light of the recent tragic news. Faces were sad or stony, some outright bawling and others offering comforting pats on the back or kind words. Mr Hicks had had a profound effect on the whole office.

Poppy was exactly where he had left her, still gazing sadly off at nothing and chewing on the end of her pen, his article hanging limply from her hand. Neal had disappeared, no doubt to ready Mr Hicks’ obituary for print. Anton twisted the black metal manacle around his right wrist, having forgotten it was there until he noticed it in his reflection. He couldn’t feel it on his wrist, but it felt like cool metal to his fingers. It was an oddity, one he’d have to ask someone about. Had it always been there, or was it a recent addition?

“Poppy?” he said quietly, touching her arm.

She flinched, as if brought out of a trance, looking at him as if he had just appeared there out of thin air. “Oh, Anton,” she said, still sounding distant. “I was just... it’s terribly sad, isn’t it? So sudden, too. I mean, Mr Hicks was getting on in his years, but he was still working. He certainly wasn’t just going to lie down like other people his age. Makes you think...” Her eyes finally focused on Anton. “Oh, Bucko, you look terrible. You... you should go home. Get some rest.”

“I can’t just leave, Poppy,” Anton reminded. “I have things to do. Besides, Evans would-”

“Oh, I’ll handle Evans,” Poppy said confidently. “You’re taking a personal day. Go home, sleep for twenty hours and come back tomorrow.”

Anton sighed exasperatedly. When Poppy had an idea in her head, woe to anyone who tried to sway her otherwise. “Alright,” he conceded. “But I need to ask you about something. Have you heard anything about a fire at 79-”

“Stop,” Poppy cut in, raising a finger. “That sounds like work. No work, Bucko. Rest.”

“This is important-”

“No,” she said firmly.

He sighed again, finding he couldn’t argue with her. He did need rest, and sleeping for twenty hours sounded very good at that moment. It would allow his body to repair itself, maybe even help him remember some things. And stop those hallucinations. They couldn’t be real. He felt silly for even considering they could be.

“Okay, no work. Just one thing, though.”

“Keep it short. The faster you’re out of here, the better.”

“This thing.” He held up his right arm and pointed to the black metal band. It glinted dully in the office's fluorescent lights.

“What, your wrist?” Poppy said. She was staring right at it.

“The thing on my wrist,” Anton clarified.

She just stared at him blankly. “You really are sleep deprived, aren’t you? Get out of here.”

“Can’t you see-”

“Out!” She pointed to the door, her other hand on her hip in a fist. Anton had a feeling that, if he continued to stand where he was standing, she would use it. He would get nothing out of her. Perhaps he could see Neal on his way out.

He picked up his bag and his hat and left without another word, walking down the stairs slowly, each step sending a little pain up his neck and through his head. He didn’t notice it much, though; he was still playing with the black manacle-like bracelet around his wrist. He traced his fingers around the strange engraved characters, and, though he tried, he could not pull the thing off. It was loose enough to twist, but too tight to take off. It had no seam, no hinge, and no visible release mechanism. How could he take it off? How did he get it on in the first place? And had Poppy actually not seen it, or was she just pretending to get him to leave faster? More questions, and no way to answer them. It irritated him beyond measure, not knowing.

He past the ground floor, descending another flight of stairs until he reached the door to the Morgue. The grainy ebony wood and tarnished brass doorknob spoke of the wealth of information behind it, of the ancient issues of the Apollo Sun carefully ordered and archived in rows of filing cabinets and shelves, and the stacked pillars of folders and binders balanced precariously where they didn't touch the roof. He didn’t bother to knock; anyone at the paper who needed access to a back issue was welcome to it, and he knew Neal would be too busy to answer.

As usual, the Morgue was dimly lit with only a few flickering lights, and the smell of old paper washed over Anton, the smell of age, wisdom, and history. Anton took on a kind of reverence as he entered. It seemed appropriate to him; thousands of stories told over hundreds of years, collected together under one roof, made this place special. Sacred, even.

The Apollo Sun’s archiving system was quite different from any other paper in the city. Most, if not all, had long since gone digital, which may have been logistically easier and more convenient but everyone at the Sun agreed that their system was much better. Sure, it involved having to train people in the complicated ordering system that was enforced in the Morgue, and no doubt took much longer than simply typing in a date or a keyword, but each trip to the basement was like an adventure, like a treasure hunt to find that piece of information you were looking for. And holding the actual page from the paper you were looking for, standing over it with a magnifying glass, was far more satisfying than reading a display on a screen. It could be annoying, confusing, and infuriating at times, but no-one at the Sun would change it for the world.

But with Mr Hicks gone, and Evans running things...

Anton walked down one aisle of shelves stacked with folders and took a left, towards where he knew Neal’s desk was. He was, as he had expected, hunched over it with a pen in hands, scribbling away in his messy scrawl. The surface of his desk was untidy, and several odd items stuck out to anyone glancing at it: an old oil lamp, lit and flickering, and kept far away from any papers; a bucket of water, in case the lantern tipped over, as Poppy and Anton had warned several times; a narrow china vase with a single, wilting sunflower in it; and a human skull – not real, a very good replica from an authentic mould – being used as a paperweight. Suitably odd for a man like Neal.

Anton touched his shoulder, and Neal quickly turned his head around, recoiling a little, his eyes wide with terror. Then he realised who it was, and visibly calmed, rotating his chair to face him as he slumped back down into a comfortable position. “Sorry,” he said, a little breathlessly, “I thought you might be Evans, coming to check on me or something.” He scratched at the black band around his arm absently. “What can I do for you, Bucko?”

“I just came down to say I’m going home, so I won’t be here for lunch,” Anton told him. “And to ask a few questions. Poppy has it set in her mind that I need to go home and sleep and grieve and all that, so I know get anything even vaguely work-related out of her will be like getting blood from a stone.”

Neal nodded, turning back to his work and continuing to scribble. “She can be stubborn like that,” he agreed. “Does the question involve finding something, or is it more general?”

“General,” Anton said. “Have you heard anything about a fire that occurred last night? A building at 79 Moy Street, a warehouse, burnt down late last night, didn’t touch anything around it.”

“Mhm,” Neal murmured.

“Is that ‘Mhm, I’ve heard about it,’ or ‘Mhm, go on’?” Anton asked.

“Both, really,” Neal answered. “Yes, I heard about it. What of it?”

“It actually happened?”

“Of course. Did you think you just imagined hearing about it?”

“No, no,” Anton said, although Neal’s approximation was far too close to what he thought might be the truth for comfort. This information drastically changed his outlook on his health. Perhaps it was possible that he had seen Mr Hick’s ghost, and that he wasn’t crazy.

His second question was: “Do we have someone on that story?”

“I would assume so,” Neal replied, “but I don’t know for sure. I mean, a building doesn’t just burn down in the middle of the city, and not contained like that either. It didn’t even lick any other building around it. Weird, huh?”

“I’ve heard weirder,” Anton said, still anxiously turning the manacle over and over again.

“Yeah, me too, but still,” Neal muttered, flipping over the page he was writing on. He froze. “Please don’t tell Poppy I’m telling you this stuff,” he said. “If she knew that I knew what she told you and that I helped you anyway, she would... well, she’d have my head.”

“Of course I won’t. She’d have my head just as soon.” They both laughed, the sound echoing down the aisle, then the silence returned. It would have been more amusing had it not been so true.

“Is that all you wanted to ask me?” Neal questioned after a little while.

“There was one more thing,” Anton said, nodding and holding out his wrist. “What do you see?”

Neal's eyes scrutinised his position for a few moments. “I see my friend holding out his arm like he’s pretending to be an elephant,” the obituary writer said eventually. “What should I be seeing?”

“Nothing,” Anton said, dropping his arm back down and leaning against the side of the desk, staring blankly. Two for two. He was glad and worried at the same time: glad because he wouldn’t be committed to a sanatorium, worried because this opened up a whole new can of worms and a whole new list of questions. He was feeling a bit faint.

Neal obviously noticed what little colour remaining in his face draining away. “What’s wrong?” he asked concernedly. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Anton snapped his head around to look at him. That had to be just a poor choice of words. Coincidence. He plastered a smile on his face, then said, “Maybe Poppy is right. I’m not feeling so good, to be honest. I better get going.”

“I think that’d be best,” Neal said. “I don’t think anyone would thank you if you upchucked down here.”

They laughed again, and there was another silence. Neither of them spoke for a time, but both of them knew what the other was thinking about.

“You’ll be okay, right?” Anton asked, gesturing to Neal’s armband. Mr Hick’s death had seemed to really shake him. Perhaps it was partly that his biography would never be finished, and that his story was gone forever.

Neal nodded profusely. “I was just a little shocked. But this,” he picked up the copy of Evans’ obituary, “has reignited something in me. He’s just written the famous and the flashy things Mr Hicks did. There are so many smaller and more important things he’s left out, and some things are just plain wrong. But I don’t know how much I should change. If I should change it...”

Anton didn’t know what to say. Lots of things would change at the Sun now, because Evans could find a way to dispatch anyone that displeased him. And jobs at papers and magazines were hard to come by. He just patted Neal on the back, said goodbye and turned to leave.

But as he did, he heard Neal yelp, and his chair screech back. Anton turned quickly in time to see the oil lantern’s flame burning brighter and higher than he knew was possible, engulfing the metal surrounding it. Fire licked at the desk, the wall, at the papers nearby.

Out of the corner of his eye, Anton swore he saw a hand reaching through the wall into the lantern’s flame, drawing it out and making it bigger. The hand was aflame, burning with ugly black smoke that made Anton cough just glancing at it. Then it pulled back through the wall, leaving a streak of what looked like ash. Gone.

Neal was still dancing around, once again looking terrified, and standing very far away from the fire. That was probably a wise course of action for any other location than a basement filled with dry paper and wooden shelves. Anton darted forward, grabbed the water bucket and upturned it on the lantern, spilling water over it and causing it to steam. Most of it missed the papers on the desk. The copy of the obituary, however, was soaked.

“Thanks,” Neal said, breathing deeply. He moved forward and picked up the page by the corner, letting the excess water drip off. “I don’t know what might have happened if you hadn’t...” He trailed off, looking at the ink running down the page.

Anton just stared at where he had seen the hand silently. Had he seen it? The black mark was still there, but it was close enough to the lantern to have come from it’s flame. Was he ready to accept what he thought were delusions as real? Was this some kind of sign?

Instead, he said, “I knew that would happen someday. I told you keeping fire near paper was a disaster waiting to happen. And that thing was an antique. It was bound to break eventually.”

Neal looked sadly at the obituary before placing it down again and gingerly picking up the bucket. Underneath it was the twisted metal shape of what was once the lantern melted into a flat, roughly circular glob. “Wow,” he said, holding it up to one of the lightbulbs lining the basement roof. “Must have been pretty hot. Okay, I’ve learnt my lesson. No more fire. Especially not down here. Eh, Bucko...? Anton?”

Anton looked worriedly at what was once the lantern; the simple oil inside it should not have burnt hot enough to melt it so completely. “I... I should go.”

“Yeah, go get some sleep,” Neal said. “I’ll clean this up. See you to-”

Anton was already gone.

He walked swiftly up the stairs, pulling himslef with the railing, and rushed out of the Apollo Sun building, not looking back at the golden sun statue as he turned towards home. The pain in his head took a back seat to the mad thoughts swirling around at the fore.

It all revolved around fire. ‘Last thing I remember was the smell of smoke, and then...’ That was what Mr Hicks had said to him. His house had burnt down, and so had 79 Moy Street, and whatever was inside there. The lantern, and the hand through the wall touching it. Smoke. Light. Flames. Anton was sweating just thinking about it.

The streets still seemed oddly busy, despite it being the middle of the day when most people were supposed to be working. Temmarin had an impressive population for a landlocked city, but not large enough to have the buildings and the streets packed constantly. As far as he knew, there were no public holidays on today, and no events or parades that might draw people out. It was definitely very strange. It made him slightly uneasy, although that just piled up on top of all the other unpleasant feelings he was experiencing at that moment.

He stopped at a street crossing and pressed the button; the little man was red. Cars were rushing past, trying to get to their destinations as quickly as possible. Yellow taxis, convertibles, four-wheel drives, vintage cars, all sorts were zooming by. Anton just stared across the road, lost in his own thoughts.

He only dimly noticed a boy, dressed in clothes not from any era he recognised and holding a shiny, round red balloon in his little hand, coming the other way. He walked with a little limp, and there didn’t seem to be any adult with him. He just ambled on down the street, completely unnoticed by any of the city’s denizens.

The little man still glowed red, and the little boy continued to walk forward. When he got to the curb, he stopped, looked both ways into the traffic, and then went on, his balloon bobbing after him. It was then that Anton snapped from his thoughts and saw the scene for what it was; a boy was walking into busy traffic, and there was no-one there to stop him. He called out, but the sound was swallowed up by the roar of motors, the honk of horns, and the combined city sounds that permeated one’s hearing while out on the street. People looked at him, but the boy simply limped onward. He was stepping in front of a black station wagon...

And then he was gone. No, gone was the wrong word; Anton couldn’t see him anymore, which sounded like exactly the same thing, but there was a difference. He couldn’t see the boy anymore, but he could see his balloon and it’s string sticking out from the top of the station wagon, till bobbing as if it were being pulled behind. The car rushed on by, and Anton caught a glimpse of the boy, still limping forward, completely untouched. Another car that should have sent him flying drove on by, and the balloon still pulled forward. They were going through the boy. He was intangible. They couldn’t see him, and it seemed he couldn’t see them, or just didn’t care. He just kept on going.

A ghost, Anton thought. Another one. This was too vivid, too real, too specific, to be a hallucination.

Suddenly, the reason why there were so many people out and about – or why there seemed to be more people about – hit him like the cars should have hit the boy: they were dead. They weren’t really there at all to anyone else except him. Ghosts, hundreds of them, thousands, were walking the streets, and no-one could see them except him. It gave him chills.

The little boy made it across the road, not even glancing at the cars moving through him, and stepped up onto the curb next to Anton. He stopped his hobbling gait for a moment, turned to look directly into his eyes, and gave him a little smile. Anton’s eyes widened, and he felt goosebumps ripple all over his body. Then the boy turned back and walked forward again, pulling his red balloon with him.

As he left, Anton saw the reason for his limp: a chunk of his left leg was missing. He dimly thought that was probably how he died, and that the reason for his strange clothes was that he had died a long time ago.

The little man turned green, and the beeping set the rhythm for his feet. He was running straight home, locking the door, and not coming out until he had gathered some form of composure and calm. But what if they could get inside his apartment?

Others looked at him oddly, bolting down the street as fast as he could, and it scared him that some, possibly most, of them might not even physically be there. He stepped on some toes and knocked one man down in his rush, not bothering to apologize or help them up – after this morning’s experience, he didn’t want another surly person chastising him for not looking where he was going and wasting precious running-to-a-safe-place time.

He sprinted across Alabaster Drive and down Fletcher Avenue. He burst into the apartment building, not stopping to talk to the doorman, and jabbed the button of the elevator repeatedly until it came, then threw himself inside and slammed the doors shut. He leant into the corner, slid down a little, and shut his eyes. He was out of breath, not to mention at the end of his tether.

“What floor, sir?”

“Four,” Anton replied. But wait: there was no elevator operator in his building. There had been no elevator operator in his building for seventy years. His eyes flew open.

A short man in a red velvet uniform, complete with hat, stood in the corner of the elevator, facing the buttons. He hovered his finger over the ‘4’ button, and went to press it, but his finger went right through. He turned to face Anton. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said sadly, “I’m afraid you’ll have to do it today.”

It was then that Anton realised he wasn’t short. He was squashed. He felt bile come up in his throat.

He threw the doors open and ran to the stairs, jumping three at a time until he was at Floor 4, Apartment 4B. He quickly jammed the key in the door, turned it violently, pulled it out, leapt through the door, slammed it behind himself and leant against it, once again sliding down to the floor and shutting his eyes. No voices spoke to him, and he opened an eye to check if there was anyone around; he seemed to be alone. Finally.

After he caught his breathe, he dragged himself to his bedroom, put his hat on the rack, placed his bag carefully on the floor and dumped himself on the bed. He inch-wormed himself under the sheets, not bothering to change out of his clothes. He tried to blank his mind and go to sleep. It took him an hour before exhaustion overtook him.

---

Anton woke up slowly hours later, suitably refreshed but still a little tired, and very hungry; he hadn’t had breakfast, and he had no idea how long ago he had eaten before waking up that morning.

‘Even now you’re mind’s making things up to fill the holes,’ Mr Hicks had said to him. ‘If you want to remember, you better do something soon.’ Do something soon.

He reached into his waistcoat pocket and checked the time, finding it was 11:13, and rolled over to check the digital bedside clock to be sure. There was no light streaming through the window, so he assumed it was night. He had slept for about twelve hours, assuming it was still the day he had fallen asleep on, and he felt a lot better than he had. The head pain was gone, the weariness had melted away, and the uneasiness had noticeably diminished. His apartment was, apparently, a safe haven from wandering ghosts.

There was little doubt left in his mind anymore. Unless the waking hours he had experienced that day were some kind of bizarre fever dream – which he doubted; he had the bruises to prove it, and the clothes he wore too – or unless he was insane – and if he was considering that, he did not think he was, or at least not very far gone – there wasn’t any other plausible excuse or explanation. No, that was wrong: there wasn't any plausible excuse or explanation whatsoever. Mr Hicks, the fires, 79 Moy Street, the burning hand, the lantern, his black manacle that no-one could see, the number of people on the street, the boy with the balloon, the elevator operator... A very strong dream, some very big mental issues, or he was seeing spirits.

He sat up on his bed, and tried to sort out exactly the situation he was in. He had a month-long hole in his memory. He could see ghosts now. He had been instructed by a ghost – a ghost he knew, but a ghost nonetheless – to seek out a burnt-down warehouse downtown, but had been given no explanation as to why apart from it maybe jogging some of his memories. Further, he had a black metal manacle-like bracelet engraved with strange, unfamiliar runes that no-one but him, it seemed, could see, and try as he might he couldn’t get it off. He had so many questions he didn’t know where to begin, and no ideas for answers. Except for... 79 Moy Street.

That was his plan: he was going to investigate a fire.

Anton’s stomach, however, had other ideas, and growled loudly like an angry badger. He would eat, and then go investigate a fire.

Picking up his bag as he went, Anton moved into the kitchen and placed his laptop on the table. As he waited for a couple of pieces of bread to toast and some bacon to fry, he looked up directions to 79 Moy Street and tried to find out more about the fire itself.

Apparently, unlike Mr Hick’s house, this one was arson; police had found traces of accelerants, and convicted a pair of teenagers who had been seen in the area at the time. It didn’t explain, though, how they had managed to burn the warehouse down so completely without touching surrounding buildings, how they had broken into a presumably locked building, what was inside when it did burn down, or why the teenagers had burnt it down in the first place. But the police had enough evidence, and no-one was asking any more questions, regardless of the case’s peculiarities.

So one was – or looked like, at least – arson, while the other was an unfortunate accident after an elderly man fell asleep with a lit pipe in his mouth. That explained why no-one had tried to connect the two before, and it would have been a fitting conclusion to that story had Anton not known better.

And there was something else. Two fires which had been successful in burning down their buildings, and then there was Neal’s lantern. Anton had actually seen a hand reaching through the wall and fuelling the flames, and he suspected that, had he not been so quick in putting it out, it might have burnt down the entire Apollo Sun archives, if not the whole building. Perhaps that hand was responsible for more than melting an old lantern. That it had melted the thing into a puddle was a testament to its power. Certainly powerful enough to burn down a building as large as a warehouse.

It was clear this whole affair involved some malicious phantom, the owner of the burning hand, but the why was still unknown. Anton knew so little about this new world that had opened up to him except that ghosts were, apparently, real, and they were everywhere, but it could probably be assumed that there were some bad eggs among them. Why would one suddenly start to burn down buildings and kill an old man in the process? It didn’t add up.

There were no visible connections between Mr Hicks’ house, the downtown warehouse and the Apollo Sun building. Mr Hicks owned the Sun, so they were connected, but 79 Moy Street was... well, he knew literally nothing about it. He’d have to go down there and snoop around a bit himself, and hope that the police had cleared out and no-one was around to see him.

And why did Mr Hicks think it would jog some memories in him? It was all mixed up together, but he was still none the wiser to why or how any of this was happening. It was all a mystery to him.

A faint whiff of smoke pulled Anton from his ponderings, and he panicked for a minute until he realised it was just the bacon cooking for a little too long. The burning hand ghost had not somehow entered without him noticing to try and kill him. No ghosts could get in there, he was sure. If they could, he would probably see them; the ones he had looked at carefully didn’t seem to mind walking through people and vehicles, and had no qualms entering buildings, so why wouldn’t they stroll through his home if they could?

He still knew too little, and he would have to remedy that. An internet search only resulted in very clearly edited pictures showing transparent figures and mad stories about possessions, exorcisms and mysterious goo supposedly resulting from interaction with ghosts. None of it matched what he had seen that day. He didn’t know who to ask about this stuff, who was legitimate and who was just taking advantage. He could try talking to one of these ghosts, but he didn’t think he was quite ready for that yet. Besides, to anyone out on the street, he would look like he was talking to himself.

As he ate his bacon butty, he mused on his situation and his workings. It was like some kind of detective story, following leads, finding connections, investigating crime scenes. Anton thought most detectives didn’t get their leads from apparitions, though.

After he had finished eating, he gathered his bag again and put on his grey overcoat, armed with his directions and both a cautious apprehension and an insatiable curiosity to find out more about the fire, ghosts, and his lost memories. He was going to get some answers.

---

The journey to 79 Moy Street was surprisingly uneventful. Anton had suspected there would still be spirits out wandering the streets at night, maybe even more than there had been during the day, but he had found quite the opposite; there were none. It was nearing midnight on a work night, and things were usually quiet at this time in the city, so there weren’t any people out anyway. Seeing so many more people outside and now suddenly seeing none was a little jarring. It begged the question: where did all the ghosts go?

Apart from the occasional car or taxi rolling down the street and sporadic groups of late-night business people or bar-goers stumbling home, Anton was alone. The people he did pass were certainly alive, as they walked around obstacles instead of through them, spoke to each other, noticed him as he moved past them, and didn’t appear to be mortally injured or dressed in period clothes.

Anton nearly stopped and turned to walk straight back home, realising how ridiculous that sounded in his head, but decided, if he wanted to get any answers that night, he would have to ignore what he would usually concieve as foolishness and just do it. A voice in the back of his head - his common sense - nagged to turn back. It was an effort not to listen to it.

As he moved into the downtown district, the number of late night quick-marts and bars became fewer and the number of skyscrapers, offices and high-priced shops became greater. Most of them were closed, and the only illumination came from the streetlights, stark blue-white light shining down on the glistening footpath. Eventually, it seemed, he was the only one left awake in the city.

He had no fear of muggers or murderers; Temmarin simply wasn’t that sort of city. He couldn’t say why, but crime rates were very low, even downtown. It was as if the whole city shut down after midnight, and there was no curfew enforced either. Regardless, whatever the police were doing to keep pickpockets and thugs away from dark alleys at night, they should keep doing it.

Moy Street came off Main Street, which cut the city in half and eventually led to Mount Temmar, and the warehouse was at the very far edge of the central business district. It was quite a walk from Anton’s apartment building, but relatively easy to find. He felt it getting colder, saw his breath turn to mist in front of him, and was glad that he had brought his overcoat, stuffing his hands into his pockets. He had wondered for a second before leaving if he should wear his hat again, but decided against it. It would have been too close to dressing up as a detective.

He counted the numbers as he drew nearer to the corner of the block. 71... 73... 75... 77...

When he got to the corner, Anton’s eyes were on the ground. He could see ash on the sidewalk, and could smell smoke. Slowly, he lifted his eyes.

The whole corner of the block was a wasteland; except for small mounds of black ash on top of the thick layer that was spread across the whole space, it was completely flat. The smell of smoke was overwhelming, and some places still slowly wafted in thin grey streaks in the air. As he had heard, the ash stopped in clean cut lines where it met the surrounding buildings, and there were no scorch marks on the tall walls that bordered the lot. There was no hint, no sign, of what used to stand there. 79 Moy Street, as far as anyone besides Anton was concerned, did not exist anymore.

Anton moved to the street corner to stand beneath a lamppost, within a pool of light. He glimpsed tracks in the ash, the heavy boot prints of firemen, the trails of policemen, and other footsteps that cut through and zigzagged whose owners he couldn’t imagine. Because it was dark, he couldn’t see all the way to the opposite corner of the burnt lot, but... For moment, he had thought he had seen some movement. He stared towards the spot for a few minutes, hopeful and slightly scared, but saw nothing. He must have imagined it. Or perhaps it was a ghost. Anton nearly laughed at how suddenly that thought had become commonplace.

A frown developed on the reporter’s face, however; the place didn’t make him remember anything. He felt no jolt, no spark, no tickle, no sudden filling of the hole in his memory. He had thought there would be something left, even if it was just a charred skeleton of a building and a few blackened objects, but there was nothing standing. The fire had devoured everything, and spat out massive amounts of smoke and ash. He couldn’t learn what the warehouse had contained, nor many of the answers he needed to his myriad of questions. He had walked all that way for nothing.

It had been sitting there for a day, perhaps longer, and it still smoked. The warehouse had been made of bricks and cement, and he knew they didn’t burn down so completely so easily. Those teenagers must have used some very strong accelerants, or it had been the burning-hand ghost. But, he had to admit, there was little proof that it had had a hand in it either, unless the absence of any other spirits was proof. But the same could be said for the whole city...

It was a dead end. Mr Hicks had been wrong. It was time to go home.

The doubt that had almost disappeared began to grow anew in him, and the voice of common sense pushed it's way back to the front of his mind. Maybe it had just been a... a momentary lapse in sanity. The ghosts were gone. He must have heard about the warehouse fire some other way and just imagined Mr Hicks’ ghost had told him. And he must have drunk a lot to forget that much, even if he had never really drank...

He turned to go, but as he stepped out of the lamppost’s light, another thing caught his eye. Floating across his vision, ever so slowly, was what appeared to be a firefly. A tiny ball of blue-tinged light, meandering through the air without aim our purpose, leaving a faint trail of illumination that faded a few seconds after behind it. Fireflies in the middle of the city? And blue? No, it couldn’t be. It was the wrong colour, in the wrong place, and didn’t make the buzzing noise he assumed fireflies would make.

It seemed the glowing, floating... thing... had found a purpose, and was now flying away, deeper into the darkness of the burnt down lot. Anton stared at it, unmoving, as it slowly swerved and dipped towards wherever it was going, its path traced out in light. The curious part of him wanted to follow it. The serious, logical and tired part of him wanted to go home and sleep for another week or so. Common sense took the side of leaving.

The curious part won. He followed.

Each step across the lot produced a billowing cloud of ash that swirled around his legs and sent a strong smoky smell up his nostrils, but Anton wasn’t looking down. He kept his eyes firmly fixed on the little ball of light, following it almost blindly. He was careful not to step near any of the still-smoking piles of ash, but he kept his gaze forward.

When the light dipped particularly steeply, though, he caught a glimpse of where he was walking; there were other footprints going in the same direction. Three different pairs, to be exact. The first appeared to be the prints of a pair of sneakers, sinking deep into the ash and moving in a straight line. The second was much lighter, with only half of the foot really sinking in as if the person walked on their tiptoes. This pair wandered and waved across the first straight pair. The third pair was also light and round, like delicate slippers, but was more sporadic; at times the steps sank in deeply, as if the owner had stopped, then kept going, then stopped a few feet later. Perhaps, Anton thought, he was not the only one to be led this way.

After a while, the ball of light was joined on it’s winding path by a second, this one a pale green. They began to spiral around each other, seeming to play, occasionally bumping into each other along the way, their trails criss-crossing and making symmetrical patterns that hung in the air before fading away. They still didn’t make a sound, and their behaviour certainly confirmed that they were not bugs of any sort. What were they? Besides from a guiding light in the darkness...

He glanced back towards the streetlight to see it was now quite far away. They must be approaching the opposite corner soon. When he turned back to face forwards, he saw the lights were picking up speed. He quickened his step, but then he stopped, seeing their ultimate destination.

There were many – hundreds, possibly even thousands – of the glowing balls of light up ahead, circling and spiralling in a dome shape. They were of every colour imaginable, in many hues and shades, all mixing together and combining with the steady smoke and displaced ash in the air to give a truly magical feel to the place. Sometimes they stopped, floating close to one another, as if conversing, then went on their way, dancing with one another. It was beautiful. Not for the first time that day, Anton thought he definitely had to write this down.

But the gathering of the lights was not the only thing that made him stop. In the centre of them all, he could see a silhouette, a figure standing in awe of the flying glows around them much as Anton was. He couldn’t see them very clearly, the balls of light constantly floating past and around them, but he thought they were shorter than him, and wearing a dress, or maybe a long robe.

Another person, here on the same night as he was, surrounded by most definitely supernatural creatures. They must be able to give him some answers, Anton surmised.

He stepped forward to the edge of the dome made by the circling lights, not yet daring to step within. “Hello?” he called.

He thought he heard an echo, but it wasn’t quite the same. The figure turned around to face him.

“Hello?” he asked again. There was that echo again, but something was off about it.

It wasn’t an echo. It was the voice of a young girl. And it was coming before he spoke.

Click here to read Chapter One - A Bad Day

Click here to read Chapter Three - The Waif, the Nerd, and the Woman in Orange

Chapter One - A Bad Day

2010-03-07T12:04:00.015+11:00

Sorry for such a large gap between chapters, but I did say... Anyways, here's Chapter 1 for you to enjoy.

Chapter One – A Bad Day

A man awakened from a deep slumber, with no idea who he was, how he had got there, or what he was supposed to be doing.

He was slightly disorientated for a moment. He wiped the sleep from his eyes, blinking a few times to clear his vision. The room was dark. His brain was pounding. His head was stuck at an odd angle. And he had the inkling that he was nude beneath his sheets. In short, he was not feeling his best.

He lay there for a second, his mind blank. Then he assessed the situation. He wasn’t exactly sure why he wanted to do that, but it seemed like the correct thing to do. The natural thing. He was lying on a mattress, perhaps on a bed, with a pillow under his head and a sheet on top of his body. He could feel a quilt at his feet. Good, he thought to himself. Being in a bed was far better than waking up in a dumpster or finding himself in an alleyway.

He didn’t have any clothes on, he was sure of that now. Either he had gotten to this bed himself and disrobed, or someone else had. He wasn’t sure he liked that idea. He quickly felt his body for any scars, and was relieved to find none. So no-one had drugged him and stolen any of his organs. He rubbed his temples to try and clear his head. He ran his hands through his hair, which he found was short fuzz that covered the top of his head, and stroked his chin, which had some light stubble. Perhaps he had been asleep- or knocked out- for a few days...

His eyes had adjusted to the low light now. There was a window to his left, with sunlight shining through the edges despite the curtains being drawn. Motes of dust swirled in and out of view. So it was daylight, probably morning.

He could see, beyond the end of the bed, a desk and an office chair. It was strewn with papers, pens and other objects; the corner of a laptop could be glimpsed underneath a pile of script-covered documents. A grey satchel bag hung from the corner of the chair. They seemed vaguely familiar, but the man honestly couldn’t remember anything. His own name escaped him at the moment. That probably should have worried him a bit more, but the pain in his head was preoccupying his thoughts.

To his right there was a door beside a bookcase, open a crack. So he had probably not been kidnapped. If someone was keeping him here against his will, they either weren’t doing a very good job, or didn’t care if he left. Or they may have been other reasons, he did not know. The bookcase was packed with thick volumes of fantasy, science fiction, murder-mysteries and adventure stories. None of the titles were familiar, nor the authors.

In the corner of the room was a full length mirror, next to a black wooden coat rack. There was only one hat on it. That was either odd or important, he wasn’t sure. Near that was a wooden wardrobe that was shut tightly.

He sat up in the bed and just blinked for a few minutes. The pain went down from a harsh throbbing to a dull ache, and he figured that was as good as it was going to get without a remedy. He set himself the task of remembering, but when it seemed that he was on the verge of recalling something, it slipped away. It was like his brain was covered in oil, and when he tried to grasp a memory, it flew out of his hands. And he was afraid that if he tried too hard, he would make a spark and set the oil aflame.

I should write that down, his mind suddenly told him. Now why would he think that?

Wondering would do no good. Perhaps there would be answers in the room. He carefully got up, slowly so as to not aggravate his head again, and wrapped the sheet around himself. He waddled to the mirror to see his reflection. That would probably reawaken something.

In the mirror he saw a man with green eyes, heavily lidded and bloodshot with weariness. He saw a man with short dark hair and stubble from a few days without shaving. He saw a man rolled up in a white sheet, with a slightly tanned complexion and a body that was neither skinny nor heavily muscled; leanly muscular would best describe him. He saw a man with a tattoo, a patterned band of black, on his right upper arm. And he saw a man with a black metal bracelet, like a manacle, on his right wrist.

The man in the mirror touched the black metal bracelet which encompassed his wrist, mimicking the man looking into it. Were they the same person? He couldn’t say he recognised him, but he didn’t trust himself to recognise anyone or anything in the state he was in. He moved his arm around, and the man in the mirror copied him. That was him, apparently. Well, he could have looked worse.

He concentrated on the bracelet. It was tight around his wrist, and was cold to the touch, but he couldn’t actually feel it on his arm. That was probably the reason he hadn’t noticed it when he had woken up. His fingers met carved grooves in the metal, lines straight and curved, like letters. But he didn’t recognise them as any language he knew. Odd. Was that always there, or was it new? More questions, and no answers.

He moved over to the desk, collapsing into the chair and spinning around to face the front. There was a lamp overlooking it and, without thinking, he switched it on. Several minutes later, after the searing pain in his retinas subsided and the spots cleared, he went about ordering the papers. They appeared to be drafts of some kind, covered with pen marks in red, blue and green ink. After perusing a few pages, he found that some of them were news reports, probably for some kind of newspaper or magazine, and some were segments from some kind of novel. Had he written these?

When he had cleared the cluttered mess of papers, there were a few miscellaneous objects remaining: the laptop sat shut on the centre of the desk; a few stray ballpoint pens of various colours lay around, which he collected up and placed in the pen holder in the corner; and a silver pocket watch on a chain sat open, showing that it had stopped at one minute to midnight. The man took it in his hand, shutting it and turning it over in his hand. The lid was patterned with a crescent moon and stars, and on the back a small semicircular glass window revealed the now-immobile cogs and gears that made the watch tick. That made him wonder what time it was. He glanced over his shoulder to the digital clock on the bedside table, which informed him that it was 10:47 AM. What day was it? What month? What year?

Placing the watch back down, the man lifted the lid of the laptop and touched the pad. The screen jumped into life, showing yet another page of writing in a document. This one appeared to be set out like a play, with a name and then a line. He glimpsed the names 'Byron' and 'Charlotte' but none of them seemed familiar to him. He scrolled up to the top page, where, finally, there was an answer. In the centre of the page, it read:

‘ Dystopian’
A play by
Anton Macquarie

The man slowly mouthed the words. “Anton Macquarie,” he repeated aloud. Where had he heard that before...?

Something clicked inside his head. I am Anton Macquarie. That was his name.

He stood back up and looked in the mirror. Now he could recognise the face that smiled back. The pain in his head stabbed again, and his smile vanished as quickly as it appeared.

The hat on the coat rack caught his attention again, and he took it down. It was a grey fedora with a black ribbon, and he notices a slip of paper sticking out from the side. It read, in big, black capital letters, ‘PRESS’. He was a reporter... But people didn’t wear hats with ‘PRESS’ on them anymore. He plucked the card from the hat, and noticed some writing on the back:

Bucko,
Happy 21st, kid! Keep up the good work.
From your friends at the Sun.

That made him smile again. His nickname down at the office was ‘Bucko’. The office of the Apollo Sun. More memories were flooding back now, more connections reaffirming themselves: he was a reporter at the Apollo Sun, and... last night was his 21st Birthday party! That was why his head was pounding; he had drunken a little too much while celebrating.

He laughed out loud, feeling foolish. It was all coming back to him now. This was his room. He had woken up in his own bed. That was him in the mirror. He had written those articles and those pages. That was his desk, his pens, his laptop and his pocket watch. It was 10:47 AM, and...

He was late for work.

Anton’s hangover-induced stupor was suddenly shed in favour of an adrenaline-fuelled rush. He dropped the sheet and threw open the wardrobe, quickly dressing in a grey business shirt, charcoal pinstripe trousers and a matching waistcoat. They appeared to be the only clothes he had in there, a row of empty coathangers beside them. The only shoes he could find were his black and white wingtips he used for swing dancing classes, which he slipped on without tying the laces.

There was no time for a shower, or shaving, or brushing his teeth, instead settling for swishing around some mouthwash as he packed his bag. He slipped in his laptop, and found a folder to put the drafts on his desk in. He rummaged around in his desk drawer for his wallet, phone and notepad, and took a fistful of pens from his pen holder. He stared at the pocket watch for a few moments, contemplating whether or not to take it with him, then gathered it up, slipping it into his vest pocket and attaching the chain to the bottom button hole.

He slipped his satchel over his shoulder, and was about to leave, when the hat with the card caught his eye. It would be pretty funny if he wore it into the office this morning, a laugh with his coworkers, even if was just to draw attention away from his lateness. He flipped it off the hat rack and put it on, checking himself in the mirror and pulling it down so it sat nicely. Apart from his slightly bloodshot eyes, he looked alright. He grinned at his reflection, and then he ran out the door of his apartment.

As he waited for the elevator to get to his floor, he checked through his mind for what he could remember. He had never drank so much that he had forgotten who he was, but yet for some strange reason, he still wasn't overly worried about that fact. Seeing what he could remember seemed like a good thing to do, and if he couldn’t, well... He'd come to that when it happened. He played with a pen between his fingers as he flicked through his mind.

His name was Anton Macquarie, and he was 21 years old. He lived in apartment 4B, at 677 Fletcher Avenue, in the city of Temmarin. He worked as an investigative reporter at the Apollo Sun, one of the city’s finest newspapers. His father was Gregor Macquarie, a fairly successful writer, and his mother was Marigold Beauregar, a... a nurse. She was a nurse. But she retired a few years ago to work on her garden. That was right. Wasn’t it? Yes, of course it was. He wasn’t sure why he had doubted himself.

He exited the elevator and strode quickly through the lobby, out onto the busy city street, and began walking to work – it was within walking distance, and parking was impossible to find nearby. He listed his friends, co-workers and relatives as he tied his shoes beside the appartment building's doorway. He recalled his credit card number, his pin, and the passwords to his computer and email, amongst others, as he waited for the lights to change at the intersection of Fletcher Avenue and Alabaster Drive.

He tried to make his way through the crowds, and attempted to move swiftly, but quickly gave up to instead drift along and go with the flow when it became apparent no-one else shared his urgency. He absently thought that there were a lot more people walking today than usual as he wound the pocket watch, and set the correct time.

The watch was an antique, a present from his parents for his 18th birthday, which he kept polished and wound. It was unusual for it to have stopped; he usually kept it ticking, winding it before he went to sleep each night, but he still couldn’t remember exactly what happened last night or how he had gotten home. For all the small details he could recall, he couldn't for the life of him remember what had happened but a few hour earlier.

The crowd thinned, and with his mind, eyes and fingers preoccupied, Anton tried to make up some time by quickening his step. But, of course, not looking where one is walking on a busy city street is rarely a good idea, and it’s almost certain that one will collide with another person. Which is exactly what happened.

Anton suddenly found himself on his back, his silver pocket watch flying from his grasp. The chain attached to his waistcoat came loose, flying over and coiling around the watch like a terrified animal's tail curling protectively around its body. It seemed to move in slow motion, floating across his vision, and as it did, dread filled him; it was going to smash against the concrete footpath when it finished its arc, shards of glass exploding from its face, cogs and gears leaping for freedom. Then the uncaring footsteps of the city’s denizens, hurrying on their way to live their busy lives, would crush the pieces beyond repair, beyond recollection. It was a tragedy. Why should something so beautiful, so fragile, be destroyed in a foolish moment of distraction?

Perhaps that was a little dramatic. It seemed appropriate to Anton at the time. That watch had some interesting history, but it was important for another reason that he couldn’t quite remember...

Still, it hurtled through the air, but it did not smash as he had expected it would. It was stopped, mid-revolution, by another object. A shiny red apple, with a single bite taken out of the side, entered his vision, and the two collided. They began to fall to the ground more or less on top of Anton.

Luckily, he still had his arms outstretched; it was simply a matter of cupping his hands to gently cushion the watch’s fall. The apple fell to the ground with a small thud, rolling a few feet away.

Anton let out a relieved sigh, clutching the pocket watch to his chest. It was safe – if a little sticky from the apple – and for a second, that was all that mattered in the world.

He then realised he was lying in the middle of the sidewalk, and that he had walked into someone. He sat up to survey the damage.

His hat had flown off his head and rolled a little to his left, so he quickly grabbed it so it wouldn’t be trampled. His bag was beside him, but some of its contents had spilled out, a few stray pieces of paper fluttering about. Hopefully nothing was broken; his laptop had lived through worse, but it might have been the straw to break the camel’s back. Apart from a lump developing on the back of his head, and what he was sure would become bruises on his back, Anton felt fine. The same probably couldn’t be said for the other member of the crash.

It wasn’t that she had been hurt by their collision, it was just that she didn’t seem in a very good way in general. The woman was, simply put, a mess: her brown hair was messy and knotted, falling to obscure her face, and numerous leaves and twigs appeared to be stuck in it, in particular a rather larger branch that hung limply down beside her face; her skin was smeared with dirt, especially on her legs and knees; she was wearing a dress that looked like it was made out of the rough material of a hessian sack, and may have originally been one, altered to come down just above her knees; and now she was scrambling towards where the apple had rolled, moving like an animal desperate for food, or for prey. She snatched it up, inspecting where it had been bitten, and after rubbing it on her clothes, took a large chunk out of it. Then she turned towards Anton. He could see two eyes within the hair, glinting with accusation and anger. And... something else. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

He decided to speak first. “I’m so sorry-”

But she was having none of that. “Don’t you look where you’re going?!” she screeched, apple juice spitting from her mouth. She did not pause from her eating while she spoke. “Typical!”

“I was just apologizing-”

“And you just let a perfectly good piece of fruit just fall onto the ground!” she continued over him, cutting him off. “While you catch your precious silver thing.”

Anton did not appreciate being yelled at by a homeless lady, let alone one who insulted his watch. That watch was close to his heart, and he was not in the mood. “I was trying to say sorry, but I guess you couldn’t hear me over your insufferable shrieking,” he said dryly, picking up his papers and slipping them back into his bag. The crowd was walking around them, some looking down at them but none of them stopping to help, too busy to slow down.

She glared at him as she ate, making a noise that might have been a harrumph, then spat, “I’ve been having a horrible day!”

“Yeah, well, mine hasn’t been so great either,” he muttered sourly. He stood up, fitting his hat onto his head and making sure the pocket watch chain was attached to his waistcoat buttonhole securely. “Now, please, just get out of my way. I’m sure you’ve got your bag lady thing that you do-”

“I am not a bag lady!” the woman said, scandalised. She was standing now as well. “I just happen to be going through a tough time at the moment. I woke up on the hill...”

“Of course,” Anton said curtly. “Good luck with that.”

She just scowled at him, and stepped forward, attempting to bump into him as she walked past, but instead getting herself bumped into a turn to see Anton walk away from her. As far as he was concerned, the sooner he got away from her, the better.

Thwack. He felt the impact of something on the back of his head, and saw an apple core roll beside him from the corner of his eye. He stopped for a second, but then continued on, not giving the woman the satisfaction of making him turn. He was in a foul mood now.

The crowds thinned as he turned into Aurore Street, and finally he was at the Apollo Sun office building. One of the taller buildings on the block, it was instantly recognisable, its golden statue of a sun above its doors glinting in the overcast daylight. He gave a sigh of relief when he stood beneath it.

That relief drained away when he saw a piece of paper taped to the elevator door, reading ‘OUT OF ORDER’. He would have to walk, or more probably run, up the stairs to the eleventh floor. Things were not going very well today, he contemplated silently.

The stairwell was empty except for him, so he was left to brood, muttering under his breath to himself. His quick footsteps echoed around the stairwell, and he began to lose his breath when he finally made it. He threw open the door.

The office was, as usual, a hive of activity. Many people were hunched over desks with their computers, often with two or three people looking over their shoulders, as they made last minute changes to their articles before sending them off to print. Runners were moving swiftly around this maze, ferrying printed pages to editors to correct and chop up. Printers spaced around the room were constantly working, spitting out pages at all times, and filling the air with the smell of fresh ink and warm paper. Anton let out a second sigh of relief, and hoped that this time it would not be wasted.

“Hey, Bucko.” A short woman in a mauve cardigan, carrying a stack of papers, was walking through the crowds towards him. Her dark red hair was tied in a tight bun with a pencil stuck through the middle to keep it in place, but she still looked slightly flustered as she pushed her spectacles up her nose. Her name was Poppy Elliot, and she was a sub-editor at the Sun, one of Anton’s close friends. She was generally a spritely and cheery person, except when she was working seriously. Then... Anton could not remember. He didn’t think it was good.

She stopped a few steps before him. “What happened to you?" she asked concernedly. "It looks like you’ve just come in from a storm... in the 1920s.”

By this time, Anton was looking quite dishevelled. His hat was dented in several places, and the card in it was wonky in the ribbon, the corners creased and drooping. His shirt was rumpled, his pants wrinkled and dirty where he had climbed off the ground. He was perspiring from his run up the stairs, and he was still trying to catch his breath. The dull ache from the night before combined with the now golf ball-sized lump on the back of his head were throbbing in a syncopated beat. And, to top it all off, he was still wearing his swing wingtips and waistcoat, complete with pocket watch. This, combined with the fedora and ‘PRESS’ card, did indeed make him appear like he had stepped out of some time warp from the 1920s, where it was blowing a gale.

“I just...” he tried, but had to stop to gulp down a few more breaths before starting again. “The strangest thing happened to me this morning, and then I was late, and then I ran into some crazy homeless lady, and then I had to run up the stairs, and I couldn’t find my shoes, or any clothes, and I...” He pointed to his hat. “Ha ha. Funny, eh?”

Poppy just gave him a strange look before returning to her upbeat self. “Do you have the Estherfield article ready?” she asked, cocking her head slightly to the side. Sometimes Poppy reminded Anton of an owl, with her glasses magnifying her inquisitive gaze. It also helped that she was usually very wise when it came to matters of... well, anything, really.

“Yep,” Anton replied, rustling through his bag before producing a slightly rumpled, slightly dirty page. “Sorry about that. Crazy lady.” As if that explained everything. It earned another look from Poppy as she produced a red marker and started crossing out words, marking things to be cut and correcting spelling.

Usually, Anton knew better than to talk to Poppy while she worked, but today he needed information, namely what happened last night. He still had no memory of it, and only had a vague idea of what happened, if that. He leaned casually against a nearby desk. “So, last night was pretty crazy, wasn’t it?” he said nonchalantly.

“Why, what did you do?” she asked, not looking up from her work or missing a mark. She could multitask, it seemed.

“You know,” Anton said.

Poppy didn’t reply.

“You know,” he repeated.

No reply.

“Oh, you know...”

“Saying that does not help me know what you’re talking about, despite what you may think,” Poppy said abruptly and cuttingly. Anton remembered now why he didn’t bother her while she worked. She was mean when she worked. But he continued regardless.

“You know, my party,” he clarified.

“You had a party? And you didn’t invite me?” She sounded genuinely confused. She must be joking.

“You must be joking,” Anton said. “Don’t kid. I haven’t been having a very good day thus far...”

“I am not,” Poppy said, slashing the paper particularly violently.

“My birthday party. My 21st birthday party. My 21st birthday party that was on last night.”

“Anton, what are you talking about?” She had stopped her marking and was looking up at him. “Your party was a month ago. Unless you threw a fake party a month ago so I wouldn’t come to your real party, and I don’t think you’re canny enough to do that.”

“I said stop joking,” Anton said. He was deadly serious now. This was getting increasingly worrying.

Poppy gave him a look that told him she was serious too.

“What day is it today?” he asked her quietly.

“You work at a newspaper,” Poppy said. “You should know these things.”

But she told him, and his birthday was indeed a month ago. But that couldn’t be right. Could it? He couldn’t remember last night... but he didn’t think the gap in his memory was a whole month.

“Was I... here yesterday?” Anton asked cautiously. He was afraid of what the answer might be.

“Of course you were,” Poppy said, shaking her head and turning back to the article, glancing up a few times to assure he was okay. “Same as every day. In at seven, regular as clockwork. I was a little worried when I couldn’t find you this morning, to be honest.” She looked up to stare into nothing as she remembered. “You were wearing a purple tie. Where is your tie today, anyway? You always wear a tie.”

“I couldn’t find one,” Anton said truthfully. But he hadn’t really looked...

Ties were not the most important thing on his agenda at the moment. He had a month missing, and some details were still fuzzy. And all the while, he was sure the memories were just beyond his grasp, just around the corner, just outside of the light.

His musings were interrupted as the doors from the stairs slammed open. A tall, skinny man bustled into the room, making a beeline for Anton and Poppy. He had a single sheet of paper between his fingers, which he glanced down at continuously, his eyes widening a little with each look.

Neal Underwood was another of Anton’s work friends, one he usually shared his lunch break with. He worked downstairs, in obituaries, and also helped Anton navigate the sprawling basement archives when he needed to find old reports or articles. They jokingly referred to it as ‘the Morgue,’ which was decidedly appropriate for Neal: he had an odd obsession with death. Anton supposed it was partly the history and life stories that were uncovered when a person died, which was why he liked the obituaries. And, of course, there had to be an element of spectacle to the ways people could die. And the morbid fascination with what might come after life. For all his talk of death, though, Neal didn’t seem to fear it. He didn’t understand it, but it was interesting enough to influence his career choice.

Today, while not as dishevelled as Anton, Neal looked very disconcerted. His usually tightly-tied bowtie was hanging loosely around his neck, his top buttons undone. His dark blonde hair was flat in its usual mess of spikes. His hands were shaking a little, the paper between his fingers obviously wrinkled from the constant movement. A black band was tied around his upper arm.

“What’s wrong?” Poppy asked concernedly. “Who died?”

“Mr Hicks,” Neal said, his voice quavering.

Mr Collin Logan Hicks, Esquire, was the owner and editor-in-chief of the Apollo Sun. His family had worked for the Sun since it was a weekly town newsletter, and they developed a reputation for a high standard of journalistic integrity. Every son of Hicks followed in the footsteps of his father, becoming a reporter and rising up the ranks of the Sun. The current- or the late- Mr Hicks had only one child, and he became a doctor. He was not disappointed that his son would be the first to break their dynasty of writers, but many people who knew their family history were. Dr Hicks heard no end to it.

C. L. Hicks was not only an excellent reporter, he ran a tight ship, and was generally a good boss. In his old age he had become noticeably grumpier, but those who knew him well knew that he was an intelligent, thoughtful man who knew the newspaper medium inside out. He and his family were, arguably, the reason the Apollo Sun ever became successful. It was indeed a tragedy that he had died.

“But I’m not supposed to tell anyone until after Mr Evans has announced it,” Neal added quickly. “He should come in soon. I had to tell someone.” After a short pause, he asked, “Where’s your tie, Anton?”

Anton gave him an angry look for bringing up such a trivial question after such horrible news. Mr Hicks liked to take an interest in and check up on some of the younger reporters for the paper, himself included, and they seemed to be the only people he could stand to be civil to. He had made a lasting impression on most of the young staff at the paper. The stories he would tell them about his exploits when he was their age, the people he met, the places he went, were truly fascinating. He was writing a book about it, with the help of a biographer; now that story would never be completed.

“Why would you tell us when you were told specifically not to?” Poppy chastised. “And wearing that band. Someone’s going to-”

She was interrupted as a hush came over the office, and Mr Evans entered the room, a sombre look on his face. Tobias Evans was pointedly not known for his journalistic integrity. He didn’t care for getting the news to the people, nor for telling the stories of the city or the world. He cared about sales, and money. He twisted words, he slanted opinions, he manipulated people into saying what he wanted and, Anton hated to admit, since Evans had started working for the Sun, sales had increased. This was perhaps the sole reason he had risen to be Mr Hicks’ second-in-command, because he had certainly not got there by personal favour – to say Mr Hicks did not like Evans was like saying the universe was fairly large.

More papers getting sold was a good thing, Anton had to admit, but he did not agree with his methods. Soppy human-interest stories and celebrity news was not the way to sell newspapers, and neither was being partial to certain politicians or putting news in a positive or negative light. Anton enjoyed reading and writing fiction, he just knew when and where to do so, and a newspaper like the Apollo Sun was not the place he wanted to see it. But now, with Mr Hicks gone, it seemed there was nothing holding Evans back. Anton held no pull over what was published.

As usual, Mr Evans was immaculate in his pitch-black suit and spotless white business shirt, a pair of shining gold cufflinks visible beneath his jacket sleeves, which matched his tie and pocket handkerchief. His long nose gave one the impression of a hawk, or some other bird of prey. He walked with a confidant strut, perhaps overconfident, but rightly so; he was a very influential man now.

Behind him was a squirrel of a woman, wide-eyed and scampering on his tail, a clipboard clutched to her chest. His assistant, Miss Jean, evoked images of a petrified animal, afraid of making a wrong move lest she be snapped up by the circling eagle.

“Attention, everyone,” Evans began. “I have some sad news to report." He sighed dramatically before continuing on. "This morning... Mr Hicks’ house burnt down, and Mr Hicks was found dead in his bed. There hasn’t been a complete enquiry into the incidence yet, but I’ve been informed that it has none of the trademarks of arson, probably a freak accident. Our hearts and our thoughts go out to the Hicks family at this difficult and tragic time. But, rest assured, it is business as usual today. Keep up the good work, people. Do it for him.” He nodded, and turned to leave again, Miss Jean scurrying after him.

Anton was surprised he had kept it so brief, but it was sufficiently clichéd and cheesy, which was exactly what he expected from Evans. He knew he shouldn’t be thinking such bitter thoughts at such a sad time, but this was the icing on the cake of a horrible day. The Apollo Sun was going to shift from a golden age of morals and quality writing to a slum of sensationalism and gossip. Mr Hicks was dead. His head was still pounding. He was missing a month of his life, perhaps more. Nothing else could happen to make things any worse than they were now, of this he was sure.

The bustle of the office restarted with a more subdued air about it. The events of the morning were finally piling up on Anton, and he actually felt physically ill now. “I need to go to the bathroom,” he said. Poppy was now chewing on the end of her pen, sadly looking off into nothing. Neal was rereading the draft of the obituary Evans had written, still shaking slightly. Neither of them said anything as he left. Both of them had been inspired by Mr Hicks; Anton suspected he was training up Poppy to be his eventual successor, and he and Neal got along like a house on fire, Neal being very interested in his biography.

Anton took a stall and locked it, sitting on the seat, lid down. He put his head in his hands, pushing his palms to his temples. He had to remember. He was finding he couldn’t recall the last conversation he’d had with Mr Hicks. Or the last time he’d seen his parents. Not even the last time he’d just sat down and read a good book. He didn’t care about setting his brain alight now. He’d try as hard as he could to remember.

“That is unwise.”

Anton stopped squeezing his head. That voice was not his. But it had come from inside the stall.

Slowly, he looked up from behind his hands to see who had spoken...

And he was very surprised to see Mr Collin Logan Hicks, Esquire, standing – and appearing to be very much alive – in his toilet stall. So surprised, in fact, he yelped and jumped up on top of the toilet seat, crouching in a defensive pose.

Mr Hicks wore his usual tweed jacket and tan trousers with brown leather loafers, a striped tie hanging down his considerable girth. He wasn’t a particularly tall man, only reaching Anton’s chest when he was standing, but he more than made up for it with width. The stop of his head was bald, and the patches of hair that remained were snowy white. His voice was gravelly and gruff, probably from a lifetime of smoking on his pipe, which he could see poking from his pocket.

If he was dead, he was dealing with it very well.

Anton was speechless for a few minutes, trying to pinch himself and wake up from this nightmare, waving his hands in front of his eyes to make the hallucination disappear, and finally reaching out to try and touch him. Before he could lay a finger on him, Mr Hicks croaked, “Calm yourself down, Macquarie. Get down from there!”

Anton did as he was told, carefully sitting back down. Quietly, he asked, “Aren’t you supposed to be... dead?” A bit after, he added, “Sir?”

“I don’t know what I am anymore,” Mr Hicks muttered, taking his pipe and adding a little tobacco to the bowl from a snuff box produced from his pocket. “Last thing I remember was the smell of smoke, and then...” He shrugged, searching his pockets for a light and apparently finding none. “You don’t have a match on you, do you, Macquarie?”

Anton was only half listening, staring in awe at the man that stood before him. He had so many questions to ask him, but at the back of his mind there was doubt. He didn’t think that this was some practical joke on him – if it was, it was a cruel one – and it was possible that increased stress and grief could cause delusions. “This is not happening,” he muttered to himself. “I am imagining this. Mr Hicks is dead. He died. His house burned down.”

“That is one of the things I wanted to talk to you about,” Mr Hicks said between his pipe, which he was now chewing on unlit. “I found myself... It’s hard to describe. Floating, I suppose, is the best way to describe it. I could see things, but I couldn’t touch them. I could move without walking. I would talk, but no-one would hear me. And I could see... things. Something drew me here. And you can see me.”

“You’re dead!” Anton hissed angrily.

“Perhaps I am,” Mr Hicks mumbled, “but in my... state... I’ve been able to see things others can’t. And you can’t be a journalist for nigh on 50 years and not see patterns in things. Mine is not the only place that’s burnt down. You need to-”

“Okay,” Anton interrupted, “if I do believe you are real, and you’re really here as a... a ghost... why am I the only one who can see you?”

Mr Hicks just looked at him for a few minutes, before shrugging and taking the pipe from between his teeth. “Perhaps it has something to do with those memories you don’t have. Even now you’re mind’s making things up to fill the holes. If you want to remember, you better do something soon. By the way, where’s your tie?”

“How do you know about my memories?” Anton asked sceptically, ignoring his question. Of course, a figment of his own imagination would know such things, and that was much more plausible than the ghost of Mr Hicks standing before him.

“Like I said, I can see things now,” Mr Hicks repeated. “Now, let me tell you what I’ve found out. Two places have burned down by seemingly natural causes last night, each one only an hour or two apart. One was my house, on the outskirts of the city. The other was a building downtown, odd because it seemed to be a completely isolated fire. No other buildings surrounding it caught fire. It was a warehouse on the corner of an office block.”

“Why are you telling me these things?” Anton asked.

“I want you to investigate it,” Mr Hicks told him. “That is your job, after all. I have a feeling that these fires, and by consequence my death, were not accidents. I wouldn’t call it avenging my death, but finding out the truth would certainly allow me a happy afterlife.”

He replaced his pipe, and puffed a few clouds of smoke, frowning. “Oh dear, it would appear my time here’s running out,” he said sadly, gazing at the now-lit pipe. “The address of the warehouse is 79 Moy Street, and it’s downtown. I’m sure just being there will jog a memory or two in you.”

“How did you...?” Anton’s voice trailed off, looking at the glowing bowl of the pipe. It hadn’t been lit before.

“Keep an eye on things here for me, Macquarie,” Mr Hicks said, now ignoring his question in turn. “Don’t let Evans screw up the Apollo Sun too much. And remember, 79 Moy Street. Go there.” Now the red glow from the pipe was spreading up the pipe and onto his fingers, but he didn’t drop it. He let the light spread across his skin and intensify. “Do you promise me you’ll go there?”

Anton pushed back against the wall as Mr Hicks began to glow, turning from the red embers of the pipe to an unearthly white light. But he nodded. “Yessir,” he whispered.

Mr Hicks nodded, the light now encompassing his whole body. Anton had to look away, it was so bright. “Good,” he muttered. “Oh, and Macquarie?”

Anton looked up again, at the being of light before him, through squinted eyes.

“Keep up the good work.” Mr Hicks chuckled as his shape became insubstantial. He became light. And then he was gone.

Anton exhaled heavily, rubbing his eyes and rubbing his temples again. Today was a bad day.

Click here to read the Prologue - The Wizard on the Mountain

Click here to read Chapter Two - Investigating a Fire

Prologue - The Wizard on the Mountain

2009-12-20T13:46:00.014+11:00

Here is the first installment of 'The Grimmery'. I hope it's gripping enough to make you want more.

Prologue – The Wizard on the Mountain

Everyone in the village below called it a mountain, but, in truth, it was just a very steep, very tall hill. It didn’t reach up high enough to have its peak dusted with snow, as the other distant, purple mountains on the horizon did. Nor was it as rocky or treacherous; for the most part, it was carpeted by lush green grasses and the occasional berry bush just beginning to bare its fruit. But compared to the flat plains and ploughed fields surrounding the village, it might as well have been a mountain. It was the highest point for miles around, the lone landmark, and the natural place for a small town to pop up. It had plenty of wildlife, and edible plants in abundance. And then there was the wizard who lived atop it.

The Wizard Grimmerl, it was said, lived in a cave at the top of Mount Temmar, and there were many stories about him and his exploits. Some said he was the smartest man in the world, having read every book known to man, and several that were not. Others claimed he was the most powerful, with enough magic to rival the might of the gods themselves. The sceptics dismissed these legends as myths, and retorted that he was simply an old, smelly homeless man who just thought he was a wizard. They argued that the ‘words of wisdom’ he gave to people who visited him were the ramblings of a crazed man. 'Wherever you go, there you are' sounded profound, but what did it really mean? Most were too proud to admit they didn't know either.

But, even if the disbelievers denied his title, they could not explain away why, when floods threatened the land, their little village was untouched. Or why, when fires ravaged the countryside, their town did not burn down. The fact that the mountain continued to provide for the people while the rest of the land withered and died in drought had to be the intervention of the Wizard; there was simply no other explanation for it. He was protecting their town. He must be.

The motley crew making their way up the ‘mountain’ had seen much taller in their travels. They had forded rivers, spelunked caves, crossed oceans and walked the earth, on the folklore that the villagers found so trivial. To the townspeople, even to those who did believe him to be a powerful Wizard, he was still just a man who lived on the hill. To the mismatched group who had arrived in the middle of the night before, though, he was hope. There were strange things happening, things that not everyone could see, and they hoped the wisdom and might of the great Grimmerl would give some insight, some clues, into what was going on. At this point, anything would be helpful.

And if he was a dirty old man living on a hill, then they would have come all that way for virtually nothing. They might find the reason why the town lived while its surrounds died, but that was hardly fulfilling compared to their ultimate mission. It all came down to hope.

Their company numbered six. In the centre of the group was a young girl. Petite and pale skinned, her platinum hair was tied behind her in an intricate braid. Her cream-coloured dress swirled around her in her brisk pace, her arm linked with the man beside her. Her eyes were covered; a pale yellow strip of cloth hid her gaze, but despite this, despite her clinging to the man, her slippered feet moved as confidently and as surely as any sighted person. To any onlooker, it would seem as if the other five were guiding a little blind girl up Mount Temmar for some reason. Probably to see the Wizard to let him restore her sight. Thinking that, they would be half right; yes, they were going to see Grimmerl, but the girl would never dream of letting someone give back her sight. Clutching the arm of the man beside her was simply a facade, to make them appear normal. Although normal would hardly be the word to describe them.

She clung to the arm of a thin, lanky man, a thin grey feather stained with black at its tip stuck jauntily in his cap. The lenses of his spectacles were ringed with strange letters that seemed to glow if glanced at at the right angle, surely a trick of the midday sun. On his other arm was a bag, filled with the large, blockish shapes and exuding the dry smell of old paper. As they walked, his mind buzzed with words and phrases as he tried to keep the scene in his mind. He knew that he would have to write it all down later. After all, their travels would make an excellent story, especially if their mission came to fruition. Even if it didn’t, that cave exploring story was really very good, with the right angle. He pushed his strange frames back up to the bridge of his nose, talking softly with the blindfolded girl as they climbed the 'mountain'.

To the girl's left was another woman, dressed in natural shades of green and brown, her bare feet making little noise on the soft grass as she skipped. Her deep brunette hair was interwoven with leafy vines, and as she continued on in her carefree gait, her hands kept busy by forming a chain of white-petalled daisies. A trefoil leaf hung in the centre of her forehead by the part in her hair, a vibrant, shiny green that almost seemed to glow in the sunlight. As her bare feet fell on the grass, one might have glimpsed the blades grow just a shade greener, or the flowers nearby open up a little further. Her fingers worked deftly at weaving the little flowers together, and she smiled and sometimes laughed at what the bespectacled man was saying. The daisies, despite being picked, seemed healthier and more alive than they ever had been as she made a loop. Her fingernails, dirt trapped beneath them, did not seem to bother her as most women's would, and her skin was streaked with soil; she didn't seem to mind. Her attire and her actions evoked images of a wild forest girl, which, again, wasn’t far from the truth.

The forest girl skipped up ahead to the man who was leading the way. He was a giant of a man, his shoulders broad with muscle, his eyes constantly shifting from shrub to bush to boulder. In his hands was a long broadsword, with a silver hilt bejewelled with blue stones. But that didn’t bring an end to his weapons: he had a knife at his belt, also spattered with sapphires at the hilt; two more swords crossed and strapped to his back, pommels comfortably placed above his shoulders; and an axe to balance the empty sheath of his chosen blade. His mail shirt chinked quietly as he walked, polished to shining in the midday sun. It might have seemed a bit odd, looking for danger on a hill inhabited by mostly harmless creatures, but he had seen some things, and had learned you could never be too careful.

There was a rustle in a nearby gooseberry bush, and he suddenly jumped at, holding his blade toward the disturbance and letting out a fierce cry, one to rouse an army ready to charge against their enemies.

The group stopped abruptly, watching as a white rabbit hopped from the bush, red juice on its whiskers. It turned it's head to the man, looking curiously at his sword, then began sniffing its tip.

The forest girl laughed uproariously, scaring the rabbit into hopping away. She placed the daisy chain on the warrior's head. He blushed slightly, then cracked a grin.

Bringing up the rear was a shorter man with several tools at his belt. He flicked a lock of dark hair out of his eyes, but it almost immediately fell back into place as he looked down into his hands. He had, clutched tightly in his left hand, a small sphere made of metal, and in his right, a miniature screwdriver he used to work on it. The ball, sized to fit perfectly into the palm of his hand, was inscribed with lines of runes, crisscrossing the surface in rings, meeting at the dark screws that kept together the six segments of metal. It didn’t look like anything out of the ordinary, perhaps a child’s toy, or a ball for a game of bowls. The man working on it hoped that it would never fall into the hands of a child, for they might unleash an untold horror onto the world. Even more untold horror than there already was.

His eyes shifted nervously from the ball to his companions. He had been entrusted with carrying it, and indeed he had been the one to design and create it, but he would never let any of them know that he was terrified of what it held. His sphere would hold, though, he was confident of that, just like all his inventions did. Well, like most of them did, at least. He absently fingered his eyebrows, or where they used to be. In this case, though, past performances could be dismissed; the metal sphere was nigh perfect, a fusion of magic and technology to create something truly amazing. He sighed a sigh of relief when he was sure all the screws were in tightly. Today was the day - hopefully - it would go on show.

Beside him was a pale man dressed all in black, his face hidden and his features obscured in the shadow of his wide-brimmed hat. His hands were stuffed in his pockets of his long coat, his neck covered by its high collar, and his ankles sheltered by his trousers tucked tightly into his high boots. He trudged on, his boots sinking heavily into the thick grass, not laughing, not even speaking, a stark contrast to the laughter and playfulness of his companions.

The wind picked up, and his hat fluttered slightly on his head, appearing to try and escape its position. The man had other ideas. His leather-clad hand, quick as a flash, shot from his coat pocket and clasped down on the crown of his head, trapping the hat from its freedom. This momentary course of evasive action drew his eyes away from where he was walking, and a small boulder hidden in the grass became acquainted rather abruptly with his boot, jarring his leg. He muttered a curse beneath his breath, thrusting his hand back into his pockets and continuing on after the others, his mood having gone from indignant to silently furious. All this worry over sunlight, all this strife, could have been avoided had they just gone up to the cave during the night. If there even was a cave. Or a Wizard, for that matter

The blind girl, the scholar, the wild woman, the warrior, the inventor and the man incognito made their way up Mount Temmar at noonday, to see a man who may or may not be the Wizard they were looking for. Their quest, based on an obscure foretelling and the probably-overemphasised stories and rumours coming out of a small, distant place, was coming to a conclusion. Perhaps a happy one, perhaps not, but a conclusion.

Finally, as they neared the top of Mount Temmar, they saw the cave. Like the maw of some enormous beast, it gaped open, round and toothless. Within there was nothing visible except inky blackness; no light fell within its bounds. A promising sign.

They shuffled inside, not thinking to announce themselves. It was pitch black within, which produced a relieved sigh from the man in black. For a moment there was a rustling and a clinking, then a rasping accompanied by a few sparks in the darkness. A few minutes later, the man with the glasses was holding a lantern, the light reflecting off his lenses and making the surrounding runes glow. The flame flickered brightly, revealing their surrounds.

The cave went much further into the hill than should have been physically possible. It was a round, earthen tunnel, with the roots of plants peaking through at points in the roof, and various mildews and moulds growing in the darkness. No bugs, however, or ground dwelling creatures to be seen. There was a damp, dank smell to the place, and the temperature had noticeably dropped compared to the warmth of the sun outside. A distant dripping could be heard echoing around further down. The only way to go was forward.

The six moved onward, led by the lantern’s illumination. The tunnel twisted and turned, declining and inclining, becoming narrower and wider as they travelled deeper into the impossible depths of Mount Temmar. They talked very little in their pool of light, silent with determination and anticipation.

After a sharp descent in one of the thinner parts of the tunnel, they found themselves in a round, earthen chamber. The lantern was now unnecessary; sprinkled around the room and clinging to the roof were several varieties of radiant bioluminescent fungi, giving off eerie green, blue and violet glows. Apart from that, the place seemed empty.

There was only stillness and silence for a few moments; none of the six dared move, and none of them dared vocalise their fears that they were at a dead end, both literally and figuratively. And still, nothing happened. The forest girl sighed heavily, shutting her eyes.

Suddenly, the earth shook. The quake created a great rumbling, causing chunks of the roof to rain down, and clouds of dust to billow from the floor. Five of the six fell to the ground; the blind girl, somehow, kept her footing. The lantern flew out of the scholar’s hand, rolling into the centre of the chamber.

“YOU DARE TO BRING LIGHT INTO MY LAIR?!” a great, booming voice demanded. There was another quake, and a chunk of earth fell from the roof, crushing the lantern beneath and extinguishing its light.

“MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” the voice laughed in menacing tones, making the ground shake again. The little girl with the blindfold still did not fall over, even when her companions struggled to right themselves again.

The voice continued with its laughing, but, they noticed, it was gradually losing its volume and magnitude. What was once a fearsome cackle to strike fear into the hearts of mortals became the thin, reedy chuckle of an amused, aged man. On the other side of the chamber, the wall rumbled, making a round section of the previously-thought solid wall fall over to reveal yet another tunnel behind it. The laughter was coming from someone inside.

He came into the natural glow of the round room: a hunched-over, elderly man was limping towards them, a gnarled wooden walking staff in his hands. His hair was grey and white, completely unkempt and streaked with what might have been dirt. His clothes were grey and ragged, patched up at the knees with mismatching material, and in place of a belt to hold up his robe, there was a length of rope tied loosely around his waist. His face looked thin and gaunt in the weak light, shadows cast over his hair-covered wilderness of a face. Two shiny black pebbles sat in the middle of it all, twinkling with mirth at the joke he had played on them.

“Gets ‘em every time,” he wheezed, limping towards them as the others got upright and brushed themselves off.

“Okay, he’s a crazy guy, let’s go,” the man with the sword said gruffly, sheathing his blade and turning to leave.

The forest girl put a hand on his shoulder to stop him. “Easy, soldier,” she said pensively, her earlier disappointment seeping away to interest in the newcomer. A slow smile spread across her face. “I think he might be the one.”

“Now,” the old man said, finally having made his way to his little audience. “Who are you? Usually all people see when they get to the end of the cave is a stone wall, but not you. Not you... Wait. Let me guess.”

He pointed a crooked finger at the blindfolded girl. While he was just opening his mouth to tell her what he thought, she said, “Blind oracle.” The old man, already speaking, said, a second after her, “Blind oracle.”

Again, he began to speak, but she jumped in just before he could. “That’s a neat trick,” she murmured, with him repeating her less than a second later.

The man was silent for a second, trying to think of something to say to trip up the child. He settled for something, but she was very good: they both said, in perfect unison, “The thirty-three thieves thought that they thrilled the throne throughout Thursday.”

The man frowned, then a grin spread across his face. “Very good,” he chuckled. The girl graced him with a small smile.

He pointed his finger at the scholar. “Book bag, glasses tooled for seeing beyond, and the physique of a squishy mage. But no wand or staff... Warlock. And the brains of the operation, if I’m not mistaken.” The man with the glasses blushed a little, and took his hat off, shrugging and nodding modestly.

He turned to the girl with the vines in her hair. “Dryad," he said without hesitation. "Definitely dryad. And you’ve maintained a connection with your tree with those clippings, especially that leaf,” he said, pointing to the one hanging in the centre of her forehead. The dryad stood proudly, giving a strong nod.

“That makes you,” the elderly man continued, swinging around to the man with the tools, who glanced up from his work, “some variety of telepath. There’s potential there, but I have a feeling that its all but useless, and before its time besides. What do you call yourself, then?”

“A technopath,” he told the man, then added, “uh, sir.” Despite his ragged appearance, the elderly man with the staff seemed to demand respect, and he exuded authority. Calling him ‘sir’ seemed natural. “Manipulation of technology with the mind. I also have a little ability with regular telekinesis, but I’m an inventor first and foremost.”

The old man nodded, then suddenly swung around to point at the man armed to his teeth. “So you’re their guard, I take it?” he asked plainly, without much interest in the answer.

“That is an insult!” the armed man said, drawing his sword. “I am a sorcerer of the highest order! You have tarnished my honour!” Hot-headed as always, he had his blade pointed at the old man’s throat.

But the dishevelled old man rolled his eyes and knocked the sword away with his staff. The soldier, not expecting this, was pushed into a 180 degree turn. “Don’t you point that thing at me!” the elderly man said, outraged.

The dryad looked the soldier in the eye seriously, and shook her head slightly. The blindfolded girl added quietly to him, “Do as he says, Natan. You do not want to compromise our position.”

Natan turned slowly around to face the old man, his face a thunderhead, his eyes narrowed. He held that gaze for a few moments- which was returned with an unimpressed stare from those two shiny black pebbles amongst the wild hair and beard- and then sheathed his sword noisily.

“And that must make you, what, a vampire?” he finished, pointing at the man in black. “I hope you’re not hungry, because I can’t cater for your type.”

“Ha,” the pale man in black laughed dryly. “That won’t be necessary.” He put a black-gloved hand down his shirt and pulled something out from beneath it: a tiny vial of crimson liquid tied to a weave of black leather around his neck.

“Ichor,” the old man said. “That’s smart. Very smart, actually. It probably wouldn’t have been the first thing I would have thought of.”

“I took a drop of this about... seven years ago,” the vampire explained. “I think I’ll be fine for food. But thanks for your consideration.” There wasn’t a shred on sincerity in his voice. “Although,” he added, his tone lighter now, with a smile displaying his pointed canines, “I do like what you’ve done with your cave. Lovely gloom, I must say-”

“Enough of this banter,” the blindfolded girl said abruptly. “We have travelled a long way to be here, Wizard Grimmerl. We have very important business.”

“Well, I expected as much,” the elderly man said. “I wouldn’t think you people would be travelling together unless there was some kind of universal, cosmic threat or somesuch. Usually, you would be in some kind of library,” he said to the scholar, “you would be frolicking in the woods,” to the dryad, “you,” he pointed at the ‘sorcerer’, “would be trying to kill him,” to the vampire, “you would be in some basement, blowing yourself up,” to the technopath, “and you, I’d expect, would be cooped up at home, never to bet let out into the dangers of the real world,” he finished, to the seeress.

“Will you listen to our story?” the dryad asked curtly, crossing her arms. That ‘frolicking’ comment was slightly offensive.

“Hold on, just let me...” He began to draw a circle in the dirt with his staff.

“So it’s true?” the bespectacled man asked, excitement entering his voice. “You really are a Wizard? You really are Grimmerl?”

“Well, of course,” Grimmerl said. “Usually old folks like me don’t have the energy to yell that loud, or make the ground shake with their infinite powers, like I just did.” He finished drawing the circle, and then hit the centre of it with the butt of his staff. A few multicoloured sparks flew from the contact, and a slight rumbling accompanied the pillar of earth that rose up about a foot, then stopped. He sat down on it.

“Actually, that reminds me.” The Wizard spun his staff, making a blur of brown in the air, before jabbing it down into the ground, which produced more sparks and a greater rumble. The chunks of debris from the earlier quakes began to shake and jump from their position, bouncing into the air. They flew through the air, back into their original spots, bonding with the walls and roof of the chamber. Even the dust flew back to its initial position, in a thin layer on the floor. The dirt that the six had gathered also flew from them. In seconds, the chamber was back in its original condition, and everyone was relatively clean.

The old man frowned. "What have I forgotten...?" He snapped his fingers, realisation replacing perplexity. Without looking, he pointed his staff over his shoulder. The scholar's lantern, still lying crushed in the centre of the chamber, began to jump and dance, and it seemed to move backwards in time; the dents and bends in the metal straightened themselves out, the spilt oil slithering back into it, and the flame it held jumped back to life. Then it leapt into the air, flying back to its owner, handle first. The man dropped his book bag and caught it with both hands, holding it far in front of himself so as not to burn his face.

“Now,” the Wizard said, holding his staff over his knees, “speak.”

“There’s something going on, outside in the real world,” Natan butted in before anyone else could talk.

“It is a little more complicated than that,” the scholar said, “but he’s basically right." He carefully placed the lantern down, pulling its shutters, and picked up the bag of books again, shouldering it delicately. "My name is Antonilus, by the way. I was the first to notice what was happening.”

“And what was happening?” Grimmerl asked impatiently. He didn’t particularly like strangers waltzing through his illusionary wards and pointing weapons at him for no good reason. Sure, it was entertaining, watching them squirm as he made the roof come down on them, but rudeness was intolerable, especially from uninvited guests.

“I’m sensitive, as a warlock, to matters of magic and spirits,” Antonilus went on. “Seeing what regular people can’t. Ghosts, impossible creatures, phantasmagoria and the like. We all can. Anyway, it was becoming more and more obvious that there was... unrest in the hidden world. Once, spirits would float harmlessly, never affecting or touching the world of mortals. That doesn’t happen anymore.

“They were all just gone one day, except for one. It... it burnt down half my town,” he finished quietly.

The Wizard’s eyes widened. “That’s quite serious,” was all he managed to say.

“It was only the beginning,” Antonilus continued. “There were more of them. All of them different. All of them aggressive. One turned Serge’s city upside down,” he indicated the inventor, who didn't even look up, continuing to work on his little metal ball. “Another possessed one of Melia’s friends and used her to fulfil its gross desires and excessive impulses,” he nodded to the dryad, who was running fingers through her hair and retying her vines. “Yet another maintained perpetual daylight on Xander’s dwelling,” he gestured to the vampire; he shuddered visibly at the memories of days without night. “And, sadly, one took the life of Natan’s fiancé.” The armed sorcerer’s face stayed as stone, not even a glimpse of sadness crossing it.

“That was when Cassandra found me,” the scholar finished.

The blindfolded girl nodded, taking up the exposition. “The Veil parted for me. It showed me that the beginning of the conclusion lay with the wizard on the mountain. It also showed me that six would arrive, and that seven would remain.”

Grimmerl put a finger to his lips, thinking for a minute. “So how did you find him?” he asked, nodding towards Antonilus.

“I investigated unusual and spontaneous occurrences,” Cassandra said. “Eventually I found a pattern: in each place one of these new, powerful spirits wreaked their havoc, there was only one sensitive person remaining among the survivors, or only one that had been affected by them. So I explained to them my theory, and convinced them to travel with me.”

“And what theory is this?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” the blindfolded girl asked, tilting her head slightly. Even though her eyes were covered, she looked directly at the Wizard. It was slightly off-putting, combined with the fact she was a child acting as the leader of this group of adults, wise beyond her years. “There’s collusion between the disappearance of restless souls and the appearance of these spirits. And they’re hunting sensitives.”

“That seems a little farfetched,” the Wizard argued dismissively.

“But you believe it, don’t you?”

“... Why would they leave one sensitive person behind?”

“To warn the others not to interfere with them, I suspect. I do not think they considered that we may band together.”

There was silence again for a few moments, then, “Go on with your story.”

“Once I had found Antonilus, and then Melia, it was obvious my theory was sound. Serge had gone a step further. Show him.”

The self-claimed ‘technopath’ looked up from his work, then stepped forward toward the seated Wizard. “This is my ball of infinite horrors,” he said quietly, slowly handing it to Grimmerl. The old man put his hands out to receive it, but it was snatched away at the last second. “Don’t drop it,” Serge added, tapping a finger to the sphere for emphasis, and then handed it to him.

Grimmerl inspected it for a while. “Well, it looks impressive,” he commented, causing Serge to beam proudly, “but... what is it?”

“Put your ear to it,” Cassandra said.

The Wizard held the metal sphere up to his ear. At first, he heard only silence. Then he caught the sound of a low roaring, like the sound of the ocean in a seashell, which slowly became louder. It became a moaning, incomprehensible as any known language, which turned into an angry raging littered with what must have been some very unsavoury expletives indeed.

“That is highly disturbing,” the Wizard said, throwing the ball back to its creator. Serge gasped loudly, quickly snatching it out of the air and clutching it protectively to his chest.

“Serge perfected a holding to contain the scourge of his city,” Cassandra informed him. “A Cell. It’s a start. If we can somehow find a way to question it, we may find out why these events are occurring, and how many more of them there are.”

“We continued to travel until our company numbered six,” Antonilus continued, “and then we systematically went about finding all known wizards that live on mountains. Some of them were fakes, others unwilling to help, others still so willing they agreed to come with us on our travels. But they weren’t who we were looking for.”

“You think your foretelling was referring to me?” Grimmerl asked sceptically, crossing his arms. “What makes you think I would help you?”

“Your concern for your hill,” Melia piped up, “and your compassion for the people that live nearby. You must be the one who protects them. You certainly wouldn’t want one of these new spirits befouling them. Besides, I suspect people don’t call you the most wise and powerful Wizard in the world for no reason.”

“Mountain,” the Wizard said absently, as if correcting people to the nature of Mount Temmar's nomenclature had become a habit. His eyes became more focused. “Even if that is true, what if I refuse? You haven’t exactly made a very good first impression.” He pointedly did not glance at Natan.

“It’s not as if you have a choice,” Xander drawled, pulling his gloved hands from his pockets and slowlt peeling them away to reveal bloodless white hands. “Every one of Cassandra’s prophecies has come true. It’s you. And if you refuse, a way will be found to... convince you.” That sounded vaguely ominous.

The elderly Wizard sat on his earthen stool and thought. He had gone into seclusion on this mountain to avoid the affairs of mortals, but it was true that his soft side had made him protect the villagers. Now there were these... spirits, these new spirits who were attacking cities and murdering sensitives with reckless abandon. He did not think he would just stand by and watch the village he had become so attached to be destroyed by them. And he was certainly the only person he knew with the knowledge to fight back against them. Was he prepared to lead these youngsters into battle with an enemy unlike any he had heard of before?

No. He had had his day, and it was time to let others take care of the world. Besides, while these young men and women may claim to be doing it for the protection of innocents, he suspected they all, in some part, wanted retribution for what had been done to them.

“I’m afraid I’ll have to-” he began to say, but the young seeress put out a hand to stop his speech about responsibility. Something was happening.

“The Veil parts now. I see.” Her voice had changed, becoming loud and commanding. She held one hand to her temple, the other in front of her with forefinger and thumb extended. Her face was blank. “I see an oath sworn with deep magic. I see seven hands resting on a book. And I see a name for that book.” A smile spread across her face, as if what she saw amused her. “It is called... the Grimmery.”

Grimmerl was dumbstruck. Then the words fell out of his mouth without thought, his ego overcoming his reason. “I’ll do it.”

There were cheers and smiles all 'round from the six, hugs and handshakes of congradulations and relief. A long-awaited conclusion; a happy ending.

“But don’t think I’m going to lead you around by the nose,” he continued over their merrymakings. “I’ll teach you, I’ll lend you my wisdom, but you’re the ones who’re going to go out there and stop these spirits, you hear?"

"Leave all the heavy lifting to us, then," Serge said with a grin. Grimmerl chuckled drily at that.

"We make our centre of operations here," he told them. "Now, when we’re making a plan, what do we do?” He clicked his fingers and pointed at Antonilus.

“Write it down?” he answered, slightly unsure.

“Correct! Come with me. We begin immediately...” He tapped his seat with his staff, and it rumbled back into the ground. He pointed towards where he had entered, and butted his staff on the ground again. An undulating ball of light appeared at its head, growing and shrinking slowly in a regular pulse, and he made his way towards the circular opening in the chamber wall. The others quickly followed.

Natan hung back, waiting for Cassandra to come pass. When she did, he took her by the shoulder and turned her around. “What was that?” he asked in a whisper. “That was not a true prophecy.”

She looked up at him, into his eyes despite hers being hidden. “It does not matter if it is a true prophecy or not,” she said quietly. “Whatever I say will come true.” With that, she turned away to follow the others, leaving him behind.

And so the Grimmery began.

---

It was dark and cold inside the Great Cell, but it was by no means empty. 10,000 awarenesses could be felt within it, none of them happy. Some were vocal with their anger, screaming constantly, or moaning in despair. Other, madder ones laughed: high-pitched screeches or low, menacing cackles. A few sang an eerie song that almost sounded cheery until the lyrics were spelled out, talking about ‘cracking bones’ and ‘spilling blood’.

Only one was silent. It spent its time plotting. Part of its plan depended on the last of the 10,001 Spirits joining them in the Grand Cell. Soon.

There was a hissssss, then a plunk from outside. Something flowed into the Great Cell, and all went quiet. Outside, the muffled sound of cheering, singing and clapping could be heard. Those miserable agents of the Grimmery were celebrating. They had finally captured every single one of the 10,001 Spirits. Their celebrations would be short lived, if things went to plan.

“What happened?” a voice asked from the darkness. It was a new voice, one that had not been heard for centuries, perhaps millennia; time was hard to measure in the dark of the Great Cell. “What happened?” it asked again, louder. “WHAT HAPPENED?!” It was a roar now, infused with bestial rage. “WE WERE UNSTOPPABLE! WE WERE INESCAPABLE! WE WERE INEVITABLE! WHAT HAPPENED?!”

“What do you think happened?” another voice hissed in reply. “We sssssshouldn’t have left any of them alive. We sssssshould have exxxxxxxpected thisssssss.”

“No,” another voice said, whispering in a child’s voice. “The plan was sound. We just did not count on them getting help from that Wizard. He ruined everything.”

“BE SILENT!” the first voice roared. “I WILL NOT BE HELD! NONE OF YOU SHOULD HAVE GIVEN UP TRYING TO GET OUT!”

“Do you think we didn’t try?” a low baritone voice whined, almost incomprehensible. “This place is as airtight and as solid as... as... as something airtight and solid.”

“It is useless,” a tearful female voice moaned. “We will never escape. We have been forsaken, to rot in the darkness we tried to thrust upon others.” It began to sob.

Other voices began to talk over each other, yelling, screaming, crying, laughing, singing, humming, even quacking. It crescendoed to a deafening cacophony, 9,999 voices speaking at once, echoing and reverberating in a terrible harmony.

“BE SILENT!”

There was silence.

“WHEN DID THIS HAPPEN? WHEN DID YOU BECOME A SCRABBLING BUNCH OF HENS?! WE ARE THE MOST POWERFUL BEINGS IN THE WORLD!”

“We’ve been beaten... beaten... beaten...,” a voice echoed.

“NO! WE HAVE NOT! NOTHING CAN CONTAIN US! WE ARE INVINCIBLE!” The scream became the roar of a monster.

“He’s right!” a proud, triumphant voice cried. “We were like gods before! Together, we can rule the world! The universe!”

“He may have a point,” a thoughtful male voice wheezed. “Before we were divided. Separated. Now we are unified. If we combine our strengths, we make be able to attempt an escape.”

“We are a legion!” seven voices said as one. “We are many!”

“My thirst must be satisfied,” a sensual female with a voice like bells chimed in. “We must break out any way we can.”

A demented cackling began, and in between its laughter it said, “Bring it on!”

Suddenly, the masses had turned from stir-crazy and depressed to determined and aggressive; affirmative murmurs, eager war-cries and animal calls filled the Great Cell. Part two of the plan.

“But this time, we do it properly. This time, we make sure no-one can stand in our way. Careful, meticulous planning is called for. This time, we kill the Grimmery.” That voice was calm and quiet, and bubbled as if it were coming from underwater.

“Revenge!” This from a voice that was generally regarded as not the most intelligent spirit in the underworld.

Regardless, it sparked more cheers. Part three. It was time to speak up.

“I have a plan.”

The Great Cell went silent. That was a voice no-one had heard in generations. Even more chilling, it souded like the voice of a regular person, rather than the strange hybrids or bizarre sounds of the other voices. Somehow, when it spoke, the Great Cell became darker. It became colder. When that voice spoke, everyone listened.

The silence continued, until the only one who could talk to that spirit who struck fear into the most fearless beings on the planet had gathered enough courage to speak.

“...What is it?” the first voice growled softly. It was no longer roaring, almost purring instead.

“I’m sure you’ll all like it,” the normal voice reassured. “It has vengeance, it has murder, it has all the trimmings. It begins with us getting out of here, and it ends with the Grimmery completely and utterly destroyed. And their book in our possession. You are right that we need to unify, and you’re right that we need to be careful. We will get our revenge, and we will be free to do as we wish. The universe will be our plaything once more.”

“What about the group that locked most of us away?” the first voice enquired carefully. “Death does not seem a fitting punishment for ones who have done so much wrong by us...”

“Oh, don’t you worry. I have something very special prepared for that Retrieval unit. Ingenious in its simplicity. Let me explain it to you...”

The empty halls of the Grimmery began to echo with the hollow laughter of 10,000 spirits emanating from the Great Cell. The silence was replaced with mirthless, confident cackling of those who knew their revenge was assured, and that it would be sweet after being imprisoned so long. The calm turned to unrest, as if things were changing now, as if a new age was dawning with the next morning. In a way, it was.

But no-one was there to hear it. No-one was there to feel it. No-one was there to stop it.

And so the Grimmery concluded.

Click here to read Chapter One - A Bad Day

Welcome

2009-12-20T12:05:00.004+11:00

Hi,

So I decided to make this blog. This is kind of new to me, so please be patient. Just working out all these settings and editings and advertisings is making my head spin.

I created this blog so I could post my original story, 'The Grimmery.' I'm also posting it on an RP forum which I frequent, but I figured that it would probably get more exposure if it had it's own place on the web, as opposed to in the dusty old 'Original Stories' section of the forum. Although how much exposure it will get is yet to be seen, I hope that people will like it. If you do like it, comment, and tell your friends.

I'll give you a little blurb: the story begins by following Anton Macquarie, a newspaper reporter, who wakes up to find he can't remember who he is. Most of the basic facts come back to him fairly quickly, but when he realises that he can see ghosts, his memories suddenly do not seem so stable. After investigating a fire downtown and finding others who have experienced the same amnesia and spirit-seeing encounters, he realises that there is more to this than meets the eye.

The story involves ghosts, supernatural races and creatures, a secret organisation, a collection of evil spirits, and many, many flashback sequences, as well as ghost-busting action and a puzzle where the pieces are the lost memories of the Grimmery...

I don't want to give too much away, but that's basically how it begins. The story will initially be from Anton's point of view, but I plan for other story arcs or chapters to be from other character's perspectives as well. I hope you like it.

Right now I'm not sure how often I'll be updating. I'd like for it to be a regular weekly or biweekly update, but sometimes that just isn't possible. I'll try to be as quick as I can, I promise.

I'll be posting the prologue shortly. Feel free to comment.

-Tamyrlin Ink-