The Mysteries of Holly Diem (Unknown Kadath Estates Book 2) (24 page)

“Someone made a real mess of things.” I pointed at the
damaged cradle, bolts crudely severed and metal struts bent during the violent
process of the telescope’s removal. “Who do you think did that?”

“Not who,” Yael said, with a wince. “What.”

“You sound like one of the damn cats.”

“Up there.” Yael ignored me, pointing at the underside
of the apex of the dome, where a small complex of rooms and a glass-fronted
office were slung. A circular stair wound about the perimeter of the
observatory, climbing the dome gently, in several revolutions. “Let’s go.”

We wandered the concrete chamber, looking for the base
of the stairs. Piles of vacuum tubes and primitive capacitors were strewn
across the tops of damaged machinery, and a number of maintenance panels were
pried open, as if a lone technician had made a valiant and ultimately futile
attempt to return the observatory to functionality. Cracks in the stone produced
a whistling tone that gave me goosebumps, each time the wind blew in from the
ocean. The sound of our footsteps echoed at unexpected intervals.

“There.” I squinted, following the line of Yael’s
pointing finger. “The stairs.”

I took her word for it.

Our path took us close by the violated steel cradle.
There were gouges in the metal and extensive warping, as if the machinery used
to extract the telescope had been attached to the cradle, for leverage or
position. The steel itself was marred and discolored due to extensive chemical
burning, and the concrete around the cradle was cracked and broken from some
enormous weight. The center of the room was flooded, for meters on every side
of the cradle, which itself sat partially beneath the waters, surrounded by
something of a pond. Yael and I made our way along the bank, which was
colonized by a scanty collection of grasses and reeds.

Stepping cautiously, I approached the edge of the
flooded area. The water was clear, gentle waves lapping at banks of corroded
machinery. I dipped a finger in the water; tasted it. Brackish, from the ocean,
below and distant.

“Seawater,” I marveled. “How is that possible?”

“The same engineers who made Sumire’s new arm, I
imagine.”

Yael picked up one of the broken stones that made up
the observatory floor, and then heaved it into the center of the flooded area.
The water was clear enough in the middle of the pond that we were able to watch
it sink for a few seconds, before it disappear into the depths.

“A tunnel, do you think? A flooded tunnel?”

“The Deep Empire could do that,” Yael said, with
grudging respect. “The Empress counts engineers among her servants, and they
have a penchant for large machinery.”

“How do you know all that?”

“I’m still in school, Preston.”

“I remembered that. I just forgot what sort of school
Carter is, that’s all.”

The interior of the observatory was far from silent,
thanks to the wind, decay, and debris. I found myself flinching and looking behind
me with regularity. It was the sort of place that art students like to film
creepy movies, the sort of place kids break into to get high and have sex – or
it would have been, anywhere but the Nameless City. Here, it was an object of
more specific and concrete terror, and for good reason.

The stairwell was surprisingly ornate, composed of
rusted wrought iron with brass and pewter detail work. On either side of the
base of the stairwell were columns of tooled metal, each engraved from top to
bottom. The lines were even and regular, machine-cut, and grotesquely vivid. There
were dozens of symbols inscribed in the metal, and I had seen each before, in
dreams I refused to recall. Yael shivered and shoved her hands in the pockets
of her windbreaker, hurrying past the posts and up the stairs, and I followed
closely.

The stairs made four complete circuits of the
observatory. The first arc was elevated four meters off the main floor and
perfectly flat, likely designed for viewing. The next two spans clung to the
walls of the observatory, terminating near the crown of the dome. The final
stair orbited the central offices like a halo, with platforms for observation.
The wrought-iron stairs were originally painted the same gleaming white as the
walls, but time and weather had removed most of it, leaving the metal beneath
notably corroded. The handrails were molded into vague organic designs, the
details lost to corrosion.

I hurried along, grateful that Yael set a brisk pace,
and tried not to think about how far we had to fall.

The first circuit gave us a fuller picture of the disarray
of the observatory. There was a flooded trough in the concrete floor between
the initial breach in the floor and the telescope cradle, as if something heavy
had rolled or been dragged across the surface, pushing aside tons of machinery
in the process.

“Someone really wanted that telescope.”

“Possibly.” Yael’s mask bobbed along with her gate. “Or
they simply hated it.”

We found the staircase to the second circuit. This one
was more of a ramp, the incline slight and noticeable primarily in the steady
burn in my calves. After making it nearly halfway around the observatory, we
found a door, heavy and wood like the one out front. I shrugged at the girl in
the bug-eyed mask, and then tried the knob. I think we were both relieved when
it didn’t budge.

The third level was incrementally steeper than the previous
stair. The ironwork was increasingly corroded, and the metal groaned and sang
in the wind, and trembled underfoot. Below us, the seawater rippled with the
wind that whistled through the observatory. I tried not to look through the
spaces in the ramp toward the distant concrete of the observatory floor.

We crested the final ramp, grateful to finish the
climb, if nothing else. A rickety catwalk connected us to the final ring, the
viewing halo, and then the safety and stability of the offices within. I
hurried, perhaps more than I should, and in my haste kicked a loose bolt,
sending it over the railing and the down to the floor. I grimaced at the
clamor.

“Preston, be careful.” Yael spoke urgently from behind
her mask. “We aren’t alone.”

“What?”

“Down there.” I glanced over the railing. There were
monsters wading out of the floodwater. “Servants of the Deep.”

Distance made details hard to make out, but I had seen
these particular monsters before – in the basement beneath Madeleine Diem’s
former home. The bipedal fish men with gills were pouring from the pool of
seawater in the observatory floor, wearing gilded ornaments and wielding
bizarre instruments of brass and unfamiliar silver metal. Some rode larger,
winged things, which stayed mercifully below the water, only the general
outline of their bulk visible.

I counted dozens, and then I tired of counting.

“Guess we aren’t going back that way.” She shrugged as
if it didn’t really bother her. “Do you think there is another exit?”

I eyed her like she was a madwoman.

“From the
roof
? Of an observatory?”

“As I recall,” Yael said thoughtfully, ignoring my
scorn, “the Visitors preferred to stay off the ground. I recall watching their
zeppelins dock to the spires of downtown Roanoke many times, particularly as a
child. What did you think the door we passed on the stairwell was for?”

It seemed ridiculous to me, but there was no point in
argument. I didn’t have any better ideas to offer.

We watched as fish-people swarmed the base of the long
stairwell. Their movements were clumsy and sluggish, as if maybe dry land was
not the ideal operating environment, but they would catch up to us eventually,
and in numbers. They emerged from the pool in legion, like spawning frogs,
trailing kelp and smelling like a fish market.

“We can’t wait here,” Yael said, starting forward.
“Let’s see if we can get a door between us and them, at least.”

We circumnavigated the final ring of the stairwell
rapidly, occasionally sneaking glances at the slow motion calamity below. From
this elevation, the fish-people emerging from the water looked like an algal
bloom, from the mottled green-grey of their scales to the intestinal pink of
their gill slits as they flared uselessly, gradually swelling to cover the
observatory floor. I couldn’t imagine that the creaking, fragile iron that we
hurried across could bear the weight of hundreds of servants of the Deep, but I
suppose there are always more where those came from. The Deep Hatcheries are
busy and sprawling.

The structure grafted to the top of the dome wasn’t
large. One-half of it was an observation chamber, complete with a wall of pre-digital
instrumentation and a pneumatic document system. Through the large glass
windows, I could see what looked like office space behind.  

There was another heavy timber door preventing access.
I tested it with a hand, and then my shoulder, but the bolt held firm. Yael pushed
past me as I readied myself for another go, grumbling as she peeled off her
mask. She produced a small velvet bag from within her windbreaker, and then
spread a roll of cloth carefully before her, meticulously maintained lock picks
laid out beneath her nimble fingers. I watched over her shoulder while she went
to work, eyes closed so she could focus. I have some experience with the art
myself, but I have to admit that I didn’t recognize half of her tools. Her
technique was equally foreign, employing a third tool along with a pick and
rake, the purpose of which was never clear to me, my wits dulled by the
aftereffects of the Azure. Regardless, she had the lock open astonishingly fast.

Yael gathered her tools, and then burst through the
door into the empty observation chamber, her image reflected in a hundred glass
dials. I followed closely behind as she moved to investigate the offices down
the hallway. When she came to an unannounced stop, I practically ran her over.
We untangled, but before I could ask, the reason for her sudden halt made
herself apparent, on the other side of an open door at the end of the hall.

“How excellent!” Madeleine Diem sat at the end of a
long conference table, clasping her hands – one mechanical, the other stolen –
in front of her décolletage. “You are very prompt in fulfilling your
commitments, Mr. Tauschen.”

I am certain that Yael meant to respond, but the knock
on the back of the head I gave her dropped her like a bag full of rocks. I put
the sap – just a nylon filled with coins, really, but it did the trick – into
an interior pocket, stepped carefully over the fallen girl, and gave Madeleine
Diem a grin designed to imply all sorts of things.

“I like to think so. Let’s talk about payment.”

***

The view from the top of the observatory was ridiculous.

I could not see the whole of the city from the glass
chamber atop the observatory that Madeleine led us to, because it is impossible
to see the whole of the Nameless City, from any perspective, save that of a
dream – and the residents of the Nameless City have forgotten how to dream. The
view from Constance’s former observatory in Iram was, however, the next best
thing.

For the first time since I arrived, I looked out on
all the various wonders and mysteries of the Nameless City, the occult
architecture and history that April had described to me breathlessly, during
the warm sleepless nights of the summer, whispered like secrets into my ear.

The elevated tracks of the transit system ran through
the city like a line of stitches, disappearing underground and reemerging at
intervals. The pillars of Iram towered above everything, delicate and fragile
near their fluted apexes, alongside a collection of aging and contemporary
skyscrapers. Crowds milled and surged across intersections below us, intent on
the commercial and recreational establishments built around the bases of the
great pillars.

Adjoining Iram and the towers of downtown, the hulking
mass of Chambers Museum sat on its haunches like a sphinx, surrounded by
exquisite gardens and visited only by schoolchildren on field trips and my
neighbors. At the very edge of Iram’s suburbs, on parallel tracks of meteoric
iron, Black Trains made nightly arrivals at Bierce Station, their shrieking
whistle echoing through the core of the city. No one waited in the cavernous
halls of the Station, and no one was ever seen to disembark.

Innsmouth Harbor was a massive horseshoe, rotting
docks and moorings clustered behind a breakwater constructed from raw stones of
impossible size. Just beneath the sluggish waters of the bay, the city beneath
the sea lurked, waves skimming over Empire of the Deep. The black water was
thick with the city’s refuse, as were the shores and beaches. A series of
canals deposited the sad remains of the Skai into the harbor. The ships docked
at the old quays below the halogen lamps of the container port flew ragged black
sails.

 The industrial ridge of Sarnath loomed above the
harbor, choked with chimneys and cooling towers. Across the confined Skai, the
flat grey of the Empty District, hardly visible during the day, but obvious at
night, a patch of darkness in the urban lightshow. The purple crests of the
Moon Trees in the Enchanted Forest poked out above the abandoned tenements.
Traffic forced its way through the narrow old streets of Palsey and
Thoroughbridge, near Iram, while gardeners maintained the vast guarded cemetery
of Wenth near the inland Lake of Yath, onyx walls in stark contrast to the
slate grey cloud front. To the north, I could just make out the misty reaches
of the Essex Coast, lashed by the leaden Southern Sea, where stately old
vacation homes and mildewed fishing villages maintained an uneasy truce with
the local Selkie population.