The Society of Dread (18 page)

Skun was out there somewhere too, trying to round up his lost tribe and bring them to the Well Chamber by narrow ways that only the smoglodytes knew. Would he succeed? Theo was surprised to find himself already missing the chatter of his eager companion.

As he pressed onwards in the gloom, Theo stumbled on a battered and discarded Orpheus helmet. He had reached the spot where his own group of Orpheus officers had been attacked by the crelp. For a moment he considered putting the helmet on himself, then disregarded the idea. It hadn’t done its original wearer any good.

Tunnel twenty up ahead,
Theo thought. The fungus houses. He had often thought of visiting this section, while studying the network map in the safety of his room at Empire Hall. Now everything was horribly different.

They were heading for the scene of the attack
on Chloe’s squad.
Would there be any traces of that dreadful defeat? Would there be any trace of Chloe?
He swallowed hard and tried not to think of it.

‘At last you’re here!’ sighed an impatient voice. Lady Blessing stood out in the gloom, her silvery network suit gleaming faintly.

Theo could now see that the force was no longer pressing forwards. They had come to a halt at a wide, vaulted junction, near to the site of the old fungus farm. Great iron tanks loomed ahead in the darkness.

But in the middle of the tunnels was a sinister, living barrier. A mass of crelp were draped horribly across the passage, their tentacles festooned together to form a living wall.

In the face of this freakish sight, the Dodo’s army of beasts seemed uncertain; the rats skulked at the heels of the wolves, which peered ahead warily. The Trogontheriums bared their long teeth but could identify no real creature, no foe to attack.

‘A living wall of monsters,’ Lady Blessing said
with an air of disgust. ‘Any ideas, Candle Boy?’

Theo stepped closer. It was a sight to chill the blood. Ahead, hanging among the massed crelp tendrils, the bodies of Orpheus soldiers could be glimpsed.

‘They – they’ve made a wall – out of themselves and – and . . .’ Theo could not bring himself to mention the bodies, horribly suspended among the crelp mass. One of those couldn’t be – mustn’t be Chloe.

‘The animals can smell the death,’ Lady Blessing said. ‘They’re fearful – confused. If we don’t do something soon, we may have a stampede on our hands.’

‘A stampede?’ Theo looked around at the horde of extraordinary creatures they had brought with them. When the Dodo had been around, it had never occurred to Theo that these creatures might panic and run wild. Now, of course, things were different.

‘Yes,’ said Lady Blessing. ‘I’m afraid the dear old Dodo didn’t anticipate this nasty little trick.’

One of the keepers was whispering calming words to a great Newfoundland wolf and gently stroking its striped mane.

‘We need action,’ the keeper commented. ‘The creatures are getting jumpy without the Dodo here. They need to follow someone they consider to be their pack leader.’

‘So what shall we do?’ Theo wondered aloud. ‘I mean, who – who’s in charge?’

Lady Blessing looked down at Theo as if he were stupid.

‘Why –
you
are, Master Wickland,’ she said. ‘Head of the Society of Good Works. You outrank me. And you’re a leader of the Society of Dread. It’s time you started earning your illustrious titles.’

Theo nodded, staring blankly. He tried to appear calm, but inside, an anxiety struck him. While making plans with the Dodo and Skun, he had felt strong, like a real Candle Man, like the hero they expected him to be. But now, surrounded by the fretful animals, he doubted himself.

‘We could go back,’ Lady Blessing suggested
with the air of someone on a holiday stroll. ‘Try to find a nicer way down.’ She glanced back at the horrible wall of tendrils blocking the path. ‘We do seem to be rather stuck.’

Go back?
Theo asked himself.
But this is where I hoped to find Chloe. This is where her squad was last seen.
He didn’t want to go back.

‘What about the insect bomb?’ he asked.

‘The Dodo has taken it ahead, remember?’ Lady Blessing sighed. ‘Sorry, but
we
haven’t got one.’

Theo strained his eyes, trying to see through the murk, past his ghastly foes, down the passage beyond the fateful junction. The fungus globes in the tunnel revealed a few sinister glimpses of their foe, but only enough to spread horror, not enough to reveal useful facts. They couldn’t see to guess how thick the mass of crelp was. It was the unknown that was so frightening.

Was Chloe hanging there, somewhere in that slimy morass?

No. Theo refused to believe it. In this moment of crisis, he refused to be afraid. He would
not be beaten by the darkness and the horror.

The light will win,
he told himself.
I won’t give in to despair.

I am the Candle Man.

Theo stared at his hands. He raised them above his head and they burst into blinding light. Theo stepped forward alone. Concentrating his mind, he poured light on the tunnel ahead.

The wall of crelp began to squirm in the brightness. Tentacles began to move, unweaving themselves from each other. As Theo took another step, one of the crelp detached itself from the wall and slithered swiftly backwards, to hide behind its fellows. A stir ran through the Dodo’s army of creatures.

Theo continued forwards, concentrating on his hands and making them shine with a steady, controlled glow. They crackled with power, an energy that the crelp could sense was dangerous to them.

More crelp began to pull themselves free of the wall of tentacles, a hiss of fear spreading through
their ranks. An encouraging growl was heard from Rakhim, the Caspian Tiger, behind Theo.

I’m with you,
it seemed to say.

An excited chatter of grunts and howls broke out amongst the animal army. The Caspian Tiger stood beside Theo now; in the absence of the Dodo, the great cat was accepting Theo as its leader. Confidence seemed to surge back through the herd of creatures.

Suddenly a screeching
teratorn
swooped into action and snatched up a crelp in its beak. The other crelp began to retreat, slithering back over one another to avoid Theo’s approach. Rakhim pounced forwards and seized another crelp in its jaws. A nearby crelp tried to wrap its spiny tentacles around Rakhim’s neck, but Theo swiftly touched the tendrils with his fingers, and the whole crelp went up in a flash of green flame.

The onslaught began. In seconds, rats, wolves and Trogontheriums were tearing into the crelp with flashing, sharp teeth. Whenever the crelp tried to fight back Theo was there, his hands a
blur of lightning, filling the tunnel with stinking, burning, molten crelp slime.

‘Now we’re cooking!’ said Lady Blessing, as she followed carefully in Theo’s footsteps. ‘It’s such fun to have you on our side, Theo darling.’

The battle for Junction Sixteen was soon over. Terrified of Theo’s power, fleeing in panic, the crelp were easy targets for the Dodo’s horde. Sharp-taloned
teratorn,
savage wolves and nimble, ferocious rats soon sent them scattering, wailing, into the gloom.

Theo led the way across the junction to the passages beyond. The bodies of Orpheus officers lay here and there, among fallen eradicator weapons and torn remains of crelp.

As Theo stared at the nightmarish scene, he noticed something even more shocking. Close up, he could see that the bodies were strangely flat, their skins spread out and grotesquely floppy. In a moment of realisation, he saw what had happened to them.

Their bones had been taken.

Theo looked this way and that, a glitter of dread in his eyes. Would he see a sign, a trace of his friend?

‘What are you looking for?’ one of the men asked.

Theo did not reply.

‘We should move on,’ Lady Blessing urged.

But Theo did not want to move on. He was staring down the passage to his left, suddenly transfixed by an astonishing sight.

Walking towards him was a girl, glowing with a ghostly light.

F
ear as well as astonishment filled Theo’s eyes as he stared at the glowing figure, who was stepping over dead crelp bodies and moving towards him.

‘Chloe! You – you’re . . . you’re not dead . . . are you?’

Chloe laughed. ‘That’s a bit of a daft question, even for you!’ she replied, grinning. Her dark hair stuck outwards in an untidy shock, and she was wearing shredded rags.

Theo still stared wide-eyed.

‘But you’re glowing!’ he gasped. ‘I – I thought you might be a ghost.’

Chloe looked at her hands and frowned. ‘Of course,’ she exclaimed. ‘The fungus!’

A snort was heard from Rakhim and the big Caspian Tiger began to sniff around at
the bulky metal vats that lined the walls of the passageway.

‘We were ambushed by the crelp,’ Chloe said, turning to follow Rakhim. ‘There were too many of them to fight. We got cut off from Colonel Fairchild.’ She was no longer smiling now, her face drained and pale.

‘Suddenly I remembered where we were – near to these old fungus houses. I’ve passed them countless times in my work for the Society of Unrelenting Vigilance. This is where we grow the glow-mould that powers the fungus globes. These old iron vats made perfect hideaways that even the crelp couldn’t get into.’

Chloe pressed a code into a small panel at the side of an iron door.

‘I managed to lock a few survivors in here before I hid myself in one of the other tanks. That’s why I’m glowing. I’m covered with the spores.’

Theo’s face cracked into a grin as he saw Sergeant Crane crawl out of the tank, along with a handful of luminous Orpheus officers.

‘Might have known you’d come to rescue me, Theo,’ Crane said. ‘You’re that kind of bloke.’ He gave them both a slap on the back. ‘Chlo’ gets me into trouble, you get me out of it. Saves life from getting dull, I suppose!’ The gangling policeman rose to his full height and tried to pat the mould off his torn uniform.

‘Perhaps you’d like to explain who your friends are?’ he added with an almost comical look of bemusement.

Lady Blessing had come to see what was happening, along with two white-coated keepers, several wolves and Theo’s Quagga.

‘Ah, well,’ said Theo, an anxious look creeping over his face, ‘I hope you won’t be annoyed, but to fight Dr Pyre I’ve made an alliance with the Dodo, Lady Blessing and the entire smoglodyte race.’ He gave Chloe a hopeful smile. ‘Err . . . is that all right?’

To his surprise, Chloe nodded and strode swiftly ahead.

‘Sound war strategy,’ she said. ‘My enemy’s
enemy is my friend. Well done, Candle Man. Now let’s get on with the job, shall we?’

‘Just in time!’ Chloe said. They had reached the final approach to the Well Chamber. Emerging from a tunnel, they gazed down into a cavern with a vast, barred iron gate at the far end. To the right was a deep dark pool, fed by a snaking canal.

Trapped between the gate and the waters of the canal were the Orpheus reinforcements. Theo could see Colonel Fairchild shouting orders while his men formed a ring around him. But surrounding them was a circle of crelp, waiting, watching, slowly edging closer to the trapped men.

Theo looked on with grim fascination. The Orpheus squad had another problem. They were fully armed, eradicators primed and glowing with power. But every time the men raised a laser to target the crelp, a tentacle flashed out of the gloom to snatch away the weapon.

‘Stay calm!’ Fairchild cried, but there was
a hint of hysteria in his clipped tones.

‘Please to standing still, humans,’ requested a polite crelp voice. ‘We come – coming to harvest you now.’

One of the creatures lashed out with its tentacles, and a man on the rim of the squad was dragged, screaming, into the surrounding horde. Fortunately, it was too dark at the edges of the chamber to see what happened to him.

Rakhim nudged Theo forwards with his muzzle and gave a deep, angry growl. The animals were eager for action.

‘Can we take them?’ asked Lady Blessing, glancing towards the crelp. A small note of discomfort could be heard in her smooth tones.

‘One way to find out,’ said Chloe, taking a step nearer and producing an eradicator from under the torn folds of her black jacket.

She stopped. From across the cavern, there was a loud hiss, and a ripple of alarm surged though the crelp. Beyond the surrounded men, something was happening at the gate to the Well Chamber.

Dark shadows, like pools of ink, were slipping through the iron bars.

‘Colonel!’ shouted one of the Orpheus officers. ‘More of them!’

Fairchild went white. Even from his distant vantage point, Theo could see the terror in the nervous movements of the men.

‘Black crelp?’ wondered Lady Blessing, peering over towards the gate.

‘Smogs,’ said Theo, a gleam of excitement in his eyes. ‘I’ve seen this kind of thing before.’

The black squirming shapes squeezed through the gate, and plopped on to the chamber floor. Then they began to rise upwards, forming the shape of shadowy imps.

‘Skun’s done it,’ Theo cried. ‘He’s assembled his smog army! Now we’ve got
them
surrounded!’

Rakhim could wait no longer. With a bloodcurdling roar, the Caspian Tiger sprang forwards, followed by the wolves and Trogontheriums. Theo was almost knocked over in the tide of fur and claw that hurtled past him.

‘Do something,’ Chloe elbowed Theo. ‘Something to scare the crelp witless!’

Theo raised an arm and with all his willpower made a bolt of green light flare up from his hand to illuminate the great chamber.

In the flash of
tripudon
lightning, the crelp saw, with horrible clarity, the ferocious stampede heading their way. Bulbous eyes rose on stalks, glancing this way and that, wondering which peril to face first. Some edged towards the canal, seeking escape from the new threats.

Then it happened. The black waters of the pool began to bubble. A scaly claw scrambled for purchase on the stone edge of the pool. A fanged snout emerged from the depths.