The Society of Dread (7 page)

‘Over the years, the head of the Society of Good Works has had his own private means of entering the network,’ Lord Dove said. ‘This will take you straight down to the bottom.’

Lord Dove pressed a button and the door slid open.

‘You could be in the heart of the network in no time at all. Find out what you can, then come back. You might even get lucky and find . . . find someone.’ Lord Dove did not name his son again, but Theo could see the worry in the man’s eyes.

‘Would – would you be coming too?’ Theo eyed the machine doubtfully. It reminded him of the hated Mercy Tube.

‘The mechanism will only take one,’ Lord Dove said, scrutinising the capsule. ‘It is designed for secrecy and speed. You have the diabolical powers – I do not!’

‘Did Dr Saint build it?’ Theo asked.

‘No, a far more arrogant mind conceived it. A mind that could imagine needing no other help but his own – Erasmus Fontaine, the original Philanthropist. Now you are the head of the Society, his inventions are yours.’

Theo’s mind was racing. Was he doing the right thing?

‘Take a careful look at the diagram,’ Lord Dove said, pointing at a yellowing chart on the wall. It was covered with a spidery collection of ink lines. Theo was intrigued to discover another rendering of the mysterious realm beneath his feet.

‘Drawn by the Philanthropist himself. Now pay attention, this whole mission will fail miserably if you make a wrong step.’

Lord Dove said this as if making a wrong step would probably come naturally to Theo.

Theo scoured the map with eager eyes.

‘Don’t get out at Level One – it’s not deep enough. That’s where all the basic secret passages are. You probably know a few already.’

Theo nodded. He had used those several times – usually with Chloe as a guide.

‘Level Two is the next. Again: avoid. Smelly canals and blue mosquitoes. These tunnels are pretty wrecked now, cracked and flooded.’ Lord Dove gave Theo a cold look. All of that damage was a result of Theo fighting against the plans of the old leader, Dr Saint.

Now Lord Dove pointed at a large oval shape in the next section down.

‘Level Three. This is where you get out. The Well Chamber is here, the centre of all the alchemical technology. Communications are best here – there are decent tunnels, fungus globes. You’ll be close to where those survivors might be.’ His voice quavered for a moment.

Theo frowned, as the scribbled lines became more vague below Level Three.

‘What’s down here?’ asked Theo. ‘Level Four? It’s all pretty unclear on the map I’ve got.’

‘Ignore those levels. They’re an environmental hazard; ash pits, heaps of waste. I wouldn’t go there if I was paid. And Level Five is empty caverns as far as I know. Probably overrun with foul creatures. Avoid like the plague.’

Theo’s heart was pounding. He moved over to the shining silver tube that seemed to be beckoning him inside.

‘How does this work?’ he asked, stalling for time. He stepped gingerly on to the threshold of the machine.

‘It’s weight activated!’ cried Lord Dove. A transparent doorway shot across the opening, knocking Theo into the capsule. A light flashed. A thrumming noise started.

‘Stop it!’ cried Theo. ‘I – haven’t decided yet!’

‘I can’t stop it!’ Lord Dove shouted. ‘Go to Level Three!’

Theo grimaced. Three was his unlucky number. He pressed the button, but a light immediately
flashed for Level Four.

‘It – it’s saying Level Four!’ Theo shouted. An unnerving clicking was going on above his head.

‘Not Four!’ shrieked Lord Dove. ‘Don’t go to Level Four – or Five!’

A red panel lit up. There was a sudden explosion and Theo was rocketed down in the capsule, far below the earth.

T
he capsule did not stop at Level Three. Theo studied the controls with growing alarm. The number four glowed obstinately instead. With an ear-splitting ratcheting sound, the capsule was redirected. It sped down a new tube, deeper into the heart of the network.

The Well Chamber must be more badly damaged than Lord Dove realised. The capsule can’t stop there. Some sort of emergency override system must have kicked in. So what happens now?

The capsule reached Level Four. And passed it.

Theo gulped.
We’re heading straight down to Level Five.

He gave up being brave and closed his eyes.
My powers,
he told himself,
my powers will look after me. Please.

Like a torpedo, the capsule shot downwards
through the darkness. A sickening plunging sensation was followed by a loud klaxon blast and then a great whoosh of air. Buffeted by powerful turbulence outside, the silver tube slowed down, then stopped with a jolt. Theo’s stomach felt like it had turned right over.

Silence followed, except for the low clicking of the machinery, now at rest. Theo waited for something disastrous to happen. Nothing did. Instead, the door slid open, and cool air flowed in. A sense of relief flooded over him as he stepped out into a gleaming silver control room, a carbon copy of the one in the ice house.

I’ve landed in one piece,
Theo thought, trying to stay calm.
I might be on the wrong level but at least I can start looking for my friends.
He opened the door of the terminus and peered outside. A huge dark cavern stretched before him, lit here and there by patches of bioluminescent fungus.

Shadowy fears threatened to overwhelm Theo’s mind.

Don’t panic,
he told himself.
You are the Candle
Man. The Candle Man will find a way in the darkness.

Theo sat down on some rocks and unfolded his precious network map. He studied it intently, but tiny lights were dancing before his eyes. Theo blinked and shook his head, but the lights did not go away.

He stood up and stared around him. A cold chill went down his spine. Slithering forms crept and bubbled all around him, barely-glimpsed bodies reflecting flashes of light from the glowing fungus.

Theo was surrounded by the creatures that had taken Chloe.

He peered at them with fascination. Any normal person might have been paralysed by terror. But Theo had not been brought up as a normal person. Surrounded by fairy stories and fanciful picture books all his life, Theo knew little of what passed for normality. Being surrounded by a horde of monsters in a subterranean chamber was scarcely more unusual to him than bumping into boys playing football in the park.

That was why he did something that had never
occurred to any of these creatures’ victims; he spoke to them.

‘How do you do?’ said Theo awkwardly. ‘I, um . . . I need to talk to you. It’s very urgent. There’s been a terrible mistake.’

The creatures flexed and bubbled in the darkness. They looked rather like jellyfish, with an outer rim of extendable feelers. They were very flat, several feet across, and some of them had eyes that rose and blinked on stalks.

‘You – you took my friend. Or some creatures like you did. I think it must have been a mistake . . .’

Theo desperately hoped it was. There was a pause. Then one of the creatures lashed out with a feeler. It whipped painfully around Theo’s leg and tiny prickles bit into him.

Theo cried out with pain. A shiver of excitement went through the slimy horde of twenty or so. Theo used his teeth to bite into one of his gauntlets and tear it off. Before he could take any further action he was jerked into the middle of the vile,
slurping bodies. He felt a jelly-like lip suck at his ankle. Blood was trickling from his leg.

‘That’s enough!’ he shouted. He summoned all his anger and plunged his right hand into the middle of the nearest creature.

Fwoom!
It went up in a column of blue flame, emitting a ghostly shriek and shedding burnt fragments of feeler across its comrades. Where the ashes fell, the creatures screeched, howled, wailed and slithered away into the gloom.

Now Theo stood, smeared with ash and slime, in a circle of clear ground, with the creeping things seething a respectful distance away from him.

‘No!’ came a thin, unearthly voice. ‘Do not fighting us.’

A tingle shot up Theo’s spine at the sound. For a moment he forgot his peril and stood in awe.

‘You – you can speak!’ Theo said. Suddenly he felt more optimistic. If these things could talk, then they could think – respond to reason.

‘Allow me to introduce myself,’ he said, strictly following the formulas he had been taught at
Empire Hall. ‘My name is Theo Wickland.’ Then, he added, ‘Some people know me as the Candle Man.’ He raised a still-smoking hand with streaks of ash on it.

The creatures pulsed in the darkness, as if pondering, en masse, their reply.

‘We are the crelp,’ one of them said. ‘Do not fighting with us – for we – we only wish to killing of you – as is our custom.’

The unearthly frankness of this sent more chills through Theo.

‘Why do you want to kill me?’ he asked.

The crelp seethed again, fluttering and squelching in the dark.

‘Because dead is better for humans. Better for us – for what we wanting to do,’ came a low, eerie reply.

Theo frowned as the circle of crelp seemed to edge nearer to him.

‘Do not attack me, or I
will
fight you,’ Theo said in as polite a way as possible. ‘We seem to have got off on the wrong foot,’ he added. Then
he remembered that the crelp didn’t have feet.
Another gaffe.

‘You – um . . . speak very well,’ Theo said.

‘We can speaking your tongue because we have taken some humans inside of us,’ a crelp said. ‘We absorb you, so now we can talking with you. Please let us eat Theo.’

‘No!’

Theo held up his hand; it burnt with green fire. The creatures withdrew nervously.

‘Are there people like me, down here?’ Theo asked. ‘Are there other humans? Your – your kind took one – by mistake, called Chloe.’

The crelp bubbled and fluttered the edges of their jelly-like skins in the darkness. Theo could hear noises like hissing and spitting as if the creatures were arguing among themselves. Finally, one creature slithered nearer to Theo.

‘You do not hurting us again?’ asked the creature.

Theo frowned. ‘Only if – if you’re good,’ he said. ‘And answer my question.’

‘Then, the crelp will taking you to special place.’

‘What place?’

‘Follow. We will take you to our secret larder.’

‘T
he furnaces,’ croaked Magnus, gazing up at the smoking edifice before them. ‘I never thought to set eyes upon them.’

The fires from the great building illuminated the scene in sudden bursts like the lightning from a brooding storm.

Some great and sinister work was at hand. From tunnels in the rock wall, coal trucks were arriving. Slaves in ragged clothes operated a giant turntable that received the trucks, emptied their load down a chute, then turned the trucks around, back into the caves.

‘If the Great Furnace is working again then at least part of the legend is true,’ Magnus breathed.

The prisoners looked up through the fumes as a dark figure emerged from a doorway in the Furnace and began to descend a stairway towards
them. The slithering creatures scattered as he approached, as if repelled by loathing – or fear.

‘What legend?’ asked Sam.

‘Mr Norrowmore knew the tales,’ Magnus said sadly. ‘Our old leader, now gone. He spoke of the Great Furnace and the Wonderful Machines that lay below. Power enough to rip a world apart. I – I didn’t listen. I told him that those days – those fears were over.’

‘What fears?’

‘Shut it!’

Sam was smashed to the floor by the gnarled staff of Hollister. As soon as he hit the ground, he was covered in black, stinging tendrils.

‘No!’

A commanding voice, so cracked and hoarse it was painful to hear, tore through the air. Its owner gestured towards Sam and a sudden blast of searing flame sent the creatures slithering and hissing into the shadows.

‘Only I decide life and death down here,’ the figure rasped.

The prisoners looked in disbelief at the man who had spoken. A dark figure with smoking hands, cloaked like some ancient warlock, towered over the cringing Sewer Rats. As they gazed at the one who reigned over all in this terrible place, the truth slowly dawned on them.

The man had no face.

His head was one great mass of charred flesh, a grotesque, ash-grey scar. No hair, no features remained, just two, deep-set, glimmering eyes, the slightest crack for nostrils and a twisted gash for a mouth.

Sam glanced towards Magnus and saw that his grandad was staring, transfixed.

‘Dr Pyre!’ Magnus breathed at last. ‘It – it cannot be!’

‘We saved these intruders into your kingdom, to be used as slaves,’ Hollister said to the faceless man. ‘But some of ’em won’t learn to shut up!’

‘The people who never learn are usually the clever ones,’ said the faceless man in his ravaged, deep voice. From their dark hollows, two glistening
eyes looked upon the new captives.

‘Can we have them for the ash tunnel?’ asked Hollister. ‘The slaves there are dropping like flies.’

The faceless man considered for a moment.

‘The ash tunnel, then,’ he said.

As the slaves were led away, the rasping voice spoke again. ‘Not this one!’

Dr Pyre walked slowly towards Magnus, who had stayed rooted to the spot, staring, thunderstruck.

The faceless man turned on his heel and gestured towards some crelp guards.

‘Bring him. The old man will come with me!’

‘W
ow – what
is
this?’

Following the crelp, Theo had emerged from a narrow tunnel on to a high gallery of rock.

Stretching out below, he could see a series of long mounds curving away into the depths of the cavern. At first, he thought it was a spectacular rock formation, but it slowly dawned on him that the whole thing was man-made. The long, low hills were in fact giant underground pipes. Covered with a fine layer of dust, they blended into the natural beauty of the cavern.