The Jekyll Legacy by Jaye Michael & Levanah Greene Chapter Six Spelunking for Spooks

Victorian alchemy meets modern science and magic.
What could possibly go wrong?

 

He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision,
 — he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath —
“The horror! The horror!”

The Heart of Darkness (1899)
 — Teodor Josef Konrad Korzeniowski (Joseph Conrad)

 

“What’s wrong now?” Akcuanrut asked in irritation. Now that he’d agreed to move quickly, he was anxious to get moving.

“No bottom,” Selene cursed. “The darned pit’s effectively got no bottom.”

“I can fly us all to the ground easily,” said the wizard.

“I think not,” Dr. Lanyon rejoined the conversation. “Can you fly us and also respond to any magical threats?”

He seemed deflated slightly. “I can try, but you’re right. Overconfidence is the enemy of good luck.”

“You don’t sound very certain,” Emily said, “but that’s all right, because I don’t think you’ll need to do both.”

“Huh?” Rhea’s ears perked up. “Whaddya mean?”

“I mean your mother and I can float us to a soft landing, and are easily big enough to carry us all.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” Selene stood and brushed off her hands. “I can’t find any more traps so let’s go.”

With a sly smile at Rhea, Selene jumped on Mrs. Lanyon’s back and called out, “I call dibs on riding with D’lon-ra.”

“What? No way.”

“Hey, you got to cuddle with the big guy when the darts were falling. It’s my turn now.”

“Children. Stop,” Mrs. Lanyon firmly pushed between the two before swords were drawn and spoke with his ‘it’s final and that’s it’ voice. “D’lono-ra and Selene will ride on my back while Akcuanrut and Rhea will ride on Herbert’s back. I’m both stronger and bigger in my present form, so I should be able to carry the extra weight more easily than Herbert.”

Grumbling, and with only one snort of laughter from Rhea about the weight comment, the girls took their places. All four humans carried a torch in one hand and a weapon in the other. Even Akcuanrut carried a short sword, while the centaurs held only a torch each, leaving one hand free to manipulate any obstacle they might encounter.

Mrs. Lanyon crossed his fingers. Dr. Lanyon silently mouthed, “I love you, Emily.” Taking each other’s hands, they walked to the edge and leapt into the void.

As soon as everyone realized they were still alive and floating everyone exhaled in unison. Slowly, like two gliding eagles, the two centaurs circled each other as they fell lower and lower down the dank stone well. They fell hundreds of feet. The bottom was still lost in darkness and the opening beneath the throne through which they had jumped was a pinpoint above them before they encountered anything of special note.

D’lon-ra was first to spy the tunnel, a roughly circular section of greater darkness. As Akcuanrut frantically braced himself to react instantaneously to any magical attack, Selene squinted intently as she examined the fast approaching entrance for any hidden traps, or rather places that might conceal them. Seeing none, she didn’t say anything as they sped toward the dark opening. One last circle and they were in the tunnel, the walls of it suddenly illuminated as they rushed through the opening, and then they were skidding to a stop on the floor of the tunnel as everyone cheered.

“Hush!D’lon-ra observed laconically. “The tunnel ahead is quite straight, and it too seems to go on forever.”

“The Cave of Despair,” Akcuanrut intoned solemnly. “Can you not feel in them the waves of pain and helplessness left behind by the hapless slaves coerced into creating them?” The others paused to examine their surroundings and themselves and slowly, unwillingly, nodded in agreement. They did have some sort of horrible aura about them, like the squalid slave quarters at luxurious Monticello, or the Old Slave Mart in Charleston. Looking at the hand-hewn rock walls, it was easy to imagine the oppressive dark filled with gaunt and scrabbling miners, the sound of whips, and the intermittent cries of anguish.

“No stinkin’ feeling is gonna get to me.” Rhea declared, and with that she turned and began to walk down the tunnel.

“Wait a minute, moron,” Selene shouted as she bolted after her and grabbed her smaller twin by the shoulder. “There are too many risks for you to be wondering off by yourself.”

“Like you’re gonna stop me?” Rhea sneered. Her dagger appeared in her hand.

“Rhea! Think! We’ve got to work together.” Selene pleaded, but that didn’t stop a dagger from appearing in her hand as well.

They danced about as each made exploratory feints, not realizing that the others had caught up to them until they suddenly found that they could not move. Akcuanrut had frozen them with his magic, again. Both struggled helplessly until their faces were bright red. Tears began to trickle from Rhea’s eyes.

“Agitated depression,” Mrs. Lanyon spoke with clinical detachment. “Sometimes when people are depressed, they fight against it, producing what appears to be a state of agitation, usually including aggression. Hold them while I look for something in my backpack.”

D’lon-ra moved behind Rhea while Emily Lanyon moved behind Selene. Each took a firm grip on the barbarian woman before him and held tight as Akcuanrut released his hold on them.

Suddenly able to move, each gave a tremendous shriek and began struggling as if possessed, but their captors merely waited stoically until they were spent. By that time, Mrs. Lanyon had finished digging in his backpack and was holding a whispered conversation with Akcuanrut. The wizard muttered something, waved a finger at something in the doctor’s hand and then they both turned back to the still struggling girls.

“Akcuanrut has enhanced the effect of an herb whose effects are very much like Saint John’s Wort. It should be more than strong enough to counteract any of the depressive effects of this benighted place.” The girls had stopped struggling as Mrs. Lanyon spoke, although they continued to glare maliciously at each other.

“I want each of us, in fact, to take one,” Hastie’s father offered small pieces of dried, whitish root to each girl. “You two first. If we release you, will you take it?”

It took a few moments, but eventually each agreed, and when released took the proffered root, swallowed quickly, and gagged at its bitter taste.

“Yuck. That stuff tastes terrible,” Rhea complained.

“True,” Mrs. Lanyon agreed, grimacing as she swallowed a piece herself, “but it will help us. Now, do you still feel angry?”

Rhea and Selene examined themselves. “No,” they spoke in unison again. “No. We feel fine now.”

“Then,” the good doctor used his best imitation of John Wayne, which was just as bad as the girl’s attempts at levity had been, and said, “Let’s roll them wagons, Pilgrims.”

“How long have we been marching?” Mrs. Lanyon grumped. “My hooves are getting sore.”

“It does seem like a long time, doesn’t it, Dear?” Dr. Lanyon agreed. “Maybe we should take a break.” The muted chorus of grunts made it clear everyone was in agreement, but didn’t have enough energy left for much enthusiasm.

“How long does this thing go on for, Akcuanrut?”

“Good question, Selene,” Rhea seconded her.

“I do not know,” Akcuanrut replied as he slid to the ground and groaned, “but we cannot go on for much longer, and I dread to think of sleeping when surrounded by so much evil.”

“So what do we do?” the ever-practical Dr. Lanyon asked.

“I will try something now. I should have thought of it earlier, of course, but hindsight is always all-encompassing.” Akcuanrut asked D’lon-ra for an arrow from his quiver. Next he took a small ball of twine from his own backpack and tied it to the back of the arrow, just in front of the feathers. Balancing the arrow chest-high on one finger, he muttered and the arrow began to vibrate. Akcuanrut dropped his finger and the arrow remained floating in the air. One last word and it shot forward to the limits of the attached line and then hung there like a dog straining at the end of its leash.

“We will follow this, and perhaps see more clearly if we are are being subtly misdirected.”

With more groans, everyone stood and slogged off behind the tireless arrow, which strained ahead of them like a young puppy on a leash.

“Break time.” Rhea didn’t wait for anyone to disagree as she slid to the ground.

“Who wants the last of the water?” Selene shook the water skin and everyone listened as it barely made any sound.

“We can’t go on like this,” Dr. Lanyon observed tiredly.

“The arrow still points straight ahead,” Akcuanrut observed.

“True, but why does it wobble every hundred feet or so?” Mrs. Lanyon wondered aloud as he watched it wobble again.

Akcuanrut“I have no idea. There may be currents of magic that alter the flow of space and time in here.”

“Maybe… maybe… may… mmmm….” Dr. Lanyon began digging frantically through her backpack. Shortly she had the laser pointer in her hand and assumed her lecturer’s stance.

“Aw geez, Dad,” Rhea groaned. “Can’t ya just tell us? I’m too tired for a lecture.”

“Hush, Rhea. Listen to your father,” Mrs. Lanyon’s deep voice boomed.

“Thank you, dear,” Dr. Lanyon smiled appreciatively at her muscular wife. “I am relatively unsure of the coherence of my speculative hypothesis, limited as I am by classical physics, rather than the magic which seems to rule this world, so I would prefer to explain my thoughts on this matter aloud, hoping that, even if I’m incorrect, my ramblings will jog the thought processes of someone else so that the correct solution presents itself. Akcuanrut’s comment about time and space sparked a feeling of ‘Eureka!’ in me, and made me immediately think of something I’d just been reading about quantum theory, specifically, about String Theory, which seemed particularly apropos since we’ve been following a string for the past weary miles.”

This time, there was a much more enthusiastic chorus of groans,

Undaunted, she gathered herself together for her presentation. “I wish I had a lectern,” she muttered, then said, “Does everyone know what a Möbius strip is? Anyone? Anyone?”

Emily Lanyon cleared his throat to remind his husband to keep to the point.

“Ah, yes. Never mind. Well, a Möbius strip is basically a one sided shape. You can make a representation of one by taking a strip of paper and curving it into a closed loop without twisting; then take one of the ends and rotate it a hundred and eighty degrees, then glue the two ends together. If you trace a pencil line along the surface of the loop, you’ll find that what you might naïvely think are two sides, an inside and an outside, are actually only one, so your penciled line will loop around the strip twice, once on what would have been the top, and then seamlessly around to what would have been the bottom, then around again to the top again, where it will finally meet itself.”

“Dear,” her wife said gently, “you’re dwelling upon inconsequentials, I think.”

“Sorry,” the smaller centaur cleared her throat. “In any case, some forms of String Theory require some portions of space and time to be folded in upon itself to form extra dimension which we can’t directly observe. I think that that’s what’s been happening here. If my premise is correct, my laser pointer should help to prove it.” With that she turned it on and aimed it at the wall. Slowly she moved the bright red dot further and further along the wall until it was just a pinpoint in the distance, and then it was gone.

“Look!” D’lon-ra pointed excitedly back along the tunnel toward a tiny red dot of light that had just appeared behind them.

Dr. Lanyon carefully held the pointer very still, keeping it aimed down the corridor in front of them, then turned the pointer off and on again several times, the last time carefully twisting around so she could see over her own shoulder, and could see what everyone else had seen, that the red dot behind them blinked off and on in synchrony with the movement of her finger on the laser button.

“I was afraid of that,” she said. “We’ve been walking in circles.”

“Come on, Dad,” Rhea whined. “We’ve been walking in a straight line. We never turned once.”

“That’s true, Rhea, but think of the Möbius strip. You can draw a straight line on it forever but it still loops around, even though you haven’t retraced your steps.” The laser pointer was replaced by the piece of paper and her finger traced its way around the strip several times without stopping. “Instead of a strip of paper, three-dimensional space itself has been twisted around and joined to itself in some manner, so that although we believe that we’ve been walking in a straight line, we’ve been subtly ‘tricked’ into walking the same short path many times.” Then he looked down at the floor of the corridor, smiled, and said, “In fact, I can prove it. Look above your heads. What do you see?”

They all looked but only Selene spoke out, “The roof of the corridor and traces of soot deposited when people have walked through carrying burning torches to give themselves light.”

“Exactly!” she said triumphantly. “Now look below your feet.” She pointed down for emphasis.

Selene looked down, then up, then down again. “I’ll be darned; the same sorts of soot on the ‘floor’ of the corridor as there are on the ceiling.” She looked up again. “Now that I know what it is, it’s fairly clear that someone has scuffed through the soot above us with their feet, just as we have the soot deposits below us.”

Dr. Lanyon beamed with pleasure, just as she did in the classroom when a student grasped an important point. “Excellent observation, Selene! You’ve got a good head on your shoulders!”

Selene blushed a little, but was none-the-less pleased with herself.

Mrs. Lanyon asked perceptively, “But how does this explain the wobble, dear?”

“I think the wobble is where we loop back, or turn over onto the other side of the three-dimensional loop though some sort of extradimensional portal. Before the wobble, the arrow correctly points forward and after the wobble it also correctly points forward, only we’re upside down from what we were before. Just at the wobble, though, where we loop back to the beginning again, the arrow is confused. It doesn’t know exactly where to point — up or down or right or left — so it enters a state of quantum uncertainty in which it wants to enter all possible states at once, hence the uncertainty in its exact orientation.”

“So it wobbles, Dad. So what?” Math theory was never Hastie’s strong suit, and changing sex didn’t seem to have done anything to improve her grasp of topology.

“Rhea. Think carefully. It’s the weak point. It’s where we get out.”

“But how?” she whined again.

She furrowed her brow, never having had a mother warn her of the dangers of permanent wrinkles from rash grimaces. “That’s the part I haven’t figured out yet.”

Rhea let out a heavy sigh, redolent of adolescent ennui. “Great, Dad. Build us up and drop us flat, why don’tcha?”

“Herbert Lanyon the Seventh, you apologize immediately,” Mrs. Lanyon roared.

“But….” Belatedly, Rhea glanced over at the angry expression on her mother’s face and revised her angsty attitude. “I’m sorry, Dad, but how do we get out?”

“I may have the answer to that,” Akcuanrut chimed in. “Now that you’ve brilliantly pointed out the weak point, I should be able to defeat the spell of concealment that must be there. Observe.”

“Great.” Rhea poked Selene in the ribs and muttered. “Now he’s done it. Just what we need, another lecture.”

Selene only glared at her and rolled her eyes, a subtle criticism that passed Rhea by completely.

However, instead of a lecture, Akcuanrut merely tugged gently at the arrow, pulling it back toward the group until it began to wobble again. Ever so slowly he continued to reel it in, feeling the line as carefully as an angler might strain to imagine the movements of a fish. The wobble grew more pronounced, Akcuanrut then twitched the line, and suddenly the arrow veered off to the left, flying rapidly towards the wall — and through it.

“Akcuanrut, you’ve done it,” Dr. Lanyon cheered, her voice rising an octave or so, until it was almost a squeal.

“Sinister. The way of evil, of course,” but the wizard smiled as he spoke.

“But there’s no door there, just more wall. Where did the arrow go?” Mrs. Lanyon was confused.

“No, dear, it just looks like a wall. Think of it as an optical illusion.”

“Okay folks, rest period is over. Let’s go kick some evil butt.” Rhea’s groan belied the enthusiasm in her voice as she slowly rose.

It was a matter of moments for Selene to check for traps and when she looked back, Akcuanrut nodded to indicate that he too had finished his examination of the unseen door.

One by one the group stepped through the illusory wall and into a cavernous room, bigger even than the throne room above. Every inch of the room’s circular wall appeared to be covered with sculpted images of cruel depravity, each worse than the one before, people — and other creatures — splayed on racks, their entrails being drawn, people thrown into pits of fire, others hacked by hooded figures with wicked-looking battle axes, others torn to pieces by wild animals, pierced through with spears, hung on low gibbets, the movements of their dying struggles captured in obsessive detail, flayed alive on wooden crosses, drowned in buckets while suspended upside down by flesh-hooks through their hamstrings. Every vicious cruelty possible was displayed upon those walls, the makers of which seemed to have focused their entire creative energy on destruction and pain. The center of the room was a sandpit about thirty feet wide and beyond that was a huge throne composed entirely of human bones. Sitting on the throne, and by no means dwarfed by it, was a leathery-winged, muscle-bound humanoid with ruddy skin and horns. Fangs grew from its lower jaw and the eyes shone with a yellow glow that seemed to pierce the soul.

The creature’s voice was incongruously deep, yet melodious, in a peculiarly discordant way, as effective in causing discomfort as nails on a blackboard. Somehow it also had a gravelly undertone that reached to the very marrow and made the bones shiver. “Greetings, D’lono-ra. It’s been a long time, old friend.”

“Na-Noc?” the Emperor’s Champion replied.

“How wonderful. You remember your old teacher,” the creature rumbled.

Rhea nudged Selene. “Teacher?”

Selene just shrugged in return.

“You, vile thing, are not my honored teacher and friend,” D’lon-ra spat out the words as if they had a sour taste.

“True,” the creature’s smile showed more teeth than should ever be seen. “I was your sad, tired old friend, resting on my laurels and the table scraps of an uncaring liege, but I’m feeling much better now.”

“Na-Noc was none of those things and you defile his memory, creature of evil.”

“Oh, D’lon-ra, D’lon-ra, old friend. You are so, so wrong, but worry not; soon you will join with me and understand.”

“Come to me, spawn of evil,” sword drawn, the huge hero moved warily out into the center of the sandy circle. “Allow me to end your torture. Allow me to kill the evil in you so that you may die honorably and be remembered for your good deeds and glorious accomplishments.”

“Jeez,” Rhea whispered to Selene, “he’s wordy all of a sudden.”

“Yeah,” Selene agreed, but she was staring intently at the tableau before them. “Something’s wrong!” she whispered.

Both women nodded imperceptibly to each, silently drew their swords and began circling in opposite directions around the edge of sand pit as Na-Noc flowed to his feet and languidly ambled out onto the sand.

The huge creature stopped about ten feet from D’lon-ra. The Emperor’s Champion was huge, but the creature dwarfed him, easily twice as large with muscles on its muscles.

“Come to me, little boy,” Na-Noc beckoned, his grin showing yet more teeth. “Come to me, if you dare.”

“D’lon-ra! No!” Akcuanrut shouted frantically. “It’s a trap!”

“Of course it’s a trap, incompetent one,” Na-Noc laughed. With that it lunged with superhuman speed, not directly at D’lon-ra, but right over his head in a flip using its wings to end up facing the hero’s back. One quick slice and D’lon-ra’s leathers were lying on the sand.

With a roar of anger D’lon-ra spun to face the creature, but was hampered by the shifting sand. A short sword appeared in his left hand and sliced a wide swath at stomach height while his long sword swung out in a higher arc toward the demon’s neck.

Na-Noc stood immobile as the gleaming blades approached and made contact with solid thwacking sounds, imbedding themselves a good half a foot in the creature’s body exactly where D’lon-ra had aimed. Yet rather than crumple to the ground, Na-Noc stood laughing. Then its flesh closed around the blades and began flowing rapidly toward the hilt.

Before a surprised D’lon-ra could react the fast-flowing flesh reached his hand and he froze. Within seconds the red flesh had encompassed the smaller man and then the two masses combined, leaving an even larger Na-Noc shaking the walls with his peals of hideous laughter.

“It’s not there, little ones.”

Selene had reached the throne and was examining it, looking for the Heart of Virtue while Rhea stood by as lookout. In the meantime, Akcuanrut had been gesturing and muttering frantically. Suddenly he refocused on the events about him and stared in disbelief at the altered Na-Noc. “Of course!” he shouted to the others. “By your own reasoning, Selene, it could it be nowhere else. The Heart must be lodged inside its body, the only place of ultimate safety for suspicious creature of evil. Within its own body lies the Heart of Virtue!”

“Oh great,” Rhea groaned. “Not only do we need to beat ‘Big Red,’ we’ve got to get that damned Heart from inside its molded jelly body.”

“You take the right side and I’ll take the left.” Selene cut off Rhea’s complaints and matched her words with actions. Still not sure how to help, but worried about the girls, Dr. and Mrs. Lanyon also stepped onto the sand and uncertainly moved toward the great beast.

The girls were graceful, yet blindingly fast as they parried and sliced in perfect unison like two sides of a mirror. Even the huge Na-Noc was hard pressed, but was managing to hold its own; the fact that its injuries healed over within seconds was helping it immensely, though, and it was clear to everyone there that the current stalemate would slowly turn to its favor as the girls were beginning to tire; yet Na-Noc seemed indefatigable.

Off on the sidelines, Akcuanrut was still chanting and gesturing frantically but to no avail. No spell he could throw seemed to affect the great red creature for more than a few seconds.

Meanwhile, Dr. Lanyon had been watching the struggle with that detached look on her face that she always used when concentrating on a problem. As her husband yelped in fear at a narrow escape for Rhea, he withdrew from his reverie and trotted off towards Akcuanrut to whisper for a moment.

When the wizard nodded she quickly trotted around the circle to her wife and whispered to him. He too nodded and Dr. Lanyon resumed her original position opposite her wife. Both centaurs unstrung the thick ropes hanging from their saddlebags and held large loops of rope as if preparing to lasso a steer.

As Na-Noc extended himself on both sides to thrust at the swordswomen harrying his flanks, Dr. Lanyon shouted, “Now!”

On cue, Akcuanrut threw a spell to freeze the air around Na-Noc to create a foot thick slab of ice around its corpulent body, leaving its limbs free to thrash around. At the same time, the two centaurs flipped their ropes over its extended arms, twisted them like garrottes around each arm, and reared back to pull them tight. Seeing their opening, Selene and Rhea immediately began hacking away at his huge limbs, even as the ice began to melt away as if dropped into a blast furnace.

The advantage was theirs however. On the third roundhouse chop both arms separated from its body, causing the centaurs to stumble as they struggled to regain their balance.

As the last of the ice began to melt, the barbarian women attacked Na-Noc’s legs and by the time a smaller set of replacement arms had formed, the legs too were gone. The centaurs quickly tossed their ropes around the falling legs and dragged them to yet another corner of the sand pit, far enough from the arms, that had in the instant become rippling puddles of red slowly sinking so rapidly into the sand that they could not easily or quickly reunite, trapped by the porous surface that the creature had designed to trap others.

As a much smaller Na-Noc reformed, Rhea and Selene started hacking away at the arms again. Now that a system had been developed, things moved quickly and shortly the once huge beast was little more than a quivering red blob about one foot in diameter while the others took up plates and cups to hurl sand on the separate blobs of Na-Noc jelly, which quickly sank into them, somehow weighing them down to the point that they could only quiver, knocked in random directions by fresh onslaughts of sand.

Akcuanrut’s magic was much easier to focus on the smaller blob and he carefully levitated the quivering mass while Mrs. Lanyon pulled a plastic picnic tablecloth from one of her backpacks.

The two girls kept hacking away until they could see a small lump of something shiny beneath the viscous red goo. At that point Dr. Lanyon tossed the plastic over the slimy lump, gathered the ends together and tied a bulky knot to seal whatever it was inside.

The group cautiously moved off the sand, carefully avoiding all the clumps of red. At the edge of the sand pit the three remaining humans collapsed to their knees on the floor of the hall, exhausted, while the centaurs remained poised for instant action. All five gave a heartfelt sigh of relief.

“Is it finally over?” Emily Lanyon asked Akcuanrut.

“Over at last, I think. The journey back is all that remains. After this, it should be relatively easy, although we must still be wary of the Dark God’s tricks.”

“So we can go home now?” Rhea asked, still panting from her exertions.

“Of course you can return home,” a sepulchral Voice boomed deafeningly, coming from everywhere and nowhere, from the walls, from the dank floor and hidden ceiling of the horrible hall. “And in fact, you should!”

The others jerked in surprise as Akcuanrut struggled back to his feet and resumed a defensive posture.

“Your presence here has served as an amusing diversion, but all diversions must eventually come to an end. You may even take the Heart of Virtue with you.” and then the Voice laughed horribly, just as it must have laughed when the moments of agony depicted on the walls of its throne room were first enacted.

There was a tremendous rushing sound and a blast of air, like the wind as a train rushes down a tunnel straight towards you. Just when they all thought it couldn’t get any louder, there was a gigantic flash, brighter than any locomotive headlamps, and….

Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002 Jeffrey M. Mahr — All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2012 Levanah Greene — All Rights Reserved