The realm of the shadow, p.24
THE REALM OF THE SHADOW, page 24
Yet out of that nothing came a smell that was recognisable, a sickly sweet smell that prompted his mind to be thrown back to Andrew Brown’s house.
“Oh God, Louise, can you smell that? The last time I smelt that rancid stench was…”
Louise spoke over him, “Don’t worry, it’s not them.”
But it still begged the question, where did it come from?
A muffled sound broke his panic as water cascaded down, creating a breeze as it bounced off the floor in all directions.
John opened his arms up to the sky, welcoming the water, hoping the wetness would make him feel alive again, refreshed and away from here. His arms dropped in bewilderment, he was not getting wet?
John was going to ask the question, but the words were drained away by the sound of rustling leaves and branches, that filled his senses with contradictions.
John looked at Louise for an answer, and she returned his unspoken question with a knowing look that broke into the smallest of smiles, “I told you you would be amazed.”
Louise turned her back on him. Even her chemical suit could not mask her figure completely. She stood by the door they had just come through and keyed information into a control panel at the side of the closed door. Her fingers rushed across the keys with ease.
John focused on the wall that shadowed her, desperately trying to gain some perspective, some reality. He was totally bewildered, searching for visual answers. He looked up at the wall and could not see an end to the light that cascaded down its grey stone surface.
John asked quizzically, “How deep are we?”
She answered without turning around, busying herself in her task, “I’m not totally sure.”
She paused, her voice replaced by her keying fingers, then replaced by her voice, “But we are very deep.”
She looked behind her head, pointed to John, yet her eyes full of excitement looked beyond him as he turned to cast his eyes on her vision. The light flickered all around them, shadows seem to dance in all directions and then the most amazing of things…
A forest appeared out of nowhere. John’s open mouth said it all. Huge trees filled his eyes. The trees flanked either side of the single rail track. The giant vegetation themselves were of a kind he had never seen before, and he had been well travelled. Their trunks were covered with a sticky residue that shimmered silver, giving the black leaves a perfect contrast. The rain dropped down their smooth leathery surface with ease.
John could not take his eyes off the forest. He had so many questions. Which one should he ask first and, as always, each answer would only prompt more questions.
“What habitat do these trees grow in normally?”
Louise replied, “This one.”
He re-phrased the question. “Yes, I know, but what other environments do they grow in.”
Louise walked up beside him and looked into his eyes with a deepness that could only come from her understanding of him.
“I understood your question. The only place these trees grow in the world is here.”
John was eager for knowledge. “Why just here and nowhere else?”
She looked away from him, her eyes filled with the mysteries that got them both in this mess.
“Do you think anyone can answer all this? This is beyond anyone’s understanding.”
John could not hold back. “How can you have trees that I have never seen before, hidden behind glass sheets that can make their existence a falsehood and say you have no answers?”
Louise took the point, “What I meant to say is, the glass can be explained. It’s a plastic compound you can play any image on, thus hiding a forest, if need be, from prying eyes. The bunker can be explained in some ways, in terms that the Iraqi military were hiding everything down here. Its construction is another matter. This is the biggest underground facility in the world and dates back to before any dynasty we can trace. John, we are not sure if we could build this now, but then again, we are unsure how the pyramids were built. The Iraqi military have extended and improved on some aspects, as we have in the last year, but the vast amount of this facility was already here.”
She looked upwards. “The sheer scale is amazing.”
John perused his original question. “What about the trees, why have them down here, why have them at all?”
“The Iraqis were starting to harvest the tree sap in the 1980s. UN inspectors had discovered a strange chemical that accelerated ageing. These trees are the source of that chemical. The plastic sheeting serves two purposes: one, to keep out prying eyes, and two, protection. We have no idea what would happen if these trees were to seed on the surface. The more we study them, the more dangerous they appear to be.”
Louise pointed to a white stake nuzzled in between several large tree trunks, behind the plastic barrier. On the marker surface the number 153 was written in matt black paint with no real care.
Louise backed up her pointing digit, framing the moment with poignant words, “Hundreds of Iraqi scientists lost their lives; their markers are scattered all over this place, buried where they fell. Their identities just a number. Families mourn their loss with no idea of their fate, just another statistic in Saddam’s missing thousands. That is why, when we were searching for the source of this chemical back in the 90s, we could seldom find the information we required. No-one survived long enough to talk, either killed by the Iraqi Secret Service when their knowledge became too great, or by their work. It was only when we tortured Saddam that questions started to get answered about where the chemicals had come from and the location of their source. No satellite imagery could pick this place up, it's far too deep.”
John looked inquisitively. “But Saddam is on trial. Surely he wants to hurt the Americans in any way he can? All he needs to do is blurt this out in court and your secret is out the bag.”
Louise looked impatient.
His naivety upset her clarity of thought.
“Do you really think that man who is on trial is Saddam? Surely not? John, cast your mind back to the Second World War. Hundreds of Nazi scientists, who had the knowledge of rocket science, were smuggled out of Germany. The information they gave us put a man on the moon. The German doctors that experimented on the Jews without any anaesthetic, killing thousands in the process, were working for us a few years later, under the protection of new identities, never to face up to their war crimes in a court of law. The person who we showed being captured in a little hole in the ground was not Saddam. We had caught that sadistic man a month earlier. The man that faces trial is one of his doubles, with some plastic surgery thrown in for good measure to ensure that even his old generals cannot tell the difference. If he deviates from the story that he as been set, he knows he will be shot by an assassin. When he is convicted of his crimes, he thinks he will be shot by an assassin with a blank bullet.”
She paused, the silence framing her next words. “I cannot see that happening. He will be killed. What we see on television will be seemingly leaked to the mass media, but it will not be what it seems. It’s a win, win situation for the American Government. They keep this secret and the Iraqi public will feel they have justice, and everyone will think Saddam Hussein got what he deserved.”
John did not like what he was hearing. The words cut right to the bone. The disgust was evident, by being etched on his face, soon to be followed by his well-chosen words, “No-one can justify that kind of insanity, using the excuse of advancement in knowledge as a screen for their deeds.”
John looked straight at Louise with a stare that left no quarter. “Be warned, if I get the chance, I will stop this insanity.”
Louise fixed her gaze straight back. “Then we are on the same side. I have stuck my neck out too far to turn back now. After all this, I will be lucky if they allow me to do the bloody filing.”
John smiled. “You can always come back and work for me. You were always very good at filing.”
Louise looked dismissive. “We will be lucky to both come out of this with our lives. The only reason you are alive is because you have not divulged where the book is. Keep that one to yourself. That’s your insurance.”
John teased, “You mean I should not even tell you.”
Louise did not think that was funny, “Don’t play games with me. I have risked everything for you. Don’t patronise me.”
John carried on digging, “What about the trees?”
“We are not sure. There are seed banks in this facility that are of the same DNA as these plants, but we cannot germinate them. Because of the unusual nature of the trees, we are unsure if they grow quickly or slowly from germination. What we can say is these trees have not grown in the time we have been here. They have no growth rings and, as yet, not dropped any leaves. We have not detected any flowers and are still analysing all the data. We cannot trace any plants that are similar in structure or cellular make up, and that includes any fossilised specimens. All we have is guesswork at the moment. The CIA believes all the answers are in that book and they will not stop at anything to get those answers. All they have is the link of historic background, the fact the book as been mentioned in one form or other through most of the major civilisations and by association with the Sumarian tablets that were found with the artefact.”
She went silent, sensing the inevitable question from John, and he did not disappoint. “Ann, you talk as if the CIA was a third person. You work for them?”
Her gaze fell to the floor. “They are a third person. I was recruited in a similar fashion to yourself. I was in the right place at the right time. I’m not proud of deceiving you or your father.”
Her head lifted and her eyes stared a coldness at John. “What I can tell you is that you would not be alive today if it was not for me, and further more…”
Silence. Louise stopped in her tracks. They both looked at each other knowing the others’ thoughts. Chilling images and sounds cascaded into their minds as they froze in a moment of terror.
Louise started moving towards the small train. “We have got to move. They are so close I can smell them, feel them, touch them.”
He did not need any second invitation. He sat by her as the small train moved off. They could feel Andrew’s fear.
Chapter 30
Andrew awoke lying on the floor, a surging pain in his left leg prompting his mind into reality. His eyes tried to focus on what was causing the throbbing that left a sickening feeling in his stomach that was quickly projected on the floor, splattering in all directions as he wretched. He felt weak and dizzy due to the amount of blood he had lost. That formed a drying stream of rustic coloured liquid that had reached the small drain in the middle of the shower room. The drain was clogged with blood and strange clumps of hair and skin.
Andrew felt the warmth of a droplet of blood that ran its course down the side of his face. This registered a sharp soreness on his scalp. His hand followed the pain instinctively. His slightly sweaty hand, with the residue of sick that was trapped in between his fingers, touched his flesh. He screamed out in sheer horror as his hand lifted off his reddened sticky flesh, leaving behind it small tufts of hair where an eager hand had not finished a perfect scalping. Andrew tried to get off the floor, only to slip on the blood and sick, slumping back to the floor. Andrew’s predicament rapidly became worse before he could even think clearly through his pain. A strange feeling came over him, washing through his soul. A tidal wave of feelings that prompted his body to react in a cold sweat that appeared in small droplets on his skin and captured in small claret blisters, that formed under what was left of the skin where his hair was stood in a proud style. His bloody flesh screamed out intense pain. His skin started to erupt into small goose pimples as a chill stoked fear in the depths of his belly. The air around him started to cool and shift in direction, swirling in a coldness that turned his rapid breath into fine vapour, that signalled his panic, that transferred to a shiver throughout his body.
There was a strange movement in the dimly lit shower room that resembled a car moving just faster than the head could follow, that left a void in its evil wake.
Andrew struggled to follow the rapid movement, but finally manage to catch the slightest of glimpses as the black blur moved quickly out of the corner of his eye, leaving the imagination to make his mind up.
The shadow was compelling, a dark flame that captured the moth to its flame, drawing and pulling his attention away from all thought of pain. His concentration and fear vanished for a moment as the figure started to slow just enough to make out the faintest of outlines that shimmered in a cold haze, that brought terror back to Andrew.
A head turned towards him. A face started to form with ever more detail, with each passing of the black shadow, dragging out Andrew’s dread. Eyes formed, along with a nose and mouth out of the blurred blackness. Features blended together, washed into the greyness of flesh, that drew him into a deep-seated feeling that this being held his destiny.
Then Andrew’s attention switched. All he had just witnessed vanished into an afterthought as his eyes focused on the sound of movement, leather soles dragging on a dry hard surface. A pair of shiny black shoes stood in the corner of a dark room, which reflected the smallest of light sources that came from a bulb that swung to and fro in the middle of the ceiling, dancing to the music of quickly moving events.
The shoes stood motionless in contrast to the trouser leg which brushed rapidly against the highly polished black surface that was steered into life by the rushing wind within the room. It rippled and slapped up the trouser legs, against the thinness of their owner. A garment on a wash line of dread, beaten backwards and forwards in a strong autumn wind that came straight from a place worse than Hell, signalling the chill of changing times.
The shoes seemed to be waiting for a signal, as a high pitched cry ripped through the room and bounced off the walls. As the shoes started to move, silent, almost floating over the floor towards Andrew’s clumped up, broken body, the scream ended as quickly as it had started.
The distant and faintest of laughs could just be heard, children playing in a far away playground, mocking a poor bullied child, it gripped his mind from all around.
Andrew strained his neck to look up at a pair of black trousers moving closer with every glance, yet stretching out the moment.
The trousers stopped with no contrast, at a black raincoat that seemed to pull the shadow out of the corner of the room with its movement.
Andrew painfully sat up, trying to regain some dignity as he rested his weight on his hands, situated towards the back of his body, fingers pointing towards the wall.
He looked his tormentor straight in its face, trying to show control. The deepest of pits formed black eyes, pierced from under a mohair black hat. Its powdered white skin gave the lifeless windows extra depth, a thousand souls had been lost in that darkness.
The creature smiled at the feeble attempt of Andrew to impress, a wounded pathetic insect ready to be squashed under foot. The cast of a proud crooked nose could be made out; the shadow it cast extenuated its size across a scarred left cheek.
Andrew knew this demon; he had announced himself as a dim black figure, in the largest of stone rooms locked away in his nightmares. But that was in the beginning, the night after the theft of the devil book. Each day after that unforgettable date, the figure would walk around its room from corner to corner, ranting and raving in a foreign tongue that switched from Spanish to Latin, confusing the mind even further as it grappled and raged in his nightmare.
The illegible mumbling started to change into English after the second week. The figure would walk around the room, never showing its face or form, just a pair of black shoes, with a voice that played torture games on a guilt filled mind.
In the end, the sheer evil, torturous words spoke of the joy in killing, raping and mutilating. Words that could never be recalled in the clearness of the morning yet seemed to echo in a place in the mind, hidden from woken thought.
So much mental pain and stress was caused just before and after sleep. The dread of impending doom and torture caused Andrew to cheat sleep to save his sanity, with a cocktail of drugs that kept him awake, but inadvertently had brought his mind to the very point he tried to avoid.
Now the demon was out of the room. It had escaped from his mind. It was standing right in front of him and Andrew was reminded of all the nightmares. In a split second, every word, thought and terror was recalled from his dreams.
He shook his head violently, trying to shake off the thoughts, and in realisation that was quite impossible he shouted, “No, No, No!” in sheer anguish.
Andrew looked up and sneered at his tormentor through clenched, painful teeth, a wild dog cornered with no place to run.
“You don’t frighten me. I know what you have come to do. Just get on with it.”
The creature’s shoulders started to move and a whispery laugh was forced out, in condemnation at such a suggestion. Quickly cutting to the chase, a soft Italian voice broke through the pretence.
“You feel you know what I’m going to do?”
He laughed out, his eyes swelled and fixed on Andrew.
“Do you really know what I’m going to do?”
All this time the movement of the black shadow circled around them both, causing a chill that resembled a north wind in the middle of an Irish winter. The vultures awaiting an opportunity to strike at a stricken pray.
Andrew’s mind was allowed to understand what was happening to him. The control relinquished, his body quivered in realisation as the thought crossed his terrified mind. “There are two of them.”
A sigh could be heard from the general direction of the shoes, followed by the clinical voice, “Two, three, four, oh how my fingers can count, there may be even more.”
Andrew looked straight into the black eyes with defiance. “So you can read my thoughts.”
Read this. In his mind he said the words, “Fuck yourself.”
