When the day of the expedition into the unknown came around, Amanda waited with trepidation for her father to leave the house.
The tension was unbearable. She sat in her bedroom staring at the large haversack, packed the night before with items she would need for a long journey, attempting to compose in her head the goodbye letter she wanted to write to her father. At last after what seemed like an eternity her dad shouted up the stairway, “I’m off” and a few minutes later she watched his BMW drive through the opened gates.
When her father had left the apprehension eased slightly and she found the inspiration to write, resting the note paper on a hardback book.
Dear Dad
I’m going away probably for a very long time to rescue Moonbeam, but I will be back. Can’t tell you where I am going but you wouldn’t believe me anyway. I’m sorry I lost my temper the other day but PLEASE, PLEASE don’t sell the house to The Order of the Arboreal Orb. THEY ARE DANGEROUS!’
Yours truly
Amanda
Short and too the point. She would leave the message on the kitchen table and although she knew it would not put her father’s mind to rest it would go a little way towards explaining her whereabouts. Hopefully it would encourage her dad to delay the sale of the Manor as he concentrated on searching for her. It would be a long desperate search as where she was going no one could follow, unless it was The Order of the Arboreal Orb.
Hauling the heavy haversack across the floor with both arms and then pulling the bedroom door open with her left hand, she almost stepped on Jones the cat, which darted away down the corridor, startled. She was glad about one thing she thought, as she watched the ginger tom make its cautious way back to her. With any luck they would go through to the other side without sacrificing any animals, because Amanda had found a substitute or so she hoped.
Tucked away at the bottom of a box of old video cassettes in a plain white case was a tape given to her by an acquaintance from her school in California. He claimed it was a snuff movie that he had purchased from a dealer outside an underground bookshop and when she viewed it for the first and only time it was undoubtedly realistic. For all of her liking of horror films it had sickened and appalled her-fifteen minutes of blurry atrocity footage. She had meant to dump the dreadful object but for some reason had not done so.
Now the hideous film might have some use. When the idea came to her she discussed it with Doctor Baldwin on her mobile and he said it was worth trying. Instead of killing an animal they could play the snuff movie to the mirrors, to open the way. In theory the movie would function as an immoral act activating the portal, albeit an act once removed by the medium of film.
In the kitchen she placed her letter on the table, rested the haversack against a cabinet and unplugged a portable television on the top. Cradling it in her arms she carried it through the sitting room and into the library. Placing it on the cold stone floor she manoeuvred a straight backed chair into position facing the looking glass and put the TV on it, plugging it into the nearby socket. Doctor Baldwin would bring his VCR machine with him.
Once everything was in place Amanda stood back and looked about her, her arms crossed. A hushed stillness gathered around her in the church like space and her eyes were drawn to a third alcove beneath the stained glass window picturing Adam and Eve.
This had remained empty until recently, but her father had placed the newly restored mirror, which had lain for decades in the overgrown garden, within the alcove. In deep reverie she stared at the two eyes and the twisting floral patterns on one side of the looking glass and the agonised human shapes on the other. The evilly erotic Eve with the even more sinful looking serpent was reflected back at her from the other side of the library and she wondered what awesome terrors lay ahead beyond the surfaces of the three mirrors.
These mirrors now formed a triangle, the middle aisle where she stood marking its base and she remembered what Doctor Baldwin had told her. The hall had been the focal point of George Brown’s sect and the three looking glasses had been unconsciously arranged by Amanda’s father into the triangular pattern used by the Satanists. The base of the triangle was where human sacrifices were performed five hundred years ago to gain access to the Ten Universes; bodies with their hearts torn out were strung from the oaken beams and bloody trials of gore covered the floor, taking the worshippers to the mirrors, now open gateways to other dimensions.
Back in the kitchen she sat at the table and waited. The temperature although it was mid October was extremely humid and beads of sweat had formed on her forehead, trickling slowly down the sides of her face.
Looking out of the window she saw purpled hued flowers with big funnelled petals and long stamens like proboscises, nod gently against the glass; the thick spiky stems swaying as if they moved by their own volition. These outlandish tropical plants were all over the garden and at night they glowed, attracting the strange insect life, complimenting the bright multicoloured mushrooms the size of plates arising from the fertile but sickly soil. Stranger still had been the reaction of her father who had completely ignored the weird growth, the heat and the unnatural life forms.
So many unanswered questions, Amanda thought. The most worrying concerned the actions of the Order of the Arboreal Orb. For instance why had they left Doctor Baldwin free to use George Browne’s grimoire without taking it from him by force? When the cult had intercepted them in the cemetery they could have taken it easily. But instead the mutant insect released by the man in the Golf, although unsettling, had been harmless. Maybe they were playing games, waiting for an ideal moment to pounce and what a better moment she thought with a shudder then when they where out of the ordinary world.
Hearing the beeper announce the arrival of Doctor Baldwin and Paul, she went into the hallway and stared for a few moments at the image of the scruffy middle aged academic and the young guitarist on the tiny screen connected to the CCTV camera. She pressed the button activating the gate and pulled open the front door, waiting for the man and boy to arrive.
Burdened with rucksacks similar to her own, they stood in the hall, Doctor Baldwin, clutching the VCR, gazing around in engrossed fascination especially at the floral motifs on the banisters. He was dressed in lightweight walking trousers, boots and a pale blue nylon shirt buttoned to the top, his thin uncombed hair falling to below his collar. Paul was clad in comparable style to Amanda, wearing khaki combat trousers, Doc Martins and a black Motorhead tee shirt advertising their latest tour.
Directing them to the kitchen she picked up her haversack and lead the way to the library. There was a pause as Dr Baldwin took in the ominous ambience of the large book filled room, a look of wonder on his gaunt features, no doubt pondering the evil enacted within these walls. After fixing up the video recorder, he carefully extracted from one of the pockets on his haversack, George Browne’s book, took it from its transparent folder and placed it on the small table in front of the left hand mirror, opening it to a marked page. Amanda and Paul stood to the side, merely spectators to what was about to follow.
As well as the backpack, he had brought with him a small cage containing a brown furred rat that scurried in panic from one side of its prison to the other. Where he had got the animal from, Amanda could only wonder.
“Hopefully we will not need the rat,” he said, placing the cage on the floor. “But just in case.” Ominously he withdrew a kitchen knife from his haversack and put it on the table. Amanda looked on, her stomach turning over, and she quickly grabbed the video cassette from a pocket in her rucksack and inserted it into the VCR, but before she would turn it on she waited for Doctor Baldwin’s instructions.
“Amanda, play the video and stand to the side. Once the portal is open get through as fast as you can, I don’t think it will remain open for long.”
Spreading his arms wide opposite the table and the looking-glass, Doctor Baldwin, looking directly at the grimoire, began to intone words in an unknown guttural language. His words were overlaid by the appalling screams, despairing moans and thwacks and pummelling sounds coming from the television and Amanda was glad she was not facing the screen, witnessing the atrocities committed on the helpless victims.
Paul smirked at first as he surveyed the scene but as the television set was directly in his line of sight the grin soon faded to be replaced with a look of repugnance that grow more pronounced the longer the film continued. Amanda’s heart was beating faster and faster as the time dragged on and still the mirror had not opened up.
Involuntary her sight was drawn to the rat in the cage as she grow more and more concerned that the poor thing would have to be killed and her heart leapt into her mouth when Jones the cat began to paw at the rat’s cage. Somehow Jones had crept undetected into the library and was now staring with intense curiosity at the terrified rodent.
Just as she turned her eyes back to Doctor Baldwin, whose voice had risen dramatically, drowning out the horrific sounds in the film, the looking glass went black. A moment later instead of the wild perspiring reflection of the doctor there appeared the alien and gigantic antechamber she had last seen at her fateful initiation.
“Now, everybody through,” Doctor Baldwin yelled, stuffing the book back into its transparent folder and slipping it into his haversack. Pushing the table aside he leapt through the mirror and soon afterwards Paul did the same
But Amanda hesitated staring at the towering walls awash with eerie red light, the sloping floor made of rotting slabs of stone leading to the eye mosaic at its centre and the gaping pillared archway, entrance to god knows what monstrous destinations. The tiny figures of Doctor Baldwin and Paul, dwarfed by the soaring chamber, beckoned frantically for her to join them.
After a few seconds she acted; grasping the startled cat by the scruff of its neck with one hand, the haversack with the other, Amanda ran into her nightmares.
No comments:
Post a Comment