Chapter Two: Sacrifice

The descent seemed to take forever and Amanda held on to the rusty iron ladder as tight as she could, gingerly taking a step at a time, forcing herself not to look down. The others must be a long way below her. Stagnant water dripped on her face smearing her body with brownish stains and lianas like solidified muscle blocked her way. With a horrible lurch in her stomach, taking her completely by surprise because she was fixedly staring at the moist stone between the bars of the ladder, these blockages of her downward path made her lose her footing. She grasped unsteadily with her two hands, almost slipping away into the void. But then something unexpected happened.

At some imperceptible point she felt she was moving upwards rather then downwards. She stood still, disorientated and faint, her heart beating. Gradually she craned her neck to look up and with a shock she spotted far above the blue suited figure of Camilla and the walking corpse with Moonbeam draped over his shoulders.

They neared the rounded end of the well, blue sky peering through disintegrating masonry above the lip. Amanda had indeed switched from climbing down to climbing up.

Sweat from her forehead flowing into her eyes, her arms and legs aching, Amanda continued her ascent. With a deep sense of relief she clambered over the broken lip of the well and defiantly rested herself against its uneven surface, not caring if the others went on without her.

Exhaustion clouded her mind but it was not long before regrets once again entered her head. She was really envying her other self now, safe with her father in the real world, while she explored unknown regions. Amanda had no idea where she was going or for what purpose. Maybe she was being lead to her doom. She had seen marvels filling her with loathing but also with fascination and excitement. Her hatred towards Moonbeam and her dislike of Lucius was rewarded by seeing them reduced to puppets under the control of Camilla. But what was her role she kept thinking, over and over; was she a pawn in a game (whatever the game was), a mannequin like Lucius and Moonbeam or a major player, a leader? What it all boiled down to was that she just didn’t know.

Amanda was alone and in the dark.

Taking in her surroundings as she leant against the well she suddenly had a sense of Déjà vu. And then it came to her. Amanda was in the same fortress that she had seen reflected in the looking glass, the mirror transfixing Sarah Boswell in her room back at Ashbury Manor.

The derelict fortress she realised was not a fortress at all but an annex or extension to a larger building, Ashbury Manor. The entrance to the main building, blocked by a substantial oaken door inscribed with hieroglyphs, was behind her. The wall of the well was higher then she thought and she was in fact sitting on a raised circular platform made of crafted rock, with uneven steps leading to the floor. Painted frescos adorned the shattered walls of the annex, the usual depictions of horrifically deformed and malignant creatures, with the staring eye symbol that was so prevalent, scattered seemingly at random among the monsters.

The well, the centre of attraction, was like an altar in a primitive temple. The place was in a state of disrepair; a large rent in the vaulted ceiling showed a hazy blue sky with a sinuous tropical frond snaking its way through the hole, almost touching the flag stoned ground with its leaves. Saplings, grass and other hardy plants grow from the gaps between the cracked flagstones and in corners and in other forgotten areas, fan like ferns sprung, even a small palm tree. But this tropical flora was not like the supernaturally diseased vegetation Amanda had seen before. In comparison it seemed quite ordinary.

Unsteadily she stood up, walked to the steps and stared down. Staring up at her was Camilla, with the inert form of Lucius still carrying Moonbeam in his arms standing next to her, but Amanda’s eyes immediately went to the figures surrounding them, seven in all she counted. Six were dressed in khaki uniforms with guns slung on their shoulders and formed a protective semi-circle around the others. The seventh was standing beside Camilla; a tall, tanned and lean man, wearing shorts, sandals and a tee-shirt. He stood very close to Camilla, almost touching.

At once she became conscious that she was naked. It was as if she was on stage and the people below were the audience. She was mortified and desperately tried to cover herself with her hands. When she had moved through the nightmarish chambers and corridors of Ashbury Manor she had no consciousness of her nakedness but now it was as if she had awoken from a dream. Camilla was smirking at her obvious discomfiture and the soldiers or guards gazed at her intently but their faces were expressionless. The man though had a serious look on his face and he turned around, shouting an order.

“Give the girl some of your spare clothes!”

At the sound of the man’s commanding voice Amanda’s pride reasserted itself and she straightened up and glowered at Camilla. She was not going to let any of them belittle or debase her. Slowly and deliberately she moved down the stairs, her back straight, attempting to settle her features into blank neutrality. She took hold of a pair of camouflaged combat trousers and a white vest from the man. Feeling everyone was staring at her she put them on as fast as she could.

When she had clothed herself in her new garments she found they were too big for her, so she tightened the leather belt to keep the trousers from falling around her ankles. She turned to confront Camilla, who still chuckled mockingly, but almost tripped over the lower leg of the trousers.

“Where are we,” she said. “And who are these people?”

A long silence ensued and Camilla stared intently at Amanda, deflating her rage and making her feel uncomfortably and awkward again.

“We’re back home, back to the suburbs of south-west London but two hundred years in the future,” Camilla said. “And this is my close friend Richard Solomon, who I have not seen for ten years, and these are the hired soldiers of the Order of the Arboreal Orb. The Order is the true and only sovereign of Great Britain now.”

“Two hundred years in the future?!”

“That’s right”, said Richard Solomon. He put his arm around Camilla and she snuggled up to him. “A lot has happened in those two hundred years, Amanda. Global warming has turned England into a ‘tropical paradise.’ Governments and states throughout the world have fallen, chaos has reigned, the perfect situation for us, the Order of the Arboreal Orb.”

“Richard is a member of the Order,” said Camilla, extracting herself from his arms and walking closer to the high wall of the well-like structure, suddenly deep in thought.

“As the membership is extremely exclusive we have no hierarchy as such, no one has power over another within our elite circle, but Richard is important,” she said after a while. “He is our chief theoretician, a one time professor of philosophy at Kings College, London, someone who understands the complexities of the Arboreal Orb and its ten projections or universes better then anyone else alive. He is the one to answer your questions.”

Amanda glanced at Richard Solomon, a man who she estimated to be in his thirties, intellectual looking but tall and handsome with blonde hair cut short. He was well tanned by years of living in a hot climate, not muscular but strong and wiry. She felt intimidated at first by his intense stare but the youthful and mischievous smile he eventually gave her put her at her ease. He did not seem to have the cruelty of Camilla, instead he looked at the unfortunate condition of Lucius Peake with pity and distaste rather then a vindictiveness.

“Well, my first question is about the Arboreal Orb,” she said. “What actually is it?”

“The Arboreal Orb is the Creator or Godhead.” said Richard. “It’s been given many names throughout history, the Christians called it Lucifer or the Devil, and the Gnostics the Demiurge. Interestingly the Gnostics were correct in thinking the Demiurge created the universe but they were wrong in believing in a duality of good and evil. To the Gnostics the evil Demiurge was opposed by a divinity of light, purity beyond our corrupted reality. But there is no God only Satan. It was he or as I prefer ‘they’ who made our world. There is nothing ‘good’ outside it.” 

“But the Arboreal Orb’s true nature is a mystery. Only George Browne the Order’s founder knew its secrets and wrote them down in his grimoire, lost since the sixteenth century. But there are many theories; some within the Order, the traditionalists, the occultists, look upon it as a supernatural entity separate from ordinary space and time, a mystical force. The Ten Universes are the emanations of the Arboreal Orb, or in other words its thoughts, its dreams brought to life, corresponding to the Tree of Life of the Kabbalah.

“I myself think the Orb is not an individual but a collection of alien intelligences, an advanced material civilization that has managed to devise the technology to manufacture universes. This I think will be revealed when at last all the universes are absorbed into one. We then become the Arboreal Orb…or its food.”

Interested by Richard’s erudite monologue, Amanda was unaware that Camilla, who had returned to Richard’s side, had an air of impatience.

“Yes and the biggest mystery is you, Amanda,” she said at last. “You’re a doppelganger, a physical split from your other self. What happened back in the library of Ashbury Manor was totally unforeseen, even Richard can’t figure it out.”

“And there is another question,” Amanda said, realising this was the question she most wanted answered. “What is my place in all of this?”

“I’m going to be blunt with you,” said Camilla. Richard stared at her intently, a dark frown on his face.

“In the beginning you were a mere means to an end. When your father turned us down we approached you. We needed you to gain access to the Manor when our bid for the building failed. You see, Richard had gone through via a different route, a very dangerous one, over ten years ago our time, a route that was not open to us. Once you had gone through Amanda you would have suffered the same fate as Lucius.”

“To us you were a spoilt child, your head full of half-digested ideas. But then that miraculous divide occurred and I was taken completely by surprise. I had to act quickly and I decided to spare you. I also on the spur of the moment captured Moonbeam. My hunch is you are important, very important to the task ahead, the merging of the Ten Universes into one, and thus I have allowed you to join the Order. But you still have one more thing to do to prove yourself.”

She looked meaningfully at the immobile and expressionless figure of Moonbeam and then turned to the soldiers.

“Take her to the altar and secure her,” she ordered.

Rushing to obey, two armed men roughly manhandled the limp body and secured her wrists to iron manacles attached to the wall of the well. Moonbeam’s eyes suddenly lost their dead vacancy and she stared around her confusedly as if she had awoken from deep sleep. Then when her situation finally dawned on her she began to struggle, arching her body, kicking violently but in vain at the guards, who leered at her, mocking her helplessness. She began to scream in a high pitched fashion that after a while slowly ebbed away into a desolate sobbing. Without uttering a word she looked imploringly at Amanda.

“Now gut her like a fish,” Camilla said. “Show me your mettle!”

Amanda felt the tip of the knife digging into her sides and without thinking took hold of it from Camilla. She held the clasp tightly and directed her gaze back to the terrified Moonbeam.

She hated the woman who had taken her dad from her and warped his mind with sappy morality. She loathed Moonbeam’s cloying new age philosophies and her attempts to preach, treating her like a kid. Rather then play acting at debauchery like a moody adolescent, here at last was her chance to demonstrate to the Order her embracing of evil.

But to actually thrust a murderously sharp blade into Moonbeam’s yielding belly… Such a scene playing itself out in her mind rooted her to the spot.

“What are you waiting for-do it!”

Camilla scowled, pushing her forward. Tentatively she walked, feeling an appalling nervousness surge up inside, clutching her innards, making her head spin. She carried on regardless, holding the knife directly in front of her, watching the sweat trickle from the twisted face of her victim. Amanda had to do this, she had no choice. If she refused she would become a victim herself, dead or worse. Either that or do the deed, become active in the limitless project of excitement the Order represented.

Now she was face to face with Moonbeam, a new emotion began to take hold, the emotion the powerful feel when confronted with the supine bodies of the powerless. Staring directly into her eyes, lifting the knife above her head, Amanda felt power, the complete control over another person’s life. An incredible rush like adrenaline pumped through her veins, blocking out compassion and pity. The woman in chains wriggled and writhed in a hopeless attempt to escape the blade, desperately pleading for her life. But Amanda was not listening, something more primeval, visceral had taken command.

Here in front of Amanda was a pathetic creature, who not so long ago ruled her. The position was now reversed but Amanda’s power was expanded a hundredfold in comparison and simplified; the power of life and death.

Moonbeam shrieked as the knife fell, aimed at her belly. But the blade never reached its target. Amanda was thrown violently to the ground, the dagger falling from her hand as she hit the floor, wincing with the pain of the impact. Looking up she saw Richard Solomon coolly standing above her. But it was Camilla who spoke first.

“Why,” she shouted. “She was doing everything she was supposed to!”

“Not yet, the time is not right. We may have use for this woman later on,” Richard said pointing at Moonbeam.

“Your getting soft Richard, you really are.” Camilla grimaced, frustration contorting her features.

But it was Amanda who felt frustrated, furious too. Thwarted in her attempt to murder her rival she turned her excess anger on the one who dominated her in the present: Camilla. Picking up the knife she hurled herself without thought at the woman, spitting out obscenities, her face lost in a deformed smile of rage. Then, suddenly she was turned off like a tap. Unconsciousness descended without warning.

 

 

Part Two: Beyond The Looking Glass: Chapter One: Mirror Image

Amanda watched her mirror image clamber from the library floor, grasping at the bookcase for support and dislodging the heavy volumes resting on the shelves. The surge of violent feeling inside her had ebbed, but it still left an exhilarating residue behind.
Unlike her alter-ego she was naked and covered in a sticky fluid as if she was newly born and for a brief moment she felt dismayed as she realised she was without hair. But the incredible wash of sensation buoyed her up, jolting her with savage portents of freedom. She could do what ever she liked and nobody could stop her, not her school teachers, her father or Moonbeam.
She gazed agog at her father’s lover, who in kind gaped in stunned silence, obviously shaken by this new apparition, naked and bold; at Paul, who had betrayed her and at her other self, weak and frightened. Amanda was fearful but she had her fear under control. The hatred for Moonbeam smouldered and burnt inside but it was not sensible to attack now.
Calmly she picked up the knife and walked towards Camilla. Here was a strong woman who knew what she wanted, albeit dressed like a company executive.
For a moment her cool evaporated when she turned to face the looking-glass. The mirror was now a doorway into a colossal chamber lit by red sunlight-mysterious and exotic. It was only a few seconds before she rallied and looked to Camilla for guidance. Amanda was ready to kill the cat, torture it if need be to proof her worth and escape from the clutches of normality and boredom. She felt a twinge of loss when she thought about her father. She loved him but he was too much under the influence of his soppy new-age girlfriend-drawing away from the decadent and the satanic.
But the woman from The Order of the Arboreal Orb was not interested in completing the initiation ceremony. She immediately stepped through the mirror into the peculiar vestibule. Amanda using all the daring that had been instilled in her since she was an infant followed, she did not even look back at Paul, Moonbeam and her other self. It was as if these people had nothing more to do with her, feeble characters who no longer had dominion over her.
She was convinced this was the right direction, the pathway guiding her to the secrets of Ashbury Manor. Of course she was scared, but a decision had to be made and she knew it was the correct one.
There was no friction when she stepped through the looking glass, nothing that clung to her or hindered her egress; it was as if she was walking through an open door.
Once she stood within the chamber the humidity was palpable, bringing a sweat to her body. It was like entering on a mild spring day one of the tropical greenhouses at Kew Gardens. Assailed by an overwhelming odour of rotting vegetation, of arboreal growth and decay, she stood on the sloping floor, made up of slabs of stone, tinged with a thin layer of green moss and the diseased yellow of fungus. She gazed around her in wonder.
The next few minutes passed in a blur of horror as Lucius Peake as if sleepwalking passed through the mirror and was attacked by a dog sized insect. It issued from a hole in the centre of a mosaic depicting a giant eye, laid out at the bottom of the dip in the floor. The creature having smeared its three proboscises into Douglas’s eyes and mouth, somehow controlling his movements directly through his brain, forced him back into the library. But he soon emerged dragging a screaming and kicking Moonbeam.
Held tightly around the stomach by Lucius’ well-muscled arms, shrieking uncontrollable, her limbs flailing in all directions, Moonbeam was turned towards the imperious figure of Camilla, who stared intently at the struggling woman. Immediately Moonbeam’s turbulent movements and high pitched screeching ceased as the two women’s eyes meet. The zombie form then lowered the inert but free standing body to the ground and backed off. Her shape was as still as a statue as she stood in front of Camilla, her eyes wide-open but vacant.
A brief smile of triumph crossed Amanda’s face as she witnessed the subjection of her enemy, now under the control of the business woman. She marvelled at the way Camilla had complete power over Moonbeam, thinking at the same time what she could do with such powers.
“How do you do that,” she whispered, after the shock of the last few minutes had worn off. She looked around in bewilderment as the unreality of the situation crept up on her again
“You need years of practice in the arts of domination before you can master supremacy over another. There are limitations though. For instance I can make her move forward, stop and sit.”
As she said these words, Moonbeam walked a few steps, sat, stood up, turned and moved back to the position she had started from.
“I can even get this hippy to eat meat.”
Taking a sausage roll from her pocket Camilla passed it to Moonbeam, who expressionlessly began to munch on the morsel.
“For ultimate control, for getting the powerless to carry out complex tasks, you need the Arboreal Forms as intermediaries.”
Camilla pointed to the creature that had once been Lucius Peake. His limbs twitched sporadically as the tiny organic tendrils beneath the skin of his face and arms flexed.
So many questions to ask thought Amanda, as she swivelled around, taking in once more the immense cathedral sized space.
“Where in hell are we,” she managed to say at last.
Camilla smiled with bleak humour. “Ashbury Manor of course, the real Ashbury Manor, but you can call it Hell if you like, many do. For us it is a playground, a place of opportunity, but above all it is a terminus for other destinations.”
There was a pause in which time Amanda heard a sound, a susurration, almost inaudible, issuing from the huge archway.
“This chamber, if you were religiously inclined, you might call Hell’s Gate,” Camilla continued. “But plenty of time for questions later. We must make haste; a long and arduous journey awaits us.”
Striding purposefully up the slope, away from the eye mosaic, Camilla made for the entrance that yawned cavernously. Amanda, slightly out of breath after climbing the incline, Lucius and Moonbeam behind, could only see a few meters into the tunnel, whose towering uneven walls, enveloped in green fronds and vines, were lit by the red illumination of the sunlight. But beyond was only darkness.
The massive stone columns, thirty or forty meters high and ten meters thick, standing on either side, slicked with a mysterious amber fluid, were like two gigantic redwoods, making her head spin as she stretched her neck to get a better look. The portico supported by the columns was just as immense; a solid slab of stone carved to resemble the eye of a malevolent god. The craftsmanship was otherworldly but still infected with the ubiquitous vegetation.
An unbearable odour of vegetable rot gushed from the black entrance, making Amanda gag. But it was not only this preventing her from following Camilla.
Crawling and shuffling obscenely on every surface within, were a multitude of cockroaches. On closer inspection, as one of the creatures perambulated towards her feet, she saw they were smaller versions of the insectile beast attached to Lucius. Their bodies were composed of tiny, wriggling, worm-like organic strands of many colours. in ceaseless motion. There was a wide variety of bodily forms; some had no legs and moved like slugs, others had an endless array like millipedes, some had thin elongated bodies and others were broad and fat; their dimensions ranged from the size of small rats to tiny specks. But all consumed Amanda with a gut wrenching revulsion.
“Oh God, I’m not going in there,” she said.
Camilla, who had turned around as she was about to be enveloped in darkness, stared long and hard; a penetrating look suddenly filled with hostility. But just as quickly the hostility faded to be replaced by wry amusement.
“Come on. Don’t let a few bugs upset you.”
As Amanda stood in silence considering her next move, the abundance of plant life began to emit a faint emerald glow, lighting the interior with a green luminescence.
What was revealed staggered her. A corridor of vast proportions, the angled lines of the walls, the souring buttresses and arches of the roof, as elaborate as a gothic cathedral, stretching into a dark distance; warped, transformed by alien foliage, an undergrowth of exotic forms. Diseased but multicoloured toadstools the size of houses clung parasitically to shattered pillars, palm trees and massive ferns clustered everywhere, even growing on the buttresses; black and purple coloured hanging moss fell from the arches like shrouds or funereal curtains.
By now the emerald tinge revealing the corridor was complemented by the radiance of the other plants, a rich decadent colouration, a mixture of purples, reds and greens. For a while as she stared transfixed, she was puzzled by a constant rippling movement of the bizarre flora, until with a jolt she understood. The motion was caused by thousands upon thousands of the Arboreal Forms, swarming on every leaf and bough.
“Beautiful isn’t it. Probably the greatest single creation ever devised by mankind, total genius,” said Camilla as she nonchalantly strolled down an aisle running down the middle of the growth infected edifice.
Beautiful was an understatement, thought Amanda as, mustering her will power, she walked on. Lucius had picked up the comatose form of Moonbeam like a monster in an old B-movie and tagged along behind her, the three figures walking in single file.
The insects or Arboreal Forms as Camilla called them inexplicably kept off the main path, strewn with broken brickwork and mixed with pods, seeds and strange fruit. Instead they massed on the gigantic stems and trunks crowding densely at the edges. Over their heads along entangled branches, vines and creepers, they swarmed like the massed ranks of army ants. It was difficult to see the trees and plants close up beneath the clouds of diverse bodies, but when there were gaps Amanda was shocked to see human faces; arms and legs encased in thick bark or the skin of fungus.
She stopped in her tracks, her mouth open in disbelieve, ready to run back the way she had come.
Camilla had disappeared behind a turn in the path and Lucius had stopped, so controlling her repulsion of the myriad, crawling entities with great difficulty, she stepped, very carefully, to the side.
The creatures undulated, swayed, climbed on each other to get away from her as if she was sprayed with some extremely powerful insect repellent. Mystified by this immunity but very grateful all the same, she reached out her hand to the nearest trunk, the tiny beasts spilling away like a wave.
The gnarled convoluted bark was revealed and something else too, a head half submerged, one eye covered in the knotty wood, the other twitching uncontrollable and a mouth also moving but spasmodically, chocked with rotting flora. An arm jerked imploringly, almost catching hold of Amanda, but she moved instinctively, stifling a gasp of dismay.
“Camilla!”
At the sound of her cry, Camilla returned, a look of impatience on her face. Amanda waited for her to arrive, watching in disgust as the Arboreal Forms flowed back, engulfing the head and arm.
“There is a person trapped in the tree,” she said pointing at the spot.
“Ah, so you have noticed the victims of Ashbury Manor,” Camilla said grinning to herself. “You will find Sarah Boswell here somewhere and the unfortunate William Barrett. The architecture is sustained by the nutrients of their suffering; without them the whole building would collapse.”
“Jeez, it’s so sick!”
“Look here young woman, if you don’t like it you can return home now to your daddy. You don’t want to give up the greatest opportunity you could possible have, do you?”
Her instincts were telling her to flee but Camilla’s commanding tone was stronger. The realisation that she had passed her initiation gave her a sudden unexpected stab of pride.
She was now a bono fide member of the Order of the Arboreal Orb, the most secretive, exclusive occult society in the world. Everything around her was frightening, extremely perplexing but also strikingly gorgeous; a decadent verdure of pain but also of exuberant life.
“No I suppose I don’t, but I have so many questions. Is it possible to ask them while we walk?” Amanda replied after a long pause.
“No, I need to think. Plenty of time later for questions.”
Gritting her teeth she continued after the business woman. Another thought came to her then, a disturbing one. What if rather then a member of the Order she was a willing dupe, being lead blindly on by Camilla to her doom, a victim like all the others.
She was beginning to become aware of other trapped bodies in the undergrowth, a shaking limb here, a sheet of skin mottled with parasitic growths over there. One figure was not as encased in vegetable matter as the others. His arms were held tight behind his back and his feet were swallowed by the thick rind of a tropical fern, whose overarching greenery scraped the roof. The flowing stream of Arboreal Forms moved over him like a current and the man’s mouth opened wide suddenly and a form like a centipede scrambled out. A groan of inarticulate suffering escaped his mouth and his anguished eyes locked onto Amanda’s.
Nausea twisted her stomach and she retched. Turning her head away she forced herself to focus on the back of Camilla’s retreating blue jacket. But still the insidious idea she was a mere tool, a useful fool, destined to end up in this hellish jungle or some other horrific place, played on her mind.
For a moment she envied her other self safe behind the mirror in the cosy everyday world.
Using all the reserves of will she had at her disposal she carried on walking. There was no going back she thought, no way of back tracking. She knew deep down she was committed to her task, first to learn from Camilla, to uncover awful and dreadful knowledge and then to raise through the ranks of the Order of the Arboreal Orb, gaining power. So what if weak and pathetic individuals ended up as victims, their pain and misery used as an energy source for this succulent decadent beauty. It was worth it. Hadn’t she always thought this way, weren’t the beliefs her father held in his Satanist period the same, weren’t the messages of the books she read, the films she watched, the lyrics of the music she listened to saying the same thing?
“Stop being a loser and get on with living,” she muttered, striding with more purpose, but keeping her eyes firmly fixed on the path ahead. The knife she still held in her hand she griped tighter.

Before long the infested nave came to its end in another soaring arch of gothic stone, every conceivable form of clinging and parasitical plant dangling like organic drapes from its edges. Amanda passed underneath still marvelling at the luxuriant and exotically coloured foliation, the bright red and yellow flowers like gaping mouths with shifting stamens, the giant purple mushrooms sprouting everywhere, but she tried to keep her eyes away from the trapped men and women immersed in vegetation.

Camilla was waiting for her in an even larger space beyond the archway, its walls forming a circle hundreds of metres high topped by a glass dome held together by black iron girders as thick as tree trunks. Looking up at it, Amanda felt dizzy so immense did it seem, high above her like the sky itself. This chamber the size of a small town made her feel tiny and insignificant like a house would appear to a fly.

There was less vegetation here then the previous ‘room’ but the gigantic scale of the trees growing here compensated for their lack in numbers. Lumpy branches of contorted wood issued from the bulbous black trunks, similar to banyan trees, and undulated over the iron girders, drooping sickly green tendril-like leaves into the dizzying heights. It was possible that it was all one tree so interwoven were the trunks and branches.

But the arena like space in between was free of organic life except where the roots of the trees broke the surface of crumbling stone to form humps and hillocks of bark. All was illuminated softly in an eerie emerald light coming from two moons or planets floating in a starless void seen through the glass dome, their surfaces tinted green as if infected with gangrene.

With a feeling of relieve, Amanda realised she could not see any of the Arboreal Forms in this enormous space. But just as she was relaxing, a movement across one of the branches spanning the dome made her flinch. She could not help but look in the direction of the scuttling movement and she gasped. The form was indistinct in the faint light but its sheer bulk loomed high above her, an Arboreal Form that had to be at least eight meters in length straddling the branch with its multiple limbs. Once this shape had been discerned, other shadowy forms, hulking and insectile, could be seen in the undergrowth, high above her head and in the distant trees.

It was difficult keeping up with Camilla, so fast did she walk, striding ahead as if she was late for a business appointment. She was heading straight towards an oblong arch on the left discernable between the looming trees. Vast carved symbols, hieroglyphics of obscure and sinister meaning, had been chiselled around its architrave, there occult significance intimidating and overwhelming.

Sweat covered her body as she ran to keep up with the older woman, her heart beating faster with the exertion, but she looked around her with the same appalled fascination as before. She saw other gaping entrances, one far away directly behind her and a gigantic cavern of an entrance facing the one they had left. It was obscured by distance and the undergrowth sprouting from the strange trees.

She noticed that the floor of the immense hall was decorated in faded colours, each slab of coloured stone representing a piece of an ancient and root ruptured jigsaw, a picture so big that she could not make any sense of it. But she passed over fragments, depictions of hideous mouthparts, reptilian scales, deformed human faces and eyes, thousands of eyes, humanoid but all with the stare of insanity.

Catching up with Camilla, the business woman unexpectedly stopped in her tracks and faced Amanda, who tried to control her fast and rapid breathing, wiping sweat away from her forehead. The loping gorilla like form of Lucius with the inert body of Moonbeam cradled in his alien controlled arms came up to them. Camilla was giving Amanda one of her wry humourless smiles, staring in all directions and for a few minutes there was silence in which could be heard the displacement of foliage by the gargantuan forms overhead.

“It’s not fair to keep you totally in the dark,” said Camilla, breaking the silence. “This place is the hub, the hallway where the corridors branch off to the different rooms and chambers of Ashbury Manor. The Manor as constructed by George Browne, an architectural genius if ever there was one, is a representation of the Ten Universes. Each room symbolises an actual emanation or sphere of the Arboreal Orb with doors exiting onto those spheres. The one we are standing in is the Earth or Earths, the lowest and lease perfect of the emanations.”

“Over there,” she pointed towards the oblong arch, “is the beginning of the Corridor of the Future, where every possibility has a doorway leading to it. And that way is the entrance to the Corridor of the Past.” Her finger indicated the other far-off archway.

“Our destination is a future where the Order of the Arboreal Orb commands and controls.” Camilla began to walk, turning her back on Amanda.

“But where does that go?”

Amanda had her eyes on the gaping black wound that opened up cavernously at the head of this preternatural hall, a dark hole that seemed to have been broken into the very fabric of reality; and something beyond imagining, beyond comprehension lurked there in abysmal darkness, a thing that moved like a spider.

“That is the gateway to the other Nine Universes, to the Arboreal Orb itself. For us to attempt to enter would entail our consumption by Mogoloth, The Devourer of Souls, that guards the path. We would spend eternity in its labyrinthine innards, slowly, very slowly decomposing in its digestive juices.”

After these words had been spoken the older woman moved on again, her face set in an inscrutable mask and Lucius shuffled forward following the silent command of the entity that had absorbed his brain, knocking Amanda aside and sending her sprawling onto the hard stone floor.

The fall jolted her from her trance of horror and wonderment and was replaced instantly with simple humiliation. Without much thought except embarrassment she quickly sprang to her feet and ran as fast as she could, past the shambling zombie with its human baggage (with an inward jolt, equal to the force of the fall, Amanda finally comprehended that Lucius was no longer Lucius but a tool made of flesh) and slowed down only when she reached Camilla.

They passed under the arch and found themselves in a corridor only eleven or twelve meters in width and the same in height, but whose length stretched into an impenetrable expanse of distance. The first few kilometres were lit with the ubiquitous green glow emitted from the foliage clinging to the walls, plant life just as exotic as the rest. Arboreal Forms, not huge like those in the oversized domed hall they had left but relatively small, crawled and slithered abhorrently.

Further and further on they went and she began to see a pattern emerging in the endless corridor. After what seemed hours of walking but was probably a fraction of that time, when the nauseating vegetable stink had lost its power due it its constant presence, they came at regular intervals to glass domed atriums, strange skies seen through the iron ribbed glass; night time skies crowded with scintillating jewelled constellations and outlandish moons, or just a cold void, an absence of all light; and daytime skies with red coloured dying suns or unbelievably intense orbs of scorching light ready to explode. In each atrium there was a rounded cavity in the floor like a well sunk into the earth surrounded by a low brick wall. An opening in the wall led to an iron ladder leading downward to a tiny pinprick of light, far, far below.

Her eyes were turned to the porthole shaped windows on both sides, the size of giant transparent plates, framed with riveted steel. The supernaturally thick glass was tinged green with lichen and moss, but the spellbinding landscapes they revealed made Amanda stare with shock and amazement.

Rolling dunes through one window extended to distant mountains as black as night like lowering storm clouds, jagged with rocky peaks and pinnacles. But these dunes were not made of tiny grains of sand but faceted crystals heaped like pirate treasure on an immense scale, covering everything. They blazed with multi-coloured light, reflected sunlight, blinding Amanda briefly. Smashed structures, ruined buildings like skyscrapers, reared above the crystal sand, victims of some unimaginable apocalypse, deserted and eroded by the constant wind induced movement of the jewel-like grains.

An impenetrable rainforest crowded against another window in another atrium. A huge slab of concrete, a few paces off down an incline of a prominence, could be seen through the sail sized ferns and entangled undergrowth, covered in bright red tubular blooms and exotic green and purple plants. The block with broad metal wires sticking out of its uneven top was the vestige of a massive construction long since collapsed and overtaken by the propagating forest.

By now Amanda was so used to frightful wonders that when a dog sized insect similar to a grasshopper crawled from behind the concrete bloke she was only mildly surprised.

Camilla hardly said a word, striding determinedly forward. Questions about what she was seeing crowded Amanda’s mind but she felt too intimated by Camilla’s brisk movements to put them into words. But once Camilla did offer an explanation.

“What you see are possible futures. We are making our way to one particular future. Now hurry along, please.”

Amanda had lost all track of time, her legs were aching, sweat soaked her body and the marvels on each side of her were now mere blurs in her mind. She began to wonder if they were ever going to stop. But just when she was ready to complain they came to a halt in one particular atrium.

Resting on the circular wall around the lip of the hole in the floor, she caught her breath and stared at the oval window.

The landscape beyond was oddly familiar, a river seen from above as if the window was set into a high tower. The wide fast moving river had broken its original banks, submerging non-descript housing beneath its waters. Palms grow along the bank and bunched together at certain places in between more decrepit looking houses; houses Amanda recognised as normal English suburban dwellings but gone to seed. Tropical weeds and plants sprang from the small gardens with washing stretched on lines waiting to dry. The few carts pulled by malnourished horses moving slowly on the cracked and crumbling roads looked ramshackle. Above it hung a blazing yellow sun.

“Now give me the knife. This is where we say goodbye to Ashbury Manor,” said Camilla, sitting next to Amanda on the wall and staring straight ahead at the humid land through the glass. “And hello to our future.”

After Amanda had given the knife to her, Camilla got up and looked intently at Lucius: The thing on his head pulsed gently and he clumped to the iron ladder. He draped the prone Moonbeam over his broad shoulders and began to descend the well-like cavity. She swung herself over the edge and followed the zombie, leaving Amanda to stare down into the vertiginous depths.

The rounded brick walls went on and on into the blackness, the hardy outlandish vines and creepers managing to cling precariously to its sides, until at the bottom could be detected a tiny prick of illumination. Amanda’s stomach flipped and she felt dizzy standing on the edge, her eyes fixated on the sheer drop. Eventually Camilla’s voice echoed up to her like a cry of a demon from the pit.

“Come on, we haven’t got all day and don’t worry-it’s only half a mile down.”