The first sensation was a rolling motion. Amanda was sitting upright on a moving object; the shock of her sudden awakening almost toppling her to the ground. An arm shot out and gripped her upper limb, steadying her. The sky wheeled above her and her stomach rose into her mouth. Gulping for air she stared at Camilla, the owner of the securing arm, who looked back not with concern but with a cold regard.
Amanda rode on a human being or what once was human, transformed, transmogrified. A vegetable entity, an arboreal form, had consumed its host, warping, purposefully disfiguring limbs and body to fit it into the lose shape of a four legged animal, a beast of burden. The tiny proliferating vines felt soft against her posterior but they constantly moved, slipping and sliding like a nest of thin elongated maggots, richly coloured in bright greens, reds and yellows. A stink of vegetable rot assailed her nostrils mixed disgustingly with the smell of decomposing flesh. Staring straight ahead at the thing’s head, a corpse’s head, swaying side to side, recognition came to her. She was riding on the back of Lucius Peake.
The shock was too much. Amanda retched and would have fallen if it was not for Camilla’s firm grip.
“Revolting isn’t it,” said Camilla. “But it’s mainly for show, to scare the local populace.”
Camilla was riding on a similar ‘beast,’ another unfortunate, absorbed by an arboreal form. Richard Solomon rode on another. Both flanked Amanda, travelling slowly along a muddy path beside a vast, swiftly moving river, palm fronds and detritus floating downstream. Behind them were two ordinary horses. The rider of the first, one of the khaki clad soldiers, led the other horse. Moonbeam’s horizontal and comatose body was strapped to her mount, her body wobbling, her head lolling, a movement induced by the slow trot of the animal. At the front of the column were the remaining five soldiers, all on horseback, powerful machine guns slung behind their backs, leading two mounts without riders.
Outside the ruinous temple annex, the heat of the afternoon sun was unconfined by its shade. Humidity dragged the sweat from Amanda’s body as she bounced on the soft slithering hide of the creature that had once been Lucius. The air was moist, wet; mud and grimy puddles clogged the path and the lush steamy greenery to the side was slicked with rainwater. Nausea still swirled in her stomach, made worse by the lurching of her mount, and clouds of tiny gnats or mosquitoes swarmed above her head. She felt wretched and was unable to fully take in her surroundings, but behind the screen of ferns, the odd lofty palm and the general tangled jungle, she could see patches of cleared ground, roughly cultivated and beyond that, houses, ordinary, mundane suburbanite housing from the late twentieth century but dilapidated, still lived in but falling apart. Sometimes raggedly dressed people, tanned by the intense sun, were working in these makeshift fields but if they caught sight of the slow moving procession they scurried back into their hovels, picking up any stray children on the way.
Of course the swift swollen expanse of river on her left dotted with tropical debris was the Thames and the rough agricultural land, just barely vacant of encroaching jungle, and the almost ruined overgrown housing was Walton-on-Thames, a suburb of London.
Somehow all this, southern England two hundred years hence, was more unsettling then the nightmare world of Ashbury Manor’s interior. The biting insects buzzing around her, the sickness, the heat, the vivid moist greenery were real, not like the startling but hallucinatory dreamscapes of the Manor. She had come back to Earth, but an Earth transformed, made foreign so it was completely unrecognisable. She felt lost and alone, defeated.
The idea of escape came to her then. She would run away, back to Ashbury Manor; travel the way she had come through the terrifying corridors and finally pass through the mirror into the early twenty first century and be reunited with her father. When this thought entered her brain, a surge of hope banished her nausea for a brief second. But the near impossibility of these actions, breaking away from the hired soldiers of the Order, then fleeing through unknown territory, then facing the dangers and unbelievable horrors of the Manor, deflated this transitory hope like a burst soap bubble.
With a heave of her strained innards she tried to vomit but her stomach was empty, only bile filled her mouth.
On the horizon, towards London, something loomed above the river and the many scattered clumps of palms. Amanda was so tightly coiled in her misery that she had not taken in the red and green object that was like a massive mountain seen through the haze of distance. At first she really thought it was a mountain, a mountain that had sprouted up over the last two hundred years where London had once been, but then she understood it was some kind of edifice, organic in nature like a city sized tree hollowed out by ants or termites. It was ragged and chaotically shaped with branch-like protuberances connecting different parts of its lumpy construction or sticking out into the air like bridges that had nowhere to go. It was so far away that she could not make out any details but its surface undulated, was in constant motion. As she watched one of the awesomely huge ‘branches’ reached out and connected with another, forming an archway high in the sky.
“Our destination,” said Richard, who was staring at Amanda. “We call it the Arboretum, capital city of the Empire of the Order of the Arboreal Orb.”
She made no reply but continued to stare ahead at the edifice, fixing her gaze straight ahead to steady her stomach. They lurched on for what seemed like hours through the increasing tropical flora, but eventually passing the primitive homesteads they came to a halt. The fronds of particularly tall palms shaded the clearing in which the party stood and a wrecked car long since eroded into a mound of rusting metal lay to the side amongst exotic verdure. A concrete road bridge in a shattered condition crossed the river nearby, strange water weeds and dislodged biomasses washed up against its arches and grow up its sides overtaking the lopsided and destroyed street lamps along its edges. A cluster of high rise flats long since deserted and overtaken by rank foliage, surrounded by the ubiquitous palms, reared above the transformed Thames, a reminder of past times.
Dismounting, Camilla signalled to the soldiers to dismount too. Richard helped Amanda from the Lucius-Thing smiling encouragement as he did so. Once on firm ground, slightly away from the stench of decomposing flesh and vegetable matter, she felt her insides settle and with this she began to feel more human. Camilla was up close with Richard discussing something in soft whispers but then the woman stepped quickly away without warning.
“Farewell Lucius, you are no longer of use,” she said loudly so everyone could hear.
The strands and fibres covering his malformed body began to clump together, coagulating into bizarre many-legged shapes and arachnid forms that swarmed busily like army ants taking apart their prey. Bits of flesh, organs and bone were carried away into the undergrowth and into the river too, were some slid under the surface while others floated on the current or swam using grotesque paddle shaped limbs. Some even flow on wings formed of organic tendrils taking away sagging trails of intestine or unnameable organs reduced to gooey masses into the air, over the tree tops or the other side of the river. Amanda watched, wrapping her arms about her hairless head to keep the flying creatures away, as Lucius’s skull, decaying skin still attached, scuttled away, held by at least five arboreal forms.
The same process was occurring with the two unknown victims and the ground, the water and the sky were a crawl with the floral insects, dazzling the eye with bright primary colours and afflicting the ear with the buzz of wings.
Silence. Once it was over and the multitude of arboreal forms had carried off there bounty no one spoke. Only the susurration of normal insect life and the clacking of parakeets in the trees disturbed the profound stillness. Then Richard jumped deftly on to one of the riderless horses already saddled and Camilla slightly more awkwardly did likewise. They both stared at Amanda for a few seconds until Richard offered her the opportunity to ride behind him. Clambering onto the back of his horse, helped by his sturdy arm, she clung tightly to his waist. Richard shouted a command and the posse continued on its journey.
Slowly crossing the road bridge, Amanda’s stomach began to settle and she felt well enough to take an interest in her environs. The expanse of river was getting wider, turning into a flood plain the nearer it got to the ominously large construction miles away. The plain or immense swamp was scattered with islands and on these, isolated structures, crumbling tower blocks, sections of motorway bridges and other detritus of the 20th century, succumbed to the proliferating organic profusion. Now and again clouds of parakeets arose like rainbow coloured smoke from these lonely outposts of dry land and flew in all directions except towards the giant formation on the horizon. In between the islets of lost modernity, the still and fetid waters were a breeding bed of more foliage, stunted willows and swamp grass, camouflage to half submerged objects; a cluster of broken cars like a wrecker’s yard, even a tail fin of a crashed airliner. Further on more freakish and abnormal flora abounded, immediately recognisably to Amanda, who had travelled through the disorientating corridors of Ashbury Manor. They were fungi shaped and multicoloured, grouped here and three like the beginnings of some exotic cancer of the rank landscape. And over this marshland loomed the immensity of the Arboretum like a gargantuan sentient fortress or a city sized banyan tree caught in a time lapse film.
Amanda could not keep her eyes away from this glowering monstrous object. It dwarfed the nearby wetlands but its details were obscured by a heat haze or mist arising from the far distant swamps. Constant movement was noticeable, as massive branches or limbs, at least a mile in length she calculated, sprouted from its surface, joined with others or was absorbed back into the main body. She wondered if this Arboretum was an equivalent to an amoeboid or alien blob from a sci-fi movie consuming everything in its path.
Occasionally a deep hum or drone came from the air as they continued along the river bank, this time on the north side. Glancing into the hazy blue sky Amanda observed a flying creature high above, roughly insectile in shape and very big. It held something in its extensions but it was too far away to clearly observe.
“What’s that,” she said to Richard.
Amanda knew the answer before Richard replied.
“An arboreal form. It is taking victims to the Arboretum.”
Muddy and stagnant water was thinning out the dry land as they continued, until eventually it was impossible to go further without the use of a boat. The party eventually came to a halt outside a half submerged multi-story car park infested with thick vines and nearly hidden by ferns like green sails and thickly bunched and lofty palms. Darkness was coming and the sky was painted a glorious reddish orange as the sun died, silhouetting the immense stain of the Arboretum, a gigantic ink spot whose edges were in constant activity. Swarms of mosquitoes arose from the neighbouring swamplands as twilight deepened and Amanda slapped her neck and exposed arms to keep them away. The music of night creatures, frogs mostly, boomed out like an alien chorus line.
Dismounting, Camilla, Richard and the soldiers guided their horses through the small forest of palms towards the concrete car park, squelching through mud and sometimes tripping over exposed roots in the gloom. Arriving at the black bulk of the multi-story, the guards took electric torches from their packs, switched them on and aimed the beams at a metal ramp over the water, leading to the lowest non-flooded level.
Entering the dank sweaty interior, echoing with the drip of moisture and the slosh of water from below, the wavering torch beams throw elongated shadows over the once grey but now green slimed walls. Misshapen objects that had once been vehicles were occasionally revealed in the fitful light, rusting heaps of metal overtaken by miniature but sturdy tropical undergrowth. They halted before a square section of the car park, screened by voluminous canvas curtains hanging by iron pegs driven into the concrete roof. Behind these curtains was a dormitory area with at least a dozen makeshift camp beds with mosquito netting. The guards taking their guns and packs from their shoulders immediately headed for the beds, crawling beneath the netting, except for the two who carried Moonbeam to a bed, lying her down. Some took food from their rucksacks and began to eat; the others laid themselves flat to sleep.
Camilla, Richard and Amanda stood and surveyed the scene for a few minutes. “This is where we sleep tonight; tomorrow we arrive at the Arboretum,” Richard said without emotion, handing Amanda and Camilla wrapped food from his pack. “You’re bed is over there Amanda and we’ll sleep here,” he continued, indicating their resting places.
When Amanda found her cramped cot, without bed clothes or even a pillow, she ate her food sitting on its edge, listening to the incredible sound of nocturnal life issuing from the fecund swamps. The food was dried salted meat and hard crusty bread but the thought she was eating animal flesh only created a mild pang of guilt. This faded after a few seconds and she realised vegetarianism was no longer important. Finding she was feeling very sleepy, she lay horizontal and shut her eyes.
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