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.”

Chapter Eleven: Through The Looking Glass

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.

Chapter Ten: The Grimoire

Wearing gloves as instructed by Doctor Baldwin, Amanda carefully lifted each page of the 16^th century volume. The Doctor sitting behind the desk in his study leaned over, concerned his precious find would be damaged, but she tried to ignore him. Unfortunately the tome was written in Latin so she would be unable to read it; annoyingly she would have to rely on Doctor Baldwin’s knowledge. But there were pictures, diagrammatic woodcuttings and more, that had a disturbing effect.
As Paul, sitting next to her and staring at the book, made fake grimaces of disgust, she studied each picture carefully. Some were merely hieroglyphics, outlandish and incomprehensible, but others were pictorial: an eye in the middle of folds of flesh, gazing with evil intent, malformed insects constructed of hundreds of miniature plant like worms, humanoid figures likewise composed of organic growths, either engaged in some form of atrocious act or eating each other and scenes of ritual human sacrifice mostly involving disembowelments, eyes ripped from faces, bodies in cruciform positions strung from trees or poles, encircled by wildly dancing worshipers. Phantasmagorical landscapes were the backdrop to many of these drawings, recognisable from her nightmares of two weeks ago.
“This picture would be great for our next album cover,” Paul said, pointing to a particular nasty scene.
“It makes my skin crawl,” Amanda said after turning the last page, deliberately ignoring Paul’s comment. “But what does it all mean?”
“What I have read has confirmed my suspicions. It’s both theoretical and practical. The theoretical part turns the Cabala on its head; a description of the sefirotic tree of life totally at odds with the ancient Jewish tradition. The practical part is a guide to the rituals essential for union, not with God as in traditional Cabalism but with supreme evil.”
“That explains a lot,” Paul said, making a wry face.
“You will let me know everything about the book, won’t you Doctor Baldwin,” Amanda said trying to catch his eye but failing. Having taken the book away from her, he was absorbed in a specific page.
“Sure,” he assented but he did not look up from the tome.
Normally she would have angrily demanded more from him, extracting every piece of information he held. But for some reason her usual confidence was gone as if her twin had taken it with her into the unknown region behind the mirror.
“So what do we do next,” Paul said breaking the silence.
“First I have to study the book and then I can formulate a plan of action. Working day and night it should take about a week.”
“Leave it up to you in other words,” Amanda managed to say.
“Yes.”
She was unable to reply to that blunt affirmative. Instead she stood up and looked at her watch.
“I better get going, my dad will be getting worried.
“Yes, of course.” Doctor Baldwin still had his head lowered over the old grimoire but now was scribbling ineligible notes in a pad of paper. “I will be in touch.”
The doctor remained absorbed in his work, They let themselves out.
It was about eight in the evening, a day after the grave robbing expedition, and it was already dark. Deciding to walk to the Manor via Abbey Street and then the residential road that merged with it, rather then the unlit towpath beside the Thames, Amanda talked quietly to Paul. As they went past the entrance to the New Cemetery both lingered, staring down the long aisle of the dead at the obscured corner, where they had exhumed Sir William’s body.
“I hope they never find out that we interfered with someone’s grave,” Amanda said.
“I doubt it; we filled it in pretty good.”
Cars passed them as they continued on and they crossed the road near a small roundabout, making their way through a housing estate, then another residential street lined with terraced houses; the residents behind their cosy walls oblivious of the peculiar malevolency lurking only minutes away.
Finally they reached the gates of Ashbury Manor, Amanda and Paul pausing awhile outside and gazing at each other.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea if you come in, Paul. My dad will start asking questions.”
“I agree,” he replied, nodding his head and giving her a resigned but sweet smile. “I’ll see you then but give me a call if Doctor Strange comes up with anything.”
Amanda laughed and watched his retreating back as he walked the way they had come, starting the two mile trek to the train station.

It took two excruciatingly long weeks before Doctor Baldwin contacted Amanda.
In those two weeks, after the police enquiry drew a blank, her dad made up his mind he was going to sell the house and return to America. But friends of Moonbeam and Lucius began to get concerned. They approached the police independently and the investigation picked up again. A thorough search of the Manor and its grounds was undertaken, but they found no evidence of wrong doing.
It began to dawn on her that her father suspected her of involvement in a kidnapping or even the murder of Moonbeam. He hardly spoke and kept to himself, becoming even more withdrawn. Only when he drove her to and from school did they talk, mostly about her sessions with the counsellor, but the conversations were mostly carried out in monosyllables. None of his band mates visited and he hardly went out, spending most of the time brooding in the library or aimlessly playing the guitar in the studio annex. His demeanour became more bedraggled and unkempt, an expression of vacancy always on his unshaven faces as if he was taking hard drugs, and ominously he refused to get dressed-instead he wandered around the house in his dressing gown.
Most of the time she felt on the verge of crying in her father‘s presence, but she held back, ending up silently weeping when she was in the privacy of her room. She had never felt so lonely in her life.
She tried calling Paul but she kept getting a woman at the other end of the phone, probably his mother, who told her that he had gone out and then got angry when she tried to enquire further. Paul never rang her.
She considered phoning Doctor Baldwin or visiting him, but thinking about it she realised he was so engrossed in study he would not want to talk to her. Anyway the Doctor was too intimidating and Amanda’s depression deepened when she reflected that this obsessed old man was (except for Paul) her only real acquaintance. The two girls she had met on her first day at school had remained distant. They regarded her famous father with too much star struck deference for a strong friendship to develop.
As for the house there were no further eruptions of the supernatural but a tense hush reigned as if the Manor awaited an event that would change everything. Amanda did not know if it was her state of mind but the holes or voids of shadow in corners and at the end of corridors were getting deeper and darker. Her fear increased at the same rate that the tension rose, reaching a pitch that was almost unbearable. What made it worse was the morose spectre of her father moving purposelessly from room to room, oblivious to the rising pressure. Very soon now she knew that her self-control would snap and she would verbally attack her father, if only to get a reaction from him.
Although they were a different species from the insect released in the graveyard, the outlandish bugs in the garden scared her and she kept her window shut tightly at night; curling into a ball underneath the bed covers when she heard them rattling against the glass. She could easily imagine herself in the tropics as she sweated beneath the sheets; the sounds of bountiful life existing in the transformed garden keeping up its weird barrage of sound.
Returning to her room after a particularly depressing dinner, where her father had stared sullenly into space picking at his food, she heard through the door the faint ring tones of her mobile. Clasping the small silver object to her ear, her heart beating rapidly, she listened to the posh English voice at the other end, exited and exuberant.
Doctor Baldwin babbled almost incomprehensible about a dark side of Cabalist doctrine with Ashbury Manor at its centre. George Browne’s grimoire was a revelation, terrifying in its implications. It touched on subjects that brought him out in a cold sweat. He believed they were up against a power or force even the most courageous would shrink from, a monstrous agency that threatened existence itself.
Amanda had to admit the Doctor did not seem petrified in the slightest; rather he was over enthusiastic as if he was a scientist who had discovered a new hypothesis to explain the universe. She told him brusquely that in a couple of weeks’ time she would have left the Manor and England altogether.
“Then we are going to have to act quickly…We are going to enter Ashbury Manor” he said, a note of agitation in his voice.
“But…I already live here.” Amanda was perplexed, if it was not for the frightening experiences she had gone through she would have thought the doctor was deranged.
“I mean enter the real Ashbury Manor, not the mere façade you live in. The manor existing beyond the mirrors, an architectural masterpiece defining the topology of evil itself; a gateway to the Ten Universes, emanating from the embodiment of the counter godhead, the eternal eye.”
She restrained her urge to cut the connection and instead took a deep breath, trying to get to grips with her confusion.
“You don’t make any sense, Doctor Baldwin.”
“I thought you were desperate to know what was contained in the book. Well I have studied it and I want to go further, through the looking glass and beyond. Look, we are going to have to meet up and discuss this in some detail. If you come around to my house on Saturday I will reveal everything.”
Amanda acknowledged his suggestion with a resigned grunt, but secretly felt relieved things were moving forward.
“And bring your boyfriend; we’re going to need him.”

The worn, centuries old but surprisingly resilient pages of George Browne’s book lay open upon Doctor Baldwin’s coffee table at an inexplicable diagram depicting circles connected by straight lines. Inside the lines were words written in an unknown alphabet and inside the circles were sinister but beautiful drawings of landscapes Amanda recognised from her nightmares: deserts of crystal and jungles of exotic vegetation. Beneath these elaborate drawings were the faint outlines of what looked like the mapping of a complex labyrinth and at the base of the main diagram was an eye staring in terror and crowning the whole structure was another eye emanating malice and hatred.
They pulled the armchairs, on which they sat, close to the table in Doctor Baldwin’s sitting room. The doctor wearing plastic gloves leaned forward on the sofa, his body rigid, concerned the two teenagers would attempt to touch his precious book. His thin gaunt features were lit by the sunlight coming from the window overlooking the garden that had not been worked in for years, reflecting off his huge spectacles. A strong stench of stale sweat arose from the doctor’s skeletal body, forcing Amanda to lean backward in a futile attempt to escape the smell. But in the end she gave up, letting her horrified fascination with the old grimoire take her over instead.
“You know I could be a very rich man if I sold this book,” Doctor Baldwin was saying. “It’s probably the rarest book in the world, rarer then any other occultist manual, but not as old as the Necronomicon or The Book of Eibon. But that’s beside the point, the real riches lie within its pages.”
Amanda was aware of the ticking away of time. Only today her father announced they were leaving within three weeks and they would be gone sooner if it was not for some final preparations. He had sold the depressing pile at a very good price, incredible rapidly, to a wealthy religious group from Somerset for use as a headquarters; a representative would be visiting on Saturday afternoon to have a look around.
“This is all very interesting Doctor Baldwin, but my dad has sold the house and if we are to rescue Moonbeam and prove my innocence…”
“This goes beyond anything you could possible imagine. George Browne’s twisted genius designed and built an edifice that does not merely exist in our world but also is a springboard to other worlds, other times. His architectural masterpiece represents a map of the Ten Universes, offspring of a Prime Universe, a universe of evil, the Eternal Eye or Arboreal Orb as George Browne called it-the satanic mirror image of the divine godhead in Cabbalistic theory. Disturbingly our world which is the Base Universe is an emanation of the primary malevolency and not separate from it. The construction of Ashbury Manor was an attempt to reach the Eternal Eye, to become at one with it.”
Sighing forlornly, Amanda put her head in her hands.
Detecting her frustration, the doctor changed tack slightly. “But I have discovered in my reading a method of entering the real Ashbury Manor. We can track down this Camilla woman, Moonbeam and your doppelganger. The way of doing so involves an enactment of a ritual to open up the mirrors. There is a problem though.”
Paul who had sat silently through the proceedings with a look of mild disgust on his face spoke up for the first time.
“What sort of problem?”
“At your initiation, Amanda, you were asked to sacrifice a cat to prove you were suitable membership material for the Order of the Arboreal Orb; in other words you could act without moral scruples,” the doctor said, ignoring Paul and staring directly at Amanda in an unnerving fashion.
“But this amoral act was also the method of gaining entry to the vast hidden halls, rooms and corridors of the Manor. As it turned out your ‘evil twin’ broke away before you decided which path to follow. Whatever the mysterious cause of this split, the fact remains that the only way of entering is to enact some kind of evil or amorality.”
“First we desecrated the resting place of the dead and now you want us to mutilate animals,” Paul said, laughing nervously.
“I’ll do it, just leave it to me,” said Doctor Baldwin expressionlessly. “If we wish to confront this awesome threat and save Moonbeam, it has to be done.”
“This is sick,” Amanda said beneath her breath. She felt forces beyond her control were sweeping her away; powers she could not even make sense of, let alone confront. She relied too much on Doctor Baldwin; a man so wrapped up in his own obsessions he could dig up a corpse and now wanted to inflict suffering on an animal. But at that moment she had an idea which she clutched at desperately.
“There is another problem. We are going to have to perform the ritual without my dad knowing. This is impossible as he never departs from the house. Doing it at night is risky because he doesn’t sleep very well and wanders around the house.”
“But I thought you said your dad was meeting his band mates in London next Sunday,” Paul said.
There was a stony silence. Amanda wanted to kill him, extremely slowly.
“Yes we can enact the procedure then, it shouldn’t take too long,” Doctor Baldwin said, oblivious to the tension between the two youngsters. “A week gives me more time to prepare. I still have to do more reading to fully understand the ritual and the sort of terrain we will be moving in. This is exiting; we are entering regions very few mortals have explored. If I arrive at noon would this be convenient for you”
A resigned apathy had taken hold of her. She was unable to take any form of action removing her from Doctor Baldwin’s insane, dangerous and immoral quest. The thought of hurting an animal, causing suffering, made her shake with repugnance, but her will to say no or even protest had been sapped. With a nod she accepted.
“That’s settled then,” Doctor Baldwin said, getting up and carefully taking the book from the table and walking towards the hall. “I’ll see you Sunday week at noon.”

Later on the towpath beside the Thames, dodging the occasional speeding bicycle and getting out of the way of the Canada geese milling around, Paul made an attempt to break the barrier Amanda had retreated behind.
“I’m sorry if I put my foot in it but I thought that you were keen on rescuing Moonbeam.”
“I was, but I feel out of my depth. I hate the thought of killing animals and Doctor Baldwin just seems to take it in his stride. He’s such a weirdo!”
A light rain was splashing into the grey river from the thick cloud cover but it was not cold. They walked on in silence, feeling the rain intensify around them and they increased their pace, Paul hunched up in his leather jacket in a futile effort to keep the rain away. Amanda did not care. She was preoccupied, allowing the water from the sky to fall on her exposed head and sweat shirt without protest.
“Would you like to come out with me tonight.”
“I better not. If my dad finds out I’m seeing you it might ruin our plans for next Sunday. I’m sure he thinks we’re behind the disappearance of his girlfriend, even her murder.”
“No way! He can’t possible think that.”
“My dad is acting very strangely, he hardly talks to me.”
They had come to the turning leading to Ashbury Manor and Amanda hesitated. She wanted Paul to stay and she would have loved to have spent the evening out with him, if only to get away from the house, but she was frightened, frightened of her father. The rain was falling so heavily puddles were forming on the muddy ground and her clothes were soaked, weighty with wetness. Looking across at Paul she saw he was in a similar state. Normally she would have had an excellent excuse to invite him in.
“Staying in at night in that creepy hole doesn’t do you any good,” he said, desperately looking around for some shelter.
“I know but what else can I do,” she replied, a slight quiver in her voice. “We better separate, we’re getting very wet.” She turned her back on him and with head down walked away.
Running back to the Manor, she underwent a feeling of separation, exaggerated by the thought she had been extremely rude to Paul. She cursed herself and felt tears welling up inside as she reached the entrance of the house, vaguely noticing a black Mercedes parked outside with a dark figure of a uniformed chauffeur in the driver’s seat.
Letting her self in to the house she wiped her mud caked plimsolls on the door mat but then decided to take them off. Her hair clinging to her wet face like seaweed and her jeans heavy with the extra weight of rain water, she squelched towards the stairs, but before she reached them she heard the voices of her father and an unknown speaker coming from the kitchen. Listening intently, immobile as a statue, she caught a few words but the ones standing out as if written in blazing neon sent a shock like electricity through her body: The Order of the Arboreal Orb.
With a flash of appalling revelation she realised her father was selling the Manor to the cult. She remained still, undecided; should she confront her dad or flee to her bedroom. Suddenly she was jolted from her dilemma by a knock on the front door making her flinch. Reaching out she opened the door and stared at the chauffeur, who stood on the step, getting soaked in the downpour.
Amanda felt her insides turn to jelly as she recognised the man, the same man who had kept Doctor Baldwin’s house under surveillance and released the insect in the cemetery. He gave a humourless grin, water dripping from his cap and moved confidently into the hallway as she backed slowly towards the ornate stairway. Finally she ran defeated up the stairs, unable to face the implications of what her father was about to do.

Chapter Nine: Grave Robbing

“Hello Doctor Baldwin, it’s Amanda.”
She was using her mobile in her room after school, the TV set on and the sound turned down low, keeping her voice quiet in case her father was listening.
The voice of the doctor at the other end seemed surprised but pleased. “I thought I was never going to hear from you or your father. What can I do for you?”
“Well, I want to help you.”
“I would love some help, but you’re under age. I am going ahead with the exhuming of the body of Sir William anyway. I think I can just about do it on my own. Any information I get I will pass on.”
“You’re going to need a look-out at least, I can then give you some warning if anyone passes by,” Amanda suggested. “I might even be able to get someone else to help, you know Paul, the guy who witnessed my initiation in the library.”
“That’s an excellent idea, but I would be in serious trouble if anything went wrong.” There was a silence at the other end of the phone as if Doctor Baldwin was considering Amanda’s suggestion. “If you manage to get Paul interested” he said at last, “give me a call and I might accept your offer.”
Without any delay Amanda dialled Paul’s house-she had found the number by contacting Darkcore Records the evening before. A woman picked up the phone and it was a few minutes before Paul came on the line and when he did, to Amanda’s surprise, there was a hint of relief in his voice.
Pacing to one side of her room to the next, she attempted to explain the meeting with Doctor Baldwin and his proposal to rob the dead. She was surprised to find that it was not difficult to persuade him.
“I have been doing a lot of thinking since the party,” Paul said. “I haven’t been sleeping and I don’t think I can ignore what I saw that night, it will drive me mad. I am going to have to take some kind of action.”
“Great, my thoughts exactly,” Amanda said and then apologised for calling him a snitch. They did not talk long after that and she promised to get back to him as soon as possible.
Feeling pleased with herself she sat on the bed, allowing Jones the cat to climb onto her lap and rang the doctor back, but the line was engaged. Perspiration was falling profusely from her forehead and she wiped it off with the back of her hand. It was very warm, unusually so for this time of year. All day at school it had been cool, a thin drizzle of rain coming from grey skies, but once within the grounds of Ashbury Manor, the rise in temperature had been noticeable. The window in her bedroom was open but no cooling breezes entered to alleviate the heat.
Opening the door to allow the ginger tom to leave, she gazed around her room. It was only 7 in the evening and a whole expanse of empty time stretched ahead of her. She had no friends here to phone up or visit and the usual solitary pastimes like watching movies, listening to music or reading no longer appealed.
Looking at the garish covers of her goth and metal CD’s, her selection of horror videos and books resting in ordered piles against the walls, awaiting shelves to be put up, she was suddenly repelled by their gothic exaggeration and violent imagery. Her enthusiasm for the dark side had seemingly been taken from her, but there was an emptiness inside of her as if an important part of her psyche had been severed or a close friend had been spirited away.
The house too appeared even more constricting but at the same time the shadowed corners of her room had, if only in her imagination, expanded out to infinities of blackness. The heat was getting oppressive and Amanda decided she had to go for a long walk to escape the enclosure of the time-worn walls.
Meeting her father on the stairs she told him she was going for a walk. Jonathan was distracted and had an air of fretfulness about him, his eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep, but he immediately focused on his daughter.
Amanda could not help but notice that he clutched a cigarette in his hand and he had not shaved this morning. At seeing her father like this she felt a wave of unhappiness overwhelm her. Her sadness was so strong she almost flung herself at her dad so she could burst into tears in his arms, but she controlled herself.
“Please tell me, Amanda if you’re hiding anything from me,” Jonathan said, abruptly and loudly.
“I’m not hiding anything. I’ve told you everything but you don’t believe me,” she said in a slightly raised voice rather taken aback by her dad’s outburst.
Calming down her father said resignedly, “Yeah I know. Bye the way I’ve booked you to see a very good counsellor, a friend of Moonbeam’s, a week from today.”
“Dad, I’ll see you later.” She moved past him towards the main entrance.
“Don’t be too long,” he said anxiously.
When she stepped onto the driveway in the gathering twilight, the gravel crunching underfoot, it was like walking out on a balmy evening in the tropics. Frogs with iridescent leathery skins of many colours hoped at her feet and she wondered at their strange markings, not having seen anything like them before except in nature programmes. The large beetle-like insects that flew in the air above her head were even more alien and reminded her of the bugs she had seen in her dreams, which swarmed in the cavernous spaces existing beyond the looking-glass.
They made her skin crawl and she quickened her pace making for the gate, but before she could reach it, one of the flying creepy-crawlies got caught in her hair. Frantically extracting it, she let it fall to the ground and fascinated despite herself with this odd life-form, she stooped low to get a closer look.
The creature moved weakly on its six legs and its transparent wings unfolded from its dazzlingly beautiful carapace; but its constantly moving mandibles and wavering antennae were repulsive and she felt the sting in her scalp where the thing had bit her. In an excess of revulsion she stamped it under her foot and ran from the grounds.
Once she had left the temperature dropped considerably. It was still warm, but this warmth was only the normal heat of an English evening at the end of summer. The drizzle that had dominated the daytime had ceased and it made for a comfortable stroll towards the river past the pub. Amanda realised she was walking aimlessly, making her way to the path beside the Thames purely as a means of escaping the Manor. She had no destination, no friends to visit, nothing. Always at the back of her mind was the beckoning presence of the old house, summoning her as if it had consciously allowed for this brief moment of freedom, knowing full well she had to return.
Now standing alone staring at the darkening river, the line of low bungalow’s on the other side and the vivid colours of the sunset staining the clouds, she had the idea of making an impromptu call on Doctor Baldwin. He was somebody she could talk to. Rapidly making her mind up, she set off in the direction of his house.
When she arrived there it was a few minutes before the doctor opened the door. He seemed a little startled if not annoyed, as if she had disturbed something, but he soon allowed her to enter, directing her to the living room. The room was surprisingly neat considering the clutter of the hall and the study upstairs, consisting of a battered old sofa, a rather plush armchair, and an old TV attached to an ancient VCR player. There was only one bookshelf, which held modern paperbacks and some hardbacks on its shelves, instead of the leather bound manuscripts dominating his study.
But on entering the living room, her eyes were drawn to a video case lying near the recorder. The kitsch image of the well muscled, naked man on the case contrasted so radically with the plain décor of the room that at first she was unable to look away. As Dr Baldwin swiftly kicked the tape under the stand the TV stood on, she was suffused with embarrassment.
There was a moment of silence you could cut with a knife but eventually it was broken by Dr Baldwin speaking in a hesitant voice, offering her a cup of tea. She accepted and propped herself on the edge of the sofa, trying to avoid gazing too intently at a box of tissues resting on the floor near the TV.
“Paul’s agreed to help us,” she said when the doctor had passed her a cup and saucer and he had sat in the armchair.
“I’m so glad,” he said, his voice less hesitant, suddenly turning all his attention to Amanda. “We will begin the digging at two in the morning next Tuesday to avoid detection. Is that alright with you?”
“Yes, although I have to go to school the next day. I suppose at the weekend there could be more people around.”
“That’s correct. I would like to do it sooner but I need to prepare. The longer you stay at Ashbury Manor the more at risk you and your father will be. But you do know what you’re getting into, don’t you,” he said, suddenly very serious and stern. “This whole thing is very dangerous, extremely dangerous and I don’t just mean the possibility of getting caught grave robbing. Maybe it would be for the best if you fled or at least moved elsewhere temporally. We are dealing with forces of evil that transcend the everyday. Your very soul might be in jeopardy.”
“I think it already is, Doctor Baldwin. I am in great danger. I am very frightened. That’s why I want to help you.”
“Sure, but you must never confide in your father. His natural inclinations will want to protect you because he considers me, well…odd. He will go to the police and have me arrested.”
“And another thing…” Getting up from his chair, resting his tea on the armrest and gesturing to Amanda, he went to the kitchen which overlooked the road.
Pointing out the window to a red Volkswagen Golf underneath a streetlight, he said, “I’m under surveillance. If you look closer you will see a man in the car. He’s been there all day.”
“Who’s watching you?”
“The Order of the Arboreal Orb. They’ve found out you have made contact with me, which makes the situation even more awkward. Our grave robbing expedition is going to be that little bit more perilous.”
Amanda did not wish to return to the Manor but it was important her dad did not become suspicious. She promised she would meet the doctor at 2am at St Mary’s church and she left for home, glancing back at the car beneath the streetlight.
At that moment the car’s engine started and the vehicle moved off in the opposite direction. She quickened her pace and shivered even though the night was warm.

Sleep was as allusive as a wisp of smoke that Monday evening and in the end the alarm clock Amanda had set for half-past one was not needed. The long tiring day at school tomorrow worried her as she arose from her disturbed bed and put on her clothes, but she was getting used to tiredness and anyway lack of sleep paled into insignificance when she thought what else could arise in the next few hours.
Since her meeting with Doctor Baldwin the previous week everything seemed to have been leading up to this moment. She had nothing to do with the preparations, so she carried on with her life as normally as she could. Her father had called the police on Thursday, but they were very perfunctory in their investigations, merely making notes while they talked to Jonathan for half an hour and then with her for fifteen minutes. They left promising to follow up the enquiry but it was obvious they considered the case a domestic problem.
After that her father had withdrawn further into himself, spending a lot of time in his studio annex. Amanda went to school and did her homework, so her dad would not get any suspicions, but she found it hard.
Shutting her bedroom door very quietly behind her she moved downstairs almost on tiptoe. Her father, suffering in the last two weeks the same insomnia as herself, had a tendency to pop up unexpectedly like a red eyed dishevelled ghost, but she reached the front door without incident.
Outside the atmosphere was as strangely sultry as ever, the night noises more akin to a rainforest then an English late summer, but she left the grounds at a fast pace, the heat and the sounds ceasing as soon as she passed through the gate, as if they had been switched off. In there place the dark stillness and the eerie quiet of early morning descended like a thick curtain and she moved almost running to the main entrance of St Mary’s churchyard.
The doctor was not there and she agitatedly glanced at her wristwatch beneath a fitfully glowing streetlight, her heart skipping a beat when she realised that she was late. The isolation of the deserted street, the darkened cavity of the church and the blunt silhouettes of the gravestones made her feel vulnerable.
A feeling of weakness, of irresolution crept up on her. Amanda began to wonder what she was doing out here, meeting a creepy middle-aged man with a dangerous obsession. Their attempt at digging up a grave in the dead of night suddenly felt insane to her.
Taking one last look around her, staring into the menacing shadows of the churchyard and glancing up and down Abbey Street, she took a step across the pavement, meaning to walk home. Tomorrow she would talk to her dad, pursued him to sell the Manor and in the meantime they would fly back to America and stay in a luxury hotel, until they bought another house. But before she could take another step she was grabbed roughly by the arm and spun around to face the surly features of Doctor Baldwin.
“You’re late,” he hissed, dragging her brusquely behind the wall.
“Get away from me, you creep,” she shouted, extracting herself from his weak grip. Trying to calm her beating heart she leant with one arm on the rough flaky brick of the wall, her right foot sinking into the damp soil of the flower beds. Shut off from the streetlights, it was very dark, the heavy foliage of a yew tree making it even darker. The smell of stale sweat told her that the doctor was standing close and she tried to escape by moving sideways, holding onto the uneven bricks as a guide.
“Where is your friend? He’s bloody late as well,” he whispered, griping her arm again and pulling her away from the wall and closer to him, his odour making Amanda heave. “This is not some teenage escapade when you can turn up when you want, you know. Now where is he? I’m going to need to dig up the grave, before sunrise.”
“I don’t know,” she stammered, trying to hold back the tears that were about to slip down her face, desperately thinking of ways to avoid this situation.
There was movement from behind and both Amanda and Doctor Baldwin turned to confront whatever it was.
She gave a sigh of relief when she saw the dim form of Paul standing in the pale illumination coming from the street. “Sorry I’m late,” he said innocently. “I was delayed.”
“Thank god you’re here anyway,” the doctor said and Amanda noticed that, when he switched on a bulky torch, he was shaking all over and perspiring heavily. “Help me with this bag will you.”
Doctor Baldwin, directing the torch into the church yard, lit up the leaning gravestones with their markings of remorse and death, as well as the large carry-all. Paul, without saying anything, came over and picked up the carry-all with both arms, the bag clanking metallically. A night-bird hooted in the distance.
“Follow me,” the doctor said. “We will go the back way into the New Cemetery. We haven’t a moment to lose.”
Amanda decided to follow Doctor Baldwin and face the hazards. Running away was an option and if Paul had not arrived she would have done so, easily out-manoeuvring the awkward doctor. She was out of her depth. Her drives, compulsions, her confidence had gone since the ceremony in the library, but she still felt responsible for the young guitarist. If it had not been for her he would not be here in a graveyard with the intention to rob the dead. With trepidation, faint with fear, she paced after the retreating torch beam wavering on the church wall and the graves.
Catching up with the struggling Paul, she took hold of one of the bag straps and both of them hauled the heavy carry-all through the gate into the Old Cemetery at the back of St Mary’s, moving onwards after the retreating arc of torch light, the sound of clattering metal disturbing the eerie early morning silence. The table tombs, broken angelic statues and moss scared markers of the dead were revealed fitfully by the beam which came to rest next to the entrance to the New Cemetery. They gratefully lowered the canvas bag to the ground and caught their breath, but Doctor Baldwin urged them on.
It was not long before they reached Sir William Barrett’s small and horizontal gravestone, tucked away in the forgotten corner of the cemetery. Immediately the doctor unzipped the carry-all now resting on the damp grass and extracted two spades, a crowbar, and an electric lamp. He passed one of the spades to Paul and kept hold of the other.
“Right, lets start digging, the quicker we do this the better,” he said and then pointed down the middle pathway that could just be discerned in the gloom. “Amanda, go to the entrance, over there. If you see anything suspicious call me on my mobile, the ring tone will warn us, now go!” After handing her a scrap of paper with the number on it, he began to dig into the resistant grassy earth.Obeying his commands she paced off down the path, holding the torch rigidly in both hands and keeping the beam still so as to light the path only. She did not want to see the looming gravestones on either side. When she reached the second entrance into the New Cemetery, fronting the road with its row of darkened terraced houses on the other side, she switched off the torch and crept into the uncertain shelter of the threadbare hedge that bordered the graveyard.

After a while she began to relax, listening to the distant sounds of digging coming from behind. A few cars went by even at this late hour, and once a police vehicle drove past, but was away before she could become concerned. But just as she was becoming bored, she was jolted out of her lethargy when she saw a Volkswagen Golf parking directly opposite. A man got out on the driver’s side and walked leisurely across the deserted road.
Acting quickly she rang Dr Baldwin’s mobile, letting it ring three times, her heart in her mouth, hoping desperately that she had not been seen by the owner of the vehicle.

Slowly and carefully he extracted from the inside pocket of his coat a matchbox. Placing it gingerly on the hard surface he carefully began to push the matchbox open with a pair of tweezers, an intense look of concentration on his face. A frantic buzzing sound emanated from the box, loud enough to be audible from where Amanda lay in the hedge. Then the object contained in the matchbox was set lose; a flying insect as big as a baby’s hand.
The man in the long coat as soon as the bug was released ran back across the road, climbed into his car and with a screech of the Golf’s tires drove off. The insect flew above Amanda’s hiding place to where Doctor Baldwin and Paul were working.
It all happened so fast that she did not have time to get a close look at the creature, but something about it made her skin crawl. Except for its transparent wings, the insect seemed to be composed of tiny interlocking filaments similar to the thing that had attacked Lucius Peake, but on a smaller scale. Again, she felt the impulse to run away, leave the doctor and Paul to their fate, but her feelings of responsibility towards the man and the boy got the better of her.
Creeping stealthily, the terror of coming across the insect making her throw the torch beam wildly around, exposing the leering faces of angels and cracked headstones, she moved gradually back to the grave.
It was open, a high mound of soil to one side, two spades lying near the lip of the six foot hole, the lamp turned off, but no sign of the doctor or the young guitarist. She agitatedly shone the torch light into dark corners, revealing the rusty railings of the fence and the unkempt undergrowth growing thickly in this part of the New Cemetery, wanting to shout out to Doctor Baldwin and Paul but too intimated to do so.
Unable to resist looking into the opened grave, Amanda directed the shaft of illumination into the black pit, immediately exposing the rotting wood of the coffin. The decayed lid had been prised up and rested against the uneven walls of the cavity and inside the man-sized box were the yellowed and dishevelled remains of Sir William Barrett. But as if seeds from the tropics had seeped into the restricted spaces of the coffin, plant growth had sprung up, wrapping the skeleton in a thin shroud of foliage.
It was as if this vegetation had grotesquely fed off the dead body, sprouting purple and blood-red tropical
fruits that pulsated with the putrefying ooze of decomposition, swimming with liquefied flesh from the corpse, beneath their exotic rinds. The skull grinned back at her through its mask of clinging greenery, the tendrils having shoot up through the empty eye sockets and covering an ancient looking book that leaned against the rib cage, clutched by the skeletal hands.
But it was not the book that had caught her eye, but the bug that crawled on its black leather surface, the same insect that had been released from the matchbox. Without warning the creature unfurled its wings and flew into the air, disturbed by the torch beam.
A few seconds went by as Amanda held her breath, hoping that the thing had flown away, but then, quickly stifling a scream, she heard the buzzing very close and then the sensation of many legs moving up her arm at the same moment the sound ceased.
Her first reaction was to violently sweep it from her arm and another split second and she would have done so, her other arm raised. But unbidden, an image of Lucius Peake and his dreadful fate came into her mind and her arm stalled. She remained frozen in complete thrall to her terror. Now she could not move even if she had wanted too.
Gradually, without any hurry, the insect perambulated upwards, clinging to the thick surface of her leather jacket, making its way to her shoulder. She had time to notice in the dim light of pre-dawn the composite nature of the animal. Made of hundreds of worm like strands that weaved in and out, they undulated constantly, except for the bony carapace that hid the enfolded wings and with a sickening lurch of her whole being, she saw a miniature version of the three tubular extensions that had wavered on the blunt head of the monster that had attacked the owner of Darkcore Records.
The creature was on her neck now, crawling stealthily and finally reached her cheek, feeling the movement of its legs on her skin. It did not stop there but continued towards her tightly closed eyes. A ghastly thought of the thing getting into her mouth and burrowing upwards into her brain made her clamp her lips together, almost making her flick the tiny beast from her face.
Inside she was silently screaming, ready to brush it off, once it got too near to her eyes. On and on it came, relentlessly, but just as she was about to swipe, it unfolded its wings and flow to the ground.
Amanda acted without thinking. Still holding the torch in her right hand she looked downwards, saw the insect in the grass and with one blow crushed the foul thing under her Doc Martin boots, making a satisfying plopping sound.
Shinning the beam at the splattered mess, she noticed that some parts of the insect were still alive. Many of the fibrous tendrils that made up its body and had not been flattened had detached themselves, wriggling away in all directions, eventually disappearing into the damp soil.
Overcome, she collapsed, not caring about the wet grass, sobbing uncontrollable, taking huge gulps of air into her lungs. Shortly she felt rather then saw two presences near her, bending over her. A young man’s voice could be heard but at first she could not make out what was being said. A hand touched her shoulder then and she looked up.
It was Paul and behind him the tall bony figure of the doctor, Paul with an anxious look on his face. It was Doctor Baldwin who spoke first, brushing the boy out of the way and gripping her shoulder roughly.
“What’s happened? Has someone taken the book!”
“Screw your book,” Paul said, pushing the doctor easily out of the way and helping Amanda to her feet.
Her distress ebbing away, she swept damp earth from her clothes and said in a wavering voice, “I almost had my brain sucked by a very big bug, but other then that not much has happened.”
Both of them heard movement coming from the pit, the sound of bones being displaced by the scrambling of feet. The doctor’s face then rose above the lip of the hole, a wide grin animating his features and his hair more of a mess then usual, a reanimated corpse arising from the grave.
“Thank Christ, it’s still here,” he shouted wildly as he held the book, now carefully wrapped in a transparent folder, above his head.Obviously she had not been detected because the man ignored the hedge and crouched low on the pavement, outside the cemetery entrance. He was so near to where she huddled in the shadows that Amanda could see him clearly. Although it was a warm night, he was wearing a woollen coat which reached to his ankles, unbuttoned and opened, revealing a pair of smart trousers and a white shirt.