Another couple of heads peered nervously – and yet still betraying an air of excitement – around the open doorway. Caty tried to process what she had just been told – and failed miserably. Alison was hyperventilating, in a near fit of panic, whilst Jason was staring, wide-eyed at Caty. She met his gaze for a brief second but looked away quickly; she hated the accusation she thought she saw in his eyes, that she was the reason they were there.
One of the strange men lifted a heavy-duty torch and flicked the switch. The light that flickered into existence was a pale shade of green. The man lifted it up so that it lit up his face. He grinned suddenly, showing pointed, gapped teeth. Jason, Alison and Caty all recoiled slightly, and the man’s smile widened into a grimace; he looked even more unnerving with the shadows the torch beneath his chin cast on his face.
“Wh-who are you?” demanded Jason, but his voice shook and quavered.
“We are His people,” replied the first oddity vaguely. He turned and walked a few paces along the dark cavern, and then he turned and gestured for him to follow. Jason and Caty shared a nervous glance, and Alison sniffled noisily. Caty rolled her eyes at that, and nodded encouragingly at Jason. His expression hardened as he steeled himself; then, with one last glance at the lift with its flickering strip lights – no longer a vision of comfort and safety, as in this dark underbelly of the world the lights took on a different, scarier tone – he stepped after the oddities.
For two intense, drawn out minutes, they followed the intricate twists and turns of the cavern, as its roof sloped gently but noticeably downwards. As a result, the height of the passage shrank with every step; before long, Jason was stooping.
Just before Caty screamed out loud with annoyance, fear and boredom, the oddities leading them stopped suddenly. The passage had reached an end – of sorts. A tiny door, barely three feet high, was built into the left-hand wall. Oddity number one, who seemed to be the leader, tapped three times on this door with the knuckles of his index and little fingers, and it creaked inwards.
Inside there was a huge room with a low ceiling, but with openings all around its circular wall that clearly led on to other rooms, corridors – who knew? In the gaps between the holes computer monitors flickered with black, grey and white jagged stripes.
Caty’s heart sank involuntarily. These monitors were not connected to anything, so she would not be able to contact anyone, send any sort of message.
Even though there did not seem to be any sort of computer system, wires and leads littered the damp, stone floor. They crisscrossed over the walls, crept over the ceiling and made a tangled mess at the base of the walls.
Their appearance seemed to have stirred something. Lights – pale green strip lights – blinked noisily into life along the ceilings of the tunnels and heads peered around corners.
“Ah, my children,” sighed the leader oddity, stepping forwards into the centre of the room and holding out his hands. He looked utterly insane. “Come, come closer. The Hour is nearly upon us. And, lo! She has come to us!”
Alison whimpered, and Caty stepped down hard on her foot.
People were inching out of their tunnels – Caty counted fifteen in all. Their eyes were sunken and dark, their hair straggly and their clothes hung loosely around their pitifully frail bodies. They too had symbols painted – or worse – onto their skin and clothes. Again, Caty wondered what they were and what they meant.
Another of the oddities who had greeted them stepped forward, lifted some sort of headdress from the floor and placed it lovingly on the leader’s head. Then he stepped backwards, bowing and muttering over his hands, his palms pressed together.
Whilst all the others were watching this bizarre display, Caty’s eyes flicked agitatedly around the dark, circular room lit by the crackling light of the television screens. They rested for a second on a grey cube. It looked like there was something sticking out of it, but before she could examine it further the oddity leader was addressing her and her head snapped up at the sound of her name
“...Caty, here.” His utterly grey eyes met her light blue ones, and something in them unnerved her. They were full of false warmth and fierce promises. She wondered whether these would be good or bad.
“Our dear, dear Caty. How happy we are to have you here with us at last. Come here, darling.” He beckoned her to him with his hand. Nervously, full of apprehension and terror, Caty stepped forward. Her shoulders were stiff and hunched, her fingers tightly intertwined.
The moment she was close enough, the leader oddity wrapped his arm around her tense shoulders and pulled her beside him. She could feel his bony ribs pressed against hers, feel the skeletal fingers gripping her upper arm. A faint shiver ran down her back.
“We welcome you most sincerely,” he said, his shadowed, hollow face turned to stare into hers. The dark rings around his eyes were exaggerated in the strange lighting, and for a second Caty thought his head was a skull. But then he pulled his lips across his teeth into a wide smile, and the moment passed.
“Welcome,” came the disembodied, echoing reply from every surrounding person.
“Welcome,” repeated the leader, and his people chorused another mimicked reply.
* * *
Once they had been shown their quarters – a small alcove in one of the farthest chambers from the main, central room – the three of them were left alone for a while. Alison remained on the one tiny bed frame, clutching her knees to her chest and shaking. Jason trailed behind Caty as she wandered vaguely through the complex series of passages and chambers.
In her mind she was creating a map, starting with the lift. The first passage from there led to the main circular room. From there, fifteen other passages continued further underground. The one that Caty, Alison and Jason’s quarters were down was the one fourth from the door, counting clockwise; five chambers down, seventh alcove on the right.
“So, we can blame you for this, huh,” commented Jason as Caty peered around the corner of the third chamber down their passage. She turned to glare at him, and saw that although he was suppressing a laugh, he looked extremely worried.
“I’m sorry,” she said, adding a mock-irritated tone into her voice to relieve the tension she, too, felt. “Why don’t you help me?”
“Help you?”
Before Caty could explain to Jason, however, the leader – whose name they now knew to be Axelander – and his assistant appeared as if from nowhere, Axelander smiling that unique smile of his.
“Do you need help?” he enquired politely.
“Err... no, we’re fine, thanks,” replied Caty.
“Excellent. Lights will be going out in five minutes.” He continued strolling down the passage as smoothly as if he were on castors. Which he might well have been.
Jason and Caty’s eyes met, both flummoxed by this.
“Why?” asked Jason, not looking away from Caty.
Axelander continued walking as he replied simply, “We have to worship the God of Darkness.”
People seemed to have heard this, as they began to file out of their chambers, walking just as slowly and smoothly as Axelander and his assistant did. As they passed Caty, she saw their robes clearly. They reminded her strongly of the gowns hospital patients had to wear, only they did not have to be tied around the back. They were marbled grey in colour, with the dark shapes Caty had noticed on the leader’s robes before.
A small girl brushed past her, and she saw what the shapes were. They were not completely black, as she had first assumed; they were dark swirls, interspersed with tiny amounts of bright white.
Galaxies. They could be nothing else.
The two of them doubled back, struggling against the throng moving in the opposite direction, to pick up Alison before following everybody else. They managed to squeeze into the circular room, although Caty was not sure how much more Alison could take. She was frighteningly pale, even by the odd green lights down there, and shaking violently.
Suddenly, without warning, the lights flickered once and died, plunging them into total darkness. While Caty was expecting a sermon of some kind, nothing came. Silence, other than Alison’s shallow, scratchy breathing, filled the room. Not one person stirred. Nothing moved. Nothing.
No wonder they were all so brainwashed and crazy. This nothingness would be enough to drive even the sanest person mad.
Time ceased to mean anything, as long as there was silence. And there was silence – nobody moved, not so much as one twitch of an intercostal muscle as somebody breathed.
* * *
When Caty was next fully aware, she was horizontal and on the floor. A few lights were on now, and she could just make out the dark patches that were the alcoves all around the walls. Her feet and lower legs jutted out from hers; next to her on a thick but springy mattress lay Jason, and on the other side of him Alison slept on the bed.
For several minutes she tried to fill in the blank space between the dead silence of the God of Darkness worship to when she opened her eyes. In a small part of her memory, the indistinct idea of Axelander finally beginning to talk came to her – although she could not quite pinpoint whether or not that was a dream. She did remember – just – following the masses back down the passage.
Something she had been thinking in that passage lurked just beyond the reach of her mind.
The button.
An image of a non-descript grey box with something unknown sticking out of it burst behind her eyes, and she grinned involuntarily. Of course it was a button of some sort! And buttons were useful, because they did things, corresponded to something.
Caty lifted herself up and leant on her bent elbows, ignoring the complaint that came from them as they dug into the rough floor. Several ideas were buzzing through her head. Firstly, the only exit was the lift, and it was not in good shape. Secondly, there had to be some sort of electrical circuiting, as if there was no electricity the screens in the main room would be black. They were fuzzy grey because they had no aerial, not because of a lack of power. Thirdly, she was extremely thirsty and was in desperate need of a lavatory.
Axelander glided past her alcove at that moment, scaring Caty so much she banged her head against the wall and squealed softly.
“Go out into the passage, turn right. First alcove on the left,” said Axelander, before gliding past again and leaving the chamber.
One of his assistants peered around the corner, spotted Caty trying to get to her feet and hurried over to offer his hand. She ignored it.
“Don’t worry – all the newbies have this problem,” he said, in what he clearly wanted to be a comforting tone.
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Caty in an angry and sarcastic tone. “I’m sure kidnapping victims get this, too, right?” She strode away before he had a chance to understand what she meant.
