Tanglewreck Page 6

  Sewers meant rats, and Thugger didn’t like rats.

  At last he found a door and opened it thankfully. Doors meant rooms or passageways, and rooms and passageways led out of sewers.

  He went into the room – nothing there, but there was another door. He opened it into a room with two doors, tried one, and found it led into a room with three doors. He went back and tried the second door of the second room. It led into another room with three doors, which led into another room with four doors, and now the doors were like mirrors, every one identical, every one showing him the same thing, but multiplying themselves, so that he no longer knew which doors he had tried and which doors were untried.

  He panicked, and ran through the rooms, pulling open the doors. There were echoes too – footsteps, his own, they must be his own. The rooms were an echo chamber and the noises were delayed, because even when he stood still he could hear footsteps in the other rooms.

  ‘Who’s there?’ he called, and the voice answered, ‘THERE THERE THERE.’

  He spun round. Where where where?

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘YOU YOU YOU,’ the voice said.

  ‘I’m not scared!’

  ‘SCARED SCARED SCARED.’

  ‘I’ve got to get out of ’ere,’ Thugger whispered to himself so that the Echo wouldn’t hear him, but it did hear him, and chased him step by step and room by room, as he went on through the endless house.

  ‘HERE HERE HERE.’

  ‘It’s just my voice,’ he said. ‘I’m lost and I don’t like it, that’s all, but there’s nothing to worry about.’

  Then he fell over. No, he didn’t fall over, he was tripped up; someone or something had put out their hand and pulled him flat on his nose. Punching wildly, his closed fist hit a solid object that straight away hit him back right over the head. As he lost consciousness he had the feeling that he knew what, or who, it was.

  The Throwbacks

  Silver had never seen anything like the underground world of the Throwbacks.

  She followed Gabriel down a narrow passage about six inches deep in water. She had no shoes on, and running through the city had torn her socks. Now she was footsore and soaked, but she didn’t say anything, just hoisted up her jeans and pyjamas to keep them dry, and walked as quickly as she could. Bits of rubbish were floating about in the water; old crisp packets and burger boxes, and she was glad when they began to move slightly uphill, and the water shallowed out to indented puddles in the clay floor.

  Gabriel didn’t speak to Silver until they were able to walk side by side.

  ‘This be the way to the Chamber, but we must go by the Devils.’

  ‘Who are the Devils?’

  ‘You shall see them.’

  The roof of the passage was getting higher, when suddenly Gabriel doused his torch in a puddle and pulled Silver into an opening in the wall. As they stood still and silent as statues, she could hear voices approaching, and then she saw four men wearing red waterproof suits and full-face helmets with some kind of air filter on the front. They carried high-pressure water guns. She guessed they were for the maintenance of the drains or something like that. Whatever they were, they weren’t devils, but Gabriel was trembling.

  As soon as the men had gone by, towards the culvert where the Mammoth had come in, Gabriel took Silver’s hand and they started on their journey again. He was fearful, and kept looking round.

  ‘It’s all right, Gabriel,’ said Silver. ‘They are human beings like us. Um, well, like me, but men, and grown up. They aren’t devils.’

  ‘Did you not see their red bodies and their heads of monsters and their weapons?’

  ‘Those were just waterproof clothes and water guns and some sort of safety helmet, that’s all. When they take it off they look like humans, like Updwellers.’

  ‘They cannot take off their heads and bodies,’ said Gabriel, ‘and I have seen them use their water-weapons. Water is soft but the Devils magic it hard as iron.’

  ‘It’s pressurised,’ said Silver.

  ‘You do not know them,’ said Gabriel. ‘It is Goliath they seek.’

  ‘The Mammoth.’

  ‘Yea. The Devils will kill him with their weapons.’

  ‘Gabriel,’ said Silver, ‘do you ever go above ground?’

  ‘We cannot live Upground. We can go there but we cannot live there. We would be killed.’

  ‘Who would kill you?’

  ‘Devils or Wardens or the soldiers, or the White Lead Man.’

  Silver couldn’t understand this at all, so she fell silent and looked around her to see what these tunnels and passages were.

  They were built of brick, and here and there steel ladders were anchored to the walls, leading upwards, she supposed, to the pavement and all those metal plates and grilles that you can see when you walk around the city. She had never thought about what was underneath all those plates and grilles. She had never guessed that there might be a whole world.

  A rumbling through the wall made her think that they must be near a Tube train station. She glanced at Gabriel; he didn’t seem bothered by the noise.

  ‘What’s that?’ she said, to see if he knew what it was.

  ‘That be the Long Wagon,’ said Gabriel. ‘Updwellers use him when they come down here. They fear to walk here by themselves. They come all together in the Long Wagon.’

  ‘Why do they come down here – the Updwellers?’

  Silver knew that everybody used the Tube to travel round the city, but she wanted to know what Gabriel thought about it.

  ‘It be their loneliness,’ he said. ‘Updwellers be lonely for the ground they come from. They come here to remember.’

  Silver was beginning to realise that Gabriel’s world was not like her own world one bit. But then her world had a lot wrong with it, so she wasn’t going to say anything rude about his.

  ‘Updwellers lived here once. Look and see.’

  Gabriel opened a little door in the wall and led her on to a deserted platform.

  At first it looked like any other Tube station platform, but then Silver realised that the posters on the walls were from the Second World War, because all the people in them were wearing gas masks.

  ‘Updwellers,’ repeated Gabriel, and sure enough, they came to a row of rotting stripy mattresses, with blankets still thrown on them, and here and there old newspapers and magazines.

  ‘Air-raid shelters,’ said Silver, who had read about the war.

  ‘This be the time when all people dwelt underground,’ said Gabriel.

  Silver didn’t believe this was true, but she didn’t want to argue, and she was fascinated by this caught moment of Time. It was as though Time had got trapped here and couldn’t move on. She didn’t feel like she did when she went to a museum and saw lots of old things; she felt as though Time existed differently here. Even though the people had gone away and gone forward, Time itself was left here, or a piece of Time, anyway, as real and solid as the mattresses and tin mugs.

  The dirty faded signs on the wall said ALDGATE WEST.

  ‘My work be to find supper,’ said Gabriel. ‘I may not return without our supper.’

  ‘Where are you going to find that?’ asked Silver, wondering why anyone ate supper in the early hours of the morning.

  ‘Here,’ said Gabriel, and he disappeared.

  Now Silver was alone in the dark, listening to the rats and mice scurrying about their business. She shut her eyes and visualised her little room at Tanglewreck, with the fire lit, and whatever food she had been able to steal from under Mrs Rokabye’s selfish and sharp eyes. She supposed that Mrs Rokabye had arranged everything with Abel Darkwater, but did that mean she was really bad, or just greedy and stupid? Grown-ups were always worrying about money, she knew that, but what did you need if you could eat and sit in front of the fire and read books? That was what Silver would do with her money.

  She wondered if the Throwbacks had any money …

  Just then Gabriel reappeared,
dragging a large sack.

  ‘Pizza,’ he said, ‘from the Pizza Hut.’

  ‘You’ve been to Pizza Hut?’ asked Silver disbelievingly.

  ‘My mother Eden be from the Kingdom of Italy. There be a Hut up a stretch from this place and at this hour a Short Wagon comes and two Updwellers bring these boxes to the Hut. It be a depot for food. Come.’

  Dragging his sack, he hurried along the deserted platform and disappeared into the tunnel where the trains came through. Not wanting to be left behind, Silver ran after him.

  It was now pitch black, and there were heavy dripping noises coming from above. Every five seconds, Silver felt another cold drop slither down her neck or her nose. She was damp all over and beginning to shiver. All she wanted to do was sleep.

  Something is following me, she thought, and looked fearfully behind her into the solid darkness. There was nothing to be seen, nothing to be heard, except for scurrying and dripping, but she was sure that that there were more than two of them in the tunnel.

  Suddenly, coming towards them, she saw a flare, then another and another, and Gabriel ran ahead, while she hesitated, and then a man appeared like an apparition out of the half-light. He was heavily built, like Gabriel, taller, though not much, and he wore a black fur coat. Gabriel said something to him, and he nodded, before striding up to Silver.

  ‘We greet you as a Stranger. Micah will hear your story, he will.’

  ‘You’ve got to help me,’ said Silver. ‘There’s a terrible man who …’

  But she said no more because she fainted clean away.

  When she came round she could hear low voices, and she sensed the low light on her eyelids. For a moment she didn’t open her eyes, because she wanted to be awake without anybody knowing.

  She was warm. The air smelled of petrol and dogs. Someone was playing what sounded like a recorder.

  She opened one eye just a little. A group of men, women and children were sitting round a fire dug into a shallow pit and piled with old crates and pallets. Most were drinking something out of what looked like giant tin mugs. Some had mending, or knitting or carving on their knees.

  The men were short and square with their hair tied back in brief ponytails. Silver knew better than to stare at their ears, but they all had ears the size of hands. The women were taller than the men, and slender, like shoots growing up towards the light. The children looked strong, and some of them were playing with the dogs, or riding round the edges of the chamber on the smallest ponies Silver had ever seen.

  ‘Bog ponies,’ said a voice by her ear. ‘The dogs be Jack Russells, the ponies be bog ponies, and my name be Micah, and I be the Leader of the Clan.’

  Silver opened both her eyes and looked at the man who had come out of the shadows. The others were all dark haired, but Micah was blond. He wore a shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a torn waistcoat embroidered with flowers, and a pair of blue seaman’s trousers. He had a long clay pipe in his hand, and on his fingers he wore gold rings three deep.

  Silver sat up. She was feeling stronger but she was starving.

  ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Gabriel rescued me. Can I have some food, please?’

  ‘Eden! Bring you food for the child?’

  A woman came forward with a wooden dish. There was a piece of pizza in it, and some thick yellow soup. ‘Eccola bambina bella!’ said Eden. Silver didn’t care what it was, she ate and ate, and all the time Micah watched her.

  Then Silver started to tell the whole story of her parents, and Mrs Rokabye, and Abel Darkwater, and the opium in the tomato sauce.

  ‘And what be the reason of all this doing?’ asked Micah.

  ‘It’s a clock called the Timekeeper, and a house called Tanglewreck.’

  Micah’s face changed, but he did not say what it was that had caused his pale face to redden, and then turn paler than before. He knocked out his pipe and stared into the low fire.

  Then he said, ‘We will help you, we will. We know the man Abel Darkwater.’

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘We did know him, we did, once upon a time, yea, and we know of his business.’

  Micah clapped his hands and everyone stopped their work or their drinking, and the dogs stopped jumping over each other, and the ponies stood quietly at the back.

  ‘We have no traffic with Updwellers,’ said Micah, ‘but you be a child and a Stranger, and it be in our beliefs to help Strangers. All of us that you see here before you were Strangers once, so we were.’

  And Micah, in his high singsong voice, began to tell of how it began that the Throwbacks had come to be.

  ‘There be a hospital called Bedlam – though not what you would call a hospital now in your own time, but a terrible tall torture of a place where a man or a woman might be tied to a chair for days at a time and fed no food but dead mice.

  ‘It was a Mad House. It was a place for the Insane, though many of us who went there had no insanity, no, none at all, but we were an offence to our masters. Many ways there be to get into Bedlam but only one way to get out. And that was the narrow way that all must take. Yea, Death.

  ‘I be in Bedlam myself in the year 1768 and that year the Warden minted the name of the Throwbacks for us, and hung the names round our necks in these medallions – yea, these medallions, look you here.’

  Micah reached round his neck and took out a circular metal disc on a chain. On one side was his name, MICAH, and on the other side the word BEDLAM.

  ‘Throwbacks we be, and by his cruelty he called us after angels too, for our Christian names, to make the visitors laugh, for in those times visitors come to Bedlam and other Houses of the Mad, to laugh at us like wild beasts.

  ‘Strong I be, and clever too in my way, yea, and I see one day that there be a rusty door in a rusty cell, and I contrived to get time in there and I found it led out and away, if only we digged enough, and for three years long we digged enough, and we found a way to be free, and many of us escaped underground, and hid here.

  ‘When we were free we discovered a strange thing, yea, that underground we be not living and dying as Updwellers do, but that for us, Time moves more slow, creeps like darkness. We live long lives, not like to Updwellers, and we know not Time as you know Time.’

  ‘But how do you know Abel Darkwater?’ asked Silver.

  ‘He be that man,’ answered Micah. ‘He be that man who named us.’

  ‘What, in the Bedlam place?’

  ‘Yea, he be the Warder of Bedlam.’

  ‘But that was like two hundred and forty years ago, or something. He isn’t that old – I mean, he’s old, but he’s not, like two hundred and forty or whatever.’

  ‘I be as old as he.’

  ‘Nobody lives to two hundred and forty! Even Mrs Rokabye isn’t a hundred!’

  ‘In thy world I would be dead. In my world, I am alive.’

  Silver fell silent. She didn’t know whether to believe him or not – she wanted to believe him, but how could he be so old? And Abel Darkwater too?

  Micah put his hand on her shoulder and smiled. ‘You be young. Our story be strange to you. Rest now. Sleep.’

  ‘I left my shoes behind,’ said Silver, looking sadly at her torn socks and blistered feet.

  Micah gestured to one of the women, who brought Silver what looked like a pair of clogs with shiny buckles. She gave them to her, and a pair of hand-knitted woollen socks. When she saw the state of poor Silver’s feet, all bleeding and sore, she went away and came back with a tin of something thick and yellow and nasty-smelling, and rubbed it all over Silver’s feet. It felt wonderful.

  ‘What’s that?’ said Silver.

  ‘Dog grease and cloves.’

  ‘Dog grease!’

  ‘When a dog of ours be dead, amen, we renders him in a cauldron, and we forms him into this good grease.’

  ‘You do that to your dogs?’

  ‘Yea, but not afore they be dead, amen. What do Updwellers make with their dogs that are dead?’

  ‘Um, we bury
them or the vet takes them away.’

  ‘Wasteful,’ said the woman. ‘Wicked wasteful.’

  Silver felt quite sick to be covered in boiled-down dog, but she didn’t dare say anything. She just pulled on her socks quickly and tried to forget about what was on her feet as she drank the delicious hot apple cider she had been given.

  Soon she fell deeply asleep.

  Strange Meeting

  Mrs Rokabye was eating breakfast.

  It was rather a good breakfast of kippers and toast and hot chocolate, and she was glad that no Silver had appeared to come and spoil everything. She had promised herself the last kipper, and she was eyeing it so greedily that Sniveller got up with a sigh and slapped it down on her plate.

  ‘If the child wants to sleep, she can’t expect breakfast,’ announced Mrs Rokabye.

  ‘Sleep she may, but not today,’ said Sniveller.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ asked Mrs Rokabye, who longed to be alone with her kipper.

  ‘She’s run away.’

  Mrs Rokabye put down her knife and fork. ‘Run away? From here? From me?’ She bit the head off her kipper. ‘How sharper than a serpent’s tooth.’

  ‘Found a bone, have you?’ said Sniveller.

  ‘How sharper than a serpent’s tooth is a thankless child,’ finished Mrs Rokabye, who only ever quoted the nastier bits of the Bible.

  ‘Last night, what a sight!’ said Sniveller. ‘Master blames me. You never said she didn’t eat tomato sauce.’

  ‘I have never given her any tomato sauce! Children should not be indulged.’

  ‘Master hypnotised her, and –’ Before Sniveller could continue, the door to the dining room opened and in came Abel Darkwater in his outdoor clothes.

  He sat down heavily, and motioned to Sniveller to fetch him coffee.

  ‘Have you found the child?’ asked Mrs Rokabye, who had no interest in Silver’s welfare, but every interest in her own get-rich-quick opportunity. Mrs Rokabye had slept soundly, not knowing she had been drugged, and she had awoken to find herself happy, in her own mean-minded way. Yes, happy at last, and now the wretched child had upset everything.