West of the Hollow Sands

I awoke in strange surroundings. A gloomy place, barely illuminated by bald lightbulbs—haloed with an unearthly radiance, it was as though they were attuned to some spectra other than visible light alone, showing in their way, a field beyond ordinary human perception. All around me were pipes and wiring and raw metal gantries, speckled with rust, as if I were confined within the bowels of some great machine. Chains bound my arms and legs, and a larger chain, looped between them, tethered me to a valve, itself sprouting from an enormous pipe like a mushroom on a log.

I was still weak from my experience with the shard and my head throbbed where I had been struck by Rotcod—a sticky dampness on my temple and cheek told me the blow had broken the skin and my face must have been a mask of blood—but I tried with all my remaining strength to turn the valve, hoping I might ensnare my chains in its wheel and so snap their links.

My efforts to move the valve were in vain—whether because it was seized closed with rust, or because of my physical frailty, I could not tell—and I had not been at this endeavour more than a few seconds before a shadow rose over my shoulder and I turned from my labour to find Rotcod stood before me. His appearance, with its twisted smile and wild hair, was alarming enough, but what truly terrified me was that he had approached without my noticing him. The place I had been taken to—which I guessed was somewhere beneath the Empty Bowl—was quiet, save for a distant noise like the babbling of a stream, or the chittering of birds, yet he had made not a single sound.

“?ereh uoy thguorb evah I yhw wonk uoy oD” he said.

I shook my head.

His eyes narrowed slightly, as if he had expected a different answer, and then he gestured to the chains that bound me.

“?snoitcurtsni ym htiw ylpmoc uoy lliw ,uoy esaeler I fI ?yrassecen eseht erA”

“.naem uoy tahw si taht fi ,uoy mrah ot yrt I lliw ron ,epacse ot yrt ton lliw I” I replied.

Rotcod laughed—a singularly uncanny sound, as if he were inhaling in rapid gasps.

“.XESNA yhtlif a rof ,llew egaugnal ruo kaeps uoy ,wonk uoY .dooG”

I was about to respond—to show at least some defiance in the face of such bigotry—when Rotcod raised his hand. I felt an odd sensation, as of the pull of gravity, centralised around the manacles that bound my wrists. Rotcod’s hand closed suddenly into a fist and, before my eyes, the manacles crumbled into dust and the chains attached to them fell to the floor in a heap.

“?woH” I managed, but Rotcod only laughed his strange, wheezing laugh and gestured for me to follow him.

We walked for several minutes through the gloom of the subterrain, down skeletal staircases that were more rust than metal, along gantries suspended above fathomless depths whose darkness my eyes could not penetrate and along cramped corridors whose walls were alive with whirring mechanisms and writhing corrugated pipes. These last piqued my curiosity and, putting aside the mystery of how Rotcod had disintegrated my manacles, I found myself wondering where they had come from—had they always been here? Or were they part of some sinister construction, embarked upon by Rotcod himself?

Though I received no answer to this query, it was not long before I discovered their purpose.

Soon, we came to a large pillar from another of the gantries and followed a winding staircase that wrapped around it like an emaciated snake. The pillar itself must have been twenty metres or more in diameter and both its upper and lower extremities were concealed in shadow—such a grand stanchion made me think we must be in the very heart of the Empty Bowl’s subterrain and that the pillar we circled must be a structure of great significance; a foundation or support upon which our home had been built.

Here, the strange noises I had heard on waking grew louder and took on a new clarity—the babbling, or chittering noise, was revealed to be neither, but a heavy sonorous breathing, like bellows in a forge. A familiar smell permeated the place too—a scent I remembered all too vividly from the ENCAMPMENT; that of death and decay.

The first of the corpses loomed from the darkness like the figurehead of a ghost-ship lurching through sea-mist—the Demeter, with its unholy cargo, come to the shores of this new, neuronic Whitby to disgorge its evil into the womb of the Now-Age. The skin and flesh and organs had been stripped from it, leaving only a bloody skeleton, a few scraps of connective tissue clinging here and there. It had been lashed to the pillar with chains in an awkward posture, limbs spread-eagle, torso twisted to one side, the better for its leering skull to greet those foolhardy enough to venture down into the gloom. My stomach cringed from the sight, scrunching itself up inside my body, and I thought with a jolt of the missing children of the colony.

“,noos delaever eb lliw lla—kniht uoy tahw ton si tI” said Rotcod, apropos of nothing, and he let out another laugh.

The first corpse gave way to a second, then a third and a fourth, all lashed to the central pillar in the same contorted attitude—I stopped counting after the tenth and soon, the shock I felt on seeing them dwindled to a dull throb in my chest, like a second heartbeat.

After what must have been an hour or more, we reached the bottom of the stairs.

There I found myself in the most wretched hell imaginable—truly, I had never anticipated the prospect of being confronted with a worse place than the ENCAMPMENT, nor a worse time than the eight days in which THAT WAR raged, and yet, here it was, before my very eyes; a fathomless evil, made manifest by what cruel machinations I could only guess at.

The floor was strewn with more of the bloody skeletons that had adorned the central pillar—strewn may be the wrong word here, for each was posed with an obvious intent, though what that intent consisted of was, thankfully, beyond me. They were arranged in complex structures, in pyramids and domes and all manner of other geometric shapes, bound together with chains and lengths of insulated cabling, like some hideous work of art.

A path of bare concrete had been left leading from the staircase and, at the end of this path, an enormous machine was set into a wall—the source of the strange breathing noises I had heard. It towered above Rotcod and I, standing some thirty metres tall. Though it was undoubtedly man-made, consisting chiefly of great iron mechanisms, cog-wheels, pistons and the like, there was something disgustingly organic about it. The wires and pipes that had adorned our route fed a series of ten egg-like objects, fashioned from some scabrous material, like scales of rusty metal, each standing approximately two metres in height, and the whole thing seemed alive with movement, like an ant’s nest opened to the elements by a curious child.

My heart sank at the sight of the eggs, for their numbering could be no coincidence.

“?dnetni uoy od tahW ?enihcam lanrefni siht ni swollef ruoy nosirpmi uoy od yhW ?Rotcod ,enod uoy evah tahW” I said, my voice shaking with a potent amalgam of fear and anger.

“.denrael dah I tahw meht dewohs I nehw ,em ot emac yehT .ton od uoy tub ,enod evah I lla dnatsrednu uoy kniht dna hturt eht fo tnemgarf a tub ees uoY .yleerf em ot emac yehT ?nosirpmI” Rotcod replied.

“.ytinecsbo siht htrow si hturt oN ?hturt tahW” I said, gesturing to the corpses that surrounded us, and whose origins I was beginning to suspect.

“.enod dah I tahw yb deifirroh dna kaew erew yeht rof ,em llet ot desufer yeht—wonk ton od I ,erudecorp eht fo tceffe-edis a ylerem ro ,gnola lla noitnentni s’tnerap ym saw siht rehtehW .dekcolnu eb ylerem deen gnidocne citeneg eht—noitulove ‘seiceps ruo ni pets txen eht—namuh-tsop era eW .otni depahs erew uoy serutaerc euqsetorg eht evoba llew dna snigiro laihcorap nwo ruoy dnoyeb su ecalp taht seitiliba niatrec evah eW .namuhbus ;XESNA uoy deredner hcihw taht—tnerap ym yb dettimmoc yticorta eht erofeb ,saw ecno sruoy sa ton si noitareneg yM”

“?sdnaS wolloH eht gnitnevmucric fo yaw a dnuof evah yeht taht—ydaerla raf siht snerraw rieht daerps evah elpoep-elom eht taht eb ti naC ?stoirtapmoc ruo ton fi ,sesproc eseht era ohW ?enod evah uoy taht ti si tahw dnA”

Rotcod laughed at my question.

“.sgnilbis ym ,erew ro ,era—lliw uoy tahw meht llac ,slessev ytpme ,sesproc—seidob esehT .sredavni yranigami fo rethguals elaselohw eht naht evisserpmi erom raf si enod evah I tahw ,oN .ylekil tsom ,Deezle ,loof taht dna sruoy fo noitacirbaf a—noitareneg nekorb ruoy morf eil tneinevnoc rehtona—ecnetsixe yrev rieht tbuod I ,hturt nI ?elpoep-elom ehT”

I bit back my retort—the schism of the mole-people was not a matter to be spoken of lightly—and instead focused on the matter of Rotcod’s “siblings”. A terrible realisation dawned upon me—the meaning of his words, veiled in kaepskcaB as they were, filled me with disgust and I backed away from him.

“.ecidrawoc fo drawer eht si noivilbo tub ,hpmuirt lanif ym ees ot ereh ton era yeht emahs a si ti—fo maerd ylno dluoc tnerap ym tnempoleved citeneg fo srood dekcolnu dah srehtorb ym fo noitpmusnoc ehT ?ees uoy ,stceffe-edis detcepxenu emos dah emoneg namuh eht htiw gnirepmat s’tnerap yM .doohdog fo tiusrup ym ni ytilarom fo snoiton ciasorp ruoy edisa gnitsac ,deed dna noitca ni—dnik ylwol nwo ruoy dna—srotsecna latrom ruo fo smlaer eht dnoyeb enog evah I ,seY .srehtorb esoht gniraeb fo nedrub eht meht nopu decrof dna evitpac tnerap ym dleh I ,seY .yrevocsid elbidercni na edam I ,gniod os ni dna ,nwo ym hself rieht edam dna meht demusnoc I—srehtorb ym deruoved I ,seY .dnatsrednu dluow uoy ,dnik ruoy tsgnoma wenk I tub ,XESNA yhtlif rehtona ylerem era uoy ,esruoc fo ,t’nera uoy—su fo eno erew uoy fi sa tsomla egaugnal ruo kaeps uoY ?wonk uoy ,uoy esohc I yhw si tahT ?uoy t’nod ,won dnatsrednu uoy ,seY”

I could not reply, but continued to recoil from the monster that had once been a child of our colony. As I stepped back however, Rotcod seemed to suddenly melt, like a candle beneath the exhaust of a jet-engine, forming a pool of black fluid that slid rapidly across the floor and between my feet. I turned and watched in horror as Rotcod reconstituted before my eyes, seeming to spring from a black shadow, as if it were a portal to some other, nocturnal dimension.

“?meht-t htiw enod-d uoy evah tahw-W ?Rotcod ,Doctor eht si erehw-W” I managed, stammering out the words, even as Rotcod advanced upon me, a murderous gleam in his eyes.

“?flesti emit fo cirbaf eht etalupinam ro ,enola hcuot yb stcejbo fo seirotsih eht daer ot nrael ro ,sgniw tuorps lliw I spahreP ?nwo ym nopu evah lliw hself s’nerdlihc ruoy stceffe suollevram tahw rednow I .emas eht od ot nrut ruoy si ti ,woN .yawyna ycnangerp rehtona devivrus evah dluow yeht eveileb ton od I—em ot rettam on saw tI .llec rieht fo roolf eht revo tuo llips ot efil sselhtrow rieht dewolla that yeht ,tsur tsenif eht fo drahs a htiw taorht rieht dehsals taht yeht saw tI .noitcnuf rieht lifluf meht edam ylno ,gnihtoN ?meht htiw enod I evah tahW” said Rotcod, advancing all the while.

I made to step back once more, but found I had been backed into a corner, the giant machine at my rear. Rotcod smiled his evil smile and reached out a hand towards my throat.

His fingers, capped with grime-encrusted nails, were mere inches from me and I could feel a terrible pressure start to exert itself around my neck when he stopped with a jolt, arching his back, a look of pure anguish upon his face.

Behind him, the figure of Elzeed straightened up, the canvas wrap containing the shards of Deezle in their hand. Rotcod gurgled and pitched forwards, a shard protruding from between his shoulder-blades. Whatever effect the shard was having on Rotcod did not seem to match my own experience, for he writhed as if in unending agony, limbs flailing, head bouncing from the raw concrete as if trying to eject a brain-parasite by force alone. Then, he fell still and, a moment later, dissolved into an ashen substance, as if he had been flash-cremated, the working of the machine behind me casting the scads away, leaving behind only the milky shard where he had lain.

And so ended Rotcod’s story and the first chapter in the history of our colony.

Elzeed and I recovered the lost children from their rusty prisons, returning them to the surface and to the arms of their parents. I wish I could say the experience had not left its marks upon them, but that is a story for another time—and, with any luck, another teller, for I have grown weary in my old age and the chronicling of our times and the Now-Age must surely pass to younger hands and more supple minds.

The knowledge contained within this account is undoubtedly dangerous in the extreme, but I consider it my duty to record it nonetheless, trusting to those that follow in our footsteps not to stray from the path of enlightenment and of good—should there arise any that follow in the footsteps of Rotcod instead, herein lies the means of vanquishing them. The machine and its origins remain a mystery, for neither Rotcod nor the Doctor left behind any record of their discoveries in the subterrain beneath the Empty Bowl—I can only guess at its purpose, and the purpose to which Rotcod turned it.

Finally, to my dearest child—for I know it is you that shall discover this volume when I am gone—I say only this; I love you and I know when you are ready, you will find a name that best encapsulates your qualities. The difficulty you have had in doing so is only a testament to the number and depth of those same qualities.

Goodbye—do not follow me where I now tread, for I go in search of a route through the Splinter Forest, and to my certain death.

E. Roseveare

The bizarre fiction of Edgar Roseveare will return next week with the first part of a new serialisation—Tales from the Grey Void.