Diary of the Displaced (21 page)

“We can’t use this to escape.”

“No.” said Adler, “I think you are right. My original ideas that he used it to travel were wrong. I can’t see how it can be used to travel other than maybe using it to control someone on the other side, or bring people here. There has to be something else, another way. Or maybe it can be used in another way?”

“Yes, but how?”

I heard the familiar sound of DogThing growling.

“We need to find another door.”

I felt something warm on my chest, and reached inside my shirt to pull out the compass. It was glowing. A spark of light shot out from it, to strike the mirror, and the darkness inside the glass vanished. Instead, there was a clear image of a wall. I squinted to see what might be significant about the wall. It wasn’t like the ancient wall outside, this was made of bricks, not massive stone blocks, and it didn’t look that old.

“Look,” said Adler, pointing.”

The image was changing. Where there had been bricks, there was now a seam of light surrounding what looked like the shape of a door. It opened slightly, and then the image was gone.

“I know that place. I’ve seen it before, but there is no door in that wall.”

“Where is it?”

“It’s over the great wall. The scaffolding goes higher, much higher, and then it goes over the wall at the top. I went there, once, a long time ago, long before I discovered this door. But it leads to a platform that goes over the void that is the other side of the wall. But it ends at a brick wall. I always thought it was a curious place to put a wall. It doesn’t even block anything. It’s just
there
, on a small rocky outcrop, at the end of the platform.

The compass glowed again.

“The direction of the compass has changed. It’s like it’s pointing us somewhere, towards the great wall.”

“Then let us go, quickly. But first destroy that thing,” said Adler.

I turned back to the mirror and drew my blade, turning it in my hand. With a grunt, I thrust the blunt pommel into the black glass. I hit it again, and again. On the third strike, the mirror shattered, scattering glass fragments across the room.

Unfortunately, so did the ground underneath me. Floorboards collapsed, bricks crumbled, and the roof of the building began to fall in. I stumbled, hauled myself up again and ran for the entrance. It seemed like the very fabric of the building was being torn apart. Through the gaps in the wall, I could see darkness and mist, and things, immense things, clawing at the building and tearing it apart.

I reached the doorway and jumped, barely landing on the scaffolding, skidding to a halt a few inches before I toppled over the edge.

I turned back around, bracing myself, expecting to see a building collapsing, but there was nothing. Even the door had gone.

DogThing sat a few feet away, waiting patiently for us.

“Where now?” asked Rudy, as I tried to get my breath back.

“We go up.” I said, glancing at the levels of scaffolding platforms that rose up above us until the darkness swallowed them.

“And let’s hope that door is still open when we get there.”

Eight floors up and probably two hundred feet from the ground I discovered where the platform finally led to.

It was exactly as Adler had said. Instead of rising up further and further it drew level with the top of the wall that Adler was so convinced marked some kind of boundary that shouldn’t be crossed, at least not from the ground. From there, the platform extended towards the wall, and then over it, where it stretched outwards into the darkness and continued on and on. I stood there for a moment, peering down over the other side of the wall, into the emptiness below. I could still see the ground behind us, and some of the maw moving around. Most of them were up on the scaffolding, following us, but I could still clearly see the ground. The other side of the wall, where I had only been once, by pure accident, was an empty, endless void.

There was scaffolding holding up the walkway on the other side. Roughly every ten feet or so, the metal struts poked out of the darkness and upwards, to hold the wooden planks in place, but I couldn’t see where they ended.

“Are we going across there?” asked Rudy.

I shrugged.

“I don’t think we have a lot of choice.”

“It is not far,” said Adler, “even if it looks it. The wall on the outcrop is only just out of sight, along the platform.”

DogThing was right behind us, and behind him, the rest of the maw followed. I could see what might be the last few stragglers jumping up onto the bottom of the wooden slope below.

It seemed to me as I walked across that rickety wooden platform, into the darkness ahead, that with every single step it might give way, and we would all tumble down into the darkness below. I’d only walked about ten feet when the wall with the door in it came into view, giving me a little more confidence to move on. I was about half way across the space between the top of the wall and the door at the end when I happened to glance back down into the darkness below.

I wished I hadn’t done that.

Very little light was down there, only the faint glow from some stalactites that I could see high above us. I wondered if they were in the ceiling, and if there was a roof to this place, that was just out of view. The crystals cast a small amount of light down onto the platform, and the ground below, just enough to see what was there.

At first I couldn’t make out what it was that I was seeing, it looked like the surface of some strange rock formation, spread across the ground below. But as I stopped and squinted, trying to focus on the strange, bumpy shapes, something moved.

One of the rocks below shifted, nudging the one next to it. From there, a kind of wave effect spread across the ground. I still hadn’t figured out what I was looking at, even though it was moving. I was convinced that I was viewing some new and strange, natural phenomena.

Then one of the rocks looked up and moaned, and I realised that I wasn’t seeing the ground at all. They weren’t strange rocks. They were heads, every single one of them, thousands upon thousands crammed in together, moaning and moving, shifting, pushing and shoving each other.

The ground underneath the rickety platform that we were all walking on was a sea of zombies.

I stopped walking.

“Do you see them?”

“Yes.” It was Rudy who answered.

"Keep moving. Slowly. Quietly."

The voice in my head.
 

"Through the door. Go through the door. This will all be over soon."

I focused. Tried to fight back the fear, the tiredness, and walked slowly forward, every moment telling myself over and over in my head that there was nothing there, nothing below us, only the door, just go through the door.

One step at a time the door got closer. One step at a time I breathed, slowly, deeply.

I stepped off of the platform and onto the rocky ground. It was a small outcrop, as the professor had said, and the wall was merely a free standing block of bricks, maybe ten feet high and ten feet wide.

The edge of the door glowed faintly as I stepped nearer. I reached out to touch it, but even that slight touch was enough to open it.

I stepped through and stumbled into daylight.

I staggered, moving forward a few steps, struggling to grasp my new surroundings. The skeletal remains of massive, derelict buildings rose on either side of me. The ground was broken, once a road, but now grass and weeds broke the tarmac.

It was day, but it was still dark. Above me, the sun shone through only small gaps in the grey clouds that drifted overhead at a speed that was astonishing. A cold blast of wind gusted down the open street, and I had to brace against it to stop myself from falling over.

Rubble, broken windows and burned out vehicles littered the street, and not just this street. I was standing in a dead end, with a solid wall behind me, except for the hole through which Rudy and Adler now stepped. The street stretched on and on, and beyond that were more ruined streets, more ruined buildings and vehicle wrecks, from the seat of the car next to me stared the weathered, cold, bleach-boned face of someone who had been dead for a long time.

An entire city lying derelict, ruined and dead.

A noise behind me startled me, and I turned to see the maw begin to flood through the hole, pacing down the street, spreading out, not stopping, so that the rest of their kind could escape through the door that we had opened. After a few minutes, they stopped coming through.

DogThing was by my side.

"It’s time to close it now,"
said the voice in my head.

I looked down at DogThing.

"Before he escapes too. Before they come."

Then I knew.

The voice in my head was DogThing, and he had been speaking to me all this time.

He looked back towards the door and started to growl. Other maw nearby span around and crouched down low, baring their teeth, ready to spring at whatever was coming from the other side, whatever was about to escape with us.

"He comes,"
said DogThing.

I could hear the thud of heavy feet on the wooden platform, approaching fast. But he never got there in time.

I reached for the door. There was no handle to pull, so I grabbed the edge and pushed, quickly taking my hand away. The last thing I saw through the opening was CutterJack, a few feet away, reaching out with both hands, his one eye wide with anger or fear, running towards us. Behind him were his lizard pets, many of them, tearing along the wooden boards as fast as they could go, each of them with the look of death in their eyes, and beyond that a wave of moaning and screaming.

 The cries of countless tortured souls.

I swore that I heard CutterJack scream just as the door closed and vanished, leaving a solid brick wall in front of me. I staggered back, expecting the wall to collapse in front of me, and CutterJack to come bursting through with his lizardcats and an army of zombies, but there was nothing.

It was over.

I turned, seeking the others, Adler and Rudy. They were a few feet away, staring up at the towering ruins that stretched on as far as I could see.

“Something terrible must have happened to this place,” said Adler.

“I don’t remember,” I replied.

I turned back to DogThing and knelt down. This time he came forward and nuzzled his head in my lap. I ruffled his fur.

“You’ve been talking to me all along, haven’t you?”

"Yes, but I don’t think you always heard me."

“Why did you help me? Why did you help us?”

"Because I’m your friend."

“My friend? I don’t remember.”

"I know. It was after you fell, after we found Nua’lath’s device. I didn’t understand why you weren’t breaking it. That was why we went there. That was what we came here for."

“Nua’lath?”

"CutterJack. He goes by many names. That’s what you always said."

“So I’ve known you all along, right from the beginning? That’s why you came to me in the junkyard?”

"Yes. I came here with you, to destroy the device. I’m your guard, your companion. But you became something different, something I couldn’t understand. After you looked into the device, you changed. You weren’t you. There was someone else there. I was frightened."

“You’ve always been with me haven’t you? I just can’t remember why?”

"Yes. You raised me from when I was a puppy."

“I raised you? I wish I could remember.”

"Ever since I can remember, I’ve followed you".

“But the other maw, where are they from?”

"I’d never seen another one of my kind. They were trapped in there, in Nua’lath’s prison. I found them. They didn’t like me at the start, but they became my friends, and I told them that if they helped me, if they helped you, you would help them escape that place forever."

“Do you have a name, other than DogThing?”

"No. That’s what you always called me."

I stood up and looked around at the world we had returned to. Somehow I knew that although we had escaped back to where we had started, this place was no more my home than the prison we had left behind. It should be familiar, but my memories still haven’t returned.

We found a building not far down the street to camp up in for the night that still had windows, and a door that could be shut.

Day 39

I slept well for the first time in weeks, and woke up to a sound that in my memory, I’d never even heard before. I looked through the dirt crusted window and saw that outside, Rudy and Adler were listening, smiling, so I opened the door and joined them.

A grin crossed my face as I felt the warmth of the sun. High up on the tops of the building across the street was a single nest of birds. I didn’t know what sort of bird they were. One of them was perched on a ledge, just below the nest, singing.

This is the last page in this journal. I’ve ran out of space to write for now, until I find another book. I’m sure I will soon.

So much still to discover and so many questions still unanswered, all locked away in my own mind.

There is a whole new place here for me to explore. Even as I look around, there are things that are somehow familiar, yet my own mind has locked it all away. I should be afraid, like I was when I first came round in the dark, in The Corridor. But I’m not alone this time. I’ve got Rudy and Adler, and I’ve got DogThing. It’s amazing how much fear is lessened when you have friends to look out for you.

* * * *

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Diary of the Displaced (Dark fantasy Novel)

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