The Complete Short Fiction (2017, Jerry eBooks) Page 4

  He ventured deeper into the forest, turned a corner and suddenly found himself facing the dungeon. Rising out of the middle of a moat, veiled in the slow-falling snow, with its hardy stonework and tiny barred windows, it looked like something from another, harsher time.

  The pond around it was completely frozen over, the only access to the dungeon a low wooden bridge with no handrails, just thick beams on either side.

  The view of the dungeon had seized Ascham’s attention and it was precisely then that he felt an ever-so-gentle tug on his ankle and out of the corner of his eye, he saw something move. On instinct he ducked and—whoosh!—something swung down out of the branches above his head and swept by at the exact height where his neck had been.

  The whooshing noise was quickly followed by a thud and Ascham looked up from his crouched position to see a scythe-blade—hanging from an ingenious metal swing—lodged in a branch above and behind him.

  He had, of course, tripped a length of twine—artfully disguised as a stray vine—causing the swingblade to be released from a perch above him and rush at his neck.

  A booby trap.

  Ascham swallowed.

  It was the same fiendish mechanism, no doubt, that had severed Napier senior’s head. Ascham looked at the ground and saw that the path here contained large swathes of the yellow-flecked soil he had already seen twice that day.

  Ascham’s heart began to pound. He was actually a little surprised at himself.

  He had found the lair of the killer.

  But he was no huntsman or sword-wielding knight. He wasn’t even carrying his beloved bow today, having not thought he would need it when he had appeared before the king that morning. Goodness, he was just a teacher!

  Napier had come here, because he knew where he had sent the Italian girl . . . and he had come to a grisly end.

  And so had Sir Roderick—how he had found the place, Ascham didn’t know, but he guessed it had to do with his hunter’s mind. Whatever had led him here, Ascham was keenly aware of what had happened to Sir Roderick once he’d got here. A far more physically powerful man than Ascham, he had come to this place and not emerged alive.

  Ascham resolved to race back to King’s College to inform the king and return with armed escorts.

  But first he had to do one thing: since he didn’t want the killer who lurked here to know anyone had come this way, he reset the swingblade that had almost decapitated him, replacing its trip-rope as well.

  Ascham had only just set it back in place and was turning to leave when he heard a terrifying sound.

  A woman’s scream.

  It had come from the dungeon.

  A desperate shriek of terror.

  ‘Someone’s alive in there . . .’ Ascham said aloud as he broke into a run and dashed toward the grim dungeon.

  He came to the low wooden bridge spanning the frozen pond and hurried across it, his feet pounding on its slats.

  Then he entered the dungeon and his breath caught in his throat.

  SIX

  WHAT ASCHAM BEHELD IN that dungeon was the stuff of nightmares. He recoiled in revulsion.

  From an elevated platform he saw an old stone-walled chamber lit by flaming torches and filled with awful machines of torture: body-sized sarcophagi fitted with spikes, hanging cages suspended above hot coals or icy baths, iron helmets with no eyeholes, a pillory, two racks and . . .

  . . . Good God, Ascham thought . . .

  . . . and every single one of the hideous contraptions had a young woman imprisoned inside it or manacled to it.

  The two women on the racks were dead. Their innards lay exposed, cut open, not in a butcher-like manner but in a more exact, precise way.

  Ascham did a quick tally: there were eight women in total, all for the most part undressed. Some groaned, one sobbed, another whimpered while yet another screamed from her cage above the icy bath—a scream that none would hear, save for Ascham, for they were several miles from any kind of habitation.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, do something, man,’ Ascham said to himself, snapping out of the horrified trance into which he had fallen.

  The depraved villain responsible for this hellish scene was apparently not in residence, so Ascham leapt into action, dashed down some stone stairs leading into the chamber and hurriedly began unshackling and releasing the girls.

  His hands fumbled with fear as he freed them from the terrible machines, and he turned constantly, checking to see that the villain had not returned to his lair while Ascham was in it.

  As he released each girl, he shouted, ‘Run! Get out of here!’ The terrified girls needed no further urging and they scurried up the steps and out the door, despite their lack of clothing.

  Ascham came to the two racks. He shook his head sadly and moved to the last girl, the one wearing the eyeless iron helmet.

  His fingers quivering, Ascham unlatched the dreadful mask and removed it, revealing a beautiful young woman with dark eyes, olive skin and long brown hair.

  The king’s lost girl.

  ‘Isabella?’ he asked.

  ‘Si . . . yes,’ she said through teary eyes.

  ‘Come on.’

  He pulled her to her feet and, leading her by the hand, clambered up the stone steps and raced outside.

  He emerged to find snow still falling and the sky darkening. He stepped onto the bridge. They had to get out of the forest before nightfall—

  ‘I love to know the inner workings of things,’ a voice said through the gloom, stopping him dead.

  Ascham looked up and saw a lone figure standing at the far end of the bridge spanning the frozen pond. The women he had freed had not yet crossed the bridge for the figure was blocking it, their only avenue of escape.

  Ascham froze, for he had heard those very same words earlier that day from those very same lips.

  It was the Earl of Cumberland’s bastard son, the student named Timothy Higginbotham.

  ‘I see that you have found my private surgery, Mr. Ascham,’ Higginbotham said evenly.

  ‘It is the lair of one with a warped mind,’ Ascham said.

  ‘I like to think of it as an inquiring mind,’ the lad said. ‘I wish to become the finest surgeon in England. Think of this as extra study on my part.’

  Ascham sized up the lad as he spoke. He was tall and strong but certainly no match for a warrior like Sir Roderick. Ascham wondered how he had got the better of Roderick.

  ‘What sort of monster uses other human beings for his experiments?’ Ascham said, his eyes roving as he spoke. He saw that the lad had no discernible weapon on him.

  ‘My father introduced me to women like this when I was young,’ Higginbotham said. ‘He said they would make a man out of me, but they laughed at me. They do not laugh anymore. They beg. And I quite like that. Well, I suppose you have got me, Mr. Ascham. You have outwitted me. Come and escort me to the authorities.’

  Ascham walked past the horrified and freezing young ladies, stepping further out onto the low wooden bridge, only twenty feet from Higginbotham.

  Higginbotham watched as Ascham strode out into the centre of the bridge, and then suddenly the boy lunged to his left and threw a hidden lever.

  The middle section of the bridge dropped away, as if on a hinge, plunging into the ice-covered pond.

  The lad looked up, grinning, no doubt keen to see Ascham drop into the freezing waters—

  —only there was Ascham, standing on the left-side beam of the bridge, having leapt onto it at the last instant, safe from the open trap-door beside him.

  Higginbotham’s grin faded.

  ‘Sir Roderick drowned before he froze, boy,’ Ascham said. ‘There had to be some way you got the better of him, some way you managed to drop him into a body of water from which he could not escape—like a trap-door into an ice-covered pond.’

  Higginbotham turned and ran.

  Ascham gave chase, edging across the rest of the bridge via the side beam before dashing down the trail as the snow fell harder and
the day grew darker.

  He was approaching a bend at speed when suddenly the lad’s fist came rushing at him from behind a tree. The blow hit home and Ascham’s feet flew out from under him and he hit the ground with a great ungainly thump.

  Dazed and in pain, he looked up to see the Earl’s son standing over him. The lad had picked up a sizeable rock and held it in his hand like a weapon.

  ‘I cannot allow you to leave this place alive,’ Higginbotham said. ‘Rest assured, though, that you will be found . . . a long way from here.’

  Ascham scrambled on his rear-end along the dirt trail, away at the lad’s boots as they advanced. He rolled away, desperate, before suddenly he stopped and looked back up at his assailant and said, ‘Only one of us will be leaving this place, lad. And it will be me.’

  With those words, Ascham lashed out with his right hand and broke the trip-rope crossing the path just behind him.

  The swingblade came rushing down and just as the lad comprehended what Ascham had done—that he had got the better of him—the scythe-blade cut cleanly through his neck and the villain fell to the ground, headless, a bucket’s worth of blood splashing onto the yellow-flecked dirt all around him.

  Still lying on the path, Ascham could only stare in wonder, breathless wonder, at what he had just done.

  ‘Goodness me . . .’ he gasped. ‘Goodness gracious me.’

  SEVEN

  ONCE HE HAD RECOVERED from the shock of his encounter with the deranged Higginbotham, Ascham escorted the young women he had rescued to the safety of a local convent.

  There, with the aid of the resident nuns, he attended to the poor women, ensuring they were clothed and fed. He only left when the last one was asleep, in safety, warmth and comfort.

  While he did this, he sent word to the king that the Italian girl, Isabella, had been found, along with a summary of the acts of the Earl of Cumberland’s bastard son, who had taken to kidnapping, torturing and performing surgery on prostitutes from Cambridge and its surrounding towns.

  He also mentioned the manners of Sir Roderick’s and Napier senior’s deaths, and confirmed that Higginbotham had unfortunately been killed in the course of the investigation.

  After Ascham was satisfied that the girls were in safe hands, he made his way to King’s College to face King Henry, certain that His Majesty, while pleased to know his favourite girl was safe, would want a comprehensive report of the day’s events—the death of an Earl’s son, even a bastard, was not a matter that was taken lightly.

  It was thus late in the evening when Ascham arrived at King’s College, exhausted and cold, to be informed that King Henry had only an hour previously hurried back to London to deal with some pressing matter of state.

  And so Ascham found himself standing at the doors to King’s College on a snowy winter’s night, having confronted a monster on behalf of a king who was no longer there to hear his report. He wondered if the king even remembered the commission he had given Ascham that morning.

  Ascham sighed and trudged back to his rooms.

  The next morning, Princess Elizabeth, fresh from her lesson with Giles, challenged Ascham to a game of chess.

  As Bess set up the pieces, she asked, ‘Whatever did you get up to yesterday? You were gone all afternoon and evening.’

  ‘I shall tell you about it some day,’ Ascham said with a sad smile, ‘but now is not the time. Come, let us play. It’s your move.’

  COMPLEX 13

  PROLOGUE:

  THE PRISON OF NO RETURN

  There are several Great Military Myths out there.

  One of the most well-known is the Area 51 myth: that the US Air Force holds a crashed alien spacecraft—and the aliens that arrived in it—inside a hangar complex in the Nevada desert.

  Another is that Adolf Hitler did not commit suicide in his fortified bunker in Berlin before the Soviet armies stormed it.

  Rather, the Soviets caught him and took him back to Moscow where he ended his days in an isolation cell, going mad.

  A third is that the Israeli Mossad, the most ruthless secret service organisation in the world, knew of the September 11 attacks in advance and did not tell its ally America, thinking that such a shocking Islamist attack would only enhance US support for Israel.

  Interesting conspiracy theories, yes.

  But one myth has long prevailed over them all.

  A legend which many in the United States intelligence community swear is true—especially those CIA operatives who eavesdropped on the former Soviet Union in the early years of the Cold War.

  It was they who heard the radio intercepts of whispered, frightened Russian voices speaking of a place named: “КОМПЛеКС ТРИНаДЦаТь”

  Complex 13.

  It was the USSR’s Area 51, a high-security facility nineteen miles outside Tunguska—the site of a famous meteor impact in 1908—where the Soviets supposedly held their own array of extra-terrestrial creatures.

  The myths about Complex 13 are terrifying: that no prisoner who entered the complex ever left; that the Soviets fed human prisoners to the aliens there; and that the Soviets did foul experiments on the aliens themselves.

  Members of the Soviet prison system—political prisoners, anti-socials and military deserters—knew Complex 13 by another name.

  The prison of no return.

  But then an odd thing happened.

  According to the CIA, Complex 13 was decommissioned in December 1959, its furnaces extinguished, its iron doors shut, its place on maps obliterated. It is not mentioned in any Soviet transmission—radio or otherwise—after that date.

  It has not been found since.

  In 1959, Complex 13 vanished from history.

  THE LONELY MOUNTAIN

  Tunguska,

  North-eastern Siberia,

  Present day

  The American troops shouldn’t have been there—out in the barren northern mountains of Siberia, a thousand miles from anywhere, breaching the sovereign territory of Russia.

  Indeed, technically, since they were carrying weapons and wearing combat uniforms, not only were they breaching the sovereignty of Russia, they were committing an act of war.

  But these twelve battle-hardened Force Recon Marines didn’t care.

  Their mission was to be a quick one.

  Get in, verify that it was the right complex, get whatever documents they could find on the subject, and get out.

  Why? Because this was urgent.

  Their own government had one big problem back home and this might be the only way to solve it.

  ‘It’s under this one!’ Rockmeyer indicated the ominous black mountain rising up before them. It soared into the sky like a slab of seamless black stone, its front face covered in the rocky detritus of a major landslide.

  Master Sergeant Rockmeyer held in his hands a high-density sonic-resonance imager, aimed at the mountain. The imager now revealed that there was a cave-system inside the mountain, but one that featured voids with squared-off corners.

  A man-made structure.

  THE FINISHER

  The commander of the team stepped forward.

  His name was Lieutenant John T. Armstrong, a quiet but effective man who excelled at unusual missions.

  Among other things, he’d tracked down Saddam Hussein to a tiny hole outside Tikrit; he was also the one who’d captured bin Laden after a gigantic firefight in a cave in Tajikistan. America had not yet released that information to the world.

  He was the man the Marines called in for the hard missions, the tough ones.

  His call-sign: the Finisher.

  Armstrong called in his team’s only piece of heavy equipment: an M-19B tunnel-boring machine. It looked like a tank fitted with a big cone-shaped drill-head on its main cannon.

  The tunnel-borer roared to life, started cutting into the mountainside.

  Within an hour, it had penetrated two hundred metres into the landslide . . .

  . . . where it struck iron.

  The
doors of Complex 13.

  THE INSIDE OF HELL

  Flashlights in darkness—twelve of them—lancing through the hazy gloom.

  Led by Armstrong, the Marine team came to the giant iron doors of Complex 13, hidden for nearly fifty years under the landslide, and now ripped open by Armstrong’s tunnel-borer.

  Scrawled in spray-paint over the broken iron doorframe were Milton’s famous words, translated into Russian: ‘ Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. ’

  The team entered anyway.

  ‘Man, when Hell freezes over . . .’ someone said.

  He was right.

  It looked like Hell . . . frozen-over.

  Immediately inside the iron doors, they found a giant grey all-concrete receiving dock. It was flanked by some glass-walled administration offices.

  Blood was splattered everywhere—painting the dock’s concrete walls and the offices’ glass windows with long foul strokes.

  Human body parts lay strewn about the floor, preserved for years by the extreme cold, body parts that seemed . . .

  . . . half-eaten.

  A layer of frost covered everything.

  Beyond the receiving dock, past a heavy steel door, they found a wide spiralling stairwell, going down into hazy darkness.

  Armstrong peered down into the stairwell—

  —just as something large and leathery swooped low and fast behind his head and with an ear-piercing shriek ripped the head of the man behind him clean off!

  Armstrong whirled around—just as Rockmeyer opened fire on the creature—brrrraaaappp!—and it smashed against the nearest wall, hit.

  It lay on the floor, whimpering, dying.

  The eleven remaining Marines gathered around it, stared at it.

  It was man-sized, but with oily scaled skin and bat-like wings. It looked a little like a pterodactyl, the flying dinosaur, only its head was more developed, more complex, like that of a miniature dragon.

  ‘Mother of God, it just tore Kasdan’s head off . . .’

  ‘Jesus, it’s just like the two we saw at Groom Lake . . .’

  ‘Which means,’ Armstrong said, ‘the Russians might also have some of the bigger ones. And that’s why we’re here. Stay sharp.