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Lungbarrow - Chapter Ten

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Good Day for Mushrooms

The deeper they went into the warren of the House, the louder the whispering became. It had started soon after Chris and the Doctor descended from the kitchen. In a typical volte-face, the Doctor decided that he would accompany Chris after all. However, at every available opportunity, he found an excuse to linger at each pale-beamed archway while Chris moseyed on ahead to check the lie of the land.

The whispering didn't seem to come from any particular direction. It was just there, a sibilant muttering from a number of voices that Chris could not really interpret. There was, however, one recurring sound, a repeated guttural note that Chris supposed to be laughter.

The Doctor denied hearing anything.

The night showed no sign of relenting, but Chris's eyes were already used to the dimly lit gloom of the passageways. As they crossed the galleries overlooking the dark canyon of the Hall, he peered down and could just make out the hemispheres of the great clock set in one of the lower balconies. Overhead, the high ceiling was shrouded in a mesh of web. He blew a puff of air upward and watched a ripple spread out across the surface of the web like a billow in a silken sail. He wondered what had happened to Arkhew.

'Go on,' muttered the Doctor in his ear and Chris ventured ahead into another wing of the House, hoping to find a way down.

The age of the place was almost tangible. As the whitewood trees reached up around him, Chris felt as if he was walking in a mysterious wood, whose bizarre denizens disguised themselves as items of giant furniture to observe the strangers intruding on their territory.

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The Doctor, who usually had plenty to say about any new environment, said nothing. He wandered yards behind Chris immersed in his own dark thoughts. Chris noted, however, that every time they passed a mirror, of which there were several, the Doctor contrived to drop something on the floor. He would grovel on his hands and knees in the gloom, discovering the item only when he was well past the mirror.

As Chris moved ahead along one passage, he recognized the place where he had looked out of the window in his dream. He pulled back a dusty curtain and was surprised to find that the window had been boarded up.

For a moment, the whispering voices grew louder and then subsided back to their general level.

He pushed on until he reached the corner of the passage that led to Satthralope's room.

'Not that way,' said the Doctor, who was suddenly at his side. He indicated the other way. 'This looks more promising.'

'OK,' said Chris. 'After you.'

The shadow across the Doctor's face twitched slightly. 'Too kind,' he said and started to lead the way.

They soon reached a side arch beyond which a flight of stairs led downward. Every step creaked as they went, until they finally emerged into a large area with a high glass dome. A baleful glimmer of light came from a lantern hanging on the wall. Impenetrable darkness pressed on the outside the dome. The walls were silvered, presumably to catch the sunlight. Out of the flagstones sprouted a long dead tree, its gnarled and blackened trunk clambering up towards the dome.

Chris walked out across the area, but the Doctor skulked near the foot of the stairs, apparently regarding every shadow with suspicion.

One side of the conservatory had been penned off by a low curving wall. Chris leant over the top and saw hundreds of tiny shapes covering the floor. Some were round, some were flat-topped, while others had intricate coloured patterns.

'Species of edible fungi,' observed the Doctor, finally venturing out to join him. He pointed to different varieties. 'Feathergills, pogsquats, skullcaps\x85 Those flat, circular ones are called Cardinal's collars.'

'Indigenous,' said Chris.

'Biotrophic: they live in harmony with other plants.'

'Like the House, for instance,' Chris suggested.

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. 'The residents have obviously set-up some sort of fungi farm. I wonder why.'

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Chris leant on the fence. 'Looks deserted to me.'

'Not totally,' said the Doctor. 'Don't forget someone's left the dinner on.'

'You call that dinner?'

The Doctor leant on the fence next to Chris and they stared at the fungi.

I know you know where we are, Chris thought. You know I know where we are. So why does neither of us admit it? What have we got to hide?

The fungi were growing thickest on a dark mound at the far end of the pen. There was a sudden pop and a little puff of dust shot up out of the throng.

'Spores,' said the Doctor. 'They're multiplying.' He picked up a piece of broken wood that was propped against the fence and pulled off some splinters. He tossed them into the pen. 'Hungry little devils. They're not averse to a little dead material either.'

Chris listened to the whispering for a while. 'Doctor?'

'Hmm?'

'What's going on?'

The Doctor drew in a slow deep breath of the heavy air. 'What do you think, Christopher?'

Chris considered the least offensive way of calling the Doctor a liar. 'It's a big place,' he said. 'Considering it's been abandoned by most of the people who lived here, I think it's the noisiest place I've ever been to. And we haven't even seen anyone yet.'

The Doctor's hand reached for Chris's forehead. 'The whispering again?'

'Can you really not hear it?'

'It seems ominously quiet to me.'

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That really niggled Chris. His temper flared. 'I think you know a hell of a lot about this place, especially since you deny ever having been here before.'

The Doctor stayed totally calm. 'I could say the same about you,' he said.

Chris was immediately embarrassed. He looked down at the fungi in the pen and noticed that they were shifting very, very slowly round the dead wood, like a crowd of umbrella-ed snails.

'Do you miss your family, Chris?' the Doctor asked suddenly.

Chris shrugged. 'I could do with a good argument now and then. Yes, I suppose I miss them.' And he added testily, 'How about you?'

The Doctor shushed him and darted his eyes round the dead conservatory. 'Walls have ears,' he muttered. 'We don't want to wake up the whole household.' He turned back and met Chris's stare head-on. 'I want to find the TARDIS and leave.'

Chris nearly said something about Cousins and wills and murders, but he was suddenly completely side-tracked by the depth of the Doctor's eyes. Even in shadow, they glinted with an inner light that was fascinating and oh, so persuasive.

'Give it a rest, Chris,' he heard Roz wearily intoning.

Maybe it was better not to pursue the argument. We all have our secrets, don't we?

'Fine by me,' agreed Chris, rather pleased by his decision.

'That's right,' said the Doctor's voice, which sounded miles away. 'Thank you, Chris. But first, there's something I must just check.'

'Fine,' repeated Chris dreamily.

'I won't be long. Just wait here. Don't move. Don't be seen. Don't eat the mushrooms. I'll be back.'

'Fine.'

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Chris leant on the fence and inhaled the musty odour that came up from the fungi as they slowly slow-shuffled below.

The glass Chris looked into, or out of, shattered across into dozens of tiny identical reflections. A hundred images of Quences turned to face the intruder in his room. The figure, wrapped in a black robe, plunged a twin-bladed dagger into the old man's chest. Quences, spluttering blood, grasped at the robe and pulled it aside. The assassin was an elderly man, not tall, but with long white hair. 'You,' mouthed Quences in disbelief He fell sideways on to the furry mound on the table.

Chris woke with a start.

The mushrooms were sliding, snail-like, around his boots. They had oozed out of a crack in the pen wall caused by his weight.

Perhaps it was the mushrooms that were whispering.

He heard something clattering down the stairs and ducked for cover behind a group of large and dead spiny plants.

Moments later, the giant, angular figure of a Drudge appeared, carrying a dish in front of it. It bent like a leaning tree to pick up the errant fungi and toss them back into the pen. Then it moved on again, across the conservatory and out through an arch at the far side.

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Chris wondered if he should jump out in front of it, just to see if he was still invisible, but the servant was gone before he could make an idiot of himself.

He slipped out from behind the dead plants and peered along the passage after the Drudge. Its distant silhouette halted by a bulbous cylindrical object. It seemed to empty the contents of its dish into the top of the object.

Through the low barrage of whispering, Chris heard a voice. It was shouting angrily.

'You call this food! How much longer are you keeping me here, eh? Let me out! Let me out of here!'

The Drudge ignored the abuse and, to Chris's relief, glided off in another direction.

Chris ventured warily along the passage. As he approached the object, he saw a rotund stove with a chimney pipe that went up to the ceiling. On its surface were the flaky remains of idyllic pastoral scenes that must have been painted in happier times. On top of it sat a rusty kettle.

Chris could hear something moving inside the stove. It was muttering to itself. It must suddenly have become aware of his presence, because it went quiet.

He went nearer. There was a little gasp from inside the stove. In the gloom, Chris saw an eye and a mouth at the grating on the stove's front. They looked human enough, not that that was always a sure sign.

'Hello,' Chris whispered. He tried to think of something to say but could only manage, 'Are you all right in there?'

'Who are you?' hissed the mouth. It sounded scared.

'Umm, Chris Cwej,' said Chris. 'Who are you?'

The voice tried to compose itself. It belonged to a young man embarrassed by the circumstances in which he found himself. 'Perhaps you'd oblige me by letting me out of this contraption,' he said, but he couldn't disguise a nervous quaver. 'My name is Glospin by the way.'

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The Drudge waited in a shadowy alcove. It could have reached down and touched the intruder, he passed so close to it.

It did not recognize the features with which the intruder was furnished. He was not one of the remaining Cousins, not unless one of them had regenerated without leave. It would catch his likeness in the next looking glass that he passed.

As he approached the glass in the next passage, the stranger bent low and pulled his hat over his face.

The Drudge felt a certain apprehension from the furniture along the intruder's route. A degree of twitchiness that was unseemly in the chattels of the House. Unlike the messy, fleshy inhabitants, no item of furniture would ever scratch itself.

The Drudge abandoned its routine patrol and moved off in pursuit.

The figure suddenly stopped in his tracks. He seemed surprised at the stream that emerged from a crack in the wall and flowed down the sloping passage towards the atrium of the north annexe. He followed its path until it disappeared under the iron gate where the annexe had been sealed off. He stretched up to examine the tamper-lock that had been attached to the gate.

For a moment, the Drudge was distracted by the growing numbers of waxy, fungal growths that had sprouted from the damp walls. Manifestations of neglect were spreading through the appointments of the House. Orderliness would have to be restored and imposed.

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The intruder had forced the lock and swung the iron gate open.

Beyond the gate, the north atrium lay in darkness. The stranger lifted a lamp from the wall and, holding it high, made his way into the darkness.

As the Drudge reached the gate, there was an exclamation and a small splash as the intruder discovered that the atrium was flooded.

The pool of lamplight reflected on the water in which he was standing. It threw huge ripples of light up across the atrium's ceiling. He waded deeper, clinging along the wall, his fingers groping at the carved wooden panels, searching for something. Ahead, a row of coracles bobbed and clunked on the black water.

At a signal from the Drudge, a section of the ceiling further back towards the gate opened silently. A carved bracket descended through the gap. From it hung a looking glass shaped like an eye. The glass swivelled to catch the perpetrator of this encroachment.

Mirror by mirror, the image was thrown and caught, one to another, up and along the covert belvedere arteries of the House. At last the urgently reflected revelation came to rest on the glass of a dressing-table mirror. Opposite the mirror, sat a figure in an ancient rocking chair, dozing beneath a veil of dusty cobweb.

Whisper softly.
No one would dare
To waken the old one
From her rocking chair.

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A host of whispering voices in the air. The intruder in the atrium heard them too, for he stared round in alarm. Then he rapped one of the wall panels and it swung open, almost eagerly, as if it recognised the signal, to reveal a small cupboard.

The Drudge sent an angry reprimand to the errant cupboard and the ashamed panel tried to close itself. But the stranger held it forcibly open and extracted several items which he slipped into his pockets. The ceiling mirror reflected into the Drudge's thoughts as well. Through the glass, it could make out a number of small metal spheres and a triple-stemmed object that its long and house-proud memory recalled with irritation to be a catapult: the plaything of younger disorderly Cousins. The result of its assault could mean intricate repair work to the Drudge's wooden skirts, overlaid by coats of fresh varnish.

From over the dark water came a growl and a heavy splash.

The stranger hurriedly started to wade his way out of the flooded atrium. He faltered as he saw the mirror bracket ahead of him. He quickly slipped the catapult from his pocket, loaded one of the metal spheres and let fly at the mirror. The glass smashed.

As the bracket retreated into the ceiling, its broken pivot spinning wildly, the Drudge heard the stranger mutter, 'Seven lives' bad luck.'

The Drudge withdrew into the shadow. It waited for him to pass the gate and then ordered the lamps to light.

The passage was immediately diffused with a golden glow. The intruder saw the Drudge immediately and raised the catapult in warning. As it advanced, he loosed a metal ball, which pinged off the Drudge's shoulder leaving an unsightly abrasion.

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He darted for cover, but the gate slammed against him. The Drudge saw him take aim at a large fungus puffball grown from the wainscot. 'Happy landings,' he called.

The catapult twanged and the fungus exploded in a cloud of white powdery spores which caught the Drudge full in the face.

Dust, its bitterest enemy; loathsome, unending scourge of any House, it choked the servant's vision. The Drudge flailed out its carved arms, its wooden shape crunching blindly against the walls.

It heard its persecutor dodging past. It collided with something it could not see and toppled to the ground.

'Happy landings mean a happy House,' called the voice as the stranger scurried away like an escaped tafelshrew.

The Drudge lay uselessly prone, waving its arms like an overturned beetle, too rigid to right itself.

In its mind, it heard the startled voice of the Keeper of its House.

The smashing of the mirror startled the old woman in her chair. She shuddered, trying to rouse herself from a sleep overgrown by tangled dreams.

'The Hand of Souls,' she croaked. Her ancient hand gripped the chair like a claw.

Her dreams opened to her like soft, gaudy flowers. They reeked with a heady perfume in the warm sunlight of her memories. Calling her back.

The sudden flash of broken glass glinted like droplets of soft rain on the leaves when she was a girl. Flashed like black ribbons in her hair.

A board was creaking. Somewhere away from here, beyond the windows of her dreams, a clock was chiming.

She let the warmth envelope her. She drifted down, sinking through the canopy of flowers. But now the flowers had spines. Whispers of waking tangled with sleep and unwelcome daylight winked through the thinning webby leaves.