“Now would be a good time for some accompanying riffs,” I called to Henry.
“I’ll do the music, you do the muscle,” he said. “Grab the girls,” he added when I gaped at him.
Grab the girls? Like this was a gentleman’s ‘excuse me.’ Well, what else was I supposed to do?
Henry played a gentle riff on the guitar, the sound almost smothered by the banshee screech of the spinning creatures around us. I waited, trying to pick the right moment. I watched Suki Yosimoto’s spinning face, her white arms reaching out in a blur and I tracked her. I let her get closer, closer then reached out myself and made a grab for her. I managed to get one hand fastened on a wrist and I yanked her towards me. It was like pulling something out of a pool of muck, or quicksand.
I could feel the resistance of the powers fuelling that concentrated energy, but the protective charms I was wearing, coupled with the stuff I’d smeared over my flesh so painstakingly exerted its own power. I felt myself boiling, my hapless torso a battlefield for energies that buzzed and fizzed like shorting electricity. Fortunately, the whirling motion of the singers worked in my favour and with a final jerk, I tore the girl free so that she tumbled into me. I wrapped my free arm around her, aware that her mouth, and more significantly her teeth, were inches from my neck.
She did shriek even louder, but her shriek was worse than her bite—that is, she didn’t bite me. She just sagged down as if she’d been slugged, and curled up into a ball. As the others closed in, hands—claws now—still tearing at the air, I singled out Maria Mozzari. Again I struck while Henry played. It took me a couple of goes, but then I had her and drew her in. Steam emanated from me as if I’d got out of a baking oven.
The noise had become deafening and Henry strummed out some stronger chords. The effect was startling. His music went out in waves and it was like two tides clashing head on. In that maelstrom of sound, everything churned and broke like waves on invisible rocks. I gripped both of the fallen girls, while the others started to break apart, flying this way and that like foaming surf, slowly dissipating, their singing melting away.
I couldn’t see the Cold Lady and her companion for the grey fog that palled around us, but I knew they’d both be in a real funk over my antics. Hell knew what they’d try next. I didn’t want to hang around to find out.
“Time to beat it,” I called to Henry.
Carefully holding the guitar, he nodded and followed me as I hoisted up the two girls, one under each arm. They acted like they’d been drugged, which was a relief and I made for the exit to the chamber. The Raggedy Man was in the shadows, waving us toward him. I let him lead the way back through the narrow defiles towards wherever the main exit was. My guess was, we’d have to stop for a time at least, while Henry sorted out his repertoire and played the right tune to open the way back home.
That wasn’t going to be so easy—already the Cold Lady had set about closing her net. The stone walls were moving, like huge doors on hidden rollers. If we took the wrong turning, we were going to be crushed to bloody pulp or pinned helplessly. The Raggedy Man led the way, hopping like a huge flea, and at least he seemed to keep one jump ahead of the closing stone.
There was an eerie light ahead, high up like a weak moon, hidden among dense clouds. We seemed to be out of the labyrinth, but wherever we were, it was obscured. The Raggedy Man pointed ahead into the near darkness.
“Bridges,” he said. “They criss-cross this place. Keep to them. Don’t fall into the mire. It festers with the Pullulating Tribe and they will suck you in and drag the very soul from your bones.”
I didn’t relish that prospect, especially as I could see the many pools of this mire, disturbed by things below their sticky surfaces. On either side of the narrow bridges—which seemed to be some kind of twisted root, interlinked and tangled, slick with moisture—the foul sinks bubbled and frothed.
“Play the exit tune!” I yelled at Henry.
“I need more time,” he yelled back. “If I stop here now, they’ll overrun us.”
That meant we had to get out on to those contorted root-things. The moonlight—or whatever the hell it was—brightened a tad and I could see that the landscape stretched away indefinitely, another maze. From out of the stone defile, the swirling spirit creatures, now re-grouped, came tumbling. They had the look of harpies on Benzedrine, intent on mayhem.
The Raggedy Man moved a whole lot quicker than I would have expected, doubtless prompted by the prospect of being shredded and fed to the pool-dwellers. So our little company moved on to and across the root maze as quickly as we could without slipping off and plunging into what would have been a revolting bath. Writhing tongues slapped at us as we passed, thick greasy fingers, green and stinking. Mercifully the two girls remained in a stupor, so I was able to keep them moving, their eyes glazed, their expressions empty.
Miraculously we reached a wider expanse of root, like a flattish area of trunk, slightly raised up, a kind of crossroads. Several paths led away from it, though they all seemed to head into an even more dismal mire. Fog billowed, shutting us in. We looked back and saw that the aerial creatures had again pulled up as if something in this place deterred them.
As we studied the marsh, things began to ooze up from it like bloated plants, vaguely human shaped, dripping with muck, emanating tendrils of vapour and exuding a stench that curdled the blood. They clawed their way out on to the root paths, slithering, snake-like along them. My guess was there were scores of the things, mud-beasts, shaped like fat slugs, unfinished and ungainly.
We were surrounded. “Henry, it really is time for that exit tune,” I told him. “Either that or the last post.”
He shrugged. “I was hoping to avoid this,” he said, “but I think maybe I’m going to have to give it the old Entropy Chord. You might want to block your ears.”
I told you he was an impulsive lad. With Henry, you didn’t always get a chance to deliberate with him. This was one such time.
He gripped the guitar firmly, fingers of his left hand fixing its strings tightly to the frets, and ran his right hand down dramatically. The chord that erupted—oh, yes, erupted—from the instrument was like the crack of doom. It thundered outwards around us like a miniature tsunami. Well, maybe not that small. As the sound waves hit the things that were gathering in their disgusting multitudes, they burst like ripe fruit, showering the mire—and us—in filthy, sizzling gobbets of muck.
The whole structure under us shook as if it would crumble. I could vaguely see shapes back at the mouth of the stone labyrinth exploding, turned into a white cloud. I was getting a bad feeling about this. Like everywhere was about to disintegrate. That Entropy Chord was the trumpet of doom, a real world-ender.
“Henry,” I called above the din, “I’ll say it one last time—you really need to play the exit tune. It’s time to go home.”
He steadied himself, grinned like an idiot, and thankfully did as I asked. The two girls had partially come round, no doubt shaken awake by the apocalyptic events around us. I took hold of each of them as the new chords and riffs rippled from the blue guitar. It pulsed with life, the air about us went abruptly very still and for a moment everything stopped as darkness closed in.
When light seeped back into our little bubble, we seemed to be in another old building, not unlike the one Henry and I had first entered. The five of us moved through its dusty corridors and out through a broken door to stand on a sidewalk, where dim light splashed down from neon
