London Calling.
"(…) London calling to the underworld
Come out of the cupboard, you boys and girls (…)"– The Clash "London Calling".
Warnings: Crime and everything that comes with it.
Timing: 2016, a year after "The Cabbala"
Rating: M.
Disclaimer: Disclaimer: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen original comic books © Allan Moore and Kevin O'Neill. Neverwhere © Neil Gaiman. Atomic Robo © Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegner. Stargate Atlantis © MGM Studios. Hellboy (in character of Karl Ruprecht Kroenen) © Michael Mignola. Slenderman © Eric Knudsen (as Victor Surge). The story © Archer Black.
Dracula (in character of Wilhelmina Murray) by Bram Stoker. Allan Quatermain by sir Henry Rider Haggard. Orlando (or his/hers alike) by Virgina Woolf.
Mad man's mind, p1.
?
The House of Arch, library.
It was lots of books. Books... heh... volumes, big, fat codices written on vellum1), delicate looking incunabula, and old but modern printed books. There were even few scrolls, but these were not their concern. All in all it looked like a good few herds of calves and not so small forest were sacrificed to create this library.
Door led them to a bookshelf tightly packed with books. It took a sizeable niche, though it wasn't as large as some other shelves that took entire walls. It was however just as tall as all the other ones.
"Don't worry; you won't have to look through all of these books." Door assured them. "Doctor Kroenen and Slenderman already know that these books are sorted thematically. The ones that interest us are those on the fifth, sixth and seventh shelves. We will split them evenly and then search through their contents."
"What about the books that Kroenen and Slender brought to us earlier?" Spike asked. He thought that these should be searched as well.
"We have looked through those books before. They were helpful but we got as much as we could from them." Kroenen informed. "We need to search through all these books now. Before we were aiming at certain titles that we knew could contain information we were after. Now we need to search the ones that we do not know."
?
It was going slow and it was clear that it would take them longer than they initially thought it would. All five of them plus Richard and Marquis were leafing slowly through the books, reading certain sections, looking at the drawings, re-reading certain parts. What they were looking for could've been described in detail, or just showed on a picture with laconic note to it. It could be mentioned in description of some other artefact even.
Finally it was Richard who was first to find anything noteworthy. It was the ring with a carbuncle2) shaped into lozenge3). It was clearly stated that this was a ring made in Oberon's Kingdom and that it was unique, because it was the only one left in Below. It had to be it. It was also Richard who few minutes later found the second item, just few pages further in the same book – the pendant that just as the ring was created in Oberon's Kingdom. It was small, silver and had a leaf shaped gem in it, the gem was described as perfectly black obsidian.
Another hour has passed before Marquis de Carabas was lucky to find another item – the pocket watch – well described and with a detailed drawing. It seemed that the watch had indeed something engraved on its hunter-case lid. According to the book it was a four line rhyme dedicated to game of chess.
"Wasn't that supposed to be some sort of spell not a poem?" Robo asked mockingly.
"It can be both." De Carabas replied. "Words in a spell don't have to always be unambiguous. Spells can be constructed with metaphors and ambiguities."
"Indeed. Most commonly in curse spells, hexes in order to make it harder to break them." Kroenen added. "Another common practice was to construct a spell that thanks to its ambiguity contained instructions or required ingredients. Lastly metaphors in spells could also be forms of safeguards so no unwelcome people could use them, leaving the spell only to those initiated."
"But what chess has to do with faerie?" Robo ignored the explanations; it didn't make any sense to him anyway.
"Maybe it doesn't. Perhaps it's a code of some sort?" Spike pondered. "It is not uncommon to encode data among my people, why it would be different in here?"
"Spike is probably right. It probably made perfect sense to its maker." Door sighed wishing that it made sense to her. "You'd probably need a code word to understand it."
"Maybe there's more about it somewhere else?" Richard gestured to the book the Marquis found the description in. "Or maybe in another book?"
"Possibly. And we still need to figure out what was stolen from the living place of the victim with missing keys." Marquis nodded.
They returned to their work. It was just as toilsome as before, but now they had some results and everyone hoped to find out more. And for the longest time all they found was more information on the items they already have had identified. At some point they even found the name of the first person that owned the items, and it was one person – a faerie half-breed woman named Nan Bulen4), born into English noble family, a short time queen consort and second (out of six) wife to King Henry VIII.
"I bet that importing faerie goods was pretty expensive." Richard remarked.
"Yes, but then again, her personal motto was 'the most happy'5)." Marquis observed. "If two of the three belonged to her... maybe the missing item belonged to her too?" He asked.
"Hmm. And if not. Perhaps it belonged to the original owner of the pocket watch?" Kroenen added.
"Good thinking." Door lifted her eyes at the three men. "Let's follow both leads. That will give us some focus, purposeful search will be much better than random one."
It certainly was more absorbing than mindless leafing through old books.
It was near supper6) time when Atomic Robo finally found the wristwatch's owner. It was welcomed with Richard's 'thank goodness' – the man's stomach was growling already.
"It says that it belonged to a man from Above who managed to travel to Below and back." Robo read attentively. "He had the case for his own watch made by local blacksmith and engraved by local engraver."
"Did they mention his name?" Door asked. An Upworlder traveling to London Below and managing to return was not common. The only living man she knew of was Richard, and he still returned. There were some historic cases of people returning to Above, and even one or two Downworlders traveling and staying Above. But she didn't know any names.
"Let me see. It says that he was a mathematician... by the name of... C. L. Dodgson7)." Robo scanned the page. "He purchased many items from Below, all of them returned here after his death in... 1898."
"Okay, let's see if we can find anything more about this Dodgson fellow. Maybe a list of his purchases?" De Carabas sighed.
He was hungry himself, but this killer on the loose was bad for him in many ways. First and foremost it was bad for his business directly – some people didn't care about the murders, but many did and decided to postpone any bargains and ventures until it was safer. And ever since the unrest with Vandemar, Croup, Islington and the murder of Door's family, he was heavily associated with House Portico... which was both good and bad, depending on situation. But currently it means that Door's failure would make him look bad by association. And her success in catching this mysterious murderer wouldn't hurt his public perception in the slightest, on the contrary. So it was in his best interest. On top of all that, he liked her.
"Hold on." Robo spoke while turning the page in the book. "This is not the end... There's more... Some detail about the guy... where he was, what he saw, what he was doing, who he met... Looks like he has spent some time on Earl's Court, whatever that is, and met someone called Serpentine."
"Hey, he visited House of Arch too!" Richard glanced over and pointed a finger at the text. "Says he paid regards to mother of Lord Portico!8)"
"Mentions that he even studied the Beast of London." De Carabas poked his head above Robo's other shoulder.
"Do you mind?" Robo pushed them off.
"Please, no arguments, we're only wasting the time for petty little scuffles." Door stepped closer. "Robo, do the reading if you will."
"Sorry." Richard gave an apologetic smile. Door was right. Both he and de Carabas wanted to look but if one person would do it, it would be better.
"Fine. Let's see." Robo scanned the text for a moment. "Here. List of belongings that returned to Below. It lists only three of them that survived to the time this was printed." He gently traced his metallic fingers over the old paper.
"Did they put pictures there?" Kroenen asked. There was strange greed in his voice – hunger for information.
"No. But they described them." Robo turned the page and scanned the text. "A pocket watch, originally from Above but with Below made hunter casing engraved with, and I quite 'playful rhyme'. The second is listed here as small, marble sculpture of not described animal. And the third is a large, glass mirror framed into old, silver, decorative frame shaped like playing cards."
"Wait. The lozenge ring, the leaf pendant..." Door furrowed her eyebrow. "These descriptions are wrong!"
"Well, not really." Richard winced. "They were pictures."
"Show me." Door demanded and Richard instantly opened the book on the page with the ring.
"Hmm. It is a rhombus." Kroenen spared a glance to the drawing.
"It's a diamond!" Door exclaimed. "As in a playing card! And the pendant?"
Richard nodded and opened the book on the second bookmark.
"It looks like clover, but it's a club!" Door recognised the other shape. "The colours match too. Diamonds are printed ass red and clubs are printed in black, and the ring has carbuncle while the pendant had obsidian."
"And the card-themed frame of the mirror matches too." Robo nodded.
"Not just any mirror. A looking glass." Door instantly corrected him.
"The book states it to be a mirror. Besides, isn't it a same difference?" The robot asked.
"Yes and no." Door shook her head. "It depends."
"Mirror is multi purpose item. It comes in all shapes and sizes for variety of uses." Kroenen decided to elaborate. "A looking glass is a mirror for personal purpose with well-defined shapes and sizes."
"Your meaning?" Robo looked at the German as if he was the last pedant on the planet.
"Looking glass is medium to large, flat mirror that can be hanged on a wall or has a frame and can stand on a floor as a piece of furniture." Door decided to be more specific.
"Ok, I get it. It's a very specific kind of a mirror. But why it's so important about what kind of a mirror it is?" Atomic Robo didn't get the significance.
"I believed that it was the frame that was important?" Spike wasn't sure what was so special about the type of the mirror.
"Because it's most probably is important." Marquis admitted. "But it wouldn't be if not for the mirror in it."
All he received was three sets of confused stares. One electric blue of robotic optics. One yellow with vertical pupils of a Wraith. And one plain and normal human from Richard who didn't follow the whole thing either.
"Large enough mirrors, say looking glasses, were often used to create so called 'Nehalenia Mirrors' that were used for magical predictions and distant vision." Kroenen took pity over the ignorant men.
"You mean, like, 'mirror mirror on the wall' kind of things?" Richard choked out in disbelief.
"That fairy tale mirror didn't come from nowhere." De Carabas chortled evilly.
At that moment Spike barked out a short but full of humour laugh.
"Slender told me that Nehalenia's mirrors divide into polite kind and broken kind. 9)" He choked out. "But I still fail to see why the mirror is only important with the frame."
"That is a good question, but the playing cards and chess motifs are not accidental. So the significance is there." De Carabas tapped his fingers on the table top.
"I believe the motifs are accidental, or at least irrelevant." Door disagreed. "The important thing is that the items are connected to faerie."
"So why the motifs?" It was Richard again.
"Both card games and board games were very popular among faerie." Door pointed out. "It was faerie that started to print the playing cards to make the decks uniform, it was them to first use what is close to what we know today."
"They were also very fluent in chess." Marquis admitted. "Both chess and cards were regarded as popular entertainment."
"So if all these things are connected to the faerie and Robo said that the survivor-girl has six fingers and we reckon that other victims were faerie-kin too. Richard summed it up. "Do we presume that every faerie descendant is a possible target?"
"I think it would be the safest assumption." Kroenen agreed. "And with that in mind we should consider the target our killer is aiming at."
"If he was trying to become world's most blood soaked fortune teller he wouldn't need the mirror." Robo concluded. "And if he planned on using the mirror for fortune telling he wouldn't need to go on a killing spree."
"Then the only logical assumption is that his is not an attempt at precognition." Spike deduced.
"Then why did he kill all these people?" Richard scratched his head. To him it was gruesome but illogical.
"So he could use them or rather their parts in occult rituals to localise the items he was after." Kroenen revealed.
"What is that supposed to mean?" Robo blinked his optics in confusion. To him it was all crazy.
"Similar leads to similar, or so says Slender." Spike passed on the tall creature's words. "Though I don't understand why he keeps on attacking if he has all that items already?"
"Because he's not done." Door guessed. "He doesn't have what he's after yet."
"And what is he after?" Spike focused on the young woman.
"I fear that he's not just having his time. Spring Heeled Jack was a mad man but he was not a fool. He lost his senses but not his wit or intelligence." Door said. "There is a sense of purpose here; it is clear now that we have all the details. All things are directed at faerie."
"So you know what he is doing?" Robo focused his entire attention on the young woman.
"I do not know. But I am speculating." Door corrected. "I firmly believe that he is trying to find his way to Oberon's land."
"How can he do that?" Spike asked. He wasn't sure what to think, he did hear some stories told by Lanteans, but how much truth did they hold?
Despite being a Wraith10), Spike wasn't the one to accept words of a woman uncritically which wasn't a common trait in his people. But Spike was part of Todd's crew and the Wraith Commander was old, experienced and cosmopolitan which in practice meant that he learned to always question thing he was told, no matter who was telling. And he was doing his best to instil that view into his entire crew. Spike was one of those who accepted that simple truth easily and always questioned others. Though he usually did so politely, especially when questioning words or a female, after all he was a Wraith and rudely questioning a Wraith Queen would be equivalent to committing suicide.
"By creating a mirror portal11). It is possible to do so. At least it used to be." Door revealed. "It was one of the ways to travel between our worlds."
"Oh, come on! I get that Oberon's Kingdom is another dimension that may be close to ours." Robo couldn't take it anymore. "I happen to know that such things exist, I've experienced it12). But making hocus-pocus mirror doors to them? No way! You probably had some naturally occurring rupture, but normally you need some heavy duty equipment to open portals between dimensions!"
"All we ever needed was an item that was heavily connected to faerie." Door explained calmly. "It would naturally create a connection between the two worlds. A conduit to channel the passage if you will." She elaborated. "It worked the same in the other direction; an item heavily connected to humans would serve as conduit for Earth."
"Because opposites attract." Spike nodded.
"Yes. On our side everything faerie… Robo would say that it resonates with each other. But when you want to connect to faerie side it will only get you so far. A faerie artefact will simply resonate with the Oberon's Kingdom. To open a portal you need a receiver of opposite polarity." Door did her best to explain everything in terms that even Robo could accept. "I fear that it is what Spring Heeled Jack is trying to do. We must stop him. He mustn't succeed!"
"Forgive me, Herrin Door, but I fail to see what is so vile in such a portal. Weren't they a common thing before and during the reign of Queen Gloriana?" Kroenen asked. He understood why faerie fled human realm after Gloriana's death, but the political and racial prosecution ended and it was safe again. Well, relatively safe.
"They were but they were all closed off and destroyed. King James I Stuart's prosecutions and purges were ruthless and it was decided to break the connection from faerie side in order to secure the faerie side. You must understand that back then no one knew how far King James would go in his faerie hunt and even dare to invade." Door began to elucidate. "That was why the connection was severed, leaving only one way to re-establish it."
"So if Spring Heeled Jack can't open a portal then there is no problem." Robo shrugged in his own way. "Not that he ever could. He lacks the equipment to create such a thing anyway." For him the case was solved. Well, almost, they still needed to catch the little rapscallion. "You don't have anything to worry about; all we have to do now is to catch the dastard."
"No. You don't understand. When all faerie fled all connection between worlds ended on the order of King Oberon leaving England enchantmentless... all except for one! Oberon decided to leave one safety route just in case." The woman continued her enunciation. "But it can only be used in case of emergency as opening that portal from our side and re-establishing the connection to faerie land will annihilate London Below. The only way to open that connection safely is to do so from faerie kingdom's side."
"Does Spring Heeled Jack know about it?" Kroenen asked with concern. He wasn't fond of the idea of London Below annihilating while he was still there. Not that he'd be happy about it annihilating even without him, it was just that no one wants to die in some crazy catastrophe and Kroenen wasn't an exception.
"I do not know how much he knows. I only know about it because I am an Opener and all Openers have to know this." Door admitted. "Though it is stated in the Charter that opening passage from our side is forbidden in any circumstances except for deadly peril to all of Below."
"How does breaking that Charter of yours relate to destruction of Below?" Spike asked.
"The Charter is not only legal act that regulates the laws of Below. It is also founding act that sustains the very existence of Below." This time it was the Marquis that spoke. He stayed silent for a moment now, but it was now time to speak. "Below is a fragment of reality that was not devoid of enchantment upon severing the connection to faerie land. To put it plainly it is the Charter that sustains the enchantment and it is the enchantment that sustains the Below. Breaking the core, the very nucleus of the Charter will start a chain reaction."
"The Charter without its fulcrum will collapse ending the enchantment, when the enchantment will end it will terminate all the forces that sustain London Below which will then collapse." Door counted on her fingers. "So without the Charter the London Below will turn into nothing and it will take London Above along with it – Below's obliteration will create a chasm that will consume London Above."
"That doesn't sound nice." Robo muttered but everyone heard him.
"I find it troubling that it is so easy to cause such destruction." Spike noted.
"On the contrary. To avoid such a scenario a number of fail safes was excogitated." De Carabas opposed.
"How so?" Kroenen shifted.
"Starting with separation of artefacts. „The Marquis pointed out. "You need to collect enough of them in order to get strong enough signal. And even then not just anyone can establish the connection."
"That's one of the purposes of Openers." Door gestured to herself. "Only an Opener can initiate the connection and even then they cannot pass themselves, they can only send someone through to pass a message so a true passage can be opened from the other side."
"Wouldn't that be too late?" Robo sighed. This sounded ridiculous. "I mean, that entire ordeal would break all these laws and end the Below before anyone could escape."
"No. The process wouldn't be instant, it takes time. I don't know how it would look like but I suspect it would be not unlike dominoes falling down." Door spoke. "There would be enough time to initiate the connection, though I'm not sure if folk from Above would manage to evacuate... The enchantment of London Below was established long before London Above grew so large."
"Slender says that there is no chance that everyone would manage to escape." Spike passed the words of the creature. "Though I wonder, if it takes an Opener for Spring Heeled Jack to work, then all we have to do is to make sure he doesn't catch you."
"It's not that easy." Marquis de Carabas frowned. "Door comes from entire family of Openers but it doesn't mean that only her bloodline is capable of Opening."
"It is true. It is a rare gift but it happens in others too." Door confirmed. "I have some distant cousins and there are cases of unrelated people with affinity to doors and locks."
"So all it takes for Spring Heeled Jack is to find someone with such a talent?" Richard whimpered in weak voice. This was getting grimmer by the second.
"Unless he is capable of Opening himself. Was told that he never showed any signs but it doesn't mean he can't do it." Door nodded. "He is a very distant cousin of mine after all."
"So, if we read this all right and he wants to go to the faerie land, we need to find him before he will do it and stop him." Robo recapitulated everything. "And how do we do that?"
"Slenderman?" Richard pointed at the faceless man.
"He says that there's not a chance." Spike shook his head 'no'.
"If I recall correctly from last year, he can read people's minds if they're disturbed enough, but he cannot just localise them." Kroenen said, aware that neither De Carabas nor Mayhew were with them in Europe. "Or does London Below enhance his powers?"
The pale entity shook his head energetically and gestured at Spike.
"He says that it's easier for him to read people's minds and teleporting is less energy consuming, but navigating is more complicated." The Wraith spoke on Slenderman's behalf. "And I concur; I do find it easier to read people in here, though their minds are less clear than any I have ever encountered... as if they were obscured by mist."
"That's enchantment." De Carabas nodded. "It enhances Slenderman's telepathy but clouds his ability to navigate. It probably works differently on your own gift."
"It is not my gift but natural ability of my people." Spike cleared out.
"Regardless, the effects remain the same." Marquis shrugged. He didn't really care about what the Wraith's telepathy was.
"That's all nice and jim-dandy, but what now. And spare all that magical non-sense explanation, I assume it's some laws of physics, maybe some quantum entanglement involved." Robo cut in before the conversation would stray into wraith biology. "I want to know what our next step is. What we do next before that Spring Heeled Jack bozo does something disastrous."
"Let's start with what we can't do." Kroenen proposed.
"Neither Slenderman nor Spike will be of much help. And we won't find much more in my library." Door admitted. "It would be good if we could foresee when he will attack next, but also what other artefacts remain for him to be stolen."
"I don't think there is any pattern for his attacks." Kroenen crossed his arms. "He attacks when he localise the next target and the opportunity arises to do so successfully. Our best option is to find out what other artefacts are still out there… Considering he will be after artefact that is, there is still possibility that he will attack a person."
"He probably will, but he needs more than just four items to open the portal. Depending on how powerful the artefact, he may need one or more. Especially that the pocket watch is rather weak one." De Carabas conveyed his thoughts. "And we have no way to know who and where he will attack next, our best option is to find artefacts."
"Searching for them in this library may prove to be futile, no offence Herrin Door." Kroenen gestured to the books.
"None taken. My library is rich, but it does not specialise in indexing faerie artefacts. It focuses more on people than objects." Door smiled weakly. "But I know someone who should be able to help us."
"Yes, I know of who you're talking about." De Carabas winced. "And I should like to not accompany you."
"No, you shouldn't. Given what happen the last time he saw you, it may be prudent for you to stay behind with Richard." Door agreed.
TBC.
1) Vellum is a parchment made exclusively of calf skin. Parchment is most commonly made of sheep or goat skin, thus parchment made of calf skin is called "vellum" to distinguish it due to its higher quality.
2) Carbuncle is general name for red gemstones such as garnet and sometimes ruby. I decided to use the name carbuncle for two reasons – it sounds nice; and because garnets come in various shades, they can be red, blue and even green, and I wanted to make it plain that it is red. I didn't use ruby because rubies can be red but also pink.
3) Lozenge – a rhombus or diamond shape. It's easier in Polish, where you can specify what kind of use of the shape you mean, such as: karo or dzwonek (bell) for diamond in cards, romb (rhombus) in math or for general shape. And we only use the term diamond for the gemstone.
4) Mentioned in Black Dossier, she is LoEG equivalent of Ann Boleyn. While Ann Boleyn's daughter Queen Elizabeth I is Queen Gloriana.
5) Actual motto of Ann Boleyn.
6) Supper as in "evening meal", not dinner (afternoon meal), or tea/dessert (a sweet snack with some tea). I am horrified by the fact that western cultures have forgotten the difference between dinner and supper.
7) Charles Lutwidge Dodgson is the real name of famous author Lewis Carroll, you know, the one that have had written "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking-Glass"... speaking of which...
8) Why not? This could serve as an inspiration for the wonders in wonderland especially that "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland." original title was: "Alice's Adventures Under Ground." but the title of manuscript was changed for the purpose of print. In this, the following inspirations could be drawn:
Earl's Court = Mad Tea-Party. With Earl as Mad Hatter and Tooley (the Earl's Fool) as March Hare.
Serpentine = Queen of Hearts.
The Cheeshire Cat = Marquis de Carabas (though not met directly, otherwise de Carabas would recognise the name).
For "Through the Looking-Glass":
Lord Portico's Mother = White Queen.
Then you can go as far as say that the Jabberwock would be the Beast of London.
9) A joke from The Witcher Saga. I just had to put it here.
10) Wraith are strongly matriarchal species. They've evolved from Iratus bugs that drank human (most probably Ancient's) blood or perhaps somehow absorbed "life force" and somehow absorbed their DNA that accelerated and influenced their evolution (though I personally think they're result of some experimentation that Ancients won't admit). And as in many hive based insect species they have queens, though unlike bees or ants bulk of their numbers is male (be their actual males or drones). Wraith are also telepathic species, their females are much stronger telepaths than their males though old and experienced male could be able withstand telepathic influence of a younger and less, much less experienced Queen. Still, it's generally a bad idea to fall on Queen's bad side. Spike doesn't want to develop bad habits.
11) Looking glass to walk through, just like Alice did.
12) Vampire Dimension. He visited it twice. And VD invaded too but it was stopped.