Neal Barrett Jr. - The Prophecy Machine

The stairs led down from the rear hallway behind a thick, padlocked wooden door, down, down, down a dizzy spiral of ancient stone, down a dark and twisted way, down a passage so narrow, so cramped and so tight only one person could squeeze through at a time.

Calabus led the way, his torch casting ghostly shadows on the low confining walls. Finn crouched behind him, Julia on his shoulder, Letitia after that, with Sabatino bringing up the rear.

Finn could hardly guess how long they'd been descending into the earth. Deeper by far than he'd expected, for the cellar to an ordinary house. And Calabus had surely been right. There was no need for warmer clothing here. Every cellar Finn had ever seen was damp and cool. This one, though, was unnaturally hot.

“Stop that, sir!” Letitia cried out. “You stop that at once!”

“Your pardon, lady. These are very tight quarters. I certainly meant no harm.”

“Finn …”

“I can't kill him now, Letitia. Not unless we all lie down.”

“Don't be amusing, I'm in no mood for that-Oh, that sound !”

Letitia swallowed hard, choked, strangled and gagged.

“What is that, it's awful!”

“I don't hear a thing,” Finn said, “maybe it's the heat, there's very little air.”

“It's not, either. You don't hear it? If you can't hear that … ?”

“Quiet back there, the lot of you.”

Calabus stopped, the smoke from his torch bringing tears to Finn's eyes. Past the old man, Finn saw another heavy wooden door strengthened with enormous straps of iron.

“This is a place of science, a chamber of creation, I'll brook no childish play here. Don't make me tell you twice, or I- Bruuuup! — dreadfully sorry, Sea Pudding does it to me every time. The gods only know what Squeen puts in it. You could flog the scoundrel to death, he wouldn't tell.”

“Finn … I can't breathe … I think I'm going to- faint …!”

“No you're not, there's no room here.”

“Finn, please!”

Letitia swayed, sagged in Finn's arms.

“Move away,” he told Sabatino, “she's not feeling well. I've got to get her upstairs.”

“I can't move away, sir. Your very words. There's no room here.”

“Well, make room, she's got to lie down. I need a cup of water, I need a wet cloth …”

Calabus turned to Finn, clearly annoyed. “Didn't I say don't bring her down here? What did I say? Stand back if you will.”

Calabus grabbed a key from a hook on the wall. The key rattled in the lock and the door swung free into a chamber dark as a demon's heart.

At once, Finn's ears were assaulted with a tumult of sound, a shriek, a rattle, a terrible whine, a head-splitting, gut-shaking clatter, a rumble, and a clamor and a roar.

“Hah, well. That's it,” Calabus shouted, “We're here. You're in the presence of the greatest invention of our time-the Calabus Nucci Prophecy Machine!”

“The what? I can't hear a thing but some damnable machine.”

“Don't anyone move. I'll get some light in here.”

“What?”

The torch moved off to the right, and Calabus was gone. Letitia moaned, coming to life again, clapping her hands against her ears.

“I'm terribly frightened, Finn. This is an awful place. I cannot stand it here.”

“Hang on, dear. I'll get some light, then I'll get you upstairs. Why, you're trembling, Letitia. Surely you can't be cold, it's terribly stuffy to me.”

“I am not cold,” Letitia shouted in his ear, “I'm scared . Didn't you hear me? I have never been so scared in my life!”

“In that case, I'd best get you out as quickly as I can.”

Finn lifted Letitia in his arms. She wrapped her hands tightly about his neck. He was greatly concerned, yet pleased somehow, for she was anything but distant now. Maybe they'd settle their quarrel without the need to discuss it anymore. Finn always hated that.

He moved, backing toward the stairs away from the deafening roar, and ran into Sabatino at once.

“Did you not understand me?” he said. “Move aside, you're in the way.”

Sabatino didn't move. “This is Father's foolishness, not mine. You were advised, missy, to stay upstairs.”

“Don't you call me that. I'm not a missy, you lout.”

“Just move aside ,” Finn said, losing his patience now. Letitia was slim and very light, but even 90-weight of lint grows heavy in a while.

“I'd rather not,” Sabatino said.

“You'd rather not? I don't care if you'd rather not.”

Sabatino looked away. “I, ah-don't come down here. I do not fear the place, of course, that would be absurd. It's simply quite annoying to me. If I do come down, to see the old fool doesn't fall, I stay here. Just inside the door where I am now. I do not wish to go further than that …”

“Move. Move or I'll have to force you, sir.”

“I don't think you can manage that. Not unless you put the lady down.”

“Damn you, Sabatino. I'm going to take her upstairs if I have to walk over you!”

“Doubt if you could, Finn!”

A laugh, too highly pitched, stifled at once, and in scarcely any light at all, Finn caught a look of apprehension in Sabatino's eyes, slight, but clearly there, a touch of agitation, not enough for fear, not enough for dread, but all out of place in Sabatino's masks against the world. For a moment, the face behind the bluster, the swagger and the sneer, revealed a man cursed, damned, lonely and lost, and worse still, by what, he didn't know …

All this in the blink of a second, and the man was Sabatino, and illusion once again.

“What-whatever you may think you want to do,” Finn said, releasing a breath, coming at the fellow with pluck, spunk and will in his voice, “you will get out of my way and do it now. I will brook no more of your-your-damn it, whatever it is. You're lucky I can't see you very well or I'd-”

Darkness suddenly turned to light. Not light as he'd ever perceived it to be, but a brilliance, a radiance past anything he'd dreamed. From the ceiling hung a great chandelier, three enormous circles of iron, one within the next, each ring alight with a hundred crystal spheres, spheres ablaze with the light of captive suns, fiery orbs of energy that spread their harsh glory to every corner of the room.

A wonder, an awesome sight to see, but the light was not the marvel that held Finn breathless in its sway. The light was the catalyst that offered its brilliance to the astonishing sight below …

“Great Tarts and Farts,” Finn exclaimed, nearly dropping Letitia to the floor, rapt, trapped by the bizarre monstrosity that groaned and shuddered before his eyes-a thing that defied all description, betrayed no sign of what it could possibly be.

Monstrous in complexity and size, bigger than a pig sty, bigger than a poor man's house, it seemed to expand one moment then shrink back the next. It boiled, roiled, chattered in a fury, a thing of twisted iron, copper and brass, metals that had seethed, breathed, run together in a dross of some odd, uncommon design, each fiery element no longer itself.

And, coiled within this ruinous mass, wound in ugly convolutions like a nest of angry snakes, like the foul and tortured bowels of some great imagined beast, a beast that had surely taken ill, was an endless maze of grime-encrusted tunnels; tunnels made of crude, translucent matter, something old, something fused, something cracked and used, something once akin to glass.

Within those tunnels was a sight that raised the hair on Finn's head, for even through the filth, through the dark obscuration, he could see that something moved in there, something of a dimness shifting in those kinked and twisted whorls …