Phoebe Wren and the Vortex of Light (35 page)

As the teenagers stood for a second time in Darken Abbey’s Great Hall, they were overwhelmed anew at its vastness. The high and cavernous ceiling created something of an ominous covering and Phoebe was keenly aware that the beams and architecture provided ample nooks and clefts in which demonic beings could hide themselves. She had an acute sense of being watched, but could not say for sure whether this was substantiated or whether her jittery nerves were simply playing tricks on her. The Great Hall stretched out before them, gloomy and unchartered, daring the three teenagers to cross its stone floor in search of whatever treasures it may give up.

Phoebe was aware that Demetrius and Ella were both hanging back, hovering just a few feet through the anteroom door. Although the butterflies in her own stomach were swooping and diving, she mustered up as much courage as she possibly could, set her jaw and squared her shoulders, and addressed her friends.

“Come on guys,” Phoebe said, then cleared her throat so that her voice wouldn’t sound so feeble. “We’ve come this far, we’re so close now. Everything that Cosain has told us so far has been right. I mean, this place is going to be put to good use really soon, and we get to be part of that! All we need to do now is…”

Phoebe’s pep talk was cut short as an unearthly cry from the belly of the abbey pierced the gloomy atmosphere. Phoebe’s eyes widened and she grabbed on to Ella’s hand. ‘
Come on Phoebe,
’ she urged herself. ‘
Keep it together.
’ Every fibre of Phoebe’s being was begging her to run, to get out of there and never go back. But her heart would not allow it. ‘
No, I have a job to do! And I’m going to do it!
’ She thought of Cosain and his angelic brothers, and of the incredible journey she had been on these last few weeks, and knew deep in her soul that she could not allow this all to have been for nothing.

“All we need to do now,” she repeated, her voice controlled and resolute. “Is to find Brother Bennett’s journal. Cosain said it will contain all the instructions we will need to find the missing piece of the Key of Esse. Once we do that, we can lock Schnither, his overgrown attack dog the Behemoth, and the rest of the hordes of hell back in the Mooar Mountain where they belong.”

“Yeah, sounds easy when you say it like that!” Ella chipped in, who was gripping Phoebe’s fingers so tightly that they were beginning to turn blue.

“I know,” replied Phoebe. “But it’s
such
an important thing. We’ve got to at least try, don’t we?”

“Yes,” said Demetrius assertively. “You’re right, Bird. We
must
try. Come on girls, let’s find this book of clues.”

Demetrius lead the way, stepping out as boldly as he dared across the cold stone floor of the Great Hall. Phoebe and Ella looked at each other, and without saying another word agreed decisively that following Demetrius was preferable to loitering here indefinitely and giving Schnither’s minions an easy target.

The three teenagers moved quietly, forming a small but tight group and sticking together as closely as they could. They scouted around the edges of the abbey’s Great Hall, examining the walls and floor looking for loose tiles or peculiar quirks of design, which could potentially hide a journal. The great pillars, which supported the abbey’s roof, were easily four feet in circumference, and as the teenagers grew tentatively braver, they began to move short distances from each other and continued their search pillars apart from each other. They felt around the column bases with their hands, and used the light from their cell phones to examine the walls, looking intently for a crack or a hidden button which might signal a secret hiding place, but their search was yielding no rewards.

After fifteen minutes, Demetrius voiced what the girls were probably both thinking.

“It’s no use,” he said, his voice despondent. “If that journal is in this abbey, then it must be on another floor. It’s definitely not up here.”

Phoebe and Ella looked nervously at each other. They knew what Demetrius meant – if the journal had not been hidden somewhere in the Great Hall, then they were going to have to venture further into the lower areas of the abbey, down the dark stone staircase that lead away from the Great Hall into the deeper recesses of the earth. They had all noticed the staircase before, but had tried desperately to ignore it, hoping that if they did not acknowledge its existence, then they might not have to use it. All of a sudden, it seemed that ignoring its glaring presence wasn’t going to work.

“We’re going to have to go…” Ella paused, unsure of the wisdom of even making the suggestion. “Down there…” she said, pointing to the stone staircase that lead into the unknown.

The friends looked at each other for another moment, unsure that they had what it would take to physically move in that direction. Finally, Phoebe spoke, “Right, we’re here now, we’ve come so far and I for one am
not
turning back. Cosain is right outside, if we get into any hot water, he’ll be in here in a second. Right?
Right?
”

Demetrius and Ella nodded their tentative agreement. “Besides,” Phoebe tried to sound optimistic, although she could not be sure she had succeeded. “We have our cell phones, they’ll give us enough light to see where we’re going.”

Slowly, tentatively, like toddlers finding their feet for the first time, Phoebe, Demetrius and Ella made their way towards the stone stairs and the unknown. They reached the first step en masse, and Demetrius moved to venture down first. As he put his foot on the first step, Phoebe called out.

“Wait!” she cried. “Demetrius hold on a second. I’ve just remembered something.”

Demetrius and the girls regrouped in an instant. “The altar,” Phoebe started. “We need to check the altar. I was up next to it last time we were here and, well, it had an
unusual
effect on me! I was looking at the coloured windows and the stonework in the arches, and I happened to run my hand along the altar. It’s so beautifully made that I just had to touch it, but when I did… It was like a jolt of electricity hit me, and images of angels and demons and monks flashed through my head. As soon as I let go, they were gone, but it was definitely a very weird thing.”

“Let’s check it out then,” said Ella, who had already started walking in the direction of the front of the Great Hall. Phoebe suspected that her eagerness to get over to the stone altar probably had more to do with her reluctance to descend into the dark unknown than her excitement at checking out an old marble structure. Phoebe and Demetrius followed Ella across the uneven floor until the three of them stood in front of the intricately decorated alcove, which housed the abbey’s altar. They wasted no time in commencing their search, with Ella probing around the top slab while Phoebe and Demetrius crawled around it on their hands and knees, intent on not missing a single discrepancy in the stonework. A few silent minutes passed, and just as it was beginning to look like another dead end, Phoebe’s now freezing fingers fumbled across a small smooth stone, hidden in plain sight in a section of the altar’s decorative stonework. The stone would have easily been missed by anyone, and its loose setting was visible only because Phoebe was probing the side of the altar inch by inch, her face only centimetres away from the cold surface. Her heart skipped a beat, and she sucked in a sharp breath. Could it be? Had she stumbled on Brother Bennett’s secret storage space? Phoebe’s fingers hesitated over the smooth stone for a split second before she held her breath and pushed against the suspect stone. There was an initial pause, and Phoebe’s heart sank, but as over a century of dust and grime gave way, the little stone heaved in towards the centre of the altar, and just below it a slab slid sideways revealing a little crevice not more than fifteen centimetres wide. Phoebe gasped, and her heart began to race.

“Dem! Ella! I think I’ve found it!” cried Phoebe, who was still on her knees at the side of the altar. She thrust her hand forward and was about to rummage around in the secret crevice that had just been revealed when something stopped her. It was quiet in the abbey, that was to be expected, but suddenly it was just
too
quiet. ‘
What are they doing?’
Phoebe wondered.
‘Why aren’t Dem and Ella round here celebrating this with me?
’ From out of nowhere, a heavy sense of dread pervaded Phoebe’s senses, right about the same time as the now familiar smell of sulphur began to burn in her nostrils. Phoebe slowly withdrew her hand from the secret chamber in the altar, and raised her head slowly, not wanting to see the terrible sight which she assumed awaited her. Her eyes moved to Demetrius who was on his feet now, eyes wide, jaw dropped, and entirely motionless except for his chest which was rising and falling with great velocity as he struggled to control his erratic breathing. Phoebe let her eyes move on from Demetrius; she was terrified of what she was about to see, and yet could not refrain from looking. Her own sense of foreboding at once repelled and attracted her, and she moved her eyes slowly in the direction in which Demetrius’s gaze was fixed. There, just a few metres away from the stone altar, was the eyeless horror that was Malva, his face a ghoulish mask of weird euphoria. Four of Malva’s six leathery black wings were wrapped around the front of his body in a manner that appeared unnatural and even painful for the creature, but if he was uncomfortable he did not show it. His ferocious denticles were entirely exposed as his mouth gaped wide open in a macabre grin. And there, behind the four powerful wings, clasped perilously tight to his burly chest, was his prize and the source of his glee. It was Ella…

Brother Thadius Bennett hurried silently through the secret underground corridor that stretched from the monks’ quarters above to the stone altar at the front of Darken Abbey. The faithful old monk moved as quickly as his arthritic legs would allow, and as he ran silent tears of righteous anger and frustration streamed down his wrinkled cheeks; tears for lives destroyed, tears for goodness corrupted, tears for light usurped by cruel darkness. For more than half a century Brother Bennett had served the Atoner in this abbey, and for it all to end this way pained him greatly. He had asked himself over and over again if he could have prevented the events of the last few months. Should he have been more vigilant? Maybe he ought to have kept a closer eye on the younger monks, especially Brother Byron and Brother Ernest? Was it his fault for trusting them so completely when perhaps they had not been ready for the pressure of being entirely responsible for themselves? Time and again, however, Brother Bennett had concluded, and found solace in concluding, that he had not stepped outside of the Atoner’s will but had done his utmost to oversee the running of Darken Abbey with integrity and uprightness. Yes, evil had found its way into the midst of the monks, and the corruption and destruction that followed had been absolute, but Brother Bennett knew that the schemes of the Enemy were always underhand and sneaky, and Brothers Byron and Ernest had fallen foul to the Enemy’s dirty tricks.

Darken Abbey had always been a special place where those who entered found themselves in a thin place, a place where communion with the Atoner was facilitated and encouraged. By its very nature then, the abbey was a spiritual place, and Brother Bennett had always been entirely aware of the dichotomy of the realm of the eternal. He and his fellow monks had sought at all times to bring light to the people of Ireland, pointing always to the Atoner and promoting goodness and hope. But where there is light, darkness is never far away, and Thadius Bennett knew full well that his battle had never been against flesh and blood, but against the principalities and powers of darkness in the realm unseen. He believed because he had seen for himself how the spiritual forces of evil operated; Brother Bennett knew that evil had found the chink in the abbey’s armour, and once the dark forces had secured a foothold, they did not rest until invasion was full and total. The thoughts plagues him as he ran, and he shook his head as if in so doing he could change the reality of Darken Abbey’s demise.

Brother Bennett knew that he did not have much time, whatever he was about to do must be done quickly. He rounded the final corner of the long narrow corridor, his sandaled feet moving nimbly for a man of his seventy years. Up ahead, he could see by the light of his lamp a small trap door that opened up at the front of the stone altar. The hatch blended well into the floor in the Great Hall above, and could not easily be seen unless one knew that it was there. An old wooden ladder was propped up with the top step resting against the rim of the hatch, and Brother Bennett wasted no time in scaling the uncertain looking rungs to the top. He slid the latch open and pushed his right shoulder against the hatch; the door had not been used in many years, and Brother Bennett had to lean heavily to persuade it to move and allow him through.