The Prophecy Machine

“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 …

“Well then, what do you think, boy?”

Calabus was suddenly beside him. Finn nearly jumped out of his skin.

“It's, ah-most impressive,” he said, fighting the clamor, the shudder and the quake. “It's different than anything I've seen before.”

“Yes it is, isn't it? Oh dear, I see you carry the poor girl about. Just as I advised, I believe. A Newlie doesn't fare well here. Something in the ah-primitive makeup, I assume.”

Letitia found the strength to glare. “Let me down, Finn. I'm much better now.” Her voice was so weak below the clamor and the roar, Finn could scarcely hear her at all.

“Nevertheless, I'm taking you back upstairs.”

“Oh, sorry, I'm afraid you can't do that.”

“And why not?”

“Because I can't allow just anyone the key. No offense, you understand. Miss Letitia, if you'll wait near the top of the stairs, you'll scarcely feel the, ah-disturbing emanations there. A little queasy perhaps, but I doubt you'll regurgitate at all.”

“I can't allow that-” Finn began.

“Damn it all, Finn, I am going to throw up on you if you don't put me down!”

Letitia squirmed out of his grasp, nearly fell, and caught herself in time.

“This won't do,” Finn said, “I'll have to insist on that key.”

“I told you, sir-”

“Wuuuuuuuuurp!”

Letitia clasped her hand across her mouth. Her eyes went wide and all the color drained from her face. Before Finn could stop her, she staggered toward the door, pushed Sabatino aside, and vanished up the stairs.

“I'll attend to her,” Sabatino called out. “I'm going up myself …”

“Don't even think about it,” Calabus said. “You stay right where you are.” He turned to Finn then. “I do regret this. But you're here, sir, and I insist you take at least a hurried look before you tend to the girl.”

“I'm afraid that wouldn't be right.”

“Nonsense, come along, now,” Calabus said, taking Finn's arm with a quite insistent, quite surprising grip.

Finn looked back, hoping against all reason, that Letitia might still be in sight. No one but Sabatino was there, perched on the steps with a surly petulant air.