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Haliel
Created on 2006-02-08 02:54:23 (#9461373), last updated 2007-03-15
324 comments received, 418 comments posted
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11 Journal Entries, 0 Tags, 0 Memories, 0 Virtual Gifts, 8 Userpics
Basic Info| Name: | The Holy Sword |
|---|
Bio Under the darkened city, old machinery roars on. Fans the size of small rooms spin into the darkness, moving air through dead tunnels where no trains move; rats, used to the dull echo of the machines, preen their whiskers atop switchboxes in dark stations that were last opened before the bombs dropped on Japan, in the last days of the war. Deep-level shelters built to save Londoners from death by fallout have become forgotten storage rooms for the government’s unwanted paperwork, hundreds of feet below the surface; below even the deepest tunnels of the Underground, a network of black tunnels stretches from one side of the city to another. In this darkness, years of secrets lie stacked on one another in mouldering cardboard boxes, their identifying tags long fallen and scattered on the concrete floors. No one knows now what remains in the tunnels, and no one goes down there alone.
The deep-level shelter at St. Paul’s station is blocked off, rusted iron grids and brick closing the station off from the lift shaft and the labyrinth of tunnels below. From the right angle, if the wind is blowing from the right quarter, the bells of St. Paul’s cathedral can be heard echoing eerily down the lift shaft—and, with the faint pealing of the bells, another noise reaches the listener: a humming, hissing crackle that brings to mind Frankenstein’s laboratory and the blue arc of electricity crawling up the Jacob’s Ladder. If the listener then takes his courage in both hands and squeezes between the edge of the grid and the curving wall of the tunnel, and follows the tunnel for twenty paces in the darkness, he will find that this noise grows louder, and that the utter darkness of the tunnel has become very faintly lit with blue. Most explorers lose their nerve at this point and hurry back to the half of the station that is ordinary and faintly sulphur-scented and bright with yellow electric light; but there is more to see. The lift shaft on the left of the tunnel is encircled with an ancient spiral staircase, closed from the corridor by another rusty mesh door which swings aside with a tortured creak. One hundred steps down deeper into the blue glow, the staircase will lead the explorer to the deep-level corridor, and a few yards further on he will see that the glow is coming from underneath a grey metal door marked Plant.
St. Paul’s is one of the only stations left where the original 1941 mercury arc rectifier is still in place, and still in use. On those rare occasions when a team of workmen from the world above needs access to the shelter, it provides power to run the ancient lift. The room where it hums and crackles to itself stinks of ozone, the smell of bright energy, of lightning storms. The thing itself squats like a malevolent deep-sea creature, bulbous, eight-legged, and glowing with brilliant blue-purple light: blown of heavy glass, it is not dissimilar to a giant octopoid light bulb, its base filled with a miniature lake of mercury. A tiny blue-white flame dances on the surface of the mercury pool within the glass globe. To the onlooker, it could be a captured spirit, flickering and throwing itself against the walls in a ceaseless, decades-long struggle for release. It is an eerie and a powerful sight.
In the past months this strange, stinking corner of the Underground has seen more visitors than it has in twenty years. After the war the tunnels were closed up, the transit planners turning their interest elsewhere, now that the need for deep-level shelters was gone. But certain esoteric subsectors of society have always gravitated to such places; as long as there is secrecy, there will be a need for holes to hide in.
Now, the crackle and hiss of the rectifier is joined by another noise; the rhythmic clang of footsteps descending the staircase. There is something horribly inexorable about those footsteps; they are the sort one hears in dreams.
The door of the Plant room creaks open on its rust-damp hinges, and blue eyes meet dancing blue sparks, and one is as empty as the other.
The deep-level shelter at St. Paul’s station is blocked off, rusted iron grids and brick closing the station off from the lift shaft and the labyrinth of tunnels below. From the right angle, if the wind is blowing from the right quarter, the bells of St. Paul’s cathedral can be heard echoing eerily down the lift shaft—and, with the faint pealing of the bells, another noise reaches the listener: a humming, hissing crackle that brings to mind Frankenstein’s laboratory and the blue arc of electricity crawling up the Jacob’s Ladder. If the listener then takes his courage in both hands and squeezes between the edge of the grid and the curving wall of the tunnel, and follows the tunnel for twenty paces in the darkness, he will find that this noise grows louder, and that the utter darkness of the tunnel has become very faintly lit with blue. Most explorers lose their nerve at this point and hurry back to the half of the station that is ordinary and faintly sulphur-scented and bright with yellow electric light; but there is more to see. The lift shaft on the left of the tunnel is encircled with an ancient spiral staircase, closed from the corridor by another rusty mesh door which swings aside with a tortured creak. One hundred steps down deeper into the blue glow, the staircase will lead the explorer to the deep-level corridor, and a few yards further on he will see that the glow is coming from underneath a grey metal door marked Plant.
St. Paul’s is one of the only stations left where the original 1941 mercury arc rectifier is still in place, and still in use. On those rare occasions when a team of workmen from the world above needs access to the shelter, it provides power to run the ancient lift. The room where it hums and crackles to itself stinks of ozone, the smell of bright energy, of lightning storms. The thing itself squats like a malevolent deep-sea creature, bulbous, eight-legged, and glowing with brilliant blue-purple light: blown of heavy glass, it is not dissimilar to a giant octopoid light bulb, its base filled with a miniature lake of mercury. A tiny blue-white flame dances on the surface of the mercury pool within the glass globe. To the onlooker, it could be a captured spirit, flickering and throwing itself against the walls in a ceaseless, decades-long struggle for release. It is an eerie and a powerful sight.
In the past months this strange, stinking corner of the Underground has seen more visitors than it has in twenty years. After the war the tunnels were closed up, the transit planners turning their interest elsewhere, now that the need for deep-level shelters was gone. But certain esoteric subsectors of society have always gravitated to such places; as long as there is secrecy, there will be a need for holes to hide in.
Now, the crackle and hiss of the rectifier is joined by another noise; the rhythmic clang of footsteps descending the staircase. There is something horribly inexorable about those footsteps; they are the sort one hears in dreams.
The door of the Plant room creaks open on its rust-damp hinges, and blue eyes meet dancing blue sparks, and one is as empty as the other.
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