Read Online Catacombs of Terror! by Stanley Donwood - Free Book Online Page B

have been nasty to me. Almost everyone else has been elusive, insulting, and generally difficult. And it never stops fucking raining. So, listen . . . I’d really, really appreciate it if you just state your business, tell me whatever it is you’re here to tell me, and then leave me the fuck alone. Is that too much to ask?”
    “You been up to Charlcombe yet? Have you any idea what’s going down?”
    “I’ve been up. I’ve been down. I’ve been all over. You know what?” I was suddenly very bored. “You know what? If the next sentence you utter doesn’t grab me, I’m gone. As of that moment. I’m gone. Are you hearing me? Catching my drift?” I lit another cigarette and closed my eyes for a couple of heartbeats.
    “Hey.” He looked a little perplexed. With that I could identify. “Calm down. I’m here to help you. Help you. Understand?”
    As you can imagine, I’d had enough help to last me a long time. None of it did the job though. None of it helped. All it did was get me deeper into something I had no wish to even dip my toes in. “Okay,” I said. “Help me then. Yes, I’ve been up to Charlcombe. They’ve got a big hole there. It goes a long way in a direction I don’t like. Who, exactly, are you?”
    “Think of me as your friend. My name’s not necessary for you to know. I’ve got some information for you.
Now, do you want it?
”
    I sighed, again. I ran my hands over my face, again. “Yes,” I said, exhaling.
    I stared at my empty glass for a little while, realised he wasn’t going to offer to get it filled up again, excused myself, bought another pint, and sat down again.
    “Look,” I said patiently. Well, yeah. Impatiently. “Before you begin, just by sitting here with you I’m implicating myself in this further and further.”
    Maybe I should have just ignored the note, the e-mail, I thought. I shouldn’t have gone to see that woman in the Star. I shouldn’t have gone to the dig at Charlcombe. I should have avoided the CCTV place like the plague. But I didn’t. I went and got all intrigued about it. Then I got myself a kicking in a farmer’s field next to the motorway. I sighed again. The practice was improving my delivery.
    “Okay,” I muttered, lighting another cigarette, “tell me what you know.”
    “Listen. There’s something under the city. It’s been there a very long time, since, well, maybe forever. A darkness. But it’s a darkness people have been using, or trying to use, for, well, a long time. Thing is, now they’ve worked out how to use it. For real. And that? That is seriously bad news.”
    “Whoa there. Two things. Who are ‘they’? What is ‘it’?” I interrupted.
    “
They
are . . . they are kind of—the elite. I’m not talking about the old ‘Establishment’ here, not the Bilderbergers, not the oligarchs. They are just . . . dilettantes, compared to this lot. No one name describes them or does them justice. They are the folks who
really
run things. The top dogs. They are very powerful people who can never get too much power. They call themselves AFFA. In their own tongue, in a language from a very long time back, AFFA means ‘nothing.’ It isn’t an acronym for anything. It is—just a word. If you call yourself nothing, no one knows who you are. Or what you want.
    “They—AFFA—always want more. And now—right now—They have the means to change the world. I want you to think about what I’m saying. Power has always been fought for. Next king, next queen, next pope, president, whatever. It’s a fight, a very, very dirty fight.
Power, by any means necessary
. These people are above morals. Morals are there to keep the likes of us in line. But They, the elite, AFFA, will do anything at all to get and keep power. And now, after centuries of work, the ultimate power, the absolute power to do exactly as they please is finally within Their grasp.”
    “I know all about this,” I said, “because I watch
The X-Files
. Next. Next please.