The Stranger - Max Frei [162]
“Right, disguised like the secret passage into the garden of the Order of the Seven-Leaf Clover? Not likely, Max.”
We descended a narrow ladder. Melifaro replaced the false floor behind us, and we found ourselves in utter darkness.
“You don’t have a problem finding your way in the dark, I hope?” I asked.
“Do you?”
“I think I do. I don’t know. In any case, I can’t see a thing.”
“Fine, I’ll guide you. Some Child of the Night you are.”
Hand in hand we groped our way toward the divine aroma that grew stronger with every step. Gradually I discovered that I instinctively knew where to turn so as not to bump my forehead against a wall, and where to raise my foot a bit higher to step over an invisible, but hard impediment in our path.
“Are you joking at my expense?” Melifaro asked, trying to withdraw his paw from mine. “You sure don’t miss any opportunity to make me look like an idiot.”
“My whole life I’ve dreamed of holding hands with you, and now I’ve found a pretext. Don’t be so touchy. I’m absolutely serious. I don’t know whether I can find my way around in the dark or not. I never know anything for sure about myself beforehand.
“You are a lucky fellow, after all. What an interesting life you have. Here we are. We still need some light, though. You are a smoker, I recall.”
“To the degree that I can tolerate the rubbish that passes for tobacco around here. I do have matches, though, don’t worry.”
“I’m afraid that won’t be enough light. You’ll have to smoke your pipe. It’s the only light-bearing apparatus we have that gives off a steady glow.”
“Are you trying to hasten my demise? Well, so be it.”
I quickly filled my pipe. The idea was brilliant. I had only to draw on the pipe, and the dim reddish glow dispelled the darkness around us. We we were standing on the threshold of a small storeroom, stuffed to the brim with huge, oddly shaped cupboards. Strange furniture. I had seen things like this a number of times at home, but never here in Echo, where the spare, elegant objects that functioned as domestic furnishings looked more like works of art.
Since the capacity of my lungs was limited, we were once more plunged in darkness.
“What was that?” Melifaro tugged on the sleeve of my Mantle of Death. “Puff on that pipe one more time, please.”
“If you want to boss me around, you’d better learn to smoke,” I growled.
“When I was eighteen I swiped my older brother’s pipe, smoked nearly all the contents of the snuffbox, and got terribly sick. Please, Max. Give us some light! What are these things?”
I went right up to the nearest ‘cupboard’ and took a mighty draw on the pipe.
Holy cow! It wasn’t a cupboard at all, but a cage! And a person was trapped inside it. He seemed to be sleeping. In any case, the fellow didn’t react when we appeared right in front of him, and the clouds of tobacco smoke that enveloped him didn’t faze him, either.
“He’s neither alive nor dead,” Melifaro observed after a brief silence. “Try sending him a call, Max! Very curious sensation. It’s like talking to a sausage.”
I immediately regretted it. The ‘curious sensation’ turned out to be one of the most uncanny and horrible experiences of my life. I suddenly felt as though I myself was a large, living sausage that had somehow preserved the very human characteristic of being able to contemplate his essence and his fate. I was a sausage that dreams of the moment he will be eaten. I couldn’t extricate myself from the sticky spiderweb of nightmarish sensations. A slap in the face, fairly powerful, made me drop my pipe, then sent me reeling to the opposite wall where, I banged my knee against the corner of yet another cage.
“What’s wrong, Max?” Melifaro asked in a trembling voice. “What is happening to you? Who taught you to do that? What is it?”
“I don’t know,” I murmured, fumbling around for my pipe, which had gone out. Now a good draw on the pipe was just what I needed. Sausages don’t smoke, I knew that for certain. The foul taste of the substance that they mistakenly consider to be tobacco here in Echo