The Eighth City: A Torch in the Darkness

bed with him.

  “It’s ok, honey, it’s ok. It was only a dream.”

  He cried into his Mother’s shoulder and tried to take a breath, but it seemed like all the air had left his lungs and wouldn’t come back.

  He felt embarrassed at how he clung to his Mother, but he only held her closer as he tried to catch his breath.

  “It wasn’t real. It wasn’t real. You’re ok, you’re just fine. It was just a dream. Nothing is going to hurt you.”

  The words comforted Sebastian enough to allow him to take deep, gasping breaths of air. They seemed to comfort Mother as well and she let out a giant sigh of relief. She sat him on the edge of the bed and stroked his hair. Father had left the room after determining the threat was only in his son’s dreams, and when he returned the tube was gone. Sebastian wondered if he had imagined it in the first place. Father sat on his other side, and they both held him and muttered comforting words. He nodded and thought about the pain of the fire all around him.

  When the tears had finally dried from his cheeks and he had calmed enough, they tucked him back into bed, and he gave them both tight hugs.

  “I’m fine,” he croaked out at last. He felt like a child with the way they were treating him.

  Mother left the room calling out a soft “goodnight,” but at the door Father hesitated and looked back at Sebastian. After a moment he went back to his son’s bed and kneeled down beside him.

  “What happened in your dream?”

  Sebastian swallowed and closed his eyes against the memory.

  “It’s ok, you don’t have to tell me about it,” said Father, seeing the reluctance in his son’s eyes. He patted Sebastian’s shoulder, “I don’t like to talk about my dreams either.”

  Father reached into his pocket, “But I’ll tell you what.”

  He pulled something out of his vest and held it with his hand closed so Sebastian couldn’t see it.

  “You know how dangerous it can be in the Bellows. It’s not just the fire that will get you but the moving gears, the clanging levers, even the ill will of a friend, can mean death.”

  Sebastian nodded slowly, he actually knew very little about what his father really did.

  “Well as I get older I’m getting slower, and stupider,” he paused for a moment and smiled wryly, “but don’t tell your mother I said that. But even so I’ve never had an accident, and I never will. Do you want to know why?”

  Sebastian shook his head.

  “Because I have this.” Father opened his hand and to show him a tarnished silver medallion. He turned it so it would catch the light from the door, and Sebastian saw engraved on it the image of an eclipsed sun and a complex hourglass balanced on a scale made of a crescent moon.

  “You can have it tonight. It will protect you from fire and the dark and anything else that might threaten you. In the morning, I’ll explain where it came from.”

  He placed the medallion in Sebastian’s hand and gave him a reassuring squeeze on his shoulder. Then he stepped away from the bed and moved to the door.

  “Goodnight son,” he said as the door closed behind him, and Sebastian was left in the darkness once again.

  He had expected it would take him a long time to fall asleep after his nightmare, but clutching his father’s medallion, he found himself quickly drifting off.

  This time he knew he was dreaming, and the medallion must have worked because it was a pleasant dream. He was walking slowly down the street in thick boots. Above him he could see the sky between the tall spires and crisscrossing wires of Outer City’s skyline. Despite the weight of his boots, they tread quietly on the welded walkway. Around his shoulders hung a heavy cloak that felt like one of his down comforters. The stars were blocked by the clouds and smog that hung over the city, but a diffused patch of white in the sky told him the moon was almost full risen. In the peace of the night it took him a moment to realize he had companions.

  His head shifted to the side to look at the hooded figure next to him. Nothing seemed out of place until his companion turned towards him. Where a face should have been was instead a swirling vortex of darkness. Sebastian tried to recoil, to turn and run away, but instead he kept walking alongside the others as though his body expected the sight that his mind was rejecting.

  He began to panic and glance about, trying to find a way to escape, to stop dreaming, to wake up. When they passed a street lamp he saw his reflection in the rat catcher’s window. He too, had only swirling darkness where his face should have been. He felt terror rise up within him and tried to call out for help to the dark storefront.

  The rat catcher had always been friendly to him and had showed him how to lure rats into a trap with just the sound of his voice. But his voice stuck in his throat and they passed silently on by.

  Now they passed the butchers. It was dark now but he was reminded of the wet sounds the machines would make as they sliced the meat. “Always be on good terms with your butcher,” Father would say, “or you’ll end up buying your meat from the rat catcher.” He always chuckled at his own joke.

  As they passed the barber he visited once a month, he realized where they were going. They were coming to him. Soon they would pass number 4724, where Mathias lived. He knew with a strange certainty that these men were going to his house and that it was with evil intent. He glanced again at the men that accompanied him, this time with worry and fear creasing his thoughts. He saw, as their cloaks swept backwards, a set of wicked knives and tubes like the one his father had been carrying nestled in each of their belts. One hefted a sack that clinked softly in the night. He checked his own belt to find himself similarly armed. Terror seized him and his breath came in short gulps. He tried to run, call for help, scream, but he awoke in his bed, safe at home. Somehow, though, he could still hear the soft tread of boots on cold metal.

  Fear swept through him and he leapt out of bed, crashing into walls as he rushed to his parents’ room. He found his parents awake and talking in hushed voices when he burst through the doorway. They were startled but recovered fast enough that by the time Sebastian reached him, Father swept him into his arms, giving Mother a worried glance as he did so.

  “It’s ok-”

  “Dad! Dad!” He tried to yell. He tried to tell him that they were in danger but only produced a weak sob.

  “Shh. Shh. It’s ok.” Father comforted him.

  Sebastian could only watch, his throat numb with fear, as they moved to the kitchen and he was placed into a chair, all the while his fingers moved frantically over his Father’s medallion as if it were a shaman’s charm. Father began warming some milk on their coal heated stove. He opened the iron door to wake the embers that sat in the stove’s belly. Mother felt his forehead and stroked his knee. From one of the high cabinets that ringed the kitchen, Father took out a crystal decanter. He poured a few drops of a brownish liquid into the milk as it warmed. He went to put the crystal back but hesitated and then poured himself a splash in a clear glass.

  Sebastian tried to get the words out. Tried to move, tell them somehow, but he could only sit and stare with wide eyes at his father’s slow movements. His mother’s voice seemed to come from far away.

  “Howard…”

  “What? It’s just a small glass.”

  “Not you, him.”

  “It’s ok, dear. It’ll help him relax. He’ll sleep better.”

  Mother gave Father a stern look but finally nodded.

  Father poured the pan of milk into a glass and while Mother wasn’t looking added a few more drops of the brownish liquid to it. He handed the glass to Sebastian and took a short sip from his own.

  They watched carefully as Sebastian gulped the warm milk down.

  “Slow down honey. You don’t want to get stomach pains do you?”

  But he didn’t stop until the glass was empty. It seemed like there was a small sun in his stomach as he felt the heat radiate out from his chest. His throat burned slightly, and he gave a dry cough as he placed the glass on the ta
ble.

  “We have to go,” he croaked, jumping out of the chair and looking wildly from his mother to father.

  “Bad men are coming. They have knives and a tube like Dad’s. I saw them, they’re coming here!”

  Mother and Father exchanged a look.

  “Honey, it was just a dream…” She began, but then there was a quiet thump from outside and they all fell silent.

  “I’m getting the blackpowder,” Mother whispered, her hands were shaking, “Just like we practiced,” she added, looking at Father. She left the kitchen.

  “Come here Sebastian,” his Father whispered.

  He stepped to the wall of the kitchen that held a cylindrical cover, about the size of a man’s torso. It was their depository for the Tunnel System where all of the garbage for the city began its journey into the Below, the massive area beneath the city that contained all of the waste and discarded treasures of the Eighth City. Once opened, it led into a tunnel that connected with hundreds of others from houses and deposit centers in the neighborhood and finally exited beneath the city. There were muffled sounds from outside. He hurried over.

  Father silently opened the lid of the chute and motioned for Sebastian to get inside. He clambered in without question and laid down on the part that lay flat before dropping off into the darkness. The faint smell of decay drifted out into the kitchen.

  “Hold onto this,” Father said, indicating a handle on the side of the chute. He grabbed the handle with one hand. The