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Chapter Text

Into a Machine For Pigs

Part One - Waking the Doll's House

[Following many pages of writing]

New Years Eve,

—Notes on my awakening:

The bed on which I awaken is not my own. I feel scarcely able to bear the weight of my own arms, but I rise, enclosed by sumptuous greens and faded reds. Beneath me, the bed is dressed in fine, cold fabrics, and it cradles my sore body tenderly. Yet, these nursing beddings feel distant and detached in a queer way. 

Slowly, my senses return to me. Dimly, I perceive, there! on my wrists are faded markings, as if left by chains. But, I realise they are soot, caked on my skin in dragging brush patterns. This chamber is dark. Supple curtains wave, haughty moonlight evinced by their casual parting. The outlines of domiciliary fixtures sleep in the gloom, distant and unoccupied. I’m arrested by an absurd feeling, as if in a dream, smothered in these expensive fabrics in this alien space. I feel heavy and mild.

As I further arrive into the world, I discover I smell bitter; the tang of dry blood beats at my nostrils.

Surrounding me are peculiar bars of metal and wood which line the sides of the bed. They’re as exquisite as the rest of the chamber I awake in. This caged-bed resembles nothing so much as a child’s crib. Time passes by in inches, and I begin to regard the more mystifying traits of the space surrounding me. The strange features of this room engender a kind of remote, groggy superstition in me. I am passive in my dissolving investigation; I feel that something is amiss, but the nature of this mystery evades me. For a period, this silent chamber forbids me to controvert its stillness. Then, in a queer, inert way, I am conscious. This newfound awareness creeps slowly upon me. A feeling of sickness quietly curls behind my ears, and I regard the room with a lucidity that evaded me before. I stare off through the bars, bedridden, at a room which is muted and familiar. Fine tables and desks populate this chamber’s dark corners. A fine carpet sits beneath them, upon the floor.

I rap confusedly at the bars, locked tight. But just as I emerge fully into a claustrophobic wakefulness, some unseen person opens the cage, and darts away into the darkness. The shock sends a shiver up my spine. Inaction provokes me to stir, and the apparent stillness of the room now sits contaminated by this unseen agent.

I crawl through the opening of the cage and fall gracelessly onto the floor below. Strength eludes me. I continue to drag my body through the dim room, then slowly, I give myself rise. I feel the weight of centuries fall off my back, as if I had been carrying the dirt of an entire city. An uneasy familiarity returns to me, as my eyes negotiate the dark corners of this room. I have been here before. 

I stand, alert and battle-ready, but this small room reveals itself to be uninhabited apart from myself. Even in my sleep-addled state, I can clearly recall that the door exiting this chamber had never been closed. Perhaps it was merely a fluke of gravity or air currents that pulled open the cage door. At any rate, I am alone.

Or so I assumed. Suddenly there comes a voice! There, beyond the confines of this room, a ghostly muttering, distant and dreamy: "Daddy, daddy, find us!” This sound is so little and so ancient. It penetrates the darkness, calling for me like a grim and fecund sepulcher. I feel grave and strange upon the sound of it. It is the sound of my boys; their little voices are unmistakable. I surprise myself at the thought, and I feel a kind of ethereal fear. 

Now, I begin writing in this journal. I found it on my person. It is already partially filled with scribblings, presumably my own. An unnameable dread prevents me from reading what comes before. But, these fresh leaves of paper invite my story. I feel a clarity as I put ink to page.

My children call, and I shall answer. And, I shall descend into a loam where only bodies may be found.

*******

Beyond the bed chamber,

—I find myself before a railing overlooking a lower floor. A chandelier hangs regally beside the railing and I. The candles of it are lit, yet no sound disturbs this desolate crypt of stillness apart from my own creaking footsteps. And, the ghostly voice of my twins. My darling boys. They were born out of sacrifice. I remember this now. She lived long enough to see Edwin, but not Enoch. I remember as I held her hand and watched the blood pool between her legs.

But, where are they now? They slept in the attic when they were babes-in-arms, and perhaps they have hidden there now.

In the attic,

—I direct myself through the walkways of this house naturally like a key fitted to a lock. Each passing room sits like a tableau both readily familiar and strange. The attic was easy enough to find. Here, I fetched an electric lamp, and beheld a stranger sight still. As I write, I wonder if those shadows skirting across the wall were real or the awful intrusions of my anxious mind. I tried to catch a glimpse of this unseen intruder (my boys perhaps?) but the shadows are gone before I could illuminate them. As I turn over the attic, I find no other signs of life apart from half-chewed vermin, piled on top of a crate. Could they have been eating pests to stay alive? I’m revulsed and shamed by the thought. I will find them and protect them.

Another finding: Two torn pages found on the floor. A telltale sign of their presence; it’s from our children! Our children!

[Here are two torn diary pages written in a small print]

October 3rd,

—Daddy says we're not allowed to play with the animals anymore. We were playing hide and seek with Cook and he came and shouted at us, just as we were going to hide behind Mr Grumpy Teddy. Cook say's it because of the guns in there, but he always lets us help polish them, so it can't be that. Anyway, that room is haunted. If you sneak around there at night, you can hear the ghosts in the walls behind the cases. They are often angry, or that's how it sounds. We think that's why you can hear them rattling their chains and slamming doors and things like that. We don't like it there anyway.

October 11th,

—Daddy says there won't be a Christmas this year, he is much too busy. Nanny says we must not disturb him, he is ever so busy. He is gone for work before she wakes us and often we are asleep before he returns. We found a bird in the garden with a broken wing. We gave it to Nanny, who said it was a filthy thing and hit it with a rolling pin. Later, we crept downstairs to bury the body when everyone was asleep. There was a pig in the garden, we heard it snuffing about. Then Daddy came and said we had to come inside straight away. He was furious, but we think he'd been crying again.

Later,

—Further my mission pacifies me into a mindless wander. Familiar yet otherworldly voices beckon me towards quiet contemplation. 

As I write, there across the hall is the washroom. Like the rest of the house it is ornate and welcoming. From there I vaguely recall laughter and play. Perhaps these memories are a token of some kind…

—When I approached the tub, I found there was blood in it… and a suspicious painting hanging above…

A thought: Look beyond the paintings, Oswald, where once you watched her bathe. The children must have discovered those secret places.

—God above! A terrible hollow banging like metal! Yet beneath it, I must have heard a child’s voice. They speak. THEY speak, their voice made distant… but I know too well who it is. I left the bathroom in search of…

At the ground floor,

—Nearly crushed by the most recent fissure. And then a sound. A grandfather clock, perhaps? I wait with frozen breath and count. Ten times it rings, and then all is silent once more.

—The ground floor of this house is an intolerable maze! Everywhere there are useless fixtures and installations for entertaining guests. You’d think it was a museum. How did I ever navigate these spaces efficiently?

*******

In the study,

—I step into the cosily lit study where once we sat to weep Lily's passing, under weapons that cannot slay the angels to retrieve her from heaven. Rifles. They hang in order on the wall. I wondered at them for a moment, when a phone behind me jumped to life. Of course I answered it, if only to stay the awful ringing.

“Precious eagle cactus fruit,” the voice on the line enunciated. “Help us.”

And the conversation ended as swiftly as it began, myself hardly soothed by the affair. Who spoke? I recognized the voice at the other end, but I cannot put a name to it.

My restless attention turns directed me back to the rifles hanging on the wall. the lowermost of which was framed by scratches on the wallpaper. As if from impulse, I grasped the rifle and lifted it along the markings, to which sounded a satisfying cascade of clicking mechanisms, before the wall itself parted to reveal a hidden passageway!

In that hidden place,

—The walls of this passage are decorated with disguised windows which peer through the paintings adorning the public halls beyond.

I find a note attached to the wall. 

[Here a is a sheet of old parchment, scrawled on which is a note]

Replacement is dissatisfactory. So like a pump.

Better the intestinal canal, like a tapeworm, already hosting intrusion and the breed. Brass better than copper, more resistant. Filaments sewn to bone hold.

Marrow pipe removal with needle potential. Composite replacement straightforward, will respond to electromagnetic inducement to increase yield rate, serum provides accelerated resetting resulting in naturalised movement within two to three days. Subjects still require severing of frontal lobes to reduce emotional stress upon reactivation.

Damn, damn it. Damn this wretched soul. If only it were like clockwork.

The meaning of this eludes me.

—At the end of the passageway, I found a hidden portal looking into the washroom. On the wall here line a number of voyeuristic photographs, depicting tranquil persons in water, and strange, vexing depictions via messy charcoal lie on canvases at their side. I stared, transfixed, at these odd visages and figures for a moment, before noticing a lever attached to the wall. At its command opened another hidden doorway, through which I found treaty into the Public House once more.

Later,

—Another phone call. 

“Mandus,” the voice began. “Do you know me?”

“Who are you?” I asked. “Where are my children?”

“Trapped, Mandus,” the voice returned, grimly, “far below us. The Machine is fouled, it is breached, it is flooded. The bulkheads are down, the children are encaged. If you help me, I can help you release them. Restore the power, Mandus. Drain the flooding and restart the great engines.”

I demanded, “How? Where should I go?” But the line was already dead.

That voice on the telephone speaks as if he knows me. I feel we are entwined, though I cannot conceive of how. Like a twin pulled away from the other at birth. Confound these forgotten memories. I am a drowning man grasping for the surface within my own home.

Beneath me, I know there are splendid architectures hidden in the dark, if I can only find the entrances.

In Lily's honour, a banquet,

—A lavish dining room with a banquet table. Yet as I beheld the scarlet wood, and smelled the familiar fire, a terrible vision seized me. Shrieking pleas beneath blunt trauma, and the slicing of meat. Meat and meat, and meat. But no, I realise, the voices were not pleading, but cheering! A merriment spread throughout the air, with sounds of clapping and wine, and a terrible feeling rose through me. A banquet, a happy banquet—Why does this memory fill me with such a horrible dread? 

—After the party, someone took my arm and said, "But darling, however did you get from the trophy room to the guest bathroom so quickly? Everyone considers you quite the magician!" My darling Lillibeth, my father's house has many rooms, and as for mine…well, it also has its secret chambers.

In the trophy room,

—Presently, I stand in another very familiar room. A trophy room decorated with taxidermy of various curiosities. There is a spider the size of a small dog resting deceased in one display, in another stands tall the body of a great bear.

Well, I pushed aside the glass case containing the bear, revealing familiar dark metal walls behind it. The light of this room reaches very shortly into that space, barely illuminating steel railings and covered crates, steel floors and barred walls.

—A tall fence along that balcony overlooks a great and expansive darkness, pumping with machinery and steam. Industry. This word fills me with an enigmatic shame, and pride. There was a valve connected to pipes of pressurised steam. As I turned it open, mechanisms shifted and whirred into place. Eventually the valve reached its stopping point, and when the metamorphosis was done, I exited that secret room.

Soon after,

—I am not alone! As I stepped back into the public space, I noticed a door now open that had been locked before. When I approached to grab the handle, the door was seized by some terrible force and shut in front of me! A throaty utterance roared on the other side. Likely mechanical? Although it sounded almost like a hog. Something rapped furiously at the door, although I presume vainly, for stillness resumed soon after. Someone else in the house shut this door and held it closed. I know now that I must be careful to avoid them getting the drop on me.

Later,

—I wandered into a nearby washroom, switched a hidden lever I knew was there. Another wall moved aside to reveal some industrial passageway breathing out smog into the air. Within it there is stray viscera trailed on the ground, leading to a chute. This chute drops carrion down into that metal abyss. I contemplated this dispensary place before turning another valve to its stopping point. There was blood on the valve, fresh. I rub my hands across the fabric of my shirt. What manner of animal did this come from?

But the blood does not come off. The blood, I can no longer stand the blood. That terrible scent. I’m met with visions. Hands bleeding, raw. I scrub and scrub but the smell will not lift. God, the creeping dread. How can I hold my children with these hands now? How can I kiss them goodnight with … with lips that have issued such instruction? Just those words I know I have spoken before. They feel fresh upon my lips. Perish the thought. Damn it all. I must press forward.

I hear the sounds of steel ticking as it cools and contracts. A new path opened into a dark descent. This must be the strange machine my new (old?) friend spoke of. If my children discovered this place, it is entirely conceivable they strayed downwards, delighted in their discovery. Very well, it seems my route is predestined. I am off to market. I will cry all the way home. I will have none. 

I will have none at all.

Chapter Text

Into a Machine for Pigs

Part Two - Against the Rising Waters

Beyond,

—As I made my way through the hidden labyrinth, I found myself in some kind of rueful cellar. “Come along, slow coach,” the phantom voice whined. “It’s this way.” Very well.

I stepped onto the stairs leading down into a narrow and deep chamber. Beneath me, the stairs gave way. Luckily, the fall was harmless, but the entrance sits above me, several feet out of reach. There is no longer any visible means of escape, if I had wished for it.

Was it a trick? That voice on the phone, who seems so close to my own, who seems to know me so well, does he lead me for a nefarious purpose of his own secret devising? But, do I have a choice? Even though his motives are unknown to me, I must find my boys. I will follow the machinery down to the very core of the earth if it will lead me to Edwin and Enoch.

A thought: Why did I fear the unseen person who slammed shut that door, when surely it was just my darling boys?

Just after,

—Swelled pipes belch steam as I clang through the dank floor. Another phone rang on the wall.

“The shaking ground you feel is our attempts to clear the floodwaters,” the voice on the line stated. It is of course the same man as before. The voice speaks of sabotage: “Treachery, Mandus, we are undone. Your children are trapped by this act, you must find them before it is too late.”

I asked what it needs of me, what I must do to save my children. By way of reply:

“Always deeper, Mandus. Through the piston room and into the tunnels, then find the bilge and flush the rotten water. I will help you where I can, but you must be swift, my little friend.”

That is all the voice said before hanging up.

—I continued my way through this dark, cold cellar, only my electric lamp to guide me, and the occasional shaking of the earth discouraging me, although I must hold resolute. I walk within an enormous factory of some kind. Wooden beams rise to the ceiling and crude chains and equipment line the walls. It isn’t much of a factory. Moreover it’s a labyrinth of darkness. I forged my path through it, trying to ignore the shuddering metal or persistent footsteps clanging in the distance.

Near some large gates I found a broken machine. So the saboteur has been this way. Intriguing. The gates were far too heavy for a man to lift and are instead hoisted aloft by a chain coiled about a spool that appears to be spun by motors connected to some electrical switches before me. Alas, with the fuse blown, the motor cannot be spun. No matter, I simply employ a spare fuse nearby, and reactivate the machine, allowing me to raise the gates via the pulley. Not very extensive sabotage.

As the machinery falters I heard a terrible wail, a mournful cry echoing through the walls. Through its alarmed pitch I heard a reflection of my own terror at the sound itself. I dread an encounter with its source. Some scuttling, pounding thing that shrieks like it does. Like a pig. And I fear for my childrens’ lives, as well, for it appears the saboteur isn't the only threat stalking the factory.

Later still,

—It seems this chemical processor is merely one part of a much larger complex. No easy route for me, then. I will follow my fever, the calls of my children, wherever they may lead me as I move further into this empire. “Follow us, papa,” they seem to say, “we know the way.” 

But I know now it cannot really be them, can it? If they are trapped below where the machinery is flooding, they cannot also be just ahead? Regardless, I follow my white rabbit.

Broken pipes spew sour vapor into the air. Ahead: a bulkhead locked in place by a valve. Turning the valve and stepping inside I found some intermediary space. An airlock?

Through the airlock,

—All the suggestions of a large workforce, yet no actual signs of life. Empty desks. An office of some kind, seemingly. It is every bit as if someone has attempted to carefully create the illusion of a working factory complex, yet this facade, when examined closely, is clearly just a fabrication. I saw a figure run in the shadows, heard the rapid padding of its footsteps. But I must put aside my anxieties, quell the unease that pits my stomach and continue on my path.

The phone on one of these desks rang, and so I answered. That familiar voice spoke: “I have such visions to share with thee if my jaw be unshackled and you harvest the crust from my eyes. Make me clean Mandus, that my thoughts and words can unfouled be.”

That was all he has to say.

I continued exploring the office, pilfering through the desk drawers and papers in search of, what, I cannot say. In one drawer, I found a collection of bloodied teeth and spectacles, a strange recoiling sight. I shut the drawer quickly. 

*******

Later,

—I recall words spoken with my own voice. ‘Bandaged feet and eyes,’ my brain recited unknowably. ‘Small bones in the orchard.’

Damn this. I have carried this world on my back, with its legs about me. Damn this wretched soul, I am given birth to nothing but machinery. 

—I find myself in a large, bright garage with a curious machine by the locked gate. Examining the work, I surmise it to be the fueling station, of a kind. I have seen automobiles demonstrated at Mr. Yarham and Mr. Simmon's works, but the smell here is all wrong. This is not petroleum, of that I am sure. Nearby is a wagon filled with the slaughtered corpses of pigs, parked by the gate, and I contemplated its purpose without venturing too near it. 

—Puzzling over the obscure riddle of whether this load is arriving or departing, I journeyed into a room filled with other slaughtered things hung on hooks. Arriving, then! I stumbled out of the freezer, seeking refuge from that environment, and threw my head out of an open window to breath in the fresh air.

Sensing a certain doom in my quest to explore these offices, and a pleasure in breathing the outside air, I decided to simply hoist myself out the window and onto the rocky path shortly below.

Outside I am met with impenetrable darkness. A cobblestone road is paved humbly underfoot. Darkness itself is cast into slick, thin lamp posts which meekly push their light out into the fog. They appear lonely and desolate at their posts. Their eternal service paints their shape with an odd, depressing air, and I found myself retrieving my electric lamp and switching it on, I suppose to aid in their battle against the nighttime air. A truck lies parked by a church’s gate, blocking any entrance. On its footstep, a note. My curiosity got the better of me.

[Here is a handwritten note]

How in blazes are we supposed to meet these damned schedules if even the basic equipment we are provided with simply will not perform its designated function! These cursed new-fangled trucks will only run a fraction of the distance my old nag managed before running out of stinking gasoline. The gaffer says it's fine and there's plenty of pumps to refill them outside the factory walls, but you end up dragging a blessed tank from the truck to the nearest one to refill it, and the one in the storeroom is empty again. I can't be turning that crank handle all day only to find the tank is empty! 

Well, sod it says I, enough for a night and to my bed I go. It's not like anyone needs access to the bleeding graveyard anyway. Harry, if you get this, I'll meet you in the Damson Templar for a jar.

So the driver of this truck is away. Difficult for me to move his truck without his being here. I peer through the bars of the gate. Ancient tombs and tombstones, made of lonely stone. The epitaphs deny recognition, faded with the ages. A sign bolted to the gate reads “St. Dunstan’s Church”

This church is connected to the plant - how odd. However, it does suggest another route into the main part of the facility, given the locked doors around the fueling station. The truck blocks my way however, almost as if the saboteur knew that I might consider this alternative entrance.

Outside the warehouse,

—I have seen something awful which I struggle to drive out of my mind. As I write, a warehouse looms behind me with its wooden gate half ajar, casting a faint trace of light across the stone street. I am now standing outside of that terrible place. Yet dreadfully, even still, it beckons my presence, as if it holds some awful mirror whose reflection I am compelled to lean in to study. Inside, a large, wide fence stretches across the far wall, holding a tribute of terrible knowledge beyond.

I had entered and stepped toward the fence, fingers gripping the wires in imitation of my eyes venturing through the metal rust. Beyond the fence was a conveyor belt lined with metal crates ambling along from one dark unknown into a further unknown in kind. There, one crate crawled past without its obscuring lining. An unshapely, living animal was encaged inside. Something large, of spoiled, mottled flesh, pulsated and twitched, but the details were impossible to make out. It had the shape of a barrel of wine draped over with a matted, befouled blanket. What protrusion could be called its head had an almost conical appearance. But painted as the creature was in blackness, I could make out nothing other than its texture and form. How then do I know it was a living thing? Because it snuffled and snorted with a particular form of wet living that repulses me beyond even describing here.

I was horrified at the sight. But even as I intended to flee that place, a compartment along the side wall stole my attention. There, a bulky aluminium canister lay in wait for my prizing.

This canister appears as though it may fit the fuel pump I saw earlier. It certainly carries the same fetid, unholy reek. It is in my possession now. That is all that matters. I will not think of that which I saw pass me in its cage, I will not gaze again into that dark machine room. A more immediate task presents itself, and the opportunity perhaps to gain access to St Dunstan's.

In the churchyard,

—Dear sweet Lord of all that is good and holy! I write from the security of the churchyard, surely such an abomination could not follow onto hallowed ground!

Back towards the window I ran, canister held tightly in my arms. The harsh patting of the electric lamp on my thigh punctuated my heartbeat, as I ventured back across those empty, ancient streets, filled with lonely lampposts in the infinite dark.

And yet! Before I approached the window, I found the garage had already been opened. The strange fueling pump stared at me through the newly opened gate. Without delay, I installed the canister into the slot, making sure the tubes align, and began peeling away at the large yellow valve. The strange, foul chemistry from within the machine began to empty into the canister. 

Then suddenly, I was interrupted by loud metal clanking and a coarse, inhuman squeal, burrowing through the walls at a ghastly low register. An animal snort came growling from above, as I turned up to see a queer brutish demon running across the catwalks on all fours, snarling and yowling with the distress and intensity of livestock near to being slaughtered! Yet in my terror I remembered that I mustn’t forget the fuel. I tore at the valve, stealing the rest of the liquid as that inhuman beast, flesh peeling away and spoiling, continued crashing about the catwalks overhead. No later than I spilled the last drop into the metal box did I hastily detach it from the machine and made my escape.

Sweat chilled from contact with the cold open air as I ran back into the darkness, the terrible smell from the box rotting away at me. Carefully, I inserted the canister into the fuel port of the truck, and turned the starter crank. The truck jolted to life and slid backwards away from the gate before slowing to a stop. Now the churchyard is unobstructed. I fear that the beast will find its way through.

I must descend deeper and away, before that creature, that nearly-man, returns.

Chapter Text

Into a Machine For Pigs

Part Three - And so to The Stoking

Inside St. Dunstan's,

—We sat here.

I remember, we sat in our black and we mourned and we prayed and we bowed our heads. How I hated God then, how I spurned Him. If this is our Lord, this pig who robs me of my wife, then I refute his embrace. I will carve a new God for us all. Such madness, such a fool I was. If such blasphemous ravings had remained within me, I would be damned. But even here, I feel the machine throb beneath the flags and I know my path awaits me...

At the pulpit, 

—The nave resembles nothing more than a mausoleum, with its high-reaching pillars of bare stone huddling around its central prize. Here at the pulpit is some kind of altar. A large wooden cross stands on a table; tied to it by the neck is the corpse of a pig. Its skin has begun to waste away into chunks of carrion slung loosely over pulverized musculature and bone. Beside it rests another of its kin. This shrine betrays a deeper secret. I know this. I recall so clearly, if obscurely, an entrance into yet more grander labyrinths underground. But where is it? Hidden away by some kind of mechanism, no doubt. A secret and infernal one. The missing candlestick is clearly the answer. But why, this I cannot fathom. Why hide secret machines in a place of prayer? And where are the faithful? Why are there drag marks about the altar, as if someone was pulled away?

—I found a note, seemingly a diary entry from the parish priest of this church. It is… troubling to read. I’ve decided to hold onto it. Out of shame or out of… what, I cannot tell.

[Here is a torn page from another person’s journal]

They flock to us now, where once I had to walk amongst them, to bring salvation into their lives. Now, drawn by warmth in winter, by the food that Mandus distributes, my church is full and my charges are saved. He walks amongst them and they almost worship him. He will not allow them to work in his factories, claiming that his workforce are specially trained for the new machinery he uses, and that it would be irresponsible, nay unethical, to risk such precious lives as he sees here.

A changed man since Mexico. It is to be praised that in the face of such appalling tragedy, and from the confines of his sickbed, as he is often chained to, he conducts one of the greatest and most benevolent charities in all of London. Not content with the rise to become the dominant food produce business in the land, he distributes his goodwill, his fares, to the poor and they congregate about his kingdom in gratitude.

—A simple act of replacing the missing candlestick and reigniting the coal furnace did the job. Now the engine fires, the flames are stoked. I hear steam in the walls, vibrations upon the very air. My heart faltered at the prospect of throwing that lever and exposing the workings of this dark contraption. 

Down there waits a staircase dropping into shadows where the casted light of those… carnivalesque stained windows fail to reach. How could there be so much light outside? Moonlight, perhaps? Yes, moonlight touching down on the path I have yet to tread. 

Thus I descend and may God have mercy upon my soul. If this is my Bedlam, and I am to be cast as Matthews, then I will wear that mantle for the sake of my boys, and face whatever horrors lie beneath the altar.

Beneath,

—I… I beheld a curious thing. And I hope it will not speak to me any longer. Liquid words, shrieks, muttering chatting in some language unknown to me. Another caged thing. God and Heaven forbid that it is the same caged thing as before. I left it behind back there, in the dark. And yet, I fear it could follow.

Many sounds betray the presence of… something with me. I dread it. I dread passing by the stone brickwork, warm to the touch… by the arrays of cages, empty so far as I know… by the sounds that might form into more words, if I linger long enough to listen. It’s

[Here is a handwritten message on a torn page]

What exhumation is this, what rotten fruit, what be-stitching of parts?

I doubt I will ever be found, yet I leave you this, scrawled in the malodorous half-light, whilst my tormentor shuffles below, my fellow prisoners keen and squeal in the gloam, and where I wait for the knocking upon my cage that signifies it is, finally, my turn to make that dark journey into the interior.

Alone,

—I am being pursued. It knows I’m down here. Its terrible snorts react to my every move. In the clear for now, I think. Damn darkness, encroaching, developing. Sounds and shapes everywhere. It’s the man-pig. I shine my light to pierce through the gloom but the damn lantern falters at its sight. Candles will suffice, already lit. Scarce and scattered. I write under their nursing glow. But who lit them? WHAT did?

Mandus Processing Company,

—That terrible thing, the way it shrieks. It spotted me and gave chase, but I was able to confuse among all of the cages. I caught a glimpse of it. There is no doubt of what it is, with its soured flesh, its soft head tapering into a snout, its asymmetrical arms dragging across the floor. It’s the nearly-man, the man-pig. The Abomination.

Of note, I found a message down there among the cages. I sandwiched it between some of the previous pages. It speaks of the man-pig, I think, but who could have written it? The author describes themself as a prisoner. I recall the speaker in the dark cage, all chattering and alone. But they spoke in some language other than English, some foreign tongue. Still, I wonder at who they were… Some unfortunate trapped down there? It is a fate worse than death.

—My soul shudders at what I have seen, but at last I have reached the main part of the factory. Outside, I breathed cool air. I’m not sure how long I had spent in Dunstans or below, but once more was I greeted by the nighttime air. But the surface is not where my mission lies. —Some words come readily into my mouth. Alien words… ancient words, almost fury. Fire. I recall the utterance but not the context: Water in his shoes! It’s always the water. And, the sparks, and the embers of the wheels. It’s too bony. It’s too damn bony!

Another descent,

—The plant is at rest. I must poke the hornet's nest to open my way, I fear. The scale of these engines suggests far greater works than are visible from the surface, so my friend must be correct. The larger part of this plant is underground. We are close to the Thames—no wonder flooding is such a risk. Down here, the pistons are silent. Lily’s arms, they are. Silent.

—Luscious green lamps cast their wares over the tables in these offices. Below are the skulking pistons attached to wheels, still lifeless. Massive things. This plant serves… what purpose?

—Another phone call:

He said in a hushed voice, “Hear me, Mandus. I am compromised. Our contacts must be brief and occasional. Beware the wretches who populate this compound. The way you seek is under the pistons. When you meet the saboteur, you will understand everything.”

—I began the usual process of reigniting the furnaces down in the dark, to set the pistons to work. The fires are stoked. Assuming the same architect is responsible here as with the chemical plant, I surmise that a centralised control system regulates and operates the pistons. It should be a simple matter of finding it, and hoping the saboteur relented after simply extinguishing the fires.

Below,

—Down here are so many dials, pipes, canisters. Electric lights made from coiling filaments illuminate the way with an orange hue. Grates shudder underfoot, some endless swallowing blackness waits beneath them. What did the dark voice instruct me to do? Under the pistons, into the tunnels and on to the bilge pumps. And if the doors should be locked, I will have to find another means of descent. I cannot trust him, but my path is set. I shall ignore those noises... that snuffling, those shuffling steps below me… I will brave whatever lurks beneath.

—A snuffling. The grated floors wince under its steps. I think it’s gone, for now.

Out of the dumbwaiter,

—Beneath the pistons I walked over a path of coal leading to a halted conveyor. From here I found no entrance into the rest of the facility. Perhaps I should have been trapped, if it weren’t for a dumbwaiter installed along a walkway above the belt. This little cage delivered me—up or down I am not sure—for some distance before a stutter in its movement.

From outside, something rattled the box, rapped at its walls! The metal casing of the dumbwaiter scraped across the walls of the shaft, then it lost grip of its tethers, plunging me into the depths, banging along the sides of the shaft. Of course this banging may have been to my benefit. It could have sufficiently slowed my descent, for despite the distance, I am alive.

Bruised and battered, but alive. I have survived the saboteur's best efforts. He and I are now locked in an epic struggle. But I am driven to find my family, and I will prevail. Ignore the madness about me, do not consider what cruel and unspeakable acts have been committed here. Find the way to the bilge, drain the flood. Free your children, Mandus!

Chapter Text

Into a Machine For Pigs

Part Four - In the Nest of Eggs

A laboratory,

—At first I mistook that ringing for the ringing in my ears. Another call from my friend. He tells me the floodwaters continue to rise. “The children weep in the darkness," he said. Do I dare question him?

What to make of this room… It is dimly lit. It is something of a study-cum-laboratory. A chair… a restraint chair… is stationed here, with a large lamp connected to it by an articulating metal arm. It resembles a dentist’s patient chair. Several wooden desks and shelves line the walls of this room, adorned with various pieces of scientific and measurement equipment. There before me, for instance, is a dead frog attached to a battery by two metal tines. The creature’s legs jump about spasmodically in response to the current from the battery.

On one end of the room is a metal railing and a set of stairs leading to some larger laboratory space below. On the other end of the room, behind the chair, is a metal gate. There is clearly another passage beyond it… but it is locked. The padlock is old but firm, and after that fall, I cannot summon the strength to break it open. Perhaps I can find another way?

—Putting aside the gate for the time being. Down the stairs I found a large centrifuge. Out of it are two suction pipes leading into two tunnels leading away, like hands on a clock. This bizarre device is for mixing chemical compounds, and it positively reeks of the foul fluids I have seen too often before. It is clearly a compound, some volatile bastard of two composite ingredients. Yes… The thought comes readily to me. I seem to recall when it fell onto… his hands, and they eroded in front of me. To stumps. To stumps… Whose hands? I wish I could say. I should wager I would find the two ingredients close by. Well, there’s one metal tunnel branching away in one direction—oh, let’s just say The West—and another likewise to the north.

Low Temperature Storage,

—The west tunnel first. Perhaps my nerves are getting the better of me. I saw one of the wretches clear as day, hobbling ahead of me into the fog of this freezer room. But it is nowhere in here, and there is surely no place for the brute to hide. I could not have mistaken what I saw, if it was truly there.

—This freezer definitely contains the stuff I’m looking for. A giant wooden keg of it. Also a warning of some kind. Perhaps I’ll know what to make of it later when I have clearer eyes.

[Here a loose page is placed]

inflamed it is, burning it does. bleeding from each hole, fore and aft, leaking down my legs, blood and excrement. my lungs are in my vomit, i pass clots of my organs now onto the filthy stone. drink this, he says, and i did drink it, i did do that. because of the changes, they ripple inner me, my teeth sneeze out and scatter like mice in the dark. i cannot find them all, gathered what i can, push them back into my grey gums with my fingers but the nails are all weepy and falling out.

drink it, he says, it'll help the running of the fever, because not us all can take the change. on the other table, a beast under a blanket. i never wanted to see under that, but he drank it too, he passed it under the blanket and i heard it drink. dear god almighty, how can a man shit so much blood and still live?

I sent back a canister of the chemical stored here through the suction tube.

Back in the lab,

—As I left the freezer room, I found myself turning corners which the metal tunnel did not contain before. I swear it. It must have shifted in some way when I wasn’t attending! Soon I found myself in a hallway with wooden walls and crates lining both sides of the floor. The wretch came tumbling up from behind me screaming bloody murder, so I ran. I barely made it out with my life through a wooden door, locking it shut behind me. And where else could I be now… but back by the centrifuge. Only, I was standing then by the base of the stairs, at the SOUTH end of the room!

Perhaps, I reason, perhaps there was some fork in the tunnel that I went down without realizing. But it felt like a single path… One that changed its shape and location without my realizing. I won’t return to the freezer room to investigate, in any case.

In the Holding Pens,

—I do not relish in this environment. The oppressive blackness and the haphazard towers of cages call to mind the candlelit labyrinth under the church. These light-tan tarps cover the cages, they have all the look and feel of leather—a sort of doughy quality, too. Each cage is empty, I think. A sign put up on the wall reads, disconcertingly: SILENCE! Do not STARTLE or UPSET the Acquisitions!

Another dumbwaiter is parked here, although I’ve learned my lesson!

These pens form a winding maze. The floor here is of a fine stone tiling which gives way just before me to a wide strip of grating, underneath which is a tidy stream of pipes. Several light bulbs are affixed overhead but the method of activating them eludes me. My trusty lamp illuminates the path ahead well enough. But the shadows it paints onto far off cages gives a ghostly impression. There on the ground is a bucket holding a few russet potatoes. Food for the man-pigs? Some subconscious part of me recognizes this maze, that feed for the pigs. What dark part in this did I play?

I step into a side chamber and find shelves of miscellaneous detritus from these operations. There is no rhyme or reason to them. I see books, bottles, oil lamps... On one shelf is a large stuffed doll of a bear. My boys would have played with a bear just like this. I wonder if these eclectic belongings weren't once the possessions of the "acquisitions."

The light on my lamp flickers. Uneven, tinny crashes of darkness replace its light.

—I am in the company of a walking man-pig. I caught the beast peering through a vent in the wall. Through the vent glows the cold, yellow light of an electric display of some kind. It took off and is now ambling about a short walkway. The creature doesn't seem to realize it's not alone. For now, I have the upper hand. I have in my possession a sturdy length of pipe. Possibly half a metre. I must steel myself and do what must be done.

—God, but it cannot be hurt! I approached the beast from behind and sent my pipe through the back of its head. I felt my weapon sink into its skin like I was striking a massive lump of modeling clay. But it didn't falter at the injury. Instead, it shrieked and sluggishly knocked me to my feet. I had to flee. The way it hops when it runs keeps it surprisingly agile. But I think I have lost it.

Up close, I saw the particulars of its flesh. It's patched together with messy stitches. Crude folds of untrimmed skin hangs off the seams.

Whatever keeps this beast alive, it is not the same spell of life God embedded in His creatures. It is something darker and more persistent. The work of a Devil.

What else can keep a corpse like I saw on its two feet?

I descended a broken staircase into a lower area, more industrial. Up there it crashes, it snorts. Its eyes, I saw them pierce the gloom. Tiny, wet little things.

But it cannot find me down here.

—Another telephone is put up on the wall here. As if trying to get me killed, my mysterious friend called me on this precise phone! The ringing pierced the silence, threatening to give my hiding place away, so I answered it. He told me nothing of importance—that the lift has been sabotaged.

The fellow upstairs must be of an incurious sort for it did not come investigating.

When silence returned, I slipped away.

—Up another set of stairs. Here is that glowing display which caught the wretch's attention through the vent, before. It's a map of the facility, although hardly a useful one. It depicts roughly eleven distinct structures arranged into six layers. One of these structures, a big building with a sort of laboratory illustrated inside, is lit up. This must be the location I'm in right now. Above the map is a mechanical display of text reading, "Flood Breach - Emergency Shutdown in Place".

There are four layers still beneath me

There is a lift down the stairs I came up. My mysterious friend was correct—the lift is not operational. Regardless, here are some more of those chemical canisters in a crate. The one here feel heavier in my hands. It draws something from me to hold it. Something like shame.

I wonder, Why is this stuff kept here, in the holding pens? But, I know the answer.

I send one canister through the pneumatic tube up here. It will make it's way back to the central chamber with the centrifuge. And now, so must I.

Through another hall,

—I can't drive out the voices of my sons from my mind. They laugh and jeer at the most horrible sights.

To my right, here, is another vent. It is painted over with blood. Human blood, I suspect.

And more of the stuff coats the floor.

And there is another stuffed bear laying in the stuff. And Edwin and Enoch chime the dearest little giggles at the scene before me.

I will save you, my sons.

—Steam blocks the way ahead. Must turn back. Try my chances with the beast skulking about in the dark cage-room, perhaps. Let it guard its keep in my absence.

At the mixing machine,

—I press a switch and start the centrifuge. The external seals of this chamber roll closed and lock themselves. Some sort of security measure, no doubt.

In only a few moments, I have the compound. A heady brew.

It hisses and steams in its container like some living thing. The container is made from glass—perhaps it corrodes through metal?

I recall the fleshy stumps the mixture once left in its wakes. An accident or an experiment? I cannot say. I do remember that this inspired a change in the recipe.

Vanishingly scarce terms and phrases float among the noise of my thoughts. Half-recalled things like childhood nightmares creeping their way into the daylight. Orgone Disperser, that was the chemical in Low Temperature Storage. What was the other one called?

Vitae?

Chapter Text

Into a Machine For Pigs

Part Five - This Leaking World

Back by the “patient’s chair”,

—Some of the electric lights quiver as I pass them with the compound in my hands. It calls to mind the premonitory flickering of my lamp whenever I last drew near one of those creatures.

Now it is time to test a theory of mine. If this mixture does indeed corrode through metal, it should make short work of the old padlock guarding the gate up here. I must be careful to break it over the lock without getting any of the stuff on myself.

—Well, there goes that hypothesis. And the last few hours of my time. The mixture (now coating the padlock) appears to be having no reaction. Why is this so-called Compound X kept in a glass container if it has no reaction to the metal pervading everywhere else in this confounded place?

I look around me and observe the giant articulating lamp installed by the chair. Perhaps the chemical is sensitive to light, like the silver iodide now used in photography.

—Exposure to the focused light of the lamp seems to have activated the compound. Under those intense rays, it bled through and dissolved the lock in a matter of seconds! What ghastly stuff. And somehow smokeless, too. Instead, a puddle of charged sludge is sitting on the floor below. I poked it with a pair of metal pliers—it seems harmless, now.

But seeing it melt through that lock brought to mind the memory of those flesh-stumps once again. I look back at this strange chair. 

I observe the leather arm and leg restraints anew. 

And suddenly, the horrible purpose of this chair and the Compound-X-activating lamp installed nearby quietly becomes clear to me:

I can say now that that injury was no accident, but an experiment.

And, I know who conducted it.

Down,

—My children seem to pull me away from that place. I shed the guilt as I passed through the gate, and heard their phantom voices cry out once more to remind me of my mission: “Down here, Daddy! Faster! Faster!”

Down indeed. Down a flight of stairs to a downward ladder, finally down a chute in the floor itself which drops me onto a messy pile of… straw, it appears? There are human remains down here with me. Several skulls, what appear to be the leftovers of two rib-cages, and four total femurs.

I am in…

It is difficult to say. A sewer of some kind? Small mountains of slime loom over the bones and kiss the round, stone walls of this room. I hear a squelch behind me as I step off the slickly coated straw under-foot onto the stone walkway before me.

Ahead,

—A large chamber flooded with sewage. As I behold this sight, I recall a conversation I once had with the mysterious person on the telephone. 

I had asked him, plainly, “Isn't it dangerous allowing this filthy discharge to collect so close to the core?”

"We can use the flow to drive the turbines,” came his reply, “there will always be a torrent of excreta flooding through these tunnels. We can use this to supplement the steam production and ensure constancy."

And I recall my voice declaring back, “Dear God, the stench! This faecal matter is the true product of the age."

This was no phone call. We had this discussion in person. The nature of our relationship comes feebly back to me. This man was my engineer— The Engineer with whom I oversaw the creation of all of this. I feel an ancient feeling of debt rising up. He is a brilliant mind… But, is debt the right word? Or penitence?

In any case, my Engineer friend is correct, the sewers are indeed flooded. To descend further I will have to find the local sluice pumps to drop the water levels. The smell is almost unbearable, it makes me gag. Why should the saboteur have flooded the tunnels though? What did he hope to achieve?

A final note: I beheld something strange lurking about in the sewage. Something that left behind a sparking trail of electricity dancing on the surface as it wiggled out of sight into the depths.

Another maze,

—I am approaching one of the sluice gates, I am sure of it. Part of me remembers these corners. This is the result of haphazard digging through solid earth, reinforced by stone. Sturdy work, but the channels of stone are hardly navigable. And I am not alone. 

—Another map. Not of the maze. Of the facility, this great big Machine I traverse. 

I am many layers deeper now, in the one indicated by a short, wide illustration of pipework and tunnels. There is only one space still below me. I seem to have bypassed the two layers above me through my descension.

There are three chambers in all in those two layers. One of them depicts an assembly line where pigs are hung on hooks and cut open, brought to a large machine to be mulched in the room below. Crews of workers dutifully attend to these acts in the illustrations.

The third room is harder to make out. It seems to depict a rectangular vat of some kind of liquid, with bodies bathing in it, in a large laboratory.

—Here also is the valve for activating the first sluice pump. I turn it until its stopping point and observe a red light indicator crash to life. Its neighbor is another light above a plaque reading, Sluice 2 , and is still shut off.

—Interrupting my journaling came another ringing of the telephone. I hadn’t even noticed this one installed here. 

“Faster, Mandus. Drain the waters. Open the ways to the bilge pumps. 

“We are waiting for you.”

He rather emphasized the ‘we’ in that final line. I had no chance to reply before he hung up the phone.

—I will never be free from these creatures. A wretch stalks these grimy passageways like the minotaur. It walks on the other side of bars—didn’t seem to notice me. Let my memory be my clew so I might prevail over these winding, treacherous paths.

Onward,

—Now I am on the other side of one of the dams—the still-closed Sluice Gate No. 2.

The sewage here is rather lower than on the other side of the gate. Lumps of matter hugging the floor peak out over the surface of the liquid to form small and thin islands. 

Lights hanging on cords overhead are scattered out across this chamber but have little effect. Without my lamp, I would scarcely be able to see my own hands, except when they eclipse those lights in the distance.

I navigate the railed pathway above the sewage, towards my next destination, and catch sight of those same arcs of electricity popping along the surface of the muck, as whatever their source is splashes about. One crash of liquid, then another about a third of a metre away, then another splash a metre away. One more, and then the surface is still and quiet once again. During this, the light of my lamp danced like it seems to do when those wretches are nearby. What is this creature dancing about in the waste waters?

—Not far ahead I arrive at the valve for Sluice Gate 2. Some part of me knew where to find it already. A close call with a man-pig—I heard the beast but did not see it. Difficult to be truly safe with all of these blind corners. But the valve is turned and the pumps are active. 

I have pushed back the flood waters. Now I can enter the strange decontamination chamber once again and move onwards! The way to the bilge is clear, where I can divert the remainder of this filthy torrent back into the Thames where it belongs, and clear the path to the centre of the Machine.

My boys’ ghostly voice champion me. Thats it, Papa! they tell me. You’re so near now…

Through the decontamination chamber,

—I am walking along a high-up pathway of stone. Over the railing is a fall of possibly over 20 metres. The taste of my victory turns sour on my lips at the wailing sound of… music? Soothing opera plays from some unseen speaker far below me. What is down there? I can scarcely bring myself to look. But I will.

—They eat from a vast wooden table of damp carrion. The music underscores their gentle, snuffling bites.

I stumble away from the railing back over the edge of a large brick wall. Below me is another hall lined with doors. More of them amble along its length. I travel along this high-up path to a locked door. 

Its locks undo themselves at my slightest touch, leading me into a short hall of metal cell doors. Each door has a closed porthole-like window. I do not have the courage to look through them until I traverse this hallway and come face-to-face with one already open. Inside, a man-pig sits beside a cage and stacks a small set of children’s letter blocks.

The dawning realization sends me to the floor. Dear God, it is a whole nest of these foul creatures!

—I come across a metal notice on the wall: REMEMBER! Work TOGETHER, Sleep ALONE! Fraternizing will not be TOLERATED

—Several more pathways like this, cell doors with the man-pigs locked inside. One of them started to charge toward me at the sight of my presence only to be pulled back by a chain fixed round his neck. I am beside myself in this network of work areas, rest areas… The man-pigs go about their dark business. I avoid looking at their faces. And yet... and yet, I watch them sleep and eat and play and they are so very human, so very childlike. 

I will not think of what I have seen, of the chairs and the cages, and I will not think of how such monsters may be sculpted.

Ahead of me is the ladder by which I shall descend. To the bilge pumps. To my children. To a postdiluvian world!

Into a series of large pipes,

—Down the ladder. The children were sent to work in these, the orphans… With all the unaccommodating falls and turns, and the shivering metal. The memory of this fact itches at my brain. Dear God, Mandus. Just press forward to your own children and be done with this horrible place.

—The metal door just says: Bilge Pump - Maintenance Access

Beyond,

—Thick waterfalls pour out from leaking pipes and through the gated waste exits lining the brick walls above. A dizzying knot of smaller pipes swirl in straight lines overhead, and venture tentatively down to my height like so many spiders sliding down along silver strands of web. Here, they diverge into several directions, down halls and through the bars of this catwalk’s railings, and further downward into the flooding waters below. 

I am close to my children. A father knows. A father knows.

The Pump Rooms,

—The tangles of pipes in these room are more confounding than those in the last. More metal beams accompany them, including the catwalks themselves which wrap around each other and around large metal machines. These machines must be the bilge pumps. I am at the heart of the saboteur's efforts. In order to keep his flood in place, he must have disabled these vast pumps. But he was clearly rushed, thus far he has left most of his work incomplete, his clumsy efforts reduced to simply switching off all he could find, if I can locate the controls, the remedy will be simple.

The floodwaters push up through the bottoms of the catwalks a milimetre or two. I think I see the telltale splashing of the creature swimming about the sewage water I bore witness to before. But the surface appears still now. I can hardly say with certainty what it was I heard in this room, so full of running steam and water-buried machinery, and looming darkness obscuring that which isn’t lit red by the sparse, dim service lights.

—I remember the temple. I see it in my mind's eye. So very long ago, it feels like. Ahead: the trickle to still waters. I dragged myself deeper into the temple, downward, ever. Towards a wind that held the voices of my children, beckoning me to set them free. And so I did. And so a father always does.

—A valve up here ignites the great coal engine and sets the gears to life. Some saboteur he was. Well, there’s one pump operational. Ahead to find the ways to start the others. 

Below,

—Just above the floodwater again. I grow anxious with every groaning step on this metal. Ahead of me is another pump. It seems once again I must engage it. I cannot help but feel I am trapped in some great game, forced to undertake endless herculean labors for the promised reward of my darling children!

Above,

—Safe at last. Christ! The damned catwalk broke apart under my weight and sent me into the waste water. 

My worst suspicions were right: two or more of those swimming creatures were alerted to my presence, and gave chase. The screech of water under their sparks ignited a fire in my heart. 

I swam desperately towards the nearest ladder close enough to the surface of the water to reach. I thought I felt one of the things brush against me, but in reflection I believe this was the current of the water from one of the creatures passing nearby. I flailed at the sensation, however, and kicked something soft. It let out a deep vibration. The water all about me crashed up as if the thing broke up through the surface for a moment, then back into the muck. But I could see nothing—it was as if it were invisible.

By then I was close enough to the ladder to grab hold of it. There still, behind me, the other creatures raced for me. One foot of mine struggled to keep hold of the ladder rungs. My knuckles whitened, and I pulled myself up and out into dry air. Seconds were punctuated by my breaths as I lifted myself from rung to rung, then to the catwalk above. To safety.

Arcing wires of light huddled at the base of the ladder below me, but the creatures don’t seem capable of pulling themselves free from the liquid. 

Even up close I could not glimpse their exact form or size. Only their sound: a guttural, gurgling yelp, achingly excited to get at me, to pull me under.

Well, I’m out of their reach, now, and on solid stone once again. I have let free some of my disgust in this writing. Now I push onward to undo the flooding those creatures thrive in.

Another valve,

—This gearbox is missing some of its parts. Above it is a metal sign, helpfully warning: STOP! Ensure all WHEELS are in place for CORRECT OPERATION of Pumps

A simple fix, with the wheels of various sizes lying around this room.

—Another pump is active now.

The flood is drained. I have prevailed. The saboteur is beaten. 

My heart pounds with excitement, even as my head spins and shudders in feverous anticipation. 

How this Machine now throbs about me! sensing its rebirth is imminent. 

I know these catwalks well. I find my next ladder; the same ladder I climbed up to escape the floodwaters and those swimming creatures. Now the flood is lowered and the path below the ladder is dry. 

This final descent beckons me to enter, just as Lily once lay on our wedding bed, and summoned me into manhood.

Chapter Text

Into a Machine for Pigs

Part Six - Anything to Save Them

Core Systems Access

—When they first said "Daddy" my heart was molten, as if blood frozen upon the ground were held to the sun to thaw and slop.

And they were inseparable, always together, one soul in two bodies, and my love was all consuming. I would die for you, I whispered to their sleeping faces, I would kill. I would set this world to ruin to protect you.

I have fought through dark tunnels, great engines, the foulest of beasts. I have set my covenant and drained this flood, and I am come for you now, my darling boys.

“And…” the voice of my Engineer booms out from everywhere as if in continuation of what I have just written, “...we came then to London.”

His tone penetrates the fragile darkness.

“You set me upon a mantlepiece, and then you went into the house and gathered the servants. And we set, you and I, on re-crafting them.” 

I follow his voice deeper down the rectangular staircase, spiralling down among all these pipes. As I descend, I see the speakers through which his bold voice emanates, a pair of them installed above every corner-landing.

“Then you went into the garden and buried those tiny shattered skulls, alone.”

I walk. With every step, I grow closer to my sons, and to the core of the Earth itself.

"For your children, Mandus, to spare them the world you have created. For us all."

For my children.

—Why do I continue to mark my actions upon these pages? My thoughts, my adventure thus far, my cruel history in this dark place, all of it is committed to paper. My journey could end at any moment in this lethal temple dedicated to our civilisation. And the words, too, would stop without an ending, buried so deep in this place that I suspect they would never be recovered by the people of London. My record, and I, would be lost for good.

—Here, another sign warns unauthorised persons to keep out of this place. Yet the elevator before me opens its shutters of its own accord, beckoning me to enter it and rest my legs as I continue to sink ever downward.

O’ Machine. Great Machine that cages my destiny. Carry me down to the terminus of my great task.

At the bottom of the elevator ride,

—The words escape my lips without my beckoning, “Oh, dear God. Dear Christ! What is this place?”

This tremendous chamber of metal cradles a vast sea of luminous blue liquid at its base. Azure light creeps upward along enormous beams which suspend a large metal structure over the stuff. Its radiance feels almost sickly, corruptive, like a whispering, contagion-filled smell, enveloping and yet diluted through distance.

The central structure itself resembles nothing distinct. It’s a large, uneven cylinder of brown steel, like a boiler or a lump of clay.

From here, a catwalk leads to a door marked “Rod Control Room”. In the other direction, two sets of stairs lead to some sort of command room overseeing this chamber through a convex window.

—Rod Control Room,

Another map. I am on the bottom-most layer, symbolised by an illustration of three large furnaces being loaded through eye-like circular hatches. To the left of this illustration is a sketch of a room where a man operates a console which resembles a loom crossed with a church organ.

—Some of the rods are not inserted into the blue liquid. One of them is actually obstructed by a closed hatch lid. So, the bastard has been here too! This is the epicentre of his meddlings—this is where it began, and this is where it will end.

—A sign here reads, DANGER! COMPOUND X. Highly Flammable! Highly Corrosive! Highly Toxic!

“Compound X”. This mixture has followed me across my journey—I recall creating some of the stuff to break open that lock. My past murmurs to me in a taciturn way; I also recall having something to do with its invention in the first place. 

What is its purpose? 

I touch my own memories and recall dead things being submerged in it—dead, at the time.

Here is the offending lid. Opening it up is simple enough. Now the rods may dip into the stuff freely. They may fulfil whatever dark design I built them for.

—Back in the central chamber,

My Engineer speaks to me over the loudspeakers again.

“Quickly, quickly, the air is thin! Their little faces turn blue, Mandus! They suffocate! They suffocate!”

—I tried. I tried so hard. I will uphold my promise, I will always protect them for you.

My eyes are your eyes. My heart is your heart. I will rip them loose from this rotten world and set them to burn, all to save them.

But not yet, Mandus. Now to find the ignition controls and start the Machine once more. 

My heart renewed, I stride forth upon these catwalks.

I am coming, my darlings.

—By the shutters of another elevator,

I don’t remember how I got here.

I don’t know precisely where in this great Machine I am. Lower? Impossibly lower, past the bottommost level of the diagram I have been following? Higher? Had I followed some thoughtless frenzy into this elevator? Or was my senseless body moved here by one of the pigs for some hideous purpose?

God, it is all lost. All lost. I am a discarded shell—the meat is dust in the ocean. It is all lost.

—An unknown amount of time later,

Why do I continue to write?

Because there are pages of my past I have not brought myself to read.

Because my history starts in these leaves, and it must end there. Not for anyone to find. But because perhaps, if I transfuse it all into this journal, my history won’t follow me into that sleep of death. It will go unremembered.

I must transpose the events I last remember, then. Before I awoke on the floor at the base of this elevator.

—Then,

I was in the command room—the ignition control room.

There, I readied myself by the controls—two large levers—prepared to save my sons. 

With a pull of the first lever, the colossal chamber outside became bathed in white lights, nine in a row, crashing to life with a dingy sound. Then came a grid of red lights glowing from the central piece of this Machine. 

In the din, I thought I heard my boys: “Now, Daddy!” came that phantom voice. But it was soon interrupted by the clearer voice of my Engineer.

“Now, Mandus!” he said. “Set them free! Set them all free!”

The second of two levers waiting for my pulling. I put it into its final locking position.

Behind me, both doors into this room slid along rails into place, fastening in place with a pair of pneumatic hisses. 

Then, from beyond the glass window overlooking the vast chamber outside, thunderous arcs of electricity jumped to life, dancing in destructive waves across the body of that central metal mass.

The force of their current pushed me down onto my back, and I felt tears pooling in my eyes. They ran down my cheeks, but I scarcely felt them. Everything was sheer and thin, I could not see. In that senseless interval, his voice boomed out.

“I live! I breathe again! I rise! I will rise to bleach the sky and still the water! I will spin the world wheel, and set the future upon the path to redemption!”

Sight had not yet returned to me. The world was a pinkish-grey shifting impression rather than the sharp, distinct scene it had once been. I touched my face dumbly and liquid there stuck to my fingers. “Where are my children?” I stumbled out. “You promised me my children!”

He did not answer, instead declaring, “My time is come! More pig! More pig!”

I slid along the floor, did not attempt to stand, then wiped the liquid from my eyes. Not tears—blood! A muddy, thin blood that had obscured my vision. 

Still blurry, but now I could see.

In front of me, standing side by side, motionless as dolls, were Edwin and Enoch.

“Boys…” I choked out.

They did not respond.

They couldn’t. Of course they couldn’t.

“Boys,” I said further, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Blood stained their chins, having poured from their lips. Their matte skin, grey and blue, rejected the light that touched it. They were dressed in little tan coats and breeches. 

I tried to say more, but before I could find the words, after only seconds had passed, they began to move. In unison, they reached their little hands in between the buttons of their little coats, and from inside pulled out their own hearts.

They were already removed, from a cavity in their little chests which was caked over in black blood.

At this horrible sight, I screwed shut my eyes. I was alone with nothing but my boys—dead—and the sounds of my breathing.

—Emerging, I raised my head to an uncaring sun and I cursed this world of pain and despair. This civilisation built on the ricketed bones of the unfortunate, on the greed and swell of Mammon and Empire.

Cradling a stone egg in my jacket, I kissed my children farewell and I crawled my way home.

—It has been a little while since I’ve last written. Perhaps an hour.

I have been reading the previous entries of my journal—the ones I wrote before beginning my journey in that awful bedroom with the cage. I can’t remember much of the events described.

Skimmed it. Only skimmed it. The words are alien to me and I am tired.

Some things must not be forgotten. My name is Oswald Mandus. I am an inventor. I live in London. I created Compound X—that dark elixir of life. I had envisioned great designs with it, but the bank would not give me credit to fund them. So I left for Mexico in search of riches.

That was about a year ago. When I returned, everything changed.

The last words I wrote before waking in that terrible cage-bed:

As I reach my hands to the exposed wires I ask myself this - is redemption possible for such a creature as I? And if not, then surely better to die amongst my creations than to continue to live as a monster.

Only days before. Why can’t I remember?

—So it is done. The Saboteur was me, and the voice on the telephone was him. But what of us? How do we connect? Surely I cannot be responsible for all I see about me? I cannot remember, I cannot remember! All I can grasp is a moment when the world split into two pieces and the innards of humanity fell from an orifice torn into my open, bifurcated heart.

God blast it! Some things mustn’t be forgotten, indeed. But some things are too hideous to preserve. Some things must be burned. Some things cannot be suffered to touch the daylight.

Oh, God, what have I set in motion?

—Engine Rooms,

I must move on. I cannot rot here. 

A sign before me reads, ‘Engine Rooms’ , posted above a thin window with vertical bars. To my left is a small hall leading to a dead end with another window much the same.

This area is an odd patchwork of tan bricks with steel support beams. The ceiling above me, adorned with the odd electric light, is primarily metal plating which oddly gives way to wooden boards in certain locations. The floor underfoot is a scaly metal tiling.

Round the corner to my right I see an imposing wall of bars separating this end of the hallway from the rest of that passage on the other side. Meek lights beyond the bars cast black shadows on the floor in my direction.

On the wall here to the left is a door leading to the space beyond the first window I described. Here is probably the Engine Room proper.

—What an awful vision. I saw my sons again. Red coats. Still-bloody chins. They approached me from the other side of the hall beyond the door. I was seized with terror. 

Yet again I covered my eyes—only for a moment. But when I quickly looked back ahead of me, Edwin and Enoch were gone. 

In their place, an exquisite Oriental pig mask lay on the floor. As I approached it, four more tumbled from above and came to rest on a sloppy pattern by its side.

But on closer inspection, they seem less Oriental and more Mesoamerican in their designs.

—Up a ladder,

Another map is ahead of me. The section which is lit up is on the layer above the one I was previously in. I’ve begun to dig my way back to the surface, it appears. The lit-chamber’s illustration depicts an enormous device resembling the conspiratorial device a fellow by the name of James Matthews wrote of, known as the ‘Air Loom’. 

As illustrated on this map, the machine is a large, enclosed, rectangular chamber connected by tubes to no fewer than nine large barrels. A many-fingered hand of metal pipes connects to the ceiling of the chamber and extends far above, and great automated wheels attach to engines and a furnace enveloping the device.

The subject, targeted from afar by the Loom, has his blood-flow locked and controlled by powerful magnetic fields. Through this process, and the steady introduction of noxious gasses into the chamber, the subject could have his very thoughts and beliefs extracted and new, more preferable ones, inserted into his mind. 

Well, that’s what Matthews described, anyway. As for the device depicted in this chamber, I am not certain of its true purpose. Its resemblance to Matthew’s torture device could be merely a coincidence. But my ready familiarity with the oddity suggests otherwise.

Chillingly, the text-display above this map, which once read, “Emergency Shutdown in Place”, now simply reads: Plant Fully Operational .

—A sign here reads, Pressure Regulation . All about me, the thunder of machinery, the blast of boiling steam. I cannot pass without fear of scalding. 

Indeed, another sign is posted by one of the messier ejectors of steam: WARNING! Steam Vent Access ONLY at LOW PRESSURE .

I am a lobster, cracked, my circulation stagnated, my vital motions impeded. The steam will boil me whole unless I can find a way to shut it off.

Before me is arrayed a menagerie of dials, switches, levers, etc.… fitted to the aforementioned pressure regulation systems. As of yet, they are locked in place.

—Where are my children?

To him. I spoke to him. I knew he could hear me.

“Where are they? Where are my children?”

And there was an emptiness to the air that followed, a silent moment that passed before his reply came. Softly, coldly, from one of the speakers:

“Why do you ask, Mandus? You know the answer well enough.”

Then silence again.

I must recount the rest. 

I pulled the batteries from their sockets, broke open the locks keeping the automated systems running. Presently, they were manually controlled, I could tear regulators apart with their own ligaments. 

Until the Machine’s immune system took hold and cut the pipes and wires from the structure entirely. A great embankment of silence pooled around the steam, damming us from the rest of the Machine.

A ringing. An alarm perhaps? To my ears it sounded not unlike the ringing of the phones that previously heralded my Engineer’s voice.

And very apropos, he spoke to me again. His rich voice quivered softly with condescension. As if speaking to a child or an animal, he said, “Do you think I will allow you to sabotage me again?”

I roared into the darkness: “I want my children, you unholy bastard!”

But he was gone, again. As is the steam that threatened to scar me with its touch. So I may pass freely into further, softer parts of this enormous body—of his body—and wrench sinew from bone until the blood passes deeply into this great Earth and spoils the dirt it’s buried in, and this awful Machine can be left behind as just one more forgotten kingdom of a terrible king.

—The Pressure Regulator,

Some form of steam regulator. It seems that the pressure system is indeed the Achilles Heel of this facility, something I clearly did not realise in my first clumsy attempt at sabotage—I'll wager if I disable it, the damage caused by the rushing steam pressure could be catastrophic

I can feel this horror—this grief, this betrayal—boil into fury. If I re-route the steam, I can wreak havoc! It would certainly be enough to force a temporary stalling of this entire engine.

I will not stand, I will not be undertrodden. If this machine is my Air Loom, I am the Overman.

But, God! What an Overman I have been. For this is the truth in those pages I swore not to read. The Engineer… He is indeed my Engineer. Compound X, the Man Pigs, everything in this unholy city beneath the ground…is my design. It was I who sent children into these pipes—these bulky, serpentine tunnels—to clean away the viscera of their kin from the metal plating. Tiny children, the most underprivileged of any of us, herded into these ghastly mazes where the violent return of discharged steam would have disfigured them. In the height of my reign over this place, I procured them to tend to my Machine. Now, they are lost.

But that steam is gone, now. Through these pipes, there is likely to be another entrance I can use to escape this noxious maelstrom of engines.

—Into the pipes,

I sense the machine snarl itself about me, its unholy, inhuman mind coil and slick and send its dark tendrils through its conduits to repair the damage. I will return to the streets, I will fetch help, and I shall lead the people upon the factory, burn it to the ground, and seal this evil place underground forever!