The Affair of the Chalk Cliffs by James P. Blaylock Page B

natural fissure in the rock. Someone had chiseled it larger, however, and the chalk was nearly white where it was newly exposed. The walls of the passage itself were gray, however, with black blotches and streaks of red, and here and there veins of quartz and flint. The stream ran heavier in its channel, fed by further streams where surface water filtered through from above, having dissolved the chalk over the long ages.
    We passed into darkness, stepping into the surprisingly chill stream more than once and soaking our shoes, the passage leading ever downward, sometimes steeply. The air had grown stale, but I got a scent of salt air suddenly, and rounding a corner I saw another window, nearly level with the floor this time and providing scant illumination, but enough so that I could see that the passage turned again ahead, and then again after that. On we went, time ticking away. It seemed to me that we might easily have passed beyond Beachy Head proper, into one of the Seven Sisters, and that soon we would come level with the Channel itself if we continued downward at the current rate.
    In time, however, the passage leveled off. We saw a tiny flame hovering in the darkness ahead of us, surrounded by a golden aura. When we drew near to it, I could see that it was a large lantern, sitting in a carved-out niche. It must have held a couple of pints of lamp oil, which meant that someone routinely filled it to keep it alight—someone who might be making his rounds at that very moment, lurking nearby. There was nothing for it, though, but to go on, ever on the watch for movement in the far shadows or for the sound of footsteps. Another lantern glowed beyond the first, and I could see that the floor of the cave had been swept clean now, as if we had arrived at a habitation. Chunks of chalk had been pushed up against the far wall in a heap, with a wheelbarrow upside-down atop it. On our right-hand side an arched doorway stood open, through which light glowed. Like the windows along the seaward passage, the doorway had apparently been enlarged, which accounted for the chalk pieces in the rubble heap. At first all was quiet, the air deathly still, and then there was the sound of movement, clearly coming from within the lighted room.
    I shrugged at Alice and nodded at the doorway. She nodded back at me, and at once I stepped in front of her and walked silently forward. If one of us were going to stick our head into the lion’s den, it would be me. I wafered myself against the wall, craning my neck to see past the edge of the door. What I saw was my own rather murky face looking out of what was apparently an illuminated mirror that framed the front of a wooden wardrobe cabinet.
    I admit that the unexpected sight confounded me, although the confusion vanished when I saw that there was another face peering at me from out of the glass—the grimacing face of Dr. Ignacio Narbondo, who sat atop a wheeled stool, his back to the door. He regarded me without the least show of surprise. I gestured at Alice, still hidden behind me, waving her away, praying that she would vanish back into the darkness. Then I walked calmly into the Doctor’s presence as if I had been invited.
    I was aware in that moment of how few times I had actually set eyes on Narbondo, and then most often from a distance. He was one of those men who keep to the shadows, living in out-of-the-way places in the countryside, or inhabiting low dens deep in the rookeries of the Seven Dials or Limehouse. He was largely unknown to the police—the sort of evil genius whose machinations are carried out by men easily manipulated by greed or fear. He was gnome-like in feature, and middling small in stature, although he was rather stout and was as pale as a frog’s belly. There was something bent about him—something you saw at once, or rather felt. I don’t refer to his being a hunchback, which is neither here nor there, but to something hellish and inhuman in his demeanor, some