Notes and Books

Day 9 on the road. We have reached the altar at last. Nine stones stand round it, one for each of the Nine, every one carved with one of their signs. We knelt at each of them.

The candles at the altar lit themselves as we came near. Brother Tobias wept. He says it means we are welcome.

Day 10. There is a stair by the altar, sealed under a stone. Tobias says it opens when the altar opens its eye. The first pilgrims are buried down there, all together, so they can go on praying.

Day 12. Tobias has knelt at the altar three nights now. He does not come back to the fire. When I go to him he turns his head to me and smiles, and then he is not there.

I am leaving in the morning. I will leave this for whoever comes after.

The Feast of the Nine.

They came again tonight, the nine families, and sat in the front pews, and did not sing. When I asked them to go home they turned their heads to me.

Only their heads.

They do not eat. They do not go home. When I lock the doors at night they are already inside, praying, and the candles are lit that I did not light.

Below, the Saint lies sealed in its tomb under nine chains and nine candles, one for each of the heads they took to make it. I have kept the candles burning forty years. I am so tired.

The organ played itself at the third hour. A hymn I do not know. The candles went out one by one from the doors to the altar, as though someone were walking up the nave pinching them.

The bell rang thirteen. There is no thirteen. Something stood in the doorway and did not come in.

I went down this morning. The gate is bent outward. The tomb is open and empty and its chains are broken, and the congregation was smiling when I came back up.

God keep whoever reads this. Do not open the tombs.

Tolls, by the night.

Mon. 12 at midnight. Right.
Tue. 12. Right.
Wed. 12, and one more after I'd let go of the rope.
Thu. 13. I counted twice.

Fri. I tied the rope off at dusk. It rang thirteen anyway. The bell was swinging on its own when I got up here, and it was warm.

Sat. I'm sleeping up here now. If it rings I want to see what rings it.

It isn't the bell.

It's the thing in the doorway, down below. It looks up at me on the thirteenth. Every time.

Tuesday.
The floor has started creaking at night where nobody is walking. From the corner by the wardrobe to the bed, and back. I have moved the bed.

Wednesday.
The creaking goes to where the bed is now.

The wallpaper by the window is damp, and warm. I put my hand on it and something on the other side put its hand on it too.

Thursday.
There was a red light in the window. Not in the street. In the window, as if the glass itself had a crack in it and the crack went a long way back.

The clock stopped at eleven.

Friday.
The floor tipped.

I am writing this because the rest of the house is gone and this corner is not and I don't know what is under it. It is dark under it. It is dark all round.

The lamp is still lit. I'll keep it lit.

To whoever finds this room.

There is no door. I looked for a long time. There is the bed and the wardrobe and the table, and past the edge of the rug there is nothing, and in the nothing there are lights that drift like jellyfish.

Something long goes round and round in the dark with a little lamp of its own. I thought it was another room, lit, far off. It isn't.

If you fall, don't be afraid of the hand. The hand is the only kind thing out here.

Plot 12. Plot 13. Plot 14.
All the new ones in the north row came up loose this week. Not dug up. Loose. As if the ground under them had let go of them.

I filled them in again. I filled them in again. The fourth time I put my ear to the earth, and it was hollow under. Hollow all the way down.

The coffins in the north row are knocking.

Last entry.
The north row is gone and the earth with it, and I went with the earth. The mausoleum came too. I am in it.

Whoever they buried here, they never wanted to stay put. Now none of us has to.

STATION LOG

02:10 Carrier on 6.66. No station licensed there.
02:14 Voice under the carrier, counting. Counting down.
02:31 Mast lamp flickering. Replaced the bulb. Still flickering.

02:40 The TV in the shed came on by itself. Same channel as the radio. The man on it has a television where his head should be. He looked at me.
02:41 He knows the frequency. He is coming up it.

03:00 Static.
03:00 Static.
03:00 The mast is still up and the lamp is still on and there is no ground under the shed any more. Keeping the lamp on. Someone might steer by it.

The counting stopped. It got to one.

(written across the bottom, later, in pencil)

if you can read this - the red light is the way back to the altar. keep it on your left as you go and the bridge will take you.

the long things come up out of the black pool, where the big one died. they eat what falls. they will help it fall: they bite, and they pull you out over the dark, and let go.

hit them hard and they let go sooner.

the lights are harmless. they drift where there is ground, and light it. their jelly is good to eat if you are afraid of falling.

their light keeps the long ones off. the long ones go round it.

and the hand.
the hand was here before the breach. it was here before the island. it catches everything that falls.

i don't know why. i don't know whose it is. i know it has never once let anything go.

Hale House. Accounts kept by Agnes Hale.

March.
Coal, 2 tons.
Candles, 6 dozen (the master will have them lit in every room, all night, since the trouble).
Flour, salt, lamp oil.

April.
Meat, from the new man in the kitchen. He brings his own. He will not say from where and I have stopped asking.
No charge, he says. The house is paying, he says.

April, later.
The master has given the east rooms to guests. Nine of them. I am not to go up when they are in.
Nine rooms aired. Nine beds made. Nobody has slept in them that I can tell.

May.
The staff have gone. All but me and the cook, and I am not sure the cook was ever staff.
Candles, 6 dozen. Candles, 6 dozen. Candles

(the rest of the page is crossed through, hard enough to tear it)

June.
I have found the old ledger and I have found the reason for the hall at the back, with the long table and the spikes round it.
The house was built for this. The first Hale built it round the table.

The table is not a table. It is an altar. The spikes are for heads.
When there are nine heads on the nine spikes, something comes to the table and sews.

I am writing it down so that somebody knows.

June, late.
The guests are back. I heard them come in. Hooves on the stairs. Something dragging an axe.
I have locked myself in the attic with the trunks.
I have candles. 6 dozen.

ORDERS

For the house: 4 sides. Hung 3 days.
For the guest with the hook: whatever comes up the lane after dark. He is not fussy.
For the guest in the straw: nothing. He feeds himself.

For the tall one with the lamp face: it does not eat. It breathes on things and they spoil. Keep it out of my kitchen.

For the dog that walks like a man: bones. Big ones. Fresh.

For the boy with the hooves: everything, and then the plate.

For the moth: nothing. It wants the lights.

For the rabbit: he says he will catch his own. He always does.

For the doll: it will not eat while you are looking. Leave the tray. Turn round.

For myself: the pig's face is wearing thin again. Need a new one.

Ask the visitor if they are free.

My dear sister,

You asked why I have stopped writing. I have not stopped. I write every night. Henry burns them.
He says the house reads the post.

He has filled the east rooms with guests. I have not seen them. I hear them. Something taps on my window three floors up. Something in the garden is taller than the hedges.

Henry says it is an honour. He says the nine of them choose a house, and the house is kept, and the family is kept.
I asked what kept means. He would not look at me.

If you get this, do not come. If someone comes looking for us, tell them to look in the hall at the back.
Tell them to bring nine of something.

Your loving sister,
Margaret

One for the rabbit who waits by the bridge,
Two for the hook on the roof of the car,
Three for the butcher in somebody's face,
Four for the doll that gets closer each time.

Five for the scarecrow that walks in the corn,
Six for the moth with the eyes like a fire,
Seven for Mother Leeds' thirteenth child born,
Eight for the dog on the road that stands up,

Nine for the lamp in the hills with the spade,
and then they all come to the table to play.

Count them on your fingers.
Count them on their heads.

ROOMS

1. The Bunnyman. The room under the stairs (he asked for the one with the axe).
2. The Hookman. Top floor. Windows to be left open.
3. The Hogshead. He has the kitchen.

4. The Porcelain Man. Nursery. The dolls are his.
5. The Harvestman. The barn, if he will take it. He will not.
6. Mothman. The turret. Take the bulbs out.

7. The Jersey Devil. Cellar. Lock it from the inside.
8. Dogman. Anywhere. Everywhere.
9. The tall one from Braxton County. The garden. It glows. The hedges died.

Nine. The table is laid.

Sept. 12. Called out to the hill above the farms. A crater in the brush, the ground scorched, a smell like burnt metal and something sweeter.
The boys say a thing came out of it ten feet tall.

They say its face was a lamp and its hood was a spade, and that it hissed, and glided, and the mist off it burned their throats.
The dog that went up with them would not come down.

Sept. 14. Something has followed the boys home. Their mother says it stands at the end of the lane at night, lit up like a lantern.
I have been asked to survey the Hale place next. The lane runs there.

Mrs Hale,

The gate stays locked. I have the only key and I am keeping it. Whatever you have let into your house, it is not coming into my glass.

The big flower is doing well. It has had the last of the dogs. Do not send the boy with the hooves again; he trod on the orchids.

If I am taken, the key goes with whatever takes me. Then it is no business of mine.

sit

face the wall

don't turn round

it's behind you

it's always behind you in this room

that's what the room is for

count to nine

slowly

if you get to nine you can turn round

nobody gets to nine

you found the table. good.

it's an altar. the house was built round it. nine spikes, a horseshoe, open toward the doors.

put a head on each spike. one of each of them. no doubles. it knows.

when there are nine, step back. i come down from the ceiling and i sew.

what i make out of them won't be pretty and it won't be kind.

it will be one thing instead of nine. that's the point. one thing can be killed.

it has the gardener's key on it. the gardener's dead, he just doesn't know it.

bring torches. bring food. bring more than you think.

don't let it get between you and the doors.

The great flower opened today, under the dome. Nobody planted it. The roots came up through the tiles of the rotunda in a single night, and in the morning there it was - red as a wound, and warm to the touch.

It is warm. I put my ear to the stalk and there is a beat in it, slow, like a sleeper's.

The orchids have all turned to face it. The ferns too. I have begun to think the ferns are looking at things.

The family came down from the house to see it. The children would not go near. The eldest said it smelled like the butcher's yard.

They do not come any more. I have stopped going up to the house.

Feeding. Bone meal will not do; it wants better. The rats are gone from the potting shed. The cat is gone.

I do not remember the last time I ate. I am not hungry. I am never hungry now.

The flies are thick on anyone who comes in now. Avery is black with them.

They will not settle on me. It knows my clothes - it has grown into the cloth. My hat is in the shed, my coat in the chest here. Whoever wears them, it will take for me.

There are roots in my boots. I cut them away in the morning and by evening they are back.

They do not hurt. That is what frightens me. They do not hurt.

Something came down from the house tonight - a great stitched thing, all iron and wrong pieces - and locked the gates from the outside, and took the key away with it.

Good. Keep them out. Keep it in. Keep me in.

I hear it say my name through the lilies. It says it needs tending.

It is right. Somebody must tend it. I am going to kneel by it a while. Just a while.

If you find this: do not wake me. Do not touch the flower.

Moved the good seed down here, out of the glass. Mr Thorne says it doesn't like them. It doesn't like anything it didn't grow itself.

Mr Thorne doesn't sleep now. He kneels by it all night with the big shears across his knees, and in the morning the beds are cut back to the soil.

He told me to bring it the rats. I won't.

His face. Something is growing in his face. Flowers - white ones, where his eyes were.

He turned them to me today and they opened. I think he was smiling.

I've come down here to hide. He can't get down the ladder now; he's too tall. I can hear him up there, tending it.

Snip.
Snip.
Snip.

The roots are coming through the walls. They're warm.

I'm so tired. If I sleep down here they'll grow over me, the way they grow over everything.

If anyone finds this, there is a key, the stitched thing took it, don't

THE ROSEMONT COURIER

GARDENS' 'MONSTER FLOWER' DRAWS CROWDS

A flower the size of a motor car has opened in the glasshouse at the Botanic Gardens. Head Gardener E. Thorne says it is a Rafflesia, 'though not one I know.'

THE ROSEMONT COURIER

FLIES CLOSE MARKET STREET

The Corporation has closed the market after swarms of flies 'thick as smoke' settled on the stalls. Traders blame the Gardens. The Gardens are no longer open to the public.

THE ROSEMONT COURIER

FOURTEEN MISSING IN WEST END

All were last seen walking toward the Gardens at night. Neighbours speak of a smell 'like a butcher's yard in August.' The Station is 'taking samples.'

LATE EDITION

THE GROUND IS MOVING ON PARK ROAD

Residents are asked to go to the shelters. Do not go near the Gardens. Do not go near anything green that moves.

(the rest of the page is torn away)

Specimen 0: the Gardens' Rafflesia.

It is not a parasite on a vine. There is no vine. Its root goes down through the rotunda's floor and keeps going. We let down a line four hundred feet. It kept going.

The flies are not drawn to it. They come out of it. It makes them - they are how it tastes the air.

Every subject exposed is 'liked' by the flies within the hour. Every subject but one.

Subject Thorne shows no infection at all. The flies settle on him and lift off again. It knows him: his clothes, his skin, the soil on him.

Recommend all field staff wear his old work clothes. (He laughed when I asked.)

The bud under the glass is not the flower. It is a finger. The flower is somewhere under, and it is very, very big.

We have built a binding at the root's end. While it holds, the flower cannot pull itself up the root.

If the binding is broken, it will come up the root, all the way, into the Gardens.

It is hungry. It ate the street. It ate our east wing. It is eating us now. I can hear the tank

(the writing stops)

Day 1. Forty-one in. Doors sealed at 20:00. The radio says stay put. The air smells of meat.

Day 2. Flies under the door. Taped the door.

Day 4. Something big under the ground. It goes under us slow, like a train.

Day 5. Mrs. Avery says her boy is at the Gardens with Mr. Thorne, he's safe there, the flies don't touch the gardeners. Nobody answered her.

Day 6. Fourteen left. The ones who went out to the Laboratory for medicine came back green round the mouth. They wouldn't stop smiling.

Day 7. The roof is breathing.

Day 9. The whole shelter tipped. I looked out of the door and there was no street. There was green all the way down, and something at the bottom of it, opening and shutting.

If you are reading this: it has us. Don't come down here without his clothes.

THE BINDING
Site 0: the root's end

This stone holds the root down. While it holds, the flower cannot climb the root into Rosemont.

DO NOT TOUCH THE STONE.
DO NOT LOOSEN THE CHAINS.
DO NOT LOOK DOWN.

(scratched under it, in another hand)

it doesn't hold it. it only keeps it asleep.

wake it and you'll have ten seconds before it pulls this whole island down its throat. run for the tear in the air. don't look back.

0400. Handshake with SENTINEL nominal. Capacitors at 31%. Works says another week before a full charge.

Nobody up here knows what we're charging it for. The colonel says that's the point.

0900. Lost the city on the net. Not the net - the city. Every channel out of Rosemont went quiet at once.

SENTINEL still answers. It always answers.

1600. Orders to pull the targeting array and keep it on us. If the station falls, SENTINEL can't be told where to fire.

If the station falls, who would we be telling?

2300. Something big moving out by the glasshouse. Thermal can't see the edge of it.

The array's in my locker. If you're reading this and you know what it's for - you don't need me to tell you.

SENTINEL (orbital) is a weapon of last resort.

It fires on a targeting array's lock. It fires only with a full CAPACITOR CELL seated in its core.

The core has a third socket. The engineers call it 'the governor'. Nobody has ever been told what goes in it.

Do not ask the engineers about the governor.

Cell 9 to be charged to full and held in the test cage for collection by Uplink.

No collection came.

Cell 9 is holding. We can't bleed it off, and we can't leave it.

The arcs have started jumping the rods by themselves. Two men burnt. The rest of us sleep in the yard.

DANGER - LIVE BANKS.

Do not stand between rods. Do not touch the bus bars. If it starts to crackle, get down and get out.

Arc burns are not covered.

(underneath, in pencil:) neither is whatever is in the cage.

Into the well, the ones who would not lie down.
Into the well, the ones who would not stop.
We keep the well. We keep them down.

One of them will not go quiet. Its light is too strong. It burns the others.

We have bound it. We kneel by it. It must never leave the well.

If you have come for it, you have come for the strongest of them.

Whatever you mean to pour into it - it will hold. That is what we are afraid of.

0200. Reactor at 100%. Grid demand from Rosemont doubled overnight - the garrison's Works drawing again.

Nobody tells us what for.

0700. The city's gone dark on the grid. All of it at once. We're running into nothing.

Orders: hold power for the Works line only.

1300. Something under the glasshouse is drawing on the line. Not the Works. You can't draw on a line that isn't connected to anything.

1900. Breach in Unit 2. Not out of the reactor - into it.

We scrammed. The core assembly's in the fuel pool. Don't go in the water without a suit.

The governor. SENTINEL's third socket. Garrison Command thinks it's a safety.

It isn't. It's a throttle. What we're building takes it off.

The destabilizer holds a discharge on the edge of collapse. Seated in a railgun's core, it lets the gun draw on what no capacitor could hold.

Ashford's core for the power. The destabilizer to let go of it. And for the lens: Blackwater's blood.

Not a slug. A ray.

We can't finish it. It needs something we don't have.

Something that knows the dark.

Run 41. Destabilizer seated. Ring at 60%. Discharge held for 3.2 seconds.

The coils sang.

Run 44. Held for 9 seconds. Then the coils started arcing to each other with the ring off.

They still are.

Run 47. We lost the roof.

Blackwater samples are NOT to be opened outside the cold room.

If a vial is warm to the touch, it is not a vial any more. Leave the room. Seal it.

Day 1. It came down forty kilometres out. We towed what was left of it here and built the station round the tank.

The blood doesn't freeze.

Day 30. The cultures took. Something lives in it. Small. It wants to be inside something bigger.

Day 31. It can't live in open air for long. Off the island it dies in seconds - nothing out there for it to eat.

That doesn't help you in here.

Day 33. The tanks burst. The ones it got are still walking.

The last vial's in the freezer. Meridian wanted it for their ray. Let them come and get it.

The parasite: six legs, a mouth that opens like a flower. It goes for the back of the neck.

In a host it grows in hours. Then the host splits open and there are more of them.

It needs the blood. Away from the dark matter, it starves.

Mon. Carrier dropped twice overnight. Not the transmitter - something riding on the carrier, like someone else keying up on our frequency.

Gus wouldn't come in from the yard.

Wed. Gus came back out of the woods. Thin. He won't let me near his mouth.

The noise on the carrier is worse at night. Like breathing, run through a fan.

Fri. People from the valley came up the road after dark. Nine of them. They didn't knock. They stood round the mast with their faces up, like they were listening to it.

They didn't blink at the floodlight.

Sat. Still there. Gus is out with them. I can hear them in the headset - not on the air. In the headset. Under the static they're talking. They're saying where everyone is.

Sun. They've started climbing it. Tying something to it. It isn't rope.

If you find this and it's still on the air - it isn't us. Cut it loose. All of it.

RELAY 6 - HOLLOW RIDGE.
Authorized personnel only.

This station relays the county emergency broadcast. Do not interfere with its operation.

Climbing the mast: harness at all times. Rest platforms at 12, 22 and 32 metres.

(scratched into the cover, underneath:) THEY'RE ON EVERY PLATFORM

Ray - the late show's reel came in with no label and no distributor. Ran it anyway. Half the lot left before the end. The other half stayed in their cars after it finished.

They're still out there.

I took the reel off. The screen kept showing it. Then the screen kept showing static, and the static kept coming off it like smoke off a fire.

The things in it don't walk. They drift.

You can't hit them most of the time. They're not all the way here. Something on the right frequency might put them all the way here.

When they come apart, they leave bits of the picture behind.

If you have to see the rest of the reel, load the projector with what's left of them and stay with it till the end. Don't let them at the booth.

Whatever it shows you - it's where they come from. I'm not going.

The relay men on Hollow Ridge wrote to the college: voices in the dead air, near some old stones in the woods. Nobody would come. I came.

Dale brought his sets. Teddy carries everything.

Six stones leaning in round a seventh, and an ear cut into every one of them.

Not a carving of an ear. An ear. The spiral goes in further than the stone is thick.

Dale put a set down by the middle stone and tuned it to nothing. The nothing was talking.

Many voices, very far down, all at once, like a crowd heard through a floor.

There's a room under the floor. Its north wall is all ears. Whoever built this was listening to something under everything.

Teddy asked what. I said the dead. Dale said no. He said: the static.

Dale sleeps with his ear to the wall now.

Translation, such as it is. The sign that keeps coming back is a spiral with a line through it. Everywhere else it means 'to hear'.

Here it means 'to be heard'.

Over the stair: THE MANY SPEAK FROM UNDER. WE LISTEN SO THEY WILL NOT HAVE TO COME UP.

Over the wall of ears: WE LISTENED TOO LONG.

Dale says the voices on his set know our names. He played it to me.

One of them was mine.

There's a picture of another place they built. A house with one door, of a pale stone, a seal set in its floor. Under it: HERE THEY CANNOT HEAR YOU.

Teddy wants to find one. So do I.

Dr. Calloway sent me ahead to the choir pit. Figures on every step, mouths open, all facing the hole in the middle.

The hole goes down. There's a ladder. The ladder is new. Somebody's been down.

There's a room down here with ears in all four walls, facing in. The figures up top aren't singing. They're the audience.

What they're listening to is whatever comes up the throat.

I can hear Dale. He went out to the dogs a week ago. His voice comes up the throat with the others.

He says it's all right. He says it's warm down there, and nobody's alone.

I'm going to stay a little longer and listen.

We found one. The stone is pale and dead - knock on it and nothing rings. Step over the line in the door and the static on Dale's set stops.

Not goes quiet. Stops.

Teddy had a thing on his neck from the woods, like a tick with a flower for a mouth. It came off him at the door in pieces.

He's fine. He won't talk about it.

They followed us. Dogs first, the wrong shape, black spines. One ran at the door and leapt - and came apart in the air, like a picture on a set when you switch it off.

The others stopped at the line.

Now they come and stand out past the two pillars and look in. They don't come closer. They don't blink. After a while they go away.

After a while they come back.

Dale went out to them last night. He said they were calling him.

I can't hear anything in here. That's the point. That's the whole point. Stay inside until it forgets your name.

(the carving over the door, as near as I can make it)

THIS IS A HUSH. THE STONE IS DEAD. NOTHING OF THE MANY CAN LIVE IN IT.

WHAT THEY PUT IN YOU WILL DIE AT THE LINE.

THEY WILL COME TO THE DOOR. THEY WILL LOOK AT YOU. DO NOT GO OUT TO THEM.

THEY KNOW YOUR VOICE. THEY CANNOT USE IT IN HERE.

WE BUILT THESE TOO LATE. THE MANY TOOK THE REST OF US DOWN WITH THE STATIC.

IF YOU ARE READING THIS, THEY ARE COMING BACK UP.

Ruth, if this gets to you. They didn't hurt me. They took me down the static, the whole way, and I came out on a grey field with no sky.

The stones are here too. Everything they ever listened to came down here.

The voices are louder here. Not louder. Closer.

They're not the dead, Ruth. They're the ones who listened. Everyone who ever put their ear to the stone.

There's something in the middle of this place, big as a church, coiled up. Threads go up off it into the dark.

When it breathes I hear the relay.

I've been listening for you. I can hear you through the stone. You're in the Hush. Good. Stay there.

Whatever sounds like me at the door - it isn't me any more.

WE CAME DOWN WITH OUR HOUSE ROUND US. THE MANY TOOK THE GROUND AND THE SKY, AND LEFT THE ROOM.

OUTSIDE IT IS ALWAYS GREY. THEY STAND BY THE PILLARS AND SAY OUR NAMES IN OUR MOTHERS' VOICES.

THE GREAT ONE IN THE PIT CARRIES THEM UP ITS THREADS TO EVERY PLACE THAT LISTENS.

WHEN IT DIES THEY WILL HAVE NO WAY UP.

WE ARE THE LAST. WE HAVE STOPPED ANSWERING.

IT IS VERY QUIET IN HERE.

Sunday. The Pruitt boy came down from the ridge with one of the things on his neck. We cut it off him. He has not spoken since. He listens at the walls.

Tuesday. The animals are standing in the fields with their heads up, all facing the same way. North. They have been like that since the radio mast went quiet.

Thursday. The Pruitt boy is gone. In the morning there was a heap of something in his bed. By evening there was no heap.

It went somewhere. They all go somewhere.

Saturday. The ground behind the chapel is soft and warm. It moves when you are not looking at it. The heaps go into it.

I rang the bell. Nobody came. Then everybody came.

I can hear them under the floor. Not voices. One voice, made of all of theirs. It is learning words. It has learned my name.

It says it is lonely now the noise has stopped. It says it is building something to keep it company.

If you are reading this I am in the pit with the rest of them. Do not listen when it speaks with my voice.

It thinks with the four bulbs on the black stalks. Burn what you can. Cut what you can't.

Called out to the Halloway place on account of the low field going in. Expected a cave-in - there are old workings under these hills, everyone says so.

This is not a cave-in.

Thirty-four yards across. The sides are cut clean, as if something came up through the ground, not as if it fell in. The soil at the bottom is warm to the hand. At night it steams.

Halloway won't come near it. His dog went in on the second day. We heard it for a long while. It wasn't hurt, he says. It was answering something.

There's a passage at the bottom, round as a pipe, going down in a turn like a corkscrew. Its walls are lined with something like the inside of a cheek. It's warm. It moves when you breathe.

I'm taking the long rope and the lantern. Somebody ought to measure it.

Halfway, by my count. The lantern doesn't throw far. The walls give when you lean on them.

There are voices further down. Not words. Singing, almost.

One of them is Halloway's dog. One is the priest from the hamlet over the ridge - I'd know that voice anywhere. It says it's warm at the bottom. It says the others were down there first, and they don't like it.

The floor of the last room is a mouth. Stand on it long enough and it opens.

I've come this far.

The ground went out from under us on the Tuesday night. The whole of Low Marrow - the church, the green, the pond, the lane - down. We fell a long while. The houses held, mostly.

It is warm down here, and dark. The pond is not water any more. Something sang to us the first night, under everything, very sweet. Some of us went to it. They did not come back.

The rest of us found out about the white things. They have no eyes. They come when you talk, when you walk, when you cry.

Ellen's boy cried.

We do not talk now. We go about in our stockings, and we do not cry.

Old Pell says there is a king further in that the white things keep away from - a king who stopped his own ears. Pell has gone to find him.

He said: follow the stones with the ears cut in them. A cap burns on every one.

If you find this, go quiet. Go in your stockings. Follow the stones.

Text: and they have ears, but they hear not.

I have decided to preach on the singing.

It says it is lonely. It says it lost everything it had, up there, and came down here to be warm. It says we can be warm with it.

I believe it. God forgive me, I believe every word.

I am going down to it tonight. I have asked the others to come. They are afraid of the white things.

The white things are only listening for it too, poor souls. They just never stopped.

We were here first. Before the light up there. We heard everything: the rock settling, the roots growing down, the water a long way off.

Then the singing came down through the roots.

To hear it was to go to it. It took us, a few at a time, and we became its.

Our king took stone and stopped his ears, and then he could not hear it, and he did not go.

He told us all to do the same. Some of us did.

The ones who would not stop their ears listened harder and harder, to hear anything else at all. They listened until they went blind. They are listening still.

The king does not hear. The king does not see. The king feels the floor.

When you come before him, be still.

If you would have what he put in his ears, you must take it out of him. He will not give it.

With it in your own, the singing is only singing.

The Black Below. THE DEAD ZONE. The floor drops away and doesn't stop. The leviathans live down there. Don't.

The Grey Shelf. Grey water over grey silt. The rig stands in it. Nothing here is in a hurry - mostly.

The Haemal Reach. The water's thick with blood. Clotfish come in swarms; the Siphons wait for them to pass.

The Wireweed. Weed like wire, and it sings. The Choir Eels nest in it. Don't touch the bright ones.

The Lantern Fields. Lights in the dark as far as you can see. Most of them are bulbs. Some of them aren't.

The Ossuary Flats. A plain of bone. Whatever died here, died big. The Stiltfins pick it clean.

The Brine Sink. The brine pools eat what falls in. The water's sour, and the Puffbloats like it.

The Molar Reef. Teeth, grown into a reef. The Grinners live in it. They smile at you.

The Drowned Mycelia. Mushrooms the size of towers, drowned. Their spores burst if you brush them.

The Rime Shelf. Ice under the sea. Things are frozen in it. Some of them wake up.

The Ember Vents. Vents roaring up from below. Warm. The Mantlecrabs crowd round them - mind your power.

The Carrier Wave. The static's loudest here. The water hums. Your instruments won't like it.

Point at a water to see where it lies, and what he wrote of it.