"Which you're not going to tell us about," said Pretty Poison.
"The world is not ready to know," I said solemnly.
"You are so full of it," said Madman. We all turned sharply to look at him, but he had nothing more to say.
I took the key off my key-ring, and turned it in the gate's lock. It didn't want to turn, and I had to put some muscle into it, but finally it lurched into place, and I pushed the gate open. I could feel the protective spells deactivating, like a sudden release of tension on the air. I stepped aside to let the others go in first. Not entirely out of courtesy; I didn't trust the garden. When nothing immediately awful happened, I followed them in and shut and locked the gate behind me.
Blue-white light from the impossibly huge moon overhead gave the garden an unreal, ghostly look. The trees were tall and spindly, stark silhouettes against the butter yellow glow of the old-fashioned gas jets set high on the walls. A single narrow path of beaten earth curved back and forth through the garden, between hulking bushes and shrubs and past intricate displays of night-blooming flowers. Everything in the garden was moving slowly, though there wasn't a breath of breeze. Even the petals of the flowers opened and closed, like pursing mouths. The flowers were mostly white and red, and something about them made me think White for bone, red for meat. I once heard a rose sing, and it was the most evil thing I've ever heard.
"Nice place," said Sinner, stooping to sniff a flower. He then pulled his head back quickly, wrinkling his nose.
"No," said Pretty Poison. "I don't think so."
"Top marks for insight to the demon from Hell," I said. "Everything here has really deep roots. You don't want to know from what they draw their nourishment. Now let's all head for the statue in the middle of the garden; and don't touch anything."
The narrow path wound back and forth, to make sure everything in the garden got a good look at us, but finally it brought us to the statue of an angel, kneeling and weeping over its torn-off wings. The features on its face had been eroded away, by wind and rain and time, or perhaps just by tears. Behind the angel was a moon-dial, showing the exact right time. I took hold of its pointing gnomon with a firm hand and turned it slowly through one hundred and eighty degrees. The whole moon-dial shuddered violently, then slid jerkily to one side to reveal a dark shaft, just big enough to take a man, falling away deep into the earth. A black metal ladder clung to one side of the shaft. We all took it in turns to stare dubiously down into the darkness, then Pretty Poison summoned up a handful of hell-fire. She held the leaping flames out over the shaft, but the light didn't penetrate far. In the end, we made her go down first, so she could carry the light ahead of us. None of us liked the idea of descending blindly into that dark.
So she went first, then Sinner because he wouldn't be parted from her, then Madman, and finally me to keep Madman moving. The heavy rungs of the metal ladder were hot and sweaty under my hands, and the narrow circle of light above soon disappeared into the distance. The light below, now dancing at Pretty Poison's shoulder, was barely enough to let us see each other. I didn't like the colour or the texture of the hell-fire; it made me feel... uneasy. I made myself concentrate on the ladder. The rungs had been set uncomfortably far apart, as though not designed or intended for human use. My shoulders bumped against the sides of the shaft as I descended, and the ladder seemed to fall away forever. Down and down we climbed, until my arms and legs ached from the strain, and still there was no sign of any bottom to the shaft. I would have liked to change my mind and go back up, but I didn't think I had the strength to climb up that far, so all that was left was to keep going down. We were all breathing hard, the harsh sounds loud on the quiet.
When Pretty Poison suddenly announced that her feet had hit bottom, we all cried out in relief, even Madman. He seemed more with us, of late. Perhaps he just needed shared company and events to ground him; or perhaps he sensed some danger coming, so great he needed to be more focussed to deal with it. I wasn't about to ask. I just knew he would say something that would make my head hurt. One by one we climbed down out of the end of the shaft and emerged onto a bare path beside a canal; dark waters in a dark place. The stone wall on the other side of the canal showed huge claw marks, gouged deep into the stone by something monstrously large. There was no sign of anyone or anything for as far as Pretty Poison's leaping flame could carry, except for a small silver bell hanging from a tall support. The four of us stood together on the narrow bank, huddled close for comfort. We could all tell we'd come to a really bad place. The air was hot and sweaty, like a fever room, and it smelled bad. Spoiled.
"Now what?" said Sinner. His voice didn't echo, or carry.
"I suppose we ring the bell," I said. "This is as far as my knowledge takes us. From now on, it's all unknown territory."
"Ring the bell?" said Sinner. "How do we know it doesn't just announce to the local nasties that lunch has arrived?"
"We don't," I said. "Feel free to chime in with any other ideas you may have. Besides, what have you got to be worried about? You're supposed to be invulnerable."
"Not exactly. Just very resistant to punishment. I'm not sure even I could survive being eaten, digested, and excreted by something sufficiently large and determined. I am a unique case, but even I have my limits."
"Now he tells me," I said.
"Boys, boys," said Pretty Poison. She was kneeling at the edge of the canal, holding her flame-covered hand out over the dark waters. "I'm pretty sure I saw something move in here... Do you suppose they have alligators down here? You hear stories, about pets being flushed away..."
"I have a strong feeling that whatever lives in these waters would probably consider alligators an appetiser," I said firmly. "I'd back away if I were you. Slowly and very carefully. This is where all the things too nasty for the Nightside end up."
"Ring the bell," said Sinner.
I gave it a good hard ring, and the sharp, almost painfully intense sound travelled up and down the canal, without any trace of echo or distortion. We all braced ourselves, ready for whatever attack might lurch forth out of the darkness, but nothing happened. The sound died away, and all was still and quiet. We all slowly relaxed again. I realised that Madman's personal sound track had shut itself down sometime back. Presumably because it couldn't come up with anything appropriate. And then, from out of the darkness to our right, further down the canal, came the sound of something moving. The slow steady sound of some craft ploughing through the dark waters. We all stared, straining our eyes against the gloom, until finally a low-bottomed barge appeared, in a warm golden glow that surrounded it from stem to stern. It headed unhurriedly towards us, a single human figure standing amidships, poling the barge along with a solid silver staff. The barge was a good twenty feet long, painted a cheerful pastel blue, with big black eyes delineated on either side of the pointed prow. The human figure propelling the barge with his efforts wore a concealing scarlet cloak and a featureless pale cream mask that covered all his face. Disturbingly, the mask only had one eyehole, the left. The barge slid to a halt before us, and the cloaked figure gave us a deep, formal bow.
"Welcome to the World Beneath, you poor damned fools," he said, in a deep resonant voice with more than a hint of a French accent. "Where do you wish me to take you? Not that there is a lot of choice, I'll admit. Upstream is bad, downstream is worse, though at least the Eaters of the Dead have been quiet lately. Someone tried putting poison down a while back, but the rotten buggers positively thrived on it. I hope you've got a specific destination in mind, because I don't do tours. I'd go back up, if I were you. It doesn't get any better, the deeper in you go."