‘What’s this old earth of Glenaraaah?’ Tmh was hearing a new term.
Gally yawned, fighting off her sleepy eyes, before giving him a detailed explanation as she hung off the balcony of his headdress.
‘The old earth.’ She filled him in, ‘is just a name for everything that’s beneath Glenaraaah and out of sight! Its basically where the ‘raaah’ bit of Glenarraah came from. Down here its all monsters and bottomless pits without safety railings. The really spooky thing about it is though, the further you go down into it the further you go back into the past of Glenaraaah. You can find places resentful for the fact that they were once on the surface in the sunlight and encounter creatures who hold on to ancient value systems that are rather wicked and twisted. It’s also very dark down there so a lot of the time you don’t see anything you just feel a timeless feeling that the ancestors are all watching you as well as all the monsters that lurk down there of course.’
After her speech Gally suddenly felt a bit sick, realising she’d just talked herself into being terrified about where they were going.
Even TMH seemed a little on edge.
‘Monsters? How big are we talking about?’
‘Dunno…many different monsters. I’ve never seen one. My dad say’s you can sometimes hear them roaring if you put you ear to the ground.’
‘So, why is the scare ship luring us down there then?’
‘Who says it’s luring us anywhere!’ Gallabee was grumbling, ‘it’s just trying to get away from us after E-Deek here hurt it, poor scare ship!’
‘Oh its luring us down there alright!’ TMH felt sure, ‘I know a ‘I’m luring you into a dark cave’ move when I see one. Ain’t that right Crank?’
Crank briefly looked up from his comic and nodded in agreement.
The scare ship continued to descend as if it was on an invisible escalator descending into the earth, E-Deek was left with little choice than to pursue.
All around the edges of this pit-into-hell, gullies knifed downwards into the abyss like the serrated edge of a wound, their crevices nearly vertical and choked deep with huge broken boulders that had clearly crumbled down from the world above. The ruin of the odd palace or any forgotten street that had fallen down here looked entombed and alone in some vast wilderness of broken rock.
‘The old earth is as spookie as hell’ E-Deek was not happy. ‘If we get lost down there. I hope you like having dance parties cause thats all you’ll have to do in my cabin for the rest of your lives if we can’t find a way out!’
As they descended into the darkness the scare ship’s presence became just a scream in the dark that sounded as if it could have been coming from all around, thanks to the reverberating nature of the rock faces all around them.
‘This is why its called the old earth of Glenaraaah.’ Gally tried her best to distract herself from the fear as she pointed out some the features of this dark place as they loomed in the after-glow of E-Deek’s search-light eyebrows.
Tmh eyed in places how, for layer after layer, there were remnants of old buildings built one top of each other, like veins of precious stone. And the further down they followed these layers the more different sediments of architecture leapt out from the shadows like creepy ancient spider skins for the eyes.
‘So Glenaraaah is basically a place built on top of a place built on top of another on built on top of another and so on and so on.’ TMH had it all figured out.
‘Thats the way life goes in the Sosighcity of Too Many Tribes I suppose..’ Gally pondered on it for a moment. ‘We’re all built on the bones of others.’
‘Not where I come from!’ TMH scoffed, ‘Where I come from there is always something that will eat those bones!’
‘So that’s the way in the wild is it? But I’d say even if a monster eats you down to your last bone at least you will pass on your life energies to them and allow them to carry on….’
‘I never really wanted to help the monsters carry on back there, something to do with the fact that all they wanted to do was eat me…’
‘No, maybe not…’ Gally felt a little embarrassed for her insight. But quietly she found it strangely comforting to think that if it was her destiny to be eaten by a big monster at least her energy wouldn’t go totally to waste.
By now E-Deek was heading down into a vast space that was barely getting any light from the city above. Sure, there was the odd housing estate hanging off a ledge, or the glowing lanterns of an old temple just advertising itself to be explored. But any trace of civilisation down here looked remote in an ancient forgotten place where crushed old walls were draped with miles of cobwebs that clearly belonged to some vast, terrifyingly large arachnid.
‘Dammit it! I’m really not in into the vibe of this music!’ E-Deek complained bitterly, blaming the atmospheric soundtrack he had put on his record player rather than the oppressive ambience of the environment.
He was really having to fly slowly down here to prevent himself colliding with a stalactite or becoming tangled in a giant web and, besides, flying slowly always made him restless. Also the scare ship was really messing with his head the way it was doing all these circling screams around him.
Before he could anticipate it there would come a scream in his ear that would cause him to bolt like a maniac, instincts taking over and almost driving him headfirst into a rock wall at 12 o clock.
‘Why do you keep on jumping like that!’ Gallabee couldn’t understand these outbursts. ‘You’re going to get a bloody nose deck if you crash into something! It’s only a scare ship, face it head on like a good, brave soul ship!’
‘You try flying me! You’ll see! That Scare-freak knows how to push my buttons. It has us down in a dark place where it can jump out at us any time it wants.’
‘But it’s nothing to be afraid of, it’s just a silly scarer! All its bite is just hooowl!’
‘Yeah but there are things down here that do more than just scare! And every time it howls out of nowhere it tricks me into thinking that it’s one of them.’
‘One of who? Do you mean the giant stoned-faced stone-eating demons who prey on houses that fall from above? Or the ancient walking towers with beards who are bitter about their past being built on and lure trespassers into their dungeons so they can subject them to golden memories from their past as a form of torture?’
‘I don’t want to bump into any of these clowns! All I’m saying is this scare ship has us right where it wants us! We ain’t gonna beat it while the odds are all stacked in its flavour!’