Into The Black: Tales of Lovecraftian Terror
Date: 2019-05-29T07:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror; Lovecraftian; Short Stories
Description: In this collection you'll find some Mi-Go, Yog-Sototh, Shoggoths, King Arthur, British soldiers, some Deep Ones, scientists of various competencies, Roman centurions, the Antoinine Wall, a fair bit of singing and some green blobby stuff. 12 Lovecraftian tales, all previous published in anthologies.

INTO THE BLACK
Tales of Lovecraftian Terror
William Meikle
INTO THE BLACK
BROADSWORD
THE LONGDOCK AIR
THE COLOR THAT STOLE CHRISTMAS
OUTPOSTS
SHE SLEEPS IN THE DEPTHS
THE CALL OF THE DEEP
ON THE THRESHOLD

A TRUE TELLING OF THE TERROR THAT CAME TO RED HOOK

VULCAN'S FORGE
THE WONDERFUL MAGICIAN
THE LAST QUEST
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
FURTHER READING

INTO THE BLACK

I don't expect you to believe all of what I have to tell you—after all, I'm not even sure I believe it myself. But what follows here is as true and accurate an attempt at some kind of clarity as I can muster. Whether it is enough to deter you from the course of action you seem hell bent on following, only you can decide. Know this—I intend to be as distant from that dashed place as is humanly possible if and when you make a fresh expedition there.

You already know why we were there, so I shall gloss over the basics and get to the pertinent part. Our problems began a month after drilling started. Hodgson's new screw bit worked superbly, and we were growing increasingly confident that the latest British Expedition was going to go down in history as the one which finally pierced the secrets which lay hidden under the ice on the Antarctic Shelf. We passed the four hundred yards depth and kept going straight on, setting a new drilling depth record in the process. But there was no time for celebration just then. We were men on a mission—a mission of discovery.

Indeed, that morning brought a breakthrough we had not foreseen, for we thought that our drilling might come an abrupt end when we hit bedrock, so I was most surprised when I stood over the drill head and heard a distinct gurgling in the shaft, coming up from the depths. The drill's fixtures rattled and shook, and I urged the others to retreat a safe distance, but in the end it was all rather anti-climactic as there was merely a small burp leaving a puddle of water, already starting to freeze, for six feet around the shaft.

We hurried to collect what samples we could before the cold could take its toll, but I was dismayed to find on getting them back inside to the lab that much of it was just so much crushed ice and slushy water. My dismay was fortunately short lived, and a quick look under the microscope soon had me excited again—for there was clearly life on the slide I had prepared, life brought up from the depths where it had lain for ages too long to comprehend. I saw diatoms and algae, amoebae and hydra, a veritable profusion of microscopic life, such things as had never been thought possible in such a harsh environment. And as the water heated up under the light stage of the microscope, so things began to get more frantic under the slide. Frenzy and fights for survival replaced the torpor of the deeps; a long awaited spring was sprung.

And that was when I caught my first glimpse of the thing.

It was so tiny at first that I took it for a mere speck of mineral brought up with the water, too small to allow me to make out any features even under the scope's highest magnification. But it quickly became apparent that, although it was small, it was moving under its own volition—it was, in some sense, alive. Even as I watched it the mote made its way swiftly across my field of view, moving with what seemed like singular intent, embedding itself deep inside a spinning Volvox colony. The result was startling and immediate. The colony went from green to black in an instant, the individual cells subsumed into a smooth-surfaced oily globe that spun slowly and glistened in the faintest rainbow aura.

I had to look twice to make sure it was still there, for I could not quite bring myself to believe what I had just witnessed. But there was one fact of which I was certain—I currently had something completely unknown to modern science under my microscope, and much as I could hardly take my eyes off it, I had to tell someone—anyone. I left the lab and went out into the corridor. Hodgson was there, stowing his outside gear in his locker.

"Quick, man—you have to see this—you won't believe what we've found."

I was gone for less than thirty seconds, barely enough time for Hodgson to close his locker and follow me back into the lab. The black stuff had been busy in my absence. The slide, the light stage and an area some six inches in diameter around the base of the microscope was now coated, black and oily and glistening, giving off the same faint shimmering rainbow aura I had seen through the lens. I instinctively started to back away but Hodgson wasn't quite so quick—perhaps it was because he was unused to laboratory procedures, perhaps it was no more than simple curiosity—or perhaps the glazed look I thought I saw in his eyes had a more disturbing cause. The last was something I only thought about much later, but whatever the case, Hodgson had stepped over to the microscope before I had time to stop him. He put a hand on the counter some ten inches to one side of the scope as he bent over to have a closer look. The black stuff flowed, smoothly, like Mercury across glass, and engulfed the hand before he had a chance to pull it away. Hodgson turned towards me—the glazed look had gone, if it had indeed ever been there, to be replaced by confusion.

"What in blazes is this?" he said. Those were his last words—the black stuff surged up his body—I can describe it no other way, and was over his mouth and nose before he took another breath.  Hodgson made a grab for the counter, missed and pulled the microscope with him as he fell to the floor, his heels drumming twice on the linoleum then going still. Black stuff foamed and bubbled in his mouth for a long second—then vanished down his throat.

It was only then I remembered my training, and instinct took over. I backed out the door, slammed and locked it, and hit the emergency alarm by my left hand. John Greer arrived twenty seconds later. He was just in time to see what the black did to poor Hodgson.

It was almost like watching a speeded up film of a body turning to corruption—his chest caved in under his clothing, and his skin, what we could see of it, writhed and swelled as if infested by a small army of burrowing insects. Then the black came out, oozing like diseased sweat, small beads at first, then rivulets that tore at flesh rendering it into so much mincemeat before running to the linoleum. It spread tendrils, moving faster than if it had been a mere spillage of liquid—moving purposefully, as if looking for something else on which to feed. What had mere seconds ago been a pinprick was now pints—perhaps even a gallon—of oozing, pitch black, fluidity.

"Freeze it. Do it now," Greer said softly.

"But Hodgson…"

"Is gone and you know it. Freeze it, before it's too late."

Our purge procedure was a simple one. I pushed the button, and heard a hiss as the liquid nitrogen was released. The viewing window in the door fogged up for a second, and I had a moment of panic, stepping back quickly and checking at my feet, for I was sure that the black had made its way under the door. But there was only an increasing blast of cold, and when the window cleared it showed a dark mass of mangled flesh and frozen tissue.

It had been my best friend mere minutes before.

Carruthers called for an immediate meeting in the mess, and spent the first five minutes trying to apportion blame before Greer marched him back through to the window in the laboratory door. After he'd had a long look through the window Carruthers was less worried about any possible scandal and more focussed on the more immediate problem at hand. His first question inadvertently echoed Hodgson's own last words.

"What in blazes is it?"

It was directed at me—indeed, as resident biologist, it was my job to know. But I was completely at a loss to explain either what I had seen under the scope, or what had happened to Hodgson. My ignorance only served to irritate Carruthers further.

"I suppose we’ll have to stop drilling," he said, as if that was some kind of disaster in of itself.

"Only if you want to stay alive," Greer piped up sardonically. "And I'd suggest closing off the shaft too, just to be on the safe side."

"But that will lose us days—weeks," Carruthers blustered.

"Would you rather lose another man?" I said softly, and he had the good grace to blush, and back down.

Matters went more smoothly after that. Greer and I closed and capped the shaft, taking care to watch out for any trace of blackness in the crushed ice underfoot. When we went back inside it was to find the remaining three geologists—Williams, Jackson and Boyle—crowded at the laboratory window to see for themselves what the fuss was about.

"Where's Carruthers?" Greer asked.

"On the blower, calling it in," Williams replied, not taking his gaze from the scene on the other side of the door. "Will we be recalled do you think?"

"Most likely," Greer replied. "A cock up of this magnitude is going to take some explaining."

"And what about Hodgson?" Boyle asked. "We can't leave him lying in there like that. It ain't Christian."

"I don't think that stuff gives a shit," Greer replied, and without another word headed off towards the mess.

I followed, and found him breaking open a bottle of J&B. It seemed like a bloody good idea to join him. We had a drink for Hodgson, one thing led to another, and by the time the evening darkness came round I was feeling little pain and was more than a bit drunk. Carruthers popped his head in at one point, but obviously realized we were not in the mood to be chastised and left us to it.

After the whisky was gone, Greer suggested making a start on the vodka, but by then I was more than ready to slip into oblivion and forget that the day had ever happened. I left Greer there in the mess—he'd already started with two fingers of the Russian falling down water—and made a careful way back to my bunk. I didn't bother taking off my clothes—the effort was beyond me by that point in any case. I put my head down, closed my eyes to stop my head spinning, and made a dive for the darkness.

But oblivion would not have me. Almost as soon as I fell asleep I dreamed.

My head swam, and it seemed as if the walls of my room melted and ran. The light bulb above me receded into a great distance until it was little more than a pinpoint in a blanket of darkness, and I was alone, in a vast cathedral of emptiness where nothing existed save the dark and a pounding beat from below.

I danced.

Shapes moved beside me in the dark, black shadows with no substance, shadows that capered and whirled as the dance grew ever more frenetic and we joined, two, four, eight, sixteen, ever growing, ever doubling .

We grew. And we built, there in the dark, built in time with the dance.

There was stone, and ice, then there was just stone again, a vast plain of blocks given form and purpose by the rhythm. And still we danced, and still we built.

There was light.

Then there was dark—long dark, long and cold, and we forgot how to dance. We slept. We slept for a long, dark time.

And then there was light.

And the dancing started again.

I came to my senses slowly. I was upright, which in itself seemed unusual. And I was not in my bunk, but was instead standing outside the locked door of the laboratory. More worrying still, I had a hand on the lock, as if I was ready to push the door open and go inside.

The rhythm beat in my head again, and I felt the dance well up inside me, despite the fact that I was now most definitely awake. Something drew me forward, and I looked through the small window. The remains were still there on the floor—but they were no longer quite so frozen—the blackness bubbled and seethed, throwing up thin, snake like tendrils to taste the air and thrash, as if in anticipation of a meal.

The beat grew stronger, more insistent, and my hand crept toward the lock again.

There was only one thing that stopped me—and even now I am not sure if it was but another part of my fever dream. The black tissue split and opened up a small fissure and a single, lidless eye, pale green and milky, stared out from the new fold in the protoplasm.

Once again my self-preservation instinct saved me—I hit the purge button before I even thought to do anything else, and the loud hiss as the nitrogen flooded the room did much to break whatever spell was laid on me. The door window misted and clouded and when it cleared I stared in at a frozen mess of tissue on the floor, and the beat, the dance, had stopped, for now at least.

I am not prone to sleepwalking—in fact I do not think I have ever done it—but then again, I had never seen my best friend die in front of my eyes either. I put my experience down to the stress of the day and the cumulative effect of the Scotch on top of that. I had to—it was the only way I knew to remain sane. I took myself back to bed, and this time, when my head hit the pillow it was to fall down into the blessed, dreamless, darkness I had sought earlier.

There was no dancing.

I woke at some point later, bleary eyed, in darkness, with the sound of the alarm ringing and heavy footsteps in the corridor outside the dorm. I roused myself—not as fast as I might have done, for I was sour in the stomach and slow in the head—and went to see what was going on.

The cause of the commotion was not hard to ascertain. The three geologists and Carruthers stood in the corridor. The laboratory door was open. There was no sign of any frozen tissue on the floor, no black fluid—and no Greer. We quickly ascertained that he wasn't anywhere on the base—and one of the powered sleds was gone.

When Carruthers asked for a volunteer to accompany him and go after Greer, I put my hand up right away. I am not making any claim to bravery or honor; I felt responsible, somehow—guilty even. There was the drink, and the dream and the invitation to dance, all jumbled up in my mind. And if I was jumbled, what defense could Greer have made, what with having taken the same amount of Scotch, and then some vodka on top? He had answered a call that was meant for me.

At least that's how I rationalized it to myself, there in the mess. By the time I got suited up and went to meet Carruthers in the sled bay I wasn't feeling quite so bold, but the decision had been made, there was no backing out now—and Greer was getting further away by the minute.

If he was even still Greer.

I put that thought away; If I let it take root, and paused to think what might have happened to the black, and what manner of thing was out there riding the sled, I might not have been able to leave at all. I might have instead returned to the mess in search of what was left of the vodka and some real oblivion.

Instead I focussed on the task at hand. Boyle handed me a rucksack as I checked the sled had plenty of fuel for what might turn out to be a long trek.

"Soup, coffee and sandwiches. You'll need them. And make sure you come back. It's starting to feel bloody lonely around here."

I put on my goggles, pulled the Parka hood over my face, and kicked the sled into gear, following Carruthers out onto the plain.

Greer's sled was not hard to follow. The twin track led in a straight line away from the base. I had thought the black might have made a run for the coast, but it was clear that whoever—or whatever—was driving had only one goal in mind; they were headed straight for the tall mountain range some twenty miles to the south. As far as I knew the terrain in that direction was terra-incognito —no one had surveyed there, no one had mapped; the mountains were considered too harsh an environment and too barren to yield much of scientific value.

So why would Greer—or even the black—want to go there?

It was a question I had plenty of time to ponder for the chase was going to be a long one—I tried to peer into the distance, tried to catch any glimpse of our quarry, but the summer glare on the ice was too strong, even through the goggles.

At least the journey was not arduous in itself—the plain swept up in a gentle incline toward the mountain foothills, and the ice was crisp and even over soft snow. Our sleds navigated it with little difficulty, and Carruthers, in the lead, kept up a good pace as if determined to hunt Greer down.

There was only one other item to note during that long morning out on the ice. Just as we arrived at the spot where the climb became steeper and the tracks we followed led higher toward a mountain pass, we found something half-embedded in the snow, discarded in the black's flight.

I stopped beside Carruthers' sled as he tore the find, already frozen, from the ground and held it up for me to see. It was a pair of long johns, the kind we all wore under everything else, the kind we kept on, even when sleeping. The ones Carruthers held up were torn and tattered—and bloodied, the red mixed with streaks of something darker, something black.

"Be careful, Carruthers," I said, but he didn't need to be told twice. He dropped the torn undergarments to the ice—but not before showing me the nametag stitched into the lining at the waist. They had belonged to Greer—and he was now out on the open ice, headed into the mountains, without their protection.

It was harder going after that—both because of the increasing incline and accompanying frigidity, and the growing feeling of doom that threatened to overwhelm me entirely. I was more than ever convinced that what we were chasing had little or nothing of Greer left in it, for what man would voluntary speed so readily toward a certain death in these precipitous canyons?

The walls of rock—so sheer that no snow would cling to them, climbed high around us, and fell away below us in places. We crossed up and through a series of narrow valleys, many of which could not have seen even a hint of the sun for many a long year, having to travel single file for long stretches along narrow ledges above drops that fell away, down into stygian depths .

Carruthers stopped at a long curved corner, forcing me to do the same. He got off his sled and waved me forward.

"Have we caught him?" I asked.

"Not yet," Carruthers replied, and there was something in his voice and manner that gave me pause. Then I followed his gaze and saw why we had stopped.

The cliffs that surrounded us might once have been natural formations, but they had obviously been worked extensively into a series of caves that ran like honeycomb across, down and up the rock faces in intricate, bewildering patterns. I saw spirals and ellipses, funnels and cones, and other geometries too strange to be understood let alone described. Each cave was taller than a man, and wider by far, smoothly hewn by some machinery I could not begin to fathom. The workings stretched off down into the gloom as far as we could see, an unimaginable number.

"What the blazes have we here?" Carruthers whispered. "Who could have done something like this? Is it something the Egyptians might have managed do you think?"

I wasn't thinking of who —I was thinking of what , and remembering my febrile dreams of the night before.

Two, four, eight, sixteen, ever growing, ever doubling.

We grew. And we built, there in the dark, built in time with the dance.

There was stone, and ice, then there was just stone again.

I believed I knew the answer to Carruthers' question—but there was little sense in telling him then, for although he was a man of great strengths, none of them came from his imagination or willingness to embrace things beyond his ken.

"Whoever built this marvel, they are long gone," I replied. "We must press on—the day is getting away from us. If we don't catch Greer soon, we will have to turn back. "

On that matter Carruthers did at least agree with me, and after a rapid lunch of some soup and a sandwich we remounted the sleds, following Greer's tracks ever deeper into the mountain fastness.

We were almost at the point of no return as far as our fuel tanks were concerned when we rose up through one final pass and came to the entrance of a cave far larger than any we had seen previously. Greer's sled lay on one side, discarded at the entrance. There was no sign of the man—but footprints in the frost on the rock showed that he had got off the sled and, without pausing, headed into the cavern.

I was loath to follow. I was having a tough enough time as it was keeping the fear at bay while travelling in what passed for sunlight here in the mountains, and the thought of delving in the dark held no appeal whatsoever. Carruthers was made of sterner stuff—in this situation his lack of imagination was serving him well. Another of his strengths was forward planning—he took two head-mounted flashlights from his pack and passed one to me without a word.

"The batteries will last an hour if we're lucky. We go in, and if we don't find him in twenty minutes, we come out and head back—that gives us some margin for error. Agreed?"

I was more than willing to go along with that. I did however have a question—one that I had been pondering on the journey.

"And what do we do when we find him?"

"Persuade him to return with us, of course. He is clearly not himself."

I almost laughed aloud at that—my nerves were shot to pieces, and mania was not far from the surface. But when Carruthers headed toward the cavern mouth, I followed behind—I owed it to Greer to see this though—whatever the outcome may be.

It was even darker inside than my worst fears had imagined—colder too, a biting cold that settled quickly into every fiber of my being. We walked quickly, our lights picking out marks on the floor of the cavern that were sometimes footprints—and sometimes something else entirely. Five minutes after entering the cavern I noticed that this place, like the ones we had seen on the cliff path, had most definitely been manufactured—the walls were too smooth, too regular. And then there was the carved relief that seemed to cover every surface—pictorial representations of cities and war, natural disasters and calamity—millennia of history that we had to hurry past, leaving it unread, for the gait of the footprints on the floor had changed again. Whatever we followed now seemed to be going on all fours.

After another five minutes the path took a downward turn, and got markedly steeper such that we had to take great care not to go tumbling headlong into black depths.

"This is madness," Carruthers said after a stumble nearly sent us both flying. "We should turn back—if Greer wants to kill himself this badly, I suggest we leave him to it."

I was almost tempted to agree, and might even have done so—but then I felt it—a warmer breeze on my face. And accompanying it, somewhere not too far below us, the clear and unmistakable sound of feet slapping on rock.

Carruthers did not wait for me—he headed off in rapid pursuit, his headlamp bobbing away from me in the darkness. I knew that if I did not follow, I would forever after feel like a coward, but it took every ounce of bravery I could muster to make the first step downward.

The hot air on my face grew hotter still the further down we went, and a minute later I noticed that I did not need the headlamp—the cavern was filled with an all too familiar shimmering rainbow aurora that lit our passage down into ever warmer depths.

And so, finally, we came to it.

The passageway leveled off after a particularly steep final section, leading us out onto a vast cathedral-like space of vaulted rock, crystal stalactites and a long, wide expanse of what I at first took to be water, lying flat and black under a shimmering aura of dancing color.

Greer was already there, on the edge of the lakeshore—or at least, the thing that Greer had been. It was slumped and hunched, round-shouldered and more simian than man. It turned at the sound of our approach—and I saw that the man I knew was not completely gone, for his haunted eyes stared back at me from a strangely flattened face.

"Come on back, Greer," Carruthers said, although I noticed he had not taken any steps closer toward that black lake. "There are doctors who can take a look at you—chaps who can find a cure."

I wasn't so sure of that myself, but held my peace. Greer looked from one to the other of us. His mouth opened, as if he might speak, but all that came out was a rush of black fluid. Without another word he turned, took two steps, and fell face first toward the lake—which rose up to meet him as he fell, and swallowed him whole. It was not a lake as such—it was not water at all.

The whole vastness of the floor of the cavern was little more than a seething, roiling sheet of the black .

As Greer's body sank into it, a beat began, faint at first but growing ever stronger. I felt it tug at me, calling me to the dance.

I pulled Carruthers away.

"We need to leave. Now."

The rainbow colors swirled and danced in time to the rhythm.

I danced with them.

I can see it even now—all I have to do is close my eyes. I can see the pattern and design. They were made as builders you see, and they did indeed build. But they also danced, living and breathing, in their own way, dancing in time to a beat only they can hear. The rhythm from which they were born also gave them purpose, a beat that defined the dance from its very beginnings in the dark caverns under the mountains—and would ultimately, inexorably, lead the dance to its end.

I was lost to it, filled with it, awestruck by it.

And I might be there yet, dancing in that cavern with what was left of poor Greer, had Carruthers not slapped me, hard, on the face. I believe it was that singular lack of imagination of his that saved me in the end—might well have saved us both.

I followed, he led, and we raced up and away out of the depths, back up into the twilight through which we sped back to the base, reaching home just as the last of our fuel gave in.

The dance followed me all the way.

So there it is—my tale, for you to make of what you will. I only ask that you consider it carefully before you go back to those mountain passes. I know Carruthers has spoken to you of the workings, of the long history in the relief work, and of the wonders that lie there waiting to be explored. But that same lack of imagination that saved us is also the thing that might doom everyone.

For I still dance—it is in me even now, all these months and miles distant. And I have seen the pattern, the inexorable result of our building, our dancing. With each passing year the black creeps further in the deep cavern, and the dance strengthens and grows. We have danced since before life walked on land, and we will dance long after there is nothing else but the black and the rock. We will dance in the black as the moon falls into our arms, and when the sun dims and goes dark we will dance on, into the stars, black on black, until the very end, when all is black, all is the dance.

We will dance.

BROADSWORD

I let go of the button on the mike and waited. There was still nothing on the line but hiss and crackle.

"Broadsword calling Danny Boy, come in please, over."

"Leave it, Sandy," Captain Dave Collins said. "It's the mountains getting in the way. We'll try again at higher ground."

I looked up the Trollenberg. The top was obscured by thick cloud, and I had a bad feeling that was refusing to go away. Whatever waited up there, it wasn't going to go well for us.

The Captain seemed to have no such qualms. He hefted his rucksack and started off along the tree line to our left. I packed up the radio, strapped it on my back, retrieved my rifle from where I'd leaned it against a tree, and trudged after him.

It had already been a long haul; we came across the Swiss-German border after midnight and walked all night—ten miles through high passes in thick snow just to get to the foot of the mountain. My feet felt like frozen lead, my shoulders ached from the weight of the radio, and the blinding white all around had brought on a headache like an ice pick stabbing behind my left eye. But I couldn't falter—not now that we were so close.

Our future depends on it.

That's what they told us when they hauled us off our exercise on Dartmoor and laid on a train, just for the two of us, to get us first to London, then Biggin Hill airfield. I knew it was something big when the Brigadier himself was on hand to brief us .

"A bit of a flap on, lads," he said. "Winnie's had an ultimatum—stop fighting, or we all die—bit of a rum do if you ask me, but the brass are taking it seriously. What you're about to see is so hush-hush you can never tell anyone, and if you do, it'll be denied at the highest levels."

A projector whirred into life, the lights went down, and a flickering image came into life on the wall. Winnie was front and center, standing behind his desk. A pale, nebulous thing seemed to hang in the air in front of him. It was almost formless, pulsing in and out of vision every few seconds as if the camera could not quite catch it. It seemed composed of strange angles, misshapen and grotesque. I saw wings and claws, too many arms and not enough heads; there was only a fleshy pyramid of quivering tissue where a face might have been. It was an impossibility, as faint as a ghost but, if the picture was to be believed, it was most definitely there. It spoke, heavily accented, and lisping so thickly as to almost obscure the words completely. But I caught the meaning well enough.

Stop this war or die .

Winnie's instantly recognizable voice rose in an indignant reply.

"And who the hell are you to make such a demand?"

"Some of you call us the Mi-Go," came the answer, calm and slow, as if it were addressing a child. "We are your destiny, should you choose it. Stop this war. Or you will die."

A new image appeared, superimposed over the top of the PM's desk, like a miniature, moving panorama. I did not recognize the city it portrayed, but it teemed with life—at least at first. The screen filled with a blinding flash of light, and when normality returned the desk was overlaid with a view of a smoking ruin, not a single building left standing, not a single living thing moving in the rubble.

"Stop this war. Or you will die."

The lights went up and the Brigadier addressed us again.

"Now you know the Jerries, they're a devious lot. This might all be a cunning bit of propaganda when it comes down to it. But the destruction you saw was real enough. Turin is gone, in a flash like you just saw. Winnie can't ignore a weapon like that. The boffins have tracked the source back to the Trollenberg range. There's a plane waiting. No time to lose. Get over there and report back, on the double. Our future depends on it."

And now, thirty-six hours later, we were at the base of the Trollenberg, still no wiser as to what we might encounter, but resolute in our determination to find out.

We started the climb with a diagonal traverse of the northern face. We climbed swiftly over steep, icy terrain with some spots of fresh snow, making good time until the foot of the summit pyramid, and some easier climbing, was only a cliff climb away above us. But we still had some work to do. We had known from our view from below that this would be one of the most taxing parts of the ascent.

It proved to be worse than we could have imagined. The rock face was near a hundred feet tall and loomed over us in one massive slab. The Captain seemed daunted by the sheer enormity of the task ahead of us, and for my part, it seemed at least as tough as any face I had ever attempted. But Winnie was waiting in London, and the outcome of the war might depend on our actions in the next few hours.

I set to it with a will. I had thought that Pillar Rock in the Western Fells would prove the toughest challenge of my climbing career, but the Trollenberg proved tougher still. All that long afternoon I fought it, with the Captain creeping up cautiously behind me following my every move. Back and forth I went, and from side to side. Several times I had to retrace my route for long periods.

But I would not be defeated. Just as day turned to dusk I hauled myself up over the last lip that had been proving a bugger for an hour and lay, gasping at the foot of the pyramidical slope that led to the summit.

I helped the Captain up beside me. We just had enough light remaining to see that our route to the top led via a forty-five degree snow slope, which would take us directly to the summit ridge. It was only after we caught our breath that I realized we were not the first to reach this spot. Two sets of tracks led upward five yards to the left of us. I hadn't seen any sign of other climbers on the way up the cliff, but another man could have taken a different line to the top and evidence of his passing would easily be missed.

The Captain went over to examine the tracks.

"Jerry issue boots," he said. "Either the Brigadier was right, and they're at the bottom of this, or they're just as panicked as we are and have come to take a shufti. Whatever the case, we're not alone up here."

I took the hint and had my rifle ready as we made our way up the last slope.

It was relatively easy-going, and almost peaceful in a strange way. Night fell around us and a cloudless sky filled with stars. There was no sound apart from the crunch of our footsteps in the snow.

We followed the tracks to where they crested the ridge that led directly to the summit, then I had to stop quickly as the Captain bent to examine the snow at his feet .

I saw the problem immediately. Both pairs of tracks just stopped, seemingly mid-step. It was as if the two climbers had been plucked, ever so neatly, off the face of the hill, leaving no further trace of their presence.

"A sudden gust of wind?" I asked, but I knew already that anyone good enough to come up the cliff would not be stupid enough to let the wind take them down again.

The Captain agreed with me.

"No. It wasn't the wind. But I'm buggered if I can figure this one out, Sandy. Let's just press on. The answer's here somewhere—I can feel it in my water."

We heard the hum before we had gone another step. It started low, a deep bass vibration that I felt in my stomach even before I heard it. The tone rose quickly to a buzzing whine. The snow at our feet slid away below us as the rock beneath it tilted, threatening to drop us back down the slope. We had enough presence of mind to throw ourselves to the ground as the ridge opened up in front of us revealing not rock, but a metal dome, silver and glistening beneath the stars.

Ice cracked loudly in the night air. Snow flurried all around us and I was all too aware of the long drop that waited at our backs should we slide any further down the slope. Luckily for us the movement of rock and snow slowed and came to a halt.

There was a new feature on the mountain's summit. Instead of a rocky outcrop there was now the high silver dome, partially opened to the sky along a central ridge. The Captain motioned me forward and I followed, as quietly as I was able, up to where the opening in the dome was closest. We were able to look over the lip with ease, and down into what seemed to be an empty laboratory of some kind. A twenty-foot long tube of silver, brass, and glass coils dominated the space. I had no idea how it might work, but I immediately knew I was looking at the weapon that had destroyed Turin.

The Captain pulled me back away, and whispered urgently.

"We're going in. If that's the new weapon, we need to find out as much as we can. Leave the radio here. We're travelling light."

I divested myself of the radio, and shucked off the parka and snow trousers. I saw the Captain pull his balaclava down over his face and I followed suit. We were now two black outlines against the white of the snow.

"Rifles?" I asked.

He shook his head. I had a revolver, four grenades, and a long knife—more than enough to do a lot of damage if need be. I laid the rifle down beside the radio and the parkas, making sure everything was weighted against any wind, and followed the Captain over the lip to drop gently down into the dome.

We met no resistance. The laboratory, if indeed that was its function, was quiet and empty. I had a closer look at the weapon but its means of operation continued to elude me. The metals I had taken to be silver and brass looked on closer inspection to be harder than either, colored alloys with which I was completely unfamiliar. And what I had taken to be glass was instead a peculiar form of opaque crystal containing minute speckles of rainbow flakes. The whole apparatus vibrated and thrummed to my touch, and I pulled my hand away sharpish as it began to glow.

I motioned to my grenades, then to the weapon. The Captain shook his head.

"Later," he mouthed, and motioned me towards a cave mouth to our left, the only entrance to the room. We moved quietly into the darkness and started to follow the passage.

We went down, into the mountain.

It was not long before we heard the sound of activity rising up from below. At first it echoed around us, like a great many sibilant whispers. As we descended it grew louder, and we heard it for what it was.

An interrogation, of sorts, was going on; one voice asked questions in a language we could not even begin to fathom, being all sibilant tones and glottal stops. But the other was all too familiar; a male German answered—and the voice was that of a man in mortal terror. He repeated the same thing to every question—Gerd Brunke, Colonel, 734561.

Name, rank and serial number.

The Captain and I crept slowly down the tunnel. The German Colonel's replies turned to wild screams that were far more discomforting than the previous whispers. The screams didn't last long before being replaced by a pitiful sobbing that was somehow even worse.

We moved faster—the speaker might be German, but his pain was human, and something neither of us would allow. We arrived soon afterwards at an opening and looked out over a wider chamber that was artificially lit by a blue globe hanging high above. It cast dancing shadows across a scene from a nightmare.

The German soldiers lay on a long trestle that ran along the far wall from where we stood. The chamber itself was full of equipment built of the same brass and silver shaded alloys we had seen up in the dome, along with a great deal more of the rainbow-flecked crystal. But it was something else that caught our full attention. We had seen its like before, standing in a shimmering image before Winston's desk in the film we had been shown. But here it was in the flesh.

It was the size of a man, but looked more like a hideous shrimp than any human being. The body was segmented like that of a crustacean, but this was no marine creature—for a start, it had membranous wings, currently tucked tightly at its rear, but judging by their size more than adequate to lift its weight into powered flight. There were no arms or hands to speak of. I counted four pairs of limbs. The pair the thing used as legs—I use the word loosely here—were more stout and thicker than the rest, each being tipped with three horny claws extended to balance its weight at the front while a segmented tail completed the tripod behind it. The other appendages looked more flexible and nimble and as I watched the thing leaned forward and delicately picked up a tool from the trestle. I got a good look at its face—or rather lack of one. Instead of features there was only a mound of ridged flesh, pale and greasy like a mushroom towards the end of its cycle. A multitude of thin snake-like appendages wafted around the head and I took these to be the equivalent of sensory organs, although quite how they might function I had no idea.

I did however know exactly what it was doing—it was torturing its prisoners. The German Colonel screamed again, and the Captain and I moved at the same time, running forward and freeing our knives from their sheaths. The thing sensed us coming somehow and turned towards us, but that only served to give me an opportunity to go for its throat . My knife went through the flesh as if it were indeed some kind of fungus and the beast fell in a heap at my feet, twitching once, then falling still.

The Captain gave it a kick to make sure it would stay down, then clapped me on the shoulder.

"If they are that easy to kill, this should not be a problem," he said softly.

"Do not make the same mistake I did," a German accented voice said from behind us. We turned towards the sound. It came, not from the man's body, but from a screen on the wall. It showed his face, staring straight at us. The Captain nudged me and pointed at the prone bodies. It was only then that I saw the apparatus on each side of them—more of the silver, brass and crystal and—most horrifying of all—the brains of the two men hanging suspended inside tall glass jars .

The image of the German officer was still speaking, and I struggled to pay attention.

"You must do something," he said. "They know we will not bend before them without coercion. They mean to show us again that they are serious. They want us to stop the war."

"But what are they?" the Captain said, looking down at the dead thing at our feet.

"There's no time," the German replied. "They are from—somewhere else—a dark planet in deep space. They say they have many things to teach us, many wonders to enrich our lives, if we would just lay down our arms and submit. But they have no compassion, no humanity— they are like insects, writhing in their warrens in dark places. The Fuehrer will never sanction a treaty with such as these—they are beneath us, despite their knowledge. They are impure."

"I can't see old Winnie giving them the time of day either," the Captain said softly, giving the thing another kick. "But what do you mean about them being serious? Are they planning something big?"

The Colonel's image was fading away, and his voice was now little more than a whisper.

"They mean to destroy London and Berlin. You must stop them."

The Colonel's image faded from the screen. I walked over to the men's bodies. Both had the top of their skulls removed and the brains extracted. There was no life in them. If the men were still awake, still aware, locked inside their brains in those glass jars, it was not a fate I would wish on anyone, enemy or not. The Captain guessed at my thoughts.

"Let's give them some peace," he said. "Then I think it will be time for a little mayhem of our own."

He took the German Colonel's jar and I took the other, aware even as I lifted it that I didn't even have a name to give to the poor chap. In unison we smashed the jars on the ground. The brains lay there, dead meat. I followed the Captain's example and lifted the fleshy ball at my feet to place it back in the skull cavity. It was all we could think to do for them.

"This is not war," the Captain said, more to himself than to me. "This is barbarism. I won't stand for it."

He looked over at me as he drew his revolver. His face was grim.

"Get topside and call in the strike," he said. "I'll see what I can do about putting a spanner in the works."

I knew better than to argue—indeed, I agreed with the plan. I made my way back up to the dome, creeping quietly, listening at every step for any sound of pursuit, or for any indication that the Captain had got himself into trouble.

I arrived in the dome room with no mishap. The weapon—for that was surely its purpose—sat quiet and still. The only sound was the whistle of wind from outside. I pulled myself back out over the lip of the opening and immediately felt the chill bite at my bones. I had to retrieve my parka from under a new covering of snow, and my already stiffening fingers fumbled to get it zipped up.

There was a bad moment when I thought the radio was jammed, frozen solid, but the thin layer of ice on the dials cracked readily enough under my fingers. And this time Control came through loud and clear in answer to my call.

I only needed to say one word.

"Hammerstrike. I repeat, Hammerstrike. Over."

"Broadsword, this is Danny Boy. We read you. Twenty minutes. Over and out."

Our spanner in the works was going to have to be done quickly; in little over quarter of an hour enough bombs would rain down on this mountain to lower the summit a good few yards. I crawled back up to the lip of the dome, intending to head back inside and join the Captain.

He was already there, just below me, held tight between two of the lobster -things. A third of them was standing next to the long tubular weapon. I fetched my rifle, intending to start some of the mayhem the Captain had promised, when he looked up, straight at me, and shook his head.

"Not yet," he mouthed.

I gave him the OK sign with finger and thumb, made sure I had sure footing, and watched what transpired beneath me.

They had taken the Captain's revolver; it was lying on the ground off to one side, but they had not taken his grenades. They were still there at his belt—either the things did not know their purpose, or they thought that they had the Captain under too close control for him to make a move. They didn't know the man like I did .

But for the moment, the Captain seemed calm—almost relaxed, as he watched the third creature make some movements above the metal and crystal tube with the clawed appendages that seemed to pass for hands. It spoke, alternately hissing and guttural, completely unintelligible. But the meaning was clear enough as once again three- dimensional images formed in the air between the Captain and the weapon.

Winnie stood in front of Parliament, and I remembered the words he spoke well, for they had stiffened the resolve of a nation.

"We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France; we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be; we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."

The picture changed, showing battlefields, mass graves, plumes of smoke from the burning of the dead, prison camps with skeletal figures, villages, towns, cities, all flattened.

"We shall go on to the end." Winnie said again.

The picture changed—another leader, another parliament. Adolf was shouting again.

"Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live."

More moving pictures followed in quick succession—armies, vast and implacable, hell bent on annihilation of each other, a world in flames until there was naught left but a burnt out cinder floating in space.

For a last time the scene changed and split in two. I recognized both cities—London on the left, Berlin on the right. I remembered the German's words.

They mean to show us again that they are serious.

I saw the Captain stiffen, readying himself. And I saw something else, an indecision I did not expect to see as the creature by the weapon waved a limb and the tube started to glow and throb. I saw the Captain look, from London, to Berlin and back again, and I believe I understood his thought. If the creatures blasted Berlin first then the war could be finished in one stroke—all we had to do was wait and see before acting. And therein lay the danger, for if we waited, it might be London that was taken first, and all we had fought for these past years would be undone.

As for myself, I was only too aware that Hammerstrike was getting ever closer. The Captain and I came to our respective decisions at the same time. I hefted the rifle, aimed at the creature bent over the weapon. At the same instant that the Captain swiveled and tugged, pulling one of the beasts off balance. I fired; my target stumbled, but did not fall so I put another round in it, trying for the head this time.

As I was preparing for a third shot the moving picture shifted again, to show a night sky, and three Lancasters approaching. Hammerstrike was indeed coming—and the beasts knew about it. The long weapon glowed ever brighter and a loud hum rose to an almost deafening pitch. My target was still standing over it.

The Captain was busy, fighting off the other two creatures—he had one of them on the floor and tussled with the other, but I had no time to help him. I fired two more quick shots. The beast fell away—but not quickly enough. A blinding flash filled the room. I blinked, and looked down just in time to see one of the Lancasters explode and crumple to fall away in flames. The long tube pulsed again, the glow brightening, the hum rising.

"Time to go," I shouted. The Captain obviously had the same thought. He pulled a pin on a grenade and lobbed it under the weapon, in the same movement making a lunging jump to the opening where I stood. I lobbed one of my grenades down to almost the same spot and managed to pull him up and out of the dome to roll away, just as the twin concussion blasted the top off the structure.

We slid, out of control, down the steep snow slope as another explosion blasted rock and snow and metal to fly all around us. The night was filled with sound and fury that got even louder as the roar of the bombers came to us.

We came to a sliding stop on the very rim of the sheer cliff we had come up.

"Heads down," the Captain shouted, and we cowered, unable to do little else, as the bombers went overhead and, seconds later, the top of the mountain was blown clean away.

It took me a while to realize we were still alive, and longer still before I could hear much beyond the rumbling echo of the explosions in my head. The Captain tapped me on the shoulder and turned me around to look at what had happened.

The top level of the summit above the snow slope had been completely obliterated to leave only a pile of rock and rubble that was still smoking. There was no sign that any structure had ever been there.

We sat there for long minutes, catching our breath, peering in the dark, waiting to see if there would be any movement. But it seemed we were the only things left alive on the mountain.

"Looks like the job's done, old chap," the Captain said after a while. "Let's go home."

"Would you have let them do it?" I asked. "If it had been only Berlin, not London, would you have let them do it?"

He didn't even think before answering.

"No. Actually, I was considering letting them do both—it might have been the only way to finish this bloody thing once and for all. But whatever nefarious reasons those creatures had for stopping the war, I doubt they were doing it for the good of humanity. Remember those two jars we smashed? I wouldn't wish that death on another living soul—and if they had got their way here, a similar fate might have befallen all of us in time."

I will not tell of the descent—I will only mention that it was almost as terrifying as the events that took place under the dome. But we survived. I reached the bottom first and looked up. The Captain was still climbing, still focused on the rock face, so he did not see it. Indeed at first I wasn't sure I had either—it was merely a darker shadow against the night sky.

Then the wings opened out, obscuring the stars behind them. It launched itself off the cliff and into the sky.

The last I saw of it was as it crossed the face of the moon, still heading higher, the wings unfurled and soaring, far from any war or thought of war.

I envied it in that moment—and I envy it still.

THE LONGDOCK AIR

I 'm glad it was a straight line down the last hill into Longdock — the old truck's steering had been slowly stiffening up for the last hundred miles. Now it had finally gone, only a little give in it either way, just enough to get me into an auto shop that was, luckily for me, just inside the town boundary — I wasn't going to get much farther. The mechanic looked at her for five minutes. He sucked his teeth, chewed on the butt of a smoke, and told me it would be three days before he could get the parts, and twenty bucks to fix it, neither of which I could afford. I got my guitar and bag out of the trunk and walked the rest of the way into town in thin, gray drizzle that perfectly matched my mood.

My search for the song wasn't off to a promising start — but at least I'd got here, and I started to feel happier about the situation when I walked over a small hill and got my first look at the town proper. Longdock had once been a vibrant port on the river, back when the big paddle steamers ruled trade; the long quay and wooden buildings looked like they had not changed greatly since those days. John Gilthrop — the man I was here to see — had promised me a song.

I'd had fragments and snatches of it in my head for months now, a mostly forgotten thing from my childhood I guessed, but recently it just wouldn't leave me alone. I couldn't concentrate, I couldn't work — not that shoveling coal in a rail yard was much in the way of intellectually stimulating — and even sleeping was punctuated by far away voices singing in the wind, just too faint to make out, just too loud to ignore. So three weeks ago, I'd walked out of the yard, put everything I owned — which wasn't much beyond a change of clothes and a guitar — into the truck, and headed out, looking for an answer, looking for a song — my song.

I asked around clubs and among songwriters up and down the East Coast, playing what snatches of the song I could remember to anyone that would listen. Nobody knew the tune exactly, but there were many who swore they had heard it before — somewhere. Finally I was pointed toward John — Missouri John they called him. I sent him a letter, and he responded by inviting me to stay. The exchange of notes had excited both of us it seemed. Although I had to spend the last of my meager supply of cash on gas for the trip, the song was old to John, new to me and for that alone the trip was going to be worth it.

And at least I didn't have any lodging expenses to pay. Old John had a large house looking down over the quay.

"I'm rattling around like a marble in a bottle in here on my own — I could do with the company. You'll have no trouble finding it," he'd said on the phone. "It's yellow."

Yellow was an understatement. The house was perched high on a rocky outcrop and seemed to shine, luminescent despite the gray skies overhead. An elderly man — John, I presumed — waved at me from the doorstep as I walked up onto the rock. I heard a loud curse from my left and looked down to where two workmen seemed intent on demolishing part of the quay. They wore face masks as they tore long pieces of wood off the walkway, sending fine dust spraying all around them, and bringing fresh curses.

Old John's waving got more frantic, motioning me to come to him faster. He almost bundled me into his house with no wait for welcomes, and closed the door tight behind us before speaking.

"It don't do to be getting that crap into your lungs, lad," he said with a smile that never reached his eyes. "It'd be the end of your singing days for a while, just for starters."

John was just about the thinnest fellow I'd ever seen — all bone and stringy sinew over skin that stretched too tight over his frame. Liver spots ran like paint spatter over the backs of his hands and under the thin fine hair on his scalp — but his grip was firm and warm as he shook my hand.

"I thought you'd be driving down?" he said. That led us into a discussion of my trouble at the repair shop, and on to my initial views of the town, so that it was only later — too late — that I noticed how skillfully he had diverted attention from the men working out on the quay.

That first evening is something of a haze. I was tired after the long drive. After eating some hearty stew, drinking a couple of pints of strong home-brewed beer, then starting in on the rye almost straight after that, I was half asleep before I broached the subject of the old song.

"It can wait, lad," John said. "Something you'll learn when you get to my age — you need to take your sleep when you can get it — store some up against your dotage. There'll be more than enough late nights and early mornings to come later — trust me on that."

He showed me to a tidy, well appointed bedroom at the front of the house looking out over the dock to the slow stir of the river.

"It used to be our room — the wife and I," John said softly. "After she was taken, I couldn't look out that window any more." He turned away, but not before I saw the sudden tears in his eyes, tears he wiped away angrily, as if ashamed of them. "In the morning, if Betty is willing, I'll teach you the old song — the way I was taught it. And you'll see for yourself what I mean about the view."

He left me alone, looking out over the water as the sun started to go down in the West painting the sky pink and orange before going over to ever-deeper purple. I lay on the bed watching the shadows flit across the ceiling as the darkness gathered, and before I knew it I was soundly asleep.

Given my tiredness, that should have been that for the night, but I was woken, disoriented in the dark, sometime much later. The guitar rang in its case, the sound box vibrating in sympathy with whatever noise had woken me. I was used to the guitar's moods — garbage trucks, school buses, even loud motor cycles could set it off back at home — but I never expected anything here to be loud enough.

I lay there for a while waiting to see if the noise would be repeated, but all I heard was the soft sound of the river passing by. Shadows shifted on the ceiling — at first I took them to be just the play of moonlight on water, but then they took on a yellowish tinge — someone was outside with a lantern.

There was still no sound, but my interest was sufficiently piqued that I stood and went to the window. It wasn't just one person with a lantern — there were half a dozen lights, bobbing in unison as they moved along the quay down below the outcrop. It was too dark for me to make out details, but I saw enough to know that the people holding the lanterns were part of a small procession, three in front and three behind six men carrying what I couldn't help but assume was a coffin.

The whole scene took place in complete silence. The procession went to the end of the quay and went down out of sight from me but, presumably, into a boat. Several minutes later I heard the soft put-put of a two-stroke engine, and saw a small boat move away, heading out into the main stretch of river. It was mere seconds after that when I saw the flash, then heard a soft whump as the boat went up in flames. The lantern-lit procession stood on the edge of the quay watching until the flames did their job, burning the boat to its end. When it sank it went quickly, like a match being snuffed out.

The bobbing lights came back along the quay toward me, still in complete silence. I stepped back away from the window, suddenly afraid of being seen, and saw no more until the darkness once again filled the room and the procession went off and away into the impenetrable shadows of the town's streets beyond.

The last thing I heard before I lay on the bed, suddenly wide awake, was the soft noises of someone — John — returning to the house and closing the front door firmly behind him.

When I woke again sunlight was coming in through the curtains. I dressed and went downstairs where I found John stood out on his front porch, coffee in one hand, a smoke in the other, staring out over the river. If I was going to bring up the topic of the overnight procession, that would have been the time, but I kept my mouth shut, helped myself to some coffee, and went to join him in the morning sun.

We drank our coffee in silence — there was plenty of it. The sun might be up, but the town seemed to be still mostly asleep, and even the swooping gulls that flew overhead hadn't yet mustered up enough energy to make any noise. I looked out over the water but there was no sign that anything at all untoward had happened — there was no debris; not so much as a smear of oil on the water. Whatever the townspeople had been doing, the night and the river had successfully swallowed all evidence of it.

As we drank, the town slowly woke up. A truck coughed and barked its way out of a parking area, somewhere in the distance a chain saw chugged, twice, before starting up, and a workman, already putting a mask over his face, walked along the quay below us, obviously intent on getting back to work on the timbers. He seemed to be alone today, but if John wasn't going to remark on the fact I certainly wasn't going to press him.

Just when I thought we might get all the way through coffee without speaking, John flicked the butt of his smoke away and down to the river beneath the outcrop. I watched the red tip fizz and smoke as it hit the water, giving me yet another opening to mention the antics of the previous night. But John was already talking.

"There'll be fog soon enough. Best get inside afore you catch a chill, boy."

I looked around — apart from a few wispy clouds there was only clear sky. But then I saw it — far downstream to the south — a thin bank of light gray, a sharp line across the sky and river, edging closer. John saw me looking and smiled.

"You'll get to know the ways of the water when you've been here as long as I have. Come away in — I'll get some breakfast for us, then we can get round to what brought you here."

Breakfast proved to be enough pancakes to fill me twice over, more coffee, and another two smokes. It was almost noon before John went to a cupboard in the parlor and brought out a battered old National guitar. The soundbox was tarnished and dulled and the body had been dinged more often than my old truck, but it rang high and clear through the house when he struck an open G major chord. He took a glass bottleneck from his vest pocket and slid into a chugging blues. His voice was deep, but almost as pure as the old National's as he sang. I recognized it immediately — I felt like I'd already heard it all, in my dreams.

He sleeps with the fish, in the depths far below.

He sleeps with the fish, in the dark.

He dreams where he sleeps as we watch from the shore

And the dreaming lord is singing where he lies.

It sounded like something I'd heard of Leadbelly's down in New Orleans, but scored for a higher pitched voice — almost as if it was meant for a woman to sing, and not John's clear, but low bass. The old man strained slightly on the higher notes, then, just as I was expecting him to launch onto a chorus, started to cough from deep in his chest with a rumble that sounded like something was broken in there.

He waved me away when I went to try to help. He stroked the old guitar, gently, then looked up at me.

"Not yet, it seems. Betty will let us know when it's your time."

John was smiling, but I was frustrated as hell — I'd come for the song — that song — and to hear the snatch of it, then have it taken away, was just going to make my wait that bit more unbearable for me. I'm afraid I whined, like a petulant, demanding boy half my actual age.

"What did you mean, time? Who is this Dreaming Lord the song is about? And nearly time for what?" I asked .

To his credit the old man didn't tell me off for being a brat — he just smiled sadly.

"Questions like that make me thirsty," the old man said. "Will you join me in a glass or two?"

It was more of an order than a question. Over the next few hours I drank more of his rye but no matter how much I probed, I got nowhere with my questions, either about the song, or the events on the quay in the depths of the night.

"It's not something I can rightly tell you," John said. "It's something you have to see for yourself, something you have to feel." He put the rye bottle away. "Go for a walk lad, down to the shops and inn by the river. Have a beer — and a good look around. We'll talk later this evening over dinner."

"Are you coming?"

"No — I've had enough excitement for one day. I need a lie down."

The old man scratched idly at the back of his hand. Skin flaked off to fall on the arm of his chair. It was still there as I stood to leave. It caught the light strangely — iridescent, oily. When John left the room I went for a closer look. I had to lift it between my fingers to make sure I wasn't dreaming, but my first impression had indeed been right — it wasn't skin at all, but a scale — a rainbow-hued fish scale, as big as my thumbnail.

Longdock had definitely seen its best days. It looked to me like a town on a slow but inevitable, slide to ruin. The few shops that were open had no customers, just bored staff behind dusty counters in dimly lit stores. The bar in the riverside inn was empty save for a sullen girl behind the counter. I ordered a beer — more rye would have been pushing it that early in the afternoon — and tried to start up a conversation. It proved to be hard work — as if English was her second language and she had to struggle to formulate any kind of reply whatsoever.

The girl scratched idly at the back of her hand and something fell to the countertop. Then I did what John had asked me to — I looked, closely. The countertop, the tables around me, and the area of floor I could see, was all littered with the same kind of large fish scales I had seen John shed in his parlor. The more I looked for them, the more I saw. They lay strewn, discarded, everywhere.

The girl asked if I wanted another beer, but I turned it down — the first tasted dull and lifeless, like the turbid river water that flowed just yards away. As I turned to leave I looked back. She stared after me, still scratching, still shedding scales. In the dim light her eyes looked too large, too bright, and her mouth opened and shut, not speaking, just gulping in air as if it was unnatural to her.

Now that I knew what I was looking for I saw it everywhere on the way along the main street going back to John's place. Many of the shop attendants had the same blank stares; they flapped their gums but none spoke, just stared with their too-bright, too-large eyes. As I turned my back on them, the singing started, soft and low, like a spiritual sung by a distant choir. The ground underfoot seemed to throb and beat in time, and I felt my senses swim, threatening to send me insensate to the ground.

Where he lies, where he lies, where he lies, where he lies,

The dreaming lord is singing where he lies.

I hurried back to the relative safety of John's kitchen. When he looked into my eyes he didn't speak, just fetched the rye and two glasses .

Over a drink I told the old man what I saw in the inn and through the doors of the shops, and about the singing that had followed me all the way along the road. He did not seem in the slightest surprised.

"He was here before us. Before the Choctaw, too, if the old tales are to be believed." he said.

"He? You mean there is a person at the bottom of it all?"

The old man laughed.

"At the bottom, yes — but not in the way you mean. The dreaming lord is singing where he lies."

"The Dreaming Lord? What in blazes does that mean?"

John shrugged.

"He's a god, of some kind — at least that's what I think. He's down there in the river — sleeping, singing — dreaming. And when we go, we go to sing with him."

It all sounded so matter of fact — simple even, but I was still struggling to understand.

"What do you mean, go?"

"Down to the river to pray," John said, singing the line, his deep voice raising a sympathetic vibration from the guitars in the other room. "It's almost my time — it's almost time for a lot us who have been here for a while. The town is just about spent now. I think we old un's will all go together."

"Is that why I'm here? I thought I came for a song but it feels like there's something bigger going on here. There is, isn't there? Tell me!"

I was close to whining again, and once again he indulged me more than I would have in his place.

"Oh, you came for a song all right, lad. We all came for a song — it's in our heads, our hearts, our very bones. But you know that already? You're one of the choir, aren't you?"

I felt something open up inside me at his words, as if he'd just led me to a window that I had always been too scared to look through. I couldn't speak — the guitars in the parlor answered for me, ringing softly, tuned to match the pitch and timbre of John's voice. I remembered what I'd heard — both here in the house and out in the street.

Where he lies, where he lies, where he lies, where he lies,

The Dreaming Lord is singing where he lies.

I had a sudden urge to sing as the old National — Betty — rang out loud. John looked at me.

"She thinks you're ready — you look like you're ready. It's time you learned why you're here."

I fetched my guitar as he picked up the Dobro. The old Martin sounded thin compared to the National but once I'd got it tuned to open G and followed John's lead the two instruments created a sum greater than their parts, an almost orchestral effect amplified by the old timbers of the house and echoing around us.

John launched into the verse I'd heard from him earlier.

He sleeps with the fish, in the depths far below.

He sleeps with the fish, in the dark.

He dreams where he sleeps as we watch from the shore

And the dreaming lord is singing where he lies.

I joined in with the chorus — or at least I started to.

Where he lies, where he lies, where he lies, where he lies,

I felt the floor vibrate underfoot.

The Dreaming Lord is singing where he lies.

The whole house shook as the guitars and voices merged into a wall of noise that threatened to deafen me. We were in perfect harmony as we went straight into the second verse—John didn't have to teach me it, it was already there, fully formed in my head, just waiting to be sung.

He dreams of the days when he laughed as he swam,

He dreams with the fish in the dark,

He sleeps and he dreams of the times that will come ,

And the Dreaming Lord is singing where he lies.

Dust fell from the ceiling, glasses tinkled in the cupboards and old John's own voice faltered. I saw fear and confusion on his face as I brought the chorus to an end on my own, but those emotions were quickly replaced by something else — a calm, serene smile that looked like acceptance.

Where he lies, where he lies, where he lies, where he lies,

The Dreaming Lord is singing where he lies.

The room rang with a final, fading, chord and the house hummed in time then slowly, almost regretfully, went quiet.

John looked at me and nodded.

"As usual, Betty has the right of it. You're definitely one of us — and it's nearly time."

Betty might indeed have it right, but I was still mightily confused. I had my song — I'd got what I came for — but there was more here, something that felt like peace — and home. I wanted more of both — I needed more of both.

"What happens now? Can we sing it again?"

John poured us each another large shot of rye.

"Not yet. But it will be soon — maybe even tonight, if what you tell me you saw downtown is true."

"And then what?"

John echoed what I'd been thinking moments earlier.

"You've got what you came for. You can go any time you like. But just so you know — wherever you go, you'll always have the song with you — in your head, in your heart — in your bones. It never really leaves us if we leave his side. At least here on the dock we can sit and be with him, sing with him. At least here we have some peace."

"Peace sounds real nice." I said — and I meant it. I'd found something here I never even knew I'd been looking for — it scared the hell out of me just about as much as it attracted me — but it was also a damn sight more appealing than shoveling coal. John motioned towards the door. I knew what he was asking. I stayed put.

There was more yet to learn.

We spent the evening in small talk. The guitars occasionally joined in if John raised his voice then, more often as the night went on, started to ring in accompaniment to my own speech, to which John merely smiled and nodded.

After a supper of ham and fries we switched from rye to coffee and smokes on the front porch, watching the sun go down far to the west over the river. As I looked over the quay, I asked again about the events of the night before.

"George got the crap from the rotted timbers in his lungs and went too early," John said. "Damned shame — especially if the rest of us go tonight."

"He hasn't gone to sing with the Dreaming Lord then?" I seemed to slipping into the same strange modes of speech as the old man — after the rye and coffee it somehow didn't feel unnatural anymore.

John laughed bitterly.

"No — he died, the old fashioned way — but we put him in the river anyway, just in case."

The old man went quiet for a while, and darkness fell while we finished the coffee and smokes. I was about to remark on the stillness and silence when John looked up. I was surprised to see tears in his eyes as he whispered.

"It's time to go."

I saw that his skin was dry — parched almost — and flaking — more of the same thumbnail sized scales. He picked at one recalcitrant scale and it came away leaving a weeping wound behind — it oozed white, not red, and I smelled fish, not for the first time that evening.

John didn't seem to notice. He stood. As we went into the kitchen I heard the guitars ring to welcome us. John fetched the National. I moved to get my own instrument but the old man put a hand on my shoulder.

"Old Betty here will do us both just fine. Come and enjoy the show — I can guarantee it's one you'll never forget. Besides, you're in the choir now. There's singing to be done."

I followed John out onto the quay. It wasn't long before more folks started to turn up — everyone in the town at a guess. The ones nearest us, on the quay itself, started to sing — some had guitars of their own, others played harmonica, squeeze box, tin flute and fiddle, while some just stamped their feet and sang.

The song built slowly and I joined in as if I'd known it my whole life. I felt the song swell up inside me like a sudden rush of water and my voice sounded higher and purer than I ever believed possible.

He sleeps with the fish, in the depths far below.

He sleeps with the fish, in the dark.

Only halfway into the first verse and everybody was singing, the guitars were ringing out across the river and the whole quay thrummed and bounced in time. I remembered what John said about the old timbers and hoped they'd stand up to the strain, then everything was forgotten but the swell of the song in my head and in my heart — in my bones.

He dreams where he sleeps as we watch from the shore

And the Dreaming Lord is singing where he lies.

The air was filled with song, John's old National ringing loudest and clearest over the top of everything else, singers, instruments, stomping, clapping — the quay had become a church, and John was leading the choir in hymn.

Where he lies, where he lies, where he lies, where he lies,

The Dreaming Lord is singing where he lies .

Out in the river, a god paid heed to his worshippers. The river rose and fell in a swell that perfectly matched the stomping feet and ringing chords. A light, faint at first and almost oily in its sheen, rose up from a hundred yards from shore.

A new voice joined the song — high and ethereal, full of tonal shifts and flurried clusters of quavers providing a backdrop solo to our hymn.

Old John moved beside me and put a hand to my shoulder — his skin glistened now — no longer dry but moist and shining. His mouth opened and gulped air, twice before he spoke, his too-large eyes staring into mine.

"Will you serve?" he asked.

I didn't have time to stop and answer — the chorus demanded my full attention.

Where he lies, where he lies, where he lies, where he lies,

The Dreaming Lord is singing where he lies.

A deep calm filled me up and rose through me, ecstatic in its fervor. I could only look at John and nod — of course I was staying — how could I leave now?

John looked in my eyes and nodded back.

"I knew it as soon as I laid eyes on you. Welcome — choirmaster . The house is yours now — so is Betty, if you'll have her?" And with that he passed me the old battered National. "Keep the song in your heart and bones — she'll let you know when it's your time."

It didn't seem proper to just hold her, so I strummed the chords, louder as I got more confident, helping to provide a march — not a funeral march — never that — for John and a dozen others as they walked down off the quay and into a long row boat. I saw two others I recognized — the girl from the bar, still staring, still gulping, and the man from the auto shop — I guessed my truck wasn't going anywhere anytime soon.

The song rose to a crescendo as they rowed away. The light out in the river danced and hummed, a shimmering aurora of green and blue and gold, rising up and opening out like great wings of singing light that fell, softly, over the boat and sunk back into the water. We reached the end of the hymn, the final chorus fading and echoing down to silence as darkness fell on a quiet river.

The Dreaming Lord is singing where he lies.

I use the National most evenings now as the sun goes down and the Dreaming God sings—Betty rings in the yellow house in a way my own guitar never will, and she makes me feel closer to the old man. It's a quiet life for the most part. The town is running down slowly into the river — down to the river to pray — and there's hardly any life of any sort left in us — just the song, ebbing and flowing like the water that goes by, and goes by, and goes by.

I spotted a dry patch of skin on the back of my hand today. It itches like crazy. Someday — not tomorrow, not next week, but someday, I'll scratch at it, scratch at it and see a clear, rainbow-hued scale flake off.

Maybe if I left here, left Betty, I'd be able to hold it off for a time. But the song would be there — always there, in my head, in my heart, in my bones, and it would bring me back sooner rather than later. I'm guessing the choir is always right where it should be when it's needed — and a choirmaster is needed more than most.

So for now, I have my smokes, I have my rye, I have old battered Betty — and I have my song. And on a someday another will come to learn from me, and then I'll go down to the river to pray and maybe meet John again, in the deep, in the dark, singing with our God .

This is who I am.

He dreams where he sleeps as we watch from the shore

And the Dreaming Lord is singing where he lies.

THE COLOR THAT STOLE CHRISTMAS

T he day before Christmas wasn't the best time for John Millar to be calling for my services—especially when he told me he needed me to have a look at a sick reindeer. Millar's deer were the highlight of the town's Christmas Day festivities. Everyone came out to the square to see the sled—the eight deer all togged up with red bobble hats and bells on their antlers, old Millar himself padded up in a Santa suit, and a small present for everyone, young or old. It was a town tradition going back as far as Millar's own granddaddy's day, and anything that threatened it was going to cause ructions—not just here on the ranch either. I knew before I even got there that the man was going to be tetchy and nervous.

The drive out to his ranch in the foothills wasn't really a problem; not yet anyway. Last night's snowfall was a light one for these parts—a couple of inches of crisp, white, dry stuff that the pickup made it through with no difficulty at all. I knew the road well enough to know where I needed to take it easy and when I could go a bit faster.

I'd been out at his farm many times that year; anyone who runs a petting zoo in summer around here deserves all they get, with ticks, viruses and diseases all more than happy to take advantage of the balmy summers and wet Fall. Add in good kids putting their fingers too close to animals' mouths and claws, and bad kids intent on mischief, and you have a recipe for many minor disasters, many of which needed my attention. It was normally quiet in winter though—too cold for one thing—so I was surprised to get the call—surprised and slightly annoyed, for I still had far too much of my own organizing to do that day.

So I wasn't in the best of moods anyway when I drove up and parked outside his large barn. The look on Millar's face wiped away any selfish thoughts I had—whatever was troubling him, it was serious.

I saw just how bad as soon as I followed him into the barn.

"Something's wrong with Prancer's back leg," Millar said, but I could see that already—see it, but not understand it, for it was like no infection I had ever seen before. Green bubbles frothed in a seething sore that appeared to cover most of the upper hind-leg. The reindeer seemed calm, even docile, and if the infection was causing any pain, it didn't show. But it was obviously still growing, and there was something about the flowing, almost liquid, nature of the infected flesh that made me feel queasy just to look at.

"Is this the only one infected?" I asked.

Millar nodded, unable to take his gaze from the reindeer.

"So far," he replied, echoing back to me my own worries about possible contagion before continuing "And there's something else you should see."

The reindeer seemed to be in no immediate danger so I followed Millar out to the back of the barn.

"Ain't no idea what it is or where it came from—but I found the deer nosing around it earlier, so I've been keeping them away. Ain't never seen nothing like it."

At first glance it looked like any other hole in the ground, then I realized that the snow had melted—was still melting—around its edges. It was around a foot in diameter, roughly circular, and about a two feet deep. A rainbow aura of oily smoke seemed to drift and sway above the hole, strangely resistant to dispersal by the rather stiff breeze that blew over from the north. There was something else too—a green fluidity to the ground around the circumference of the hole, seething and roiling in much the same manner I had already seen at the deer's thigh. I also noticed that Millar was standing well back. I decided that discretion was the better part of valor and stood, backing away to join him.

"The other deer are fine—you've checked?"

Millar was still staring at the hole. It seemed to be slightly bigger even since I'd bent to look at it. It took the rancher several seconds to reply.

"Just Prancer," he said. "I'll keep him apart from the others—but I'll still be able to do the parade tomorrow morning, won't I? We can't let the kids down."

So help me, I agreed with him. My defense is that I didn't think there was a major problem. It looked like a mostly benign infection to me, and besides, it was Christmas—we all had better things to be worrying about.

I did take a sample—just enough of the green stuff to fill a small pill bottle I had in my bag. I made sure the lid was secure and put it away in my jacket pocket. As I left I assured Millar that, as long as Prancer was isolated and the rest were kept away from the hole in the ground they should be fine.

I had one last look at the hole in the ground—it was indeed getting bigger, but only very slowly. Millar seemed to be more worried about the reindeer, so I left him to it and went about my business.

I'm terrible at planning Christmas. If it weren't for Ellen, everything would get finished in a last mad dash—or not finished at all. As it was, she had done most of the hard work—getting the presents, buying the food and booze, and sending out cards. I only had one big job—get the tree. That was something I could handle.

My first stop was to the bank to get some cash—there was a queue at the ATM, but it was empty—and warmer—inside. I passed the time of day with old Mrs. Watkins, held her hand and asked after her cats. I petted the small yappy dog that Mrs. Haskett never allowed out of her arms. I shook hands with George Winslow, used a pen at the checkout, and had a hand on the doorknob for a long time as I let the Kaminski family shuffle in out of the cold. I may have touched some other places too—that's just the ones I can remember.

It was more than enough.

It was Frank Popper that spotted it, but not until after he'd helped me pick out a tree. We'd manhandled it into my pickup, and shaken hands on a deal that was only twice what I thought the thing was worth—beggars can't be choosers, and I'd left it far too late to have time to shop for a better deal.

"Hey, Tom—you've sprung a leak," he said, looking down to my right hand jacket pocket. I touched the area instinctively—it felt damp and strangely hot to the touch. I raised my hand to my face—my palm shone, green and almost luminescent, a thin film of rainbow shimmer dancing across my skin. The pill bottle—what was left of it, was a fused, partially melted blob of plastic in my pocket and my jacket, the shirt beneath it and the waistband of my trousers were all damp, shining green.

"What is it, Tom?" Frank asked, rubbing his own hand—the one I'd just shook, down his pants leg as if trying to scrape the skin off. "Is it acid? "

I tried to reassure him that there was nothing to worry about, but I saw panic rising in his eyes as he looked at me—I must have shown that I was more than a bit worried. I told him to have a good wash with hot water and soap—he said he'd water down some bleach just to be sure—and I drove home, as slowly as my rising fear would allow.

Old Sam ran towards me as I reached the gate, tail wagging and tongue lolling. I hated to do it, but I shooed him away, rather too harshly, and he left in a hurt sulk. Likewise, I repelled Ellen's lunge for a kiss and made straight for the shower. She came in to fetch my clothes—I'd left them in a heap on the floor—and she left, hurt and angry, when I shouted, too loud, that she should just leave the damned things alone.

I stood there for the longest time, scrubbing hard until my skin down the right side was raw and bright red. There was no trace of green, no hint of shimmering, dancing color, but I washed again, just to make sure. I left the clothes on the floor while I got changed—I had to tell Ellen, again, to leave them alone. After I was changed I put on a pair of marigolds I found under the kitchen sink—I wasn't taking any more chances—and took the jacket, shirt and pants out back. I used some kerosene and burned the clothes in the barbecue pit. Flakes of black ash mingled with the snow, and thick smoke rose and was quickly dispersed. I looked hard for a tinge of green or any hint of a shimmering rainbow aura but saw nothing. As I'd done in the shower, I stood there for a long, long time, just to make sure, and I was quite cold by the time I turned back to the house.

I had some making up to do, with both Ellen and the dog, but I think I managed it just fine, although I didn't give Ellen the whole story. I said I'd spilled some Iodine—she knew well the mess that could make—and neither of us mentioned it again as we ate lunch. After that we were busy for a while putting up the tree and decorations, and when she laughed at my swearing as I tried to get the lights to work I knew everything was okay again.

As I was changing to go out to the church service that evening I had another check on my right hand side around my belly. I'd rubbed some skin raw in my over-enthusiasm, but there was no trace of any green, and as we walked along the crisp snow covered sidewalks to the church I was happy that I seemed to have dodged the bullet.

The church service itself did much to improve my spirits even more—communal singing of the old songs always does that to me—a memory of family days of youth that never stops tugging at the heart. Reverend Johnson made an impassioned plea for world peace, we all sang 'Once in Royal David's City' and the old organ wheezed and bellowed alongside our joy.

I was feeling quite full of the Christmas spirit as we sidled out into the growing dusk. That all changed as soon as we went out into the parking lot—it was only a snatch of overheard conversation, but it was enough to have me heading for my pickup again.

"It's not the same without John Millar's singing, is it? I do hope he's okay—the kids always love his sled at the parade."

I'd quite forgotten the rancher, more worried about my own troubles. The fact that he wasn't at church—the man was devout and a regular—brought my earlier fears rushing back. I needed to make sure he was indeed okay.

Luckily Ellen understood—a veterinarian's wife gets used quickly to him keeping odd hours. Once we reached home she made me wait while she made up a thermos of coffee for my trip. My worries were only increasing with the delay—I tried ringing the ranch, but got no answer, even when leaving it ringing for a good minute and more.

Old Sam wanted to come with me as I got into the pickup—he still hadn't quite forgiven me for earlier, and he left in another sulk when I refused him—I just wasn't ready to take any more chances—not until I knew what, if anything, was going on.

The drive out to the ranch wasn’t so straightforward this time—my battery wasn't in the best condition, and the headlights had trouble finding the edges of the track in the dark. To make matters worse, just as I left the town boundary it started to snow again. It was just fluffy soft stuff at first, but by the time I was halfway out it was coming down hard, and I knew my time at the ranch was going to have to be short if I was to have a chance of getting home again.

No lights showed in the ranch as I drove up the driveway—another worry to add to the many that were stacking up. Even knowing that I would be draining the battery even more, I couldn't bring myself to switch off the headlights, and left them on, pointing at the big barn.

"John? Are you here?"

I got no answer except a bleat from inside the barn—one of the goats at a guess.

I stepped, reluctantly, up to the barn entrance.

"John?"

That only got me another bleat, but at least my eyes were starting to adjust to the light. The goats and sheep were in their enclosure off to my right, and the pigs grunted at the back—but there was no sign of the reindeer in the big pen to my left—and the back door of the barn lay wide open.

I went over, slowly. The back looked out over the deepest part of the forest that led up to the higher peaks. There was no sign of John—but there were plenty of hoof marks on the snow, and twin ruts that led off into the distance. The thought that he might just have taken the sled out for a pre-parade run made me feel slightly better.

The hole in the ground was still there, just off to my left—nearly twice the size it had been, but somehow less scary here in the dark. It was just another darker patch of blackness, although a faint green glow rose from it that I did not like at all.

Still, I was able to tell myself that all was, if not well, at least not too bad. The goats, sheep and pigs showed no sign of any green infection, and there seemed to be nothing untoward either in the barn or at the main ranch house—I knocked hard on the door but got no answer.

Five minutes afterward I was on my way back into town, fighting with the wheel as the pickup struggled through quickly thickening snow.

Any hopes I had of a quiet night in to prepare for Christmas were dashed as soon as I got back. I'd barely got in the door when Ellen shooed me back out again.

"Mrs. Haskett has been on for nearly an hour—she's at her wits' end."

"What, again?" I said, but the old joke didn't get a laugh.

"Just go and see her—I'll have some mulled wine and a hot supper ready when you get back. And take Sam this time."

I shouted for the dog, but to my surprise he didn't come. He sat in his basket by the door, just looking up at me.

I laughed .

"He's not talking to me. Keep that mulled wine warm—I won't be long."

I went back out into the night.

I walked—it was only a couple of hundred yards—hardly worth taking the pickup.

Mrs. Haskett was at her door waiting for me. She had her arms crossed tight around her chest and looked cold enough to have been standing there for a while.

"It's Lord Timmy," she said, leading me into her over-fussy front room. "He's very poorly."

Lord Timmy lay on a velvet cushion in front of an open fire. A plate of what looked like chopped sirloin steak lay next to it, but the little dog wouldn't be enjoying the good life any longer. He wasn't just poorly—he was quite dead—or at least, the dog that had been Lord Timmy was. The thing that lay on the cushion had plenty of life left in it. What had recently been flesh and bone was a seething, bubbling mess of green fibrous tissue—plant like in some respects, but writhing, like a nest of tormented snakes. The whole body quivered and shook, and the air above it danced, a swirling rainbow of oily vapor that I dared not approach too closely.

"Do something," Mrs. Haskett pleaded from behind me. "Help my poor Timmy."

It probably wasn't what the woman had in mind, but the seething mass of green seemed to be trying to form into something more solid, and I wasn't sure I wanted to hang around for a closer look. It was more instinct than rational thought, but in one movement I bent, lifted both the velvet pillow and its vile contents, and tossed them on the fire.

A noxious stench immediately made me back away; the green tendrils thrashed—and something screamed as a huge burst of flame roared up the chimney. It sounded far too much like a child in pain. I backed away and turned, intending to apologize to the old woman. I expected her to be in shock, but she merely stood there, arms still tightly crossed, staring first at the fire, then at me. Without a word she opened her arms. There wasn't a dog nestled close to her bosom—but the green where it had been was clear enough. Three pencil-thick tendrils rose out of her left breast—a bosom that was little more than a sac of vile pus—and a dancing shimmer of oily vapor rose all around her—some of it seemed to dance in her eyes as she reached for me.

It was only by dumb luck that I managed to dodge out of her way and reach the door first. I expected her to follow me, but when I turned back it was to see her reach into the fire, as if trying to save what was left of the dog. The flames took her too, and she went up with a whoosh like a rag doused in kerosene. I had to back away as the flaming figure—by then I had stopped thinking of it as a woman at all—twisted and screamed around the room, spreading the flames wherever she touched. Her last act was to grab hold of her Christmas tree and pull it into an embrace, waltzing—slow, slow, quick, quick slow, into the center of the room before finally falling to the floor. As I backed away outside into the street the house was already well alight.

Doc Anslem turned up with the fire department, but there was nothing for him to save—whatever was left of Mrs. Haskett and her dog had gone with the flames—and I cannot say I was sorry about it. I'd watched closely again—it had looked like normal fire, smoke and ash with no hint of green or shimmering rainbow aura, so I had hopes that whatever infection had been inside the house had been contained. But the sight of what had happened to her got me thinking—I remembered petting the dog—and everything else I'd touched earlier in the bank.

"I need your help, Doc," I said. "This might be bad."

He must have seen something in my eyes, for he didn't argue, just came with me as I went to look in on old Mrs. Watkins—she'd been the first person I had contact with in the bank—any infection might be furthest along in her.

The snow was heavier still now, and I wished I hadn't ventured out so blithely on foot—but again, it wasn't far, and we reached the woman's front door in just a few minutes.

Nobody answered when I rang the bell, although there was a flickering light in the front room, so it seemed the TV was running. I went to the window and peered inside. A rainbow aura of shimmering vapors danced over a prone body in the center of the room. It might once have been the old lady, but now it was just a green, amorphous blob, throwing out long snakelike tendrils that, even as I watched, were squeezing and crushing the mewling bodies of half a dozen or so cats.

I think I must have let out a shout—almost a scream, for the Doc came to my side immediately. I showed him what had become of Mrs. Watkins—thankfully now long gone. He tried to push past me, heading for the door.

"I need to get in there—I need to help her."

"She's long past helping, Doc," I said. "Just look at her. And we can't go in—we might let that stuff out—I fear there's enough of it out and about already without adding to it."

I told him my story, as quick as I could—it didn't take long, and during it he went quite pale, then made a series of phone calls—I only heard a few words—CDC, quarantine and martial law were all used. But looking at what had happened—was still happening, in the old lady's front room I knew it would all be too little, too late.

If anything, the scene that met us at George Winslow's place was the worst of all the sights of the night. This time we had to go in—the Doc had me cover my mouth with a handkerchief, but even then the stench was eye-watering and enough to make us both flee for fresh air.

But not until we'd seen all that we had to see—the Winslow family—and the sofas they had been sitting on, were now little more than a mass of green tissue. A head here, an arm there, a scrap of torn clothing—that was all that remained of George, June and their three kids, the youngest of whom was barely more than a baby. The green had shown no mercy, rampaging through the family, eating them out of hearth and home—even the carpet was infused with green goop, and the oily rainbow vapor rose everywhere we looked.

"We need to burn it," the Doc said. "Raze it to the ground before it spreads."

I felt heat where there shouldn't be heat, touched my jacket at my right hand side, and, fearing the worst, dared a look.

My hand glowed, pale green, a rainbow aura of dancing color all around it.

"Ellen!"

I was already running as I left the Doc, wide eyed, on the doorstep.

The trek back through town wasn't far, but it was a nightmare that never seemed to end. The snow had eased, but several fresh inches had fallen and in my haste I slipped and slid, falling on my face twice before forcing myself to slow. The heat at my side got warmer, only serving to make me want to hurry all the more.

I heard a scream off to my right, then another—the Kaminski house—but I didn't slow or go to check—I knew already what I'd see, what I feared was waiting for me at home.

I passed two patches of snow that looked green and frothing—large enough to have a big dog—or a small person—underneath. The air was filled with dancing rainbow vapor, a noxious stench threatened to burn my throat and nostrils, and my mind was full of images, of thrashing green snakes and fire. I feared the worst as I broke into a run on reaching my driveway.

"Ellen!"

"In the kitchen," she shouted. Something green was smeared in a long slimy trail all through the hall.

"Are you okay?" I shouted—but saw for myself as soon as I pushed the kitchen door open. Ellen was fine—but old Sam wasn't. He lay in his basket looking up at me, with Ellen standing to one side as if unsure what to do. The green had hold of him from tail to front paws—there wasn't much left of his rear end, but he still tried to raise his head and lick my hand as I approached. What had been his tail wagged, flopping a fresh, liquid splash of green on the floor.

"Get out," I said to Ellen, rather too sharply. "Quickly now."

I waited until she had gone through to the front room, then gave Sam the quick death his friendship had deserved. He licked my hand and whimpered, just once, before the flames took him. The resultant fire ruined most of our fine kitchen, but I was starting to think it didn't matter much anymore.

Once I was sure all that was left of the green that took Sam was gone, I went upstairs and scrubbed myself with bleach—I didn't put much water in it, and it stung like crazy against my skin. I kept at it for several minutes, hard enough to raise welts—but I was too late. The green had taken hold all down my right hand side, seething and bubbling, spongy and somehow slimy to the touch. There was no pain—but I knew I wasn't going to be myself for too much longer. I stood in the shower and wept—for old ladies cruelly taken, for my pal Sam, and for myself, and the fate that so surely was waiting for me before the night was out.

Ellen stood, wide eyed, in the front room when I finally went back downstairs. She was in shock—maybe that was for the best. I was tempted to end it—for us both—there and then, but the sound of sirens started up, accompanied by the loud honking of many cars. It was possible—barely—that help that arrived. I put Ellen's overcoat on for her—she seemed incapable of doing anything for herself—and led her out into the night.

It seemed that the whole town—those spared the ravages of the green—had made their way to the main square. There was no sign of any immediate help though—the sirens had been the local fire trucks, answering a call from the bank. Flames rose high into the sky—orange, red and yellow—and this time there was more than a hint of green in there. The ash fell on us, gray and mottled, raining down through a shimmering rainbow aura of vapors. We all stood in ranks, silent, as if riveted to the spot by the sight.

Some of the Kaminskis were just off to my right. The eldest daughter had her face raised to the sky, laughing even as her green cheeks sloughed off to pile in bubbling folds of greasy goop on the shoulders of her coat. Her mother didn’t even notice—she pawed at the ash as it fell, like a kitten pawing at string, and as each fleck touched her skin it quickly blossomed, an obscene green flower that burst and sent snaking tendrils of luminescence searching and tasting through the crowd. Everywhere I looked was green and glowing and somehow peculiarly relaxing—I had no urge to flee; no need to worry—it was Christmas after all—what was there to fear?

The heat at my side flared ever warmer, and I felt it now, bubbling and seething just under the skin, as if needing to break free and be born. When I took Ellen's hand in mine it too felt warm, spongy and slimy to the touch. I looked over at her and saw her love, dancing green in her eyes.

The sirens fell quiet, the cars stopped honking and the only sound in the square was the crackle of the fire.

Then we heard it—hoofs on snow, the grate of sled tracks on ice, and bells, jingling all the way. An aurora of shifting rainbow color filled the far corner of the square, and John Millar brought Christmas to the town.

His reindeer weren't quite deer any more, having become squat, bulbous, and many limbed—legs of unequal lengths that gave the whole sleigh a lurching, almost comical rock and rolling action as it hove into view. The deer smiled as they saw the waiting crowd, their slimy luminescent tongues, each as long as my arm, lolling wetly, dripping stringy drool in a green trail that stretched away behind them out of town .

Millar sat high on the back of the sleigh, a huge bloated parody of Father Christmas. He wasn't much more than a pale blob inside a suit that had once been red but was now a festering, weeping sore of seething slime topped with a smiling face and beard of glowing green foam and sloughing skin. He smiled—there was nothing but green glowing inside him—and let out a booming roar that was far from laughter. The youngest Kaminski child gripped her mother's arm—and as she tugged the limb came away, green and dripping. The fallen arm started to crawl through the crowd, pulling itself along on already dissolving fingers, leaving a slimy trail of green behind it. No one but me noticed.  This was Christmas, and the town had its traditions.

We all stood there, expectant, as the sled pulled to a halt in the center of the square. An orderly queue formed—children first, and we shuffled forward to receive our gifts, a little something for everyone.

As I approached I saw there wasn't much of Millar left—the fat blob oozed over the edges of the sleigh, dripping green goop in puddles that then seethed away into the crowd with a life of their own. Millar's face was just recognizable in folds of slime and partially digested fat and muscle—but his eyes were still his own, and they smiled at me.

"And what do you want from Father Christmas?" he said, his voice a wet, gurgling bubble, barely audible.

I put out a hand, and he dropped a fist-sized blob of green into it. It felt warm to the touch, and immediately started to bubble and burrow and feed. I stood aside to let Ellen meet Santa.

Then just to make our Christmas complete, there were fireworks. We looked up as the first one burst overhead, green filling our eyes. Then the night sky blazed with a host of exploding stars and whizzing rockets as a seemingly endless meteor shower brought the green message of this new Christmas to the world.

We clapped our hands with glee.

The green bubbled, and was born.

OUTPOSTS

M arcus Caelius got his first look at his destination when they crested a hill and finally descended out of the damp, dismal fog that had been their constant companion for the last two days. The rough fort of Rumabo ahead of them did not look any more inviting, and he wished that he could have stayed, snug and nearly warm, in his country quarters south of the wall of Hadrian. But Flavius Butto, the Centurion in command here, had asked for him specifically, calling on a family favor, and Caelius could not ignore the officer's request without losing face.

Once, he too had commanded a cohort, but now here he was, at the northern, western outpost of the Empire, with only five men at his side. They had ridden for four days in relentless damp and drizzle through moor and bog, and now they were looking down over the Antonine Wall, which, on first impressions, was a great disappointment. In truth, it was little more than a large ditch with delusions of grandeur, nothing like the massive, whitewashed stone edifice with which Hadrian had stamped his legacy over the country to the south. Here, a hundred miles further north, the weather was that much more inclement, the natives that much more savage and the country that much more unforgiving of invaders.

The earthworks were at least large and impressive, with small forts every two miles and a wooden track atop the whole length so that it could be patrolled. But given the openness of its aspect, patrols were, of necessity, frequent, and the manpower required to keep the wall secure was vastly disproportionate to its strategic importance. Caelius had known all of this before he left home, but seeing it for himself only reinforced his long held belief.

We should not be here.

It seemed he was not the only one with such thoughts, for Butto's message had been short and to the point.

"In the name of the debt that our fathers' share, I beseech you—come quickly. Something is killing my men."

He got the story over a flagon of hot wine by the fireside in Butto's quarters while he tried, not quite successfully, to get some warmth back into his bones after his journey.

"I am retired, Butto," he said. "You know that. I have no jurisdiction here."

Butto looked tired, as if he had not slept in many days.

"It is not your jurisdiction I require," the younger man said. "But your strength—and your knowledge. I know you have made a study of the Elder cults."

Of all the things that Caelius had imagined he would hear on his arrival, this was the least expected.

"In Rome, yes—but they have no bearing here."

"Do not be so sure, Caelius," Butto said. "We are far from Rome—far from civilized places altogether."

It took some coaxing, but finally Caelius persuaded Butto to sit with him at the fire and, slowly, over several more flagons of wine, the story finally got told.

"My men are a superstitious lot," he began. "The Sixth Cohort of Nervii are Belgae and Gallic recruits and before we civilized them they were as equally savage as the Picts are here. Moving them north to patrol this wall has only brought to the fore old beliefs that Rome should have knocked out of them.

"It started well enough, back in the spring. It was just as wet then, but at least it was a little warmer. The men did their duty, any raids from the north were summarily dealt with, and discipline was easily maintained. Then I started to hear stories—of music being heard in the night, and of a fog where there should be no fog. I put it down to the men's aforesaid superstitions—perhaps if I had paid more heed back then things might be different now—but I was new to the post, and hard on the men as a result.

"The first man died three weeks ago, and stories followed—more stories of music and fog. After the second man died, I almost had a rebellion on my hands, and the men refused to patrol alone, so I instigated pairs, then fours.

"Another man died, then another. That is when I sent for you, Caelius. I know of your area of expertise."

"I do not think I can help much. You have a Pict problem, that much is certain. They are getting past your defenses somehow."

"No, Caelius—you do not understand. Each man that has died has not a mark on him—no wounds, and no poison, for I have had them tested. They have all fallen at their posts, heart-struck—heart-struck and terrified out of their wits."

"I still say it must be the Picts," Caelius replied.

"Even if I tell you I have seen the fog, and heard the music for myself?" Butto said softly. "Even then?"

Caelius went quiet.

"And since you wrote to me? Have things changed?"

"It still comes—we lose a man—sometimes two—every night, and I have had three more deserters just today. At this rate we'll be done by the first day of winter."

"They are all taken on patrol?"

Butto nodded.

"And all on the same stretch of wall."

Caelius groaned, and stretched .

"You had better show me."

Caelius took a heavy cloak when it was offered—it was sheepskin, lined with coarse, matted wool. It smelled rank, but it was warm, and mostly kept the damp out, so it was most welcome out on the ramp above the earthworks, especially as their vigil stretched into its second hour. There was nothing to be seen out in the lands to the north, just unbroken moorland, dank pools and wispy mist. Tiny biting insects plagued them constantly—they came in swarms as thick as smoke at times, such that Caelius took to huddling deep inside the cloak with only his nose showing.

Butto's man—an Egyptian slave—stood behind them carrying a deerskin of warm wine from which they partook at intervals. What with that, the heat inside the sheepskin, and the seeping tiredness from his long journey to get here, Caelius was starting to feel drowsy as night fell.

He forced himself to attention as soon as he noted his head drooping. An old soldier knows well how to give the appearance of being on guard while catching what little rest there was to be found, and he wasn't that far gone into age and softness that he had forgotten his own days on patrols such as these. Butto had been speaking, and he'd missed some conversation, but before Caelius could form a polite reply, he heard a noise in the air. It wasn't coming from beyond the wall—it wasn't coming from anywhere in particular, it was just there—everywhere at once—a high, off-key flute, playing to a tune he thought he should recognize, but could not.

Butto's eyes went wide, the whiteness showing starkly in the gathering gloom. His man, the Egyptian, took a step backward, as if intending to flee, but Caelius put a stop to that with a sharp glance. The flute playing got louder still, and a fog rose up, seeming to seep upward from the earthworks itself.

The sound of the flute filled the whole length of the walkway, piping high and whining. Caelius' sight was filled with shimmering, dancing points of static. The walkway, fort, ditch and his companions seemed to melt away, falling into white motes. A black cavernous well formed in front of him, receding away, impossibly deep, impossibly distant. The Egyptian gave out a yell, then a wail as high as the flute itself. Something danced and cavorted as it fell into the blackness, falling ever faster away from Caelius, growing taller, thinner—far, far too thin—as the dark well took it. Caelius realized he was seeing the very essence of what made the Egyptian a man be taken from him—an essence that danced and stretched away to where the flautist piped it home—thin—like a matchstick—as it fell into the vastness of eternity.

When Caelius recovered his senses, the night was quiet, there was no fog, and Butto stood over the dead Egyptian at their feet. The man looked like he had died in abject terror.

"Quickly," Caelius said when Butto showed no sign of moving. "Get him inside—we cannot let your men see that another has fallen while we stood beside him."

Between them they carried the slave along the walkway, and got his body into Butto's chambers where they rolled it in a rug and hid it in a dark corner.

"We shall have to dispose of him quietly in the morning," Caelius said.

Butto nodded.

"I have another man I can trust to do the job. But why are we still here? Why did it take him and not either of us? Surely we are the bigger prize?"

Caelius shucked off his cloak then lifted the wineskin from where they'd left it when they came in, and headed for the fire. He didn't answer Butto's question until they were both sitting by the fireside with flagons filled.

"I do not think it is a matter of prizes, my friend," he said. "I have felt its like before—it takes who it can—whoever succumbs to it most willingly."

"So it can be fought?"

"Yes—with heart and will and all the strength you can muster—as it is with any battle."

"And you say you know what it is?"

"No—I said I have met its like before—but that is a tale for the morning. For now, I will finish this wine, and I will sleep. Ask me no more until then."

Caelius slept for almost twelve hours, a combination of the effects of the wine, his journey and the events of the night before. The body of the Egyptian—and the rug—were both gone when he rose in the late morning. Butto was on a tour of inspection of the men and the fort, so he had time for himself in which to think, but his mind was fogged and muddled. He felt more like himself after a bath and a light breakfast, during which he pondered the manner of the thing he'd seen on the walkway. Then, unable to put it off any longer, he went to ask his God for advice.

As an old soldier, he had long followed Mithras, and, as he knew there would be, the fort had a temple, deep in its foundations. What he had not expected was that the temple would be housed inside an obviously much older cavern. The walls were built of large blocks of sandstone, beautifully engineered and dovetailed together so tight that a layer of silk could not have been slid between them.  During the long years of his own hunt for the Great Mystery, Caelius had visited several of these old tombs, in Carnac in France, on Malta and on the rolling moors in the South of this country. This one gave the same sense of age as any other he had visited, a remnant of a time long past and a reminder of the impermanence of all things.

What was completely different here though, was the overwhelming sense that this place was still occupied by something much older than any Roman—he felt it, in every rustle, in every breath of wind, in every shift of shadow.

The statue of Mithras was in an alcove that was only a small part of a rough-hewn chamber of some antiquity. The walls were covered in small carvings. At first Caelius thought it might be a language, but it was none that he recognized from his studies, indeed, it seemed to bear no resemblance to anything he had ever seen before. Whoever had drawn the figures had packed them tightly, a miniature army ranked side by side in tightly regimented formation. Some had all four limbs, some were missing an arm or a leg, and some were just a single streak with a dot for the head. It did not take him long to realize that he was not actually looking at crude representations of men at all—it was a code—perhaps even a language, albeit one with which he was completely unfamiliar.

What if it is not language or code at all—what if all of these markings are simply instructions?

If a single line of the figure was a single beat, then Caelius surmised that the other figures might also signify beats, or multiple drum strikes. He took his knife out of his belt and, using the hilt, started tapping on the walls, experimenting .

Left arm gone, right leg gone, all limbs intact, no head, legs gone, no arms, limbs intact, left leg and left arm gone.

After the tenth attempt at deciphering a group of eight, he felt a responding vibration on the floor. And as he followed the tracks on the wall and associated beats, he started to spot something else—there was a repeating pattern amid the scrawls, and by a process of trial and elimination he was able to determine the associated beats.

No limbs, no limbs, no head, no head, left arm gone, left leg gone, no legs, no head.

He rapped the beats on the rock.

Two beats, two, four, four, five, seven, three, four.

Something beneath whistled back in time, the same high flute he had heard on the walkway. Then came the first indication that there was more to this than a mere spectral flautist. A tear in space appeared in the center of the chamber, blacker still than any shadow. It floated at his eye level and span slowly in a clockwise direction. As he watched it changed shape, settling into a new configuration, a black, somewhat oily in appearance droplet little more than an inch across at the thickest point. It seemed to be held in mid-air by some strange force.

And it looked most like an egg.

As he stepped forward a rainbow aura thickened around it, casting the whole chamber in dancing washes of soft colors as it continued to spin. The knife in his hand hummed, hot in his hand as he moved closer. The egg quivered and pulsed. And now it seemed larger than before. The chamber started to throb, like a heartbeat. The egg pulsed in time. And now it was more than obvious—it was most definitely growing. The blade sent a new flash of heat, like a searing burn in his palm as he lifted the weapon, but before he could strike the egg the throb became a rapid thumping; the chamber shook and trembled. The vibration rattled his teeth and set his guts roiling. A blinding flare of blue blasted all coherent thought from his head.

When he recovered enough to look back there was nothing to be seen hanging there but empty space. The black egg was gone as quickly as it had come and the chamber was once again dark and quiet.

He walked up out of the chamber, measuring his steps until he reached the fort, then retraced his steps up on the walkway in the same number of paces. He was standing right where they had been the night before—directly above the ancient carved chamber.

Caelius now knew what he was dealing with—and now he was worried.

He tried to explain it to Butto over a lunch of bread and cheese.

"You said that you knew of my study of the Elder cults," he began. "I will not bore you with the details of my searching—the task took many tedious years among dusty scrolls and clay tablets in ancient languages long since forgotten. But finally, I found something—something the Persians had discovered nearly a thousand years ago in a tomb in the ruins of Ur. They called it Darbān but it has had many names in many places—over the centuries, it has been called Iog-Sototh, the Gatekeeper, the Dweller on the Threshold and the Veil of Fire among a hundred—a thousand—other names. I know it as The Opener of the Way ."

"What does it open?" Butto asked .

"The veil—the curtain that separates us from the great mysteries.  It is thin in some places, places where it is easier to cross over. I came close once, in a Maltese catacomb, where I saw then what I have now seen again—for this is such a place. The veil is thin here—very thin."

He told Butto of the eggs—the manifestation in this plane of part of the Sototh.

"They are things of music and rhythm—that is how the Opener is called."

"So we have built our temple inside the older one—and we have angered an ancient god?" Butto asked, struggling to understand.

"No," Caelius said softly. "We have angered the guardian of the temple—an all too human guardian—we have angered the flautist, for it is only he who can call forth the Opener—and we must find him, before he sends us all the same way as your Egyptian."

Butto did not like Caelius' next suggestion.

"Over the wall? You want to send a hunting party into barbarian territory?"

"Only a small one—six men at the most. We need to find this flautist."

"I'll tell you this—none will go. These Gauls and Belgae are scared out of their wits as it is."

Caelius smiled grimly.

"I was not thinking of taking them—I will go—me, and the five who came up North with me. They are all my own men and have been with me for many years—they will go where I ask them to go, and fight when I ask them to fight."

"But it is madness—you do not know the territory."

"I am a Roman soldier, Butto. That has always been enough in the past—it will suffice now. "

"The country is too open—you will be seen."

"We will leave at dusk, and we will be cloaked," Caelius said. "It is not as if we will be marching out in formation. Trust me—this will not be my first night raid."

"We can only hope it will not be your last." Butto replied.

Caelius spent much of the rest of the day in preparation. They would be traveling light—dark cloth cloaks and leather jerkins, each man armed only with a gladius, and no armor, no other metal of any kind that might give away their position by knocking against other metal or stone in the dark. Nor would they need provisions—the flautist would be close by, and they would only have a short time in which to find him if they were to prevent another man being lost this night. As dusk fell, Caelius and his men were ready to move.

They crept slowly down into the earthwork and up the other side, before dropping down into what appeared to be little more than a wide expanse of moorland. There was just enough light to ensure that they did not go splashing around in any of the multitude of black stagnant ponds that littered the landscape.

It was a cloudy night—perfect for their purposes, and Caelius and his men tracked to and fro across the land within a mile of the wall. Caelius had surmised that the flautist would need to be close enough for his purposes to be served, yet far enough away that the patrols would not be alerted. His theory was proved correct during their track through the second quadrant of their search area

They heard them before they saw them, a muttering of soft voices that Caelius did not understand but knew immediately was Pictish. There appeared to be no more than four voices in the conversation. He held his men back—they wanted to rush the group immediately in a surprise attack, but Caelius needed to be sure that the flautist was present before they showed their hand.

He had his men stay back and crept forward, belly to the wet heather, moving as slowly and carefully as a cat on the hunt as he approached the voices. One of them sounded older; his voice was whispery, almost a croak. As Caelius got closer he saw there were indeed four in the group—three blue-painted warriors, all holding tall bronze spears, and an old man, bent and wizened with age, the top of his head barely coming up to the chests of the warriors. But it was this older man who got all of Caelius' attention—even in the dim light he saw the short—no longer than a forefinger—white hollow bone that the man put to his lips. The sound of the bone flute carried across the moor like the cry of a nighthawk.

Caelius couldn't afford to wait. He let out a cry that he hoped would alert his men to attack, and leapt up out of the heather. He was on them and in the middle of their group before they realized he was there, and with the element of surprise on his side was able to slice his gladius clean through the neck of the closest Pict before he'd even lifted his spear. The second was faster, and had his weapon up by the time Caelius spun round to face him—but a Pictish spear was no match for a Roman sword at such close range. It only took a second for Caelius to knock the bronze spearhead aside and plunge his blade deep into the man's chest. Then his men were there at his side, and the other two Pictish warriors fell in seconds.

Only the old man was left standing. He opened his palms to show he was not armed—the sound of the flute had stopped—and there was no sign of the hollow white bone anywhere to be found.

A spear thudded into the ground only feet away, coming from out of the night to the north—then another, this one landing in one of the black pools with a loud splash. There was no way of knowing how many Picts might be out there, even now advancing on their position.

"Back to the wall," Caelius said softly. "And quick about it, before they outflank us."

"What about the old man?" one of the others asked. "Kill him or bring him?"

"Bring him. We need that flute."

Then it was a run for safety, manhandling the old Pict with them all the way.  All thought of caution was now gone as they splashed through pools and trudged through cloying bog that tugged at their ankles and threatened to have them stuck in the mire to be standing targets for any spear carriers who were following them.

As they reached the earthworks more spears thudded around them. Someone had taken note of their flight and had now spotted them. Caelius lost two men in the ditch—good men both, veterans of many campaigns—now taken in the back by a savage's spear. By the time Caelius pulled himself and the old man up onto the walkway his anger was up, and he was more than ready for a confrontation.

But the old man merely stood there, smiling and yammering in that singsong language of his that Caelius could not even begin to understand.

Butto arrived at his side. Caelius saw that most of the Sixth Cohort of Nervii was arraigned up and down along the walkway and on the walls inside the fort. Some Pictish spears thudded in the ditch below them, but none reached even as far as the ground below their feet.

"I have the men out on the walk," Butto said. "Do you have your man?"

Caelius nodded to toward the old Pict.

"The man, yes—the flute, no."

But when he looked again he saw that he was mistaken in that. The old Pict smiled, and pushed the white bone flute out of his mouth with his tongue—he'd had it secreted in his throat all this time. Before Caelius could make a move, the Pict started to play, and after the first note, all thought of movement, of confrontation, was washed away from Caelius' mind, all rational thought was gone, lost to the call of the dance.

Lost.

Once again white, dancing motes of light filled his vision, and the flute rose to a cacophony of wails and cries, as if many were joined in the playing. A fog came up, seeping from the ground below them, and a black vortex spun, and grew, and began to suck. Some of the men tried to run, but the vortex was greedy and it crept along the wall—where it passed, the men wailed, and fell, heart-struck, even as their very essences were sucked away, stick figures dancing into the void beyond the veil.

Caelius felt the vortex tug at him, felt its seduction. But he had felt it before—felt it, and resisted. His earlier words to Butto came back to him.

"I am a Roman soldier, Butto. That has always been enough in the past—it will suffice now."

He managed to turn towards the old man—the Pict's smile faded .

He did not expect me to be able to resist .

That thought gave him even more impetus, and he was able to step forward and grab the old man by the throat, choking off the fluting.

But the damage had been done—the vortex did not fade, and the men kept falling beneath it. The ground below Caelius' feet thrummed with the power of the open gate. And he knew what had to be done.

He grabbed the flute from the old man, clubbed the Pict hard on the chin and, with the man slung over his shoulder, headed at speed for the only place where he thought the vortex might be stopped—the old temple in the underpinnings of the fort.

Now that he had an inkling of what he was dealing with, he headed straight for the Temple chamber, and once there he did not even have to rap out the beat with his knife on the walls; the darkness was waiting for his return. The black tear opened in the air above the center of the chamber, accompanied by what sounded like the ripping of paper.

A single black egg dropped out of it, a spinning globule no bigger than a thumb, and hung there, quivering. A rainbow aura danced over it, and ever so slowly it split and became two, oily sheen running over their sleek black surfaces. They hummed to themselves, a high singing that was taken up and amplified by an answering whine from the surrounding rock itself. A drumbeat started up to accompany it.

No limbs, no limbs, no head, no head, left arm gone, left leg gone, no legs, no head .

As two eggs became four, the whole chamber rocked from side to side in rhythm.

The dance had begun again .

Caelius had come down here without any firm idea as to how approach the problem—faced with the shimmering, dancing eggs he felt small and lost, all too aware of the miniscule part he played in the great scheme of things, in a dance that never began and never ended. All he could do for the moment was watch—watch, and hope for enlightenment.

He heard a loud, frightened gasp to his left, and turned, knife in hand, almost expecting an attack. The old Pict was getting to his feet. It seemed to take him a great effort to drag his eyes from the swirling, cavorting, calving, eggs.

"This is our place now. This is our land again," he said in halting Latin.

Eight black eggs hung impossibly in the air between the two men, oily and glistening, thrumming in time with the vibration from the walls that was getting ever louder, ever more insistent. Caelius had to resist a sudden urge to start clapping and stamping in time to the beat.

Thick fog glowed in an aurora of rainbow color and swirled angrily above them, creating a false sky in the ceiling of the darkened chamber.

Eight eggs became sixteen, and then thirty-two just seconds later, all clustered in a tight ball that spun lazily in the air. The walls of rock were changing too—the stone had become noticeably thinner, almost translucent and swirling rainbow fog clearly moved through them. The walls thinned further, almost ghostly now, then vanished completely until there was only the dark and the darker eggs hanging in it—sixty-four now, and singing louder.

The dust and dirt on the floor underfoot started to tremble and shake, then, as if taken by a wind, rose in a tight funnel spiraling up toward the hanging eggs, faster and faster still. The eggs sucked up the material and sang louder, as if requesting more.

Caelius felt the vortex suck at him again—the gate was opening wider. There were too many eggs to count now—into the hundreds. They almost filled the space in the chamber, their song rising higher, the beat and thrum of the rhythm filling Caelius's head, and the dancing rainbow colors filling his eyes with blue and green and gold and wonderment.

His whole body shook, vibrating with the rhythm. His head swam, and it seemed as if everything melted and ran. The scene receded into a great distance until it was little more than a pinpoint in a blanket of darkness, and he was alone, in a vast cavern of emptiness where nothing existed save the dark and the pounding.

And then there was light.

He saw stars—vast swathes of gold and blue and silver, all dancing in great purple and red clouds that spun webs of grandeur across unending vistas. Shapes moved in and among the nebulae; dark, wispy shadows casting a pallor over everything they covered— shadows that capered and whirled as the dance grew ever more frenetic. Caelius felt buffeted, as if by a strong, surging tide, but as the beat grew ever stronger he cared little. He gave myself to it, lost in the dance, lost in the stars.

He did not know how long he wandered in the space between. He forgot myself, forgot the Empire's business, forgot the old Pict, dancing in the vastness where only rhythm mattered.

He may never have returned had the old man not brought him back. He heard a noise, something not of the dance, and was curious enough to follow it. A face slowly came into focus, as if coming at him running from a great distance, and a voice spoke—shouted—as if trying to speak to him in a great wind.

"This is not for you, Roman! This is our land again."

It was the thought of his duty that brought Caelius back—back from a place where humankind was as insignificant as one of those motes of dancing dust. But when he finally managed to focus fully on the old man, he could see that the Pict was now as far gone from humanity as the stars among which he had been dancing.

The Pict's head looked misshapen and deformed, as if his brain had grown too large to be contained in his skull and was threatening to expunge itself. It was a second before Caelius realized what he was seeing—the Pict was growing horns that were already spiraling out in bloody protrusions from his skull. His hands had taken on a peculiar rough aspect, as had his feet, looking more like course, matted hair than skin. The Pict's left hand in particular bothered Caelius—it had thickened and hardened into black cuticle; it looked like it wanted to become a cloven hoof. More of the thick wiry hair ran, not just over the old man's face but up and down both his arms. The Pict went to stand at the edge of the hanging batch of eggs then, without a pause, stepped inside and quickly moved to the center where he raised his hands until they seemed to be engulfed in the mass. Caelius could hardly see him inside the swirling aurora of dancing color.

The eggs danced faster—thousands of them filling the chamber with song and dance that he had to fight to resist. The Pict sank his hands completely into them .

"This is our land again," he shouted.

The drumbeat in the chamber got louder. Dust disturbed by the vibration drifted down from the roof to fall around them. Caelius staggered, almost fell, buffeted by a cold wind that blew a gale through the chamber.

The floor bucked and swayed, and once again Caelius almost fell.

The myriad of eggs popped, burst and disappeared as if they had never been there at all. Dancing fog swirled, a dark funnel that brought more howling, screaming wind.

The old Pict screamed.

"This land is mine."

Everything went black and a thunderous blast came down like a hammer from above, driving Caelius down into a place where he dreamed of empty spaces filled with oily, glistening bubbles. They popped and spawned yet more bubbles, then even more, until he swam in a swirling sea of colors.

Lost.

He woke in the dark, lying on cold rock.

He had to feel his way to the exit by touch, and on finally making his way out of the chamber found that the rest of the way up through the fort was lit by dim moonlight.

The Sixth Cohort of Nervii—what remained of them—stood on the top of the wall and as Caelius looked out to the north it was to see a rag-tag band of Picts fading back into the misty moorland beyond.

"I have lost a third of my men—but we have won," Butto said. He had a long cut from forehead to chin, but he was smiling. "By Jupiter, we have done it."

"No," Caelius replied quietly. "I do not think we have—and I do not think we ever will. We do not belong here."

He still had the bone flute in his hand. He broke it in three pieces and threw it onto the ditch. When he turned away, he was already wondering whether his home beyond the wall of Hadrian was far enough south—whether he would ever be far enough south.

SHE SLEEPS IN THE DEPTHS

I n the mornings he only remembered glimpses and fragments, but he knew the dreams were always both terrifying and inescapable; the crumpled sheets, the sweat stained pillows and the tension in his neck and shoulders all spoke of many long restless nights.

And there was the song; what sounded like an old sailor’s tune. In his head he heard it as if a chorus of voices was singing, accompanied by a wheezing accordion.

She sleeps in the depths, in the depths, in the depths,

She sleeps in the deep, in the dark.

She sleeps, and she weeps in the depths far below,

And the Dreaming God is singing where she lies.

He had only ever heard the song in his sleep, but he also knew that it had wormed into his ear, a malicious repeating virus that would not _ could not _ be allayed either by noise, or drugs or booze. Fallon knew; he’d tried all three, repeatedly.

He’d also tried searching for the song online, in the hope that just the act of finding it might rid him of its influence. But if the song had ever existed, it was not recorded in any database or volume of folk tunes.

It was almost as if he’d made it up all by himself, but Fallon thought that highly unlikely. He didn’t have a musical bone in his body _ a fact that had been proved to him over and over again during failed piano lessons, failed guitar lessons, and polite requests to be quiet any time he attempted to sing.

After a month of sleepless nights the quest to find the song turned into an obsession, a deep need to get to the source of the problem and root it out of his brain before he was forced to stick a knife in his ear. The only clue he had; and it wasn’t much to go on, was that when he heard the voice in his head, it was being sung with a distinct Scots accent. Both his doctor and his boss suggested he took a holiday, and so, on the first Monday in July, Fallon took a train to Hull and caught a cruise headed for Aberdeen, Orkney, Shetland and points north.

On the first night he was to be found in his cabin or in the bar, but mostly in the bar. The booze wasn’t cheap, but at least it was good quality Scotch, and it helped, a bit, to keep the song at bay. Matters improved further when a band started up on the small stage in the corner. They played competent versions of chart hits from the past thirty years, and the older, sedate passengers the cruise had attracted seemed to lap it up. Fallon managed to let the sound wash through him, filling up the spaces where the tune might take root, and for much of the evening he almost managed to enjoy himself.

That all changed when the band took a break and a Karaoke machine got switched on. Middle aged women suddenly decided they were Madonna or Beyonce; men past pension age threw moves and poses while pretending to be pubescent youths. The cacophony of atonal shouting that passed for singing, accompanied by off-beat hand-clapping and foot stomping drove Fallon outside onto deck for a smoke.

The vessel chugged through thick fog, so there wasn’t even a glimpse of nighttime coastline to relieve the tedium.

This might have been a bad idea.

“I was thinking the same thing,” a soft voice said to his left. “Can I trouble you for a cigarette?”

Fallon turned to see a woman looking up at him; she could scarcely be more than five foot tall, made to look shorter by the bulk of her long coat giving her a stout appearance like a small friendly bear.

She laughed.

“I didn’t read your mind,” she said. “I’m good, but not that good. I just saw the expression on your face as you left the party.”

Fallon grinned back, and passed her a cigarette, lighting it with a match cupped against the elements.

“It was that obvious?”

She took a deep, satisfied draw of smoke before answering.

“It was written all over your features,” she said. “Don’t worry. There’s only another six days of it to go.”

She laughed again, and to his surprise Fallon laughed along.

Ten minutes later they had found a quieter lounge bar at the other end of the ship and he was telling her things he’d never mentioned to another person in his life. Somehow it all seemed natural, even the fact that she kept stroking the back of his hand when he got agitated.

”So what brings you on this trip?” he said after a time; he had done all the talking up till that point.

“You’ll think I’m daft,” she said quietly. “I’m haunted by a song and…”

He interrupted her, and sang.

She sleeps, and she weeps in the depths far below,

And the Dreaming God is singing where she lies.

Her eyes went wide with fear, she stood, too quickly, knocking the table over, breaking glasses and spilling beer all over Fallon’s lap. When he looked up again she had gone out the door.

He hadn’t even asked her name.

He spent the remainder of the night trying to drink his way to an oblivion where the tune didn’t matter, where upsetting the only person he’d found to talk to in months didn’t matter, where there was just the booze, and darkness.

He didn’t quite get there, and after a night and morning of broken sleep punctuated with an enormous hangover, he dragged himself up on deck for a smoke to find the boat drawn up on a dockside in what must have been Aberdeen.

One of the crew was pulling up a gangway and others were untying the ropes, readying already for departure. He’d missed the stop off completely.

“Excuse me,” he said, approaching the crewman at the gangway. “I’m looking for a woman.”

“Aren’t we all?” the man answered, then saw that Fallon was serious.

“She’s short, black hair, probably wearing a heavy coat and…”

The crewman interrupted him.

“Aye, I ken who you’re after, Ms. Leyton. She got off this morning; she looked terrible. Some kind of family emergency I gather. We won’t be seeing her again.”

I won’t be seeing her again.

The thought drove him straight back to the bar, forgoing any breakfast in favor of liquid refreshments that stretched into lunch and then dinner.

He was surprised to look up later and find that dusk was falling again outside. He went out on deck, somewhat unsteady on his legs, and lit a smoke. It was a clear night; lights twinkled on a distant shore, but his knowledge of geography in these parts was sketchy to say the least, and he had no idea where they might be.

As he smoked he looked around, hoping that the crewman had been mistaken, hoping that the woman would be there, looking for a smoke, waiting for an apology that he’d be only too willing to offer, given the chance.

It wasn’t to be. He stood there until it got too cold to endure, smoking a succession of cigarettes lit from the butt of the one before, waiting, and fighting the urge to lose himself to the booze once more.

He was forced inside when he started to hear singing in the wind.

She sleeps, and she weeps in the depths far below,

And the Dreaming God is singing where she lies.

The next stage of the voyage passed in an alcoholic haze, and it was only by blind luck that he was awake and upright when they hove in to Kirkwall harbor in Orkney at some indeterminate later point.

Sample the delights of the local culture, the ship’s tannoy announced. We’re berthing here until the tide turns in the morning.

The cruise ship’s lounge bar had become so welcoming that Fallon had almost forgotten why he was on the trip in the first place. It was the mention of local culture that got him off the boat; there was a chance that he might learn something about the song, here on an island steeped in history and folklore.

As he walked through town he was glad of his overcoat. Although it was supposedly summer the bay was blanketed in something that wasn’t quite fog nor wasn’t quite drizzle, but a mixture with all the bad qualities of both. His humor wasn’t helped when he found that his destination, the local museum, was closed for the afternoon. He had just made a decision to find the nearest bar when he saw her _ a small woman wearing a heavy coat. Not an uncommon sight in these parts, but the black hair gave her away _ that and the shocked expression on her face when she saw that Fallon had spotted her.

He expected her to make another run for it as he crossed the road, but she stood her ground, and it was anger rather than fear he saw in her face this time.

“Why are you following me?” he said.

The anger left her as quickly as it had come, to be replaced by puzzlement.

“I was just about to ask you the same thing,” she replied. “Buy me a drink and I’ll tell you a story.”

“It started a couple of months ago,” she began. They sat in a quiet corner of The Kirkwall Arms, each with an untouched beer on the table in front of them. Fallon was all too aware that she had started stroking his hand again, but she didn’t seem to notice, getting quickly lost in her own story.

“I thought I was going mad for a while. Who wouldn’t, with a crowd of drunken Scotsmen singing songs about dead women in their ear night and day? I was tested for brain disorders, and at one point they even suspected a tumor. There wasn’t one. I saw a shrink. He wasn’t much help; but he did say one thing that stuck. ‘You won’t have peace until you find out why it’s happening,’ he said. That’s what led me on my quest, through bookshops, folk clubs, databases and finally, to here. I thought I was getting somewhere, to a place where I might get sane again. Then you started following me. You also knew the song, and I believed that, not only was I not sane, I’d gone completely batty.”

She remembered her beer and eagerly gulped down half of it before continuing .

“So when you asked me why I was following you, it threw me for a loop, especially after I’d found out where I have to go. I…”

Fallon stopped her.

“You’ve found something?”

She nodded, suddenly suspicious.

I have to get her trust.

“I hear the song too,” he said, and felt hot tears at the corner of his eye that he brushed away angrily. “I’ve been hearing it for months. It’s why I’m here.”

Now he saw something else again in her stare; it looked like hope.

“Then there’s something you need to know _ somewhere we need to get to. But if I’m to tell you, I need something stronger than beer.”

He fetched them both a Scotch _ doubles _ and she took his hand again before continuing.

“I found it in the museum. I was there all morning, and was giving up hope as they were just about to close down, but one of the curators, bless him, found it for me in the stacks.”

She let go of his hand, leaving Fallon feeling suddenly alone and lost, and took a slip of paper from her bag. It was a photocopy, from what looked like an illuminated manuscript. The top half was a transcription of something he knew only too well, the words being only slightly changed.

It sleepeth in ye deeps, in ye deeps, in ye deeps,

It sleepeth in ye deeps, in ye dark.

It sleepeth, and it dreameth in ye deeps far beneath,

Ye Dreaming God it singeth where it lieth.

Below that was a note.

First heard tae ye west o’ ye auld man off Hoy, in ye year o’ oor Lord Fourtween Hunner and Eichty Twa.

“I’ve chartered a boat for tomorrow,” she said, “And I think you’re supposed to come with me.”

He replied without thinking of the consequences.

“Of course. I’m in.”

The smile he got in reply was worth the confused twenty minutes he then spent on the cruise liner explaining that he too was jumping ship. He was told he wouldn’t get any money back, nobody helped him with his luggage, but he had a broad smile on his face as he walked down the gangway and back to see his new friend.

They spent the night in the Kirkwall Arms _ separate rooms, but Fallon had got the feeling that he only had to say something to change that. He lay awake for a while wondering why he’d said nothing. It was only after an hour or so that he realized he hadn’t heard the singing all day.

He slept all the way through, for the first time in months waking feeling refreshed, and hangover free. He even enjoyed doing the shopping that Ms. Leyton _ “Call me Val,” _ said was needed for the trip; he followed her round the supermarket as she collected enough bread, eggs, bacon and coffee to feed a small army for several days. That and a couple of bottles of Scotch meant that they had several heavy bags to lug down to the marina.

She led him to a twenty-foot yacht with twin masts, gleaming white in the morning sunshine.

“I should tell you now,” he said. “I’ve not done any sailing."

She laughed and jumped aboard.

“Don’t worry. It’s got an engine. It’s as easy as driving a car.”

He decided that now wasn’t the time to tell her that he hadn’t done any of that either and followed her aboard. They went down to a snug but well-appointed sitting area and kitchen in the cabin below. While Val put the food away, he checked the other amenities. There was a narrow shower and toilet facility… and a low-ceilinged bedroom with just enough room for one bed, a double.

“How long are we going to be aboard?” he asked when he turned back to the main cabin.

She smiled.

“At least one night, maybe two.”

He couldn’t stop himself from smiling back.

He joined her on deck for a smoke as they pulled out of Kirkwall harbor and started to make their way west, hugging the coastline at times, heading further offshore when they crossed the mouths of bays and inlets. The rocky promontories and cliff tops were treeless and windswept, and many showed traces of now-ruined habitations, alongside older structures; great stone brochs, tall circles of menhirs and mounds that told of chambered cairns beneath. Fallon suddenly felt the weight and heft of history in a way that had never touched him before back in the city.

“Tell me again what we’re doing out here,” he said as they made a turn south later that morning. Instead of answering, she pointed out at the headland to the East.

“Skara Brae is just over there; a prehistoric village that nobody knew existed until it was uncovered in a storm. All the people that had ever lived there, built houses, loved and raised children; they were all forgotten by history. If whole villages can be lost for millennia, what else might be here, buried or drowned, just waiting to be found?”

Maybe it was drowned for good reason?

He didn’t voice the thought, not wanting to spoil what was turning out to be a damned fine day out on the water. Sun rippled and danced on the waves, the surface disturbed only by the lightest of breezes. Val did most of the talking, and Fallon got to know her through the course of the journey. And the more he learned, the more he liked. She had a quick way with a smile, she was fond of touching, particularly stroking his hand while chatting, and she understood what it meant to be almost driven mad by the song.

He still hadn’t heard it all day.

Maybe it’s her? Maybe all we need is each other?

That was a pleasant thought to hold on to as the day wore on. The island of Hoy came into view and grew larger on the horizon.

“Do we have a plan?” he asked.

They lay at anchor, far enough off the tall sandstone stack of The Old Man not to be caught in the ebb and swell nearer the shore. Val made bacon sandwiches that tasted as good _ better _ than anything he’d eaten on the cruise boat, and they enjoyed a coffee and a smoke. The sun was on its way down behind them and the first chill of the evening could be felt in the breeze. But for now, everything was more than pleasant.

“Beyond waiting, no,” she replied. “But there has to be a reason we were both drawn here; there must be an answer.”

He didn’t question her further.

But maybe no answer at all would be for the best.

They stayed on deck until the sun went down, golden then red then deep purple, into the horizon. Stars started to wink above them, and the sea breeze went from chilly to icy as the tide turned. Now that the wind had moved round the crash of waves against the base of The Old Man sounded much louder, and suddenly ominous.

Fallon felt his good mood drain away, but Val had an answer for that too. She took his hand and led them below… to the bedroom, where the day once again got better quickly.

He woke in darkness, disoriented at first until his hand, searching for a cigarette, found a warm body instead. Val moaned, rolled over but did not wake.

Fallon’s smile lasted only as long as it took for him to realize that the song was back. It came quietly, as if from a great distance, and there were no voices in it, just the basic tune, little more than a whistle and groan, but still unmistakably the same tune.

He rolled out of bed, wincing at the sudden chill, and fumbled around for his clothes, trying to make as little noise as possible so as not to wake Val from her peaceful-sounding sleep. He managed to creep out after banging his head, twice, on the low ceiling and stubbing his toe on the foot of the bed. Val didn’t wake up.

The tune was louder in the cabin. He took a bottle of Scotch and his smokes up on deck to investigate, and it was louder still in the open air.

The yacht bobbed in a still, clear night. The Milky Way hung in a ribbon overheard, clearer than he had ever seen it. Moonlight bathed The Old Man in blue shimmering shadows that gave it the illusion of movement and caused it to dance, just out of step with the tune that seemed to come from everywhere. Fallon’s mind filled in the lyrics as the noise rose, as if responding to his presence.

She sleeps in the depths, in the depths, in the depths,

She sleeps in the deep, in the dark.

She sleeps, and she weeps in the depths far below,

And the Dreaming God is singing where she lies .

The surface of the sea was flat calm, a mirror coated with a thin film of still water. He felt drawn to the prow and stood there, looking down, a smoking cigarette forgotten in one hand, the bottle of Scotch untouched in the other.

He knew the yacht lay at anchor in no more than ten feet of water. But he also knew that he looked down into impossible depths, to a sunken city of tumbled ruins. Giant sandstone blocks lay strewn in streets and passages where misshapen beasts went about some unfathomable business. The tune swelled and rang in his head, blotting out all other thought. He leaned forward, hoping to see more clearly what swirled and capered in a spot hidden even deeper in the shadowy depths beneath.

The tune rose to a crescendo as he lost his balance.

Val grabbed at the back of his belt and hauled him upright in the split second before he would have tumbled overboard.

“What the hell,” he said, and turned. She hadn’t heard him. She had wads of what looked like torn cotton handkerchief stuffed in her ears, and more in her hands She held several strips out to him, exchanging them for the whisky bottle from which she took a swig that would fell a horse.

“It helps,” she said, too loud in the still of the night.

And it did indeed help. After stuffing both ears with cotton Fallon felt once again in control of himself. He still heard the tune, but felt no compulsion to look overboard, no need to follow its lead.

Val mimed that she’d like a smoke.

“You’re taking this remarkably calmly,” he shouted.

“What choice do we have?” she shouted back.

They smoked in silence. The tune came to a climax then died away. A wind got up, ruffling the water and light cloud scuttled over the moon.

Val removed the wadding from her ears.

“It looks like we’ve found what we came for.”

There was little chance of either of them getting back to sleep. They sat, snuggled close, in the small sofa in the cabin, smoking, drinking coffee and working their way down the bottle of Scotch.

There was no recurrence of the tune.

“We’ve found it,” Fallon said. “But now what?”

“Well I didn’t come all this way to turn around and go home again,” Val replied. “There’s something down there beneath us. I’m going to go and have a look.”

“Can’t it wait until morning?”

Val turned him around to look out the porthole. There was thin sunlight outside.

Half an hour later, stomach full of eggs, bacon and toast, he stood on deck watching Val put on flippers and a snorkel.

“Are you sure you won’t join me?” she said, smiling.

He had a bad feeling in the pit of his gut, but forced himself to smile back.

“My swimming is on a par with my driving,” he said. “Besides, someone needs to watch out for you from up here. Looks like I’m it.”

She dove over the side, going in with scarcely a splash and, as graceful as if she was born to it, swam in a small circle before, with a quick wave, going under. For a time he could see her shape, pale against the darker sea-bed below, and see the bubbles rise to the surface to mark where she’d been.

Then everything went still and quiet; there was only the sound of some gulls high above and the rattle of pebbles as the tide sucked at the base of The Old Man.

Val ?

He walked round the yacht, checking both sides. There was no sign of her.

“Val!” he shouted, panic rising.

“Down here,” came the reply. She was at the stern, struggling to keep afloat while holding something heavy in her hands. The next couple of minutes were a struggle that might have been almost comical in other circumstances, as Fallon tried to help her aboard, only to have her fall back into the sea, twice before she finally pulled herself, laughing, up onto deck.

“We got it,” she said, and rolled aside to let Fallon see what she had brought up from below.

At first glance it looked like just another piece of wet stone, but as it started to dry in the morning sun Fallon saw that it was man made, a sculpture, of sorts, done in what looked like the blackest, shiniest, piece of jet. It was a depiction of some kind of sea creature, but not one that Fallon recognized as ever having seen; fish eyes and a razor-toothed mouth sat atop a squat body that would have looked almost humanoid were it not for a stubby tail fin at the rear end.

There was another thing about it, something Fallon couldn’t quite place until he bent closer. It was singing, or rather, ringing, sending out a soft drone in the all-too-familiar tune.

“It called to me,” Val said. “I’m pretty sure it’s the source of the song.”

Fallon heard it again, stronger now.

“I’m pretty sure of it too,” he replied. “But now what do we do?”

There was a loud splash over near The Old Man that nearly drowned out Val’s reply .

“We should destroy it. It’s the only way we’ll get any peace.”

Fallon looked down at the black stone.

“It’s obviously some kind of idol. Maybe valuable, or of historical importance?”

More rocks tumbled ashore. The yacht rose and dipped in an increasing swell. The song grew louder still, once again worming its way into Fallon’s. He heard voices again, a chorus of them, chanting in time.

She sleeps, and she weeps in the depths far below,

And the Dreaming God is singing where she lies.

“I don’t give two hoots about any historical importance,” Val said. “I just want my life back, I’ll see if there’s a hammer in the focsle.”

She never made it. The sound of tumbling rocks grew louder. The sea foamed and roiled, tossing the yacht violently from side to side. Val tumbled, smacking her head hard against the rail. When Fallon got to her, her eyelids fluttered. She seemed unable to focus on him.

A wave crashed over them, threatening to engulf the yacht. The stone idol screamed, as if frustrated. Fallon looked along the yacht towards it, then up, to where The Old Man towered over them. The stone tower swayed, as if ready to topple. The sea all around them raised up in a bubble then parted to show what looked like a new domed shoreline rising up from the seabed. It looked like rock, right up until the moment the great fish-eyes opened and stared at Fallon.

The singing filled his mind, the choir raised in what sounded like desperation.

She sleeps, and she weeps in the depths far below,

And the Dreaming God is singing where she lies.

And suddenly Fallon knew. It wasn’t just a tune .

It’s a lullaby. And it’s all that has been keeping the God asleep.

The domed head rise further out of the water, a hundred yards and more across; a huge mouth gaping, showing twin rows of gleaming razors.

Fallon left Val and hefted the idol in his hands. The singing filled him until he felt it a part of his body, alive in every cell of his being. He sang along as he tossed the idol back into the water.

It sank out of sight almost immediately, the song fading as it went into the depths. The dome of rock _ for that is what it was once more _ sank slowly under the surface. The Old Man fell still and solid once more, and the yacht bobbed in gentle ripples that slowly dissipated.

The song was the last thing to go, fading into nothing.

She sleeps, and she weeps in the depths far below,

And the Dreaming God is singing where she lies.

Val came to her sense after it was all done, just as Fallon handed her more torn up strips of cotton handkerchief.

“We’re going to need these until we get out of range,” he said.

“And how far is that going to be?” she answered, stuffing the wads into her ears.

“I was thinking maybe a honeymoon in New Zealand?” he shouted, and she drew him close as they left The Old Man of Hoy standing sentinel behind them.

THE CALL OF THE DEEP

S am Green kicked the dead amphi over, sending it tumbling down the Embankment steps to drop with a soft splash into the murky river. It sank in a flurry of bubbles.

"How many was that?" John Ridder asked.

"Twelve," Sam replied. "And we didn't get them all. The buggers are getting more confident."

"Or more desperate," Ridder replied, harnessing his assault rifle across his back and lighting a smoke. "It's the heat they say—and I can't say as I blame them. They've been down there minding their own business all this time, then we go and fuck it up for everybody."

"Speak for yourself," Sam said, harnessing his own weapon. "I'm from Glasgow remember? A wee bit of warmth is just the ticket."

Humor was the only answer to what they were facing, and both men knew it.

The problems had been building for years—seas rising, storms increasing and drought across vast swathes of the tropics. It took the Eastern Seaboard wipeout of 2066 for developed countries to finally sit up and take notice—but by then it was decades too late. The methane deposits in Northern Russia blew out in 2070, the Eastern Antarctic melted over the next decade and the worst case scenario predicted in the early years of the century came all at once.

London was getting hit hard—the river burst its banks regularly now, despite the new barriers at Greenwich and Tower Bridge. It was a constant battle to keep the old city above the waterline—when it wasn't baking in temperatures that topped forty Centigrade.

Then the amphis started coming up out of the river.

Sam had laughed when he'd been told about them at the briefing, thinking it to be a joke.

"Come on, Sarge—the creature from the Black Lagoon? Really?"

Now that he'd seen them up close, he knew there was no humor to be had from them—they were vicious, relentless in their attacks and fearless even in the face of automatic weapons.

Nobody really knew what the amphis wanted, only that they were weird, and they were pissed off. As Ridder had said, Sam would be pissed off too if some arseholes up top had screwed quite so thoroughly with his environment.

Besides, mine is not to reason why.

The first big attack had come off Scarborough last summer, two hundred locals dead before anybody noticed. But now that the threat was known, defenses were proving adequate—for the time being anyway. The amphis seemed to have habits and arrived in swarms. "Guard the city," was a simple enough order to follow, especially now that martial law had been declared and the boffins were guessing the location of the attacks on most nights.

The streets had been quiet last night—at least until the amphis came out of the river. The firefight along the Embankment was intense, but not long lasting. And finally the tide had turned; the threat of flood was receding, and the amphis had gone with it—for now. As the sky lightened in the East to bring the dawn, Sam allowed himself to relax—at least enough to join Ridder in a smoke.

He wasn't given time to finish it; his implant buzzed, he tongued the switch, and HQ came on the line in his ear.

"You're needed. Both of you. Right now."

That was another order that was easy to follow.

The briefing room in the Admiralty was already packed full when they sidled in and tried to look inconspicuous by the doorway. Ridder smiled, and Sam might have responded in kind—but the words from the General at the head of the long table brought all chatter in the room to complete silence.

"The Yanks have lost Washington."

Nobody spoke—they didn't have to. The battles across the ocean were common knowledge, longer and fiercer than any on the European side. But nobody had expected this. The General gave them all plenty of time to digest the implications before continuing.

"They've decided it's time for what they call the 'Hail Mary' scenario." He turned to look at where Sam and Ridder stood.

"That's where you lads come in. There's half a dozen scientist chaps downstairs that we need to get to Lakenheath Air Base—all in one piece and ASAP. The choppers will be leaving the roof in ten."

"Babysitting duty, sir?" Sam said. "We're of better use here, surely?"

"You're of use where I say you're of use," the speaker said, and Sam shut up fast. You learned quickly when an officer used that tone—this conversation was over.

Two minutes later he followed Ridder up onto the Admiralty roof to where the choppers were waiting. His implant buzzed and the General came on the line .

"I couldn't say, Sam, but this is more than just babysitting. The Yanks have a plan, but it's risky. You and Ridder are there to pull the plug on them if they try to do anything really stupid. We don't want a repeat of Boston. Understand?"

Sam understood only too well.

While the situation in London might be bad, at least the city was still habitable, in the main—Boston had been abandoned to the amphis last winter after an attempt to foul the seawater and kill the attackers had backfired and poisoned millions onshore. Just thinking about it gave Sam the cold chills as he helped usher a group of miserable looking civilians onto the two choppers. He looked out the window as they banked up and away from Westminster, giving him a bird's eye view over the partially flooded, almost deathly quiet city that used to be the heart and soul of the world.

Even despite Boston, a bunch of scientists with a risky plan might be just what is needed right about now.

He stopped looking out of the window after a while. There was little to see but mile after mile of waterlogged fields, submerged towns and abandoned vehicles, all punctuated by thick fog banks. The oppressive glare of the sun almost blinded him, and the same glare was also cooking the interior of the chopper meaning that the journey was not the most pleasant one. Sam was glad when the pilot announced they were bearing in on Lakenheath.

As they landed, Sam's implant buzzed and Ridder came on.

"Hope you brought your passport—welcome to the USA."

Sam smiled thinly. This wasn't their first rodeo in these parts—and he liked the Yanks well enough. He just hoped that his role as 'cleaner of fuck ups' wasn't going to be required.

The country around here was flat—good for an airfield, but also prone to flooding, and Sam knew that huge expanses of open water and reed beds surrounded the facility on all sides. On a calm summer's day in the past the air would be filled with dragonflies, kestrels, butterflies and the sound of bullfrogs. But now, under the hammer of the sun, there was just an oily heat haze and too-hot concrete. Sam was looking forward to some respite, and hoping that the Yanks had brought some of their fabled air conditioning with them.

They weren't given time to see the sights—everyone was shepherded, at some haste, into a hanger in the center of the airfield. Sam only had time to further note that the whole perimeter had been heavily fortified with gun towers and higher fences since his last visit, before the hanger doors shut and the lights went up.

The first thing Sam noticed was that the air conditions was definitely on—it was still hot inside the hanger, but not so much as to impair his facilities. The room was a flurry of activity—massive screens showed scenes from numerous sites around the world, excited people shouted into headsets, and the holoviews glistened and roiled. Whatever was going on, it seemed important, but Sam and Ridder were only allowed to stand by the door and watch—it seemed they were to be excluded from any sort of explanation.

Sam tongued his implant and engaged the iris viewer; he heard the drone and whine in his medulla oblongata as the processor kicked in—that had taken some getting used to, way back when, but now it was as much part of him as his own eyes and ears. He let it process data for a while, then the soft voice of his companion spoke in his ear.

"It looks like some form of atmospheric system," she said. "High intensity ionospheric enhancement technology, of the kind utilized by the HAARP program in Alaska, but with a greatly boosted power input. There are scenes in the main screen from Egypt, Kamkatcha and a point in the South Pacific. Logic processing gives a ninety percent probability of sites like this one at each of those areas—four corners of a quadrant."

"Yes," Sam whispered. "But what's it all for?"

"Rapid impact weather modification on a global scale," the companions said, her robotic monotone and matter of fact manner only adding to the fresh chill in Sam's spine.

The cleaner of fuck-ups might be needed after all.

The six scientists they'd brought from London were in a huddle at a corner desk. Sam set his gaze on them and told the Companion to listen in. He only understood every third word but he hoped his listener would be able to condense it succinctly for him. There was talk of Polar Mesospheric Summer Echoes, heating induced scintillation and great concern over calibration of something called the fluxgate magnetometer. In the end, his companion did indeed boil it all down to a simple sentence.

"My first conclusion was correct. Weather modification," she said. "All across the planet. They're planning on a sudden lowering of the global temperature, and they're hoping to do it without putting any undue stress on the biosphere."

This wee part of the biosphere is bloody stressed already, thank you very much.

"So what's the big argument about?" he asked.

"They are considering just how much power needs to be applied," his companion replied. "The plan is to hit the ionosphere as hard as can be managed. There is a branch of opinion that the risks are worth the effort, but not all are convinced, and there is concern about the stability of the magnetic field and the tectonic plates, especially in the Pacific."

Ridder chose that moment to buzz in on Sam's implant.

"You getting all of this?"

"As much as I can manage," Sam replied. "Keep your wits about you. This has the feel of something that could go sideways PDQ."

As if to punctuate Sam's point, heavy gunfire started up outside, deafening even above the chorus of frightened chatter that rose up in the hangar.

Sam led Ridder outside. The source of the gunfire was two of the tall towers at the perimeter of the airfield. They sent volley after volley of heavy fire into the wetlands outside the airfield; from his current position Sam couldn't see any target. His companion whispered in his ear.

"Amphis—the base has been getting periodic attacks for several weeks now, hence the heightened security."

Sam became aware of a rising hum from the hanger behind him, a vibration that ran through the ground and set his gut tingling, like standing too close to a bass speaker at full volume. The gunfire from the towers faltered and failed until the hum was the only sound, getting ever louder.

Out in the fens beyond the fence, something—many things—answered, raising guttural voices in unison until it seemed that a vast choir wailed in the warm breeze wafting across the runways. Sam strode past the silent helicopters that had brought them here and walked over towards the nearest portion of the fence to look out past the perimeter fence .

Amphis, a horde of them, stood fifty yards from the fence in serried ranks, five or six deep, as if paused in their attack waiting for a signal. They had their heads raised to the sun, huge eyes staring upward, mouths gaping as song poured out of them, oblivious to the bullet riddled bodies of their kin lying all around them.

Then, as quickly as it had started, the hum stopped. The amphis seemed bemused, for all of a second, then turned away and were quickly lost from sight as they waded deep into the watery fens.

"What the hell just happened?" Ridder asked.

"Damned if I know—but if it's something that stops the amphis like that, we need to know about it. Let's see what the boffins have to say."

It turned out that the boffins weren't saying much of anything—at least, nothing that made sense to Sam, although the hanger was full of excited chatter, backslapping and sporadic applause.

Sam's on-board companion spoke in his ear again.

"They think it has worked—after a fashion. They only used a quarter of the power at their disposal but readings show a distinct temperature drop across the North Atlantic—both in the air and in the ocean. They'll have to wait and see if they have caused any associated disruption elsewhere, but for the time being it's being considered a success."

"So now what?" Sam muttered. He wasn't thinking about temperature drops—he was thinking about the ranks of amphis outside, heads raised in song. He realized now what it had reminded him of—it had felt like he'd been in a church—it had felt like a hymn.

But a hymn to what god—what kind of god ?

The rest of that day was spent in settling in and babysitting the scientists—not that they needed much looking after here, in what was probably the best defended bit of ground in the country these days.

After a time Sam started to relax, at least enough to join Ridder for a smoke outside the hanger.

"All quiet," the other man said. "But have you heard the news from the Yanks?"

Sam shook his head—he'd been too preoccupied in trying to make sense of what was going on inside the hanger itself to worry about matters across the pond.

Ridder stubbed out his butt on the concrete before continuing.

"It's not just Washington they've lost; Baltimore, Philadelphia and most towns along the Delaware have fallen. They're not calling them incursions now—they're calling it an invasion. And they're talking about using nukes if our little circus here doesn't get results in the next 48 hours."

In some ways Sam was happy to know that matters were being brought to a head—being baked in a slow oven wasn't any way for a man to go, never mind a whole planet. And it wasn't as if he was given any time to worry about it. His companion pitched in as he was finishing his own smoke.

"They're not waiting. They're going straight for half power at the top of the hour."

Sam checked he had a full load in his rifle. He had a feeling he was going to need it.

The hum from the hanger started up right on cue at the top of the hour, a bass vibration that pounded in Sam's gut and brought tension at his jaw and pain in his ears. His stomach rolled, and he was thankful he hadn't yet eaten as acid boiled in his throat. He saw that Ridder was in similar discomfort, but that was all forgotten when he had a look out beyond the fence again.

The amphis were back—in numbers far greater than before, a horde—an army—of them already starting to press up against the fence as the hum from the hanger went up another notch. They came forward in waves, singing as they approached. The guns on the watchtowers burst into action, but the press of the beasts was just too great—they were already swarming over the fences, north and south as far as the eye could see. Even as Sam raised his rifle he knew it was going to be worse than useless. The tower guns fell silent as the amphis seethed over and around the watch positions. The fence collapsed—in three places—under the weight of the attack.

"The chopper guns," Ridder shouted. "We can still mow them down."

But even that thought had come too late. The amphis' song was louder even than the hum from the hanger as they came forward across the runways in a loping stride that belied their aquatic origins. Sam raised his weapon, but there was no immediate threat—every pair of huge, pale eyes seemed fixed on the hanger.

Their song rose again, filling the air with reverberating sound that once more reminded Sam of a church service, every voice calling out in praise and glory. He felt sudden tears at his eyes and wiped them away angrily as Ridder tugged at his arm, dragging him back to the hanger.

They reached the doorway just ahead of the approaching throng.

"Inside, quick," Ridder shouted, but as Sam turned for a last look at the amphis he saw that they had stopped. They stood in rank after rank, as far back as the perimeter fence and beyond, thousands, maybe tens of thousands of them. They had come to a standstill just yards from the hanger door, looking skyward, mouths open, the song pouring out of them in waves, washing around the airfield, setting everything—air, reeds, sky and clouds, all pounding to its beat.

Sam felt his head drift, as if he'd taken too much Scotch. The ground underfoot seemed to swell and buck, like the deck of a boat in heavy seas, and he tasted salt water at his lips. His sight went dim, deep shadowy black and green obscuring the sun, and for the first time in weeks a cold chill ran through him, icy water gripping tight and seeping into his marrow.

He might have been lost there forever had Ridder not pulled him inside.

The hanger door slammed shut, and Sam's sight cleared, the sudden brightness of the overhead neon dazzling him momentarily. He realized he still heard the singing from outside, but now it was overlaid by the louder hum from inside the hanger itself.

"Sam?"

He heard Ridder shout, but didn't feel any strong urge to answer until his companion spoke loud in his ear.

"Is everything all right, sir? Do you require medical attention?"

The hum from the hanger cut out, and at almost the same instant the singing from outside came to a halt.

Finally, Sam's head cleared.

The hanger was once again a hive of activity.

"What just happened?" Sam asked.

Ridder was obviously as confused as he was, but the companion, as cool and calculated as ever, had been paying enough attention for all of them.

"They are saying that they have beat the ionosphere 'like ringing a bell'. The whole planet shook—temperatures are falling all over. Most of the scientists are declaring it enough of a success that they should immediately go for a full power hit."

"There are no doubters?" Sam asked.

"Yes—there are dissenters. There was a serious rise in tectonic activity in the South Pacific, near the base at the southernmost aspect of the quadrant. There is also a severe tsunami alert for New Zealand, Hawaii and as far north as Japan. But the USA in particular are saying that it is a price worth paying. And given that the invasion on their Eastern coasts is gathering pace, the Western powers are inclined to agree with them."

Another thought struck Sam.

"And what about the amphis? Any reports of them massing—or singing?"

His companion wasn't capable of either mockery or sarcasm, so there was that to be thankful for, and the reply when it came sent a fresh chill through Sam despite the heat in the hanger.

"There have indeed been reports of singing. The consensus of opinion is that the experiment has a harmonic frequency that the aquatics are particularly attuned to and…"

Sam tuned her out. His attention had been caught by fresh activity in the main control area. Several of the scientists—he recognized three of them from the chopper trip—were gathered in front of the world map. They no longer looked quite so happy.

He walked over to investigate. It took him several seconds to get their attention and several more to get them to talk one at a time.

"It's the harmonics," one of them finally explained. "We used too much power and the whole planet is responding—a ripple across the whole planet, and it's getting stronger by the second."

"Well turn the fucking machine off then," Sam said, before he saw their faces.

"We did that ten minutes ago," one of the scientists said, just as the sound of singing rose up again from outside the hanger, even louder than before.

By the time Sam climbed up into the hanger's gantry the whole structure was reverberating—it did indeed feel like being inside a giant bell. The scene outside did not improve his mood any.

From the height of the gantry he had a view of the whole airfield—and of the horde of amphis who stood on every inch of it. All of them had their heads raised high, mouths open in a single unified chorus of song that rang and echoed, seeming to fill the air, an almost solid wall of sound.

Once again Sam started to feel light headed, starting to drift, and he had to concentrate to maintain focus.

He called up his companion

"Can I get an air strike out here, sharpish? We could take them all out at once."

"Negative, sir. It's the same all over—everyone is under siege and nothing is leaving the ground."

He could see it in his mind's eye—ranks of the amphis, around Westminster, around the old palaces, coming up out of the river, singing as they came.

Maybe the Yanks are right. Maybe we do need to use the nukes.

He couldn't watch any more— just the sight of the ranks of upturned, amphibian features made him light headed and queasy again. He made his way slowly down off the gantry, barely aware that his heartbeat had synchronized with the rhythm of the chant, not noticing that he moved like a dancer, keeping the beat with his feet.

There was an argument going on among the scientists.

"Look we've been ordered to do it," an American voice said.

"No. You've been ordered to do it. The last thing this planet needs now is more gung-ho cowboy crap. We don't know how much damage we'll do."

"But we know we're fucked if we don't." An Irish voice this time, but no one was paying much attention, everyone intent on getting their own voice heard.

On the other side of the room Sam saw that the Yank guards were getting antsy, and to his right Ridder's grip had tightened on his rifle.

We're only seconds from a firefight here.

He stepped forward and raised his voice.

"Okay—what's this order you're on about?"

The American scientist managed to speak up first.

"It comes from the Chief of Staff in NOMAD. 'Ring the bell again. Ring it hard.' It says we're to go full power."

"And what are the risks?"

"What are the risks if we don't?" the scientist replied, and Sam had no answer for him as the noise of singing outside went up another notch and every fiber of his being called out for him to join them.

"Just do it," he said, and the scientist turned away towards the controls. Two of the Europeans moved to stop him, but Ridder moved to stand in their way, and he wasn't a man to argue with in his current mood .

The whole hanger was already ringing and vibrating, even as the scientist spoke two commands into the mike.

The chorus of amphis swelled in a crescendo, the hanger, the ground, the air, Sam's whole body rang, a planet sized tuning fork sending out a tone that could not be ignored.

They lost the Egyptian corner of the quadrant first—the Great Rift Valley tore wide open along its whole length, a three thousand mile volcanic wound that send a fresh scream all around the world and swallowed all the old civilizations of man as if they had never been.

The same tsunami that took out Japan and most of the Pacific rim was three hundred feet high when it hit California. It washed L.A. and Frisco up against the Rockies just before all the big faults slipped at once sending rock and water and earth and people seething and roiling in a boiling hell.

The folks in the hanger had a great view on their monitors from surviving satellites—for as long as it lasted. The amphis outside sang ever louder, with ever more fervor.

Something in the Pacific answered.

The sound seemed to rise up from the ocean itself, an answering ring to the tuning fork, but amplified now into something that shook the whole planet to its very core.

Sam's head span, a dizziness that felt like floating. He tasted salt water again, and felt the chill as black ocean depths threatened to take him away.

He was only brought back by the voice of his companion in his ear, calm and eminently reasonable amid the cacophony and turmoil.

"They are attacking the hanger, sir."

He didn't really need to be told. The metal frame of the building creaked, bent and tore, like so much paper, as the amphis poured in. Even as he raised his rifle Sam knew it was too late—far too late—for everybody .

The huge monitor showed a final, zoomed in shot of the Pacific Ocean taken from satellite. It was the last thing Sam—or anyone in the hanger—saw—the ocean parting, great black blocks of strangely shaped stone rising from the depths. And out of the stone, something impossibly huge rose—wispy, almost gaseous, as if it was not quite fully present in this reality.

The amphis cried out in prayer.

The waking god answered.

The tsunami that came down the North Sea was five hundred feet high and washed most of Southern England away with its passing, but by then everybody was long past caring.

Sam floats.

We all float now. We are alone, in a vast cathedral of emptiness where nothing exists save the dark, the cold, the pounding beat from below and the song of our risen god.

Shapes sing in the dark, wispy shadows with no substance, shadows that caper and whirl as the dance grows ever more frenetic. We taste salt water, are buffeted, as if by a strong, surging tide, but as the beat grows ever stronger, the song gets ever louder, we care little. We give ourselves to it, lost in the dance, lost in the dark.

Lost, singing, in the sweet, cold dark.

ON THE THRESHOLD

I t started small; a black tear, no bigger than a sliver of fingernail, appeared in the center of the chamber and hung there. I was slow to react. This was only the second of more than a dozen configurations we planned to try; I hadn't expected anything to happen, wasn't convinced that we were on the right track.

"Stabilize it. Do it now." Connon shouted. That got me moving. I pushed buttons, twiddled dials and watched meters, praying that there would be a now to get back to when I remembered to breathe. The electromagnets hummed in song, getting louder as the black tear pushed against them, before finally settling into a steady drone.

The rip didn't spread; I started to breathe again. As I watched it settled into a new configuration, a black, somewhat oily in appearance droplet held quivering in mid-air by the magnetic forces surrounding it.

It looked like an egg.

Connon looked like the cat that had got the cream, a broad grin plastered across his face.

"We did it, John. How does it feel to be a God?"

I looked at the black egg. Despite it being behind so many shielded walls and fields that I was only able to look at it on my laptop screen, I knew exactly how I felt.

Bloody terrified.

It seemed Connon's theory was vindicated; it was indeed possible to create matter from nothing inside a generated field boundary. All it had taken was recreating the proper conditions in the right order—that, and a whole lot of other people's money. Now we had rent asunder the fabric of space and time. But more than that, we had a whole new universe to play with, contained in an egg that was little bigger than my thumb.

"Think of them as soap bubbles," Connon had said when he explained it to me, back at the start when everything was new and shiny—before the terror. "Multiple, maybe even infinite, universes, each in its own bubble, each connected by the thinnest of membranes to many of its neighbors. Quantum foam, if you like."

I hadn't asked the question back then. Maybe I should have. Maybe it would have made a difference. That's what I was thinking about when I turned away from the screen to face him.

"So what happens now?"

"Now we study it. Think of it, John. A whole new universe at our disposal."

"And what's inside the bubble?"

He laughed.

"That's what we're going to find out. Of course all we know about space and time may or may not apply on the other side of the field boundary. No one has ever done this before."

"I'm starting to understand how Oppenheimer felt," I said.

His smile faded as quickly as it had come.

"Don't you dare go soft on me now. Not when we've come so far together."

He was right—we'd done this together. I was just as culpable as he was for what was done in our name.

I had another look at the egg.

Has it grown ?

The instruments said no, but it certainly looked larger to me. The magnets started to throb, like a heartbeat. The egg pulsed in time. And now it was more than obvious—it was most definitely growing larger.

"More power," Connon shouted. "The field boundary is collapsing."

I was too late. I turned up the field but the electromagnets were under too much strain. The throb became a rapid thumping; the lab shook and trembled. The vibration rattled my teeth and set my guts roiling.

A pen rolled across my desk. I bent to stop it falling off the edge, so I did not see the boundary collapse, did not see what Connon saw. I did, however see the look on his face, and it did not reassure me. The terror had spread.

"That's impossible," he whispered. I looked at the laptop screen. There was nothing to be seen there but an empty chamber. The black egg was gone as quickly as it had come.

"Quite impossible," Connon whispered, talking to himself.

"What did you see?" I asked.

"For a moment there I thought—no, it can't have been."

"Connon, you're not making any sense."

He looked at the screen again, then back at me. He seemed to come to a decision.

"The boundary collapsed, that's all. We need more juice to sustain a more stable magnetic field. We'll try again tomorrow. But we're close, John. We're nearly there."

As you've probably guessed by now, I wasn't so confident of our success—even less so after a sleepless night. My quarters were immediately above the lab, and although the whole facility was encased in metal and concrete, I still heard the throb of the electromagnets in my head and felt them vibrating in my gut. I tossed and turned for several hours, the terror big in my mind, considering the implications of what we’d just done—and just how close we’d come to calamity. Eventually I fell into a fitful sleep. I dreamed of vast empty spaces filled with oily, glistening bubbles. They popped and spawned yet more bubbles, then even more, until I swam in a swirling sea of colors that so appalled me I was jolted awake, only to be sucked back down into the same dream every time I tried to relax.

I got up early. I put on the radio to try to erase the memories of the dreams, but every time there was a quiet passage I heard the magnets throb, and saw the dancing colors in my mind's eye. I went down to the control room, intent on telling Connon that I'd had enough.

He was already there, working. He looked as bad as I felt. I put that down to the fact that he seemed not to have left the lab all night; he wore the same shirt as the previous day, and was obviously unshaven. And from the hum and throb of the electromagnets I knew that he'd started without me.

"I've got it, John. At least I think so. I had to request more juice from the grid, and the money boys will have kittens when they see the bill. But we've got a stable boundary field. It's working."

He beckoned me forward to look at the laptop screen. Another black egg hung in the chamber. The electromagnets kept up a steady beat that I again felt all the way down to the pit of my stomach.

"Are you sure this is safe?" I said.

"I've had it running like this for an hour. Trust me. It's completely stable," Connon said. He looked weary, and when I led him towards a chair he sat down heavily. "God, I need a smoke."

That's when I knew there was something wrong; he'd given up cigarettes at the same time as me, some ten years before, and neither of us had so much as mentioned tobacco since that day.

"So let's say I believe you, and it is indeed stable," I said. "In that case, what's got you so worried?"

He sucked on a pen as if pretending it was a cigarette.

"I wasn't going to tell you," he said eventually. "It might be nothing."

I remembered the look on his face the day before, when the boundary field collapsed.

"Just tell me," I said, cold terror gripping me again. I wasn't at all sure I wanted to hear his reply.

"It was just when the field went," he said. He couldn't look at me. "And only for an instant. But when the field collapsed I thought I saw the egg burst. It opened out—a pair of dark wings. They beat, once, and it was gone."

"Wings?"

"Probably an effect of the field itself—you know, like the patterns you can make with magnets and iron filings?" He sounded like he was trying to convince himself rather than me.

"A burst bubble," I whispered. "Anything could have happened. We're damned lucky to still be here, aren't we?"

He nodded, and looked pale. He pointed at the screen again.

"But look, it's stable now." It sounded like a plea. I didn't listen to him. I was once again reliving my dreams, of vast empty spaces filled with oily, glistening bubbles. They popped and spawned yet more bubbles, then more still until they filled everything with color, expanding through the solar system, the quadrant, the galaxy and out, never stopping, into the infinite blackness beyond.

"Shut it off," I said. "Do it now, before it's too late. "

He looked at me as if I was insane.

"But we've done it, John. This is Nobel Prize winning stuff, right here; this is our place in the history books."

"Bugger the books. I'll just be happy to have some more history. Shut it down."

He finally turned to the control panel. This time I was looking at the screen as he tried to manage the shut down.

It was indeed too late.

Two eggs now hung in the chamber side by side, just touching, each as black as the other, twin bubbles of space-time only held in check by our boundary field. I was suddenly all too aware how fragile that field had been the day before. The electromagnets throbbed louder, having to work harder to contain the newcomer. The eggs pulsed in synchronized agreement.

"Do something, Connon."

"I'm trying," he said, his fingers dancing across switches and knobs to no apparent avail. The throb of the magnets went up a notch until it felt like being inside a vast kettledrum beaten by a manic giant.

This time it was Connon who didn't see, but I saw only too well. The electromagnets screamed in the hurt of overexertion; the lights flickered, threatened to go out completely. I couldn't take my eyes off the screen. A new area of blackness coalesced in the chamber—a pair of huge black wings that spread over the dark eggs. Two things happened almost simultaneously, and even later I wasn't sure which came first; Connon shouted "I've got it," and the dark wings beat once then winked out of existence. The black eggs went with them.

The magnets whined. The noise of their effort faded back down to the almost comforting drone I was more accustomed to. Connon looked up, his fear and excitement vying for supremacy. In him, the excitement seemed to be winning—not so much in my case.

"That's it. We're done," I said, and went in search of a smoke.

I was still shaking when I climbed up the stairs out of the complex. I gave in to the urge and bummed a cigarette from the doorman. He came outside with me, passed me a smoke and he had to help me get mine lit as my hands trembled too much to get the lighter flame anywhere near the tip.

"Is there a problem down below, sir?" he asked as I sucked deep and immediately started to cough.

"Just a small one. It's under control," I managed to say. I tried to keep my own fear out of my voice, but I saw I had failed to convince him.

"It's just that I felt the place shake ten minutes ago, and it gave me a bit of a turn," he said.

If the place shook this far away from the containment chamber, then we had been even closer to disaster than I thought. I didn't speak of it; the poor doorman seemed to have already taken a fright. Another might be too much—for both of us.

Connon turned up seconds later. He took the cigarette from me, sucked down a deep one, then flicked the butt away with his forefinger and thumb. We didn't talk until the doorman, sensing something was indeed badly wrong, left us alone. I had no idea what I was going to say, but Connon had questions of his own for me.

"You saw it this time, didn't you?"

"The black swan? Yes, I saw it."

"The Black Swan ? Yes, that's about right. I thought it was more bat-like myself, but I'll go with swan." He laughed, and sang. "A very fine swan indeed."

"This is no joking matter, Connon. What the hell just happened?"

"Hell might be an appropriate word," he replied. "There are stories in many cultures of precisely this kind of phenomenon; they tell of a supernatural beast that controls the gateways—of perception—of reality—call it what you will. The dweller on the threshold—you might have heard of it?"

"You've lost me, old man."

"Think of it this way. Suppose there's a natural protective mechanism in the fabric of each universe, something that stops one bleeding into another—a unifying force ensuring that the glue sticks the whole thing together without the bubbles bursting?"

"And you think that's what I saw?"

He nodded.

"And if I'm right, we can keep experimenting. If we make a mistake, your Black Swan will stop us from doing any real damage."

I saw in his eyes that he was deadly serious.

"No, Connon. I said it, and I meant it, we're done here. I'm going to the brass and telling them what just happened. How long do you think they'll let us keep going after they hear?"

I thought he might plead with me, even beg, but he just went quiet—in a way, that was worse.

I was deadly serious about going to the brass. I meant to get us shut down before Connon did something really stupid. But matters were taken out of my hands as I turned to walk away from him. The containment chamber alarm went off, loud even here outside the complex.

The doorman made a token effort to stop us from getting back inside, and we had to push against the flow of technicians and computer operators making their way up from below, so it was a good five minutes before we reached the control room.

Five minutes too late.

The drumbeat from stressed electromagnets was loud even above the high whining of the alarm. We saw why as we approached the laptop.

Four eggs hung in a tight group in the center of the chamber, pulsing in time with the magnetic throb. Colors danced and flowed across the sheer black surface; blues and greens and shimmering silvers that were all too familiar—I'd seen them in my dreams.

"Shut that bloody alarm off," Connon shouted. I ignored him. All my attention was on those four eggs—four universes, if Connon was to be believed, maybe even infinite in their own way. The enormity of what we were doing had finally hit me, and I was struck immobile, only able to look on as each of the eggs trembled and calved.

In the blink of an eye there were eight.

Our electromagnets howled in anguish. I was vaguely aware of Connon throwing switches, turning knobs and screaming instructions into the intercom, but I was past caring, lost in contemplation of the beauty on the screen.

Sixteen now, all perfect, all dancing.

"We need more juice," Connor shouted into the com. "How do I know how much? Just give us all of it."

Thirty two now, and they had started to fill the chamber with dancing aurora of shimmering lights that pulsed and capered in time with the throb of the electromagnets and the whine of the alarm, everything careening along in a big happy dance.

"John!" Connon shouted. "I need you. "

I kept ignoring him.

Sixty-four, each a shimmering pearl of black light.

The colors filled the containment chamber, spilled out through the laptop screen, crept into the control room, danced in my eyes, in my head, all though my body. I gave myself to it, willingly.

And I would be gone yet if I hadn't felt a flicker of memory.

It only came when it was needed the most.

I managed to turn towards Connon.

"Shut down the containment," I said. "That's what's causing the problem."

Once again he looked at me as if I was insane.

"The swan will come when we most need it," I said, having to shout to be heard above the growing din. "The Dweller is the glue."

I saw comprehension hit him. He went back to throwing switches to close down the containment. The electromagnets whined and their drone faded to a whisper, the drumbeat slowing and diminishing. The alarm finally cut out, leaving us in almost complete silence.

A hundred and twenty eight now, and already calving into two hundred and fifty-six. The chamber was filling fast.

The control room shook and quaked, fine dust falling all around us.

Connon moved to switch the containment back on. I stayed his hand.

"Wait. It's happening."

It started with a dark flicker in the corner of the chamber, but grew and darkened and spread until a pair of black wings enfolded what I guessed to be a thousand and twenty four eggs.

A crack ran through the thick concrete wall to my left, and two cabinets on the far side of the room toppled with a crash.

The black wings beat, twice. There was a sudden burst of color; red, blue and shimmering silver filled my head.

I blinked, looked back, and there was only the empty containment chamber. But the damage had been done. The crack in the wall widened. The ceiling lights fell to the floor and smashed into pieces. Connon and I looked at each other, then made for the door.

We only just made it in time. The whole facility was coming down around us. We took the stairs two at a time and emerged into sunlight, blinking, as the complex caved in on itself at our back.

A pall of dark smoke rose up from the ruins, and was taken away by the wind. I might have been the only one that noticed, but before it dispersed it seemed to spread and open out.

Black wings beat, twice, then it was gone.

A TRUE TELLING OF THE TERROR THAT CAME TO RED HOOK

“There are sacraments of evil as well as of good about us, and we live and move to my belief in an unknown world, a place where there are caves and shadows and dwellers in twilight. It is possible that man may sometimes return on the track of evolution, and it is my belief that an awful lore is not yet dead.”

—Arthur Machen.

I suppose you've all heard Irish Malone's story? He's certainly told anybody that would listen—and more than a few that didn't want to. I'm here to tell you that, yes, he got some of it right—a terrible thing did indeed happen under that old Dutch church—I was there, I saw it too. I think I'll always be seeing it, although I decided at the time that  it wasn't something other folks needed to have in their heads.

But the big cop has got an awful lot—too much—wrong to let me sit by and let desperate people suffer for his misconceptions. So here it is—the way it really went down, not influenced by booze or narcotics or whatever it was in those jars of strange oily liquids that the Irishman knocked over in the Dutchman's apartments in his hurry that fateful night when it ended.

I'm not a resident of Red Hook—at least, I'm not a full time one. I came north from the Delta last summer with Cal and Frank and the rest of the band. We heard that the city was jumping, hot for the jive and that there was good money to be made for a colored band who could keep time and heat things up on the dance floors. If there's one thing we're good for, it is heating things up—some nights it feels as if Daddy's old trumpet is glowing red in my hands and spitting fire from the horn.

And we'd heard right—we got gigs all across the city, and we played damned near every night. Our favorite gig—not the best paying, but the most fun—was every Wednesday night in the old Dutch church at Red Hook. You all know Red Hook—the tumbled stone maze of older buildings on the wharf opposite Governor’s Island. It used to be where the rich men did their trade, back in the day, and although it's fallen on some hard times now, the houses are still strong—and the people stronger.

On Wednesdays we always took digs on Clinton Street and walked down to the church at the waterside; the streets were always busy, and always felt as if the whole world gathered there... as I said, we came from the south, drawn by tales of rich dance halls and such. But the area was full of Arabs, Russians, Swedes, Poles, Chinese, Japs and Malays, all together, all just looking to get on in the New World and move on up. Everybody had a past, and some brought it with them - mosques and prayer mats, incense and balms, spice shops, rug stores, Orthodox Jews, non orthodox Greeks, high church, low church and all manner of churches in between. But only one of the churches had a dance on Wednesday nights—the old Dutch high-spired one at the seafront—and it was there that the world of Red Hook came to dance and hear us play some hot jazz.

What made it so much fun was the Turks—Kurds they called themselves—I've never seen such folk for dancing and singing—they lived for it, and took to our beat as if it was their religion.  We had a rare old time, every Wednesday. We played, the joint jumped—and they fed and watered us—hot, spicy stuff that reminded me of good old Creole cooking, and thick heady spiced wine that ain't like nothing I've ever had before.

At some point I started to notice a white man in the crowd—an elderly man, down at heel and somewhat wild looking, with unkempt, straggly hair and clothes that had seen better days. I had him pegged as someone who had come into some great misfortune and fallen from a period of grace—that too was not uncommon in Red Hook. He turned up every Wednesday, but he never joined in the dancing, didn't eat the Kurd's food—in fact, he never seemed to be enjoying himself much at all. But he watched—he watched everything—he had cold eyes that seemed to measure the worth of everything and find it wanting.

I asked Botan—he was our Kurdish go-between when we needed anything—I asked him about the old white fella and what he was doing.

"The Dutchman thinks we have magical secrets," the little Kurd said, and laughed all the way from the bottom of his belly. "He is some kind of expert on such things—or so he says. We tell him we worship devils using the old songs, and he gives us dollars for our stories. If only getting money were this easy, we could all live as Americans. At first it was a joke—but he seems genuinely serious. And he has been digging under the church too—he thinks we live here because of an ancient secret that we're deliberately hiding from the white men. "

Botan laughed at that too, and I joined him. In reality, the people of Red Hook don't have any choice where they live—they are the overflow of our immigration system that's stretched too tight to accommodate them—so they come in at night off the boats and then hide in plain sight around the wharves. What else are they to do—they have fled from war torn mountains and have no homes to go back to—and at least here they are warm, fed—and have dancing.

Keeping them dancing usually kept me too busy to pay much attention to the Dutchman—Suydam—but over a course of a few months I heard stories—we all did.

"Suydam has hired diggers for the catacombs under the church—Suydam has spent a hundred dollars on an old copy of the Koran thinking it's a book of spells—Suydam performs blasphemous rituals in his apartments..."

It got so that the Dutchman was the main topic of conversation in the church—in all of Red Hook. He seemed harmless enough though, if not more than a bit eccentric. But then his family took note of his behavior—and spotted that cash was leaking out of his savings—they hired private dicks to come and snoop around, and when that got them nowhere, they got the cops involved.

That's where Malone enters this story properly—and where things start to get squirrelly—where official statements and policemen's tales don't hardly match with what really went down. But when kids start to go missing, something has got to be done—that at least is something everybody agreed on.

I first heard of the trouble from Botan where we were getting set up one Wednesday afternoon—we'd spent three nights in Harlem, playing, respectively, a wedding, a baptism and a wake, so I was pretty damned full of that old time religion. I got a feeling I might need it as Botan told me a tale of how the Dutchman had found—something—in the crypt under the basement. Botan either didn't know or wouldn't tell—but he did know that two kids had gone missing the night before the discovery —and he didn't think it was a coincidence.

Neither did Malone—but rather than blame the Dutchman, the big Irish cop was intent on seeing whether any of us differently colored folks could help him with the matter. Heads got knocked together, the usual suspects were rounded up—but we all knew the drill well enough—live in this town while not being white and you get to know the drill all too quickly—it's either that, or go under just as fast.

We cooperated with the Irishman—but he'd taken an instant dislike to the Kurds, and they to him. So when he asked questions, they gave him nothing—instead they told him the same tales they'd told the Dutchman… stuff and nonsense and tall tales of a desert god or great priesthood that had promised them unheard-of powers—supernatural glories and dominion as strangers in this strange land. Malone was so full of shit, so sure of his supremacy that he chose to believe the outlandish rather than what was right in front of his nose.

So the Dutchman kept coming around, kept poking in the dark places under the church; the cops kept raiding the houses on Clinton Street, Court Street and Parker Place, some Kurds got arrested, some other Kurds took to boats to try their luck elsewhere—and more kids went missing. Of course the police raids were never too extensive—despite the close attentions of the authorities, the Hook kept filling up with desperate immigrants – many people took generous back handers at the ports, labor got done cheap and white folks looked the other way - same as it ever was.

Everybody was busy just looking for a share of the American dream.

I left this all too familiar story behind for a spell and in truth hardly thought about the Hook at all while I was away. I eventually arrived back one Wednesday with the band after a longer than usual absence—we'd wintered in the Delta off the pickings of the previous summer, but now the money was gone and we were back to pluck the ripe apples of the north again.

We quickly found that Saydam was still the main topic of conversation—and that he had grown almost inexplicably prosperous—was even getting married in the early summer. Rumor also abounded, fuelled by the fact that he actually looked younger than the previous year—much younger—rumors of expensive deals done with eldritch masters. Purely by coincidence of course, two more of the local kids had gone missing.

"I'd like you to come and see something," Botan said to me not long after we arrived—I was supposed to be helping Cal with the drum kit, but we could all see that the Kurd was upset, so I—and Cal—went to see what had him so discomfited.

I can tell you, these Kurds are hardy, tough men—miners in the main, born and bred in stone and dust and hardship. But Botan was like a young boy afraid of the dark as he stood at the top of the stairs leading down into the darkness of the basement beneath the church itself, and I could tell he was using all his strength to prevent himself from fleeing. He turned and spoke—more I think to try to bolster his own courage than anything else.

"The Irishman—the big cop—he was here—and at the Dutchman's apartments too—and he looks like he took a great scare," he said, looking even more like he'd taken just such a scare himself. But in talking, he had also taken his first steps on the stairs, so we followed him down, our eyes slowly adjusting to the gloom.

"Normally, this is the Dutchman's place," Botan went on. "My people stay upstairs. But seeing the Irishman's face—I had to see what so affected him. And now—I am very sorry my friends—but I have to show it to you—for no one else will believe."

After that speech, I wasn't at all sure I wanted to go down any further. But Botan had reached out in friendship to us—had fed and watered us—we owed him as much in return.

We went down, into the damp, dingy basement of the church. It too had once been a place of worship; there was a tall pulpit beneath the only window, and decayed tapestries, rotting pews and baptismal fonts. All surfaces were covered in a slimy, green mold that seemed to give off an oily shimmer that none of us wanted to get on our hands or clothes. Painted wooden panels lined some of the walls—I didn't look too closely at them, but what I saw depicted gross and vile acts of lewdness and blasphemy. There were armored men and fine dressed women cavorting with strange animals with too many legs, too many heads—too many parts all together if you catch my meaning.

"Malone thinks this is our place, our doing—some Arab devil cult bollocks he said, but I know my people," Botan continued. "This is not of the East—this is white men's work—old white men from long ages past—ancestors of the ones who brought the stone of this church over the ocean. French maybe—or Spanish, but certainly before the Moors civilized them. "

He pointed at a carved inscription above the pulpit.

"And this is Greek—it too is old—very, very, old. I cannot read it—but I brought one of our elders down who could—he is lying down now—and might not recover. It is a great blasphemy. I remember the part of it that concerned him so."

He recited, as if from memory.

"Gorgo, Mormo, thousand-faced moon, look favorably on our sacrifices!"

I looked around.

"But there's nothing here that would concern Malone unduly, surely?" I said. "Sure, it's creepy as all hell—but there's nothing illegal—is there?"

Botan didn't speak, but took me by the arm and led me to the far wall. There was a door there—a heavy, oak door that looked as old as any stone around us. Even before I reached it my nose started to itch and I tasted something heady at the back of my throat as the Kurd pulled the door open.

The stench hit me first—and I almost recognized it—Grannie Dottie had kept pigs back down on the shores of the Delta—and this smelled like the shed out back of the farm that the meat came out of once the hard business was done. Botan put a hand over his mouth and motioned me forward, into the doorway. Cal wouldn't come, but I stepped ahead. Inside the door it opened out into a long staircase that descended into utter blackness. The smell was coming up from there—smell, and, I now saw, more of the green shimmering aura, almost phosphorescent down there in the dark. Botan put a finger to his mouth, asking for quiet, so I stood still—and then I heard it, a chanting—Latin, I’m almost sure—coming up from some great deep place, a thousand—a million—guttural voices raised in unholy prayer.

I stepped away, back into the basement, almost gagging at the stench, and unsure what I had just heard.

"And yet—still nothing illegal," Botan whispered. "Or so I thought. Then I found this."

He bent down and picked up something that lay just at the top of the stairs—it took me several seconds to figure out what it was, for it too was covered in a thin, shimmering, slime—but when I peered closer I wished I hadn't. It was a shoe—a child's leather shoe, with one heel hanging off—and some red encrusted color at the toes that I hoped was paint—but knew better.

I asked Botan to bring it out into the light so that Cal might see it—and as we stepped away into the basement chamber the singing from below swelled louder—there was also an accompanying sound—deep notes, as if from a great bass organ somewhere almost infinitely distant.

And even as we stepped over to where Cal stood by the pulpit there was another noise too—footsteps, on the stone inside the doorway—coming up toward us. At that Cal didn't choose to wait to see what Botan had in his hand—he turned and headed for the stairs upward into light and sanity, but Botan was made of sterner stuff. He fixed his gaze on the doorway and stood, waiting. I was not about to abandon him at such a point so, gritting my teeth and trying to ignore a rising panic, I too stood there, by the pulpit under that infernal inscription, waiting to see what might appear from the Stygian depths.

The sound of footsteps got louder—I could tell there was more than one set of them—and the smell grew stronger, so much so that I had to cover my mouth and nose. I don't quite know what I expected to arrive in the doorway—but it certainly wasn't the Dutchman.

Yet there he stood—taller and straighter backed than I remembered—and with a face free of the wrinkles that had been there the last I saw him. His eyes had not changed though—he looked at Botan and myself, and in almost the same instant we were dismissed—unimportant—unworthy.

Four smaller men, swaddled in thick clothing and large hats that hid their features, followed close behind him as he crossed the basement and made for the steps up to the church. It may just have been a trick of the dim light—although I am quite sure that it wasn't—but the five of them left a distinct trail of phosphorescent slime in their wake, as if a giant slug had just taken passage across the floor.

Over the coming weeks, Botan and I became fellow conspirators. The Kurd kept a close eye on the Dutchman's activities and, every Wednesday night, I was his sounding post—the one man he could talk to who might believe the increasingly outlandish nature of the tales I heard after the dancing while sipping at the Kurd's strong heady wine.

The rumors flew ever thicker and faster as the Dutchman's wedding day approached—he was betrothed to a Miss Cornelia Gerritsen of Bayside—a distant relation if the rumors were true, and a woman a great many years his junior. The man had already avowed that he desired a family—a large, prosperous family—and it was that vow that had Botan flustered.

"What kind of children might such a man spawn?" he asked me in hushed whispers. "And what woman would be able to abide his advances?"

I too was repulsed, but did not see how it could be any of my business whatsoever.

But it became my business on the very day of the wedding itself. We had played a dance the night before, and were staying on for a second night as, although the wedding itself was not consider any cause for celebration, the Kurds needed little excuse to throw a party. Then three Norwegian kids went missing that very morning—not exactly Americans, but white enough for the powers that be to sit up and take more notice.

We were roused from our lodgings before noon. Malone had his men out in force—they also sacked the church—bust up Cal's drum kit in the process—and threw many Kurds out of their homes. And despite it being his wedding day and with him now being in some wealth and position—they ransacked the Dutchman's houses—all three of them.

More rumors followed—of the finding of lewd and lurid artwork, of evidence of dark practices—but they didn't find any children. The Dutchman went free and Malone was clearly ready to blame anybody he could find.

That's still not what made it my business though. What made it my business was something that happened as we were all milling about in the street waiting for the cops to stop throwing the furniture around. Malone grabbed the Dutchman's arm, and the man brushed him off angrily. I think only Botan and I saw—but what we saw made us determined to do something about it. The Dutchman did not have a right hand at all—only some kind of strange, crab-like pincer, which left a residue of green slime on the cop's jacket where it touched him.

Botan and I returned to the church for a confab. While the wedding took place and the great and good gathered, we came to an agreement, he and I—we could not allow the young wife to suffer any fate that a thing such as the Dutchman seemed to be might press on her.

We went down into the depths under the church—I will not tell what we met there, that first time. We did not delve too deep—just far enough to assure ourselves that our quarry was indeed a monster—a rabid dog that needed to be put down—or more appropriately—a disease that needed to be purged. As a miner, Botan knew the ways of deep places—and also well knew the efficacy of fire—and explosives.

Before leaving that place, we made our arrangements.

All that was now left was to get our man to the place where we could give him an end—and that proved to be a sticking point, for we intended to kidnap a wealthy white man—on his wedding day at that. And we were all too aware that we were both known, if not to the authorities, at least to Malone.

Saydam actually made it easier for us than we might have hoped—he and his new wife had taken berths on a Cunard Liner heading for Dublin, and Botan again showed his resourcefulness by getting us the use—and the crew—of a small tramp steamer. He said he'd called in a favor from a friend. I suspected it might be one of those dark boats used to bring the Kurds to land under cover of darker seas, but I did not press the point as we chased the liner out of the port and darkness fell on the city.

In truth, our only plan, such as it was, was to get aboard the liner and see what could be done under cover of night. But the Dutchman himself had other ideas, for we docked beside the huge liner at the mouth of the Hudson just as an uproar and calamity rose up in the upper decks. I found my way up through the vast vessel, and got into the stateroom by the simple expedient of pretending to be in the Dutchman's employ—I had even made up a note to that effect purporting to be from the man himself. There was so much confusion and terror that the subterfuge was not questioned. So it was that I—with Botan posing as a servant by my side, were able to see at first hand the carnage that had been wrought on the poor bridesmaid—and on the Dutchman himself.

The green sliminess lay over everything—including a stack of tall glass jars that seemed to have been filled with the lady's blood and organs—red mixed with green, flowing and oozing and seeping sluggishly as if stirred from within. It appeared the Dutchman did not need a wife so much—rather what might be inside of her.

The Dutchman himself lay on the floor of the cabin, gasping wetly like a fish out of water, that blasted pincer—itself coated in blood—drumming a tattoo on the carpet as he tried to crawl away.

Botan wanted to start a fire there and then, to burn the whole hellish thing to oblivion, but I wasn't quite ready yet to be responsible for the destruction of an ocean liner. We could do nothing more for the poor lady, emptied of everything that made her whole, with the rest left lying on the bed. But we wrapped the Dutchman—and those damnable jars—in the carpets, the drapes, the sheets—anything that we found to have been contaminated with the green, and, carefully, transferred the whole mess to the steamer. The bundle rolled and squirmed and struggled like a giant maggot, but we weighed it down with fishing nets and crates which at least ensured his silence as we made our getaway.

We managed to slip off into the night on the port side of the liner—and even while we did so I saw one of the harbor patrol boats draw up, the unmistakable figure of Malone standing up front as it docked with the liner.

And now we finally come to it—the end that so pollutes Malone's dreams, and the reason for his retirement—permanent I should think—from any active policing in the future.

We had more difficulty than I had hoped in getting back under the church—we could not risk carrying our prize in the open in the streets of the Hook. But the Kurds of the crew knew the ways under the city better than I did. We finally tied up at a long disused wharf somewhere in the tangle of supporting pillars underneath the main dock. Over the next hour, the steamer crew showed us a different way into the church vaults—one that involved tortuous passage through tunnels and sewers long forgotten by those that lived their life in the sun above.

And all the way the maggoty bundle containing the Dutchman squirmed and struggled, and green ooze dripped, thick and almost solid, from the rear end as we manhandled it through the tight passages.

I had been hoping to reach a place of clearer air, for those sewers are foul indeed—but nothing like as foul as the stench that reached me as we exited one brick-lined chamber into a more open space. Once again I was reminded of Grannie Dottie's small abattoir in the Delta—but I can tell you this—I'd far rather have been there than here, in the darkness under the city.

The smell seemed to invigorate the thing in the bundle, for it began to squirm mightily and slid from our hold on it, then made off quickly, traversing the chamber ahead with some rapidity, leaving a line of shining slime behind it.

"After it," Botan shouted, and I was at his side as we followed the trail .

It took me several seconds to realize we were now alone—the crew had gone as far as they were comfortable in travelling. But the Kurd and I had come too deep to back away now—and besides, we both thought we had a very good idea where the trail would lead us—right into the huge vaulted chamber under the church—the very heart of the terror.

And now I must tell of what lies—lay—there, for I skirted around the subject earlier rather than have my memories stirred—it is not a thing I like to dwell on, for it haunts my dreams on far too many nights as it is.

The Irishman got some of the details right. There is indeed a vast—almost cathedral like—cavern beneath the old Dutch church. More than that, there is a whole network of caves and tunnels and passages all forgotten and unknown to the world above. Malone speaks of seeing onyx pillars and golden thrones, of Satan and devils and hordes of demons. We saw none of that—I believe the Irishman's fever dream was wrought by whatever chemical soup he breathed in the Dutchman's rooms when he broke the bottles on his way through. Add to that his Catholic upbringing and his studies of mysticism and you'll see that his peculiarly Christian vision of the hells beneath the church is all too understandable.

As I say—we saw no vision of Hell—at least, not one that a churchman would recognize. What we did see was bad enough—and it is claimed by no religion known to man—at least none that has survived down the many years that foul cavern must have lain there.

Malone was right on one other matter—it was a charnel house down there. The Dutchman had been paying for whatever reward he received with the bodies of the young of Red Hook, dragging them down into the dark to be fed to his master. The evidence of his perfidy was spread wide around the gaping maw of a huge pit that glowed, green and shimmering and somehow sickening, bright enough to light the whole high cavern with its luminescent glow. We had found the missing children—or rather, what little remained of them. Bone—it too tinged green now, pieces of flesh, discarded clothes and crushed skulls lay in great profusion wherever you looked.

The thing that had been the Dutchman was finally shucking itself out of the material in which we had rolled it. Even as we ran forward, a mere ten paces behind now, we saw that it no longer resembled a man at all, but was merely a long, almost snake like thing of shining, shimmering green. It slithered sinuously to and fro as it made straight for the green, glowing maw of the pit.

And as it approached its goal, something rose to meet it—a mass of glowing slime that came up, and up, out of some distant depth, filling the whole maw of the pit with its bulk. It sang even as it came—wet mouths in blank faces all along its length chanting in time, a deep bass drone coming up from deeper still to fill the air like a bellowing organ.

I remembered the Greek inscription above the pulpit, somewhere high overhead.

"Gorgo, Mormo, thousand-faced moon, look favorably on our sacrifices!"

What was left of the Dutchman sped toward the thing in the pit, intending, I think, to give it one last meal to add to the ones he had been feeding to it all this time. At this point in his tale Malone speaks of strange dark men chasing a phosphorescent nightmare—I think what he saw was Botan and myself, in those last moments before we all reached the pit.

The green monstrosity rose, ever higher from its infernal depths, and the Dutchman stretched out toward it. The air filled with the song of the thing, and almost religious longing coursed through me—I wanted nothing else but to cast myself into the pit with it, to give myself to its song and be lost within its vastness.

"Gorgo, Mormo, thousand-faced moon, look favorably on my sacrifice!"

Botan saved us both—the miner proved to be of more stout stuff than I and was able to put our plan into action. It was time to snap the trap shut. He left my side—I scarcely noticed, for I was indeed lost, in a fervor of song and light and rhythm as intoxicating as anything I have ever felt. If I'd had my Dad's horn there I would certainly have been playing along, lost in the joy of it, breathing hellfire and brimstone into one last, hot, jive.

I only came out of it when the first of Botan's charges went off and blew a tumble of rock down in a rush into the pit. The snake-thing that had been the Dutchman wailed and rushed forward—only to be buried, squashed almost flat when a second blast brought down another wall of rock.

The Kurd had placed his charges well—a third brought a chunk of the roof down and almost filled the green pit completely, sending the slime roiling down and away from us into the deep. The chanting stopped and the spell left me, as quickly as it had come.

Then everything was dust and rumble and thunder as the whole cavern started to collapse—I saw brickwork fall along with the rock—foundations of some of the houses above, whole basements tumbling now amid the falling rubble .

Botan took my hand and we fled—the way back up to the church was now blocked to us, but we stumbled in the dark and, when we found Malone, prone at a tunnel entrance, we guessed we had found another way in—and out. We thought the Irishman to be dead, so we left him where he lay and sped, the roof falling all around us all the time, up and out and finally emerged, blinking, into a clear moonlit night and blessedly fresh air.

There is not much left to tell. Houses fell, the works of the Dutchman were buried forever, and the full scale of his evil might never be known. But no more children have disappeared into the pit and no more ever will, as long as Botan and his people are here to keep watch.

Malone survived, and tells a different tale to that which I have related above to anyone that will listen. But I know what I saw—and Botan knows what he saw, and whether the white folks chose to blame the coloreds or not, I believe it was us that saved Red Hook that night. I will always believe it—it makes the dreams more bearable.

Now forgive me—it is Wednesday, and we must go to church.

We have some dancing to do.

VULCAN'S FORGE

—Day 1—

T hey told me it was a temple, one dedicated to a forgotten god from over the seas. The ziggurat builders of Mesopotamia were the main names being mentioned, but as soon as I climbed the smoking slopes and entered the shaft I saw that what the quake had uncovered was something far older—and far more interesting.

I immediately knew one thing for sure—it is certainly no temple, although I am at a loss as to categorize the place in any other fashion. The basalt walls are smooth, as if cut in great precision by a master builder, although there is no sign of any joins, not even where high arches have been formed to mark the passageways. Strange jars line every wall; tall glass vases filled with wonders—and horrors—strange creatures beyond imagining, all of them dead, dissected and floating, specimens of some dark experimentation.

Three long trestles hewn from a strange green marble mark the workspace, and on each lies a range of knives, specula and a variety of objects—obviously tools—that I can only hope to fathom the meaning of. It will take weeks of careful study.

But first, some cleaning will be required. Everything is covered in a thin layer of ash, and I speculate that the place was abandoned in some unimaginable past during a previous volcanic episode, although I will admit to that being no more than a theory at present. I only know for sure that it is old—older by far than the great structures of Rome herself, maybe older still than the Sphinx in the desert, and with as little intention of giving up its secrets.

The place is an enigma—one that I hope to be given time to understand. I must not complain. To be given the task at all is a great honor. There are mysteries—and wonders—here that will do much to advance my reputation should I manage to penetrate the secrets, and the chamber itself is a privilege to behold.

It might never have been found had it not been for the quake that shook the slopes of Vesuvius three days ago. There have been tremors in this area before—of course there have, and some of them large enough to do substantial damage around the region. But none has ever opened up such a gash in the mountainside as this. The fact that so much has survived intact is only one of the many wonders of this place.

I am told by Galvinius the builder that a new eruption may indeed be imminent, one that might destroy this wonder before we have time to fully understand it, but I cannot allow myself to worry about that at the moment. The marvels I have seen this day must be catalogued and preserved—that is my only priority at this time.

I have a lot of work ahead of me.

—Day 2—

The complex of shafts beneath the main chamber is far larger than we have been led to believe. Galvinius is astounded—something I never thought I would say about such a stout, earthy mason. But the sight of the tunnel network that he uncovered this morning is certainly enough to amaze even the most jaded of minds. It is as if an army of ants—enormous beyond all belief—have hewn and cut out the heart of the volcano for their own as yet unfathomable devices. Galvinius has his young assistants down there now, trying to delve ever deeper

There are many chambers like the one in which I sit penning this—a score at least, with more being uncovered at every turn, each containing more of the glass jars—more monstrosities, more evidence of experimentation on a grand scale. We have seen no sign that men have been the subjects of these grotesque depravities—but I fear what we might find even further in the depths of this infernal place.

Infernal is not a word I use lightly. It is warmer here than the hottest summer's day, a dry heat that sucks the very moisture out of a man in minutes, leaving him parched and leathery. Great care has to be taken inside the complex, and to tarry too long will only bring quick and certain death. Several of Galvinius' men have succumbed to heatstroke already, and he is having fresh water brought up by the barrel from the lower slopes in an attempt to keep us hydrated.

As for myself, I have as yet ventured no further than the initial find—there is more than enough to keep me occupied up here. So far I have identified some of the creatures from the jars—although their forms are strange to my eye, as if not quite fully realized. There is part of a horse that seems too small, a strange lizard thing that seems far too large, and a hairy loathsome beast in a tall jar that I can scarcely look at. It has some resemblance to the monkeys of the Barbary, and an even closer resemblance to a man around the face, but it is far larger than any man—and somehow looks angry despite having been dead for a great length of time .

There are other jars where I can only guess at the provenance of the occupants. Some contain many legged things with membranous wings that look more like a hideous prawn than anything. Others are full of squat leathery eggs that have long since hatched, and insects—huge insects—unlike any I have ever seen.

And then there is the black tarry substance that, on close examination, seems to have coated almost everything at one time. It has long since hardened such that it is almost indistinguishable from rock, but when you break a piece—I did so by banging a fragment hard on the green marble—it shows distinctive internal structure that tells of a once living thing. Not for the first time in these past few days, I am at a complete loss as to what to make of it.

—Day 3—

I had believed myself beyond any further astonishment, but today has proved me quite wrong. Galvinius had sent to Pompeii for rope and tackle last night, and this morning he and his assistants went even deeper into the bowels of the volcano. I was at one of the green marble trestles when the mason returned—eyebrows singed, skin covered with a layer of ash and sweat, eyes showing white—and terrified—in a smoke blackened face.

"You must see this, Septimus. Rome must be told."

He would not elaborate, insisting it was something that had to be seen to be believed. He would only say that it was a greater wonder by far than we had so far uncovered. Of course there was nothing for it but for me to descend to the depths to investigate for myself .

We carried extra flasks of water with us for the descent but even so I was feeling as dry as old leather by the time we arrived at what the mason was so anxious for me to see.

It lies deep inside the volcano, at the foot of the steepest shaft we had traversed—the lowermost chamber of the complex. A vent blew sulphurous belches at us, the heat would have cooked us to a crisp if we had tarried too long, and the very walls of the shaft trembled as a fresh tremor shook through the volcano. I scarcely noticed any of that.

The chamber is a huge forge, vaster by far than even that of the most successful sword smith in Rome, a pit of molten rock and flame fit for the use of Vulcan himself. It is currently plugged with a vast slab of rock, but it is obvious from its design that this has not always been the case. Once again I can only guess at the use to which this might have been put, but there is a most cunning mechanism of gears and pulleys employed, and it was Galvinius himself who spotted their purpose, although even after being told I could scarcely believe it.

The forge itself is acting like a massive bung—a cork if you will, one that can be raised or lowered to selectively increase of decrease any growing pressure in the magma flows. It is a work of engineering genius unparalleled in the world that we know—perhaps the greatest such feat ever undertaken. One thing is certain—it was designed and built by a race long since lost to time—a race of giant intellect so far above ours that we would be mere insects under their boots should they return.

And it is the only thing that is preventing this volcano from blowing its top—and taking us with it.

—Day 4 —

The great forge has been much on my mind—and I am only slightly appeased by the fact that Galvinius has pronounced it safe. Indeed he believes he may well be able to use it to prevent what he had previously considered to be an inevitable cataclysm, and if he does so, he will be the most feted man in the Empire.

Word of our find has reached Herculaneum. General Flavius Meranus arrived this morning with a retinue of thirty armed guardsmen, although the dangers present here are not the kind that can be fought with swords and spears. I was in the top chamber when the General arrived, and he did so right at the moment that Galvinius announced that he had found more wonders. Had we been alone I might have counseled the mason to silence, but I was not given that opportunity. He arrived in the chamber at a run, full of excitement.

"There is another chamber," he announced, even before noticing the General's presence. After that, of course, there was nothing for it but to show the General the latest find.

I was expecting another chamber similar to the others, but there were no glass jars in the one that Galvinius led us to. Instead there was a single sheet of glass encompassing a whole wall of the cavern—a singular feat of craft and engineering in its own right. At first I could not discern any use apart from decoration, for it was not a window to the outer slopes of the volcano.

It was, however, a window to somewhere—or some when, as we found out when Galvinius walked up to it and stroked its surface—gently, almost a caress.

Several of the General's guards let out cries of fear as the glass cleared and we looked out over a scene of battle—but what a battle, the likes of which our legions should hope never to encounter.

A great city—spires piled high to the sky, walls almost as tall as the mountain on which they were built—was under siege. The attacking army was not even remotely human, but was little more than a seething mass of black tar, crawling and creeping inexorably closer to its goal, roiling and seething with a strange form of life. Tendrils rose from the tarry surface, as if tasting the air. Wet slits opened and our cavern filled with the sound of a high piping whistle that grated on the ears and sent two of the guard to their knees, bleeding at nose and ears. The rest of us endured as we watched the tar begin its climb up the city wall.

Somewhere on the top of the wall there were defenders, too small for us to make out detail of their form, although they seemed larger than men, with too many limbs. They poured fire down on the tar, but that only seemed to speed the attack. The walls began to crumble and quake, great rifts and cracks appearing in the stone. Spires and turrets fell into dust and the ruin of that great city seemed inevitable.

The mountain smoked and belched then belched again, louder this time. Fire erupted from the summit. The ground—even here in the chamber where we watched, rolled and yawed like a boat in heavy seas.

Then the top of the mountain came off with an explosion of such force that the entire city—what was left of it—crumbled and fell under the blow. Fire ran down the slopes like rivers, and a great ash cloud rose high into the heavens then fell like a blanket, smothering everything until even the black tar was quiet and still and hard.

The last thing we saw before the glass went dark was a scene of utter devastation—all was flat and gray and dead, and no sign remained that the great city had ever stood.

To a man—even including the stoic old general—we were in shock, trying to comprehend what we had seen—some of the guards were calling it a vision from the gods, saying that Vulcan himself had showed us a sign, a portent of a cataclysm to come. They were ready to flee until the General called for order. As for myself, I was thinking more of the engineering skills that had built the great forge, and whether this was no more than another manifestation of the builder's ingenuity.

Galvinius had obviously been thinking along the same lines as me.

"I think they did it deliberately," he said. "I think they set off the eruption. And I think they did it from a place like this."

He went off to one side of the glass panel and I followed him, with the General right behind me.

There is an alcove there, and it only contains one thing. Galvinius explained to the General what he thought its purpose might be, but I am in no doubt.

It is a lever, one that can be pulled to take out the bung, to use a crude analogy—one that will set this volcano to exploding.

—Day 5—

I thought that the General might return to Herculaneum, but he stayed today, taking great interest in everything we have discovered so far. I am not naive enough to think this is in the spirit of intellectual rigor—indeed, that was proved rather early in the day. He has taken special note of the black tar residue, and as ever with a General's mind, his thoughts have taken a militaristic turn .

"Think of it, Septimus," he said, hefting a large piece of the black material in his hand. "If we could have a living supply of this material to hand, we need never lose a man in a siege again. We would simply deploy this, and stand well back. The job would be done for us without a single grave needing to be dug."

I tried to impress upon him the horror I felt in my heart at the very idea, but he was deaf to my imprecations, even after I reminded him of the destruction we had seen wrought on the great city in our shared vision. He waved my protests aside.

"I am sure you can devise a means of control to avoid such extreme conclusions. I want this to be your priority, Septimus," he said, making it clear that he would brook no argument, and that my options for dissent were limited. "I want barrels of this material, alive and flowing, for use on my next campaign—I aim to make my mark on the Empire—I mean to go down in history."

Quite how history will remember General Flavius Meranus is as yet unclear—it is my own place in the immediate future that concerns me now. I am to begin study of the black tar.

I am to bring it back into a world from which it was banished eons ago.

May the Gods have mercy on me.

—Day 23—

The mountain is angry today. Perhaps it is my actions that have precipitated it—I can only hope not, although my dreams are dark now, filled with visions of the tar overrunning the country.

I have succeeded in the task set before me, although I have not yet informed the General, for my main desire is to destroy that which I have wrought, and to tell him that I have failed. It would mean almost certain death for me—and he would only send another to take my place before the day is out. But I would not have to live with the consequences, and that, perhaps, might be preferable to the alternative.

It has been a hard task getting as far as I have. At first the black tar refused to yield to my efforts to pry into its secrets. I tried water, wine, vinegar and a variety of salts—all of them merely washed off the surface leaving the still solid tar behind.

I only had a breakthrough when I boiled the material in a retort containing salt water, and kept the heat on it until the water had almost evaporated.

All that was left in the retort was an oily residue, and at first I thought it was another failure, but when I put out a finger to scrape at the residue, it flowed away from my digit, as if afraid of the touch. After that it was simply a matter of boiling as much of the material as we could find in the complex—which was quite considerable.

There are two barrels down in the deep parts of the complex, in the nearest chamber to the forge. They seethe and roil. The tar is viscous and things float in it; unformed limbs, suckered tentacles like those of an octopus, moist sucking mouths and—worst of all—pale eyes that stare unblinkingly, dozens of them. At least the amount of material in the barrels seems stable—if the volume had shown any sign of increasing I would have had it all poured into the forge there and then.

The General will arrive tomorrow, I will show him the work, and then I will go down into Pompeii and lose myself in wine and song for a week—it may be the only thing that will save my sanity .

—Day 30—

Has it been a week already?

I woke with a bad head and worse stomach only to be summoned to the mountaintop; it was a journey I did not in any way relish in my delicate condition. I was not in the best of moods when I arrived, and even less so when the General showed me what now occupied the lowermost chambers of the complex.

It has grown and thrived, filling the space allocated to it and spilling over into the surrounding vents. It is down below us in the deep places, seething and roiling, a black pit of fomenting fluid. He has been feeding his men to it, and it is a great horror.

I did not fully comprehend the depths of that horror until the General gave me my new orders.

I am to control it—then I am to devise a means of transporting it to Herculaneum where he intends to make a spectacle of it in front of the Governor and council.

I have five days.

—Day 32—

What have we done?

The calamity came upon us in the early morning. I was in a lower chamber, not doing much of anything, just thinking, trying to find a new way to broach my problem, when Galvinius came up at a run from below.

Screams rose from the depths behind him, terrible wails of piteous agony.

Just as Galvinius reached me, one of the General's guards came up out of the vent. Blood poured from his head where a piece of scalp flapped, showing bone below. He almost fell at the entrance to the chamber, his legs giving way beneath him, but he gave one look back down the vent and squealed in fear before getting to his feet.

We saw the reason a second later. A black sphere of the tar rolled lazily up from below, slumping like a partially deflated wineskin. The soldier squealed again and started out of the vent toward us.

He did not make it.

Behind him the thing opened and stretched, bat-like wings touching the wall on either side. The underside of the wings fluttered… and scores of green milky eyes opened in unison. The thing surged forward. The man had time for one more scream before it fell on him like a wet robe, engulfing him totally in its folds. I moved forward to try to save the man, but was held back by a hand on my shoulder.

"We need to go," Galvinius said. "You cannot help him."

One glance showed me he was right. The black mass seethed over the prone body, but the man made no sound, even as a lump of bloody meat was dragged forcibly from this thighbone. He was already gone.

The tar had developed a taste for fresh meat.

Glavinius and I wasted no time in consideration. We fled upward, trying to ignore the searing heat in our lungs, gasping for air as we pushed harder, faster, all too aware that something might come up from the depths and grab us at any moment. By the time we arrived at the uppermost chambers we were in a state of quite some disarray, and it was some time before we could catch a breath and were able to tell the General and his remaining guard the nature of our predicament .

Even then the General refused to believe us, although his refusal was to be his own undoing. He strode toward the main shaft leading downward.

"You have let yourselves be terrified by the strangeness of the thing," he said, loudly so that his guard might take note. "There is nothing for true Romans to fear here."

Those were his last words.

A black shape surged up from below, filling the passageway and falling on him before he could do any more than turn around. He earned his place in history seconds later, although by then there was no one there to see it, for we had all fled from an onrushing tide of black tar.

I chanced a look back as we approached the exit to the chamber. The tar was filling the room fast. Tentacles—black suckers glistening—waved excitedly in the air, wet mouths gaped hungrily and a myriad of lidless eyes stared implacably as it came on, relentless in its pursuit.

We had nowhere to go but up, retreating into the top chamber as the black tar swelled and filled the vast voids below us. A high whistling, a chorus of demented flutes, followed us as we ran.

We almost made it, but were caught within sight of the sky— Galvinius and I were separated in the melee as we fought for position with the fleeing guards. Two of them fell at the mouth of the last vent, to be dragged away, screaming. Some of us screamed in unison. I caught a glimpse of Galvinius. He stood at the mouth of the chamber that led to the room with the glass plate that viewed history—and the alcove beyond. We both knew that he could not escape from that place—there was no way to the surface from there.

"We cannot let it out, Septimus," he shouted. "It cannot get to Pompeii or Herculaneum—think of the carnage. You know what has to be done."

I realized he was looking for my approval. With that black horror at my heels I was only too keen to give it. I nodded, turned on my heels and fled out into the light.

Even then I did not stop, but careened down the slopes with no heed for care. I looked back once, to see black tar seep out of the hillside vents and start to flow.

Then Galvinius pulled the lever and the roof came off the world in a red blast that wiped everything else from thought.

And still I fled, through Pompeii as the ash started to fall, all the way to the harbor at Stabiae where I fought among the throng attempting to make our escape from the choking cloud of death that draped itself around us.

Finally I made it onto a boat—even then it was a perilous sail through seas choked with bodies and rubble and ash, but eventually, after what seemed an age, we reached clearer water and I turned to get my first real look at what was left of the mountain.

The ash rose like a cyclopean tree trunk from the collapsed ruin of the summit before spreading out its branches to let deadly foliage fall on the whole stretch of coastline below, leaving only gray death in its wake.

I searched the cloud as it fell, looking for traces of the black, but all was gray—gray and white and as dry as the cold pit in my heart when I think of the destruction Galvinius and I have wrought in this place.

Then I think of the alternative, and what might have happened had the black replaced the gray.

I believe we have made the right decision.

THE WONDERFUL MAGICIAN

R ickman could never quite manage to reproduce the music he heard in his head.

It had been in there as long as he could remember—even when the nursery rhymes and the pop music of his pre-teen years had long since faded into a monotonous background drone, still the music was there. It was alive and vibrant, singing to him from all the dark places in his mind, there as he worked, there as he played—there as he slept, haunting his dreams. Over the years he'd tried almost everything to get it out—guitar at twelve, piano at fourteen, an interesting experiment with drums and drugs in his early twenties, and violin throughout his thirties.

None of them, although each diverting it its own way, had made any difference to his peace of mind. The music had stayed in his head, refusing to take a life of its own, preferring to hijack Rickman at the most inopportune moments with snatches of wistful rhythms and soaring choruses full of longing. The frustration Rickman felt at not being able to share this inner beauty was almost too much for a man to bear.

But now he had hope—technology had just caught up enough that he might finally have a chance at bringing his inner music out into the real world. It had taken every penny he had, and the resulting hardware filled most of his already cramped attic apartment—but it was a small price to pay. He would call it “Soundscapes of the City”, and it would make him his fortune, of that Rickman was certain.

How can it fail?

All it had taken to get him on track was a demonstration of a machine from Dreamsoft Productions, and the latest sampling software from MythOS. A mixing desk and a holographic array did the rest. Music and images could be created from the subtle difference in electrical impulses in his brain while he dreamed, and then merged with any sound—or indeed any part of the electromagnetic spectrum—that he desired. Rickman’s visions of bringing his magnum opus to the world were now that much closer to reality.

For the past forty nights he’d sampled and tweaked, taking the raw sounds that streamed into his loft apartment from the city outside and merging them with his dream compositions to form a holographic construct of sound and light and ionized gas in an ever-moving plasma bubble. It now hung like a giant ameba in the array in the center of his room—an ameba that sang, and danced, to his ever more insistent tune.

It had been a long hard journey to this point.

During those first few days everything was sharp and jagged, harsh mechanical discordance that, while it had a certain musical quality, was not what he needed… not if he was going to take the world by storm. The plasma had roiled and torn, refusing to take a permanent shape and Rickman despaired of what the city was telling him. Everything was ugly, mean-spirited. The music of the city spoke only of despair and apathy and his dreams didn’t make a dent when he overlaid them.

Then he had his epiphany.

Aptly, it came to him in a dream more vivid than any he had ever had previously, as if the mere act of accessing the dream machine had unlocked something within him, allowing the full vision to emerge .

It starts with thin whistling, like a simple peasant’s flute played at a far distance. At first all is black. The flute stops, and the first star flares in the darkness. And with it comes the first chord, a deep A-minor that sets the darkness spinning. The blackness resolves itself into spinning masses of gas that coalesce and thicken, bubbling and foaming before resolving into great black eggs, oiled and glistening, calving, over and over, reaching critical mass and exploding into a symphony that fills the void with color and song. Stars wheel overhead in a great dance, the music of the spheres cavorting in his head.

Rickman jumped from his bed and checked the sampling box—it had recorded nearly thirty minutes of material, streamed directly from his brain as he slept.

I have it. I finally have it.

He hooked the sampling box to the mixer and holographic array and started to play with the resulting sounds. He had hoped for immediate results, but he was to be disappointed again. At first it was still all too mechanical, with none of the grandeur and sweep of his dreams. Then he remembered the stars. He went out onto his balcony and realigned his antennae pointing it, not down toward the city, but up, to the sky and the dome of stars above.

He got results almost immediately. The plasma roiled, rolled, and formed a sphere, a ball of shining silver held in the holographic array, hovering at head height, quivering like quicksilver.

At first it just hung there in space, giving out a deep bass hum that rattled his teeth and set all the glassware in the apartment ringing. Things changed quickly when he double, then triple tracked the sounds from his dreams, adding depth and resonance to them with each new layer of aural complexity. Shapes formed in the plasma, concretions that slid and slithered, rainbow light shimmering over their surface like oil on water.

They sang as they danced.

Rickman soon found that by moving the antennae to point at different areas of the sky he was able to get the plasma to merge or to multiply; each collision or split gave off a new chord, the plasma taking on solid forms in a seemingly infinite variety of shapes. As they swam, his creations sang in orchestrated overtures to the dark beauty of the night. But it still wasn’t right—the song still wasn't what he heard in his head, and nothing else would do but to keep trying until it was perfect.

He turned a knob to see if applying some distortion to his dream samples might do the trick. The array continued to whine and throb is a strangely musical beat, but the plasma burst with a soft pop , spilling like viscous liquid to the bottom of the box, coalescing and congealing.

By the time Rickman walked over to investigate, something lay curled at the bottom of the array.

At first he could not quite believe what he was seeing. This was no plasma—this was a creature—alive and breathing. The thing that had Rickman most worried was that he recognized it—a thing from childhood nightmares. It used to hide in the downstairs closet of the first house he remembered—a beast that had the body of a man but the head of some grotesque misshapen rodent. Its fur was patchy—mange and age had left it showing pale sallow skin in places where it should have fur, with weeping sores running the length of its body. Long yellow teeth hung over a short lower jaw—the left incisor was cracked and broken near the tip, giving the face a lopsided expression that was very far from being comical. Worst of all, a long pink tail rose and fell, swished once then thumped in time with the musical vibration and hum that ran through the array. Red eyes blinked, opened and looked straight at Rickman.

Rickman stepped back, half-expecting an attack, but the thing seemed more interested in the music. It pawed at the air in an obscene parody of an orchestra's conductor, then stood, unsteady on back legs that looked more suited to crouching. To Rickman's astonishment it began to dance, its diseased body swaying softly, almost seductively. Then it surprised Rickman again. It sang along with the beat, nonsense words in a guttural tone that sounded almost like a chant. To Rickman's ears the whole thing was as harsh and dissonant as the city sounds outside the window.

That isn't right at all.

Rickman retreated to the mixing desk and turned a knob. The rhythm speeded up.  The rodent-thing danced faster, legs pumping, an almost frantic jig. It sang, putting everything it had into it, as fervent as any tenor, screeching and wailing as if in pain. The whole room shook and vibrated and Rickman felt as if the top of his head might come off with the pressure. He dialed the distortion knob all the way back to the off position and finally, with another soft pop the mutant rodent vanished, its form being subsumed back into a swirling glowing mass as the plasma reformed in the dead center of the array. The ball of shimmering quicksilver hung there, quivering, as if daring him to try something else.

Rickman, while dismayed that his experiment had taken such a strange turn, was not too disappointed .

I'm onto something here. I'm really onto something.

He played with his dials and knobs, testing the boundaries of the plasma with multi-tracking, distortion, feedback and echo effects. He found that at the top range of power, with echo full on, the plasma was forced into an egg-like configuration, no longer silver but black and roiling, the surface covered in an oily sheen that cast a rainbow aurora around the room. With only the minutest twitch of the knobs things could be born from the egg—things that would dance—things that would sing, just for him.

After his disappointment with the rodent-thing, he was only slightly happier with his second creation. As before the field boundary popped when he turned a knob just slightly too far.

This time the floor of the array was coated in several inches of gray slime that was already hardening and fusing into a solid, glass-like mass. There were things embedded in it—blood and hair and bones and eyes, all jumbled like a manic jigsaw, fused and running into one another as if assembled by a demented sculptor. It was only when he spotted the chipped and yellowed incisor that he realized what he was seeing.

He had no idea what to do next, but fortunately the decision was taken for him. Something rose up out of the glassy mass, slowly at first, then punching its way through the surface with a tinkle of broken glass that was clearly audible even above the vibration and hum. When Rickman looked closer, he saw it was a bone, hollow and holed in several places along its length—a bone that immediately started up a piping whistle, high and reedy, like a gull soaring and swooping though the room, keeping time with the thrum and beat from the array. The sound was not unpleasant—almost harmonious in fact, so Rickman decided to let things play on for a spell to see where they led.

More bones forced their way up through the slime, sending their high whistling voices to join the first, a flock of flautists that blended and merged until it was like an orchestrated choir, singing in time with Rickman's dream compositions.

But it's still not right.

Without hesitation he turned the echo knob sharply to the off position. Once again the plasma reformed into the shining quicksilver globe in the center of the array. The chamber fell silent. By small, almost miniscule stages, Rickman began to turn the knob again, taking care not to go too far, determined to prevent the plasma from popping this time.

He was rewarded for his patience.

A new black egg formed and quivered, an oily rainbow aura dancing over it. Ever so slowly it became two, a shimmering sheen running over their sleek black surface. They hummed to themselves, a high singing that was taken up and amplified by an answering whine from the enclosing array. As two eggs became four, the whole room rocked from side to side in rhythm as a drumbeat kicked in to force the tempo.

Better.

The dance had begun.

Four eggs became eight.

The air above Rickman filled with singing, filled with the rhythm of the dance.

His whole body shook, vibrating in time. His head swam, and it seemed as if walls of the room melted and ran. The scene receded into a great distance until it was little more than a pinpoint in a blanket of darkness, and he was alone, in a cathedral of emptiness where nothing existed save the dark and the pounding chant.

And then there was light.

He saw stars—vast swathes of gold and blue and silver, all dancing in great purple and red clouds that spun webs of grandeur across unending vistas. Shapes moved in and among the nebulae; dark, wispy shadows casting a pallor over whole galaxies at a time, shadows that capered and whirled as the dance grew ever more frenetic. He was buffeted, as if by a strong, surging tide, but as the beat grew ever stronger he cared little. He gave myself to it, lost in the dance, lost in the stars.

He did not know how long he wandered in that space between. He forgot himself, forgot everything but the dancing in the vastness where only rhythm mattered. He may even have been there yet had the hologram's boundary not collapsed with a shriek.

This time he had to hurry to dismiss the thing that the collapsing field left behind. It was the size of a grown man, but looked more like a hideous shrimp. The body was segmented and chitinous like that of a crustacean, but this was no marine creature—it had membranous wings, currently tucked tightly against its back, giving it a hunched appearance. There were no arms or hands to speak of, although Rickman counted four pairs of limbs. The pair the thing used as legs were more stout and thicker than the rest, each being tipped with three horny claws extended to balance its weight at the front while a segmented tail completed the tripod behind it. The other appendages looked more flexible and nimble. It turned slightly and Rickman got a good look at its face. Instead of features, there was only a mound of ridged flesh, pale and greasy, like a mushroom towards the end of its cycle. A multitude of thin snake-like appendages wafted around its head, turning as one and looking straight at Rickman. They started to thrash—at first he thought it too was dancing in time to the beat of the music, but the walls of his array began to quake and the thing inside thrashed harder. Its wings unfolded, and the huge tail beat at the confinement of the boundary field. Rickman's plasma container wailed and screamed louder than any amplified feedback whine at the assault.

This isn't right at all.

He was forced to switch the machinery off completely, and even then the thing seemed reluctant to go, fighting and thrashing as it was torn into mere scraps of plasma that wafted gently in the air before finally winking out with another soft pop .

Rickman stood at the mixing desk, fingers gripping the edge of the box so tightly that his knuckles were white and his palms felt bruised and battered when he willed himself to let go and relax.

The music in his head took longer to fade than the pain in his hands. Once he had recovered his breath, the main thing that Rickman remembered was not the hideous prawn-like thing in the box, but the dance, and the time he had spent lost in the rhythm of the spheres. He wanted that again. He wanted it badly .

I'm close now.

He switched his machine back on. The holographic field sparked and buzzed and the array began to throb and vibrate. The plasma formed almost immediately and started to sing and dance even before Rickman turned the echo knob slowly clockwise.

A tear formed in reality, a black oily droplet appearing to hang in the air, a perfect black egg, already singing.

The walls of the room throbbed like a heartbeat. The black egg pulsed in time. The singing got louder, like a chorus of angels, far away, singing into a wind.

Rickman turned the knob a millimeter to the right.

The egg calved, and calved again.

Four eggs hung in a tight group, pulsing in time with the throbbing music that was getting steadily louder and more insistent as a distant drumbeat kicked in, hard and heavy. Colors danced and flowed across the sheer black surfaces; blues and greens and shimmering silvers on the eggs.

In the blink of an eye there were eight.

Rickman started to sway and hum along with the beat, singing under his breath, getting lost in the moment.

It's working .

Sixteen now, all perfect, all dancing.

The vibration grew louder still.

Thirty-two now, and they had started to fill the array with dancing aurora of rainbow shimmering lights that pulsed and capered in time with the music.

It's really working.

Sixty-four, each a pearl of black light.

The colors filled the room, spilled out over the floor, crept around Rickman's feet, danced in his eyes, in his head, all though his body. He gave himself to it, willingly. The room filled with stars, and he danced among them .

A hundred and twenty eight eggs in the chamber now, and already calving into two hundred and fifty-six.

Rickman danced.

Rickman sang.

The eggs sang with him.

There were too many of them to count now. They spilled out of the array, filled the space in the room, their song rising higher, the beat and thrum of the music filling his head, the dancing rainbow colors filling his eyes with blue and green and gold and wonderment.

Rickman was at peace. He danced in empty spaces filled with oily, glistening eggs. They calved and spawned yet more eggs, then even more, until he swam in a swirling sea of eggs and colors and songs and dancing.

Lost—so lost that he did not even noticed when he was joined in the dance.

First came the rodent things, tails thumping, paws slapping, their voices raised high in a chant that called their gods to them. High and free, a whistling rose up, soaring as a myriad bone flutes came in on the beat and joined them. Membranous wings fluttered somewhere high above. Eggs calved, releasing even more of their number into the dance, and calved again, and again.

Rickman's room could no longer contain them.

They spilled out into the city.

Rickman went with them.

THE LAST QUEST

A rthur Pendragon, forty-ninth holder of name and title, watched from Westminster Palace as the Saxon dirigibles rained fiery death from above. Londinium burned for the twelfth night in succession, and Arthur was only too aware that all he could do was stand on the balcony and look splendid in his too shiny armor that had never even seen a battle.

"The people need a symbol." He'd heard the phrase—his whole line of ancestors had heard it—heard it so often that it was almost the family motto.

"This is all your fault, you know," Arthur said to the much smaller robed and hooded figure at his side. Merlin—first and only of the name, at least to Arthur's knowledge, did not say anything in reply, so Arthur went on. "Do something, man—call up your old magic—send them home. Do your duty"

Merlin laughed at that, a harsh, low chuckle that came with a watery rumble, as if something was broken deep in his chest.

"Duty now is it, sire? I was called to your family all those years ago—bound to you by chains you will never begin to understand, and yet you have the nerve to speak to me about duty? Shame on you, Arthur—you are the king here, not I. I may have grown old over the years, but at least I have not yet grown soft. All of your machinations in the name of progress, all of your politics and treaties and kowtowing to the Northmen has only led us here, to this fiery end. The Saxe-Coburgs have torn up every treaty, walked over all of our old allies in weeks— and here they are perched on our doorstep—and burning down the house. And now that disaster is upon us, you look to me for answers, as you and yours have always done. And as always, you already know what is needed—the land needs its king, and the king needs the sword and the grail—as it ever was, as it ever shall be."

"The grail is lost," Arthur said.

"And forever will be, unless you look for it," Merlin replied.

It was an old argument, and one that was not going to be resolved any time soon. Arthur dragged his gaze from the burning city, turned his back and stepped inside, into the great hall, where the knights sat in session at the table. They would look to him for guidance—but as yet he did not have the slightest idea what he could tell them.

Arthur saw Lancelot looked up from his ale. The flickering light from the gas lamps only accentuated the gold and blue inlays of his ceremonial armor, the sharpness of which was in contrast to the sagging jowls of his cheeks and the flabby sausage fingers that brushed at his overly manicured beard as he spoke.

"Tell me, Merlin, have you always been so dashed ineffectual?"

Merlin merely smiled.

"Perhaps you should ask your mother?"

Lancelot tried to push his chair back and rise to the challenge, but his armor was far too heavy for the grossly overweight body it surrounded, and all he could do was stare sullenly as the wizard took his seat at Arthur's right hand at the table.

A page arrived with a silver platter. On it was a single note—a telegram, timed and dated that very hour. It only took him a minute to read it. The glow from the fires outside overwhelmed the dim yellow gaslight, casting a red pallor over everything in the hall, and the hum of the propellers as the great balloons went by overhead meant that Arthur had to almost shout to be heard as he put the note down.

"The Saxe-Coburg queen has called for our surrender," he said. "Unconditional, and with myself and Merlin to be taken to Kassel as hostages—a sign of our good faith. If we do not comply immediately this bombardment will continue, until there is nothing left of Londinium but ash and rubble."

Persifal laughed. He wore his own armor lightly, and moved with the grace of a fighter, being one of the few around the table who had kept to the old ways and actually enjoyed the enforced rigors of weapons training.

"Let them come. This city has burned before, and survived it. And they are only Saxons after all—they have never bested an Arthur on these shores, and our people know it."

Arthur saw that several of the knights agreed—Bedivere, Gawaine and Kay among them—but Lancelot was not convinced—Lancelot was rarely convinced by anything save a woman, a beer or a fight—and these days the beer usually won over the rest. Galahad, quiet as ever, sat at Lancelot's side, the familial bond plain to see. Old rivalries died hard around this table, and it seemed that even an imminent invasion was not enough to heal the schisms.

"I am of a mind to agree with you, Persifal," Arthur said. "But they come in such numbers—and they have the latest technology on their side—I fear we have fallen behind in the race for the future. "

Persifal laughed again—his good humor was one of the few things that had always made these archaic sessions bearable for Arthur.

"What need we of technology when we have Excalibur—and Arthur to wield it? We shall meet them on the beaches—and drive them back to their cabbages and sausages."

At least that got a laugh from everyone round the table—a rare united front. Arthur was still wondering how to make best use of it when the air above the Siege Perilous trembled and wavered, like the shimmer of hot sun on the river; it seemed to be a jet-black tear in the fabric of space, no bigger than a sliver of fingernail. Initially Arthur thought he had a hair near his eye and tried to brush it away before he realized he was indeed looking at something hanging in space at eye level above the empty seat.

He turned to Merlin, who shrugged.

"It is not my doing, sire," the old man said. As ever his features were hidden beneath the cowl and the mass of bristling beard and moustache, but deep in the shadows under his hood the wizard's eyes twinkled. It looked to Arthur like excitement.

He turned his attention back to the tear in space. It appeared to be spinning slowly in a clockwise direction. As he watched it quivered, like a struck tuning fork, and changed shape, settling into a new configuration, a black, somewhat oily in appearance droplet little more than an inch across at the thickest point. It hung there, its very impossibility taunting him to go over and look for the trick strings that had to be holding it in place. It swelled, and now looked like an egg more than anything else—a black, oily egg from some creature whose nature could only be guessed at. As Arthur rose from his seat a rainbow aura thickened around it, casting the whole chamber in dancing washes of soft colors as it continued to spin.

Excalibur hummed, the hilt feeling hot in the scabbard as he put his hand on it. There was danger here.

The egg quivered and pulsed. And now it seemed larger still. The chamber started to throb, like a heartbeat. The egg pulsed in time until the throb became a rapid thumping; the chamber shook and trembled. The vibration rattled his teeth and set his guts roiling. The aura around the egg wavered and trembled.

Arthur drew Excalibur—the first time he had ever been given cause to do so in his reign—and stepped around the table. Persifal also stood and drew his sword but no one else moved, all struck immobile by the growing dance of light and rhythm.

"What is it?" Lancelot asked. "Is it the Grail?"

Merlin stepped forward to Arthur's side.

"I have seen its like afore, sire. It is not the Grail itself—but it is a part of it—it is an opening—a pathway to deeper secrets. It is a wizardly thing."

"Is it the Saxon's doing?"

Merlin shrugged again.

"I cannot be sure, sire—the last time I saw anything like it, it was Uther, not Arthur, who stood before it."

There was definitely excitement in the old wizard's eyes now—and cunning. The old man knew more than he was saying—but that was nothing new. And not for the first time in the old man's presence Arthur notice a smell—brine, like salt spray from a blowing sea—it had followed the Wizard around for as long as anyone could remember. It seemed stronger than ever tonight, but Arthur had no time to ponder the meaning—the black egg above the long-empty seat throbbed, ever more violently. It spun—and split, becoming two.

The throbbing deepened until it felt like the Knights were imprisoned in a great drum being beat by a giant's hand. Two eggs became four—color danced. The floor—thick stone as it was, beat in time, threatening to knock Arthur off his feet. High above the roof creaked, old timbers feeling the pressure and threatening to crash down on top of them—indeed the whole palace was now vibrating in time to the beating drummer.

Excalibur sent a burst of heat into Arthur's hand. He raised the weapon high, suddenly more full of life than he had felt since childhood. He brought it down from overhead in a strike that hit the eggs dead center and burst them apart in a concussion that blew white lancing heat through the chamber and out though the doors and windows into the night.

Arthur felt dazed, as if drunk on too much mead and ale, but Merlin had already skipped past him, out onto the balcony.

"Come and see, sire—it appears we have a new ally."

Arthur sheathed the sword and stepped outside.

The city was still aflame—but so now was the sky. The Saxon dirigibles burned—white flame, sizzling like lightning as it danced among the aerial fleet and set them afire to burst asunder in great flowers of sparks. Within seconds the sky above Londinium was clear and, even above the crackle and roar of the fires, Arthur heard the joyous cheers of his people.

As he went back into the chamber, he was thinking of Merlin's words from earlier.

"You already know what is needed—the sword and the grail—as it ever was, as it ever shall be. "

"So—was it indeed the grail?" Arthur asked.

They stood on the balcony again in the morning as the sun rose in the east through smoke and cloud—and over a Londinium that had survived another night. The rest of the company stood with him, waiting for Merlin's reply. Normally, once the session was done, they would have retired to chambers to divest themselves of armor until the following month, but a silent agreement to stay seemed to have passed through them—and even Lancelot—held upright by Galahad—had joined them to look over their victory.

"It did not feel like anything Christian to me," Lancelot said, and for once Arthur agreed with him, but he didn't get a chance to say anything, for Merlin was chuckling again.

"The Grail was never Christian—surely you all know that by now? Some things on this island predate the Christ—more things than you know. Uther knew it—and it is why I am even here at all."

"Speak sense, not riddles, man," Galahad said. "Is it, or is it not a weapon we can use?"

"It may be a weapon and it may not, and you may be able to use it, or you may not."

"Well, that's nice," Lancelot said.

"Your mother always thought so," Merlin replied, then skipped out of the way as the big man lunged at him, over-stretched himself, and fell flat on his face on the stone. Even when he managed to roll over he could not find the strength to lift the weight of the armor and it took Galahad and Percifal to get him upright again, with Merlin laughing like a drain the whole time.

"If only the first Lance could see you now," he said once the laughing fit subsided. "The shame would kill him."

Lancelot looked like he might lunge again, but Galahad held him back.

"Just tell us what you know, old man," Percifal said softly. "They'll likely be back tonight, and in greater numbers."

Arthur smelled salt spray again as Merlin walked passed him to stand at the edge of the balcony and look out over the river.

"I shall tell you of my first sighting of the opener of the way," he said. "There was no Arthur then, no sword or grail or table—there was only Uther, and a land he coveted, a land the Romans left behind."

The wizard waved a hand and the scene beyond the balcony changed—it was a trick Arthur had seen him use many times, but it never failed to fill him with wonder at the possibilities that might exist, beyond the confines of name and title and duty.

He looked over a muddy field beside a great river. There had been a settlement here, on both banks, but it had recently been razed to the ground by fire and looting—Arthur recognized the bends and flow of the Thames readily enough though, and realized he was looking at Londinium, in a time long, long past.

A man trudged through the mud, leading a lame horse. He had Arthur's face.

"Uther came searching," Merlin said. "He had heard a tale—of Sototh, the Opener of the Way, sealed in a temple by the river by the priests of Mithras. And now that those priests had gone, Uther wanted the power they had left behind. So he came."

The scene shifted, to a catacomb, dank and cold, and Uther, with a firebrand held aloft, walking into a stone cell some twenty feet in diameter that had a well in its center—a black well that seemed to go down into the bowels of the earth itself .

"Uther called," Merlin said. "A chant so old that no man had heard it since before the ice came, so old that even Uther himself doubted its provenance. But Sototh came—and a way was opened."

The scene showed a spiral of black eggs, thousands of them, rising up out of the well and filling the chamber with dancing light and rainbow color. Uther reached into the midst of the eggs—and drew out a gleaming sword. Arthur felt the same sword thrum at his side, as the scene shifted again—Uther, with sword in hand, led a lame horse away across the muddy field. A figure walked beside him—a small figure, robed and cowled, his features hidden behind the bristles of beard and moustache.

"So, what?" Lancelot said as the scene disappeared and reality faded in around them. "We know Excalibur came from Uther—how does that help?"

"It helps," Merlin said, as if explaining to a child. "Because that temple is still here, under the city. And I know where it is."

"And?" Lancelot said again.

Arthur replied this time.

"And if it is a weapon—we can find it and use it."

"We know nothing about it, sire." Percifal said.

Arthur touched the hilt of Excalibur, and was given another small burst of heat and energy.

"I know enough to be going on with—it felled those dirigibles quickly enough, didn't it? So if Merlin can find the spot, and we can go there—I say we go. We go, and we drive the Saxons back—we give them such a beating that they will not think of returning, not while there is an Arthur on the throne of Britain. "

Now that the decision was made, Arthur was keen to get going, to seek out the Temple and find the weapon, but Merlin had advised caution—and darkness.

"It is but a short distance from here, sire—I can go straight there using the tunnels under the Palace, for it has been a place of pilgrimage for me these many centuries."

They were now alone at the table, the others having retired until Arthur called for them. His last order had been for them to return at dusk in full armor with swords at hand—Arthur had a feeling that this was a task that had to be done the old way, or not at all.

"You have seen it then, this Sototh?" Arthur asked.

"Alas, no. That way is shut to me—I am not connected to it through the sword like you are. This is a family matter and I am not your kin."

"Why do you think it came here, tonight?" Arthur asked.

Merlin shrugged again.

"I believe you, in your need, may have called it, sire—as I said, it is linked through the bloodline and through the sword."

Arthur voiced his largest concern.

"How dangerous is this undertaking?"

Merlin laughed loudly and Arthur smelled salty tang again, and something that reminded him of nothing so much as a fresh trout.

"It is as dangerous as anything any Arthur has done since Badon Hill," he said. "But I shall be with you, your knights shall be with you—the table will prevail, as it always has."

"They are soft—the old ways have been forgotten. We are all unused to the armor—none of us have ever worn it in anger. How can we expect to win a battle?"

"No," Merlin said. "Together you are greater than the sum of your parts—again, it was always thus, and is why the table exists in the first place. But you know this too—this babble is just your nerves talking You were born for this day. Days like this are why this land has Arthur—why it has you. The king and the sword will prevail."

"You have seen this?"

Merlin shook his head.

"Matters of the way are closed to me, as it ever was. But we saw the result of the sword and the blood and the way becoming one last night. I see no reason to believe that we will be any less successful tonight. But watch Lancelot—he has been waiting for a reason to usurp you—we must take care not to give him the opportunity."

Merlin left Arthur alone—as the old wizard departed Arthur smelled it again, even stronger now, salt and fish, as if it was being exuded from somewhere under the man's robes. There was more going on here than was being said, and Arthur resolved to watch, not just Lancelot, who he had been watching all of his life—but Merlin, a trusted advisor, yes—but also an enigma.

As he ever was.

Arthur spent the afternoon standing on the balcony, watching the city—watching his people. Carriages clattered across the bridge just below him, and the gas-lighters were starting their patrol in the surrounding streets. The warehouses and factories to the south were emptying the day shifts and taking in the evening workers, and small boys ran hither and among the commuters, trying to sell them the latest editions of the newspapers. Arthur had already seen the headline.

SAVED BY THE KING.

The press had got most of the story of what had happened around the table last night. Arthur always suspected Merlin of feeding their frenzy, but whoever it had been, it was obviously good for morale, for the people of Londinium were going about their business, in defiance of the attempted reign of terror from above.

The sprawling chaos that made up this modern city was a far cry from the vision Merlin had shown them. The metropolis had grown around the docks and the trading opportunities from both the continent and the New World had led it to become one of the largest—if not the largest—port in the civilized world. And the Saxons, having coveted the green and pleasant parts of the land for centuries, now wanted the wealth derived from the river too.

Arthur also knew—had always known—that the Blonds hated the very mention of his name—he was as much a bogeyman to them as they were to his people—and their respective families been fighting over this land since the first Arthur raised Excalibur at Baden Hill. That night, Arthur had claimed the crown—his birthright—and the Saxe-Coburgs had lost theirs. Neither had ever been allowed to forget it.

The sword hummed at his waist, as if remembering, and when he put a hand on it, it sent him another burst of warmth, reminding him of who he was—and what must be done.

He was still standing there as the sun started to set behind him, and, way to the East, the first black dots above the horizon signified the approach of the Saxe-Coburg air fleet in the Channel.

They seemed to fill the sky.

"It is time, sire," Merlin said from behind him.

He turned to go back into the chamber, but the wizard stopped him.

"No, stay there—we shall come to you. "

He heard the clank of armor and mail from beyond the door, then the rest of the knights of the Round Table came to stand on the balcony. Even old Lancelot looked resplendent, his breastplate having been polished to a shine that was almost dazzling.

A cheer rose up from the bridge below—Arthur had been too busy scanning the horizon to notice, but a large crowd had gathered, all their faces raised to look up at the balcony—and now they took up a chant. Arthur suspected Merlin's hand in this again, but he didn't mind at all, for as he turned and led the men toward the tunnels, his name rang, loud and proud, echoing down the shafts ahead of them to announce that the quest for the Grail was once again underway.

It did not take long for the initial exhilaration to fade—either the first rat or the first turd he put his foot on saw to that—and Lancelot's complaints grew ever more loud and more frequent the further down into the dank bowels of the Palace they went.

"I did not expect it to be so hard," he wheezed at one point.

Merlin chuckled.

"Your mother said that too."

Lancelot got a new burst of energy at that quip, and threw himself forward, attempting to reach Merlin. The smaller man once again danced out of his way, heading more quickly down the passageway with Lancelot following him. Arthur saw the method in the wizard's madness—the incessant taunting ensured that the Lance's dander was up—which was useful in keeping him moving forward along with the rest of them.

The way got narrower—and they began to hear a new sound, a thrumming vibration that Arthur at first thought it must be carriages on the cobbled streets overhead before he finally recognized the sound—the Saxon dirigible armada was here, over the city. The first distant screams told him the barrage had begun anew.

"We must hurry, Merlin," he said.

"'Tis not far now, sire," Merlin replied. "Unsheathe the sword—we shall have need of it very soon."

Merlin was as good as his word—less than a minute later he led the Knights into the same chamber he had shown them in the vision. Two wall sconces flared aflame at his approach, lending them enough light to see the dark well that sat in the exact center of the space. The sound of armor clanging echoed and rang as the company filed inside—with them all there in full armor it suddenly felt cramped, and much smaller than it had originally seemed.

Silence fell—they were now too far below the city to even hear the chaos they knew must still be occurring above their heads. Arthur stood over the foot-high retaining wall and looked down into the well, but there was only darkness.

"Now what?" Lancelot said huffily.

Merlin came to Arthur's side.

"Raise the sword and say the words," the wizard said. "Call for Sototh, the Opener of the Way."

"What words?" Arthur replied—but as soon as he raised the sword they came to him, unbidden as if dredged from some deep forgotten part of his mind.

"Ri linn cothrom na meidhe, Ri linn sgathadh na h-anal.

"Ri linn tabhar na breithe Biodh a shith air do theannal fein.

"Dhumna Ort! Iog Sototh. Dhumna Ort!"

It started small again; a tear in the fabric of reality, no bigger than a sliver of fingernail, appeared and hung above the well. As Arthur watched it settled into a new configuration, a black oily droplet held quivering in empty air. The walls of the chamber throbbed like a heartbeat. The black egg pulsed in time. And once again it was more than obvious—it was growing. It calved, and calved again.

Four eggs hung in a tight group, pulsing. Colors danced and flowed across the sheer black surfaces; blues and greens and shimmering silvers on the eggs. In the blink of an eye there were eight.

Arthur had no thought of the city above, no thought of duty, lost in contemplation of the beauty before him.

Sixteen now, all perfect, all dancing.

Thirty two now, and they had started to fill the chamber with dancing aurora of shimmering lights that pulsed and capered in time with the throb of magic.

Sixty-four, each a shimmering pearl of black light. The colors filled the well, spilled out over the rim, crept around Arthur's feet, danced in his eyes, in his head, all though his body.

He strained to turn his head towards the eggs. A hundred and twenty eight now, and already calving into two hundred and fifty-six. As if right at his ear, he heard Merlin's voice.

"You were born for this day. Days like this are why this land has Arthur—why it has you. The king and the sword will prevail."

And suddenly he remembered where he was. He raised Excalibur high and struck at the center of the mass of eggs.

The myriad of bubbles popped, burst and disappeared as if they had never been there at all with a wail that in itself was enough to set the walls throbbing and quaking. Swirling clouds seem to come from nowhere to fill the room with darkness .

When Arthur opened his eyes it was as if he was a colossus, his legs astride the banks of the Thames, standing guard over his city with Excalibur raised against all comers. He swung. White fire cracked through the air, setting scores of dirigibles aflame with each pass of the sword, the enemies of the land falling from the sky, blazing even as they tumbled into the river and Arthur laughed and Excalibur swung, and swung again.

The Saxon dirigibles burned.

The armada was still coming—scores—hundreds of them—the Saxe-Coburgs whole fleet in one final attack that was meant to take everything they had fought over, once and for all. And Arthur met the task willingly, blazing white fire across the skies while the people called his name in awe and wonder from below.

The moment of triumph was close—two or three more sweeps of Excalibur and the land and the King would be free—would be one again.

He heard a voice—a distant voice—call out.

"No! You shall not have it."

He felt cold steel in his back, a coward's thrust that took him in the kidneys and kept going, spearing him through and through.

Arthur fell, tumbling, down into darkness, back into the cavern beside the well. He was reeled in like a hooked fish, tugged reluctantly through a too tight opening and emerged into the dim light of a cold chamber where Lancelot, bloody sword in hand, stood over his body, ready to deliver the coup de grace.

"Percifal—he needs you, "

Merlin's voice—then the clang of steel on steel, the clash of armor and the screams, of dying men. It was over before Arthur could even bring himself to his feet.

Gawaine stood over the headless body of Galahad—who no longer looked quite so pretty. Persifal had Lancelot at the end of his sword. The old man was on his knees, bleeding from a head wound that unfortunately did not look fatal.

"Why? Why betray me after all these years?" Arthur asked, fighting for every breath—something was broken—burst—deep inside him. He did not think he had long left to do what still needed to be done, but first, he had to hear from Lancelot.

"The Saxon Queen—she promised marriage—a regency," the old man said, and those were his last words, for Persifal took his head off with a single stroke before turning to Arthur.

"Sire—you are wounded sore. We must get you out of here."

Arthur leaned on Excalibur for support as he got to his knees and looked up above the well. Four black eggs hung there—already calving to eight.

"Soon, gentle knight. Soon. But my work here is not yet finished.

It was Merlin who helped Arthur all the way to his feet, and once again Arthur smelled the sea.

"There is something fishy here," he said, and Merlin nodded.

"There has been for a long age, sire—and soon now you shall know why—but first, Londinium and Britain needs its Arthur—one last time, for now."

Arthur barely had the strength to lift the sword, but once again he swung, and cleaved the eggs of Sototh—and once again he stood high, astride the Thames, sending white fire into the air. The remnants of the Saxon armada fell in flames, and it was only when the last of them tumbled from the sky that Arthur let himself fall with it, tumbling, into the black.

Arthur dreamed, of empty spaces filled with oily, glistening bubbles. They popped and spawned yet more bubbles, then even more, until he swam in a swirling sea of colors. He drifted in a blanket of darkness, and he was alone, in a cathedral of emptiness where nothing existed save the dark and the pounding chant. He saw more stars—vast swathes of gold and blue and silver, all dancing in great purple and red clouds that spun webs of grandeur across unending vistas. Shapes moved in and among the nebulae; dark, wispy shadows casting a pallor over whole galaxies at a time, shadows that capered and whirled as the dance grew ever more frenetic. He was buffeted, as if by a strong, surging tide, but as the beat grew ever stronger he cared little. He gave himself to it, lost in the dance, lost in the stars. He didn't know how long he wandered in the space between. He forgot himself, forgot his name, his family, his duty, lost, dancing in the vastness where only the color mattered.

Lost.

Merlin called him back—or rather, something that both did, and did not quite look like the old wizard. The robed hood was pulled back from a misshapen, bald head and a small pile of discarded hair—what had been a set of false beard and whiskers—lay on the floor of the chamber. Merlin looked at Arthur and smiled from a face that looked more like that of a cod than a human—there was no nose to speak of—just eyes that were too big and a wide mouth that contained too many teeth .

"We are done, sire," he said, and the smell of fish was stronger than ever. "The Saxon are defeated, Lancelot's plot is quashed—and you have opened the way."

"The way to what?" Arthur said. He could only manage a whisper now. More than anything he wanted to be back there, dancing, with the color in the dark.

"Uther closed it to me after he called me from the deep, bound me to his—to your—service. But that is now done—we are done, you and I. Come with me—I can take you back to dance with my people in the deep."

Persifal moved closer.

"Sire—we must get you to a doctor."

Merlin raised a hand, and the younger knight went quiet.

"Your job is to watch and tell, Persifal—you were always the best of the Table Knights, and you will make a good leader of men. Just, for all our sakes, do not call your lad Arthur."

Merlin bent to Arthur's side and lifted the dying king in his arms as if he was no more than a feather. Arthur held Excalibur tight to his chest—its heat was the only thing keeping him from slipping away now.

Above Merlin the black eggs danced—sixteen, thirty two, sixty four and more—many more.

Merlin stepped up onto the rim of the well and turned to Persifal. Arthur heard the words, as if from far away.

"He will return—when he is needed."

"Not if I can bloody help it," Arthur muttered, then Merlin stepped into the eggs, Sototh opened the way, and they danced, in the vastness where only the color mattered.

Lost.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

- Into the Black first appeared in BEYOND THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS, Celeano Press

- Broadsword first appeared in WORLD WAR CTHULHU, Dark Regions Press

- The Longdock Air first appeared in SHADOWS OVER MAIN STREET 2, Cuttingblock Press

- The Color that Stole Christmas first appeared in the deluxe limited hardcover edition of CHRISTMAS HORRORS, Dark Regions Press

- Outposts first appeared in FURTHER TALES OF CTHULHU INVICTUS, Golden Goblin Press

- She Sleeps in the Depths first appeared in DARKFUSE #1, DarkFuse

- The Call of the Deep first appeared in THE RETURN OF THE OLD ONES, Dark Regions Press

- On the Threshold first appeared in OMINOUS REALITIES, Gray Matter Press

- A True Telling of the Terror that came to Red Hook first appeared in THE HEROES OF RED HOOK, Golden Goblin Press

- Vulcan's Forge first appeared in TALES OF CTHULHU INVICTUS, Golden Goblin Press

- The Wonderful Musician first appeared in A MYTHOS GRIMMLY, WH Publications

- The Last Quest first appeared in THROUGH A MYTHOS DARKLY, PS Publishing

FURTHER READING

If you enjoyed these stories, you might enjoy some of my Lovecraftian works, like my novels THE DUNFIELD TERRROR and THE CREEPING KELP

I am a Scottish writer, now living in Canada, with over thirty novels published in the genre press and over 300 short story credits in thirteen countries.

I have books available from a variety of publishers including Dark Regions Press and Severed Press, and my work has appeared in a number of professional anthologies and magazines with recent sales to NATURE Futures, Penumbra and Buzzy Mag among others.

I live in Newfoundland with whales, bald eagles and icebergs for company and when I'm not writing I drink beer, play guitar and dream of fortune and glory.

DAGGER OF THE MARTYRS – A Sample

Dagger of the Martyrs is collaboration between William Meikle and New York Times bestseller Steven Savile and is the first in a new Historical Fantasy trilogy.

Set in the 14th Century in Paris and the Middle East DAGGER OF THE MARTYRS is an epic historical fantasy novel in the grand tradition of David Gemmell's Rigante and Troy novels, tinged with magic and wonder as well as the grit of war.

Available now in ebook, paperback and on Kindle Unlimited

1291

SYRIAN TERRITORIES

T he pregnant woman screamed in pain as the cart hit a rut and threatened to tumble over. Lilane felt a cold hand cover her mouth to silence her, and smelled the midwife's potions where she'd worked the herbs and spices with her palm and fingers. When the old woman spoke, it was in a whisper.

"Quiet. No sound. Khalil's men are too close. We have not come all this way from Acre to be caught now; not when safety is so near at hand."

When the next contraction hit Lilane gritted her teeth and kept the sound inside her, but it wanted to come out; it really wanted to come out. She tried to calm herself and concentrate on some matter besides the searing pain that threatened to rip her asunder. Just behind her head, the two Templars driving her cart were conversing in hushed tones, and if she kept herself quiet she caught snatches of their conversation before the desert winds whispered it away.

"Forty two days of bloody siege, ten more days in this cursed desert. It might have been better to stay in Acre. At least it was comfortable there."

"Comfortable? Al-Ashraf Khalil controls Acre now, and he would have had your balls for breakfast, lad," the older man of the two said. "The Master knows what he's about. It was time to leave. And with the plunder we have with us, we can go anywhere we want to in Christendom and be wealthy men. Two days, that's all. Two more days and we'll be at the dock, on a boat for Constantinople then away and clear for Bologna and a life of whores and furs and good wines."

"We had all that in Acre," the younger Templar said.

"Aye, lad. And you pished in your armor at that last attack. At least you won't have to do that in France."

The young man laughed.

"It'll keep me warm on cold nights though."

The two men chuckled, softly so as not to pierce the quiet. There were other voices too, only heard when the wind dropped and coming as if from a distance. Lilane strained, hoping to hear the one she wanted to hear more than any other, her man, her strong man who had taken her from her people,  promised her so much yet had not come to see her since the protracted birth pangs began.

"Oh, Pierre, where are you?" she whispered.

No one came.

They stopped in the morning in the shadow of a grove of trees, resting the horses in the heat of the day. But there was to be no rest for Lilane. The contractions grew in strength and frequency, and despite the midwife's frequent entreaties, she could not help the cries of pain that forced their way out of her.

"Pierre," she shouted, before the cold hand was once again pressed at her mouth.

"He will not come," the old woman said. "Not until it is over. This is woman's work. We are the strong ones here. Now push."

Lilane pushed. At intervals the midwife gave her a pungent ball of camphor and herbs to chew on. It tasted vile, but it gave a small distance from the pain, for which she was to be thankful over the course of a morning that felt like a week.

Then, finally, blessed relief as something left her in a hot rush of pressure and pain.

"You have a son," the midwife said, and Lilane was so tired, so awash with the effort, that at first she did not realize the woman was not addressing her. A man's voice answered.

"God be praised. Let it be known that I take this boy as my heir. His name is Eden Moro De Bologna, and he will be Templar."

"Pierre?"

Lilane forced herself almost upright, and was in time to see the broad shoulders of her love cradle the newly born babe in his arms and walk away.

"Pierre?"

The midwife turned back to Lilane concern in her eyes.

"You are not done here yet. There is another coming."

The Templar stopped, his back still resolutely turned to the covered cart, his head bowed over the first child. The second child came with almost no pain at all, just a gentle push, a feeling of relief and then a sudden empty, hollowness in her lower belly.

"Another boy?" Pierre said from under the shade of a tree. The child in his arms wailed and the new child joined in accompaniment, their twin squeals echoing around the encampment.

"No. It is a girl. It is a beautiful girl."

"What need have I of a girl?" Pierre said. "Keep her quiet, or I will have to do it for you." He walked away, his son cradled in his arms.

"Pierre!"

Lilane tried to rise but the midwife pushed her down.

"No. There was too much blood. You must rest. If you move from here, you will die before nightfall. And there is a babe to tend."

And another already lost to me.

That was Lilane's last thought for a while. The midwife gave her another mouthful of camphor and herbs, more of it this time, and Lilane fell into a deep blackness where there was no pain, but no rest.

When she came slowly awake it was dark and they were alone in the encampment. Horses, carts, Templars, and boy child were all gone like shadows in the night. She only had his name to remember him by. That, and one word, a promise of a future she vowed her daughter would live to see.

Bologna.

Available now in ebook, paperback and on Kindle Unlimited

OTHER BOOKS BY WILLIAM MEIKLE
NOVELS
The S-Squad Series
Berserker
Crustaceans
Eldren: The Book of the Dark
Fungoid
Generations
Island Life
Night of the Wendigo
Ramskull
Sherlock Holmes: The Dreaming Man
Songs of Dreaming Gods
The Boathouse
The Creeping Kelp
The Dunfield Terror
The Exiled
The Green and the Black
The Hole
The Invasion
The Midnight Eye Files: The Amulet
The Midnight Eye Files: The Sirens
The Midnight Eye Files: The Skin Game
The Ravine
The Valley
The Concordances of the Red Serpent
Watchers: The Battle for the Throne
Watchers: The Coming of the King
Watchers: Culloden
The Road Hole Bunker Mystery
Dagger of the Martyrs (With Steven Savile)

Hound of Night / Veil Knights #2 (as Rowan Casey)

NOVELLAS
Broken Sigil
Clockwork Dolls
Pentacle
Professor Challenger: The Island of Terror
Sherlock Holmes: Revenant
The House on the Moor
The Job
The Midnight Eye Files: Deal or No Deal
The Plasm
The CopyCat Murders
Tormentor
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
Carnacki: Heaven and Hell
Carnacki: The Edinburgh Townhouse
Carnacki: The Watcher at the Gate
Dark Melodies
Myth and Monsters
Professor Challenger: The Kew Growths
Samurai and Other Stories
Sherlock Holmes: The Quality of Mercy
The Ghost Club
Home From the Sea
Into The Black
Flower of Scotland
Augustus Seton: Collected Chronicles
Bug Eyed Monsters

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Table of Contents

- INTO THE BLACK
- BROADSWORD
- THE LONGDOCK AIR
- THE COLOR THAT STOLE CHRISTMAS
- OUTPOSTS
- SHE SLEEPS IN THE DEPTHS
- THE CALL OF THE DEEP
- ON THE THRESHOLD

- A TRUE TELLING OF THE TERROR THAT CAME TO RED HOOK

- VULCAN'S FORGE
- THE WONDERFUL MAGICIAN
- THE LAST QUEST