“With the benefit of hindsight …” Gould said, but his voice lacked conviction.
“And in Machen I was sent alone, despite a long history of Interloper activity in the area,” Denny went on. “My backup consisted of Jim, basically. Oh, and in Machen, a captured Interloper called for reinforcements and got them. So, you can screw this–”
Denny stopped. Benson had pushed back his chair and was standing up. Denny lost her train of thought; so improbably tall was the chairman.
“You can't be sure of that,” said Benson, showing no other sign of being perturbed. “It may be that, like us, they simply react when one of their operatives does not report in. As for the Lucy-creature, if Doctor Zoffany thinks we should kill it immediately as a security risk, I will of course sign off on the procedure. However, I think we have achieved all we can today. This meeting has over-run. Good afternoon.”
A chorus of protest followed Benson to the door of the conference room, but he did not look back. They sat in silence, then Frankie spoke.
“Well, shit!”
***
“Right, listen up,” said Forster, scanning the semi-circle of dark-clad operatives. “I've commanded some motley outfits in my time, and done some very questionable things. But–”
The security chief paused for effect. The nine armed men and women were paying attention. It was a cold afternoon, even for February in the English countryside, and a few flakes of snow were falling. Clouds of breath came from chapped lips. Down the hill in the valley, cars passing through Machen had their lights on, and moved slowly. The sky was a bleak gray ceiling of unbroken cloud.
This lot will soon be wishing they were back in the cold, where we're going, he thought.
“This is the first time I've led reconnaissance in force into another dimension,” Forster said, with a wry smile. “A parallel universe, an alternate reality. Call it what you like, it's not like our world. Laws of physics as we know them don't quite apply. Now, you've all been briefed.”
Forster paused again, focused on the youngest member of his team.
“You! How fast does time flow in the Phantom Dimension?”
“About ten times slower than in the real world, sir!” returned the young man.
“Correct, so I hope you've made it clear to your loved ones that you won't be home for dinner.”
That got a slight ripple of laughter.
“But cut out this stuff about 'the real world',” Forster went on. “We're not going into dreamland. Nightmare-land, maybe – but everything you're going to see is real. First mission objective is to determine nature of threat. Second, try to obtain what's termed talisman material. Third, if we see one of those Soul Eater things, run like hell.”
That got a louder laugh. They had all seen grainy footage of the mountainous entities and been thoroughly briefed on how fast they moved. It was clear that no weapons short of a nuke could touch the colossal predators.
Forster turned to his deputy, Clarke, who was working on what looked like a home-made mine detector.
“Is that thing working?” he snapped.
Clarke, a top-notch radio operator, shrugged.
“So far as I can tell, chief. It worked back at HQ when we tried it on that pendant. So it should be calibrated.”
Forster grunted.
Looking for magic pebbles in what might as well be Hell, he thought. Somewhere my career took a wrong turn.
“Okay,” he said, picking up his own shotgun. “Let's move out.”
They set off into Branksholme Woods, moving in a single file. Forster noticed they were bunching up.
“Spread out,” he said. “Not too much, but you might end up tripping over each other if any of those beasties are lurking in the trees.”
“Or shooting each other,” muttered Clarke, still fiddling with the detector.
“Ever the optimist, eh?” joked Forster, bringing up the rear.
The security chief paused at the edge of the small forest and took a last look around. He saw lights from the Wakefield clinic, thought of locals getting bunions treated, sprains looked at, and smiled.
My last sight of my world, maybe, he thought. Well, there are worse places.
A lithe shape moved swiftly against the stone wall that bounded the doctor's garden. It was pale, vaguely canine in shape. As the first vanished around a corner, a second creature appeared. Forster, who had seen some wild parts of the earth, frowned. But the animals were far away, and he had a team to lead. He turned and sent troops after his squad, into the darkness under the trees.
***
“No way,” said Davenport, looking from Denny to Gould and back.
“But you've got to call it off!” Gould insisted. “They could be walking straight into a trap!”
Davenport shrugged helplessly. They were in the cafeteria, where Davenport was lunching with Jim Davison. Denny and Gould had decided, after much debate, to simply ignore Benson and try prevent the Machen expedition from leaving.
“They'll be moving out, or in, right now,” Jim pointed out. “So even if we could call them–”
“Radio silence,” Davenport cut in. “It's compulsory. They only use short-wave communications within the team.”
“They've got no back-up?” Denny asked, incredulously. “Isn't that military tactics 101, or something?”
Davenport clammed up at that, and got up to return his tray. Jim looked uncomfortable as the other man left. Denny sat down opposite and took Jim's hand.
“What is it?” she demanded. “Come on, you owe me.”
“We're a bit over-stretched because of the Tube situation,” Jim said unhappily.
“What Tube situation?” asked Gould. “First I've heard of this.”
Davenport, returning, tried to keep Jim quiet, but failed. The Hobs Lane situation was quickly outlined.
“They could be in London?” Gould gasped. “And in contact with the Lucy-creature?”
“And Benson chose this moment to send the security team a couple of hundred miles away,” Denny observed. “And send the remainder to do a sweep along a nice, dark tunnel. In the middle of the night.”
The three men looked at her. Davenport was the first to break the silence.
“Oh, that's bloody ridiculous!” he scoffed. “Benson's a weird bastard, but why would he sabotage his own organization?”
Denny looked around the table. Unlike Davenport, Gould and Jim both seemed confused, doubtful.
“Look,” she said, “before I did some dumb show about ghosts I was a reporter on local news shows, then a bigger network. Believe me, I saw a lot of bosses screw things up at close quarters. It's usually because they won’t listen to good advice. But with Benson, it's different. Something about that guy is off, so is his whole approach.”
“What do you mean?” asked Jim.
“Malpas Abbey,” she said. “Opening up the chamber that contained the gateway. That building had been abandoned for years. It was like Benson wanted to trigger an Interloper attack.”
“But doing the show at Malpas was my idea!” protested Gould.
“Was it?” Denny asked, staring intently at him. “How did you first get to hear about my show?”
“I was allocated the task of–” Gould stopped. “Benson told me to check all media for possible evidence of Interlopers. He suggested I start with the US, because there'd be an abundance of data.”
“Wow.” Jim looked from Gould to Denny. “But that's not absolute proof.”
“No,” she admitted. “But then you came up with the idea of filming a British episode of the show at Malpas, is that right?”
“Yes,” replied Gould, sounding more confident. Then a shadow passed over his face. “Except that, about a month before, Benson informed me the foundation had bought the whole Malpas estate.”
“God, he really did set it up,” Jim said, aghast. “He put a bunch of people there hoping there'd be mayhem, and there was.”
“I think the term,” Denny said, “is 'a ta
rget-rich environment'.”
“Yeah,” Davenport retorted. “But what about Machen? Who could have known how that one would pan out?”
“Maybe the idea was to get Denny killed,” Gould said slowly. “Zoffany knew one operative was going to Machen, where the Interlopers had been active for a while. They just didn't reckon on her getting the talisman.”
“Let's not waste time dotting the ‘I’s and crossing the ‘T’s,” Denny insisted. “Just get in touch with Forster and tell him to stop!”
***
The incursion began smoothly. The team was all through the gateway and standing in the open space described in Denny's report. Behind them, the gateway was a pulsing black globe, offering an escape route. When Forster arrived, Clarke was already pointing the detector out over the Interloper city, or what was left of it. Many of the square, stone-built buildings were in ruins. As Forster's eyes adjusted to the weird glow from the sunless sky, he saw that in fact a swathe had been cut through the city. Forster swept the entire horizon with binoculars but saw no sign of a moving mountain.
Soul Eater, he thought. Been and gone.
“Over that way, boss,” Clarke gestured. “Strong signal.”
The techie, Forster noted, was pointing toward an intact area of the city. A mile or more of labyrinthine alleyways might lie between them and whatever was tripping the detector. Forster weighed the odds. What had been dubbed 'talismanic material' was a priority, but so was getting back alive with useful data.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained, he thought.
“Okay, people, spread out,” Forster ordered. “Stick to the plan.”
They made their way into what remained of the city. This time the commander took up a position in the center of the column. It was just as the last man in the unit was entering the alleyway that the first Interloper appeared. A pale figure, its head bowed, rushed across the path of the column. The leading guard fired reflexively. His shot missed, blasting a chunk out of the corner of a building.
“Cool it!” shouted Forster. “They can sense fear and panic. Keep a cool head and they can't–”
There was a crash, and a building collapsed into the alley, throwing up a choking cloud of dust. More shots were taken at an Interloper bounding away. The creature moved too fast, and dodged too well. The rearmost guard had been caught in the tumbling rubble. When she was pulled out, she was limping badly. Forster felt a sense of Deja vu, that an all-too-familiar situation was unfolding under the alien sky.
Classic tactic, he thought. Using improvised weapons on a more technically advanced foe.
“If that's the best they can do,” he said loudly to Clarke, “there's nothing to worry about. All we have to do is get out of this rat-run ASAP.”
He did not add that, with an injured comrade, they would take a lot longer now. He could see from the expressions of the experienced men that they did not need to be told.
And they've probably worked out, he thought, that the enemy was expecting us.
“Okay, move out!”
***
“No reply,” said Gould, slamming down the headset. “They must have gone through.”
The operations room was almost empty. The six 'quasi-rebels', as Gould had carefully dubbed them, arrived to find just one technician scrolling through a Reddit thread on serial killers. The man had quickly vacated his seat when senior staff appeared. He did not ask any awkward questions.
“Don't they have some guy back at base camp, or whatever they call it?” Frankie asked. “Isn't that the usual soldier-thing?”
“No point if you're going into the Phantom Dimension,” Jim observed. “Remember, even if radio signals did pass through the gateway there's the time difference. If Forster could call for help it would be in slow-mo.”
“Quite,” Davenport said. “Which is why Forster decided to put all his eggs in one basket, so to speak. It's an all-or-nothing attack.”
“And they could be through there for months,” Denny added. “Or years, even. Assuming they took sufficient rations.”
“So what do we do in the next, say, couple of hours?” Frankie asked. “Find ourselves a large jigsaw?”
Denny glanced round at the technician, who was gawping at them from a few yards away.
“We might as well admit it,” she said. “We've all had it up to here with Benson's BS. We don't trust him. And he's sent his private army away, so it's not as if the guy can shut us down, now, can he?”
The technician's mouth fell open a little more.
“Maybe you should take a nice long break?” Gould suggested. “Then you can say you didn't hear anything remotely untoward. Plausible deniability, they call it.”
After the young man had left, they held a council-of-war. Denny and Frankie both thought simply telling the media everything they knew was the best option. Gould and Zoffany, having invested so much of their lives in the foundation's work, were less keen.
“People will think you've gone crazy,” Zoffany pointed out. “And after all the deaths, all the mystery, they would have good cause.”
“Also,” said Gould, “encouraging reporters to blunder into this situation might simply get them killed.”
Denny, pacing the length of the operations room, wagged a finger at them. She felt suddenly free after weeks of being stifled by the secretive, corporate culture of the foundation.
“You're missing the point, this is modern journalism 101,” she said, “The idea is to make a stink and embarrass the powers that be to move on something they don't want to. Just mention that old fart, Sir Lionel Whatsit, and see what happens. God, why didn't I just take the risk before?”
Frankie, who was sitting on a desk swinging her legs like a bad kid in detention, put up her hand.
“Ooh, I know this one,” she said. “We didn't want to get sent to Area 51 and be put in a cell next to all those aliens.”
“Way things are going now that might be the safest place,” Denny retorted. “No, I'm sick of being shoved around and put in harm's way. I'm going to take risks on my own terms from now on. Get yourself a camera, Ms. Dupont. Let's start making a guerrilla documentary about this dump. Instant journalism, straight onto the net by tonight.”
Grinning, Frankie jumped down and left. Denny took out her phone, held it up to get all the Brits in shot.
“While she gets her gear, it's time for your close up, guys. Let's do some quick interviews, get us warmed up. Jim, how about you introduce yourself first?”
Jim did not look enthusiastic.
“Okay,” Denny went on, holding out her phone at arm's length. “Hey there! My name's Denny Purcell. I used to present a TV show called ‘America's Weirdest Hauntings.’ Last year you may remember the series came to a sudden end amid, well, a lot of confusion, not to mention some very violent deaths. So, I'd like, for the first time, to tell you what really happened at Malpas Abbey. It all began when …”
***
Jackie Marshall was one of the volunteers who agreed to go and search for Ben and Zoe. Over a hundred locals turned up to sweep the countryside around the Murrays’ farm. The official police line was that an intruder had butchered the parents during the night. The children were believed to have been abducted by the same person, who was assumed to be mentally unstable. It was not stated explicitly, but Jackie and the other locals were sure the police did not expect to find Ben and Zoe alive.
Jackie was not so sure. She could not articulate her concerns, but as she joined the line of searchers, she wondered what they would find. A few traces of blood had been found outside the farmhouse, but the night's snow had erased any footprints. She kept thinking of the dead dog. She tried to imagine a homicidal maniac living rough in February, going unnoticed, and failed. But when she tried to formulate her own theory of what had happened, she hit a brick wall of fearful incomprehension.
The searchers, strung out in a long line across the rolling landscape, moved slowly. Jackie was at the center of the line, and soon the search reached a
major obstacle. The old quarry lay right in the middle of the designated area. As she grew nearer to the fence, Jackie saw a group of police officers clustered around a gate. By the time she got within earshot, one was using bolt-cutters on the rusted lock. Soon the searchers were inside, and fanning out around the banks of the flooded quarry. As they worked their way through waist-high weeds, they were told to bunch up. Lines of sight were limited.
“Ideal place to dump a body,” said a man she vaguely recognized as they emerged from the vegetation onto a cracked concrete path.
Jackie did not reply. She was looking out over the water and thinking of her own child. She tried not to imagine a pale, torn body spinning slowly in the icy gray waters. She stopped when she reached the edge of the pond, wondering which way to go around. Then she saw a low, dark object just breaking the surface.
It's nothing, she told herself. Just some old junk. A mattress somebody dumped.
But she could not stop looking, found herself pointing, heard a voice shout hoarsely, and realized it was her own. From behind her, as if by magic, two police officers in waders appeared, wielding boat hooks. There was more pointing and shouting. Jackie heard a roaring noise in her ears, staggered. A female officer took her arm and led her to a battered wooden bench; relic of a failed attempt to make the quarry a pleasant place.
“Put your head between your knees,” advised the policewoman.
Jackie did as she was asked, closing her eyes. She heard splashing, a discussion she could not quite make out. Then she heard a clear warning to someone 'not to film the scene'. She opened her eyes and sat up, taking a lungful of the freezing air. The men in waders were standing near the shore. Other officers were looking down at what their colleagues had brought in. The half-submerged object was turned over, and a small arm flailed into the air, splashed down.
“Best not to look,” said the policewoman, hand on Jackie's arm.
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