“My brother Citson, don’t you know? You were there all the time. If not for your wise teachings and prophetic words—your confidence in humanity—none of this ever would have happened. My conversion was only possible because of your influence.
“I never told you what God revealed to me on the day of the brute-hunt. Words cannot express the truth of what was shown to me. Like all revelation, it is something that must be experienced to be accepted as truth. That is one of the reasons I’ve called you here today. You must experience the same vision I had on that day. This I can do for you—with the gift of revelation. Once you awaken, the other reason for our meeting today will be known to you instantly.”
I nodded but it was not necessary. Sedow raised his arms to the ceiling. The fire between us grew more luminous. All that was visible was now pure light. My mind told me the light should be painfully blinding. Instead it was easy and warm upon my retinas. Sedow and I were instantly moving away from our bodies and into the night sky. Soon, everything earthly was falling distant as we entered the blackness of space. And there it was. An immense vessel of oddly unsymmetrical shapes almost impossible for the human eye to interpret—it was the Dimensionals’ base within Earth orbit.
The blackness of space was replaced by the bright interior of the vessel. Sedow was with me the whole time. Just like an otherworldly guide he took me through the corridors which seemed to wind endlessly without purpose. I could not see Sedow or my own body. We were now part of the astral stream. I could not hear his words in the conventional sense. It was more like communication through pure thought.
“There,” he said. “Look closely, Citson. Use your enhanced awareness.”
We were in what appeared to be some kind of laboratory. Everything was warped and misshapen. The very walls and floor began to move and morph like an organism being controlled by an unseen puppeteer. I noticed several pods being connected dynamically to a containment unit which harbored some kind of exotic energy.
“An invention of the Dimensionals?” I asked.
“More like a discovery,” said Sedow. “The energy that unit contains is from the plane of existence from which the Dimensionals arrived. They claim it has cosmically creative powers which long ago gave rise to our universe. Our reality came from theirs. Inside that unit is the energy of life itself.”
The pods became translucent revealing the human forms inside. I recognized each one instantly.
“Dear Lord, this can’t be. It’s all of them—Martak and the others who were selected for the Vernal Ascension. What the hell are the Dimensionals doing to them?”
“Look closely brother Citson. Concentrate and focus your mind. In this place you do not see with your eyes. Expand your awareness and what you seek will be revealed.”
I could see much more now. The energy flowed into the pods and began to reconstruct their bodies. Atom by atom they were being reshaped into something familiar. Before the energy had completed its task I recognized the form that was emerging. Each one of the humans who had been selected for the Vernal Ascension had been transformed into a brute within seconds. It was as if they had been reborn into a devolved state.
“We must go now, brother Citson. Several Dimensionals are approaching. I could only keep us hidden from their stream of consciousness for so long. They have entered the astral plane and will come for us. I no longer possess the energy to fight them off.
I heard Sedow but was too stunned to respond.
“Now brother Citson! We must hurry! The Dimensionals will destroy us if they find us here.”
I felt a jolt of energy and was suddenly moving outside the vessel, into empty space, then back to the physical world. I awoke and found myself surrounded by a few of Sedow’s followers who were trying to console me. I told them I would be ok and sat up to see Sedow lying motionless. The fire had dimmed.
“He has passed,” said one of the men. “Now you know the truth. Sedow told us this would happen. He said it was your teachings that he followed and revealed to us your coming upon this day. Now you must begin where Sedow has finished.”
So, I appeal to you—the people of Earth—my fellow humans of a race worthy to be saved. Surely we are better than this. I submit we have not come through the fiery pits of evolution or the precarious trials and catastrophes of historical upheaval to be reduced into cannibalistic enslavement. We have allowed ourselves to be held captive by an illusion. The invaders pretend to be Gods but they are masquerading. We must appeal to the highest of Authority which resides within our own souls. We must forever resist the Dimensionals and continue to seek truth and knowledge. Are you with me?
THE END.
AMBROSE’S EIGHT-PLUS-ONETH by Judith Field
If a bad rehearsal makes for a good performance, the Macclesfield Simfonietta was set for a five-star show. Pat and Mark sat alone in the front row of the empty auditorium. The conductor raised his baton. ‘Go from letter J.’
Mark jumped. ‘What on earth is that? He put his hands over his ears. ‘Are they still tuning up?’
Pat pulled his hands down. ‘Shh! They’ve started. Ambrose’s Eight-plus-Oneth Symphony.’
‘Can’t Ambrose count?’
Pat shook her head. ‘It’s “the curse of the ninth”. A ninth symphony is destined to be a composer’s last, so he’ll die after writing it.’
The conductor dropped his hands and turned to Pat and Mark. ‘Quiet! We asked you here to find the missing musicians, not hinder the ones still around. Three of them – just vanished.’
Pat squeezed Mark’s hand. Her engagement ring dug into his finger. Stainless steel, containing enough iron to ward off evil spirits. A blue eye-shaped amulet instead of a diamond. Their wedding rings were pure cold iron. Mark touched the jacket pocket in which, like a reminder that it was not some dream, he carried the one he would put on Pat’s finger.
Finley, the Operations Manager, crept down the aisle and beckoned from the end of the row. Mark hefted the strap of his kit bag onto his shoulder. Pat picked up a hold-all and they followed Finley to the back of the hall.
Mark whistled. ‘What a racket.’
‘No!’ A sheen of sweat covered Finlay’s forehead. ‘It’s bad luck to whistle in a theatre.’ His hands flapped. ‘We need all the luck we can get. Two flautists and a timpanist vanished into thin air in the last two weeks. We’re starting on our summer tour the day after tomorrow, at this rate all we’ll be able to play will be Haydn’s Farewell Symphony.’ It was the one where most of the orchestra leaves, one by one, during the last movement.
‘You’ve called us very late,’ Mark said. ‘Didn’t you tell the police?’
‘Didn’t want to know. “It’s a free country, people can go where they like”. Private detective? Complete rip off. Come outside.’
They stood in the foyer. ‘I can’t just hire replacement musicians,’ Finley said. ‘My niece was, er is, engaged to the timpanist. She wants him back.’
Mark imagined how he would feel if there was no Pat. ‘Say no more,’ he said. ‘We’ll take a look round and report back.’
Finley went inside the auditorium, leaving the door ajar.
‘Well?’ Mark heard the conductor snarl at the brass section. The woodwind players, sitting in front of them, ducked. He peered round the door.
A trombonist nodded towards the empty chair to his left. ‘Tuba’s gone. I called his digs. Nobody knows where he is.’
The conductor threw down his baton. ‘Take a break.’ He stamped down the steps and out of the hall, shoving past Mark as he went.
‘Four missing, now,’ Pat said. ‘We’d better hurry.’ She picked up the hold-all and turned towards the other end of the foyer.
Mark unplugged the leads and switched off the phasmometer, which detected magical entities. ‘Nothing.’
Pat frowned. ‘In a building this age there’s always some sort of entity. A revenant, at the very least. We’d better give the detector a boost.’
She knelt down and unzipped her
bag. She pulled out a black velvet box from which she took a ball of grey fluff. It would have looked like the stuff that collects under beds, had it not had red eyes, and been wriggling.
Pat straightened up. ‘This is a fae. A little bit of nothing, but full of power. How do you think they get into bedrooms?
‘Cheek!’ A squeaky voice came from the fluff.
‘Sorry,’ Pat said, through gritted teeth.
Mark dropped the phasmometer into her other hand. ‘No gossamer wings, then? Shame.’
Pat flipped a switch and a metallic, spoon-shaped object popped out of the end. She draped the fluff over it and the phasmometer emitted the sound of a violin playing a discordant chord.
‘Something’s here,’ Pat said. ‘At this frequency, I’d say it was made of wood.’
‘Glad to help, lady, squire.’ the fae squeaked. ‘Now, what do you say?’
Mark turned towards it ‘Tha-’
Pat clapped her hand over his mouth. ‘Never thank the fae. Puts you in their debt. You wouldn’t want to be enslaved forever to an object that belongs inside a vacuum cleaner. Better to pay them some sort of compliment.’ She turned towards the fae ‘You are very kind. Now go to sleep.’
The red eyes closed.
‘Put it away for me, I want to check the reading again.’ Pat stared at the detector.
Mark picked the fae off the spoon and put it in the palm of his hand. Poor creature, stuffed in a tiny box. Nothing to do all day. No wonder they got up to mischief. He remembered reading that they couldn’t resist shiny objects. Perhaps coins would amuse it. He rolled it into a ball and put it into his pocket. ‘Thanks, squire. Whoops!’ came a muffled squeak, followed by a metallic rattle and another squeak. ‘Shiny!’
Mark pressed his hand over his pocket and turned to Pat. ‘Wood, you said. A door?’
She shook her head. ‘Too big. More likely an instrument.’
‘But we didn’t spot anything while we were watching them.’
‘No. The only way we’re going to find anything is to join the orchestra. Just as well I came prepared.’ She reached inside the bag again and pulled out a stringed instrument.
‘I didn’t know you played the violin,’ Mark said.
‘It’s a viola. And I don’t really play. My uncle left it to me when I was 16. I wanted to flog it, but Mum believed you should never get rid of a legacy. Unfortunately for me, she also believed if you had a stringed instrument that nobody could play, the house would be sad and gloomy. So I had to have lessons.’
‘Couldn’t she have?’
‘Mum? Gave a whole new meaning to the term “tone deaf”. No, it had to be me. I hated it.’
‘Anyway, you’re glad now that you learned, aren’t you? Yet another one of your many skills.’ He stroked her hand.
She shook her head. ‘After a week or two Mum decided she’d rather have sadness and gloom than put up the noise. But she was right about not getting rid of it, so I didn’t.’
There was no viola part in Ambrose’s Eighth plus Oneth, but Finley agreed to allow Pat to play any of the violins’ notes that she could manage.
The rehearsal ended. Pat came down from the stage and sat next to Mark in the front row.
‘I saw you looking at the phasmometer,’ he said. ‘Find anything?’
‘There’s a sensation coming from the direction of the violins. When one of them – Rob - bowed his instrument, the others vibrated in unison.’
Rob walked down the steps at the edge of the stage. Pat grabbed his sleeve. ‘I like your violin. Mind if I have a look?’
He handed it over. The violin was made of dark wood. It gave off a dark brown glow as though lit from inside and there were shapes in the grain of the wood on the back. ‘A beauty, isn’t she? My brother Shane made her, in school.’
‘Gorgeous,’ Pat said. ‘What’s it made of? I’ve never seen anything like it.’
‘Dunno. School ran out of wood but an undertaker donated some leftovers. Shane got hold of a bit. The weird thing is that, after that, he never managed more than a coat hook.’
‘Could I borrow it for a while, take it home?’ Pat said. ‘Just for an hour.’
Rob’s face shriveled and wrinkled, and his mouth narrowed. ‘Give-it-back,’ he growled in so low a pitch that, in the split second before he shoved his hand at Pat, Mark wondered where the voice came from.
Pat’s hand shook as she passed it over. Rob’s eyes looked blank for a moment. He shook his head and walked away.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ Mark asked. ‘Muscle fatigue?’
Pat rubbed her wrist. ‘No, I was fine before I held that violin. It’s alive.’
Finley came bustling up. ‘Get a move on. I don’t want this to end up like it did when the other exorcist, Pittenworm, was here.’
Pat scowled. ‘Reggie Pittenweem. You never told me you’d tried someone else. Yet again, we have to sort out his mess. What happened?’
Finley’s face reddened. ‘I don’t know. He was OK one day, then the next he was off sick, for good. Just get on with it. Please.’
‘That’s about as much as I’ve got the energy for today.’ Pat took Mark’s arm and they left the building. ‘I’ll call Pittenweem and see what he can tell us.
Mark arrived at the auditorium the following morning just as the orchestra started a break. Pat took his hand.
Mark frowned and bit his lip. ‘I went to see the undertaker. I put a bit of a glamour on him and he believed I was from a magazine, Better Funerals. The wood he gave the school was left over from an old lady’s coffin. A violin teacher.’
Pat went pale. ‘This is bad. I’d hoped that those musicians had just wandered off, but now, I think some sort of entity’s involved. You need to understand something. M-theory has it that there’s a separation between our world, called the W duality and the land of the other, the O duality.’
‘What does M stand for? Magic, I suppose?’
‘Yes.’
Mark rolled his eyes.
‘Don’t blame me.’ Pat scowled. ‘I didn’t name it. Something has breached the separation between the dualities. That violin is a bridge between the two.’
‘Why did people disappear on this side but nothing come through from theirs?’
‘I don’t know that it hasn’t, but we haven’t got time to hunt it. We have to get those musicians back, then close the gap. It’ll take a huge amount of magical energy. We have to get hold of that violin.’
‘I don’t know how, you said Rob never puts it down.’
‘It ties in with what Pittenweem’s mother said, he couldn’t come to the phone. He’s lost his memory. Things are starting to come back but he doesn’t know what’s true. Like, he thinks he remembers seeing a violin playing itself.’
‘We’ve got to act now,’ Mark said. ‘Before they leave on tour.’
Pat thought for a moment. ‘There is a spell I can use, and I need to start now. I’ve left my phone in my bag, on the stage. Come up with me and help me set the kit up so that when Rob comes back it’ll start working.’
As they headed up the steps beside the stage Mark heard a dry, creaking voice. ‘Why are a violist’s fingers like lightning? They never strike the same spot twice.’ He looked round. Nobody was there. ‘How do you stop a violist falling downstairs? You don’t.’
As the last word sounded, Pat jerked forwards and fell down the steps, pulling him after her. His head smashed onto the floor. As he lost consciousness he saw her white face, and her arm twisted underneath her.
Pat and Mark sat at their kitchen table. It was ten in the evening.
‘A fine set of wedding photos we’re going to get,’ Pat said. ‘You with a surgical collar and me with my arm in a sling. Pass the tramadol; I’m ready for another dose.’ He slid the box to her across the table. ‘This stuff knocks me out,’ she said. She put a capsule into her mouth and tried to lift a teacup with the wrong hand.
‘We’re lucky nothing’s broken,’ he said. ‘What are
we going to do about that violin?’
‘As we were waiting for the ambulance, I heard the conductor telling them to leave their instruments in the theatre, to be packed up ready to go first thing. He told them to sleep with their music under their pillows, for luck.’ She stifled a yawn. ‘We could have gone back in tonight. But not now.’
‘I still can. Tell me what to do.’
‘You can’t do this on your own. M-theory is high level stuff. I’m coming with you.’
Her eyelids drooped. ‘Get the big bag from upstairs and pack all the gear up, you’ve got more hands than I have. I’ll just have a little rest.’ She leaned back in her chair. Her eyes closed.
Mark hauled himself downstairs, holding the bag in one hand, clutching the banisters with the other. He tiptoed across the hall and peered into the kitchen.
Pat had leaned back in her chair, her eyes still closed. ‘Sweep the hearth towards the fire every morning, Mark,’ she muttered. ‘In case pixies came down the chimney during the night while the fire burned low.’ Her head dropped to one side and her breath was slow and even.
Mark took off the collar, and stepped outside, closing the front door so that the lock made only the faintest click. He put the bag into the boot, got inside the car, shut the door as quietly as he could, and let off the handbrake. He waited until it had freewheeled down the hill before starting the engine.
The auditorium was locked, with alarms set on all doors. Mark walked round the back of the building and set the bag down in front of a filthy sash window, level with his feet. In the distance a church clock chimed eleven. He shivered despite the warmth of the summer night.
A dog barked at the front of the building, growing nearer. He froze, but the sound grew fainter again and he heard the dog’s owner telling it to hurry. He breathed out took the high-energy wand, rowan wood bound with red, from the bag. He pointed it at the window. A crimson spark flew from the end, hitting the window and lighting the pane. With a creak the sash slid up. Mark eased himself inside what seemed to be a broom cupboard.
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