The Feaster From The Stars (Blackwood and Harrington)

by Alan K Baker

  Blackwood hesitated. ‘I’m not entirely sure: it had the ring of familiarity to me… I’m sure I’ve heard it – or read it – somewhere before. But I can’t for the life of me remember where.’

  ‘I’ve certainly never heard of it. I wonder what language it is. Is it a place? A person’s name? Was it, perhaps, the name of the thing he saw?’

  Blackwood remained silent as the hansom made its way through Southwark. Away in the distance, a pair of Martian omnibuses could be seen striding above the rooftops, heading north, their spindly tripod legs stepping delicately upon the shallow trenches of the purpose-built omnibus lanes which threaded the city. The sight brought back unpleasant recent memories, and he looked away, returning his attention to Sophia.

  ‘Do you think it would be worth trying some psychometry on that train?’ he asked.

  ‘An intriguing thought,’ Sophia nodded. ‘I’ll go to the SPR headquarters and enlist the aid of our best psychometrist.’

  ‘Excellent.’

  ‘And what about you, Thomas? What are you going to do next?’

  Blackwood gave her a brief, troubled smile. ‘For a start, I’m going to try and see if I can remember where I have encountered the word Carcosa. I’ve a strong suspicion that it will shed some much-needed light on this case.’

  CHAPTER FOUR:

  The Screaming Spectre

  Seamus Brennan crouched down beside the steel pressure tube and placed the curved plate over the inspection opening. Holding the plate with one hand, he inserted the six locking bolts around the edges and tightened them with a large spanner.

  His friend and co-worker, Barrymore Tench, walked across the railway line and stood beside him. ‘All right, Seamus?’

  ‘Sure, I’m done now,’ Brennan replied.

  ‘About time,’ said Harry Fraser, the site foreman, who was standing on the platform looking down at them, fists balled on his hips like he owned the place.

  ‘Ah, stick it up yer arse,’ Brennan muttered.

  ‘What was that?’ Fraser snapped.

  Brennan smiled up at him. ‘Nothing, sir! I’m just sayin’, job done.’

  Fraser nodded. ‘Good. Now clear the line both of you, and we’ll start the test.’

  The two maintenance workers climbed onto the platform and looked down at the tracks. Now that they had stopped working, they began to feel the deep chill of the night air. Farringdon Street Station had originally been the terminus for the Metropolitan Railway, the first of Central London’s urban lines; as such, it was above ground and open to the elements. It now had the additional honour of being the first section of the Underground to be fitted with the new atmospheric railway. The pressure tube, twelve inches in diameter, ran between the rails from Farringdon Street to Baker Street and was fed with compressed air from the great pumping station at Bethnal Green.

  Further along the platform, the test train stood waiting. It was comprised of a single carriage fitted with an atmospheric drive cylinder, which was bolted securely to the underside. The cylinder was enclosed within the pressure tube, the pylon which connected it to the train passing through the single slit in the top of the tube. A strip of Martian rubber sealed the opening, preventing the escape of the compressed air and only parting to allow the passage of the pylon while the train was in motion.

  After making certain that the line was completely clear of workers, Fraser nodded to a man who was standing in the doorway of the ticket office. The man went inside and sent a brief telegraph message to Bethnal Green. At the pumping station two miles to the east, the powerful Vansittart-Siddeley Ultra-compressors were switched on and began to pump air at fantastically high pressure into the system.

  Less than a minute later, there was a barely audible hiss, and the test train began to move forward, gradually gaining speed as it passed the observers on the platform. As he passed them, the driver, Bert Smallwood, gave them the thumbs up, a wide grin on his stubbly face.

  ‘Nice one, Bert!’ called Tench, giving him a wave.

  ‘See you at Baker Street!’ he called back.

  Tench looked down at the pressure tube, which had instantly resealed itself behind the train. ‘How do you think that stuff works?’ he asked Brennan.

  ‘Buggered if I know,’ the Irishman replied. ‘Them Martians, sure they know a lot o’ things we don’t.’

  ‘You’re right there, mate,’ said Tench, glancing up at the black sky and the tiny pinpoint of ruddy light that was Mars.

  ‘All right men,’ said Fraser in his officious bark. ‘Let’s pack up here and get over to Baker Street.’

  ‘Right you are, sir!’ said Brennan and added under his breath, ‘Arsehole.’

  ‘Ex-corporal,’ whispered Tench. ‘What d’you expect?’

  Brennan sniffed. ‘Corporal? He acts more like a general. Look at him there, swaggerin’ around. Bastard.’

  Tench chuckled as he leaned over the edge of the platform and looked into the tunnel. The lights of the test train were growing steadily fainter as it headed towards Baker Street. ‘Come on, mate,’ he said. ‘This bloody cold’s gettin’ into my bones.’

  They were about to leave the platform when a sudden squeal echoed back along the tunnel. Both Tench and Brennan instantly knew what the sound was. It was the squeal of brakes: for some reason, Smallwood had brought his train to a halt.

  Fraser turned away from the platform exit. ‘What was that?’

  ‘Brakes, Mr Fraser,’ Tench replied.

  ‘The test train?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Bleedin’ idiot, Tench thought. What other train would it be? It’s the only one running on the whole bloody network.

  Fraser came back from the exit, and together the three men leaned over the edge of the platform and peered into the tunnel. In the distance, they could see the train’s lights. They were not getting any smaller or dimmer: the train was indeed at a standstill.

  ‘What the devil is he playing at?’ demanded Fraser. ‘Brennan, Tench, go and see what the matter is.’

  Brennan looked at him askance. ‘Us, sir?’

  ‘Yes, you sir! There might be a blockage on the metals. Go and see – and if there is, get it cleared immediately.’

  Tench sighed. ‘Yes, Mr Fraser.’ He jumped down from the platform and looked back up at Brennan. ‘Come on, mate.’

  Brennan hesitated, and Fraser turned to him. ‘Well go on, man! What’s the matter? Afraid of the dark?’

  ‘No, sir,’ muttered Brennan as he climbed down to join his friend on the tracks.

  ‘Off you go, then, and be quick about it,’ snapped Fraser. ‘I’m going to telegraph Bethnal Green and see if there’s a problem at their end.’

  Brennan and Tench looked at each other, picked up their Tilley lamps from the edge of the platform and headed off into the tunnel.

  ‘You ain’t afraid of the dark, are you Seamus?’ said Tench as they trudged along the tracks, holding their lamps out before them.

  ‘Of course not!’ Brennan snapped. ‘And I’ll knock down any man who says I am.’ He paused before adding, ‘It’s what’s in the dark that bothers me.’

  ‘Oh, shut yer bleedin’ mouth!’ Tench chuckled. ‘You don’t believe any of that, do you?’

  ‘Any of what?’

  ‘You know… what they’ve been sayin’ lately. About things… happenin’… down there.’

  ‘And what things might they be?’

  ‘You know what I’m talkin’ about. Ghosts and things…’

  Brennan said nothing for a moment. Their feet crunched loudly on the ballast as they walked through the pitch-darkness, the light from their lamps playing strangely upon the walls of the wide tunnel.

  ‘Ghosts? That wasn’t no ghost that Alfie Morgan saw.’

  ‘How do you know what he saw?’ demanded Tench. ‘Maybe he didn’t see anything… maybe the Loop just got to him.’

  ‘Got to him!’ Brennan gave a short, derisive laugh. ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph, no one likes the Loop, but bein’ in there doesn’
t drive you mad! No, poor old Alfie saw somethin’ – and it wasn’t no ghost.’

  ‘What was it, then?’

  ‘How should I know?’

  ‘Well, if you don’t, then –‘

  Brennan cut him off suddenly. ‘Shh!’ He stopped and took hold of Tench’s arm.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Listen…’

  The two men stood still in the darkness, their lamps held out in front of them. They were now more than halfway to the train. Its lights burned like bright stars in the near distance.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Tench.

  ‘I heard something.’

  ‘It’s your imagination.’

  A sound drifted along the tunnel to them, faint but unmistakable. It was a voice; the voice of a child.

  ‘Saints preserve us,’ whispered Brennan.

  Tench felt his skin crawl. ‘It can’t be…’

  ‘Listen to it!’

  The voice sounded again, a tremulous moan which echoed delicately through the tunnel. Tench peered into the darkness, swinging his lamp this way and that, searching for the source. ‘Must be some poor little street urchin who’s got into the network… probably looking for a place to spend the night.’

  ‘Bert!’ shouted Brennan. ‘Are you all right there, fella?’

  There was no reply.

  ‘Come on,’ said Tench.

  They hurried along the tracks until they had reached the train. The driver’s door was open, and they climbed into the cab to find Bert Smallwood sitting there, staring straight ahead into the darkness.

  ‘Bert,’ said Tench. ‘Are you all right?’

  Smallwood shook his head slowly.

  ‘Come on, mate. Fraser’s going to have our guts for garters if we don’t get moving. What is it?’

  ‘Can you hear her?’ Smallwood asked in a thin, strained voice.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The child.’

  ‘We heard her,’ said Brennan.

  ‘I thought I’d hit her. She was on the line, right in front of me. That’s why I stopped.’

  Smallwood gasped and put his hand to his mouth as the thin, tremulous little voice echoed again through the tunnel.

  ‘I don’t like the way that sounds,’ whispered Brennan.

  ‘Shut yer gob, Seamus!’ said Tench. ‘If there’s a child on the metals, we’ll have to tell Fraser and do a tunnel search – and I don’t like the way that sounds.’

  ‘It isn’t a child,’ said Smallwood.

  Brennan and Tench looked at him, and then at each other. ‘What are you talkin’ about, Bert?’ asked Tench.

  ‘It isn’t a child,’ Smallwood repeated. ‘Not anymore.’

  At that moment, the light from their Tilley lamps faded, as if they had suddenly run out of fuel, and then the train’s lights went out, plunging them into impenetrable darkness. Smallwood moaned in terror.

  ‘What the bleedin’ hell’s going on?’ whispered Tench.

  The darkness did not last, however, for presently the three men became aware of a faint blue glow which seeped into the driver’s cab, evidently from somewhere up ahead.

  ‘What’s that?’ said Tench. ‘Another train? Can’t be.’

  ‘It isn’t,’ said Brennan, pointing through the cab’s front windows.

  There was a shape on the railway tracks, made hazy and indistinct by distance and the glow which surrounded it… or which perhaps emanated from it, and as the shape drew nearer, the men saw that its outline was that of a human being, small and frail.

  It was a little girl.

  The silence in the cab was broken only by the ragged breathing of the three men, who watched in disbelief as the glowing figure drew up to the front of the train and looked up at them through the windows.

  ‘God,’ whispered Brennan. ‘Oh God…’

  The girl was perhaps twelve or thirteen years old and was terribly thin. The long gown that she wore trailed behind her, and Brennan quickly realised that it was a burial shroud. Her pale blue face was drawn in anguish, or perhaps fear, or perhaps a mixture of the two, and her eyes were wide and filled with the darkness of the grave as she looked up at them.

  The men were terrified, of course, but it was not fear which smote their rough hearts as much as sympathy, a searing compassion which flooded their entire beings at the sight of this poor, benighted, lonely little creature.

  ‘Who is she?’ whispered Tench.

  His companions did not answer.

  ‘Is she… alive?’

  The waif looked up at him, and then at Brennan, and then at Smallwood, her face bathed in the blue glow.

  And then she opened her mouth and let out such a piercing scream that the railway men clapped their hands to their ears and shut their eyes, thinking that their eardrums would burst. She screamed again and again, and such was the loudness and the anguish of it that they thought they would go mad. The screams echoed back and forth along the tunnel, filling the darkness…

  Across the city in Chelsea, Thomas Blackwood’s eyes flashed open, and he sat up in bed. His mind, drifting on the edge of sleep, had suddenly revealed the source of his vague memory of having read a strange word somewhere…

  ‘Carcosa,’ he said into the darkness of his bedroom. ‘Oh, good God!’

  CHAPTER FIVE:

  The Fantasmata of Simon Castaigne

  When Sophia called at Blackwood’s rooms the following morning, she found Mrs Butters in a state of some agitation. ‘Oh, do come in, your Ladyship!’ exclaimed the housekeeper as she threw the door wide and beckoned Sophia inside.

  ‘Whatever is the matter, Mrs Butters?’ Sophia asked as she stepped into the hall and took off her hat and coat.

  ‘It’s Mr Blackwood, ma’am; I don’t know what’s the matter with him. He won’t come out of his study – didn’t even want his breakfast. And he hasn’t even got dressed yet, and here it is, past nine o’clock! It’s most unlike him, your Ladyship.’

  ‘I see. That does sound a little odd…’

  ‘Odd? Oh yes, ma’am; Mr Blackwood is always early to rise and get his ablutions attended to. But he’s still in his dressing gown – hasn’t even combed his hair! I don’t know what’s the matter; I’m sure I don’t!’

  Sophia laid a comforting hand on the housekeeper’s shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, Mrs Butters. I’ll go and see him. After all, we’ve got a busy day ahead of us.’

  ‘Oh, thank you, your Ladyship. Might I bring you some refreshment?’

  ‘Perhaps a pot of coffee for Mr Blackwood and me, if you’d be so kind.’

  Mrs Butters nodded vigorously and took herself off to the kitchen, while Sophia went to Blackwood’s study and gave a loud knock upon the door.

  ‘I told you I don’t want any breakfast!’ came the response.

  ‘And I assure you I have no intention of making you any!’ Sophia replied.

  There was a pause, and then the door opened to reveal Blackwood. His grey eyes were wide and intense, and, just as Mrs Butters had indicated, he was clad only in his dressing gown, his dark hair wild and dishevelled.

  ‘Thomas! Whatever is the matter?’

  ‘Come inside,’ he said and quickly drew her into the room, closing the door firmly behind them. ‘I must apologise for my untidy appearance, Sophia, but I’ve had neither the time nor the inclination to attend to it.’

  Sophia glanced around the room. This was where she had first met Blackwood (was it really only a fortnight ago?) and had saved him from the ætherial virus that had infected his cogitator and very nearly devoured his mind. A rather odd way to make each other’s acquaintance, to be sure, and things had only become odder during the subsequent affair of the Martian Ambassador. Sophia noted that Blackwood had yet to replace the cogitator, and decided that she couldn’t really blame him.

  A number of books lay scattered about the room, on the couch and chairs, and also on the desk. Blackwood hurried over to it and picked up one of the books, which he waved at Sophia with an evident mixture of fear and tri
umph. ‘It’s all in here,’ he said.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘That strange word which Alfie Morgan uttered when we went to see him yesterday. Carcosa – you recall?’

  ‘Of course I do,’ Sophia replied in surprise. ‘You have found a reference to it?’

  ‘I knew I recollected it from somewhere,’ said Blackwood excitedly. ‘And this is where.’

  ‘What is that book?’ Sophia asked.

  ‘It’s called the Fantasmata of Simon Castaigne.’

  Sophia frowned. ‘The Fantasmata… I’ve heard of it, and of Dr Castaigne. But I regret to say I haven’t read it.’

  ‘There are few who have,’ Blackwood smiled. ‘It is not easy to come by, and were one to do so, one would find that it does not make for particularly light or comfortable reading. Please, Sophia, do have a seat.’ He gathered up the books from the armchair and dumped them onto the desk.

  ‘Thank you.’ Sophia sat down and waited for Blackwood to explain.

  He began to pace back and forth in front of her as he said, ‘Dr Castaigne is a well-known figure in certain esoteric circles. He has led a strange life, even by the standards of the occultist and delver into the arcane arts. He was born into a wealthy family of financial brokers, and so was guaranteed a sizeable income. However, the world of finance held no allure for him, and instead he devoted himself to the study of the occult and supernatural. His brilliance is undeniable and was evident from an early age. He studied Mythology and Anthropology at Cambridge and had gained his doctorate by the age of twenty-three. Not long after, he took himself off to the Far East where he travelled widely in China, Mongolia and Tibet. It is rumoured that he even discovered – or was guided to – the fabled city of Shambhala…’

  ‘Shambhala?’ exclaimed Sophia. ‘But that’s incredible! The city can only be reached by the most knowledgeable and pure-hearted of mystical adepts. I know of no outsider who has ever managed to reach it – except for Madame Blavatsky, and I’m not entirely sure I believe her.’