Oh my God, Pelham thought. Do they want me as a sacrifice too?
But before he could react, Ma Wakefield was striding past him, pushing through the crowd. She, too, was pointing. Now Pelham realized that the weird creature had been indicating someone at the back of the group.
“An outsider!” the wise woman bellowed. “One who should not be here!”
“How on earth can she see anyone?” wondered Pelham aloud, peering into the darkness.
“They can see very well in the dark, and she speaks to them with her mind,” whispered Stainforth. “Oh, dear me, this is very bad! We should have been more careful.”
Pelham looked back at the trees to see that the pale creatures had all vanished.
“We will wait here a while,” Ma Wakefield said. “I will be told when it is safe to return to Machen.”
The barman of the Black Swan hurried forward and said something to the wise woman. He seemed to be pleading. Ma Wakefield shook her head.
“There is no appeal, no pardon,” she insisted. “All you can do now is help clear up after it's done.”
***
At first, Bewick was disappointed. He had trudged up the hill without a light, stepping in sheep droppings and falling over several times. Now he was at the back of the crowd, and as far as he could make out, all they were doing was singing some sort of folk song.
Silly buggers, he thought. Why couldn't they just have a party in the Black Swan?
But then he saw the baby being carried into the clearing, and felt the tension in the air. The appearance of the pale beings from the forest sent a chill down his spine. Bewick had witnessed violence and cruelty in his travels, but felt sure that this was something way beyond run-of-the-mill law-breaking. Ma Wakefield's involvement led him to dredge up some half-forgotten history.
Black magic, he thought. Devil worship. It's a coven of witches, like in olden times!
Bewick had already begun to slink away through the townsfolk when the cry went up. He began to run despite the darkness, and pelted down the hill towards the town. He could just make out the glow of the blue lamp outside the police station. He took a tumble, got up, and fell again. Then he paused, listening for sounds of pursuit. He saw no lights on the hillside above him, none of the shouting one might expect.
Bewick got up again and jogged towards the town at a less frantic pace, crossing the bridge and reaching the police station without incident. He shoved open the door and staggered inside. Behind the desk, a blue-uniformed constable looked up with a quizzical expression.
“Dear me, sir,” said the young officer, “what have we been up to?”
Bewick was so winded that it took him a few seconds before he could get out a few words.
“Up – on the hill – a baby – witchcraft! Call for help – whole town involved.”
The policeman opened a big ledger and picked up a pencil.
“Now then, sir, I really need a more detailed statement than that,” he said. “Witchcraft? You do know this is the twentieth century, don't you?”
Bewick took several deep breaths and tried to give a more coherent account of what he had seen. The constable wrote swiftly in the ledger as the story unfolded. Then, when the salesman had finished, the officer gave a tolerant smile and leaned over the desk.
“Just between you and me, sir,” he said, “what you've described is just a bit of traditional nonsense.”
“Nonsense?” erupted Bewick. “Those creatures – those monsters, they were real! And so was that poor infant!”
“Yes, sir,” the officer went on, his voice low and soothing. “But if you'd stayed to the end you'd have seen that these creatures were just lads dressed up in home-made costumes. The whole thing is a, what do you call it? A re-enactment of some medieval shenanigans that were, no doubt, bad at the time. But now it's just a bit of fun. That's why the squire and the vicar were there. You don't believe respectable gentlemen like them would take part in anything truly wicked? Do you?”
The explanation was so sensible, so commonsense, that for a moment Bewick felt like a fool. He had seen no actual violence done. Perhaps the shadowy forms flitting under the trees had been costumed performers.
“Well, now that you put it that way …” he began, prompting another smile from the police officer. But then a thought struck him.
“But the child's mother,” Bewick protested. “She was weeping, really broken up about it! Why would she do that if it was just a play or something? And don't tell me she was acting!”
The smile on the constable's face vanished. He tilted his head to one side, then slowly put his pencil down on the ledger, all the while staring at Bewick. The unblinking gaze was so intense that Bewick could not help but look away. He found himself gazing at the ledger. The pages were covered not with words taken as a statement, but a meaningless scribble of jagged lines.
“No, we can't write,” said the constable, his voice growing more guttural. “But we have other talents. Pity you would not be persuaded.”
Bewick reeled back from the reception desk as the human-looking face changed, becoming elongated. His eyes retreated until they became glittering pinpoints in deep sockets. At the same time the inhuman creature's limbs extended, as did its fingers, while nails transmuted into vicious claws.
Bewick tried to run but before he even reached the door, the monster had leaped onto his back, talons reaching for his throat.
***
After the ritual, Pelham returned to his manor house on the far side of the valley. He found it impossible to sleep. It was only when the gray light of dawn appeared that he fell into a fitful doze. He was awoken at eight by his valet bringing his breakfast tray.
“What is it, Milligan?” he asked irritably, as the man hesitated by his bedside.
“I thought I should inform you sir,” said the valet, putting the tray down on the covers by his master. “A rather peculiar woman called earlier. She was most insistent that I give you something.”
Pelham looked at the silver tray. On top of the morning paper, that lay beside his plate of scrambled eggs, was a purplish stone hanging from a length of slick, brown cord that might have been leather. The stone was about two inches long, irregularly shaped. A hole had been bored at one end for the cord, creating a crude pendant.
“Did this woman say anything?” asked Pelham.
“Yes, sir,” replied Milligan. “She said that if you wear it at all times you will enjoy good fortune. She said that it was a talisman.”
“Is that all? Sounds like something a gypsy fortuneteller might come up with.”
“Quite, sir,” said the valet. “But the woman was most insistent and …”
Milligan hesitated.
“You found her intimidating?” finished Pelham.
The valet looked shamefaced but said nothing in return.
“I don't blame you,” Pelham said with a wan smile. “You can go now.”
After Milligan left, Pelham picked up the odd stone. Knowing nothing of minerals, he could not tell if it was local or foreign, costly or cheap. He was tempted to toss it aside, but instead found himself placing the cord around his neck. The stone felt oddly warm on his flesh as it lay on his chest. He remembered a book he had read as a boy called The Talisman. He vaguely recalled it was about some kind of holy relic that protected a brave knight in battle.
“Perhaps all that business last night was just for show,” he mused. “A clever charade to intimidate the new landlord.”
After he finished his eggs and coffee, he lay back and pondered the night's events, wondering what he should do next. Despite the coffee, his eyelids grew heavy and he settled back for a pleasant doze. Instead, he was beset by troubling dreams. He was standing on a hill above a deep, dark valley. The landscape was like another world, with the remains of shattered trees and ruined buildings. The slopes of the valley were studded with blocks of concrete and crisscrossed with coils of rusting barbed wire. No blade of grass could be seen, and no birds sang.
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A column of men in steel helmets, dressed in mud-spattered khaki uniforms, were marching past under a sunless sky. Their faces were wan, their eyes were cast down at the muddy road as they trudged along. Pelham looked for the beginning of the column, but it seemed to stretch all the way to the horizon. There were hundreds of thousands of soldiers, all mutely marching by. Looking the other way, he tried to make out their destination. All he could see at the far end of the valley was mist. The snaking column vanished into silvery grayness.
“Poor sods,” said a voice at his side.
Pelham looked around to see the barman from the Black Swan. He, too, wore the khaki uniform and steel helmet. But he also wore a pendant, and the purple stone seemed to glow, offering the only real color in the dismal vista. Beyond the landlord were other familiar faces – Pelham's gamekeepers, his valet, the blacksmith. All wore a pendant.
A talisman, thought Pelham, looking down to see the same glowing stone on the breast of his khaki jacket. That's what she meant.
He picked up the newspaper from his breakfast tray and scanned the headlines. The great powers were mobilizing. Fighting had already broken out on several fronts. A British Expeditionary Force was being prepared to stop a German advance through neutral Belgium.
Putting down the paper, Pelham clutched the talisman. Again, he felt an odd sensation of warmth course through his fingertips.
I can take it off any time I choose, he thought. Just a lot of superstitious nonsense. I'll take it off. Of course I will.
And over four years later, he did.
Chapter 1: Mind Games
“She's been a bit quiet, doctor,” said Mel Bavistock. “Not eating much. Doesn't seem to want to watch television, either – not like her at all.”
“I think shunning TV is not, in itself, a symptom of illness,” smiled Doctor Wakefield. “I've never written out a prescription for more telly, so far as I can recall.”
Mel smiled at the attempted joke. She liked the doctor, a kindly man who had been widowed a few years back. She had even toyed with the idea of asking him out on a date herself, but never quite plucked up the confidence.
“Perhaps you've grown out of some of those TV shows, eh Isobel?” the doctor asked, looking down at the little girl sitting quietly by his desk. “Perhaps some of the programs you used to like are a bit babyish for you, now?”
Isobel looked up at Wakefield, then nodded.
“Fairy princesses are a bit silly,” she said, then looked down at her folded hands. “I like stories about dinosaurs and spaceships now.”
“Excellent!” exclaimed the doctor. “You can't go far wrong with dinosaurs and spaceships, I feel. Central to any good story.”
“It's just – what with that business in the woods–” Mel began, then stopped, made a helpless gesture. “I know she wasn't hurt or nothing, but–”
“It was very traumatic for you, Mel,” said Wakefield, sitting on the edge of his desk. “Like any mother, when your daughter got lost you were very upset. Now you're anxious, don't want to let her out of your sight. So that anxiety communicates itself to Isobel. And that, in turn, makes you even more anxious. See?”
He's so sensible, Mel thought. And so kind. I just wish I could be sure he's right.
“Put it this way, Mel,” the doctor went on. “When Isobel and the other children were found, I examined them straight away. Just like the police, I concluded that they had experienced a few scratches and bumps from wandering in the woods, and that was it. It was a bit of an adventure, really – isn't that right?”
Isobel looked up at the doctor again, her clear blue eyes unblinking.
“Yes,” she said, “we had an adventure.”
The grown-ups chatted some more, and then Wakefield offered to prescribe something to help Mel sleep. It was, he stressed, a short course of pills to get her back on track. After a brief hesitation, she accepted. Then they left the clinic and began to walk down the main street back to the Black Swan. A few spots of rain fell from the autumn sky, and Mel glanced up at the clouds, then found her eyes drawn to the looming presence of Branksholme Woods.
“It's not the trees' fault,” said Isobel. “We just got lost.”
“I know, poppet,” said Mel quickly. “And I don't blame you or your friends. I was just worried, is all.”
“Doctor Wakefield says I'm all right,” said Isobel. “He must know, it's his job.”
Mel laughed at the remark, its child-like bluntness.
That's like the Isobel I knew, she thought. Perhaps she's getting back to her old gabby self.
As they neared the pub, their neighbor opposite emerged from her shabby cottage. Mrs. Molesworth was known to most townsfolk as the Mad Cat Lady. Mel had always tried to be kind to her, giving her leftover food for her dozen or so pets and regularly passing the time of day. But recently the eccentric, old woman had taken against the Bavistocks. Today she seemed especially grouchy, giving Isobel and her mother a sour look.
“Looks like rain again!” Mel shouted across the road.
Mrs. Molesworth said nothing audible, but stumped off towards the local Safeway muttering under her breath.
Old bag, Mel thought, then felt ashamed. I might end up like her, I shouldn't judge.
“Well,” she said to Isobel, “now you've got a clean bill of health I suppose you can help me with tonight's meals.”
Isobel nodded, she waited for her mother to unlock the pub door.
“How can a person be a bag?” she asked.
Oh God, thought Mel, did I say it aloud? Kids pick up on everything.
***
Denny Purcell tried to focus on mental images. In her ears was a steady hiss of white noise delivered by headphones. Over her eyes, special goggles cut off all light.
“Next target,” said Ted Gould's voice in her ear.
Denny struggled to make something meaningful of the fluorescent green and orange shapes drifting in her field of vision. Her mind, refusing to behave itself, conjured up an image of a large pepperoni pizza. It had been a while since breakfast and her last few answers had tended to focus on food.
I can't say pizza again, she thought. Say something else that's round, think of anything round.
“Giant chocolate chip cookie,” she blurted out.
There was a pause.
“Okay,” said Gould's voice, “At this point I think we should take the hint and break for lunch.”
Denny heaved a sigh of relief as Doctor Zoffany removed the blinders, then the headphones. Gould tapped a key on a laptop, curtailing a series of supposedly random images. The theory was that he would strive to project them to Denny. She noticed that the last image had been the Empire State Building.
Guess imagining pizza counts as a near miss, she thought.
“How did I do this time?” she asked, looking from Gould to the scientist and back.
“I think we've established,” said Gould, “that you're about as psychic as most people. Which is to say, not at all.”
“Aw!” Denny said, in a tone of mock-complaint. “I was hoping for a new career in the carnival.”
Zoffany, a dark-haired woman in her mid-forties, shook her head emphatically.
“We seldom find any paranormal characteristics in test subjects,” she said. “But, given that you survived close encounters with the Interlopers, we thought you might have some unusual mental abilities. However–”
“I'm as psychic as the average tree stump?” Denny put in.
“That's a somewhat negative take on the data,” Zoffany smiled. “You're just perfectly normal, is all.”
Still sounds like an insult, Denny thought. Who the hell wants to be normal?
“So when I thought I was having some kind of psychic battle with Lucy …” she began, then noticed Gould's expression. “Sorry, Ted, I meant the creature that impersonated her.”
“I know,” he said, with a faint smile. “It's convenient to refer to that particular Interloper as Lucy. Go on.”
“Well,” she continued, “I thought I was kind of battling her for control of my mind, that she was trying to tear me apart from the inside? And then I sort of hurled this ball of mental energy at her, put her off balance for a second. But maybe that was more imagination than anything else?”
Doctor Zoffany leaned back against a bench laden with elaborate testing equipment.
“We're reduced to guesswork when it comes to the mental powers of the Interlopers,” she said. “As with so many other matters. They can read minds, to some extent – that much we know. And they use this to manipulate humans, through fear primarily. But also in other ways, like playing on hope, even love, which is quite remarkable–”
“I think we're all aware of that,” interrupted Gould. “I desperately wanted to believe my little sister had come back from the Phantom Dimension. It was clever of them to exploit that – it very nearly worked.”
Denny shuddered at the memory of the unearthly creature that had so closely mimicked a human child. Gould had repeatedly reassured her that the being that had taken on Lucy's form had been killed and the body 'disposed of discreetly'. She had not asked for details.
“So,” she said, “if I'm not psychic, does that mean I'm no use to the esteemed Romola Foundation?”
“Not at all!” Gould said quickly. “You're the only person we know of who has ventured into the Phantom Dimension and survived.”
“Yeah,” Denny said somberly. “Pity about old George.”
Lord George Blaisdell, an eighteenth century aristocrat, had been abducted and tortured by the Interlopers, then allowed to escape. Thanks to the weird disparity in time-flow between parallel worlds, he had only aged a small fraction of the two centuries that had passed on earth. But his captors had fixed a strange symbiotic creature to his body to keep him alive. Gould had explained to Denny that trying to remove the symbiote had killed the old man.
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