Home From the Sea

by William Meikle

  "Best make it beer. For now," Challenger said, and his booming laugh rang around the room. I had a flagon of dark brown ale thrust into my hand. I took it to a corner table and sipped at it while watching in amazement as Challenger worked the room.

  Some of the customers, especially the older men, seemed to know Challenger well, and he in turn seemed to know their names, and even enough to inquire after their families. At the same time he asked about anything strange in town, and collected a variety of stories. The bar was too noisy for me to catch any more than snippets, but I saw him pass coins, and even a five-pound note, across the table on several occasions. He had a large smile on his face when he joined me with a fresh beer for each of us.

  "The bait is in the trap," he said and drained a large gulp of beer. "It seems your story is larger than we imagined, for the weird has become commonplace around here in recent days."

  I laughed.

  "I should get you a job at the paper. You're a natural."

  He laughed back.

  "Only in here. It's an old haunt from years back and they know me well."

  "I have noticed. I did not know you'd even been to Glasgow before."

  The laugh this time was loud enough to stop all conversation in the bar.

  "Been? I was born just down the coast from here, studied theory in Edinburgh, but studied life itself in this very bar."

  A cry went up for a song and again Challenger amazed me by standing up and, at the top of his voice, starting to sing. Contrary as ever, he gave the Scots in the bar a perfect rendition of Men of Harlech to which everyone joined in with gusto. Flagons were bashed on tables, feet were stamped in time and Challenger's grin grew ever wider as he came to a rousing climax and the customers roared in appreciation.

  His smile stayed as, once the bar settled somewhat, a small man came over and passed him a note. Challenger took his old map from his jacket and spread it out on the table. On reading the note he started marking points with a pencil.

  "There have been another three reports today," he said. "Strange lights over water and plants dying off. This is all connected, and there is a method in it. I'm sure of it." He banged his fist on the table in frustration. "But the pattern still eludes me."

  I was about to call it a night and suggest that we retire to be better prepared for a trip down the coast in the morning, and indeed Challenger seemed close to agreement. But that all changed when a red-faced and breathless boy arrived at a rush.

  "Dad, it's the sky," he said. "The sky's singing. And it's on fire!"

  Most of the bar's customers merely laughed and went back to their drinking, but Challenger was already on his feet and I had to hurry to catch him as he stepped outside.

  It was not just the sky that seemed afire. The whole alleyway was bathed in a red glow, shimmering like oil on a hot skillet. Looking up past the tall canyon made by the adjoining buildings I saw that the sky itself was full of dancing clouds in bright yellow and orange.

  And yes, they were indeed singing.

  At first it sounded like an atonal choir trying to be heard in a strong wind. It seemed to come in pulses, fading in and out at irregular intervals. I started to point that out to Challenger but he pushed me aside brusquely.

  "Hush man. I'm counting."

  He started to make notes on the back of his map and I knew better than to interrupt him again. He only looked up as the light from above started to dim, the shifting clouds moving away in a southerly direction.

  "Quick lad," he said, and laughed again. "Your story is getting away."

  He took off down the alley, following the direction the cloud was taking. As he seemed to know where he was going, I followed, feeling the beer swill around in an otherwise empty stomach as he led me at pace through a warren of narrow streets, the buildings blackened with soot and the cobbles slippery underfoot from a recent shower. We crossed two busy thoroughfares but were not bothered by either pedestrians or tram-cars; the whole city seemed to have come to a standstill, looking skywards.

  The singing seemed to come from every direction and none at all, and it had become louder, taking on an almost hollow echo that reminded me of nothing less than a monastic chant such as you might hear in one of the old cathedral cities in the quiet evening air. It felt almost peaceful.

  If Challenger was feeling any such peace, he did not show it. His sights were set to the south, where the color concentration in the cloud seemed brightest.

  "I see it Malone. Hurry man. We're catching it."

  I followed his shambling bulk through more alleyways, then into a ruck of bystanders that he brushed aside with all the grace of a charging bull. But even he came to a shocked stop at the view that awaited us.

  We had arrived at the riverside.

  A crowd, some five deep, lined the whole length of the north shore, and every one of them stared at a spot in the center of the river. A red mist hung over and around a tall, suspended footbridge, and it was from here that the singing emanated. The mist itself seemed almost solid, yet continuously shifting and swirling as if driven by some internal churning. But its overall shape exactly matched something I'd seen before – a teardrop just about to start its dribble down a window.

  Challenger's pause had only been momentary. He had already pushed his way to the front of the crowd and seemed intent on heading closer to the footbridge. The strange singing increased in volume again, and I felt it like a vibration in the pit of my stomach, as if I stood too close to someone playing only the deepest bass notes on a large church organ. I had to force down sudden nausea as I made my through the crowd towards Challenger.

  He had stopped again, some twenty yards shy of the footbridge, and was once more taking notes, marking the rhythm and counting beats between tones. I noted with some dismay that he was bleeding from his left ear, and even as I spotted it I felt something give in my nasal passages and tasted blood as it dripped through to my lips.

  "Come away man," I said as I reached him, and put a hand on his shoulder. At that very same moment the singing reached a concussive crescendo, a vibration that shook the very fiber of my being and threatened to knock me down into blackness. My vision dimmed so that even now I am not completely sure of what I saw next, but it seemed to me that the red haze started to pulse, almost as if it were breathing. It rose, gracefully as a balloon on a still day, and drifted silently off into the night trailing smoky tendrils in its wake. It left behind a smoldering ruin of buckled girders and split wood – all that remained of what had once been the footbridge.

  It was only later, as I lay abed in my hotel room trying to quiet the buzzing in my head that I remembered what the haze had resembled as it floated off – a giant jellyfish, swimming in a clear sea, heading for the depths.

  *

  Challenger was not to give me any chance to sleep off the headache that the damned singing had brought on. He banged on my room door just as the first dim sunlight showed through the thick curtains, and came in without being asked.

  "I have it Malone," he said, waving a sheaf of papers in my face as I rose, slightly groggy, from bed. While I washed and dressed he explained it to me – or at least he tried to. I was still befuddled and understood barely a half of what he said – something to do with mathematics, Fibonacci and a universal rhythmic messaging system. He sighed in loud exasperation as, after finishing my ablutions, I expressed continued bemusement.

  "Look," he said, in exactly the same tone he might use to explain something to a five-year old. "It's really very simple when you see it."

  Once again he took out his old map and spread it on the table. It had been scrawled all over with straight lines in black pencil.

  "I've seen that already," I said, shaking my head. "I still can't make head nor tail of it."

  "Ah, but you haven't seen this," Challenger replied. He took a pencil from his pocket and started to draw freehand in a circular motion, connecting all the dots that made up reports of strange happenings. He stood back and waved with a fl
ourish, as if he was a magician at the reveal of a trick.

  I looked down.

  There was now a large spiral marked on the map, its outermost reach being in the Inner Hebrides, and with the line converging down to a central spot somewhere out on the northern banks of the Firth of Clyde.

  "It's a descending Fibonacci series producing a Golden Spiral," Challenger said proudly, as if that explained anything. "And that infernal chanting followed the same descending sequence. I should have seen it sooner."

  Half an hour later, after a quick breakfast of weak tea and stale toast, he was still trying to explain the how of the thing as we boarded the train for Helensburgh -- the spot on the map where the spiral curled in to an end.

  "I knew already that there was some kind of pattern," Challenger said as we got our pipes lit. "I just didn't see it until I looked over the notes I took during last night's activities. The Fibonacci series is one of the most famous equations in mathematics. It defines a sequence of numbers made by adding together the previous two numbers in the sequence, and goes 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 et-cetera. By drawing arcs connecting the opposite corners of squares in the Fibonacci sequence you get the so-called Golden Spiral. Fibonacci spirals abound in nature, from the arrangement of leaves and petals on plants to the curve of the shells in snails and other molluscs."

  It must have been obvious to Challenger that I was still somewhat confused.

  "Look, take my word for it Malone. These occurrences, whatever they are, are following one of nature's most primal sequences. And like all mathematical sequences, once you know the formula, you can predict what will happen next. Or, in our particular case, where it will happen next."

  He unfolded the map again and pointed at points on it, staring with the one in the Hebrides. "This one is one hundred and forty four. Not miles or feet – it's a gross of the units used by the thing – each being somewhere around five hundred yards at a guess."

  He pointed at another, well to the south towards the port of Campbelltown.

  "This one denotes fifty-five. See how they spiral inwards?" He traced the line with a finger. "The intervals between the happenings all follow the same pattern, in ever decreasing units of time. And judging by last night's visitation at the bridge, we are now fast approaching the end game. If I am right, then Helensburgh will be the focus of the last four visits, denoting the last four points of the series, 3,2,1 and 1 again. The fifth from the end should be happening sometime before we get off the train," he said casually. "And if my calculations are right, it will be in our immediate proximity, about a mile from the station."

  As you can well imagine, I was somewhat perturbed by this, and insisted that we leave the train at the very first opportunity but Challenger would have none of it.

  "What kind of a scientist would I be if I walked away from this now, just as it's getting interesting? And another thing," he said. "It's also spiraling downward as well as inward. Remember how it was high in the sky in the photograph -- and ten feet above the ground at the footbridge? This time it may even touch down."

  "And what will happen then?"

  "I have no idea old boy. That's what were going to find out."

  If Challenger was worried he certainly didn't show it. And he surprised me further by removing a cotton handkerchief from his pocket and tearing it roughly into strips that he proceeded to ball up into tight wads of cotton. He passed two to me.

  "Ear plugs," he said. "I fear we might need them."

  He was proved right just minutes later.

  It started so innocuously that I scarcely noticed until Challenger pointed out that the sky had taken on a red tinge. I followed his lead in placing the wadded plugs in my ears, and not a moment too soon. The red glow in the sky pulsed and the train carriage started to shake and roll - so much so that I feared a derailment. Once again my stomach churned as a deep vibration coursed through me and even through the earplugs I heard a far-off chanting.

  But that was the least of our problems. The train shuddered to a complete standstill, so violently that I was almost thrown into Challenger's lap. The window beside him fell out with a huge crash and we fell sideways, almost in slow motion, tumbling and rolling in a bundle of flailing arms and legs as the carriage fell down a small bank to finally come to rest at a forty-five degree angle. Challenger had to almost bodily drag me out what remained of the window and we stood, somewhat unsteady, on the carriage roof to survey the damage.

  Whatever was happening, it was clearly not yet over. A roiling red cloud hung overhead, so close that I could have stood on tiptoe and touched the base of it. Indeed Challenger looked as if he would attempt that very thing, but a glance along the length of the tumbled train made me drag his arm down and away. Towards the rear carriage the red cloud hung even lower and smoky tendrils wafted over three men who stood, bemused, amid a pile of wreckage. The smoke drifted over them. Their screams were mercifully short, and when the smoke moved on there was nothing left of them but a mess of blood and steaming meat, as if their bodies had been put through a mincing machine. And it was not just the men that were taken. Everything the tendrils touched became disrupted, torn and twisted as if melted and reformed.

  "This way," Challenger called as the wispy smoke started to drift in our direction.

  I did not need telling twice.

  We fled along the embankment as fast as we were able.

  *

  On arriving at the station platform in Helensburgh we found the place in turmoil. A small group of survivors had made it there ahead of us and were already being tended to by station staff. A group of local firemen, still struggling into their gear, passed us going the other way. I started to warn them but Challenger pointed back the way we had come.

  "Let them go lad," he shouted. "The danger has passed. For now."

  I saw that he was right. The train was a smoking, ruined wreck in the distance, but the red cloud had lifted away and was already dissipating. I removed the earplugs. My head rang, but there was none of the nausea I had felt the night before, and the headache was rapidly fading.

  I stopped, thinking of helping with the cleanup, but Challenger dragged me away.

  "Come man. We must find the focal point, before it is too late for all of us."

  I knew better than to ask him exactly how we might go about accomplishing the task, and followed him down into the town. He muttered to himself all the way, and I only caught fragments, but it was obvious that he was formulating a theory about the strange occurrences that so afflicted us. There was mention of spectral shifting, and interdimensional vibrational entities, and some discourse on the nature of reality and the vastness of space, but I am afraid it was all a jumble to me, my mind still reeling from the tumbling chaos of the train crash. Indeed I was so befuddled that I walked into Challenger's broad back when he stopped suddenly in front of me.

  I saw why when I looked up past him. The sky ahead had taken on the now familiar red glow, and the sound of far off chanting filled the air. My first instinct was to flee in the opposite direction, back towards the train wreck on the grounds that lightning wouldn't strike twice in the same place, but Challenger had other ideas. He studied the cloud for some seconds, marking its path and its rapid descent towards the town center some four hundred yards west of our position. He too looked back the way we had come, then returned his attention to the cloud. He nodded, as if coming to a conclusion, and strode off at pace in a northerly direction.

  We walked up a side street lined with neat little cottages that seemed remarkably calm and quiet after the earlier noise and chaos.

  "What are we looking for?" I asked.

  "I'll know it when I see it," Challenger replied. "But someone has called this thing here. And the call has been answered."

  The far-off chanting got louder, and faint screams could be heard rising to join it.

  "It has made land," Challenger said grimly. "Hurry. Time is getting short."

  Just as I was thinking once again of making a
run for it, Challenger spotted something off to our right. A tall metal pole, like the mast of a yacht but festooned with a mish-mash web of wire, cable and valves, stood proud above a small stand of pine trees. Even over the sound of far off chanting and the mercifully weak screams from the town center the contraption gave off an audible hum that set my teeth on edge.

  Challenger immediately headed for the spot. A tangle of cables led from the pole to a long shed in the back garden of a small cottage set away from the main road. Knocking on the door of the cottage produced no result, but as soon as we approached the shed the door opened. A small wiry man greeted us wearing pince-nez glasses, a tweed suit, and the air of someone too busy to be disturbed.

  "The name's Logie Baird," he said. "And if you're selling something, I'm not interested."

  He had a broad Scots accent that I found difficult to understand, such was the speed with which he spoke, but Challenger seemed to have no such problems.

  "Don't tell me," he said. "You're coming to the end of an experiment, the result of which will change the world."

  Baird looked up, as if seeing us for the first time.

  "Challenger isn't it? I attended your lectures on the electromagnetic field of the conger eel and its use in navigation. Fascinating stuff. But it was a deeply flawed analysis. Let me tell you. . . "

  Challenger pushed the small man aside and made for the interior of the shed.

  "We've no time for that. Where's this experiment?"

  Baird unwisely tried to pull Challenger back.

  "You can't just. . . "

  Challenger turned, his face contorted in rage, and lifted Baird off his feet as if he weighed no more than a doll. He carried the small man out onto the garden and turned him to face where the red cloud roiled in the sky. Forked lightning crackled from it on cue.

  "Descending Fibonacci sequences, messages beamed off the magnetosphere and calling down destruction on a grand scale," Challenger shouted. "Any of this ringing any bells?"

  Baird kicked and struggled but Challenger had him held tight. He went quiet as a lightning bolt crashed to ground nearby and the red cloud started to drift, slowly at first, then with more purpose in our direction.