A hairless hyena. The latest must-have pet for London's obscenely wealthy cosmopolitan elite.
The thought made her laugh out loud, dispelling her apprehension. The front door of her apartment building was visible, and now a gap in the traffic let her run over. A few seconds later, she was inside the hall. She took off her sneakers and carried them up the stairs. Three minutes later, she was turning on the shower, then hurling her cold, wet clothes into the laundry basket.
Timandra wrapped an old robe around herself, glanced out of the window. One thousand acres of open land and I can't see any of it, only a vague blur that marked the rough position of streetlights.
The buzzer of her intercom sounded. The old lady who lived on the ground floor was always forgetting her keys. Timandra padded over to the doorway on bare feet, pushed the button.
“Hello?”
“Sorry to be a bother, dearie. I've locked myself out again.”
The voice from the speaker was tiny, distorted, but something about it made Timandra wonder if it really was Mrs. Bradford. She hesitated, finger over the door button, until the urgent little voice sounded again.
“Please hurry, dearie,” it said. “I've got a casserole in the oven.”
Doesn't she always? They'll probably bury her with one.
Timandra smiled, pushed the button, heard the distant sound of the front door banging back against the lobby wall.
“You in all right?” she shouted into the grille. It was a ritual they went through. The old lady would reply with profuse thanks and promise to bring a 'nice bowl of casserole' up later 'for my young friend'. But this time there was no response.
Oh well, maybe she was in a hurry, she thought, feeling slightly annoyed.
Despite the apartment's central heating, she was starting to feel chilly, so she ran into the bathroom and tested the water. It was a little too hot, so she adjusted the mix. Before she could step under the jet of steaming water, her own door buzzer sounded.
Who the hell is this?
As she retraced her steps across the small living room she could just make out Mrs. Bradford's plaintive voice.
“Hello dear? I've got you something nice and warm for you to eat after your run.”
Smiling resignedly, Timandra undid the chain and unlatched the door. It was only as she began to turn the handle that something occurred to her.
How did she know I'd been out for a run? I normally go in the mornings. And if she wasn't at home when I went and came back …
She was still opening the door, an automatic reflex, when she saw that what was crouching in the hallway was nothing like an elderly lady. Timandra Clay's last coherent thought, as the creature hurled itself at the six-inch gap she had unwittingly offered it, was that it did indeed looked a little like a white, hairless hyena.
Except that it had her face.
***
Theresa Bradford was not quite quick enough to catch the person who was let in. She started hobbling to the door as soon as the buzzer sounded but by the time she reached the spy-hole the incomer was already halfway up the stairs. Theresa just caught a vanishing glimpse of a shadow on the wall. Then the hallway light, which was on a timer, went out.
“Oh, well,” she said to her cat. “I don't suppose it was her fancy man. He's not so light on his feet, is he Percy? Surprised he hasn't croaked from heart failure, the sounds we hear. Shocking, isn't it?”
Percy was sitting on the sofa on far side of the room, staring across at his human. Normally, all Theresa had to do was go near the door for the cat to start winding himself around her ankles, meowing to be let out. The worse the weather, the more Percy wanted to experience it, before demanding to be let in again about thirty seconds later. But this time he showed no intention of leaving his comfortable seat.
“Not feeling well?” asked Theresa, going over to scratch the old tom between his ears. But before she could touch him, Percy spat at her, back arched and tail fluffed up. Then, as the old lady flinched in surprise, the cat leaped down and ran into the kitchen.
“You're not getting any more Whiskas!” Theresa said crossly, as she followed the animal. “Not with that attitude, young man.”
Suddenly she halted, cocked an ear. There had been a noise, faint but unmistakable, from the flat upstairs. It was a feminine voice, crying out, suddenly stifled. It was followed by the sound of something falling, what might have been a struggle. Then there was silence for a few moments. Theresa began to become concerned. What if an intruder had attacked Miss Clay?
Then she heaved a sigh of relief. The phone rang, and it was answered immediately. Theresa heard the sound of Miss Clay's voice. Though she could not make out the words, the tone was familiar, and unmistakable. It was what the old lady thought of, with a thrill of disapproval, as a 'sexy voice' – low and teasing.
“Shocking behavior!” she hissed.
Percy was squeezing himself into a space behind the refrigerator, a hiding place he always took to when strangers were about. But this time there was no plumber or electrician to be scared of.
Silly creature, she thought. Going dotty in his old age, no doubt.
She inspected her latest casserole. It was done, a steaming concoction of beef and vegetables. Not for the first time, Theresa decided to go up with a bowl for the young lady. It would give her the chance to look inside the flat, if only for a moment, and see if she could catch a glimpse of that dirty old man. Or some of the strange toys that were sometimes lying around the place.
“You sure you don't want out, Percy?” she shouted as she opened her front door.
The cat did not respond. Muttering about ingratitude, Theresa climbed the stairs to the first floor, put the bowl down outside Miss Clay's apartment, and then rapped gently on the door. After a few moments' silence, the door handle began to turn.
***
The padded envelope was waiting for Denny when she returned to the apartment. She picked it up, gave it a gentle shake. It had been dinned into her at the foundation that she should take 'reasonable precautions', and that included not opening strange parcels. She had asked Forster if he thought the Interlopers were going to send letter bombs via Royal Mail. He had not found the idea amusing.
“No,” he had said. “I think they might send something far worse. Something that pops out and fastens itself on your face, for instance.”
Denny shuddered at the thought and studied the envelope. The address was handwritten, the writing unfamiliar. She turned it over and saw no return address. However, it was post-marked 'Hereford'. Denny relaxed. There was one person in that part of England who knew where she lived. Someone she could trust.
Sure enough when she tore open the package, it contained a note on letterhead, from the clinic of Doctor Russell Wakefield in Machen. As she scanned the message, she recalled that Wakefield was a folklore expert with, presumably, a lot of local contacts.
'Dear Denny,
Checked out local museums for Great War memorabilia. Someone found this for me. Had been stashed away with other trinkets, no obvious historical merit. Don't want to keep it here in case it draws wrong kind of attention. You could give it to RF if you like.
Best, RW.'
Denny felt her heart speed up as she reached inside the package again and found a smaller envelope, plain brown and sealed shut, that had been shoved right down at the far end. It was a lumpy object a little smaller than her thumb. She tore open the inner envelope and a purple stone fell into her hand. A quarter-inch hole had been bored through it near one end so that it could be hung around its user's neck. But there was no cord in the envelope.
“Yeah,” she said softly. “I could give it the foundation. If I liked.”
Denny thought back to her conversation with Frankie, and Gould's theory of a 'multiverse'. She imagined Interlopers and Soul Eaters moving invisibly through the city in the parallel Phantom Dimension. And she remembered the rage of the Interloper posing as Lucy Gould, Ted's missing sister. The creature had somehow blam
ed human beings for the decay and collapse of their world. Somehow, these wild ideas had fit together, but she despaired of how to go about it.
In the meantime, I could do with something to shift the odds in my favor.
She put the talisman under the small desk lamp, but like the first one, it showed no peculiar features. It was like a crudely-worked bit of colored quartz. Denny thought about going out and buying a piece of string or maybe a shoelace to turn it into a pendant. Then it occurred to her that the security scanner at the foundation might well be triggered by the stone.
I have no idea what this thing might do to that kind of tech, she thought.
Denny went over the routine she had gone through that morning when entering the organization's headquarters. Then she got her keys from her jacket. The key ring would not fit through the hole in the stone. She took out the small sewing kit she always carried, got a length of black thread, and fastened the talisman to her key ring.
Hide it in plain sight. The security guys don't know anything about the talisman. Or are they talismen? Whatever. Just so long as none of the senior guys are there when I log in. That's a risk I'll have to take.
Denny got up to replace the keys in her jacket. Then she changed her mind and shoved them into her jeans pocket instead.
Closer to the flesh the better, she thought. So at least my butt will be protected from dark forces.
Denny almost sent Wakefield a message thanking him. She just stopped herself from thumbing the icon on her phone, and then deleted the message, cursing her naivety. She had no reason to believe that her bosses were bugging here, of course.
But I'd be a damn fool to assume they weren't.
***
“So,” said Jon, without looking at her. “What sort of day have you had?”
Sallie stared at her husband, wondering what to say. For ten minutes after returning home he had grumbled about feed prices, European farming regulations, the inability of 'this damn country' to grit roads when it snowed. The usual mundane talk of a tenant farmer.
How can I tell him what I think, or feel, or fear? He'd think I was mad. Stress. The 'winter blues'. A reasonable explanation.
“Sal?” Jon said, looking up from the local paper to frown at her. “You all right? Why so quiet?”
“It's nothing,” she said. “It's just … Fenton's dead.”
She proceeded to tell Jon about discovering the body, emphasizing how upset Jackie was about her pet, skipping the parts involving the police and RSPCA. She did not want him to think she had 'brought trouble', as he would say. Uniformed officials on the farm unnerved him, and she never inquired too closely why.
“But what could have killed a dog that size?” Jon said, the paper forgotten. He got up and started pacing, then stopped at the window to look out at the encroaching twilight. Snow was still falling, though less heavily than before.
“The kids,” he said. “Will they be back soon?”
“Yes,” she replied, glancing at the kitchen clock. “The bus …”
Jon was not listening. Instead he was unlocking the gun cupboard, taking out his twelve-gauge, shaking cartridges out of a box onto the table.
“Jon,” she protested. “I don't think there's any real danger–”
Again, she stopped, and not just because her husband was continuing to disregard her words. Sallie had a sudden moment of insight.
No way could any animal hurt those kids, she thought. They can look after themselves.
Jon paused in loading the shotgun, stared at his wife.
“What is it?” he asked. “Is there something else? Did you see something, an animal?”
Sallie shook her head.
“It's not that,” she said. “It's just – at first, I had this crazy idea.”
Sallie buried her face in her hands, felt great heaving sobs shaking her.
Jon unloaded the gun, and put it on the table. For the first time in months, he gave her his undivided attention. He leaned against the kitchen table, reached down and took her in his arms. His hands were big, clumsy, and rough with working in all weathers. As he held her close, she started babbling all her wild thoughts into the front of his jacket. She jumbled together her puzzlement over Ben and Zoe's handwriting, their changed behavior, and the horror she had felt as she knelt by the dog's corpse.
Eventually, she ran out of words. She sniffled, heard the sound of the central heating boiler firing up. Jon stroked her hair, murmured something she could not make out. Sallie lifted her head, looked up at him.
“Oh God,” he said, staring at her. “I thought I was just imagining it all.”
Sallie laughed, aware that she sounded almost hysterical with relief. But before she could say anything, there was a familiar sound. It was a series of rhythmic thuds, as small feet kicked snow off their shoes against the back doorstep.
The children were home from school.
***
Denny was about to turn off the TV and go to bed when she received a text message. She frowned at the screen. She did not recognize the sender and thought about deleting it at once. Her thumb hovered over the screen, then felt an impulse to gamble. She touched Open.
What the hell? If it's a virus, I could get a new phone on expenses. Probably.
The message contained a link, nothing more. Again, she gambled, and nothing disastrous seemed to occur. Instead, she found herself on a popular video streaming site she had used many times in her previous job.
The video on offer was Russian, judging by the Cyrillic writing in the title and the accents of the people involved. The clip was poor quality and looked like it was taken by a phone. The viewpoint was the rear seat in the cockpit of a small aircraft. The pilot and co-pilot were visible, then the camera swung around to aim out the side window. The plane was flying over a forest covered in snow, and Denny thought of Siberia. But her knowledge of Russian geography was patchy, so she could not be sure. People were talking loudly over the drone of the engine, perhaps enjoying a joyride.
The chatter got louder, more excited, and there was much pointing. At first, it was hard to make out what was causing the excitement. Then Denny realized that what she had taken for a dark cloud was hard-edged and symmetrical. The plane turned in a wide arc as the chatter got even louder. There was alarm now amid the excitement. The airborne object was closer as the aircraft spiraled in. Denny did not need a translation, she had seen similar situations before. Some passengers were urging the pilot to turn away, but he was dismissive.
The camera wobbled, the view veering wildly, until it settled again and focused on the mystery shape. Denny took in a sharp breath. Now the aircraft was circling at a higher altitude than the object. Its shape was apparent despite it being so dark in hue that light seemed to fall into it. A central hub, roughly cylindrical, from which radiated five tapering arms. It was several hundred feet across, though size was hard to estimate against the backdrop of the forest far below.
A Black Star.
The plane continued to circle, then the video cut to a more distant shot. Denny sighed with relief. They were at least moving away from the creature. The video ended, like most amateur footage, abruptly and with no kind of credits. She scrolled down the comments. A minority were in English. The first one she could read described the clip as,
'TOTALLY FAKE RUSSIAN BS LOUSY FX CRAP'. The next few were no more thoughtful. Most seemed to think the video was a viral marketing campaign for a forthcoming alien invasion movie. There was a consensus that, as spaceships went, the Black Star was 'lame'.
Denny tried to search for other sightings of what might be entities from the Phantom Dimension. After struggling with mainstream media, she soon found herself surfing conspiracy sites and ended up reading semi-literate prose for a good two hours. She read about sea serpents, Mothmen, Sasquatch, and a range of other creatures that she would once have dismissed as hoaxes, or symptoms of drug abuse. Now she was not so sure.
You see crazy and do crazy, how can you not believe crazy?
Denny tagged a few accounts that might be valid. There were many tales and theories concerning CHUDS – Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers, said to lurk in the sewers of New York.
“Where else? But they could be Interlopers.”
Denny went back to the original video. She was almost sure that Gould had found it, and sent it to her. But whoever it was, they clearly did not trust her enough to communicate openly. Or maybe they, too, assumed the foundation had hacked Denny's phone?
God, I need some sleep. Monster-free sleep.
She was brushing her teeth when a thought occurred to her. She picked up her phone and opened the video link again. This time she paused the clip and then zoomed in on the Black Star. The result was a blurred mess, but she could see what seemed to be fragments of dark debris falling into the forest below.
Is it dying?
She moved forward, frame by frame, trying to find a clear image. Eventually she got one. It was obvious that flaps of ragged flesh were hanging from one of the Black Star's immense arms. Then she found another definite sign that the creature was decaying. One of the dangling tentacles fell off the underside of the drifting colossus, and fell spinning into the trees below.
They're as vulnerable to earthly conditions as the standard-issue Interlopers.
She felt an odd sense of regret at the thought of the huge, floating predator suddenly cast into an alien world. Denny had no reason to believe that the Black Stars were anything other than predatory animals. Despite the horror she had felt when the creatures had tried to capture her, she also felt pity.
An animal mind, feeling its body disintegrating, failing to understand why it’s dying. A casualty of a crisis it could never grasp.
She ended the video and went to bed. Before she settled down, she put a notebook and pen on the bedside table. She had decided that if her dreams continued unabated, she might as well try to write down what she remembered.
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