* * *
A welcoming committee waited for us, blocking our access to the boat. Our host, the innkeeper, seemed to be their leader, and it was he who spoke first.
“We can’t let you go out to Dunfield, boys,” he said. “You brought that mess to the shed the last time—we’re not having any more of that nonsense.”
“But this is important,” Muir started. He was quickly interrupted; the innkeeper spoke again, his voice raised.
“You’re not welcome here—how many times do you need to be told?”
I hadn’t spotted it until now, but two of the men behind the innkeeper carried baseball bats, and another had a vicious-looking knife in his hand. I turned to Muir.
“Maybe discretion is the better part of valor,” I said, but he brushed me off.
“I can’t go backward, Duncan,” he said softly. “It’s too late for that.”
He stepped forward, putting a foot on the jetty.
“That’s far enough,” the innkeeper said. The man stepped forward too, until the men were face-to-face.
“I don’t want to hurt you, sir,” the innkeeper said.
“I don’t think you can anymore,” Muir replied, and lifted up his shirt to let them all see the mass of gaping, wet-mouthed suckers.
They stood back in alarm.
“As you can see,” Muir said calmly, still walking forward. “I have some kind of infection. And I am by no means sure of just how contagious it might be. I suggest you stand right back and let us get on with our business. Trust me, chaps—I want an end to it as much as you do.”
Even then several of the men would not give way—that was until one of them looked down and got a good look at Muir’s bare feet—after the rest of them noticed, they backed off pretty sharpish. I didn’t blame them, for one look at those elongated flippers was enough to send my own mind into a spin, and I was rather glad when Muir stepped down into the boat and I could not see anything below his knees in the shadows.
I jumped in beside him. The local men glowered down from the jetty. They could have sunk us then if they’d thought of dumping some heavy stones on us, but they seemed transfixed by the sight of Muir, standing at the helm, shirt open to show the gasping suckers opening and closing in time with his breath.
Nobody spoke as Muir got the engine running and we pulled away from the jetty. I turned to look back as we crossed the bay—the dark figures were still there, silent, watching, as if meaning to ensure we would not return.
I was by no means sure of that outcome myself.
* * *
That trip in the dark will be forever etched in my memory. Muir was silent for the most part, but at least he had buttoned up his shirt, so I was spared the sight of the horrors being inflicted on his body.
There were other things, however, that could not so easily be hidden from sight.
My first hint that something was seriously amiss came at the mouth of the narrows even before we left the relative tranquility of Trinity harbor. The school of porpoises had beached on the shingle shore below the lighthouse—scores of them, piled one on top of the other as if they had fled the water in panic to throw themselves ashore. All were dead and already rotting although I had seen them swimming offshore mere hours before. The now-familiar dancing rainbow aura hung over the whole area, a shimmering light show of green and blue and gold. It was almost beautiful—and I could not bear to look at it.
Fixing my gaze straight ahead did not do much to ease my mind—Indian Head Rock seemed to shine out like a beacon in the night—brighter still than any lighthouse. As we got closer, I saw that it was lit as if in full daylight, despite the fact that we traveled under a moonless sky. Shadows flitted across the rock surface, clouds passing under a midday sun, an impossibility my mind struggled to comprehend. As we passed the rock, it threw reflected light over us, harsh shadows that seemed to caper and dance across our deck. I turned to Muir, meaning to ask what he made of it.
The sight that met my eyes caused me to fumble for a cigarette and once again turn my gaze forward—Muir stood at the helm—what remained of him. His eyes were opened wide, unnaturally large and almost bulbous, like those of a great fish. His mouth opened and closed as if gasping for air—and the gill slits in his neck pulsed in time. His shirt ruffled and squirmed where the suckers underneath seemed to quiver in frenzy.
I finally got my smoke lit and looked up at what lay ahead.
The whole surface of the sea between us and the Tern Rock that guarded Dunfield Bay danced in a rainbow shimmer, a shining path showing us the way forward. Despite Muir’s greatly altered appearance, he apparently still maintained all of his faculties. He steered us straight and true along that path and brought us to a stop in the bay after taking lines of sight on several of the large rocks that jutted from the sea in these parts.
“We are here, Duncan,” he said, his first words to me since leaving the jetty. There was a watery gurgle in his voice that I did not like to hear at all, but he seemed like his old self as he prepared the equipment, attaching cables, checking valves and making sure the batteries were ready to be attached. He even joined me for another smoke before we started.
“We shall make history tonight, Duncan,” he said. “When I manage to control and then reverse the process, we will have finally uncovered the secret to manipulating the most basic nature of matter—we will bend creation to our will. Imagine it!”
I was indeed imagining it—although creation had, so far at least, shown a distinct unwillingness to be bent, and I was coming to think there might indeed be something in Muir’s talk of a gatekeeper, some kind of police force of nature. I did not express my concerns to Muir—we were long past any point at which he might have listened to them. All I could do was observe, and hope to somehow get both of us out of there alive.
* * *
We finished our smokes in silence, then Muir pronounced that he was ready to start.
“Stay on the wheel, Duncan,” he said to me. “If we drift, I need you to keep us above the wreck at all times—it is vitally important that the locus is under the field boundary—everything depends on that.”
“And how exactly do I ensure such a thing?” I replied. “Drift is inevitable in this dim light.”
Muir smiled—his teeth looked too white—and pointed. He motioned over the side of the boat.
“Light will be provided.”
Something glowed down there—a diffuse gray that seemed to hang in the water at some depth beneath us.
“The way is open,” Muir said. “Let us see where it takes us.”
He attached the battery to his box of tricks.
It immediately started to hum.
23
Present day
I felt the now-familiar tingle of static against my face as the hum in the inn’s garden went up in volume. It throbbed and pulsed like some strange dance beat.
An excited cry came from inside the trailer.
“It’s starting.”
The garden went dark. I don’t quite know how else to describe it—we stood in the dim glow of a morning under heavy snow clouds, but it was as if the garden itself had been plunged back under nightfall, so that all that could be seen inside was blackness and shadow.
That quickly changed when a blue light crackled, like a lightning strike, illuminating the same tumbledown shed I’d seen earlier, standing on clear ground without a hint of any snow. If it had been a vision then, it was one I was now sharing with everyone else, given the rapt attention that was being paid to it by all of us standing in the parking area.
“Increase the voltage,” someone shouted inside the trailer. “There’s too much fluctuation.”
There was certainly too much of something. The air, even where we stood some yards back from the garden, cracked and crackled with static, and I felt the warm tingle on my face again.
“The fog’s coming,” I said, scarcely aware that I’d spoken out loud. I might even have turned and ran had Breem not put a hand on
my shoulder.
“This is what we came for,” he said. “We’ve got this under control.”
A paler area appeared in the dark above the old shed, thin, like smoke at first, then thickening into the swirling, glowing fog that I’d hoped never to see again.
The humming went up a gear, vibrating in my jaw and gut. The fog drifted, leaving the spot above the shed and coming toward us.
“We need to get out of here,” I said.
Breem shook his head.
“Wait and see.”
The fog was only feet away now, and the tingling on my face and hands was like having electricity buzzing through me. The fog started to spark—blue and green and red, arcs of electricity running through the darkness. I ducked instinctively—but the fog didn’t move any closer.
“Like I said,” Breem said with a smile. “Containment.”
24
From the journal of Duncan Campbell, 25th July 1955
“It’s working,” Muir said, although I was by no means certain of that.
Only minutes after switching his contraption on, fog started to rise from the sea all around us, glowing faintly and pulsing in time with the thrum and hum emanating from the kit on the deck.
I was more than aware that the deck, maybe even the whole craft, could go thin on us at any point, or that I could end up half-melted and trapped inside a fused piece of hull, but Muir showed no lack of confidence as he twisted the dials.
“I think I’ve got it,” he said. “It’s purely a matter of focusing the boundary—knocking on the door if you’d like to put it that way.”
He turned a dial. The crystal valves flared, white, blue, then white again, so bright that I had to avert my gaze. The pale glow in the fog took on a blue tinge. Sparks flew, like arcs from a Van Der Graaf generator, making the hair on my arms stand on end. The sea around us started to bubble and seethe, so much so that I feared at first we were starting to boil—and my fear was not abated when I saw the real cause.
Thousands upon thousands of tentacled creatures no bigger than small dogs filled the water on all sides as far as I could see in the fog. They pressed tight against each other, squirming and rolling, tentacles gripping and coiling, suckers gaping—and small, vicious claws clacking with such a racket it quite overwhelmed the hum of the equipment on deck. Thousands of stalked eyes all looked in the same direction—toward the boat, but it seemed they were staring straight at me—I felt like I was being sized up for lunch. At least they showed no inclination to climb aboard the boat.
For now.
“If this is it working, I’d hate to see your idea of failure,” I said.
Muir ignored me and fiddled with something in his box of tricks.
The fog immediately thickened and became almost palpable, a cold blanket wrapped tight around us. The creatures in the water fell still, although the eyes continued to swivel on their stalks, watching every movement we made. The air crackled with static, forked lightning in the fog before Muir seemed to calm matters with another calibration of the equipment.
“It’s just like back in the shed,” he said. “I think I have it now.”
Even as he spoke, a black tear opened in the air above his head, accompanied by what sounded like the ripping of paper. A singe black egg, no bigger than my thumb, hung there.
“Well,” Muir said. “We’ve had the door opened for us. Shall we step inside?”
Without waiting for an answer, he turned a knob. The egg quivered, a rainbow aura danced over it, and ever so slowly it became two, oily sheen running over their sleek black surface. They hummed to themselves, a high singing that was taken up and amplified by an answering whine from the crystal valves.
The creatures out on the water started to thrash and squirm in time to the beat.
As two eggs became four, the boat rocked from side to side in rhythm.
The dance had begun.
25
Present day
Eight black eggs hung impossibly in the air above the old shed, oily and glistening, thrumming in time with the vibration that was getting ever louder, ever more insistent. I had to resist a sudden urge to start clapping in time to the beat.
Thick fog glowed and swirled angrily in the darkened garden, but whatever they were doing to contain it seemed to be holding, for now.
“What now?” I asked of Breem, who stood at my side. It seemed to take him some effort to drag his gaze away from the black eggs—sixteen now, and all dancing, all singing.
“All we can do is watch and learn,” he said. “The brains are collecting data, but until we know more, we’ve got to let things take their course.”
“And if the containment doesn’t hold?”
The colonel smiled thinly.
“Then all bets are off. I’ll race you to the mainland.”
Seconds later, the sixteen became thirty-two, clustered in a tight ball that spun lazily in the air above the old shed. The structure itself was changing too—it had become noticeably thinner, almost translucent and swirling fog was clearly visible inside. It thinned further, almost a ghost now, then vanished completely until there was only the dark garden and the darker eggs hanging over it—sixty-four now, and singing louder.
The dust and ash in the blasted earth where the shed had been started to tremble and shake, then, as if taken by the wind, rose in a tight funnel spiraling up toward the hanging eggs, faster and faster still. The eggs sucked up the material and sang louder, as if requesting more.
I felt them suck at me too, and had the containment field not been in place, I think I might have been taken—and gone almost willingly—to whatever was on the other side.
There were too many eggs to count now—into the hundreds for sure. They almost filled the space in the garden, their song rising higher, the beat and thrum of the rhythm filling my head, and the dancing rainbow colors filling my eyes with blue and green and gold and wonderment.
26
From the journal of Duncan Campbell, 25th July 1955
The air above us was filled with singing black eggs, the sea was filled with thrashing creatures—and I was filled with the rhythm of the dance.
My whole body shook, vibrating with the rhythm. My head swam, and it seemed as if the hull of the boat melted and ran. The scene receded into a great distance until it was little more than a pinpoint in a blanket of darkness, and I was alone, in a cathedral of emptiness where nothing existed save the dark and the pounding chant.
And then there was light.
I saw stars—vast swathes of gold and blue and silver, all dancing in great purple and red clouds that spun webs of grandeur across unending vistas. Shapes moved in and among the nebulae; dark, wispy shadows casting a pallor over whole galaxies at a time, shadows that capered and whirled as the dance grew ever more frenetic. I was buffeted, as if by a strong, surging tide, but as the beat grew ever stronger, I cared little. I gave myself to it, lost in the dance, lost in the stars.
I don’t know how long I wandered in the space between. I forgot myself, forgot Muir, dancing in the vastness where only rhythm mattered. I may even have been there yet had Muir not brought me back. He had me gripped by the shoulders and was screaming into my face.
“Duncan—fight it. Fight it, man. I need your help.”
It was that simple request for humanity that brought me back—back from a place where humankind was as insignificant as one of the motes of dancing ash in the old shed. Although when I managed to focus on him, I could see that Muir was now as far gone from humanity as the stars among which I had been dancing. His head looked misshapen and deformed, as if his brain had grown too large for his skull and was threatening to expunge itself. His hands had taken on the same flipper-like aspect as his feet. The left one in particular bothered me—it had thickened and hardened into black cuticle. It looked like it wanted to become a claw. What is more, wet-mouthed suckers ran, not just over his torso but up and down both his arms.
“I don’t have much time, Duncan,” he said
—even his voice was going, barely more than a throaty gurgle. “I need you to man the controls. Blasted fingers won’t work anymore.”
“I’ll do what I can, old man—but I don’t understand what you need.”
He motioned me forward and pointed at a knob on the box of tricks.
“Turn that slowly clockwise when I tell you to,” he said. “And follow my lead.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes. Pray.”
Muir went to stand at the prow and raised his hands until they seemed to be engulfed in the mass of the eggs.
“Now,” he shouted.
I turned the knob.
The eggs danced faster—tens of thousands of them filling the sky above me with song and dance that I had to fight to resist. The sea boiled and seethed with trashing creatures. Muir sank his hands completely into the eggs.
“Turn it, Duncan. Turn it all the way.”
I turned the knob to its full extent.
The myriad eggs popped, burst and disappeared as if they had never been there at all. Dancing fog swirled, a dark funnel overhead that brought a howling, screaming wind that threatened to overturn the boat.
Muir screamed.
Everything went black as a pit of hell, and a thunderous blast came down like a hammer from above, driving me down into a place where I dreamed of empty spaces filled with oily, glistening bubbles. They popped and spawned yet more bubbles, then even more, until I swam in a swirling sea of colors.
Lost.
27
Present day
The end took us all by surprise.
The eggs—almost completely filling the garden now—pushed against the containment boundary, setting everything around us sparking with static, the vibration a deep bass drone that pounded in my gut and made me nauseated and dizzy.
The Dunfield Terror Page 16