by Michael Kerr
“Welcome to my humble abode,” the man said with a voice as warm and rich as buttered brandy snap. “I trust that you will enjoy your stay at Marston Manor. I am Sir Jacob Marston, the seventh Earl of Emmerton.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Rachel said, reaching out to grasp the hand that was offered in greeting. She almost pulled back on contact. The hand was as cold as marble, and the long, big-knuckled fingers seemed to generate a mild electric current.
“Martha will show you to your suite, where I trust you will find the facilities and amenities to your satisfaction,” Jacob said, holding on to Rachel’s hand for at least ten seconds, before releasing his grip and repeating the process with Tony. “If you will leave your car keys, I will have your luggage brought to you. Dinner will be served in the main dining room at eight-thirty.”
Tony handed the Earl his keys, and as if on cue, a squat, broad-shouldered woman wearing a black shift and white apron appeared, and Jacob turned on his heel and marched off into the hall. Both Rachel and Tony felt as though they had been summarily dismissed, and put it down to the eccentricity of their rather august host.
“Thees vay,” the maid said with a heavy mid-European accent, before leading them out to the staircase. They followed, both noticing that the woman had a withered leg encased in a calliper, which squeaked like a trapped mouse with every step she took. She also wore mirrored sunglasses, which seemed an odd thing to do, considering the dimly lit interior.
The suite they were shown into was grand but dreary, with flock wallpaper and oversized oak furniture. The bed was a four-poster, with a tester of yellowing lace. And the en suite bathroom boasted a cast iron bath with fixtures and fittings that were almost certainly Victorian.
“I think that we’ve just passed through a portal into the Outer Limits,” Tony said. “This place gives me the creeps.”
“It makes a change from most of the bland B & B’s and hotels we stay at,” Rachel said. “Maybe the place is haunted.”
“Don’t even say that in fun, Rach. The last thing I need is for some ghost carrying its head under its arm and clanking chains to make an appearance in the middle of the night.”
Rachel laughed. “I’m going to test the plumbing and see if there’s any hot water for a bath,” she said. “Why don’t you fix us a drink? There’s a coffeemaker on the credenza in the corner.”
Left alone, Tony switched on the ancient machine and went across to the window. Looking down, he saw that his 4x4 was not where he had parked it. There was no sign of it. Maybe there was a car park at the side or rear of the manor. That would explain why no other vehicles were in sight, apart from the Roller, that in all probability belonged to Sir Jacob. It crossed his mind that the old boy must be feeling the pinch if he had to open the manor as a bed and breakfast.
The single rap on the door startled Tony. He felt jumpy and ill at ease. Went over to the door and opened it. Their suitcase and large holdall were standing on the landing. ‘Jeeves’, or whoever had delivered them was nowhere to be seen. It was then that he saw the cat. It was almost invisible in a wedge of shadow, not six feet from him. And as he watched it, the creature limped out into view. Tony’s stomach lurched, and the hairs at the nape of his neck sprung erect. The black and white cat was blind. Both eyes had been removed, and the sunken eyelids were sewn shut with thick, coarse thread.
The cat was aware of his presence, though. It drew its lips back in a snarl and hissed like a snake, before turning, to bump its way along the wall, reach the staircase and fall down it, rolling over and over, emitting the sound of a howling baby.
Tony snatched up the luggage, took it into the room, slammed the door closed and locked it. The sightless, limping cat had unnerved him completely. It put him in mind of the maid in her black and white uniform, with a crippled leg, and wearing shades.
“What happened to the coffee?” Rachel said, coming out of the bathroom in a white guest robe.
“Uh...I forgot,” Tony said, now hearing the wheezing, gurgling contraption. “I’ll make it now.”
Rachel frowned. “What’s the matter, love? You look as white as a sheet.”
“I just saw a blind cat on the landing. It shook me up a little, that’s all.”
“Reminds me of the first time we saw that road sign outside some village in Norfolk that read CATS EYES REMOVED, and you made bad jokes about it for the rest of the day.”
“Yeah, well this wasn’t funny. The cat reminded me of the freaky maid who showed us up to the room. It even had a gammy leg.”
“You have a very vivid imagination. Go and get a shower and shave. It’s nearly time to eat, and I’m famished.”
They were the only guests. Two places had been set at a table that could easily have seated fourteen around it. The maid, still wearing sunglasses, served them. The casserole was excellent, although neither of them could identify the meat.
Back in the room, lulled into a mellow mood by having imbibed too much red wine, they quickly undressed, tumbled into bed, and were both asleep within seconds, although it was still relatively early. It had been a long day, travelling up to North Yorkshire from Hampshire.
Rachel woke up within an hour, shivering, with her breath misting the air. The room temperature had dropped to almost freezing. She sat up, to be faced by Sir Jacob standing at the foot of the bed, illuminated by moonlight from the window. He was unmoving, just staring down at her. With a scream locked in her throat, she watched as he appeared to drift backwards across the carpet with his feet at least six inches off the floor, to pass through the solid door and vanish from sight.
Tony had also seen the apparition. It wasn’t something that they tried to rationalise. They packed immediately and left the room on the run. Almost fell down the stairs, unlocked the front door and fled the manor house, before Tony remembered that his car had been moved. They found it at the rear of the house with ‒ thank God – the keys in the ignition.
Tony drove like a bat out of hell, down the gravel drive and out into thick fog that seemed to be cloaking the estate from view.
After a few miles they came to a public house, The Rising Sun, which was still open and had a room to let for the night.
The following morning they went back to the manor. Daylight lessened the fear of what they now almost believed they had imagined. They thought it only right to pay the outstanding bill.
The now crumbling, pitted gargoyles on ivy-covered gateposts were the first surprise. The second was at the end of the weed-riddled drive, for all that remained of Marston Manor was ruins, and the burned out shell of a Rolls Royce. Subsequent investigation revealed that the once grand house had been gutted by fire in nineteen sixty-eight. Sir Jacob Marston and his butler and maid had all perished in the conflagration.
The episode would forever remain a mystery. Sometimes in life there are no logical answers to explain bizarre happenings that have no place in what we choose to think of as reality.
14
ENCOUNTER
At one-thirty on Sunday morning, Billy Kemp woke up, climbed out of bed and walked over to the window, somehow sensing that something awesome was about to happen. No noise that he had been aware of had roused him from sleep. The farmhouse was heavy with silence, and he had no memory of dreaming. It was as if he had been summoned to witness an imminent and remarkable event.
The window faced the west field, which was backed by bleak woods that rose up into the foothills of the North York Moors. With his nose pressed to the glass and his breath forming a circle of condensation, Billy scanned the night sky, almost hypnotised by the full moon, which cast its cold, lunar light on the earth below.
Billy hugged himself as his teeth chattered and his skin tightened with goose bumps. All he wore was a Lord of the rings T-shirt and a pair of cotton shorts. He was tempted to go and get his dressing gown from where it hung on a hook on the back of the bedroom door. But no, even the few seconds it would take might mean his missing whatever was about to take place.
&n
bsp; At ten years old, Billy’s mind was not closed to the improbable. He still had the capacity to believe and embrace the existence of things that most adults had grown out of being able to contemplate. His field of thought had not been narrowed by so-called common sense and maturity. The world was richer for giving credence to ghosts, ghouls, the Loch Ness Monster, and all things unexplained or supernatural.
The hard ground glittered like a field of diamonds with late November frost, but Billy’s gaze remained heavenward, searching the dark, mysterious vacuum and the multitude of distant stars that peppered its vastness.
There was a tension within Billy. It was as if he were in the becalmed eye of a hurricane, braced and ready for the wind to pick up and become a howling, destructive force. And yet he was not scared. Whatever was about to happen would be momentous, and change things forever, of that he was sure. He knew on some primal level – which he did not even try to understand – that something was coming.
And then it happened. A dazzling light blinked into existence high above the treetops, not half a mile from the house. It hung motionless for a few seconds, to then leave a glowing trail as it plummeted down into the forest.
Mouth hanging open, the cold forgotten, Billy stood wide-eyed, convinced that he had just witnessed the landing of a UFO.
The Vargo was a state-of-the-art SRV, (Science Research Vehicle), which had successfully passed through the wormhole into this quadrant a score of times with no mishap. This deep space trip was the last scheduled reconnaissance flight before the Earth – as the inhabitants called it – was colonised. The planet was mineral rich, and much of its surface was covered by life-sustaining water. The next visitation would comprise a full invasion force. It had only been the presence of mankind that had delayed earlier incorporation of this prime world into the Kavlovian Empire. The ruling bipeds of Earth had harnessed nuclear power, and like infants holding a loaded faser, they were unpredictable and capable of being a limited threat. Now, with advanced cloaking technology, the Kavlovians could wipe out the highly vulnerable above-ground cities with impunity.
The partly organic computer cut the hyper drive, and the dart-shaped SRV slipped into Earth’s atmosphere to descend cloaked, so that it could not be observed or detected. At thirty thousand feet it levelled off and took up a stationary position, from where its sensors could monitor and collect all transmissions from the primitive communication systems of the earthlings.
The malfunction was sudden, unprecedented, and catastrophic. Standard stabilisation failed, even though the computer continuously checked instrumentation and rectified anomalies as a matter of course.
“What in Sol’s name is happening?” Galor asked his first officer, Chelon, as the computer verbally informed them of status.
“ALERT! ALERT! DRIVE STABILISER MALFUNCTION.
CLOSING DOWN CENTRAL CORE.”
“We’ve lost drive,” Chelon said as he checked the viewscreens. “We need to shut down and use the retromag to land.”
“Can we stay cloaked?”
“I’m not sure, Captain. We may be able to evade simple radio wave detection systems until we are below their effective altitude.”
“Okay, Chelon, take us in.”
General Derval, the military coordinator, stormed onto the flight deck. “What are you doing, Captain? Why are we below the authorised altitude? This isn’t a collection run.”
“We’re going down, General. We have a malfunction that will necessitate a landing. I suggest that you find a restraint seat. It could be a bumpy touchdown.”
“This is totally unacceptable, Galor,” Derval fumed, turning a mottled green and black to signify his anger.
“I agree,” Galor said. “But like it or not, we have no choice in the matter. We are going to be on the planet’s surface in a few seconds.”
The Vargo dropped like a stone, and vibrations shuddered through the fuselage as the structure groaned like a mortally wounded Claverian sloth. Cast from the dark skies, the ship hurtled earthbound, and the occupants could do nothing but hope and pray that the computer could slow them down enough to prevent them breaking up and disintegrating. There was a chance that the Vargo would be dashed onto the planet’s surface, to explode and kill them all. And for beings that lived a thousand Earth years, the notion of dissolution was an almost abstract consideration.
The retromag functioned, slowing and then stopping their descent at the last possible moment, allowing them to land with little more than a jolt.
“That was too close for comfort,” Chelon said as he pressed a button on his seat’s arm to retract the safety restriction unit.
“Yes,” Galor said. “All we have to do now is find the fault, fix it and get off this planet without being detected.”
“Can we still remain invisible?” Derval asked.
“AFFIRMATIVE,” the computer responded.
“Then keep it that way. Our landing may have been noticed.”
“What caused the failure? And how long will it take to rectify and get this bucket back in the air?” Galor asked the computer, which was not only a biologically engineered entity, but was also a sentient component of the Vargo.
“A MICROCIRCUIT MALFUNCTIONED IN THE
MAIN DRIVE UNIT AND FUSED A POWER POD.
ESTIMATED TIME TO REPLACE POD AND
REGAIN FULL CAPABILITY IS TWO HOURS.”
Galor contacted engineering section on the audiocom. “Jervas, Canlah, did you get that?”
“Yes, Captain, we’re on it,” Jervas, the drive room officer, replied.
“So we just sit tight and wait, eh?” Chelon said.
Galor shook his head. “No. I want a team to go out and inspect the hull.”
“But the viewcams and computer confirm that we haven’t even sustained any superficial damage.”
“It won’t harm to verify our status. Have you got anything better to do?”
“I’ll take three of the crew and do a visual,” Derval said. “I’ve never had the chance to actually set foot on this planet.”
Suited up, General Derval and his team left the airlock and stepped out onto the rugged terrain. They carried hand weapons and wore viewcams attached to their helmets. All alien life forms were regarded as inferior and potentially dangerous, to be avoided, or if confronted, vaporised on sight. Those abducted on collection missions were in the main examined, dissected and jettisoned. Some were kept for study and transported to a facility on a moon near Carvos, the home planet. They were never released.
As Derval and his team began their inspection, Billy Kemp approached the clearing where the crippled ship had crash-landed.
Billy had studied the landmarks, not turning away from the window until he was positive that he could go directly to where the glowing trail had vanished into the trees. He had then quickly pulled on his shirt, jeans, socks and Timberland boots, and selected a quilted parka from the wardrobe. Stealthily tiptoeing down the stairs, so as not to wake his parents, he went into the parlour.
“C’mon, Scout,” he said to the collie that met him at the door, its tail thrashing the air. “Let’s go see what came down.”
With Scout stop-starting, hanging back then racing ahead sniffing at scents that brought mental pictures of the animals that had left them, Billy crossed the meadow and entered the trees. He thought that he was on the brink of finding proof of the existence of extra terrestrial visitors. The truth is not out there, Billy thought. It’s right here, just a fifteen minute hike from my back door.
Billy had been tempted to wake his mum and dad, for all of five seconds, and tell them what he had seen. But his dad would have insisted he’d dreamt it, or that if he had seen something, then it must have been a shooting star or an aircraft. His parents were farmers, not visionaries. They didn’t possess the imagination to entertain anything out of the ordinary. No, he had quickly decided to check it out for himself, find the spaceship, then return home and bring them back to see it.
The clearing appeared to be
empty. Billy was sure that he was close to the spot where the bright arc of light had vanished from view into the forest, and felt a stab of disappointment not to have come across a gleaming UFO stood with coloured lights blinking, and a pulsing hum coming from whatever powered it. He looked about him through the trees, but there was no artificial light source, and he could hear nothing. Maybe it had been a shooting star, and he had just wanted to believe that it was more. His mum was always telling him that he had a vivid imagination. Now, walking across the clearing, intent on looking farther afield, he stopped and turned back as Scout began to bark and circle a patch of ground, sniffing at it, hackles raised across his shoulders.
“Come here, boy,” Billy said, but Scout ignored him and started to paw the pine needles and twigs, as if he could smell a buried bone.
As Billy watched, a small spark of light seemed to ignite on Scout’s nose, and the dog yelped and backed up for a second, then rushed forward and snapped his jaws at the ground.
“What is it, boy?” Billy said, sure that the lame-brain mutt had caught its muzzle on a piece of glass, which had glinted momentarily in the moonlight.
General Derval managed to loose off one blast from his faser as the gigantic entity knocked him off balance. The alien retreated, bellowing, then loomed over him again. The last thing he saw was a vast cavern, lined with what appeared to be enormous pointed teeth. He was entombed in pitch blackness for an instant before he felt a fleeting, crushing, tearing pain as his body was bitten in two.
The Vargo was tossed into the air, to bounce off an unyielding surface and roll back across the remains of Derval, before coming to rest upside down.