The Smog (The Sentinels Series Book 3)

by David Longhorn

  Maria takes the picture and looks at it closely. Her expression changes from smiling serenity to alarm. She frowns, brings the photo closer.

  “She is not alone! There are three, yes, three who stand behind her! Who are these spirits?”

  Charlotte, taken aback, can only stare. This is the first time in over six years that Maria has become agitated. She takes the photo back, looks closely at it.

  “Those are Emily's parents, Maria, not spirits. You know Rachel and Tony, you just mentioned them.”

  The Spanish woman looks confused, then resumes her normal expression. Vacancy. The nurse who showed Charlotte in stops halfway across the room, looking puzzled, then turns back to attend to another patient.

  “The unquiet spirits rise,” says Maria. “The prince of this land has fallen and the time of the Star Wormwood is near. All that is good will be overturned, the Thirteen will prevail ...”

  Charlotte hardly notices Maria's rambling discourse as she stares at the photograph. Something is changing in the background, the monochrome pattern of leaves and shadows behind the Beaumont family shifts and flows. Three stick-thin shapes loom over mother, father and child. They are standing very close. Their bony arms are raised, long-nailed fingers spread.

  It's my imagination, she thinks. I've seen so much that's bizarre and terrifying, I must be careful not to go over the edge. The occult isn't everywhere you look. It can't be. If it were we would all go mad.

  Charlotte puts the photo away and asks Maria about her drawing. The woman shows no sign of having heard, so Charlotte gets up and walks around to look over her shoulder. The drawing shows a black five-pointed star within a circle, all limned in flames depicted in lurid orange and yellow. At the center of the star is an odd tower or obelisk radiating blue lightning bolts. There are green squiggles emanating from the circle that suggest clouds of smoke or gas. Brown stick-figures clutch their heads, fleeing in obvious panic, or simply lying inert all over the paper.

  “What's this, Maria?” asks Charlotte. “It looks very frightening.”

  “All coming soon,” says Maria. “All the bad people first, and then very bad ones who are not people at all, coming when the doorway is open. So sad.”

  Chapter 3: Visions

  Tom Kneale hurries from his tiny office and runs downstairs towards the basement of Broadcasting House. Glancing at his watch, he finds he's got three minutes before the broadcast starts. As he enters the radio section, he barely registers the omnipresent logo and slogan of the BBC stenciled above the door, “

  NATION SHALL SPEAK PEACE UNTO NATION.”

  Studio Five is a cramped, sound-proof box with a desk, a chair, and one large microphone. Tom Kneale stands in the adjacent control booth behind the producer and sound engineer. Luckily they're happy to have him there, though strictly speaking, he's not part of their team.

  Looking through the glass, he studies Herbert James. I'm still getting a frisson, Kneale thinks wryly, simply being near a storyteller that I've admired since I was a boy. So much for the wordly-wise scriptwriter I was supposed to become.

  “Sound check, please, Mister James?” says the producer.

  “Certainly, dear boy,” replies the author in his deep, smooth voice. He begins to read the introduction to tonight's story until the engineer nods and the producer thanks him and says, “Very good, sir, I'll count you down.”

  The studio clock ticks towards the hour, and then the live light goes on and Herbert James, British radio's legendary Ghost Man, begins his latest broadcast.

  “I think I have mentioned before my love of ancient myths and legends, and how remarkably vigorous these supposedly obsolete stories can be in our modern world. I recently had the pleasure of reading a book by a young American author who, working under the guise of wartime fiction, explores one of the most fascinating and obscure folk beliefs of Eastern England. This book, The Ghosts and the Crown, shows Rachel Rubin to have the genuine storyteller's touch, and I would very much like to talk to her in person if only to find out just how much of her work is invention, and how much real reportage.

  “While I am not supposed to endorse commercial products here on the BBC, of course, I think I might be permitted to recommend this remarkable volume. After all, books are not mere consumables, they form the very core of our civilization, and Miss Rubin's book is a worthy addition to any discerning reader’s library.”

  Herbert James turns the page of his script with well-practiced smoothness and then resumes, slowing his pace a little as he sets the scene for his latest story. As always, he presents it as an episode of autobiography. Kneale has often wondered how much, or how little, of the old man's stories are fact.

  “It was as a young man possessed by the spirit of adventure that I set out down the Danube in a canoe with a bluff, sensible Swede as my companion. We intended to travel from Vienna to the Black Sea if we could. But as it happened, our adventure was curtailed by an encounter with the unexplained that, I must confess, still leaves me baffled and disconcerted even after five decades. I call this story 'The Island of Echoes'.”

  As James launches into the narrative proper Kneale thinks of all the Ghost Man's listeners across London, England, all the British Isles and far beyond.

  Sailors out at sea, lighthouse keepers, soldiers in barracks, miners home from the coal mines, businessmen in their clubs, housewives washing up, they're all listening. And simply by hearing The Ghost Man, they are taken out of themselves, their everyday lives forgotten, they become part of his world. A voice out of the air, weaving wonderful pictures in tens of millions of minds. I really should write that down before I forget it.

  The sound engineer lifts one of his headphones, nods at the old man reading in a cork-lined box.

  “He's brilliant, isn't he? Nobody else can touch him. They say the chip shops are nearly empty when we're on. We're up for a Radio Award!”

  “Biggest audience for anything bar the football,” adds the producer. “Goes to show, if you give ordinary people top quality entertainment they lap it up.”

  Kneale nods, only half-hearing them, getting lost in the magic of the story.

  ***

  Tony and Rachel lie side by side in bed, talking quietly, both half-listening for Emily in their otherwise silent home. They've gone over everything they know or suspect about the strange events that seemed to begin around the time the old king died.

  “Perhaps that's not a coincidence, either,” Tony suggests.

  “What do you mean?” asks Rachel.

  “Well, there's always a time of uncertainty when a monarch dies, people take stock, they worry about the future. It's like a wave of doubt spreading out from one old man's sickbed.”

  “A powerful image,” she concedes, “but why not waves of hope bouncing back? After all, it's the new Elizabethan Era. I can't go a full working day without reading that in some speech or other.”

  “Yes, but that's the official line, the politicians and the rich. Ordinary people are tired. The end of the war saw an outburst of optimism, but that soon died out. Rationing is still in force, young men are still being conscripted, the threat of nuclear war. We defeated the Nazis only to be told the Soviets were as big a threat, or worse. There's paranoia everywhere over spies and traitors. No getting round it, these are grim times for all except the most privileged.”

  Rachel can't dispute that. I see the weariness in people's faces, she thinks, especially now that winter's coming.

  “Okay, say you're right, there's negative energy out there. Maybe something or someone is feeding on it, directing it somehow. None of that helps me with Emily. I need to know if she's seeing things, getting some kind of visions, or if the Sentinels are really there. Insofar as they can be considered real, I mean.”

  “Perhaps he can help you? The Ghost Man, I mean,” says Tony. “If he's really the expert this Kneale chap says.”

  “I never thought of that, but you could be right!” Rachel agrees. “He might have some idea about what's goi
ng on, at least. I feel out of my depth.”

  Tony finds her hand in the dark.

  “Seems to me that we're all out of depth, it's just that some of us are wise enough to know it.”

  They lie in silence for a while.

  ***

  In her cramped office in the basement of the British Museum, Jane Pardoe looks up from a disorderly heap of student essays. As always, when she is marking, she has lost track of time. The office's only natural light comes from a frosted-glass pane set into the pavement above the archaeologist’s head. She looks up and sees the yellow glow of a streetlamp. She looks at her watch, shakes it. It has stopped.

  “Oh well, it can't be that late,” she mutters, putting the exam papers back into her already over-stuffed bag and getting up.

  There's a soft thud as something strikes the glass above her head. Jane looks up, twisting her neck, and sees the outline of a shoe.

  Rubber soles, she thinks. Useful in this damp weather.

  Dismissing the passerby Jane slings her bag over her shoulder, turns off her desk lamp, and leaves her office. The museum is quiet, the public long since departed, and now it only remains for her to sign out at the main desk. She takes the stairs to the ground floor and emerges into the Egyptian section. Jane weaves her way between statues, mummies, and glass cases containing the relics of a dozen dynasties.

  Something moves at the edge of her field of vision.

  One of the security team, she thinks. Or my old eyes playing tricks. Tired. Long day.

  “Is that you, Mike?” she says loudly. “Bill? Young Sidney?”

  Her words echo among the exhibits, rebound from the high vaulted ceiling. No reply.

  Probably nobody there, she thinks. But perhaps I'd better check.

  She turns from her usual route to take a quick look around, just in case a child has been left behind after a school visit. It has happened before.

  Don't want to find some terrified moppet cowering in a corner come dawn, she thinks.

  Jane's cursory search finds nothing out of order.

  Still, I'd better mention it at the main desk.

  She goes back to her well-trodden path through the treasures of the pharaohs. She rounds an upright mummy case of the Fifteenth Dynasty and is confronted by a half-naked woman. The bare-breasted intruder has a beautiful face, eyes boldly outlined with kohl, her torso bare, a kind of white cloth kilt tied at her waist. An ornate wig of black braids hangs down over her shoulders.

  “Good lord, why are you in fancy dress?” Jane begins, but stops as the woman raises a hand and points at her while reciting words that she doesn't understand but which seem oddly familiar.

  In her non-jabbing hand the dark woman holds a familiar object, a painted wooden ankh symbolizing life-after-death in Egyptian mythology. The woman's chanting echoes around the gallery as Jane backs away in startled confusion. The professor begins to recognize some of the words, though the woman's accent is strange.

  Amazing! The Egyptian of the Middle Kingdom, somewhere around the reign of Thutmose the Third! What an extraordinary performance!

  Jane begins to applaud before she realizes how improbable the situation is. Why would anyone go to such trouble to startle an elderly academic in an empty museum? Only one explanation offers itself.

  “Well,” she says, “I am duly impressed, young lady. The make-up seems a little on the heavy side, if you don't mind my saying, but the overall costume and the actual invocation are both splendid. Perhaps you'd better put your cardigan back on, though, and tell me which of my students put you up to this excellent prank? Was it Mister Leavis? He's quite the practical joker!”

  The dark woman responds by raising her voice, gesturing more emphatically, and Jane sees what looks like genuine fear in her eyes.

  No, surely, she's just a very good actress, she thinks. Up to Royal Shakespeare Company standard, in fact.

  “Well, young lady, you have certainly put on a superb performance tonight, I only wish you had a bigger audience, though of course it would have to be adults only! But as you can see this old lady has had a long day and I really must be going, so if you'll just stand aside…”

  The half-naked woman lunges forward and her jabbing fingers penetrate the shoulder of Jane's tweed jacket. There's a localized stab of cold, like a twinge of arthritis but much more intense. Jane sees her own astonishment mirrored in the eyes of the woman. She pulls her slender hand away, looks at it, staggers back a few paces. Then the woman falls to her knees in supplication, head bowed. And then she vanishes, fading into the gloom of the gallery.

  Jane Pardoe reaches out for support and feels the mummy case wobble as she puts too much weight on it.

  Good grief woman, she thinks. A little ghostly encounter is no reason to vandalize a precious artifact! I need to get home, get half-drunk, and get to bed.

  She notices the familiar label on the mummy case.

  'Nefret Iwe, Priestess of Hathor, c. 1400 BC.'

  The mummy case bears a stylized image of the long-dead woman. She is naked to the waist, and grips a decorated ankh in one hand.

  Good lord, was that her? Did I just meet a ghost of the Middle Kingdom? If so, I really should have tried to establish some sort of rapport. Imagine what we could learn! No, that's just loopy, I'm clearly in shock.

  “Get a grip, you silly woman!” she shouts to the vast empty room.

  She takes a deep breath and walks out of the gallery and into the main atrium. At the main desk, she sees a tall, dark-coated man talking to the chief of security. As she gets closer, she feels a slight twinge of recognition. The security man looks around, says, “Ah, Professor! This gentleman wanted to see you, says it urgent. I tried explaining that he should make an appointment first.”

  “That's all right Mike,” says Jane. “I know this gentleman.”

  The visitor raises an eyebrow.

  “I'm flattered, Professor,” he says. “It has been a while.”

  “Indeed,” Jane replies, “and you didn't have that rather dramatic scar back in Duncaster, Colonel Bryce. Have you been dueling, perhaps?”

  “No, not exactly. But I've been rather busy and learned a lot since we last talked,” says Bryce, running a glove finger down his scarred cheek. “And one thing I can be sure of is that I can't trust that many people in this world. You, I think, are one of those few however, Professor Pardoe. Is there anywhere we can talk?”

  ***

  The Detonator Boys are out tonight.

  Graeme Robson got the call right in the middle of the Ghost Man's best story yet. One minute he's on the haunted tidal island on the wide Danube, the next he's pedaling down the cobbled street on his dad's old bike, praying he won't be late on his first proper night as a Signaller's Apprentice. As he turns a corner near the depot, he sees a woman in a long, old-fashioned dress standing on a corner. He can't see her face clearly under her comically large hat, but he gets the feeling there's something wrong with it. He's so distracted he nearly goes straight into a parked taxi and earns a blast of colorful and varied abuse from the cabbie.

  “Sorry!” he shouts over his shoulder.

  He's getting near the depot which is situated near the Thames Embankment, and the mist is rising from the river. It's thin, now, and only obscures pavement and cobblestones a little. But Graeme's a Cockney through and through, and he knows the mist could become a full-blown London Particular in an hour or less. As he pulls up outside the staff entrance and chains his bike to a lamppost he sees another apprentice running up the street from the opposite end, breath clouding his face.

  Not the last, anyway, he thinks, relieved.

  In fact, he's among the first, and Grimsdale gives a grudging nod of approval as he sees Graeme punch the time clock. There's an urn of free hot chocolate, watery stuff but better than nothing. Graeme helps himself to a mug of the sludge-brown brew and waits for the stragglers.

  The last to arrive gets a reprimand from Grimsdale, who then turns to the assembled lads and says, “
Right, you pimply riff-raff, follow me and keep together! Last thing we need is one of you twerps getting lost in the bleeding fog!”

  Grimsdale leads his apprentices through the station and out onto the tracks, then along to the nearest signal box. He takes out a bunch of keys and unlocks a small metal cupboard, then takes out a dozen small cloth bags.

  “Right, each one of you gets twenty detonators. I'll be replenishing you and generally checking up to see that you're still alive during the course of the shift. You know your positions; you know what you have to do. Now spread out, keep alert, and no matter what happens, what do you do?”

  “Follow the correct procedures, Mister Grimsdale,” chorus the teenagers.

  “Stick to that rule, know your procedures, and you'll do all right,” says the manager. “Now off you go, lads.”

  Half an hour later, Graeme is at his post in the cutting, midway between Signal Box 101 and the Hammersmith Tunnel. The fog is denser now, but the signals at the tunnel mouth are still clearly visible. He's waiting for the signalman in the box to let him know when they can't be seen by giving three blasts of his whistle.

  It might never happen, thinks Graeme, feeling forlorn.

  He is jumping up and down, flapping his arms, trying to keep warm and cursing himself for forgetting his woolen mittens in his rush to get to work as quickly as possible. His bag full of detonators lies a nice safe distance away. Graeme's heard stories about the explosives going off by accident. He's going to take them out one at a time, quickly, not carry the bag around like an idiot.

  Someone starts whistling. It's an old tune, but Graeme recalls his dad singing it sometimes when he came home from the pub. 'After the Ball is Over,' it's called.

  A sad little tune, bitter-sweet, he thinks.

  He looks around but can't see anyone. The fog is rising properly, now, almost completely obscuring the tracks, curling around Graeme's ankles like a cat, starting to climb up the sides of the cutting.