by Mark Latham
He swept the lantern around the chamber again, and for a second caught a glimpse of those terrible eyes—dozens of pairs of them, in every shadowed corner. The crawling, scurrying movement of slender, pale bodies was visible only for a moment, and was then gone so quickly it appeared to be a trick of the light. The creatures, whatever they were, scrambled away from the light, hissing each time it fell upon their gleaming eyes.
John felt the shadows converge upon him, the creatures taking heart in their superior numbers. He was surrounded, but he was not through yet.
John unfastened the lantern and threw it hard against the floor near the pile of crates. Glass shattered, oil flowed, and the chamber filled almost instantly with firelight. The creatures checked their advance, shielding their unnatural eyes and screaming with rage as they tried to turn from the heat and light. There were twenty or more of them, naked and muscular, with skin so pale it was almost translucent. Some had grotesque, bulging deformities, whilst others had the unsettling look of half-rotted cadavers. They grunted and hissed in some guttural language, if indeed it could be called a language at all. Soon they inched closer, growing more used to the light by the second; whatever their aversion to the flames, it was passing rapidly.
John’s eyes alighted upon the crates, which were filled with work-tools. He snatched up a heavy steel wrench before the fire could spread to them, swinging it about in a wild arc to fend off the creatures that even now snarled at his back. He squeezed a round into the chest of the nearest creature, which fell to the ground. The shot rang around the chamber deafeningly, silencing the creatures for a moment. And then the felled thing staggered back to its feet, a gaping, bloodless wound in its cadaverous chest. It glared at John with a look of such unimaginable, bestial hatred—with such an intelligent malevolence—that he was momentarily unmanned.
John did not hesitate again. He turned and raced to the top of the stairs, but one of his pursuers scurried up the wall beside him with jerking, spasmodic movements, like a hideous crawling insect.
John barged into the door at the top of the stairs, but it was locked. He kicked at it, feeling it give, trying to ignore the pain that flared up his leg. The monster dropped from above him, its marble-white face twisted with fury. John smashed the wrench into the head of the creature. It fell with a crunch. With one last effort, he kicked open the door, and flung himself through it. Too late, he saw another creature had almost caught up with him, and it sprung at him with terrible force, sending the two of them crashing through the doorway in a deathly embrace.
They ploughed into the midst of a workshop of some kind, and half a dozen night-shift workers were standing gobsmacked at the sudden intrusion into their world as John skidded across the room, flat on his back with a ravenous beast atop him.
John raised the wrench, using it to push the creature off him by its throat. He scrambled upright. He fumbled for a weapon atop the nearest workbench, finding a large glass bottle, smashing it and jamming the broken glass into the creature’s throat. With a bird-like screech, the creature released its hold and scurried away towards its fellows that were already cautiously entering the workshop. John waved his empty gun around threateningly.
‘Now look here, you’d all better—’ he began. But he did not finish. Another creature tore into the room, crashing into a workbench, before leaping upon the first workman that crossed its path and tearing into his throat with its large, uneven teeth. Another monster entered close behind, and then another, to cries of terror from the workers. John raced for the exit with the rest of the men, who were taken one by one by the creatures. The workshop was hot as hell, with smelters and peculiar apparatus set up all around; vials of bubbling pinkish fluid boiled away on workbenches, discarded ammunition moulds scattered alongside them. John realised at once that he had stumbled upon yet another of the Majestic’s dark secrets, but there was no time to explore it further, or to gather evidence. Instead he flung open the workshop door and staggered into the courtyard beyond, wrenching free of a labourer who clung to him pleadingly with calloused hands.
‘I’m sorry,’ John grimaced. He kicked the man hard in the midriff, sending him crashing backwards into the press of his colleagues. John pulled the door closed on the scene of terror. The last thing he saw was the creatures feasting upon human flesh. This time, the flesh of the living.
‘It was you or me, old chap,’ John whispered.
But he soon saw that he had more pressing concerns. Dozens of factory workers were gathered in the yard, and were staring at him. Some looked merely curious at the sounds coming from the workshop, although they were fast subsiding.
A group of burly fellows began making their way over to John; he half hoped they would rush to his aid, seeing the state he was in, but he knew at once that was not to be. The closest man brandished a sledgehammer with menace.
John stepped backwards to the door of the workshop, an insane plan forming in his mind. As more workers plucked up the courage to advance, and their shouts began to ring out in the night air, John surveyed the courtyard. A main thoroughfare; two factory buildings, one large, one small; a row of five workshops similar to the one behind him; sundry sheds and shacks. Most importantly of all, a stable.
As the men drew almost within arms’ reach, John flung open the door. The factory workers suddenly checked their advance on the shed, from which the smell of meat and death wafted into the yard. Then the growling came. A pair of violet eyes appeared; then another. John regretted his decision the moment he had reached it, but it was done. He leapt aside, scrambling for cover before the workers knew what was happening.
In another instant, the creatures had barrelled into the yard. Men fled, or tried in vain to wrestle with the monsters, which were now so smeared in gore that they resembled red-skinned demons. If the factory workers did not know otherwise, then they probably thought the creatures were the very hellspawn from the Rift.
John did not stay to witness the terror he had wrought. He ran as fast as he could—little more than a limping jog—towards the stables. A man stepped in his path, and John struck him with the wrench, knocking the labourer to the ground. A creature gained on them, and upon hearing its snapping jaws and guttural grunts behind him, John spun around with the tool, cracking it into its sloping, malformed head. The monster let out a low, keening howl, and pulled itself along the ground towards John, its oversized jaws gnashing, and its noxious breath steaming in the winter air. John smashed the wrench into the head of the blasphemous thing, again and again, until he was as gore-smeared as the thing itself.
He looked up. More men were racing past him towards the courtyard. John hazarded a look back over his shoulder. Across the courtyard, from the shadow of the factory, strode a tall, thin, figure in black. With imperious sweeps of his arms, the grotesque creatures retreated from their half-devoured victims, like chastised hounds shrinking from a stern hunt-master. What mysterious power this Majestic held over the foul beasts, John knew not. And he did not intend to stay and find out.
By the time John had found a dray horse, led it from the stable and hauled himself onto its back, a gang of workers had almost reached him, with a hue and cry and demands for vengeance. That their master had brought such misery upon their fellows was evidently lost on them. John spurred on the horse, barging through the mass of bodies. He stole a look over his shoulder, and saw the Majestic striding towards him, porcelain face twisted into a bestial snarl that was too much like the pale-skinned beasts for John’s liking.
With another kick at the horse, John was away through the great gates of the factory, and onto the road that twisted through the black forests.
Cold air filled his lungs. John knew he had to return to London as soon as he could. The Majestic—whoever or whatever he was—posed a threat greater than John could have imagined. He thought of the beasts in the subterranean lair, and of the strange liquid in the workshop—most definitely etherium, the most dangerous substance on earth. He had to tell Sir Toby all that
he had seen.
EXTRACT FROM THE KEYNOTE SPEECH OF DR. WILLIAM CROOKES, ROYAL SOCIETY, 1873
There were many who doubted my own assertions that Catherine and Margaret Fox were possessed of genuine psychical ability, and that doubt extended beyond the point of all reason, when science had clearly illustrated the truth of the matter. We can now look back on the events of September last, however, with utmost certainty. Those events have become called, in the popular press, ‘the Awakening’, and this is as apt a name as we of the Royal Society could hope to coin.
We now know that approximately ten per cent of the population of England, and some smaller proportion of people around the world, were in some way affected when the woman known colloquially now as Kate Fox performed her infamous séance by royal appointment. The proportion of those affected was higher still among those in attendance, although thankfully Her Majesty the Queen appeared unharmed by the procedure. In revealing what she called her ‘spirit familiar’ to an unsuspecting public, Kate Fox inadvertently widened the Rift, with a twofold effect.
First of all, the number of adverse psychical phenomena involving the Riftborn more than trebled worldwide. So-called demonic possession of vulnerable personages became almost commonplace—an alarming trend that escalates daily. Secondly, in a somewhat violent mass spiritualist event, reported simultaneously across the world from Edinburgh to Timbuktu, many thousands of people began to unlock hitherto hidden potential, becoming preternaturally excellent in myriad fields of academic, artistic, technical and esoteric expertise. For many, this ‘Awakening’ manifested itself as a brilliant but limited skill—an improved or suddenly prodigious aptitude for music or painting, for example, an uncanny aptitude for any number of academic disciplines, from botany to linguistics, or deep insight into ancient philosophy. But more crucially, the fields of engineering, physics, chemistry, and medicine have been bolstered by an influx of minds now brimming with untapped knowledge, who claim to receive their brilliant insight from, and I quote, ‘beyond the veil’. This uncanny reception of knowledge has led to their collective designation as ‘Intuitionists’.
The doors of every great society in Britain have been flung open to these brilliant men—and even women—and as a result the very landscape of our great nation is changing. The railways expand at an exponential rate; bridges of unprecedented length span rivers and lakes; the fledgling London Underground is fledgling no more. Even the most impecunious households are now illuminated at night by electric light. The first horseless carriages have taken to our streets. Passenger airships are but a handful of years away from completion, they say. Steamships larger and faster than anything we have ever seen are even now being constructed at Portsmouth. In our hospitals, diseases are being cured that were once thought fatal. Doctors have new apparatus at their disposal so frequently that they barely have time to learn its use before it is outmoded. Truly, even the greatest minds of our time must look at these Intuitionists in awe, for by their hands is humanity set upon a course of unprecedented change.
Yet for every ounce of potential offered us by the Intuitionists, great danger is presented by their counterparts. Who among us does not know of at least one man or woman cursed by the Awakening? Poor wretches touched by visions of the Rift so powerful that they have been driven irrevocably mad? Some few of these poor souls have maintained a semblance of control over their esoteric abilities, but they represent a dark reflection of Kate Fox’s vision. Spiritualists of unprecedented and unrefined power, telekinetics, chiromancers, psychometrists, and a host of other classifications of psychic that we are still struggling to define. They treat with spirits and read minds, they ply their trade within a twilight realm that they call the ‘Eternal Night’.
Kate Fox, indeed, calls these people the greatest gift to the world as we know it. She calls them ‘Majestics’.
I, gentlemen, have seen the danger that they pose to the very fabric of reality.
I call them the greatest threat to the safety of our world since the bubonic plague.
SIX
The Awakening was a phenomenon aptly named, as it had certainly awoken something in Sir Arthur, not to mention countless others around the world.
As a boy, Arthur Furnival had but one ‘talent’ of note, though he himself had thought it a curse. Sometimes, when he held an object close, he would become enraptured by such a violent glimpse into its past as to send him into a fit, and give him night terrors for weeks afterwards. The doctors did not know what to do with him; how could he have explained to their satisfaction that he received visitations from shades of the long dead? He’d become an object of ridicule at Harrow. He’d learned to fight—both physically and politically—at public school. Those talents at least had consistently served him well since.
The family physician had thought that some time in the seminary would ease Arthur’s troubled mind. He might as well have sent him to Zululand to see a witch doctor. As the youngest of the three Furnival sons, it was his duty to enter the clergy upon leaving university. Yet fate took an altogether different turn, taking Arthur’s brothers early, and thrusting a troubled youth into an inheritance for which he was ill prepared. His extensive reading of theology was all for naught, and the awkward, pensive youth entered a whirlwind life of society balls and philanthropy. Not that he embraced such at all. Despite the baronetcy and the prestige it brought, Sir Arthur Furnival mourned his eldest brother, Horace—the second to depart this earth—for the longest time. It was that very process that drew him to Spiritualism. And it was his new-found status that had opened doors to audiences with the American prophet of that church, Kate Fox.
Arthur had been inducted into mysteries profound, learning that the powers that had for so long been a weighty source of misery had a name: psychometry, the power to sense the history of an object through touch. The visions, he was informed, were ‘echoes’ of powerful emotions, vibrations left by an owner, and channelled through the afterlife itself to the waiting medium. It was not a pure gift, like the clairvoyance that Fox herself possessed, but it was strong in the baronet nonetheless.
All that had changed with the Awakening. Like so many others who laid claim to the most modest psychic talents, Arthur’s powers had increased a hundredfold on the day that Kate Fox lost control of her ‘spirit guide’. Tragedy and miracle both; lives were for ever changed, and the world had not been ready. Then, and since, Sir Arthur had performed his duty for Queen and country. He had travelled the globe many times in the name of that duty. In truth, he preferred far-flung assignments, for leaving London these days was more a blessing than a curse; an opportunity to see clear skies, and perhaps to feel a modicum of peace rather than be plagued by the repercussions of his uncanny powers.
Arthur only wished he could be less troubled. In the years since the awakening he had seen things that would have driven lesser men mad. He had seen, he believed, the very denizens of hell spill forth into the world, and had done his part to turn back the tide of evil that could surely only signal the reckoning. Judgement Day.
Something terrible was coming: he could feel it in his marrow. What had happened in the Dials, and what had happened to John Hardwick in the north… He shuddered, nodding his thanks to Jenkins, who solemnly withdrew the syringe from his master’s arm. So-called ‘mundane’ etherium, the only thing that could bring him peace after he had used his powers. The only thing that could quiet the voices in his head. Sir Arthur dismissed his servant, and leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes until respite washed over him, enjoying the moment’s silence, while it lasted.
He and Lillian had seen horrors indeed. And yet the creatures had been flesh and blood. They were not the ravening things that couched behind the veil, scratching for egress into the world of men. They were something else. Sir Arthur Furnival, with his long experience in Apollo Lycea, had an idea of exactly what they were.
Saturday, 18th October
THE APOLLONIAN CLUB, LONDON
‘You mean to say that there is
a… creature… on the loose in the Underground?’ Sir Toby Fitzwilliam, that staunch and unswerving Lord Justice, frowned at his agents from beneath his bushy, greying eyebrows.
Lillian was about to reply, when Arthur beat her to it.
‘It is uncertain,’ Arthur said. ‘What we stumbled upon was a construction tunnel for an aborted line. Although it was closed off, I’m afraid the Board of Works believe it to be connected to further tunnels, and to the old sewers, via maintenance shafts. In short, the creature could be anywhere.’
‘It is wounded,’ Lillian offered, with optimism. ‘It has the use of but one arm.’
‘And a lot of good that does us.’ Gazing out of a large sash window across St. James’s Square, was the Minister for Defence, Lord Hardwick, formerly Brigadier Sir Marcus Hardwick. To the populace he was the most important man in England, the man who would revive a cursed empire and lead it back into the light. To Lillian, he was simply her father. He had not spoken until now. Even so, he did not turn away from the window.
Agents Furnival, Hardwick and Hardwick stood to attention, side by side in Sir Toby Fitzwilliam’s office. From this unassuming cloister did the judge exert control over Apollo Lycea—the Order of Apollo—the most powerful covert agency in the Empire. Lillian glanced askance at her brother; she had barely spoken to John before the meeting, and he had seemed most strange in his manner. He had been overjoyed to see her but remarkably stand-offish when asked about his mission. He was usually tight-lipped about official business, even with other agents—the pillar of integrity, some said—but this was different. He was troubled.
‘I shot it,’ Lillian said at last, when any wisp of clever retort eluded her. ‘It may be dead.’
‘The reports do not tally on that matter,’ said Sir Toby. ‘As far as we know, the creature is alive, and is even now posing a threat to the citizens of London. However,’ his tone softened, ‘we are a step closer to discovering who is behind the killings. You have other avenues to investigate, do you not?’