World of the Gods

by Pel Torro, Lionel Fanthorpe, Patricia Fanthorpe

  “Let’s get the van out and do some checking, shall we?” said the engineer. “Something round here is sending out a hellishly powerful field.” They got the detector going on top of the van and watched its speed. The interference was coming from somewhere north of them, and getting stronger. They edged along the highway carefully, and cautiously. It was a bit to the east—no it was west … the indicator needle swung over.

  “Over here,” said Benny. They turned the van off down a narrow unmade track.

  “Look at that road surface up ahead!” said Seth suddenly. At that moment, Grayson lurched off the end of the damaged road and waved to them. They stopped the radio van and the engineer alighted.

  “It’s Mr. Grayson the engineer,” said Benny.

  “Hey, Mr. Grayson,” shouted Seth. Jeff came across.

  “I was just going to tell you chaps the road is subsided up there. You won’t get an ordinary van up. If you’ve got anything really urgent, I can ferry you over in this.”

  “We’re trying to detect some interference…”

  “Interference? Strong interference?” queried Grayson. “Well come and have a look in the van.”

  “Thanks,” said Jeff “I will. He stood with them, watching intently. The needle was flickering and flashing, pointing unmistakably to the source of the radio-electromagnetic waves.…

  “What the devil is it?” said Grayson. “I’m just a road engineer, this isn’t up my street!”

  “This is the source of some electrical disturbance. The needle’s pointing to it. Let’s just get the range-finder into operation.” They spun the range finder, got it in line with the needle and waited for the blip to appear.

  “There it is! About two and a half miles from here, down this track.”

  “You don’t think it’s anything to do with that house on the cliff, do you?” questioned Grayson.

  “What old Anzar’s place?”

  “He’s supposed to be crazy, and he’s supposed to be a scientist, but what he could have got in an ordinary house to cause an interference like this, I don’t know.”

  “I know this,” answered Grayson, “something—some source of heat and power—some source of energy and thermo-dynamic power, has melted, and chewed up six miles of a roadway that I laid. When I laid it there was nothing the matter with it. Well, I want to know what kind of power can do that! You remember that when they threw this fellow out from the scientific council, they didn’t chuck him out because he was a quack or a dud but simply because he lost his temper with them. He may not be such a ‘nut’ case as some of us think. I’ll tell you what lads, I’ve heard from all the reckoning that he can be a dangerous man, now your job is to check on those T. and accuse him, or anything like that. In fact, if my advice V’s, but if I was you I shouldn’t just wander in there is worth anything at all I should leave the matter severely alone … and just say that you’ve located the source of the interference, and that steps are be being taken. That’ll keep the tenants quiet in the flats.”

  “What are you going to do then, Mr. Grayson?” asked Seth.

  “I think the time has come to call in the IPF,” said Grayson, “I don’t want to lay an official complaint in case we’re all barking up the wrong tree, but I know a chap who’d be the ideal man to talk to. The fellow over at Radville.”

  “The young lieutenant you mean? What’s his name now?” said Seth.

  “Cameron—Don Cameron—he’s a first class chap. He’s young but he’s already had a lot of experience … not like us old ’uns,” he said good-naturedly. “He’s got the drive of youth and the balanced knowledge that comes from longer in the force than that youthful expression of his gives him credit for. I’m going to drive over into Radville now. Maybe you’d like to come with me. We’ll see if we can catch Cameron on his lunch break, and then we shan’t have to make it official. I think I know where he eats. I’ve had dinner with him once or twice.”

  “O.K.” agreed Benny “it’s saved us a run out there. I can’t pretend that I really fancy going out there and having a word with the professor, if he is a scientist he knows a lot more about electro-magnetic fields than we can, we’re only service men. And if he’s as possibly dangerous as he’s reputed to be …” he shrugged his shoulders, “Well, I mean, it is a job for the IPF in that case, isn’t it?”

  “It certainly is,” concurred Grayson. He followed the service van back into Radville, and the three men called at the café where Don Cameron was usually to be found. They were in luck. The keen young lieutenant had just sat down, and was attacking a plate of appetising soup as they entered.

  St. Mark’s Northchurch was a beautiful old, ecclesiastical building, dating back some 1200 years. It had a Norman foundation and had been largely added to during the 12th and 13th centuries.

  Miraculously, that particular part of Radville had managed to escape the ravages of the worst of Oliver Cromwell’s Puritans, with their axes and odd ideas about church decoration, and in consequence, it was a place of singular beauty and historic interest. Its visitors books were filled more rapidly than those of the neighbouring churches. It attracted visitors to the town, as a jar of jam attracts flies, or as a waterhole attracts mosquitoes. Its belfry stairs were climbed by the curious. Its ancient bells were examined by the connoisseur. Its brasses and its beautiful medieval altar screen had been photographed time and time again. It was a place of exquisite wonder, and great age. The crypt below St. Mark’s had seen the interment of many of Radville’s leading citizens in the twelve centuries since the church had been built. Lords and ladies, mayors and mayoresses, aldermen, merchant princes, leaders of the old medieval guilds, and later—chief governmental officials. The rectors and vicars had all found their way down into the spacious crypt below the majestic old Norman church. It was not necessarily the most pleasant of places in which to spend an afternoon. The crypt did not boast of electric light. In fact there were no means of illumination of any kind, but it was necessary from time to time to inspect the foundations of the place, and the architects had left several little pipeclay tell-tales against one or two cracks that might prove dangerous. To save the expense of the architects coming themselves, the Reverend Tremayne had undertaken periodically to examine the telltales set across the cracks, and inform the architects concerned should there be any signs of deterioration in the fabrics. The Rev. Tremayne was in the crypt with a powerful electric torch … but even with a powerful electric torch and even with strong nerves, and a quiet and peaceful mind that is the most valued possession of the true churchman, Tremayne had a strange sense of uneasiness. The crypt seemed somehow different. Often it just seemed peaceful, quiet, when he went in. There was nearly always another worldly quiet about the place and an Other Worldly peace … but now—it wasn’t heavenly. Unearthly, yes, but—there was a strange silence … Then the silence gave way to a weird vibration which he could feel rather than hear. A subsonic vibration, and yet which he sensed was rapidly mounting the sonic scale, making high decibel gain as it went. He had the horrible feeling that he would soon see or hear something—something which he had no particular desire to see or hear. You’re being an idiot George Tremayne, he told himself, a complete idiot, pull yourself together, you’re a man of God, you’re the vicar of this church, you have nothing to fear from those souls departed in the fear and favour of the Lord, who sleep beneath these ancient stones. This building has been hallowed by the prayers of countless thousands. It has been a dedicated shrine for twelve hundred years. What evil can lurk here? If there are spirit forces, you yourself believe in those spirit forces, why should they not manifest, and if they manifest themselves, they will not manifest as evil.…

  Despite these reassuring thoughts which his consciousness kept trying to force upon him, George Tremayne felt more and more uneasy, and it was only by a supreme effort of will that he forced himself to make his rounds and complete his inspection of the tell-tales, set firmly in their cornice brackets on either side of the cracks. And then—th
at low vibrant humming grew louder, and a strange, eerie green light began to percolate through the crypt.

  “What on earth …?” asked Tremayne and then broke off short, the torch fell from nerveless fingers, the green grey light was little better than darkness, and yet it was enough. As far as Tremayne could make out it was about the same illuminative power as the light which shines back from a luminous watch dial. It had the same strange quality, and as he watched it seemed to him that figures were moving and gliding hither and thither in the walls, through the walls, strange, semi-transparent figures yet there was something about them that looked surprisingly human. The Rev. George Tremayne was no coward, but never before in his life had he experienced any phenomena like this. The crypt was quite dark now, except for the green light, and even the green light was fading. There was nothing but the luminous figures moving around. He tried to scream, but the scream died in his throat. The fear held him in a kind of paralysis. One of the figures, a fearsome, faceless, gliding, amorphous thing, was coming directly towards him. The scream broke loose then and the paralysis left him. Adrenalin pumped from his glands into his blood stream and galvanised him into action. Tripping over brass plates, stumbling against the ends of urns and the other impedimenta with which the crypt was filled, tell-tales and architectural inspections forgotten, George Tremayne sprinted up the stairs as though he was an Olympic record breaker, puffing and panting like a grampus as he reached the nave above, slammed the door to behind him, and hurled himself out into the pale afternoon sunlight beyond.

  “Help!” shouted the Reverend Tremayne. “Help!” An IPF constable was patrolling on the street corner as the minister emerged. He ran across.

  “What’s the matter sir? Robbery in the church—thieves or something?”

  Tremayne collapsed into his arms.

  “Worse than that,” he panted, “a thousand times worse.” He opened his eyes wide, and stared only half-seeing into the constable’s face. His pulses were racing, the blood was surging through his veins, in a great terrified flood. His nerves were fluttering and his heart was thudding like a trip hammer.

  “Ghosts,” he whispered, “ghosts in the church! Green, shining ghosts—down in the crypt … and on top of that an awful humming sound, and a feeling as if the place was electrified, please could you help me back to the vicarage. I’m afraid I’ve suffered a most severe shock.” His breath was coming in short pants. The pupils of his eyes were dilating, his hair was dishevelled, his robes awry. It was obvious to the constable that something remarkable had happened, something that had scared the Reverend Tremayne to within an inch of his life. He made his way back, supporting the still twitching parson to the vicarage.

  “Now I’d like a full statement, sir, if you don’t mind,” said the constable. “You see, I’m sure that there must be some perfectly rational explanation for all this. I hope you’ll forgive me for saying so sir, but I don’t believe there’s ghosts.

  “Not even in an old crypt like that one you’ve got under the church. There’s no doubt you’ve seen something that frightened you, and we’ve got to find out what it is. If you’ll just describe exactly what you saw, and exactly what you heard and sign the statement, then we shall be able to investigate fully. I take it that we have your permission to carry out some kind of investigation on the scene of this unfortunate happening.”

  “Of course,” panted Tremayne. “Of course. Though I don’t think you’ll find anything there that can be explained by natural means, officer.” Tremayne was feeling a little better now that he was sitting down. The constable crossed to a cabinet and poured a stiff brandy for the still palpitating cleric. George Tremayne gulped it down and felt better almost immediately.

  “Now sir—your statement.…”

  Don Cameron sat alone in his study. It had, he reflected, been a helluva day, and that was putting it mildly.

  Don Cameron was trying to organise in his mind some kind of pattern or gestalt in the chain of events which had happened with such amazing, terrifying suddenness in that one localised area. Going right back to the beginning of the thing he realised there had been the case of that car a few months ago which had crashed into a tree. The car had crashed into a tree yet as far as he remembered there had been no tree there, and now today there had been this other crash, and again, a tree seemed to have been responsible. But where had it come from?

  It was against safety regulations to have trees by the side of the main highways. It might skid on to a grass verge, and a good driver could hold that, but not even Frankenstein’s monster could hold the wheel of a car that had run into a tree, what was the tree doing there? Where had it come from? Had it dropped off a sky hook, or what? That was the first thing, and he made a mental note of it. The tree that was where it had obviously no right to be. Unless of course, somebody had dropped all the wreckage out of the sky … car, tree, mutilated driver? Had brought them there in the back of a truck and tipped them out.…

  The car was such a tangled mass, that it was impossible to tell whether it had really collided with a tree on that spot—he decided that it would repay a little further investigation, but he remembered clearly—he clicked his note book open—he had taken notes of the exact position of the tree. It hadn’t just been sheared off. It had been uprooted. That was interesting. The ground, of course, had been churned up by the impact—but had the hole really been as deep as it ought to have been?

  When a tree is torn up by the roots it brings up quite a lot of earth with it. There hadn’t been as much earth as there should have been. It might have meant that the tree wasn’t as deeply in the earth as one normally expects a tree to be, when it is big enough to stop a car. That was the second point of which Don Cameron made a mental note. Then there was that hover car that got out of control. The hover car that had suddenly been whisked up to a height of two hundred feet, caught in an air current, and wafted over some soft earth, and then as mysteriously as it had begun, the power which had supercharged its jets had failed, and it had come down again. And then there was that peculiar report which had come through from the botanical laboratory. An old man named Tom Farrow had taken some sweet peas in there. They had not been normal by any means. The whole thing was apparently being treated in a hush manner at the moment. But it was big enough for a whisper to have come across to the station, that there was some kind of botanical enigma, in the area. Tom Farrow had not been imagining things, there had been something odd about the sweet peas, but that fact was confidential. Why should there have been?

  First a tree in the wrong place, then a sweet pea plant that moved of its own volition, and then there was Jeff Grayson, and Benny and Seth, who had spoken to him at lunch time.… According to Grayson, a six mile stretch of road had suddenly subsided and melted for no apparent reason, over a six-mile area. Grayson said it looked as though a steam roller had ploughed along it. That was three strange incidents … no, four peculiar incidents, all highly localised; then there had been the interference on TV and radio. According to Benny and Seth that had been caused by some strange and very powerful field of electro-magnetic interference. Then above all, the strange humming noise heard by the Rev. Tremayne in the crypt of St. Mark’s, and the strange luminescent glow, and the things that he had described as ‘ghostly figures’ passing through the crypt. That was the most difficult thing of all to explain. Yet there had to be an explanation. Whatever else he might believe about the case, Don Cameron was quite convinced that there were no ghosts attached to it. The two crashes, the trees that had no right to be there, the hover car, strange behaviour of sweet peas, a melted, subsided road surface, and the interference on the wireless and TV, and the evidence that the source of the trouble was Anzar’s house. Now finally, these ghosts. Lieutenant Don Cameron drew himself a rough sketch map, with Radville at the bottom of the paper, and Brayton at the north. Roughly to scale they were twenty miles apart and connected by the long line of north highway.

  To the west, the points of particular interest w
ere, Tom Farrow’s garden and cottage—he marked that in. The tall, rising escarpment cliff, with the sinister house of Anzar set atop of it, about four miles north of Radville, and then on the northern fringe of Radville itself, the block of flats, where the peculiar TV interference had been noticed, and also at the north, St. Mark’s. St. Marks with its peculiar crypt and strange happenings that had taken place there. Allowing for the depression of the valley, he began checking on heights and levels. St. Mark’s stood on a hill, the block of flats not so high. St. Mark’s crypt, because of its hilly foundation, was roughly on a level with the flats. If they were on the same level as Anzar’s house, here might be the first clue. He checked up. It was as he had suspected, the whole three buildings were on a parallel plane. So was Tom Farrow’s house.

  He took down the Ordnance Survey map and studied it in conjunction with his road map. He marked in the point of the impact, checking the location from his note book. That too, made sense.

  It was on the same height as the other two places. Something then seemed to be operating on a horizontal plane, around that height. Of course it wouldn’t account for the road surface, but it might be more than coincidence, he was too good a police officer not to neglect that possibility. It might only be coincidence. He might be up a gum tree, but he was decided that the house of Anzar would very definitely pay for investigation. It was just a question of what was the best way to go about it. Things were still turning over in his mind. Trees and hover cars, and sweet peas, and road surfaces, interference on TV, and the strange phenomena in the crypt of St. Mark’s …

  Don Cameron was tired, he was extremely tired, but there was one job he had to do—everything seemed to point—in his mind at any rate—to Anzar. It didn’t point directly, it pointed indirectly; very obliquely and very obscurely, but all roads seemed to lead to Anzar. Every link in the chain of events, that strange chain of events which he had just been going over in his mind, seemed to point back to Anzar. No matter where his mind looked, no matter where his probing intellect sought, there was Anzar at the other end. The autocar crashes in the vicinity of Anzar’s house. The moving trees in the vicinity of Anzar’s house; the hover car got out of control not far from the cliff on which Anzar’s house stood; the sweet peas that had acted so strangely in old Tom Farrow’s garden had been in a garden situated quite close to Anzar’s mysterious residence. The road surfaces that had melted and subsided, as though subjected to terrific heat and pressure, had also been in the area of Anzar’s residence. The block of flats that had been subject to TV and radio interference had been on the northern side of Radville—which was closest to Anzar’s house, a mere four miles away as the crow flies. The ghosts had appeared in the crypt of a church that was also on a level with Anzar’s house, and on a side of the town which was closest to it.